Snow Roses

by Taryn Tyler

  “Those are Snow's.” I said.

  He burrowed his forehead in confusion.

  “The men.” I said. “They should surrender to Snow. This is her manor.” Her home.

  Otto nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  Something else he had said struck me. “Lucille's heir –Boris – he’s dead?”

  He nodded again. “Stabbed three times in the heart with Snow's knife.”

  I stared past Otto at the ornate picture frame hanging on the wall, wondering why I wasn't gladder, why I felt like crying.

  I wouldn't miss him. I could never miss him after what he had done but his death did nothing to the memories still clogging up inside my head. I shook them out. As hard and as fast as I could.

  “Are you alright?” Otto asked.

  I shrugged. “As much as I can be after draining a life's worth of magic in a single hour.”

  He didn't look convinced. “Have you changed your mind?” He asked. “About coming with me to the north? I could keep you safe there. We could rule together, both of us our parents' heirs.”

  I shook my head. “I belong in the forest.” That would never change no matter how many queens died.

  He nodded, rising off the bed. “Well you have until the end of summer to decide for certain. I don't want to leave until Snow is healed.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Of course he didn't. Then she couldn't travel with him after he asked her to. If he hadn't already.

  Otto's face flushed red. He touched the back of his neck. “Let me fetch you some water.” He flashed me a quick half smile and whisked out of the chamber in quick, long strides.

  I don't remember closing my eyes again but I do remember waking for a second time. The chamber was dark. Strange shadows cast from the writing table and bedposts and candelabra like dark fingers trying to curl themselves around my heart. I pulled back the thick layers of bed coverings and sat up.

  Snow slept in the bed across from me. I could hear the soft, even ebbing of her breath whispering into the silence. I placed my bare feet onto the soft carpeted floor and approached her bed. She was pale from loss of blood but her eyes were closed, the lines smoothed out of her forehead. Her deep red lips were bent into the slightest smile. I had never seen her sleep so peacefully. Still, without a glint of sweat on her skin. Her nightmares were gone.

  This was her world. The beds, the carpets, the candelabra. When her wounds healed she would dance at her own coronation. She would glide and twirl across the ballroom in silks and silver like the queen she always was. And I . . .

  I was made for the wood. I listened for the thrum of the tree roots but heard nothing. The stone walls were thick with silence. Even the wind was stifled by their stillness. Even then. Even with the compression of the walls I would stay if . . .

  But Otto had his own plans and Lucille was gone. Snow would be safe. She didn’t need me. I knelt beside her and kissed her lightly on the lips. She sighed softly in her sleep but didn't wake. “Goodbye.” I whispered.

  I got lost twice in the long, twisting corridors looking for a way out of the manor. Every step echoed into the darkness. The soldiers watched me when I finally found my way out into the courtyard, unsure if they should try to stop me. Or perhaps they were afraid I would light them on fire or call all the beasts of the wilderness to rip their flesh off of their bones. I considered trying it but the warden let me out without a question. I passed through the archway back out into the woodland. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind me.

  The moon was a sliver short of full, shedding light as it hung over the trees. I listened. The forest was silent. The animals said nothing. Wind rustled through the trees. Creatures scurried through the bushes. An owl hooted but I couldn't feel the spread of his wings in the air. I couldn't taste the long centuries the trees had lived for. Even the ghosts were gone.

  Hello, I tried to say but my head began to burn. Pain struck through my center, sending it reeling into oblivion. I stepped back. Sickness swirled inside my stomach. My limbs ached. My head throbbed. There was nothing for me to reach for. My connection with the wood had broken.

  Calling the woodland creatures, turning the glass shards in Snow's flesh to sand, heating Lucille's iron shoes, coaxing the viper to bite her. The power had rushed through me, almost as if I had been drowning in it. As if I had had no choice but to wield it.

  I hadn't had a choice. Not so long as Snow was alive. Not so long as she had been in danger.

  The wind brushed across my face, bringing with it the rotting scent of an animal carcass. The doe Greta had killed.

  The doe I had killed.

  I closed my eyes, not trying to speak, only to listen.

  Nothing.

  I waited, humming silently to myself, feeling the wind, feeling the earth beneath my bare feet.

  A fire spread through my stomach. Dim, but warm. It spread through my body like a sickness. A hatred that reeked of death. Power. Unstoppable. Like Lucille's. Like the wood itself. The rhythm of my heart quickened. A dark thrill shot through me.

  “Claim me.” the ghosts had said and so I had. I had made them my children and sung them to sleep. I had felt their pains as my own pains but now they were gone. Perhaps they had gone to sleep at last when Lucille had died or perhaps when I had broken Lucille's ice they had been trapped so deep inside me that I could no longer hear them. Perhaps they would always be there in silent, undefinable pain.

  I opened my eyes, pulling away from the burn of the forest. My head ached as it had never ached before. As if it were trapped in a wool press. As if it had been bashed in with an ax.

  Power. Everywhere around me. The memory of the wood itself, sharp, brittle, ancient and terrifying. But I lacked the strength to touch it.

