by Taryn Tyler
“Run.” A ghost whispered somewhere next to my ear but I wouldn't. Not this time.
It was still daylight when we stopped in front of an old oak. The familiar form of a hobgoblin stepped out of the hawthorns with sticky leaves stuck to his beard and his usual smear of dirt on his face and hands. Only the face was new, narrower, sharper, and his beard was scattered with splotches of brown.
Otto cleared his throat. “We've come to see Dale.”
The hobgoblin gave a single curt nod.
Otto dropped to his hands and knees. His belly brushed against the earth as he moved forward. I followed, mimicking his movements, slithering like a snake. Prickly leaves caught in my hair and skirts and I kept my lips closed and face down to keep the plants out of my mouth.
The opening to the hovel was small but big enough for Otto's long legs and broad shoulders. I felt the ground in front of me, unable to see in the darkness that enclosed me as I crawled in after him.
A scattering of harp notes echoed from below. Light, jolly notes, full of moss and dragonflies followed by another sprinkle of sound, much darker and deeper than the first. We crawled downward. Blood trickled slowly to my head, rolling along the tilting slope of the earth. I could see a warm hint of orange up ahead.
Music soared and trickled and wove around me. A light, cheerful melody strung together with heavy, angry notes that made me want to scream and cry and laugh. My tutors would have been pleased if I could hit a single note so lovely. Mesmerized as I was by the music, I almost didn't notice when the tunnel ended. Otto took my hand and helped me down into a large, cavern, flickering with shadows.
The air was stale but at least there was enough of it. I blinked, letting my eyes focus. The walls were a rich earthen brown. Stalagmite dripped from the ceiling too high above our heads. I was reminded for a moment of the domed ballroom in Papa's manor. A fire burned near the center of the cavern crowded by a tiny cluster of hobgoblins. Their small, doll-like forms made the cavern look even bigger.
A hobgoblin with a harp sat cross legged next to the flames. His melody reached a crescendo, strong and rich and cluttered with uncertainty then he set his harp down. He was the smallest of all his brothers and obviously the youngest. His hair and beard had only just started to go gray. Most of it was still blond.
The stink of fish and sting of nettles wafted through the air. Another hobgoblin stood next to the fire. His beard was better kept and a paler shade of gray. He stood over the fire, stirring something in an iron pot the size of a helmet. He lifted a ladle to his nose and sniffed in concentration. He gave his stew an experimental taste, twisted his nose in dissatisfaction, then looked up at Otto and I. “This the witch then?”
Another hobgoblin clamored to his feet. This one I had seen before. He was the troublemaker who'd nearly been swallowed by a tree, drowned by a pike, and clawed to death by a hawk. He crossed his arms and looked up at me, scowling his usual scowl. “That's the other one. Snow.”
I blinked, startled. He had never called me by my name before.
“Sludge.” The hobgoblin cook set his ladle back in the pot and held out his hand. I rested the tips of my fingers in it. He kissed my knuckles.
“She doesn't need to know what you're called ye daft willie.” A fourth hobgoblin looked up from a scroll in his hand ---an old scroll made with parchment instead of paper—from where he sat next to the harpist. He held a torch in one hand lifted over the scroll so that I could see the thick inky writing, wrinkled and knobby like his face. I hadn't noticed the rug he and his brother sat on before, woven entirely out of gold thread that glinted and shimmered in the flicker of the fire.
“It won't do any harm, Quill.” Sludge said.
Quill looked back down at his parchment. “Ha! A witch in our hovel.”
“Not all witches are cruel.” I glanced at the hobgoblin troublemaker, standing with his arms crossed, still scowling. He’d be dead by now if it weren’t for me and Rose.
“These aren't our real names.” He said “We never use those. Not even among ourselves. Names hold power. When you name something you get to decide what it is.”
“What do they call you?” I asked “They must call you something.”
