The Book of Snow & Silence

by Zoe Marriott

Shell found me there. It was only when she appeared between the bookshelves, bearing an oil-lamp in her hands, that I realised night had fallen. The pages had been a blur before my eyes for so long that I had not noticed I could no longer make out the words.

  She came to kneel beside me in a rustle of primrose coloured skirts, her brows creased with concern. She put the lamp down and signed at me in a flurry of movement. I struggled to track the individual signs, but the meaning was clear:

  Have you been here all day? I was worried; Uldar was worried – what’s the matter? Are you upset? Ill? Tell me!

  Words bubbled up in my mouth and solidified there, like stone. My instincts screamed at me to lie. To shield my vulnerability, my weakness, as my Mother had always preached. I had been weaned on deception, on pretence. I did not know if I even had the ability to be honest, let alone how.

  Shell touched my hand. No more than that; a mere brush of her fingers against mine. The stone in my mouth shattered in a sob, and words flowed out. “I found out something awful. I found out that my Mother did something to me as a child, something that probably nearly killed me. She took away my Blessing, my – my magic. All to make me worthy of her throne. And she lied to me about it, and let me suffer for it, and then threw me away anyway. Everything she taught me about power and right and wrong, about being worthy. It was all lies. Nothing was ever real.”

  Shell had me in her arms now, rocking me as if I were a child. Her lips moved, desperate to make sounds that would soothe and calm me. Our faces were very close. Shell’s lips were very close. They moved again, parted by the same breath that disturbed the fine hairs at my hairline. Her fingers had gone still, lingering as gentle as a feather stroke on the delicate skin beneath my ear.

  If everything I have wanted is empty and worthless... Am I allowed to make a different choice now?

  I sat up straight, catching her hands in mine. They were damp with my tears, and I knew that my grip was too tight. I couldn’t let go. “Shell. Shell, I can’t stand any more lies. You know everything about me, but I don’t know anything about you. Where do you really come from? Who are you? What is your real name?”

  She hesitated, staring at me with luminous eyes, bright with tears. Tears for me.

  “Tell me. You know all my secrets. It’s time to trust me with yours.” I held my breath like a wish inside me, burning in my chest.

  At last, she nodded.

  We went to the ballroom. It was nearly pitch dark, and she did not stop even to light a globe as she led me forward into the echoing space where Uldar had drunk poison.

  “How can you see where you’re going?” I asked tremulously, still fragile and soft from my tears. She looked back at me, and a stray shaft of illumination from above caught her eyes. They flashed green in the shadows, like those of a mountain wolf, or a jaguar. I had always called Shell’s eyes extraordinary, but...

  No human has eyes like that.

  Her hand was warm in mine. She squeezed once, then tugged. I followed her.

  The time was much later than I had thought. When Shell opened the door onto Morogana’s rock, I saw the nearly full moon low in the west amid a sky of milky blue clouds. Dawn could not be far away. Although it was still, as always on the rock, I shivered, hugging my free arm around myself as we went toward the dark tangled shadow of the Tree. Why bring me here? Surely this place had no answers to offer.

  But Shell’s destination was not the Tree itself. There was a set of steps, carved deeply into the side of the cliff. They led down far past where the roots grew into the rock.

  “I – didn’t notice these before.”

  They can only be found by moonlight, Shell answered.

  “Does anyone else in the Palace know about them?”

  She shrugged. Then, taking my hand again, she led me onto the steps.

  The sea whispered below us, somehow gentle under the moon. A chilly, salt-scented wind greeted us, whipping hair around our faces and tugging curiously at our clothes. It should have been a terrifying descent. I could barely make out the shapes of the stone treads in the deep, gauzy moon shadows, and was forced to step, unseeing, where Shell had stepped. Yet I never felt afraid. I knew that Shell would not let go of me. She would not let me fall.

  By the time we reached the base of the cliff my teeth were chattering and my grip on Shell’s hand had become a convulsive clench of blue-tinged fingers. Shell stopped and turned to me on the narrow crescent of pearly white sand, which was rapidly being devoured by the sea. She chafed at my hands and goose-pimpled arms, looking at me in apology. It was clear that the cold didn’t bother her at all, and she had not realised what its effect would be on me.

