Snow Roses

by Taryn Tyler

  “ Why are you here?” I asked at last. The words were hardly discernible through my drizzling nose and swollen throat. “Are you a prisoner too?”

  “ No. The queen has commanded that I cut out your heart to prove my loyalty to her.” I couldn't see her face but I imagined her lips pursed in a perfect straight line. Probably the only expression she knew how to make.

  “ To prove your loyalty?” I pulled away, untangling myself from her embrace. “Because I lived with you as a child?”

  Greta shook her head. “She knows nothing of that. These last three years i have served her carefully, all the time in terror that she would learn that I had hidden a child she had wanted dead but I had never thought to conceal the fact that Hans --the Hunter, they call him here -- is my brother. There was no reason to. He was her most trusted servant but she has learned that he betrayed her and so I am under suspicion.”

  “Snow.” Her name hurt to say. The tears had brought with them more places to ache from. “You're here because Lucille learned that Snow was alive.”

  Greta nodded. “Hans fed the queen a hind's heart instead of Snow's. It wasn't the first time he'd deceived her.”

  “What do you mean?” Tears still clung to my cheeks and the rims of my swollen eyes.

  Greta stepped back. She pursed her lips, eying me from head to toe. Like a slave master surveying his merchandise, I used to think when she looked at me like, that but now . . .

  She was so still, so quiet, so practiced in betraying nothing of herself that even her eyes were hard to read. And yet, was that just the tiniest glint of . . .

  It couldn't have been pride. It couldn't have been love.

  “You’re a princess, Rose.” She said. “Did you know that? Your parents ruled the North when they were alive. Lucille killed them. She sent Hans to kill you but he brought you to me in the village instead.”

  I blinked, staring at her. “But Gran . . .”

  Greta shook her head. “It was Hans. We lost our parents to the plague when we were both children. He learned to hunt. I learned to spin. But it wasn't enough. We were still hungry almost every night. Lucille offered him anything he wanted when she began her army. Gold. Protection. Glory.

  “Hans had killed deer and rabbit and wild boar. He knew his business. He did well on the attack, killing masses of soldiers with the same detached precision he had killed so much forest game. Lucille praised his work, promising him more rewards than he could possibly imagine, then she sent him up to your nursery to bring her your heart.

  “He found you playing with a candle that had fallen on the rug. You looked up at him. You didn't cry or squirm. You must have been used to seeing men with knives drawn. You reached for him with a drool covered fist, smiling.

  “So he hid you in his cloak and brought Lucille a young sow's heart instead. Once she had eaten it and set up court in the northern castle he brought you to me. He didn't know Lucille would ever come here. He didn't know he would find his heart again and save another child. He didn't know Lucille would ever learn that she had been betrayed.

  “Boris let him go. Last night.” This time I was sure I saw it in her eyes. One last remaining twinkle, something the world hadn't taken from her yet. Pride. Love. “I don't know why. The queen tried to keep it from me but servants talk. She was going to make him watch her rip Snow's heart out before she killed him but now he's out there. Somewhere. Alive. Lucille has no idea who you are. She knows you're a powerful witch. She wants your power and whatever years of your youth she can still take but she doesn't know that you've already escaped her grasp once.”

  didn't see that it mattered. She wanted me dead either way. Only . . .

  Otto. She didn't know about Otto.

  “What about Gran?” I asked. Otto had said that she was my nurse in the castle.

  “Lucille's sister. She wasn't in the castle when it was attacked. She searched for years before she found us. You were only just learning to speak. She offered to care for you herself but I had grown used to having you. I never married. I had no children of my own. The villagers thought I must have had a foreign lover. I let them believe that that was why you were tall and pale haired but when Hans visited

  –only once while you were buying bread –and told me who the new queen was I didn't like anything that drew attention to your differences, anything that might help her find you”

  I shook my head. I had never heard Greta talk so much all at once. Why couldn't she have told me all this before? “You left.” I said ”After Gran died, you just left.”

  The same way Boris had. And I hadn't looked for her. I had been content to stay in the wood with Snow. The wood. Where I should have been all along.