The hobgoblin's scowl deepened. Only it almost didn't look so much like a scowl anymore. It almost looked like a smile trying very hard not to be seen. Almost. “Trouble.” He said.
I laughed.
The harpist picked up his harp and strummed. Notes dusted the air like particles in the sunlight. He strummed again, clawing out a hard, heavy chord.
Quill shook his head. “Those gloomy dirges will draw the misfortunes here if anything will.”
Sludge sniffed at his soup again. “Lad! Fetch me some pine nuts and mushrooms and be quick about it. I want this stew ready for our guests.”
A thin scruffy figure stepped out of the shadows. His beard was black without a trace of gray, reaching down past his waist. His shoulders were hunched, his hair frayed and tangled, and his fingers purple with blackberry juice. He looked at me, his eyes wide and curious, then popped a blackberry from his pocket into his mouth and scrambled back into the shadows.
“Where's Glen?” Otto asked.
Sludge gave his stew a long, slow stir. “In the treasury.”
Otto pulled a candle out of his pocket. He lowered the wick into the flames then pulled it away, flickering with a tiny ring of light. “We'll go see him.”
I followed Otto across the cavern. The sound of our feet echoed in the dark space as we drifted further and further from the hobgoblins, a rhythm beneath the fierce, continuous pluckings of the harp. Even the slow, ragged huffs of our breathing bounced off the walls, filling the emptiness around us. The candle flickered in Otto's hand. I held onto his arm to keep from tripping in deepening shadows.
Another candle flickered up ahead at knee level. It moved closer. A moment later it was hovering just beneath us in the closed fist of a white haired hobgoblin with stern eyes and a sterner mouth. He stopped. His big round eyes wandered up to my face then back down to my toes. He turned toward Otto. “This the girl?”
“This is Snow.” Otto said. “Snow, Glen is the eldest of the brothers. If anything happens while I'm gone he will protect you.” I bowed my head in a half curtsy. “That is very kind of you, sir.”
“Don't get lost.” He said and stepped around us, moving toward the fire near the cavern opening where his brothers were gathered.
“They're a tight lipped clan.” Otto said “But reliable. This way. I want to show you something.”
The opening to the treasury was only a few steps further. Otto and I had to lower our heads to fit through. This cavern was smaller. Otto lifted his candle so I could see the walls, cluttered with shadows.
Dark objects of every shape and size filled the space. Axes, candlesticks, dishes. There was even a spinning wheel, threaded and ready to spin, resting in the corner.
“They're magpies.” I stopped next to a small open chest full of coins and jewelry. The pearl necklace that had changed Otto back into a man rested on the top next to an amethyst ring encrusted with the emblem of a single rose.
“This is how I am going to pay my soldiers.” Otto said.
I picked the ring up and turned it over in my hand. It was heavy, smooth, more intricate than anything I had held in a long time. The box of treasures were worth a village at least but I was certain Lucille had much more locked away in Papa's manor and in her castle in the north --Otto's castle. She could more than double whatever Otto offered his soldiers.
Then I remembered the silver Mama had brought with her from her home. The comb, the long chained cross, the short chained diamonds, the earrings, the three matching rings. If Papa hadn't given them to me when I was still small I might have forgotten she had ever existed most days. Otto's family was dead too. This was all he had left of them. “Are you willing to part with the heirlooms?” I asked.
His lips twisted in the shadows. “The hobgoblins aren't. The che
st is staying here.” He stepped to the side of the cavern and lifted his candle. The light fluttered against the spinning wheel and spool after spool of spun thread, sprawled and piled on the ground around it in no particular order. Otto stooped to pick up a spool and held it out to me. “This is what will pay for the army.”
I set the ring down and reached into the shadows to take the spool, confused. “Thread?” But it was heavier in my hand than it should have been. Realization struck me in an instant. The rug the hobgoblins had been sitting on. The thread all of the hobgoblin's clothes were stitched together with. “Gold.” I said. “Gold thread.”