  “I’m all right for now,” I said, ruefully. “But where are we going, Shell?”

  She smiled a mischievous smile, then laid her hand on the blue rock of the cliff – and passed straight through it. There was a crease in the granite. An opening.

  I went after her again, blind in the blackness, trusting. And then let out a gasp of wonder.

  It was a cave. A sea cave. The pearly sand stretched on beneath my feet. The walls and roof were glazed with thick ripples of ice that glowed turquoise, jade, emerald, pure white. As if a great wave had crested within the space, and been frozen at the apex of its curl. Threaded through and beneath the ice were curling black roots, thicker in places than my waist. The roots of the black Tree of Morgana that stood sentinel on the cliff top above.

  Under the tree roots at the centre of the cave there was a pool. It was the source of the light that made the ice glow: shimmering midnight blue, the water threw up strange reflections onto the walls and ceiling. It seemed at first to be filled with shooting stars, drifting through the water on fiery tails. But as I moved closer I saw that they were tiny glowing creatures.

  “Bioluminescence,” I breathed. My breath did not frost the air before me. Despite the ice, the cave was warm.

  Shell walked past me, wading forward fearlessly into the pool with no regard for her dress, which instantly took up long streaks of moisture that turned it from primrose to gold. As her feet, then her ankles, then her knees sank into the pool her body language was that of ecstatic relief: eyes closed, head tilted back. Her fingertips moved gently, stirring the water that now reached her hips.

  The tiny, glowing creatures reacted to her presence, spinning, dancing, gathering around her skirts so that their light was cast up along her body. She looked like a liquid flame. Sea fire.

  “You’re not human, are you?”

  My voice was loud against the soft lapping of the water. She opened her eyes, turning to face me. Her hands lifted.

  I am a person. I am not a person of the air. I am a person of the sea.

  “There are sea people?”

  Many, many sea people. The sea is where my country is. My sisters. My Mother.

  “Then how did you come to be on land? How can you breathe on land?”

  A slow, complex sign. Sea. Power. Promise. Moon.

  “Magic?”

  She nodded. I swallowed. The Whisperers were wrong. This... This was nothing reasonable, nothing rational, nothing that could be explained away with research and study. It was wild magic. Shell was so beautiful. I should have known that she was too beautiful to be real. “What are you like, in the sea? What do you look like?”

  She smiled. Sometimes almost like this, but with no legs. I have a tail. At other times, I am very different. You have seen us. On your ship, before the great storm. We danced for you, my sisters and I.

  She made new motions with her hands. Swooping, diving, jumping.

  “The orcas.” And then a realisation that made my stomach drop. “The whale that saved Uldar. That was real.” I gasped for breath, my memories of a blurring face and dark hair amid the tossing waves, of a pale arm reaching out, suddenly resolving into a face I knew. The face before me. “The person I saw, the girl in the water. That was – you.”

  Her hands dropped, and she seemed to sag in the water. The glowi
ng creatures went dim around her. I bit my lip, barely feeling the pain. There was an empty ache in my chest. She still loved him.

  Oh Shell. You made a terrible mistake too. Just like me.

  “You came onto the land for Uldar. You changed for Uldar. You didn’t realise he was already promised to me. And now you’re here in this body, and you can’t go back.”

  Her hands hesitated, then moved again. I don’t have a choice.

  “A choice about going back?”

  She was grave and calm. I came here for him. I changed for him. But I stayed for you.

  The emptiness in my chest filled with a tingling warmth that made me feel as if I was glowing, bright as the creatures in the water. Could she mean...?

  She was staring at me, her beautiful eyes wide and – and arrested, and hopeful – and despite what I felt, it was nearly too much. Too much honesty, too much vulnerability. My shoulders hunched up defensively, and I was helpless to stop it. My eyes squeezed shut.

