The dwarves exchanged a look—then broke into a storm of applause!
“That’s my gurrl!” shouted Number Six.
Number One had tears of pride in his eyes.
*********
While little Coal Black was happily quaffing beer and killing goblins under the mountains, up above, the Evil Queen, totally unaware of her daughter’s existence, was busy being evil. She executed ten thousand seven hundred seventy-three people and a cat, had another five hundred sixty-five tortured to death, and, most gruesome of all, decreed that, from now on, children would also have to attend school on weekends.
One day, she was bored of being evil and wanted to do something different for a change (without, of course, going so far as to actually do something good or nice). So she bought a magic mirror. It wasn’t just an ordinary magic mirror, but one of those new, fancy models that couldn’t just reflect a more beautiful image of yourself than reality could justify, but also had a nifty inbuilt soothsaying feature. So, to try it out, she demanded:
“Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?”
“I’m not in your hand,” the mirror pointed out haughtily. “I’m a wall mirror, not a scrubby little hand mirror, and I will thank you very much not to imply anything different.”
The Queen tried again, “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
“Do you mean fair in the sense of that a referee is fair, or fair in the sense of beautiful? Because, if it’s the first—“
The Queen grabbed the mirror and shook it. “Oh, just fucking tell me already!”
“I do not respond to expletives. My magical instruction manual states clearly that—“
The Queen raised a silver hairbrush threateningly.
“All right, all right.” The mirror sighed. “As to the first sense of the word…My Queen, you are the fairest here so true. But the chief referee of the Royal Soccer League down on the field at the finals is fairer still than you.”
“And in the second sense of the word?” The silver hairbrush rose a little higher.
“Well, in that case…My Queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Coal Black, who used to be Snow White before starting to live in a coal mine, is fairer still than yo—“
The mirror was interrupted by a rapidly moving hairbrush. Glass splintered.
“Call the huntsman!” the Queen bellowed. “Now! And get me the Royal Torturer!”
Shortly later, the huntsman appeared. “You’ve sent for me, My Queen?”
“Ah, yes, my dear huntsman. It’s nothing much. Just a minor matter. You remember that pesky little girl I sent you off to slaughter a few years ago?”
“Your daughter, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, that one.” The Queen fixed him with her Evil Queen gaze. “You did kill her, didn’t you?”
“I did indeed, Your Majesty.”
“Fascinating. How fascinating. Huntsman?”
“Yes, My Queen?”
“I wonder whether you have met Mordred, my Royal Torturer? He has a couple of questions to ask you.”
A few painful but very informative days later, the number of people tortured to death went up to five hundred sixty-six.
“He deceived me! He dared to deceive me! Me!”
Crash!
“Oh…that black-hearted villain! He couldn’t be just an ordinary murderer, no! He had to be a traitor, too! Well, I showed him!”
Another vase went flying.
Crash!
Leaning on her throne, the Queen took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
“Well…at least now I know where the brat is hiding. I’ll go and finish her off. It shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll disguise myself as a harmless old woman and won’t have any trouble getting close enough to poison her. She’s only a naïve little girl, after all.” Straightening to her full height, she marched out of the throne room and into the castle courtyard. “Guards? Saddle my horse!”
*********
A few hours later, Coal Black was just busy carving an axe pommel out of a goblin’s chin bone when she heard a knock on the steel trap door that covered the entrance to the mine. Marching over, she slid aside the metal plate that covered the little spy hole and peered out.
“Yes?”
“Good morning, my dear.”
“Depends. What do you want, you ugly old bat?”
“I’m selling—“
The voice was abruptly cut off as Coal Black slammed the hole shut and turned away. “Damn salesmen!” she muttered. “They never get tired of trying.” She sat down and resumed her work.
A moment later, there was another knock on the trap door. Sighing, Coal Black put the goblin’s jaw aside once more and returned to the door, ripping open the little hole. “We don’t want any insurance! Go away! The mine already is insured against water, fire, goblin wars, and dragon attacks!”
“I’m not selling insurance, my dear.”
“Well, what are you selling, then?”
“Let me in and we can—“
“Tell me what you’re selling or piss off!”
“Um…all right, dear. I have lace, and pretty dresses and—“
Coal Black slammed the spy hole shut again. “Try the three little piggies at the bottom of the mountain,” she yelled. “They like weird stuff like that!”
Then she went to the larder and cut herself a slice of ham from what had, until recently, been the fourth little piggy. Arguing with salesmen always made her hungry.
She was just starting on the second slice of ham and had filled her plate with roast beef, roast chicken, a couple of steaks, half a rat on toast, and lots of other things a growing young dwarf needed to become strong and healthy when, once more, she heard a knock on the trap door. Gritting her teeth, she turned and marched towards the exit.
“What now?”
“I sell other things too, my dear girl. I have sweets, and apples fresh from the—“
Without waiting for her to finish, Coal Black marched to the hidden opening in the stone wall beside the trap door, threw it open, and hurled a throwing axe into the fresh morning air. From outside, there came a startled yelp.
