by Radclyffe
How long had it been since she’d enjoyed her father’s company?
How long since she’d been welcome at her family home?
How long since she’d seen Emilia?
The fire vanished; Zemi’s purrs faded into the darkness. The warmth had worn off. The cold seeped into her toes through her cracked boots. Once again chilled, Laima curled up against the brick wall of the building behind her. She slipped her hand into her pocket and fingered the balloons. It was too soon, she knew, but she had felt so good. For that one moment, everything had been good again.
She prepared another dose, then injected it. As she leaned back against the building behind her, the brick wall in front of her began to waver—from solid to translucent, then it vanished completely. As she looked into the room beyond, she saw a family. Her family. There she was, a young girl with long, wavy dark hair that tumbled down her back as she ran from her father, screaming with laughter, clutching a new toy she’d received as a Christmas present. The dining room table was laden with food for their holiday meal; the smells made her mouth water, her stomach rumble.
And there, sitting in the comfortable chair closest to the fire, there was her mociute, her father’s mother, the person who knew and understood her best in the world. Even as Laima watched, the view changed: her grandmother’s wrinkles deepened, her shoulders bent under the weight of her years. And there was Laima, a year ago, at her feet, her grandmother’s hand gently stroking Laima’s hair as she told her stories of Laima’s senelis, her father’s father, who had died before Laima was born. She smiled and pulled Laima close as Laima told her about Emilia. Beautiful Emilia, with her golden hair and her caramel-colored eyes, her sweet sweet kisses and her poet’s soul. Laima told her grandmother about their days together at the DIA, how Emilia loved the modern American artists while Laima herself preferred the Europeans. They would go to Europe one day, Laima said, her and Emilia, and see more art, more museums, visit the village where Laima’s mociute and senelis had met and fallen in love. Love, Laima’s grandmother sighed, love was such a gift to see shining in her Laima’s eyes. Would Emilia be coming to share in the New Year’s Eve celebration?
Through the invisible wall, Laima saw herself smile, the glow of happiness that Emilia would finally meet her grandmother. Saw herself pulling out her phone, sending a text message. Moments later she was greeting Emilia, inviting her into the house, hanging up her coat. Taking her by the hand, Laima led her to the chair by the fire and introduced her to her grandmother, watching them exchange holiday greetings. In this glimpse into the past, Laima saw herself full of contentment that the two people she loved most in the world were here, with her, on the most important night of the year. What joy the new year would bring! Then, after Emilia bundled up to return to her own home for her family’s holiday meal, the two girls stole a kiss under the mistletoe.
Laima closed her eyes as she remembered; she could still hear her father’s roar, feel his hands on her arms as he tore her away from Emilia. Hear Emilia’s sobs as she turned and ran out the front door. Laima still felt the sting of her father’s hand, the burning imprint of his palm on her cheek.
Hot tears on her cheeks brought her back to the present. Behind her the wall was cold and hard. This time she didn’t hesitate. She shot up a third time, needing the warmth of the past to help her cope with the frigid loneliness of this New Year’s Eve.
This time the warmth drifted down over her. Looking up, she saw a Christmas tree; the trunk was in the corner beside her, and she was sheltered in its branches. It was the most magnificent tree she’d ever seen. The boughs danced with sparkling lights and colorful ornaments. Some had photographs of Laima, her parents, her mociute…Last year Emilia had given Laima a special gift, an ornament with a picture of the two girls together, which she’d wrapped in tissue and told Laima to put away for the future, when they would celebrate together. She’d had to watch as her father, over the protests of his wife and his mother, had broken the ornament into bits and told Laima to leave his house and never return. She’d barely had time to stuff some clothes into her backpack before he’d slammed the door in her face—“You’ve disgraced us all”—and she’d stumbled out into the cold. Her grandmother had beckoned her to the back of the house, where she’d pressed a roll of bills into Laima’s hand and hugged her close.