  The salt-water touch of her fingers didn't startle me, but it did make my gaze fly back to hers as she tilted my face to look at her. She shook her head, eyes still fixed raptly on mine as she touched the stray waves of hair that had fallen down in front of my ears.

  It’s all right, she mouthed. It’s all right.

  She did not sign. She didn’t need to. Her eyes spoke all the other words that I needed to understand.

  Don’t be afraid. Don’t turn away. I want to see you. See how you look here in this light, sea-light, with wind-tossed hair, with tears still staining your face. Let me look at you. Let me see you.

  How many times had I stared at her and cursed her for not looking at me? But it was I who had failed to see. No one had ever – not ever – looked at me as she did. No one had ever seen me. Seen through all the reflections, the future Queen, the exiled Princess, the lost child, the future wife, the composed and chilly Princess Snow.

  She saw Theoai. She saw me.

  It was exhilarating and terrifying. It was everything.

  Yes. Look at me.

  Look at me.

  Look.

  To the Frosty Hells with duty, with Miramand’s plans, with Uldar’s spoiled recklessness, with my own ambition. To Hell with the icy crown of this icy realm. For once in my life I wanted something that was mine, and only mine. I wanted freedom.

  I wanted Shell.

  37

  It was not my first kiss. Not even my first from a girl. Many had sought to use romance to curry favour with the heir, to ingratiate their family with mine, or in an attempt to pierce my guard and keep me off balance.

  But Shell kissed me because she wanted to and I wanted her to. And as with everything about Shell, it was so uniquely different to anything I had experienced before that it felt like the first time. It might as well have been.

  The water lapped warmly around our feet. My eyes kept wanting to close, but I kept forcing them open again. When her eyelashes tickled my cheek, when the tip of her tongue touched mine, hot and cold prickles ran over my scalp, and I gasped aloud. I had been wanting this for so long without ever knowing it. Closeness. Passion. Truthfulness.

  We kissed, and kissed, and kissed again. Slowly our arms wound around each other, tightening until I could not tell which of us was holding the other up. My shoes and dress were sodden, my breath was coming in soft, hitching sighs, and Shell’s fingers had laced through the waves of hair straggling around my face just a little too tightly. My eyes stung with it. I wanted to stay there forever.

  Then something splashed behind us in the water.

  I barely registered it. But Shell leapt in my arms like a desert hare. In the next moment she was pulling away, pushing and shoving at me, driving both of us up, out of the water, onto the sand. She was shaking. As my eyes focused I felt my kiss-swollen lips gape. The pool had come alive. A mass was swelling up within it, like the bud of a flower ripening, about to open. When it burst apart in a shower of foam, it revealed a strange, nearly-human form.

  No. Not human. Not human at all.

  A sea person.

  He was a kind of mottled grey-purple all over, with long silvery hair that drifted and moved around his face as if he were still in the water. Great white scars puckered his body, from the human top half down to the – the sea parts, held under the water. They were tentacles, long, curling tentacles – each thicker around than one of my thighs – exactly like those of some immense octopus. His eyes were milky white, large and round, as if he were blind. But when his gaze touched on me it was as sharp as that of an apex predator. I shuddered.

  Shell was talking to him, her hands flickering through the complex signs faster than my eyes could follow. He responded just as quickly. I frantically tried to pick up the gist of what they were saying. Time. Soon. No! Moon... Return?

  It was no good. I caught at Shell’s arm to stop her movements and quickly signed to both of them: I’m sorry. Too fast. Can’t understand. Please slow down.

  The sea man’s eyes widened. He turned his shock on Shell, who quailed before it, but nodded at him bravely. The air around us suddenly echoed with a haunting, ululating sound. A song. Like the sounds of the whales – of Shell and her sisters – that I had heard through The Black Tern’s hull. Except that somehow, now, through the sea man’s will, I could make out its meaning. I could understand his words.

  “Aroona. You have taught this one our language. Am I mistaken? Is this the one you came to the land to find?”

  His voice was so beautiful, so liquid with music, that I almost missed Shell’s – no, Aroona’s – response: No. She looked at me with trembling lips. The one I came for is – not for me. I chose wrongly.

