The Last Huntsman: A Snow White Retelling

by Page Morgan

  The trees parallel to the border road were covered in moss and sprouts of ear-shaped fungus. We followed the boundary of the road in intense silence, at first listening for any straggling warriors. But there had been no sound of armor. No sound of anything at all. And soon, I was hearing only the bend of the woods as it gave way to our feet.

  As the day wore thin, all I could think about was his unwavering vow of protection. Had he meant it? Could I trust him? I was still analyzing his promise when Tobin stopped to gather the makings of another campfire. He must have had a reason to work so vigilantly to keep me safe. But his family had been murdered. So had the princess he’d been friends with. What was my safety compared to his need for vengeance?

  My empty stomach rumbled, and I abandoned trying to figure out his vow. I reached into the leather bag, and my hand grasped the remaining walnuts and nub of cured pork. The mirror grazed the side of my hand, but its sting was the peck of a hen’s beak compared to the packed chest wound.

  “I’ll get us something,” Tobin said after arranging the kindling for the fire. He tossed me the flint and firesteel. “Can you get this going?”

  Before I could answer yes or no, he’d gone into the trees. I hadn’t lit a fire unless it was inside the kitchen hearth. And for that we had long, thin wooden sticks dipped in oil. I felt useless and absurd as I crouched by the kindling. Tobin was leading us; he was killing Morvansk warriors, hunting for our dinner, and keeping the plans for our freedom locked away inside his head. The least I could do was start the stupid fire.

  I struck the flint against the steel hard and fast, as I’d seen Tobin do. Nothing happened the first three strokes, but on the fourth, a spark shot off. I held the flint and steel down to the dried pine needles, leaves, and shavings of bark Tobin had scavenged, and hit the wedge of steel again. The sparks caught and the kindling smoked—then extinguished. Again and again, I managed to catch a spark, but the flame refused to take off. Tobin returned with a limp, gutted and skinned rabbit in his hand, and the fire was still only smoking.

  “I’m sorry, it’s impossible!” I tossed the flint and steel to the ground.

  He started to grin, and I scowled. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” he asked as he picked up the flint and steel and laid the rabbit on a rock nearby.

  “Laugh at me,” I answered.

  He struck the steel twice and the sparks caught. A few breaths on the smoking embers, and Tobin had succeeded.

  “Who’s laughing?” he asked, but even with his face turned toward the fire, I could see he was smothering a smile.

  It could have been exhaustion fueling it, but the corner of my mouth tipped up. “You are!”

  He faced me, still crouched near the building flames. I hadn’t seen him smile in days. All too quickly, I melted beneath it.

  “Okay, yes, I am,” he admitted.

  The other corner of my mouth wavered, and I covered my face with my hands to hide my own laughter.

  “Do you want me to teach you how to do this?” he asked. I was too embarrassed to accept.

  “Just cook supper, already.”

  As he speared the small animal and rigged a spit over the flames, Tobin returned to the somber mood he’d been keeping. I was tired of it.

  “Can we talk?” I asked.

  Tobin revolved the spit one turn. “About?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain why, but I’m not afraid of you. I don’t hate you for what you are. What you were.”

  Changing to the past tense seemed to relax him. He loosened his muscles enough to come up out of his crouch.

  “But I’ve killed people,” Tobin said.

  “I know. I watched you do it today.”

  He spun the spit again, this time with more agitation. “That was different.”

  I didn’t understand. Did he want me to be afraid of him? I sat on the rock the rabbit carcass had occupied. As I did, the muscles in my chest quivered and a new blast of pain ate into the bones of my shoulder and breast. I groaned and winced.

  “The wound needs to be cleaned, and the packing replaced,” he said, and like a magician, a swift flick of his elbow brought his knife into his hand. It had ejected from the sleeve of his coat. I marveled at it as he shrugged off his coat and sliced away at the other shirtsleeve. When I’d hung the coat up to dry after pulling Tobin from the Melinka, I’d seen the contraption in each of the sleeves and imagined they were for either protection or hunting. Now I knew better.