“Piss off!” she shouted and slammed the hidden door shut again.
The Evil Queen ran half a mile before she came to a stop, behind a number of very large and sufficiently safe boulders. Cursing and panting, she threw a venomous glance at the throwing-axe buried deep in a tree-trunk next to the mine’s entrance, just where she had been standing.
“All right,” she mumbled. “Maybe I need to adopt a new strategy.”
*********
Fortunately, evil queens don’t need to rely on poisoned apples alone. Since they are at the head of an absolutist monarchy, which is essentially the same as a dictatorship, except you get a pretty crown to wear, they can do pretty much anything they want. Thus, the Evil Queen seized control of the media and started to spread anti-dwarf propaganda. Over night, posters depicting sinister, bearded, hook-nosed dwarves with the caption ‘The Eternal Dwarf—Beware!’ appeared on every wall. The kingdom’s bards and troubadours, who had, up until then, mostly featured giants, witches, school teachers, and lawyers as villains in their ballads, suddenly invented the figure of the villainous dwarf. No giant was stronger than the wicked dwarf. No Casanova was more skilled at seducing innocent virgins than the wicked dwarf (which was amazing, considering his enormous nose and beard). No wicked witch killed and ate more children than the wicked dwarf.
Soon, the Evil Queen had the whole country convinced that dwarves were short, ugly, and greedy bastards who deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth. Of course, people had already known that dwarves were short, ugly, and greedy bastards. But they had never thought that they deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth for this, because most other people, while not being as short, were just as greedy and ugly. But now they knew the truth! Death to the dwarves!
The dwarves first began to notice this change when Num
ber Six went to town to sell coal, and someone threw a rock at his head.
“Someone threw a rock at my head,” he informed the others upon his return.
“Really?” asked Number Seven, interested. “Were there any interesting ores in it?”
“No. It was a just a plain old rock.”
“Strange.”
“And what’s more, they wouldn’t buy our coal, either.”
“What?”
“And they spat at me and called me ‘garden gnome.’”
“What? What did you do?”
“I hacked a few heads off, of course. Strangely, they seemed to take offence at that.”
The other dwarves frowned. “Strange indeed.”
“I think we’ll have to look for somewhere else to sell our coal.”
But the reception the dwarves received in other towns was no less hostile. They were just about to go out once more and try at another village when Number One, peering through the spy hole, said, “I don’t think we’ll have to go all the way to the village to sell our coal.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a bunch of humans right outside.”
“Let me see.” Shouldering Number Five aside, Number Four peered out of the mine. After a few moments, he grimaced. “I don’t think they’re here to buy our coal.”
“Why?”
“Well, the way they are waving pitchforks and signs that say ‘Death to the garden gnomes’ is a pretty big hint.”
“Oh.”
“This,” Number Four anounced gravely, “is a serious problem. I think that if we go out there, we will either have to kill all the humans, or get killed ourselves. And if we kill all of them, there will be nobody left to sell our coal to. We must have a Clan Meet!”
All the brothers and Coal Black gathered around in a tight circle. Beards bristled all around.
“Why do the humans suddenly hate us?” Number One asked.
“They’ve always hated us,” Number Two pointed out.
“True.”
“The question is, why are they acting upon it now?”
“And why didn’t they stop when we chopped off a few heads?”
“We must do something!”
“Chop off a few more heads?”
“That won’t be enough.”
“A few arms? Legs?”
“No! We must get to the heart of the problem!”
“You can’t chop off a heart! You could run a spear through it, though. If we—“
“I was speaking metaphorically, you idiot!”
“Oh.”
Someone cleared their throat. All eyes turned to Coal Black. She was eleven now, more than old enough to participate in the meet as a full clan member.
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” she said.
“We should start gouging out eyes?”
“Be quiet!”
“I mean,” Coal Black said, her look silencing the brothers, “that someone or something is behind all this. Someone is planning to destroy us—and we must find out who.”
“So we can hack their head off!”
“Exactly.”
“So how do we find out?”
Coal Black thought for a moment. Then her face, or what little of it was visible behind the enormous fake beard, suddenly brightened. “I’ve got it!”
Two days later, the postman arrived. He had a little trouble getting through the mob at the door, but, finally, after running a few people over with his bicycle, he reached the entrance to the mine and knocked. A hatch in the trap door opened, and a face, hidden almost entirely by a wild, red beard, appeared.
“Yes?”
“Did someone order a magic mirror from Tinkerbell & Sons, Magical Equipment?”
“That was me.”
“Well, then sign here please.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. Have a nice day, Miss…Coal Black?”
“Yes. You too.”
Only minutes later, inside the mine, the dwarves gathered around the magic mirror. Coal Black had hung it on the straightest wall in the entire mine and now stepped forward and cleared her throat.
“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, what the fuck is going on?”