Otto nodded. “They've been spinning it for me these last months. It's their skill –the one Lucille tried to take from them. I can bring a handful to show my recruits and pay them when they arrive. I wanted to show you in case . . . in case something happens to me on the journey. So you can pay the soldiers. So you can lead them if you must.”
With this kind of payment I wondered why he had to go to the north at all. Surely there were plenty of men here who would want thread spun of gold. There was no reason they had to be loyal to Otto's family.
“Why did they spin it for you?” I asked “What did you offer them?”
“Protection from Lucille.” Otto said “And a place in my castle if they want it but I think they would have done it without the promises.”
“Because of what Lucille did to their brothers.”
Otto nodded.
I handed the spool back to him.
Otto balanced it in his palm, running his thumb over the threads. “The caverns will be a good place to hide once the battles start. We could fit armies in here.”
We could. The caverns were wide and the passages tall, but was it a good place to hide or a perfect place to be trapped? I had only seen the one entrance.
“How long will you be gone?” I asked Otto.
“Until spring.”
Almost a year. That gave Rose and I one more winter in the cottage. The next would be spent either in a coffin or a castle. Probably without Rose.
“Snow,” Otto lowered his voice. He knelt and placed the spool back on the ground with the others. “Snow,” he said again. He rose and reached for my hand. His fingers were warm and tight around mine. Light from the candle flickered across his eyes. Earnest. Eager. “When I come back, after we defeat Lucille, when my home is mine again to offer you, I want you to marry me.” He paused to take in a breath. I could feel the pumping of his blood quickening even just from inside his hands. “Would you do that?”
I nodded, remembering, as if I had never forgotten, how such things were done. “That would bind my land to yours. It would be a good alliance.”
My land. The words felt strange. It had never been my land before. It had been Papa's. It had been going to be my husband's, whichever prince he turned out to be.
Otto wrinkled his forehead. He looked confused, disappointed, hurt. “Snow, I don't want to marry you to join our lands. I want to marry you because I love you.”
I stared at him.
Love me? Papa had loved me. So had Hans, and Rose, and probably my attendants, Elise and Dana --at least they had been fonder of me than my tutors had been-- but Papa hadn't loved Lucille and he hadn't loved my mother.
I didn't remember her. She had died four days after I was born from too much bleeding. Papa had told me that she had been good and kind and that she had stitched the best embroidery in all the plains. He had been sorry when she had died because she had been a good wife in the year that they had lived together. He had even mourned her an extra month but he had never loved her. Not the way the stories spoke of love. Nobles married because their lands were too close together and they did not trust each other not to attack and because they needed heirs to look after their land when they were gone.
Perhaps things were done differently in the north.
“Please say something.” Otto said.
“Did you love your other betrothed?” I asked, curious.
He let go of my hand. Hurt and disappointment gave way to pure bemusement. “What?”
“The princess from the east you were betrothed to before. The one with the freckles and the soft lips. Did you love her too?”
Otto shook his head. “No. Of course not. We had fun together as children but she was . . . we were fond of each other. That was all.” He stared at me, waiting for me to say something else but I had no idea what it was he was waiting for me to say.
“I will marry you.” I said at last. The words were final. Sticky and wax-like as they sealed my fate. Otto's plans to fight Lucille had never seemed real until that moment.
Otto sighed. He ran his fingers through his hair then looked down at me with a sad, wistful smile. He shook his head. “No. Not yet. You aren't as cold and sullen as you appear, Snow. I know you aren't. Maybe one day you will be ready to marry me.” He paused. “Or maybe you will discover that your heart lies somewhere else.”
I had no idea what he meant. We stood for a moment in the darkness, neither of us speaking.
“Should we head back to the opening?” He asked at last.
I shook my head. “I want to stay here for a moment. Alone.”
Otto nodded. He fished another candle out of his pocket, lit the wick, and handed it to me. Then he turned and left. I listened to the heavy, solid sound of his footsteps fade, dripping like wax off the candle in my hand.