  Tobin gestured with the tip of his blade toward my chest. “Do you need help unbuttoning again?”

  Knowing I had to expose my binding sash overshadowed the sickening anticipation of pulling out one packing and jamming in another. I shook my head quickly, took off my coat, and fumbled under my kerchief with the first few buttons of my shirt. Tobin crouched in front of me. His scent of sweat, wood smoke, and pine needles tripped my fingers up even more. Each scent, taken individually, might not have been something to savor, but as a whole, they made my head swim, my breathing hitch.

  Tobin waited with the new folds of linen, watching each button as I sprung them loose. I stopped at the third button from the bottom, hesitant to pull the panels of the shirt aside. The corner of Tobin’s mouth drew up.

  “Do you want to do this yourself?” he asked, the question not entirely sarcastic.

  “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.”

  Tobin reached for the collar of my shirt. He pulled down each side gradually, as if unwrapping something dangerous. He allowed his hands to linger on the bare skin of my shoulders then slowly slipped them down my arms, crumpling my shirt lower, around my waist. I sat before him in nothing but a bloodstained sash, fighting the shivers slinking up and down my spine.

  “This is going to hurt,” he warned me again.

  I thought to myself, I don’t care. I told him, “I know.”

  24

  Tobin

  The old, blood-soaked packing shriveled to black ash in the fire. I spun the rabbit on the spit one more time while Ever buttoned her shirt, her face pale and sweaty from when I’d reopened the wound in order to clean it properly. When I took a subtle glance in her direction, I saw her shoulders were covered. Disappointment set in, as annoying as it was. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to turn the changing of her bandage into an opportunity to touch her, to admire her bare skin. I couldn’t let myself to get any closer to her, especially now that I was considering betraying her trust.

  “Is it ready?” Ever asked, her attention on the rabbit.

  “Not unless you like pink and bloody meat,” I answered, an edge to my tone. She questioned it with those probing green eyes of hers, but then looked away.

  “You don’t think any warriors are around to see our fire, do you?” she asked.

  I shook the blankets from the second bag. The cold evening hinted to a frosty night.

  “No.” Morvansk warriors were known for their revelry around a campfire, and with so many of them marching with Frederic, they would have been easy to hear in the still of night.

  “I wish we knew where he was,” Ever said. “You think he moved on from Havenfeld?”

  I nodded as the rabbit sizzled. Fat dripped and hissed on the hot stones below. Ever held her newly packed wound securely as she dug through the leather bag and came out with the mirror.

  “That’s turning out to be a convenient trick,” I said. It had the desired effect: Ever sat up straight, clearly insulted. What I didn’t want was the churning sensation of guilt in my gut.

  “It’s not a trick.” She clipped each word. “It’s a tool.”

  A tool and a skill. Ever’s skill was magic. Mine was murder. Considering these things made it easier for me to pull away from her. To shut myself off and not remember the panic I’d felt that morning when I’d looked behind me and didn’t see her following. I’d been walking fast. Too fast. I hadn’t done it to lose Ever in the woods, but I had needed space. I’d needed to not feel her dependence or trust like
a second skin.

  Then the clinking sounds of metal armor had mixed with Ever’s startled voice, and I was right back in the Pendrak glade with Mara. I’d failed to keep the princess from harm, but I could not—I would not—fail Ever.

  She held the mirror up to her face so I couldn’t see her, and bid the mirror to show her Frederic.

  “I don’t like seeing him,” she whispered as the light of the mirror flickered into the dusky woods. “The few times I have, it was almost as if he knew someone was watching him.”

  “Perhaps he’s more aware of that sort of magic because of your mother,” I suggested. “Maybe something in the air changes when someone’s being watched.”

  Ever’s mother must have lived at the fortress if Frederic had chosen to imprison her. Where would he have kept a woman slave? She must have been a slave, though one to be treated with care. Not banished to a dungeon cell, certainly. I’d walked the dark, damp corridor of the dungeon and never seen a woman there.