  The sea man’s eyes closed. Very human expressions – sorrow, pain, resignation – passed over his face. But when his eyes opened again, they were stern. “Then you know what you must do.”

  The tentacles thrashed among the glowing creatures under the water. Something hurtled toward Shell’s face. Her hand blurred up to catch it. It was a knife. A long, double-edged dagger made of some blue-green, opalescent material. Sea-glass, maybe. The handle was bone.

  Revulsion twisted Shell’s – Aroona’s – face. She threw the knife down to the sand at her feet. No! The error was mine! I won’t hurt anyone else to escape my fate.

  What fate? I signed. I don’t understand. Please explain this.

  Aroona turned away, her shoulders hunching. It was the sea man who answered.

  “People of the sea may only survive for a short while above the surface. But Aroona needed a human shape, to walk the land, and seek her heart’s desire. The moon promise which can allow such a great transformation has a great cost. Either her love must be requited, and her heart’s desire agree to return with her to the sea before the full moon – or this new shape will wither and die, with Aroona trapped inside it.”

  Aroona met my eyes miserably. We both knew that Uldar would never agree to leave his palace, his parents, all the trappings of privilege and wealth and rank to live in the ocean with Aroona. With anyone. It just wasn’t in him.

  Suddenly I felt very cold. Then what is the knife for?

  Aroona flung up her hands, appealing to the sea man: Stop!

  He ignored her. “There is one more way the moon promise can be broken to save Aroona’s life. If she kills the one who has scorned her, her true shape will be restored, and she may return to the sea alone.”

  Never, she signed fiercely. Never. I won’t kill Uldar for my mistake. It’s not his fault we don’t love each other.

  Which meant – what? Aroona would die? I stared into the sea man’s face. It was implacable. He had said all he would say.

  If Shell would not kill Uldar, she would die with the full moon.

  “Two days,” I whispered. “The full moon is in two days.”

  I put my face in my hands, trying to hide, but I couldn’t hold in my rage, my grief, my frustration. A hoarse screamed ripped from my lips. Why did it have to be this way? Why had I let myself t
aste her – taste freedom? I should have known it couldn’t last.

  Everything I wanted was always ripped away from me.

  Aroona tried to put her arms around me. I pushed her away roughly, my shoulders heaving. How could you be so stupid? Why would you choose him? Risk everything for him! You didn’t even know him!

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she signed. It was an illusion, a dream that I had to chase, even if it was false. It led me to you. Theoai, you – you are what I did not yet know to dream of.

  The rage went out of me, leaving me limp and weak. Hadn’t I been the same? Chasing what I thought I wanted, blind to what I needed? She reached for me again and this time I let her, filled with sudden tenderness just as fierce as my anger had been.

  “No,” I murmured, pressing my lips to her hair. “I’m sorry. How can I judge you? I sailed thousands of miles away from home to marry him, nearly died getting here, and why? For power, for position. Ambition. At least you risked everything for love.”

  Her mouth found mine. As our lips parted, her forehead came to rest against mine and we breathed together, clinging. Why? Why does it have to be this way?

  Love is crueller than pity or death.

  “Perhaps...” the sea man began, his eyes fixed on us assessingly. “Perhaps there is – ”

  I tasted the smoky tang of fire and black powder at the back of my throat. That was all the warning I had. A deafening report rocked the cave – and a great, red wound opened on the sea man’s chest.

  He screamed. The high-pitched cry ripped at my ears, tore at my bones. My knees buckled and I fell to the sand, clutching at my head. Water frothed and gushed. There was another shot, closer – a gout of fire and sparks blinded me.

  The sea man’s screams cut off, leaving a humming, chaotic wall of sounds.

  Attack. This is an attack.

  I tried to get up, and failed. My hands fumbled at the sand for purchase; something bit at my palm, slicing the skin. The seaglass dagger. I snatched it up, cutting myself again, and found the handle. Still half-blinded, I wrapped my bleeding fingers around the hilt, ready to fight. And then, to my bewilderment, I heard Silingan voices. Heard my own name.