A queen once wished for a child with skin as white as snow, lips as red as a rose, and hair as black as a raven. She had her wish, and named her Snow White. Then the good queen died, and the King married again.
The new Queen had a mirror that could not lie. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" "You are," it said, every morning. Until one morning it said: "Snow White."
The Queen sent a huntsman to take Snow White deep into the forest and leave her there. He walked her as far as the tallest trees. "Run," he said, "and don't come back."
She ran until she found a little house with seven small beds. She was asleep across three of them when seven dwarfs came home from the mine with seven lamps.
"You may stay," said Odo, the eldest. "But we are away all day. Don't open the door." Snow White baked their bread and mended their seven jackets, and she did not open the door.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall?" "Snow White, in the house of the seven dwarfs." So the Queen dressed as a pedlar and knocked. "Pretty ribbons!" she called. Snow White opened the door, just a crack.
The Queen tied a ribbon round her so tight that Snow White fell down. The dwarfs came home and cut it, snip, and she breathed again. "Don't open the door," said Odo. "Not even a crack."
Next the Queen came as a farmer's wife, with one apple, white on one side and red on the other. "I can't open the door," said Snow White. "Then open the window," said the Queen, and bit the white half herself.
Snow White bit the red half, and fell, and did not get up. The dwarfs could find no ribbon to cut. They laid her in a box of glass on the hill and kept watch, one each night, for a year.
A prince called Karl rode by and asked who she was. The dwarfs lifted the glass box to show him. Bruno, the smallest, tripped on a root. Bump! A piece of apple flew out of her mouth, and Snow White sat up.
The Queen asked her mirror one more time. Then she came herself, with no disguise. Knock, knock. "Don't open the door!" said all seven dwarfs. Snow White opened the door.
She stood in the doorway with seven dwarfs behind her and looked at the Queen for a long time. The Queen had nothing left to sell. She went home to a mirror that never spoke again. And Snow White left the door open, which is how Prince Karl came in to supper.