Laima blinked and saw Emilia’s ornament on the tree before her, but as she reached for it, the tree began to rise, higher and higher, into the sky, until the twinkling lights looked exactly like stars. She gasped when one of them began to fall, blazing into the night with a trail of fire behind it.
“That means someone has died,” she said aloud. When she was little, her grandmother had told her that shooting stars were the souls of the dead making their journey toward heaven. Laima’s eyes filled with tears. Every two weeks for the last year she’d taken the bus to the cemetery where her grandmother visited her husband’s grave on Wednesdays. During those short visits Laima had once again felt loved, felt cherished—but one summer day she’d waited for hours, alone, and on her next visit, her grandmother lay in the ground beside her husband.
Laima had only one dose left. It was hours yet until daylight… She opened the balloon. As she held her lighter under the spoon, she looked up and saw her grandmother standing beside her on the sidewalk, smiling, holding out a hand. “Mociute, take me with you,” she said. “Don’t go away this time. You always go away.” She quickly found a vein and injected herself. The rush was immediate—Laima’s corner became as warm as a spring day, and her grandmother, strong and young, helped her to her feet. They turned to see Emilia, who greeted them both with a kiss and an embrace, and the three began to soar into the sky, shining, leaving behind a golden trail of fire.
Hours later, when the sun finally rose, Laima sat tucked into her corner. Her cheeks were flushed and she wore a blissful smile, yet she was ice-cold. Beside her on the ground were a needle and a spoon. “Another junkie trying to escape her life,” said passersby. None of them could imagine the joy and the love of the new world she had entered in the new year.
E.J. Gahagan likes writing, reading, eating, sleeping, art, music and dancing. Not necessarily in that order. He lives in the Pacific North-West, but not one of the fashionable parts. Any resemblance between E.J. and anyone you know is purely coincidental. No, really.
This story is based on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Sneewittchen (Snow White)
E.J. Gahagan
Long ago, in the time of the Great Burning, there lived a king and queen in a faraway land.
The king, though of royal blood, was a man much given to slothful habits and minor debaucheries, leaving much of his royal authority in the hands of the ministers appointed by his father. The king frittered away his days hunting in the royal preserve and his evenings immersed in games of chance and banqueting on all manner of rich foods and rare wines.
All but forgotten in her own wing of the castle, the queen worked on a tapestry that laid out the history of her own family. She was a witch descended from a line of witches older than the kingdom itself. She created this tapestry in the greatest secrecy. The room she worked in was suffused with ancient magic, hidden atop the tallest tower in the castle and protected by strong spells.
One day, while the queen worked on her tapestry, a raven landed in the window next to her. “Greetings, daughter of Morrighan,” said the queen, “what errand brings thee hither?”
“Greetings to thee, beloved of Morrighan. I bring you a message.”
“From whom?” the queen said, setting down her needle.
The raven bowed. “Cerridwin, Your Majesty.”
“Please, continue.”
“Seven days before the next full moon you must fast—not a morsel can pass your lips—bathe daily, drink purging teas, cleanse thyself inside and out, for on the night of the full moon you must lie with your husband and conceive by him. Unto you a daughter shall be born, skin as white as new snow,
lips as red as fresh blood, eyes as blue as lapis lazuli, hair as black as a raven’s feathers.”
“A daughter,” the queen said quietly.
“She shall be the future of your line and the hope of your kingdom. All that you know, all that you are, shall pass to her. Guard her well, oh Queen, from the danger that surrounds us all.”
“And I must lie with…my husband?” the queen asked.
The raven shrugged her wings as well as a raven was able, as if to say, “It wasn’t my idea.” Then she flew away. The queen dwelt long on what she had heard; finally, with a deep sigh, she resumed work on her tapestry.
All was done as the queen had been directed to do. The birth of her daughter, named Snow White, was celebrated throughout the kingdom and beyond, particularly by the king of a neighboring realm. His was a poor, and poorly led, kingdom. Avarice, want, and fear ruled there in equal measure, but he was the father of a newborn son monumentally misnamed “Charming,” a son who could secure for him the dowry of his wealthy neighbor’s daughter.