  She’d never been within his chamber either, at least not when I was there. The odd, velvet draped mirror, though…the golden dais directly underneath it. A rush of understanding flooded in. It had to have been the mirror she used to show Frederic everything and anything he wished to see. She’d stood on the dais, not the emperor.

  I looked at Ever, and saw her expression pinch.

  “Do you see him?” I asked.

  “He’s eating supper,” she replied, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “He has company. Young, female company.”

  It didn’t surprise me. When the queen had been alive, she’d been well aware of the string of mistresses the emperor kept. A mistress. Perhaps that was what Ever’s mother had been disguised as? I didn’t suggest it aloud.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  The rabbit was browning nicely, and the scent of it cramped my stomach. I could only imagine the feast Frederic had demanded in whatever village he’d invaded. He had but a couple of days before the Klaven forces were able to converge on the borderlands and fight the Morvansk intruders; maybe less than a few days, if they were already on the move from Pendrak. As soon as the two armies clashed, my chances at getting to Frederic would be destroyed. Which meant I had to find him fast.

  “I think he’s in a tavern.” Ever tilted her head as if trying to see underneath the far edges of the glass shard. I could hear the din of music, and disembodied, faraway voices. “His warriors are with him, and there’s the girl at his side.”

  Ever’s lips tightened and pulled to the side. “She really is young. And she looks frightened. I wonder if he’s found something in her.” Ever lowered the mirror and looked up, suddenly buoyant. “Do you think she could have the same magic as me?”

  She swung the mirror out for me to take. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for. The M on my shoulder marked me, but how did someone with mirror magic appear any differently than the person next to them?

  I looked into the glass, unsettled to find not my face in its reflection, but Frederic himself. His steely beard and long, straight hair were the same, the features of his face austere, as if cut from a block of granite. Still, he was more imposing in person. There were warriors in position around his table, their armor dirty and streaked black and red. Earth and blood.

  “What girl?” I asked.

  “She’s at his side,” Ever answered as one of the pillar-like warriors shifted his footing. He stepped just enough to the left for me to see the girl.

  I clutched the shard of mirror with my hand so fiercely a jagged edge split open my palm.

  “Do you think she could have the magic?” Ever repeated.

  But I couldn’t breathe. The air had been punched from my lungs the moment I saw the girl’s curly black hair, the glowering set of her mouth and chin, and the wide, brightly charged eyes. My hair. My mouth. My eyes.

  We always had looked so much alike.

  “No,” I whispered. My entire body spun around the fragment of mirror in my stinging hand. “She doesn’t. She can’t.”

  Tears boiled up in the rims of my eyes.

  “It’s my sister. It’s Lael. She’s alive.”

  Blood dripped along the sides of my hand and wrist, but I didn’t feel the pain of the cut.

  “Tobin!” Ever leaped to her feet. “You’re bleeding.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes from Lael’s image in the mirror. It was impossible. My sister…alive? I exhaled, and my chest ached so deeply it felt as though I’d been holding my breath for ages—ever since seeing my home burned, Kinn’s small, blackened feet sticking out from underneath the blanket.

  “Your sister?” Ever collapsed beside me. “But you said…I thought you said Frederic…”

  “I know.” I swiped at the tears. “But that’s Lael. That’s my sister. She’s alive.”

  I wanted to say the words over and over. Alive, alive, alive. But how? I’d seen the lumps beneath the blanket. I’d assumed there were three people underneath. But if I really thought of it, all my memory had held onto was Kinn’s feet. The joy of seeing my sister alive at Frederic’s side dimmed. She’d been alive this whole time, taken prisoner. Stones stacked up in my stomach.

  “He intended to use her,” I whispered.

  Frederic had his lure, just as I had mine.

  “For what purpose?” Ever asked. In the mirror, Lael’s jaw shifted from side to side. I knew my sister well, and having observed many of her moods, could easily see the pretenses of boredom disguising her true terror.

  “To rid himself of me,” I answered. “He’s kept her alive as bait.”