“Hm…good question,” mused the mirror. “Do you mean that in a broadly philosophical or more immediate sense?”
“Why is there a mob outside the mine?”
“Because your mother, the Queen, sent them.”
The dwarves threw each other confused glances. “The Queen is your mother?” Number Six demanded.
Coal Black waved the question away. “Don’t interrupt with unimportant details, Uncle.” She turned to the mirror again. “What does the Queen have against us?”
“She’s jealous because, supposedly, you’re more beautiful than her. I must admit, I’m a bit doubtful about that, considering the enormous bush on your face, but—“
“Don’t you dare say anything about my beard! It’s the best beard in all dwarf kingdoms!”
“Of course, of course! Please, lower the axe! I don’t like sharp or pointy metal objects.”
“Will you keep your mouth shut about my beard?”
“I promise, I promise.”
“All right. So the Queen is jealous?”
“Yes.”
“What does she want from us?”
“To capture you and kill you, preferably slowly and painfully.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Does she want our gold?”
“No.”
“Our jewels? Pearls? Silver?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Thank you.”
Taking a deep breath, Coal Black turned towards the others. “You all heard. She only wants to kill us. She’s not after our treasure. The situation is not quite as grim as we had imagined.”
The dwarves nodded. “Still, something will have to be done,” Number Five pointed out.
“Oh yes.” From behind her beard, Coal Black grinned a fierce dwarf grin. “And I know just what to do. Sound the great gongs.”
“You want us to call a Great Clan Meet? Call all the clans together?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Just wait and see.”
*********
A few days later, up in the royal palace, the Evil Queen looked up at the chandeliers. The crystals were slowly swaying back and forth.
“Chancellor?”
“Yes, My Queen?”
“Why is the palace shaking?”
“Um…a minor earthquake, My Queen?”
“An earthquake doesn’t shake things rhythmically! It’s almost like…marching feet?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, My Queen.”
“Hm. You’re probably right. Bring me the latest ugly dwarf posters, will you?”
*********
The armies of the dwarf clans began arriving three days later. Thousands upon thousands of short, stocky warriors, armed with sharp axes and rock-hard beards, poured out of the tunnels and filled the great cavern of the Clan of the Seven dwarves.
“Dwarves! Sons of the stone! Harken unto me!”
The armies turned to where a podium had been erected at one end of the cavern. A rather slim, coal-black dwarf with an enormous red beard had appeared there.
“Harken?” whispered one of the new arrivals. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He wants you to listen! Shut your trap!”
“Harken unto me, my brothers! The Evil Queen of the surfacers has stirred up hatred against the mighty dwarven nation amongst the people of the world. Because of her evil machinations—“
“Machinations? What are machinations?”
“Plans, you idiot! Shut up!”
“—we cannot sell our wares, cannot earn our honest living! This is not to be borne! We are a free people! The mightiest warriors under the surface of the entire earth! We will not let ourselves be treated like comm
on dirt! We will fight until we are treated like the rocks we are!”
A cheer went up from the crowd. A nice war was always something to be happy about.
“Follow me,” Coal Black yelled, “and I will lead you to victory against the Evil Queen of the surfacers!”
“And what’s in it for us?” yelled the chief of a distant clan. “We don’t all live under this puny little kingdom, you know. My clan sells its jewels just fine! What’s in it for us, if we follow you?”
Coal Black smiled. “I’m the daughter of the Evil Queen. If you follow me and help me win the throne, I will grant all dwarves tax-free mining rights underneath this entire kingdom, and free ale at all inns in all the provinces.”
This time, the cheer was nearly deafening.
“To war! To war, for freedom, gold, and free beer!”
Coal Black sprang off the platform, and, at the head of a cheering army, surrounded by her clan, she marched out of the mine and up onto the surface. The mob outside quickly decided that this wasn’t a good time to be sporting “Death to all dwarves” signs and disappeared. The army marched on, decapitating anything that stood in their way, or even close to their way. By the time they reached the capital, Coal Black had a nice, new collection of drinking cups.
Finally, they stood before the gates of the city. Accompanied just by a few select warriors, Coal Black marched up to the great doors of the city and pounded on the wood with her massive war-hammer.
“Hey, Mom! I’m home!”
*********
The Evil Queen, who was busy admiring her beautiful face in the mirror, was quite surprised to learn that there was an army of ten thousand dwarves outside her gates.
“Kill them,” she snapped at her chancellor.
“Um…there are quite a lot of them, Your Majesty.”
“Then take your time. I don’t mind if it takes all day, as long as the road is clear in time for me to go out riding tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to—“
Nobody will ever know how the chancellor would have finished that sentence. He was interrupted by ten thousand savage war cries from outside the wall and the sound of a charging army.
The City Guard wasn’t particularly difficult to overcome. They were mostly used to thugs trying to stab them in the back, not steel-clad little buggers trying to chop their knees off. It was quite a novel experience. And a short-lived one.