My heart drops as he shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Samantha. I thought by bringing her here, I would be able to determine the perfect present for her. But I’m afraid I have no idea what it is. Maybe the sneasles took the magic out of me.’ His voice is sad, but there’s a strange twinkle in his eye.
My shoulders slump. ‘That’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll just be the first person in the history of Palace Gatherings to show up without a Secret Solstice. I’ll never be invited back again. I’m a terrible friend.’
‘I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you,’ says Uyuni, with a small shrug.
I nod, and let him lead me back through the ice tunnels to the entrance of the elvish home. It’s like a different place already – the ice sculptures are back to their original magnificence, bright, colourful lights shine all around the entrance and there’s a smell of rich cinnamon and apples in the air. The perfect Midwinter palace.
‘Wow, someone turned on the Midwinter magic!’ Evie exclaims.
I give her a small smile. ‘I guess I’m not the only one who’s last-minute when it comes to Midwinter presents.’ I look down at Uyuni. ‘Goodbye and . . . stay well.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, taking both my hands in his and giving them a kiss.
Evie glances at her watch and lets out a gasp. ‘Oh, dragons! We’re only just going to get back in time to get ready for the Midwinter Gathering! At least you have a gift for Zain – I hope it was worth it.’
I look into Evelyn’s bright blue eyes, and I know I have to tell her the truth. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. This whole trip was supposed to help me find you the perfect Secret Solstice gift. Not Zain. I couldn’t think of anything to get you. But not even the elves can help me. You’re not going to have anything for the Solstice. I’m the worst friend ever.’
The pause that follows seems to last an eternity. She’s been chased by wolves, nearly killed by snowflakes and fallen through a glacier. I’ve almost killed the princess several times, and if this was 400 years ago, I bet she’d have my head for treason.
But instead, she throws her arms around me and gives me an enormous hug. ‘Are you kidding me? I haven’t had this much fun in years. This day out is the best Secret Solstice present anyone could have given me.’
I think back to the twinkle in Uyuni’s eye. How he invited me to bring the princess in the first place. To all the precautions he ‘left’ in place to ramp up our adventure. And how there wasn’t really any danger to her – at least apart from a bad case of sneasles.
Maybe there is something to the elf-magic, after all.
Later that evening, I show up at the entrance to Castle Nova in a festive maroon dress, made from the softest crushed velvet, the palace’s invitation clasped between my gloved fingers. I pause outside and take a deep breath. Even though I know she will treasure the memory of our day for ever, I still feel bad that I haven’t got an actual present for Evie.
A drop of cold lands on my cheek, and I look up to the sky to see snow falling, a cascade of tiny white drops lit by the glow of twinkling fairy lights. Was it only earlier today that we saw those giant snowflakes? I think. This day feels like it’s lasted a lifetime. Dear Svenland elves . . . if only I could bottle a snowflake for Evelyn. That would be something. I send the thought out into the snow, and steel myself to head inside.
There’s a puff of wind, and my coat pocket bulges with a hidden weight. I frown. I slip my fingers inside the pocket and my heart stops as they touch smooth glass. I pull out the mystery object. It’s a snowflake the size of my palm, encased in a special elvish glass so it won’t melt.
It’s special. Unique.
It’s the perfect present for Evelyn. A memory of our day together.
‘Thank you, Uyuni,’ I whisper.
Then I race towards the warm glow of the castle doors, where the princess is waiting.
Michelle Harrison,
writing as Alice Silver
‘The Voice in the Snow’ is a short story from the world of The Other Alice, a novel also written by Michelle Harrison.
I
The girl moved silently through the darkened corridors. With her companion behind her, she crept from door to door, listening. The few rooms which still had occupants were silent, except for the occasional snore or mutter. Most of the rooms, however, were empty.
The house smelled of smoke. Though years had passed since the place had almost been destroyed, in certain areas the scent lingered like the ghosts of those who had lost their lives that night. The girl shivered, drawing her hood up further. It was winter now, but since the blaze, fires were not permitted. She soon found the door she was looking for. She crept closer and pressed her ear to the wood, hearing shuffling feet and whispering. Her stomach became a hard knot of dread. These were the sounds of someone who never slept. Of someone not right in the head.
Gathering her courage, she tried the handle, pushing the door the tiniest amount. Just enough to make sure it was unlocked. Then she kicked it open with such force that it hit the wall on the inside of the room with a crack.
For a moment, she thought she had made a mistake. The stooped man who had stopped dead in the centre of the room stared at her with hollow, blank eyes. He seemed incapable of anger, or fear, or any kind of emotion. These she needed, for how else could she get what she wanted from him?
She took a step inside. The look in his eyes changed. The mad, staring quality remained but there was hostility now, too.
‘Who are you? Why are you trespassing in my house?’ he hissed.
The girl stepped aside, allowing him to see past her, where another girl struggled in her companion’s arms. A glinting sliver of metal was pressed to the other girl’s throat.
The mad eyes widened. ‘My daughter . . . if you’ve harmed her—’
‘We haven’t.’ The accomplice’s voice was cold. ‘Yet.’
‘You dare threaten me?’