  Lael’s arms were crossed over her chest. Dirt rimmed her nails. Purplish black marks riddled the tops of her hands and encircled her wrists. More bruises were likely obscured by the sleeves of her dingy dress. I didn’t want to think about what the emperor—or his men—had been doing to my sister. I ground my teeth until pain shivered into my gums.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Ever slowly pried my fingers from the sharp edges of the glass. “You were already going to kill him.”

  My entire hand was slick with blood when she took the mirror away. The new cuts throbbed.

  “But now I’m really going to make it hurt.”

  The scent of dinner as it roasted over the fire changed. It was no longer appetizing, but foul and charred. Paying no mind to my bleeding hand, I jumped up to remove the blackened rabbit, one whole side completely burned.

  “Damn it.”

  Ever whispered to the mirror, “Clear,” and I turned on her so quickly I let the burned rabbit drop to the rocks surrounding the campfire.

  “No, not yet!”

  Ever put the mirror in the bag. “Tobin, she’ll be there tomorrow.” She stood firmly against me, never wavering from my livid stare. “If Frederic is keeping her alive to draw you in, he won’t harm her.”

  “He can harm her plenty without killing her,” I muttered.

  “And do you really want to witness that, when there’s nothing at all you can do?”

  I stopped pacing and stood before her. Her cap was off, her soft brown curls looking longer than they had the first time I’d seen them.

  “No,” I answered. It would be futile to keep watching when there was no way to protect Lael. At least not tonight.

  The rabbit was coated with pine needles and dirt, but I brushed them off and we ate, the blackened strip of flesh, too. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but eating kept things silent. I needed to think. I needed to find a strategy that would allow me to not only rescue my sister but also keep Ever out of the emperor’s stranglehold long enough for me to kill him.

  We were finished eating and were settling under our blankets near the warmed campfire stones when I came to terms with something: I might not be able to get everything I wanted.

  “What is it?” Ever asked from across the fire. “You haven’t said a word in over an hour.”

  The forest floor made a natural padding, but it was a cold night. I st
ared into the reaches of the trees, unable to make out a single star.

  “It seems as if Frederic is destined to destroy everything I care for,” I said. “Everything and everyone.”

  The fire was low, but I could still make out Ever as she sat up.

  “I’ll help you get your sister free.”

  I grimaced into the dark. “Why would you help me now that you know what I am?”

  Her answer was slow to come, each word surely meted out and deliberated.

  “Because I don’t believe what you did for the emperor is a part of who you really are.”

  I sat up and peered through the dark at her. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just feel it,” she answered. So simple and trusting. Princess Mara had said something like it. She hadn’t thought killing was who I really was. But Mara had ended up dead.

  I hated myself even more than I had before. I’d been thinking of Ever as bait, looking at her as a shield that could safely get me close to Frederic. I missed the way I’d looked at her before, in Rooks Hollow. Before I knew how important she was to the emperor, and how I might be able to use her.

  “We would be warmer tonight if we double up our blankets,” I said. Maybe if I could touch her, or just feel her next to me, I’d be able to change the way I’d been looking at her lately. Maybe I could divine a way to fix everything without hurting anyone.

  I’d meandered off topic, and it took Ever a moment to reply. “You want me to sleep next to you?”

  I cleared my throat, suddenly nervous. I didn’t like it. “Yes.”

  Ever hesitated, the fire casting its weak glow on her, accentuating every line, every angle of her face with flickering shadows.

  I added the last few pieces of kindling to the ember mound, lighting the three steps Ever had at last decided to take toward me. She fanned out her blanket atop mine and then dropped to her hip and stretched out on her side, facing the flames. It was definitely warmer under the blankets, but I was near certain the heat wasn’t just from the second layer of woven wool. The crown of Ever’s head rested below my chin, her back making contact with my chest. I felt the pull of muscles deep in my stomach. My body was reacting to her, and I reluctantly pushed a few inches backward so she wouldn’t be offended. Or scared.