But tragedy followed happiness when the queen died of a fever while Snow White was still an infant. The king turned her education over to his late queen’s ladies-in-waiting. These servants, fully aware the queen was a witch but not being witches themselves, dared not teach Snow White anything beyond what girls of high station should know.
Of the queen’s secret room and the tapestry nothing was said, so great were the punishments of witches in that evil time. And so Snow White grew to adulthood ignorant of her heritage and her latent powers.
Upon her coming of age, the king began to make inquiries concerning a suitable husband. His ministers, pursuing the desires of their own shriveled souls, pushed him to choose his neighbor’s son. The king did not see great prospect in that match and said so, but the wily ministers pressed him so relentlessly that he finally agreed.
With that, the date for the marriage was set. But of all of this, Snow White knew nothing. Learning of her father’s plans from Gretchen, the last living handmaiden of her mother’s household, she despaired for her future. Never did she plan to marry, for she had no desire to be any man’s wife. Many were the days she would climb the outside staircase to the top of the tallest tower, unaware of her mother’s secret room below, and look away to the Darkly Woods, feeling a yearning she did not understand, and while she tended to all the duties and obligations of her station, she would feel an emptiness that nothing within the compass of her life could fill.
With the news of the impending marriage, she flew to her father’s side to beseech him to change his mind. “Father, this thing cannot happen. I will have to go far away. This is my home, all that I know, what will you do without me?” she cried.
“Snow White,” he said, “I love thee above all others, but the die is cast. What has been promised can not be un-promised. You shall have a rich dowry to take to your new family. They shall all be pleased and treat you with the greatest respect.”
“My…new family?” Snow White said, her hands trembling as she tried to grasp her father’s arm. “Father, I beg you, please…”
“If I may explain, Your Majesty?” said the king’s vizier from the doorway of the audience chamber.
“Yes, please do,” the king said.
“Your Highness would do well to remember that this is a matter of state,” the vizier said in silky, yet ominous tones as he slowly approached Snow White. “A uniting of kingdoms. Can the misgivings of one girl be allowed to interfere? Your soul belongs to God, this is why you pray to Him. Your loyalty belongs to your father, to whom you owe everything, and your body shall belong to your new husband, so that you will bear him, and the kingdom, many children. This is your duty and your fate. I am greatly surprised that this must be explained to you.”
The king took Snow White by the wrist and led her to the chamber door. “Go, my child, and prepare. All shall be for the best. Prince Charming is somewhat unschooled in life’s finer pursuits, but bringing a wayward husband to heel is part of a wife’s work. It is God’s will and the natural order of things. This shall be made plain to you after you are married.”
Releasing her and smiling benignly, the king firmly shut the door against his daughter.
Snow White ran to her room and threw herself onto her bed. Her tears flowed in a stream. The horror of her future had fully descended upon her. Seized by the blackest despair, Snow White curled into a tight ball and wished herself a swift death to release her from her fate.
Gretchen, hearing Snow White’s sobs, entered the room and sat at her side, stroking her beautiful black hair and humming a nursery tune she had loved as a child. Snow White quickly turned to her and seized her hand. “Gretchen, what is to become of me? Marriage, marriage to a man I’ve never met. How can Father do this? And Prince Charming? What manner of man is he?”
“I have never seen him,” Gretchen said, her voice trembling. “but many stories are told of him in the marketplace. He is a formidable man, quick of temper, proud, haughty, vain—in all these things he is his father’s son, a man I met long ago, although I wish to God I had not.”
“How can Father do this to me?” Snow White said, clinging to Gretchen. “I have obeyed him in all things, loved him without question or complaint, and now he sells me into slavery and calls it a marriage. I shall die, Gretchen. I shall die before I submit to this.”