  Or I no longer wanted to.

  I looked back at the manor, sleeping silently through the night as if it were under a curse. I could go back if I wanted. I could live amongst the safe, comfortable ceremonies of ruler-ship.

  I turned back toward the wood. I lifted my foot and stepped into the the dark canopies. I went home.

  The leaves and twigs prickled against the soles of my feet. The summer night fondled my skin, cool and fresh and fearless. The trees stood tall and silent as I passed them, each an unsolved mystery of existence. Their leaves fluttered in the brush of the wind, whispering to me in a language I would never understand. A welcoming or a warning.

  The moonlight faded as I walked. Soon I could no longer catch glimpses of the glowing orb over the canopy of branches. The bats and owls and other night creatures fluttered back to their nests. A fractured gray glow filtered into the air. Dawn.

  Song birds chirruped from the trees, soaring down to the mistcovered ground to peck through the earth for worms and beetles. A sparrow looked up at me. He blinked with his wide, curious eyes. I didn't feel his eyelids sliding down. I didn't know what kind of insect he had just swallowed.

  Somehow that made him more real. He was his own entity because he was a mystery. I smiled, releasing a half sigh into the cool cusp of the morning. He turned his head away from me, spread his wings, and lifted into the air. He was gone in the blink of an eye, pilfering another part of the wood for the rest of his breakfast. I didn’t know where.

  I looked around me. The trees glittered with the first traces of sunlight. I could hear the quiet giggle of a brook nearby.

  A brook. Suddenly the oak next to me was familiar. The pine with the bent branch. The blue jay nest in the poplar. The thick rampage of hawthorn bushes. I turned, moving toward the sound of the water. My steps were slow and careful as I rolled my feet over the forest floor without disturbing the earth. I listened. For movement. For change.

  There was the edge of the cliff, getting closer and closer as I stepped toward it. There was the abandoned fox den, the deer trail, the scattering of ferns, the wild roses. The sound of the water grew nearer and nearer until at last I could see the pale tracing of water rippling its way down toward the river.

  And there, s
tanding next to it, exactly where his mother had left him, was the young fawn. He turned his head toward the sound of my approach. His tail and ear lifted, alert. He was a late born fawn. Traces of round white spots were still visible on his coat, sprinkled like fading smudges of ash. He watched me. Curious. Wary.

  I crouched down low so that my size was less threatening. “Good morning.” I said, reaching my hand out to him, waiting for him to come to me in his own time.

  He sniffed the air, then stepped back. Did he know that it was me who had killed his mother?

  I plucked a handful of hawthorn berries off the nearest bush. The maroon colored berries leaked juice over my fingers. The thorns stung my hands. I held them out to the fawn.

  The fawn tilted his head, considering. If he wanted to fetch such a treat himself he would have to risk scratching his nose on the thorns. He stayed where he was, deciding if I was a better or worse risk.

  I kept my hand out, waiting.

  We remained like that for some time. Watching each other. Waiting. Deciding. Twice the fawn moved toward me, one or two tentative steps, then stepped back, further away than he had been before. My arm grew sore. The dawn brightened into full morning.

  At last he came towards me. He darted straight for me in a succession of quick leaps as if he were afraid he might change his mind. His muzzle was soft as he nestled it into my hand. His tongue was warm and rough. His ears twitched. He stepped back, watching me, waiting for more.

  “There.” I said “You see? I won't harm you.” I plucked another handful of berries and held them out. When he finished those I gave him another. Finally I rose, wiping the berry juices off on my skirt, and stepped away.

  I moved through the woods, one step after the other, striking a path toward the cottage once again. I didn't look back to see if the fawn was watching me. I didn't look to see if he had turned and darted away.

  The cottage was in some disorder when I reached it. The door left open, leaves and broken china scattered over the ground, my blood dried onto the table, the bath curtain draped in a lump next to the table. I placed my hands on my hips with a sigh then set to work picking up the mess. I had just swept up the leaves and shattered china and had started working on rubbing the brown dried blood off of the table when a tiny shadow blocked the sunlight streaming through the door.

  I turned with a rag lifted in one hand. The fawn placed his hooves onto the wooden floor, lifting his tail. He clattered into the cottage next to me and sniffed the cleaning bucket beneath the table.

  “There now.” I said. “I thought we might be friends.”

  I called him First Light since I had found him at dawn. I had taken his mother from him. The least I could do was keep him from starving. He slept next to the fire where Otto had slept when he was a bear. In the morning he chased insects and turned up plants while I worked in the garden, harvesting vegetables and planting the autumn crop. Then he would follow me through the wood. I picked berries for us both, found him fresh beds of grass, climbed trees, and watched the birds flutter and chirp among the branches.

  I heard only the surface sounds of the forest. I didn't hear the trees thrum. I didn't feel their roots twist, reaching for the center of the earth. The willow I used to sit in never bent her branches for me again. I couldn't see what the animals saw.