‘Give us what we want or it won’t be just a threat.’ The hold on the girl tightened. A tear ran down her cheek.
‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding . . .’ the man muttered.
‘What you talking about, old man?’
‘I was counting magpies,’ he said slowly. ‘There were three.’
‘Forget magpies. You’ll be counting down the last moments of your daughter’s life if you don’t open that door.’
‘Door?’
‘You know which door. The locked one in the North Wing.’
The man’s face twitched, but he continued muttering. ‘Four for a birth. Five for heaven, six for hell—’
‘Move, old man, if you want your daughter to see tomorrow. And when you’ve given us what’s inside that room, you can tell us exactly how you got it.’
‘—seven you’ll meet the devil himself,’ the man whispered.
Then he started to walk.
II
Some years earlier, a daughter was born to a rich man and his wife. She was perfect in every way – except one: she had been born without a voice. Her father and mother visited doctors and wise men to try to find a cure, but the years passed and the girl never made a sound. Though she was happy enough, her father could not let it rest. His daughter would have a voice, he vowed, no matter what it took.
In secret, he visited a witch, his last hope. She led him to a concealed room full of cages. Inside the cages were birds; some commonplace and other kinds he had never seen before. Some of the birds sang, but others huddled together and spoke in whispering voices.
‘Are they . . .?’ the man began, eyeing the creatures in wonder.
‘Talking?’ the witch replied. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes swept over him greedily, taking in his expensive clothes, the fatness of his pockets. ‘This one?’ She clucked to it and the bird spoke in a plaintive voice: ‘Choose me, choose me, this voice is not fit for a bird! Choose me, for here I am seen, but never heard!’
The man thought of his daughter’s sweet face and rosy lips, shaking his head. ‘Too plain.’
The witch beckoned him after her, stopping beside a golden cage containing a gleaming black bird with red feathers in its tail. She chirped to it and it cried out: ‘Choose me, choose me, this voice is not fit for a bird! Choose me, for here I am seen, but never heard!’
The man closed his eyes, again picturing his daughter. This voice was better than the last, but was it him, or did it sound a little pinched? Nasal? He hesitated.
‘There is one other,’ the witch offered slyly. ‘Only, the cost is considerably higher . . .’
Sweat beaded on his upper lip. ‘Cost is irrelevant. Show me.’
She turned away, grinning a grin he couldn’t see, and led him to where another bird sat on a wooden perch, tethered by a silver chain. This one was a beauty, with silver eyes and teal feathers that appeared powdery to the touch, like a moth’s wings. Already he sensed this one was a prize.
‘Make it talk,’ he whispered.
The witch chuckled. ‘Oh, I can do better than that.’ She whistled to the bird, and it sang in a clear, sweet voice:
‘I will seek you, I will find you
Wherever you may go
Come with me now, hide away now
Nobody will ever know.’
‘It’s perfect.’ Wide-eyed, he fumbled in his pockets. ‘Perfect. I have to have it.’
The witch smiled, handing him the silver chain and a long, gleaming pin. ‘Have your daughter stick this through its heart, and then have the bird prepared into a meal for her by the finest cook you can find. When the last mouthful is eaten, the voice will be hers.’
His face blanched. ‘My daughter has to be the one to kill it?’
The witch nodded. ‘It will not work otherwise.’
He took the silver chain and the pin, slippery between his fingers. The bird was silent now, its silver eyes fixed on him. He settled the payment and, with no further words, left with his prize.
The witch watched him from her doorway, smiling at the weight of his money in her pockets. The smile vanished as a mountain cat slunk into view, creeping closer to her door having scented the feathered morsels within.
‘Away!’ she muttered, kicking a stone at it. It missed but she took pleasure in watching the cat flee, its fur on end. She’d always detested the creatures.
The witch closed her door and unloaded her pockets, stacking the coins in gleaming piles. The man hadn’t asked, and she would never tell, how such magic was possible. How, for one person, the true cost was immeasurable.
III
Mrs Spindle had a pail of water
As well as a liking for slaughter
She was first scratched and bitten
As she drowned three white kittens
Before—
On a narrowboat leaving the town of Fiddler’s Hollow, Gypsy Spindle stared at the words in the notebook in front of her. It was a rhyme used to taunt her through her childhood, sometimes jeered in the schoolyard, other times whispered slyly in the street as she passed. For a long while, she had never heard the end of the rhyme: whenever it was uttered, she’d turn, and the culprit would say no more, vanishing into a group of smirking children and Gypsy would be left furious, holding back tears.
She lifted her pen and completed the final sentence:
Before moving on to her daughter.
The rhyme was about Gypsy’s mother.
It was six years since she had first heard that sentence. In ordinary circumstances, time might have dulled the horror she felt upon hearing it, or the ache in her heart. The sense of betrayal, upon learning that her own mother had tried to do away with her when she was just a baby. Tried, but not succeeded, thanks to Gypsy’s papa.