  “Hans took me here.” Greta said. “He promised me you would be safe.”

  “I wasn't.”

  She shook her head. “No one keeps their promises.”

  I looked at the knife lying on the cold, stone floor. Long. Slender. Sharp. The door was locked. There was no way out for either of us. “What happens now?” I asked.

  Greta twisted her lips into the ghost of a smile. “Lucille has promised that I will be bitten by a viper if I don't bring her your heart. It is a more painful death than I had hoped for but she has given worse.”

  “Don't be stupid.” I said. “Then we'll both die.” Lucille wasn't going to let me go just because one of her servants disobeyed her.

  “What would you have me do?” Greta asked “I spin thread. I don't have the stomach my brother does. Even if I had never seen you before in my life I couldn't . . .”

  “What if it were a hind? Like Hans used to fool her before?”

  She shook her head. “The door is locked and even if it weren't I don't have the skills to find one before nightfall.”

  “I'll find one.” I said. “I'll find a hind and bring her close enough for you to kill.”

  I clenched my fists, vaguely aware that I had once refused to use my power to help Snow hunt or for anything that would harm what I had been made guardian of. The memory flowed through me like an ache, encompassing my entire body, but it strengthened my resolve rather than weakened it. Lucille and her son had taken my home, my family, my body, even my kindness, from me, but my will was my own. I would not surrender to them. Not yet. Not ever.

  I stood and strode past Greta toward the window.

  “It won't fool her.” Greta said. “She will check to make sure you are dead.”

  “It will give us time.” I said. Time to find a way out. Time to get a message to Otto –or maybe even Hans. Time meant life and life meant a chance.

  Snow

  I opened my eyes. My head hurt. The sun was blinding. I groaned.

  “You're using up your debts fast, Snow. Are you trying to rival me as a troublemaker?”

  “The comb.” I said, still trying to make sense out of the patterns of lights and colors in front of my eyes. “I shouldn't have put it on.”

  “No, you shouldn't have.”

  The tingling and numbness. It must have been poisoned. My head was still throbbing. My nose ached where it had crashed into the ground. But how could Lucille have known I would take it?

  “Lad is back.” Glen said. “He found the witch.”

  “Lucille?”

  “No. The other one.”

  “And food.” Sludge added. He pulled a sausage out of a sack in front of him and sniffed it with a craftsman's curiosity.

  I sat up, shaking the last of the grogginess out of my eyes. “Where? Is she . . .” I couldn't bring myself to ask it.

  “She's alive.” Lad stood behind his older brothers. His fingers hid inside his black beard just under his chin. He spat on the ground, contempt evident in his eyes. “The queen has her locked up. No one will say why. Her servants aren't very loose of tongue. Not to strangers anyway.”

  I shuddered, remembering the silent halls, remembering Constanze and the pale woman, afraid to speak, afraid look anywhere they weren't told to, afraid they would disappear.


  “Where is she being kept?” I asked. “The dungeons?”

  I knew every room in that manor. If I could find a way in, if I had time to look . . . but getting her out would be the real difficulty.

  Lad shook his head. “I don't know where. Only that a prisoner escaped from the dungeons last night and the queen's son was seen carrying a girl with red hair up the stairs. Into his . . . into his bedchamber.”

  His bedchamber. My stomach felt sick. I placed my hand over it, choking back vomit.

  “Find out.” I demanded.

  Lad looked at Glen. Glen nodded.

  “We'll all go.” Trouble said. “Better chance of getting out again that way.”

  The brothers were silent for a moment. Their clan had once had eleven members. Until Lucille.

  Trouble snatched the sack of food away from Sludge and handed it to me. “We'll be back.” He turned around and scurried off into the bushes. His brothers followed. Even Sludge who seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to have a damaged ankle.

  I stared after them, cursing myself for not going with them, but I would only attract attention. Even outside the manor Lucille had me trapped --forced to sit still, to wait, to hide.

