~ The Seventh Dwarf ~

by

Roberta Olsen Major

Having a beautiful mother is a curse.

Not the “Poof! You’re a toad!” kind of curse. More like the “You’re Queen Snow’s daughter? And does King Charming suspect she fooled around with a homely peasant dairyman nine months before you were born?” kind of curse.

“You are just a late bloomer, darling girl.” Mother said this to me practically every day, always making an attempt to fluff my plain brown braids as if they were golden gossamer curls.

“You are beautiful to me.” Father offered this helpful comment every other day, making sure to kiss my cheek as if it were rosy alabaster instead of spattered with freckles.

In fact, by the time I was thirteen, I’d just about decided that I was either adopted, or the beautiful Snow White had not been as snowy white as hunky Prince Charming had believed when he’d planted that miraculous kiss on her ruby lips. I mean, it couldn’t have been the first time a less than one hundred percent pure pedigreed prince or princess had shot out into the Royal Midwife’s waiting hands.

Besides which, Mother had been sleeping like a dead person for quite awhile before Father ever showed up.

A lot can happen when you’re sleeping.

There she was, stretched out on her bier with her smooth white hands folded at her tiny waist, her raven black hair fanning out in glossy curls on her pillow, her lips pink and plump--and closed.

That’s another reason to be suspicious. My lips are hardly ever closed. I even talk in my sleep.

But back to Mother.

There she was: beautiful and passive, stretched out on what amounted to a bed, while seven testosterone-filled men watched over her around the clock.

Have you ever noticed that it’s the shorter ones who seem to have extra testosterone?

Maybe one of them got tired of just watching.

How else could I have ended up short and plain, with a gorgeous mom, a dashing dad, and six robust, if vertically-challenged, uncles?

And where was Tussle Furskin, the seventh dwarf?