Toad Words

by T. Kingfisher

  “Thank you,” said Snow, taking her own bowl of stew. “I’ll have to visit. Which way did you say?”

  A convent, she thought, as the cook rattled off directions. No one cheats nuns. I’m pretty sure there’s a hell just for that. I wonder…I wonder what they’d do if they found out the boars talked…Well, I suppose they could scream “Black magic!” and try to hit Puffball with a broom. He’d probably think that was funny.

  Puffball put his head up and licked the last of the stew out of her bowl, and Snow was so distracted that she let him.

  She turned the thought over in her head again, as they walked home. A convent. Hmm.

  Noblewomen went into convents sometimes. Snow had heard about it third-hand—so-and-so’s widow had gone to the convent, or so-and-so’s daughter. She’d never thought about applying it to herself.

  Would I want to be a nun? What do nuns do? Keep bees and brew beer, apparently…I could do that…I always wanted to help the gardener with his bees, but he said they didn’t like fidgeting…

  “I don’t know about these little metal things,” said Puffball, yanking her back to the present. “You can’t eat them and they’re hard to pick up. I’m afraid I’m going to swallow one if I try.”

  Greatspot rolled her eyes. “It’s a human thing,” she said. “Humans love the little metal things. You get them and then humans will give you potatoes for them. Lots and lots of potatoes.”

  “You can eat potatoes,” said Puffball.

  “The humans might eat these metal things. Like turkeys eating gizzard stones. Don’t be rude, Puffball, not everyone has teeth like us.”

  “Oh,” said Puffball, startled. “Sorry, Snow.” He pushed his shoulder against her. “You can have my metal things for gizzard stones if you want.”

  Snow rubbed her hand over her face. There was something trying to get out of her chest, and when she opened her mouth, she found that it was a laugh.

  It was late evening. The shadows were falling kindly. And Snow had cleaned herself up and brushed out her hair, so that she did not look too wild when she went into town, and like many people, she was almost beautiful when she laughed.

  And at that moment, the queen’s fingertips lay across the magic mirror.

  “Snow,” said the mirror, showing all its teeth. “Snow is still fair, O queen.”

  The queen sat still, as still as one who has been dealt a mortal wound.

  Very softly she said, “Snow is dead. Snow is nothing but bones in a hole.”

  The mirror rippled in a shrug.

  “She lives, O queen.”

  The queen reached out and touched the box with the heart in it. There were smooth patches in the carving from where she had caressed it, all the long hours of the day.

  (And now, reader, I will tell you that the queen was evil, surely, and the heart was a symbol of her triumph—but I cannot swear that she did not stroke the box of the heart from some strange maternal affection as well. Witchblood is twisty and those it twists have minds that turn back on themselves like brambles.)

  “Then what is in this box?” she asked.

  The demon in the mirror grinned. It had been waiting for this question for a long, long time.

  “The heart of a pig, my queen.”

  She shot to her feet. The chair at her dressing table went over backwards and clattered to the floor.

  “Bring me the huntsman,” she said.

  Word travelled fast in the castle. The steward knew within minutes and the men-at-arms learned from the steward and the gardener heard it from the oldest man-at-arms and took it to the midwife.

  The gardener might have run but he did not. He walked very carefully, holding the knowledge in his cupped hands, as if it were a cup filled too full to spill. He went to the herb garden where the midwife sat and he put his lips against her ear and whispered “Snow is alive.”

  The midwife had grown old in the last season, and the bones of her hands were as fine as a bird’s. For a moment the gardener thought that the news had come too late, and then he felt the midwife’s arms go around and hold him hard. A few tears trickled out from under her eyelids and she whispered something into his shoulder that he did not hear.

  The next day, she moved into his house, as he had long requested, and he never asked her what she had said and she never told him and they were very happy together. But that is neither here nor there and the future is a different country.

  All through the castle went the word—Snow is alive. The queen seeks the huntsman. The huntsman’s life is forfeit.