The old woman, her arms around Snow White, rocked her from side to side to comfort her as she had done when Snow White was a child. She then stopped so suddenly that Snow White looked up at her, puzzled.
“This thing shall not come to pass,” Gretchen said. “There is something I must show you.” She took from her apron pocket a ring of old, rusty keys. Holding one up, she put a finger to her lips and bade Snow White follow.
Silently and unnoticed, they passed through the castle and came to the tower; up the stairs they went till they came to a small door. The iron key opened it and the old woman bade Snow White enter. There was nothing in the room but three windows: one facing east, one south, and the last west.
Before Snow White could ask a question, the old woman touched the windowless north wall and whispered words Snow White could not understand. The wall vanished and therein was another staircase. The old woman held out her hand. Snow White took it and was led to her mother’s secret room.
Snow White marveled at what she saw. It was easily twice as big around as the tower itself. How was this so? Many large windows circled it, and most astoundingly, there was no ceiling—the whole room seemed to be open to the sky. Snow White knew this could not be so, for she had stood on the roof of the tower more times than she could count.
The old woman lit a lamp and pulled her to the tapestry. She explained its meaning, Snow White’s bloodline, down through the centuries, the millennia, to the beginning before the Beginning. Although the old woman talked for hours, no time at all seemed to pass.
Snow White trembled as she heard about her place in a world she never dared even dream about. That within her lay a great power whose source was her very being, and the key to that power lay in the choices she freely made about herself. Looking away to the north, she beheld the Darkly Woods in a way she never had before. The yearning within her for answers about herself, about her true nature, about her desire for a completeness she could not find in her father’s world would no longer be denied. She knew not why, but she had to go north.
Snow White asked Gretchen to fetch her some food from the kitchen while she returned to her room to put on traveling clothes. When the old woman returned she was told of the plan and sworn to secrecy.
Gretchen walked with her to the edge of the wood, then stayed in that spot, peering into the forest long after Snow White had slipped away into the darkness.
When the king discovered his daughter missing he raised a terrible fuss. He ordered his men to search to the four corners of his kingdom. The old handmaiden was closely questioned, but the king believed her story and let her go. When the searche
rs returned empty-handed he offered a reward of one thousand gold marks to whoever could lead him to his daughter.
Snow White traveled as fast as ever she could. For three days and three nights she traveled down roads, then paths, and finally, goat tracks. So deep into the wood was she that the noonday sun did not reach her. Her food was gone, but she did not despair; she knew not where she was going or what she would find, but she did not weep with fear. For, in truth, she had never felt so free in all of her life.
On the fourth day she came to a clearing, where a small spring bubbled up from the earth. The water was cold as ice and clear as crystal. She drank much and washed her hands and face. As she knelt by the pool she thought on all that Gretchen had told her. Her mother was a witch, from an ancient line of witches. Could it be that she was also a witch? She could not be sure. How did it feel to be a witch? She didn’t even own a broom, or a cat! It was all so confusing. She lay down in the soft moss next to the spring and fell into a deep sleep.
As she slept, a beautiful Naiad rose from the pool and examined Snow White closely. Placing a cool hand on Snow White’s forehead, she turned to the north and sang a song in a trilling soprano. Presently, a raven arrived and the two of them engaged in a most melodious conversation, then the raven returned to the North.
The Naiad smiled on Snow White and gathered watercress for her to find when she awoke. She called on the woodland folk to gather nuts and fruits and lay them next to the watercress. Then she sank back into the pool.
When Snow White awoke, her hunger was such that the humble offerings of the woodland hosts seemed a feast. As she ate, the raven returned.
“Greetings to thee, Daughter of the Morning Star,” the raven said, bowing till her beak touched the rock she perched upon.
Snow White bowed slightly in return. “Greetings to thee, raven. How comes it that I understand your speech?”
“Knowledge of my language, and much more, is in your blood,” said the raven, hopping onto Snow White’s knee. “If you are rested, follow me, there is someone you must meet.”