Gypsy had been sitting at her kitchen table, but now she got up, walking to the steps that led out of the boat’s cabin and up on deck. Johnny Piper stood at the tiller, his dark eyes fixed on the horizon. She crossed the wet deck to stand beside him. A cold wind stung her cheeks and whipped his long, black fringe across his eyes. She felt him watching her from behind it, and was almost glad she had an excuse not to speak, for she wouldn’t have known what to say.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Piper said eventually. ‘Six years.’
She nodded, and stared into the dull green canal water, rippling as the boat cut through it.
‘Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ he murmured.
She shot him a sharp look. Now she had words, angry ones, but no real way of communicating them – not for him at least. For everyone else she wrote things down in a notebook. But Piper couldn’t read, although he had interpreted her expression easily enough.
‘I know, I know,’ he continued. ‘It’s my fault. I’m the one who ran away. But I came back.’
She gazed at him questioningly. That was news to her.
He swallowed. ‘About a year ago, but your papa told me you were gone.’
She shook her head and shrugged, the unspoken word clear enough: Why?
‘’Cos we’re not kids no more, and I . . .’ He trailed off. ‘I knew I needed to go back and find you. To face up to what I done . . .’
They had been children when it had happened. Just gangly-limbed, tangle-haired children. Having fun one minute and fighting the next. But at sixteen, almost seventeen, Gypsy wasn’t really a girl any longer. Nor was Piper a boy. He towered above her. His face had lost its roundness to a strong jaw and high cheekbones. Only his eyes and hair had remained unchanged: those brown pools of bitter chocolate and the boyish hair cropped short at the back and sides but with its long fringe sweeping his eyes.
She wondered what he made of her now. Whether he looked past the scrape of make-up she used to make her lips a little pinker, her eyes a little greener. Whether he saw beyond the tough girl biker boots and leather jacket . . . past the scorpion inked on to her neck. Did Piper see through it all? Was it just a layer of dress-up to him, like when they had been younger?
‘We’re not kids now,’ he repeated, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I know I need to try to make it up to you, somehow.’
Their last words to each other – and Gypsy’s last words at all – had been spoken in anger. She had held on to them, remembering all of it. She only had to close her eyes and she was back in Twisted Wood, following Piper through the grass as he played his flute, leading a trail of enchanted blue butterflies after him. Soon they had been alone, having wandered from the riverside and crossed into the edge of the wood. As it had so many times before when they were by themselves, conversation turned to their parents: Gypsy’s mother, who had left soon after she was born, and Piper’s pa, who had abandoned him alone and penniless, to be taken in by the Spindles.
Only, on this day, something had made Piper ask whether Gypsy would want to see her mother again. It was then he’d revealed to her the final line of the rhyme, sending her into a rage that saw her storming off, deep into the woods – but not before lashing out with harsh words of her own. Words that made Piper out to be a fool for hoping his pa might yet return for him.
Eventually she found a glade where she lay in the grass. It felt cool against her hot skin, but her anger still burned fiercely. How dare Piper say that about her mother! Even though she knew it had not come from Piper himself she was still furious with him for only telling her now – and for believing it. Her mother . . . trying to drown her? Papa must have been mistaken. Perhaps Gypsy had slipped and her mother had been lifting her out.
If only she could hear her mother’s version of events . . . but she didn’t know how to find her. After a while she had got up and brushed herself down, calmer now. She found herself humming the melody Piper had been playing earlier. As she often did, she couldn’t help but put words to it. It wasn’t that she was trying not to think about what Piper had said, but the tune was stuck in her head. She hummed some more, trying different words and sentences until the right ones fitted together. When she had them, she sang aloud in a clear voice, almost as a peace offering to Piper – if he had caught up and were listening.
‘I will seek you, I will find you
Wherever you may go
Run away now, hide away now
Nobody will ever know . . .’
There came the sound of wood snapping underfoot nearby.
‘Piper?’ she called. ‘That you?’
There was no reply. Gypsy began to walk, half-humming, half-singing, unable to shake the feeling someone had been watching her. After a couple of minutes she started to relax a little, and so at first, did not pay much attention to the sound of wings in the air. Only when the sound of Piper’s melody carried down to her did she look up to see an exotic-looking bird. It was teal-coloured, with silver eyes and a long tail, which swept down like a musical note.
‘You heard my singing?’ she asked in wonder.
The bird tilted its head, listening.
She whistled the tune again, and the bird copied her. Gypsy laughed, her anger all but forgotten. ‘What a clever thing you are!’ She stared at the bird. ‘Wherever you’re from, it’s not round here. There’s magic in you.’
The bird sang Piper’s melody once more, and unthinkingly, Gypsy sang along.
She faltered as the bird opened its beak and mimicked her word for word . . . in Gypsy’s own voice. She frowned and took a step back from it. Magic or not, there was something unnerving about such a perfect imitation.
‘That’s enough. Away with you,’ Gypsy muttered – or tried to. No words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. Her lips moved but there was not a sound, not even a whisper. The bird watched, silent and still. Gypsy had never experienced any kind of second sight before, but as she stared into the creature’s bead-like eyes a terrible premonition came to her.
Seconds later the bird’s beak opened and her words tumbled out: ‘That’s enough. Away with you!’
A cold horror spread throughout Gypsy’s body. Her mouth formed a single, soundless word: Noooooo . . .
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