  And with this word came questions—What was in the box? She was told it was Snow’s heart! Who’s heart was it?

  This question spawned many answers as the word spread. It was the heart of a bandit in the woods. It was the heart of a stag or a horse or a hound. It was the heart of the king who had died on Crusade. It was the queen’s own heart, placed there by some confusing magic. It was not a true heart at all but one made of clay (The maids who spread sweet rushes to cover the smell of rotting meat quickly discounted this one.).

  Arrin himself was out hunting. He came back late that night, with a pheasant in his saddlebags, and saw the steward standing at the gate, with two men-at-arms on either side of him.

  He halted his mare a dozen yards from the gate and narrowed his eyes.

  “Arrin Huntsman,” said the steward. “The queen demands your immediate presence.”

  Arrin met his eyes, and the steward mouthed the word Run.

  He wheeled his horse and spurred her back down the road.

  The men-at-arms gave chase, more or less. A few ran after him on foot, shouting, and one or two of the younger, keener ones went for horses—but somehow the stablehands were a little slow bringing them out and the swiftest horse in the stable was in need of shoeing and by the time anyone was mounted and in pursuit, Arrin had vanished.

  The steward brought this news to the queen.

  “You lost him,” said the queen.

  The steward inclined his head. “We have sent out search parties. They may yet find him. But none know the woods as well as Arrin and I have no man who is his equal.”

  Her hand shot out and her nails slashed down his face, curving under his jaw. The steward felt a hot itch across his neck, but he did not flinch.

  “I want him found,” said the queen. “Bring him to me. Alive or dead, it matters not.”

  “Yes, my queen,” said the steward. He bowed to her and left the room, and only once he was well away did he stagger back against the wall and blot the blood from his face.

  But Arrin was not found. The men-at-arms went out every day—the queen could see them from her window—and the steward made a speech that the queen could hear, about bringing traitors to justice. But they rode out slowly and rode back quickly and they were always careful to make a great deal of noise. They combed the same ground, armlength by armlength, and left vast stretches of the woods untouched.

  And Arrin was not found.

  (And I must tell you now, readers, that if you, like Arrin, are worrying for his elderly aunt, you need not. The queen would undoubtedly have punished her if it had occurred to her to do so, but knowing that Arrin had an aunt would have required her to take an interest in the lives of those around her. She did not know, and no one was inclined to volunteer this information. For her part, Arrin’s aunt fretted for her nephew, but she knew that he was much too canny to be caught by such lackluster efforts.)

  Arrin went first to his house, as fast as his mare could gallop, and emptied out everything he could carry. He slung it on the mare’s back and led her away, first in one direction then another, up a streambed and down. He led her through dry leaves that would take no tracks and over hard-packed stones.

  He did not think that they would follow too closely or try too hard to find him, but it was not only his own life at stake.

  He spent three days this way. Twice he heard the distant belling of hounds, but far off. On the third day he heard nothing, and mad
e his way at last to Snow and the boars.

  He saw Hoofblack first, rooting in the leaves for mushrooms. The boar snorted a greeting and trotted along beside the mare. Arrin looked down and remembered Snow saying “I couldn’t invent a chimney.”

  This is an architect in the body of a boar.

  The thought was so strange that he had to set it aside for a moment.

  “Come to see Snow, hunter-man?” said Hoofblack. “She’ll be glad of it. So will we.”

  “You will?” asked Arrin.

  “Sure. Humans need humans. Pigs need pigs.” Hoofblack lifted his snout. “We go a bit mad ourselves if we don’t see anyone. Happened to Ashes before she could talk, and now she’s made of squeal and bones, poor soul.”

  “I’d hate for Snow to be reduced to squeal and bones,” said Arrin dryly.

  Hoofblack gave a wheezing laugh. “Wouldn’t take long. She’s half bones already, no matter how many potatoes Juniper fries up. We worry a strong breeze’ll come along and she’ll blow away, away, away like a leaf in autumn.”

