Pale Quarry, By Frances McQuillan

When he catches her, he finds

that she is greatly under-fed.

There are no roses on her cheeks

although her lips are bitten red.

Great are her foes; she has not bled.

For all their spite, she is not dead.

He kills a deer in Snow White’s stead.

Her death undone remains unsaid.

Knowing not where she’s been led,

far from the paths that hunters tread

the child away from home is fled.

Pale and dark and apple-red.

Frances McQuillan is currently studying English and French at University College Dublin. She once named a dog Chaos, which had consequences which were narratively appropriate.