  I wasn't hungry but I dug into the sack of food anyway. For something to do or perhaps to fight back the legion of fury swelling up inside me. I pulled out an apple and bit into it. The juice was sweet, crisp, and just tart enough. It tasted like autumn and winter and . . . and a brittle spice that made my tongue numb.

  Like Christmas.

  Not again.

  I opened my mouth, trying to spit the apple out, but my tongue wouldn't move. Neither would my jaw. Saliva built up in the back of my throat, blocking my breath, blocking my voice from calling out. I gagged, choked, gargled, but the apple piece lodged itself further and further into my throat. My eyes watered. My ears stung. I felt oblivion reach for me with its long seductive fingers.

  Rose

  I stood, facing the window with my eyes closed.

  His hands stroking my thighs, pulling them open.

  No. I flung my eyes open, gasping for breath.

  I looked down at my clenched fists. Open, I told them. Release.

  Accept. Speaking to the wood required trust. A mind without secrets. I couldn't afford to shrink away from anything. My fists remained closed. My jaw clenched. My wrists were tight.

  I breathed deep, then closed my eyes again.

  His skin, soft and vulturous, clammy with sweat . . .

  My fists tightened.

  No. I forced my eyes to stay shut. I had other memories. Other thoughts.

  Greta. The forever thumping of her spinning wheel. The smell of stew bubbling on the fire.

  My body unable to move, unable to fight . . .

  Gran. The bright wrinkles around her eyes as she flung my red cloak over my shoulders for the first time. The warm cackle of her laughter. The soft, haunting thrum of her song.

  My hand -- numb, bleeding --as I fell toward the ground. Lucille's cold, beautiful smile.

  Snow. The terrible green mess she turned pea soup into.

  Boris. Saying he loved me, over and over. Telling me that Snow was in danger.

  Snow, gone. Snow, found by Lucille.

  Tears leaked down my face, pouring over my lips and down my chin. They tasted like salt. Like blood. My throat swelled. My breath caught in my belly. I couldn't breathe.

  Snow. Standing in front of Boris's wolf form with her tiny silver knife inside the cottage.

  Snow. Insisting that we rescue the accursed hobgoblin again and again and again.

  Snow. Dancing in the cottage with Otto.

  Snow. Standing with me in the wood at midsummer, fearless, as I lit the world on fire, promising me no one would ever keep me away from her. Her unblinking gaze. Her deep red lips. The sideways tilt of her head.

  Everyone breaks their promises. I had broken mine too. I had trusted Boris.

  The tears kept coming. Hot. Scalding. Like fire. Like music. Singing, thrumming from inside me, each tear a different note, each tear a different thought, a different piece of myself.

  And then I heard the wood and it was singing and it was crying too. Rain water pattered against the earth, enriching the soil, painting it a dark, cinnamon brown. I felt it fall, drip by drip against oak leaves and fern branches, rolling in kisses down their surfaces, seeping down into their roots. I savored each drop, drinking in the sorrow that would never quench my emptied entrails.

  Drip. Drip. Water caught in the wind. It scattered into the air, breaking into smaller particles before sprinkling over a bed of rotting leaves. It drifted down onto a shrew's fur. The shrew shook it off, scattering it over a carpet of pine needles, then scurried away, searching for somewhere to hide from the damp, clammy weather.

  The rain poured harder. The ground grew soft with the rush of water. Mud drizzled off the side of the cliffs. Droplets leaked through the roof of Gran's empty cottage.

  There. Brushing his nose against the brook, pushing his tongue out for a drink. A fawn. And next to him, shaking water out of her ears, telling him it was time to go, her heart --the same size as mine – thumping blood steadily through her body. His mother. A doe.

  Come. I said. Come to your death so that I can live.

  The doe stood still, listening. She twitched her nose, turning to look at her fawn.

  Come. I said again. Harsher. More forcefully.

  The doe turned toward the manor. She pressed her hooves against the ground and sprang into a run. She darted through the trees. Water pounded against her back. Wind burrowed its way through her fur. It pushed against her, spurring her to bound faster and faster through the wood. Her heart beat fast, fluttering as many life pulses as it could into the short moments it had left to beat. Her legs bent and straightened, bent and straightened, kicking against the forest floor.