  He cast a critical eye up at Arrin. “You could use a few more potatoes yourself. You should stay for dinner.”

  “Thank you,” said Arrin. “I may have to, at that.”

  He told them the whole story over dinner. The heart in the box, the madness of the queen. The pursuit. “She must have found out,” he said. “I don’t know how. I can’t get word back—they don’t dare get word out to me—”

  He dropped his eyes and stared at his hands where they lay over his knees. They were long, lean hands with scarred fingers. He clenched them and watched his knuckles go white.

  Greatspot, always maternal, laid her broad bristly cheek against Snow’s. “Careful, child. You smell like the bad end of winter. You must know we won’t let her get to you.”

  “She’s got magic,” said Snow, almost inaudibly. “The mirror—I don’t know how much more. Everyone says.”

  Grunting laughter filled the den. “Magic is as magic does,” said Truffleshadow. “She tries to magic us and she’ll soon learn her mistake.”

  “It’s Snow I’m worried about,” said Arrin. “I don’t think the queen much cares about the rest of us.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Hrrff.”

  “Huh.”

  Snow scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. “I’ll be fine. She won’t come out all this way. She never went looking for me when I was a girl, why should she do it now?”

  “She ordered me to cut out your heart and kept it in a box,” said Arrin. “I think her feelings have changed.”

  Stomper laughed at that. Juniper nipped him. Arrin regretted himself immediately and put a hand on Snow’s shoulder.

  “Snow—I’m sorry—”

  Amazingly, she laughed again. “Thank you. I forget sometimes—oh, it’s all absurd! She wants to cut my heart out and put it in a box! How is this happening?”

  Not so absurd, Arrin thought, remembering what she had wanted to do to the kitchen boy.

  Snow got up again and pulled an enormous iron frying pan out of the fire. Arrin eyed it with alarm. It was hard to believe that Snow could even lift it, but a winter of cooking for the boars had left wiry bands of muscle across her arms.

  “Let me get that—”

  “Oh, don’t,” said Snow. “I can do so little. It took me months before I could carry one of these, and there are so few things I’m proud of.” She swung the pan to a scarred oak tabletop. Juniper put her hooves up on the table and scraped the potatoes into the deep bowls the boars used.

  Arrin sat back down. You can do so little, he thought, and I can do even less, because you will not let me take you away from here. And perhaps I should not even try, because what can I do to keep you safe that your four-footed friends cannot?

  The pigs grunted into their potatoes, and Arrin and Snow sat in silence in front of the fire.

  “Where is the huntsman?”

  The mirror yawned, showing a ribbed pink gullet like a cat. “In the woods.”

  “Where in the woods?”

  “Among trees.”

  The queen ground her teeth. Thin muscles along her jaw pulsed. “Do not toy with me, mirror.”

  The mirror’s surface shimmered. “There are many trees, O queen. Do not blame me if I cannot tell them all apart.”

  “Is he ten miles away? Twenty? A hundred?”

  “He is in the woods, O queen.”

  The queen’s nails gouged into the edge of the dressing table. The tips of her fingers were bloody and marked with scabs. “What of Snow? Where is Snow?”

  “Snow is in the woods.”

  “They are together, then,” said the queen.

  The mirror considered what answer would be the most infuriating to the queen, and said, “Yes.”

  She stood up. Three steps one way, three steps back, clasping her bloody fingertips to her breast. “Together. Well. If he puts a brat in her belly, that will be the end of her use as an heir. The king would cast her off before he’d turn the kingdom over to a huntsman’s son.”

  “And you’d be a grandmother,” said the mirror sweetly. “How delightful for you—”

  The queen’s fist struck the mirror, hard enough to split her knuckles. The mirror laughed uproariously.

  “Temper, O queen…” It grinned. “The king won’t like it.”

  “The king! Where is he?”

  “The king is in the woods.”