Love. Otto had spoken of it as if it were real, as if it were something we could touch, something we could own. I turned and wandered through the cluttered space of the cavern, the glittering odds and ends the hobgoblins had earned and stolen over the years. There was a goblet just like the ones Papa and I had drunk from at the manor. There was the chest full of jewels that had once belonged to Rose's mother.
I knelt and lifted the amethyst ring again. The gold stone looked like fire. Like a midsummer bonfire. Would Rose want it, a piece of her mother? I never knew what she wanted anymore. I seldom even saw her. Sometimes it almost felt like we were strangers.
I looked at the candle in my hand. The wax was dripping steadily now, crusting over the tips of my fingers. Something glinted next to the chest. Not a gold glint. Lighter, paler, more like moonlight than sunlight. I lifted my candle, bringing it closer. An oval disk leaned against the stone wall, draped in a rich purple fabric. All but one corner was covered. The corner shimmered.
A mirror. Silver, carved with vines and violets, almost exactly like the one I had had in my bedroom in Papa's manor. A seeing mirror, Papa had called it before Lucille had taken it and moved it to her own room. He had never said what I was meant to see in it besides myself. Without wondering why, I pulled the cover off.
Green eyes gazed at me, untouched by the warm smile beneath them and smothered in long nut brown locks, not quite straight, and not quite curled. I touched the side of my face with the back of my hand just as she touched hers but this woman was not me. She was too certain of herself, too boisterous and alive. And she wasn't trapped in a cluttered hobgoblin's treasury. I recognized the domed ceiling, ornate carvings, and cluttered shelves of Papa's study behind her.
Lucille rose one perfect eyebrow over her perfect forest colored eye. “Snow.” I saw her laughing mouth say but couldn't hear her voice. “Alive.”
They were her eyes, her real, magic filled eyes. She had found me at last.
My candle went out, burning my skin as the flame reached my finger, and the cavern turned dark.
Rose
I was in the garden, plucking tarragon and basil leaves when I felt the footsteps pressing down into the grass. I felt them pushing over the the tall thin blades as distinctly as if they had been pressing into my own skin. They were close, not far into the wood at all, moving steadily toward the cottage with slow, prickling movements.
I stood up. Listening. Feeling. A whisper of wind brushed across my face. It sighed through the tree tops and tangled itself into a thick, coarse coat of fur, only a few feet now from th
e forest's edge. I looked up at the sky. It was gray, filled with the smoky haze of dusk. Suspended above my head, just a little to the west, was a bright silver tinted orb. Not full, but almost. An apple with a bite gauged out of it.
I could hear the footsteps now. Not with the murmuring senses of the woodland, but with my own tiny human ears. I started at the sound. It tickled my flesh like the hum of an insect. Soft, consistent pattering over the creaking wood of the bridge at the edge of the wood. Nearer and nearer until I could see the wolf creature stepping out of the shadows and into the clearing.
Wide amber eyes. Pale, yellow fangs. Dark fur that looked almost charcoal in the blackening dusk air. He was bigger even than I remembered with shoulders that would have reached past my knees had I been standing.
He didn't look anything like Boris but I knew it was him. The monster who had killed my Gran. The monster who had almost killed Snow.
He stopped for only a moment at the edge of the clearing, sniffing the air with his snout as if to be sure he had come to the right place. He fixed his eyes on me and moved forward again. Quickly. Effortlessly. Snow and I had never repaired the gate. He leapt over its shambles, gaining speed as he neared me.
I stood where I was, holding my hand out in front of me for him to sniff. Basil leaves and strips of tarragon scattered over the earth next to my feet. Perhaps he would recognize me. Perhaps he would be strong enough to resist his mother's commands.
I focused inward, into the part of my soul where my songs came from. Where Gran had told me stories and where I had stood with Snow next to the midsummer bonfire. If he wasn't strong enough I would be ready for him.