  Leaves broke apart beneath her hooves. Forest mice scurried into their holes to avoid being trampled. A bright green beetle scrambled out of her way. The wind brushed off of her damp fur, tangling into the straight, black, damp hair of a girl. A small, pale girl with deep red lips.

  The rain stopped. The wind bubbled and boiled, dancing and tossing through the tree canopy, pushing the doe to run faster with each bound. She stopped at the manor wall just below the tower window.

  I opened my eyes. “Now.” My voice came out in a gurgle of laughter. I had to remind myself to breathe. “Kill her now.”

  Greta didn't move behind me. I turned around to face her. She stared at me.

  “Hurry.” I said “Before someone sees.”

  “Couldn't you?” Greta asked. I had never seen her look frightened before. I had never seen her look anything but solemn.

  I shook my head. Greta had never killed before. She needed to look haunted if Lucille was going to believe her, even for a moment, that the heart was mine. I couldn't trust her to pretend it.

  Greta stooped and lifted the knife off the ground. She held it gingerly in her hands, shaking as she looked up at me. “I'll miss.” She said. “I've never thrown a knife before.”

  “You won't miss.” I closed my eyes again, rummaging through the wind, pilfering it for what I needed.

  Come. I commanded. There was no hesitance this time.

  Greta threw the knife. It tumbled out the window, down, down toward the ground. A hawk swooped down. His talons clasped around the knife hilt. He held it in his grasp, plunging downward toward the doe.

  The doe stood where she was. Silent. Still. The weapon pierced into her flesh. She fell, limp, onto the ground.

  The hawk kept his claws clenched tight around the knife hilt. He flapped his wings and leapt back into the sky, up and up, back toward the window. He landed on the window sill, blinking his wide brown eyes.

  “Take the dagger.” I told Greta without opening my eyes. I felt her reach from behind to take it.

  I sent the hawk back down. He landed on the doe. She was still alive when the talons cut in
to her chest. I felt her body whimper against the force of the cut. I felt the cool, sharp bite of the hawk's talons as they penetrated her breast. I felt the blood gush out of her veins as they were broke open, ripped away from their life-source. I felt the heart beat just once in the hawk's iron grip before the last traces of being left the doe.

  The hawk pushed himself up, rising back up toward the window with the bloody piece of flesh in his grasp. I reached my hands out of the window, palms up. He hovered over them and dropped the heart.

  Thick, sticky blood covered my fingers and palms and wrists. The flesh was still warm. I turned and held it out to Greta.

  Greta reached for it, pale, trembling. Her fingers touched the tender surface, then she fell to her knees, retching into the straw. The stench of her bile added to the mildew reek of blood in my hands. When she was finished she looked up, wiping the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “How can you smile?” She asked.

  “Your brother is a hunter.” I said “You've seen animals killed before.”

  She shook her head. “I've never seen him laugh. Not even Lucille . . .”

  “We can't afford to be tender hearted, Greta.” I said. “Not now. Not if we both want to live.”

  “I know.” Greta stood. She stepped away from the mess of sick. “But why are you smiling?”

  I couldn't hold back the laughter anymore. I closed my eyes, feeling the wind, feeling it tangle into a mess of straight black hair, feeling it graze over the skin of a small frail form, hungry, tired, but flushed and beating with life. Tears poured down my face, running down my cheek, dripping off my chin as I laughed. I held the deer's heart in my hand, determined not to lose the one chance I had, determined not to die.

  “Snow is alive.” I said.

  Snow

  A pair of hands grabbed me from behind. They lifted me upright. One hand pressed into my chest. The other thumped me against the back. Once, twice, three times. The apple piece flew out of my mouth, landing on the wet leaves in front of me. I was damp all over. Had it been raining?

  I gasped for air, then swallowed. I turned around to face my rescuer. His hands were familiar; large and rough, covered in scars. I saw his form through the veil of water leaking out of my eyes. Dark hair and stern, distant eyes.