  The leaves began to brown as the days passed. Summer storms sifted into cold bitter winds. The trees shed their color like the bits of old snake skin piled on the ground beneath them. I traded some of Snow's woodpile for a flint to burn it with. The village children ran in the square with First Light, laughing and chasing him in circles while I made the trade. A woman in a long simple green dress sat on the edge of the well, watching me.

  I held the flint in my hand as the smith headed back for his forge with the bundles of wood I had given him. The woman at the well looked familiar. She had a long thin face with a soft half smile brushed onto her thin lips. I stared, trying to decide where I had seen her before, which tradesman she was married to or if she did trade herself.

  She waved. Her smile brightened.

  I laughed in sudden recognition. Greta. It was Greta. Smiling. Wearing color. No wonder I hadn't recognized her. She embraced me when I approached, and insisted that I have supper with her in her house.

  She was living in a different house, smaller than the one we had lived in together. Instead of a loft she had a small bed next to her spinning wheel. I sat on it while she cut up vegetables and bits of rabbit to put into a stew. First Light laid down next to the door, tucking his nose beneath his tail.

  “Hans is dead.” Greta said. “Killed trying to kill Lucille's son.”

  “I'm sorry.” I said.

  She dropped the bits of food into a pot over the fire. “He gave me another chance. To live. To be free. I've never had that chance before. Not since I was a child. I've always been so afraid. Of Lucille. Of loss. Now that's gone.”

  “You didn't want to stay in the manor? Working for Snow?”

  She shook her head. “I never liked that manor. It's too big. Full of too many people. Those little men stayed though. The ill mannered ones. They're royal messengers or spies or something now.”

  “The ghosts are gone from the wood too.” I said. And the wolf. All the monsters were gone now.

  Greta turned from the pot she was stirring. “What about you?” She tilted her head, staring at me with more intensity that I would have liked. “You didn't stay at the manor?”

  I shook my head.

  She turned back to the stew. “That king –your brother, he said he was –will be leaving for the north soon. Before winter, he said. Just as soon as Snow is well enough to travel.”

  I turned toward the window, watching dusk set in over the village.

  “She wanted you to stay.” Greta said.

  I snapped my gaze back toward Greta. “Do you want any help with that stew? Smells about ready to add the garlic.”

  Greta sighed. Her lips returned for only a moment to their habitual somber line. I helped her add the spices to the stew. We ate it with bread from the village. We ate in silence but it was a soft, warm silence. Not the cold, tense silence I remembered from the old nights with Greta. It had been weeks since I'd had anyone but First Light and the other woodland creatures to keep me company. I almost didn't want to leave when we had finished with the washing but night had fallen as we ate and there was no place for me to sleep.

  “Come with me.” I said, standing in the doorway with my cloak flung over my shoulders and a sleepy First Light at my heel. There was more than enough room for both of us in Gran's cottage. “The forest isn't as frightening as it looks.”

  Greta shook her head. “I don't think I'll ever step foot in there.”

  So First Light and I went home alone. We walked through the dark of the forest. Quiet. Still. There were no ghosts. There were no wolves. There were no hobgoblins.

  I slept hard that night and late that morning. I dreampt of birds and thorns and long colored threads spinning and spinning through a forever turning wheel. I woke to the scuffling scrapes of someone mixing things up and the sour scent of yeast. I sat up, dazed, my hair full of straw.

  “ If your porridge is lumpy.” Snow said. “It's your fault for sleeping so late that I had to make it.”

  I stared down at her from the loft. Her cheeks were bright from the glow of the fire. Her hair was tied in a scarf behind her head, cut neat and short behind her ears. She had a fresh linen shift and violet wool bodice on. Laced around her feet were big, black, leather boots. Not the sort of clothing a queen usually wore.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She wiped a flour covered finger off on her skirt then pointed to a sash laid out over the table. My sash. The one I'd embroidered for her with vines and doves but then never gave her. “You left your sash at the manor.”

  I turned back to look at her. She stared at me with her dark, unblinking gaze.

  “I made it for you.”
r />   Her red lips twisted into a smile, coy, almost shy. “Then you left me.”

  “I . . .” My heart pounded. I concentrated on deep, full breaths. “Don't you have a kingdom to rule?”

  She shook her head, grinning, laughing. “I abdicated. Otto rules both kingdoms now. Only I ought to have waited. He refused to let me leave the manor until I was fully healed and since I had already told him that he was my king I couldn't disobey him without causing discord among his new followers.”

  “But . . . your home. Didn't you want your home back?”

  “Yes.” she said “That's why I came here. You are my home, Rose.”

  I was grinning now too. And crying. I laughed. I pushed my blankets back and clattered down the ladder, almost tripping on the steps. “Here, let me check that bread for you before you burn it. There's probably nothing I can do about the porridge.”

  But Snow stopped me. She took me by the waist and spun me around to face her. She lifted herself onto her toes and placed one hand behind my neck.

  Her lips melted against mine, soft like a whisper, strong like a storm. She tasted like the sunrise. Like dusk. Like rain. I leaned against her, thirsty for her touch. We stood together, entwined like roses on a vine, while the bread burnt as black as charcoal.