  “These woods? Here?”

  “The king is in the woods.”

  “Mirror!” cried the queen, half an order, half a child’s wail. “Mirror, damn you, answer me! Where is the king? Is he coming here? Who is with him?”

  The mirror rippled. “He comes with the remains of his men. He comes with a new bride beside him. He comes thinking how he will rid himself of you.”

  The queen stood very still.

  The king would come, and Snow would be gone. The servants would tell him what had happened.

  She had always known that this day would come, but she had believed in herself, in her own witchblood’s power. She had believed that she would be prepared.

  “Too soon,” she whispered. “It was too soon! It has not been so long.”

  “It has been many years,” said the mirror, and showed the queen her own face, with the lines etched cruelly on it.

  “I must find them,” said the queen, tearing at her hair. “I must find her! Who, mirror? Who?”

  “Look at yourself,” said the demon, almost gently. “Look at your hair in clumps and your hands in ruins. Look at you in your bower that stinks of rotten meat. Not you, O queen. You are very far from fair.”

  The words seemed to steady the queen somehow. She nodded once, sharply. “No. I am not. Very well. I will be less fair still, if that it what it takes.”

  She rapped the mirror with her hand and it turned obligingly into a true mirror, with a face that did not move of its own accord.

  “I have been young,” she said. “Now I must be old.”

  In her veins, the witchblood coiled and stirred.

  Her face in the mirror sagged. The lines drawn hard around her mouth grew soft and sagged. Her eyelids became crumpled rice paper. The veins in the back of her hands stood up in ropes and hoarfrost crept through her hair.

  The mirror reflected it back, pitiless and pure.

  Even a heart as black as the queen’s could ache a little for how easy it was to become old.

  “Now,” said the queen—and even her voice was old, as thin and bony as her hands. “Now.”

  “My queen,” said the mirror—or perhaps it was only in her head. “O queen, what have you become?”

  The queen laughed. The sound hurt her, high and crazy, but she kept laughing, like scratching tender skin until it bleeds. “How do I kill her?” she asked. “The last question for you, mirror. How do I kill Snow?”

  The mirror, who saw everything that happened in the castle, remembered a white face in a gnarled tree. “Give her an ap
ple,” it said.

  “Poison,” said the queen. “Yessssss. That is well.”

  She fitted her gnarled fingers into the half-moon shapes on the table’s edge, where the splinters were still sharp. She bore down.

  Witchblood oozed beneath her fingers. She lifted her hand and gazed at her fingertips.

  “Blood of my blood. Find Snow.”

  She had done no real magic in almost a decade, beyond speaking to the mirror. Her blood had slept.

  It was not sleeping now.

  A great hollow beast roared in her veins. The mirror jerked when she brushed against it. The demon made a sound that was almost pain.

  There.

  She could feel it in her throat and in her belly. Snow was there.

  The queen strode out of the bower—or tried. Her hips throbbed and one knee tried to buckle under her. She caught at the back of a chair for support and learned what it was to be old.

  “Very well,” she said. “Very well! So be it.”

  It came to her that Snow’s blood was young and hot and a draught of it might go down kindly. Her own blood roared approval.

  She fed the pain to the witchblood, and hobbled out of the bower for the last time.

  “She wasn’t very interesting anyway,” said the mirror-demon, and closed its eyes and went to sleep.

  “No,” said Snow. “You are not going with me. I’m going with the pigs.” She tightened one of Greatspot’s cinches.

  “My horse can carry two,” said Arrin. “We can go much faster.”

  “I very much doubt that,” said Puffball. He eyed Arrin’s mare and snapped his teeth.

  The mare, no fool, sidled to the end of her rein and tugged. Puffball snickered.

  “It’s not about speed,” said Snow. “I want to go to the convent.”

  “Convent,” said Arrin blankly.

  “There’s a convent a few hours from the village—”

  “Yes, I know. Sisterhood of Saint Mirriam, I think.”