I hesitate with my hand on the doorknob. One turn and I can be in the room with it. Three steps to place me before its glassy face. A handful of words in return for … what? I scarce know what I need to ask, let alone how to phrase it.
(Don’t I know? Oh, don’t I?)
Another day, then. When I have had more time to ponder my question.
Carefully, I insert the key into the lock and turn it. The weighty clatter of the tumblers brings me more comfort, I am sure, than the words of the mirror ever would. But do I imagine it? That barely heard sigh from the chamber beyond, so heavy with disappointment and with desire? Before leaving, I tap my toe three times and brush the tip of my nose.
Am I mad to have even considered such a diabolic audience? My stepmother has twisted my thoughts, most like for her sport. My husband is not a good man but he is not—
(a monster)
He is her father. He would not—
(you know his heart)
I need to occupy myself with practical matters and stop this foolishness. The snow has stopped and I have coins that need to be spent before my husband’s return, lest he find a more worthwhile cause for their use. I will take my daughter down to the village and buy her that winter cloak. Already, I can picture her wearing it, a scarlet weave folding soft and billowy around her slight frame, all that golden hair kept safe beneath the hood.
Oh, I know that I won’t be able to find such a thing as that. It will be lucky enough if the village seamstress has one of sparrow-egg blue or the bright green of ferns, anything other than muddy hues of brown or grey. If it be trimmed with rabbit fur, then we shall be luckier still. For red, I would have to place an order, and all of that would take too long.
My husband returns in a fortnight. The coins will need to be spent by then.
I will hunt you down with dogs. Hungry, vicious hounds that have been starved for days before being given your scent. You will beg for your life when finally they bail you up, circle you with their jaws snapping and slavering, but I will let them have you. I will let them tear you to pieces. I will let them take their fill of your flesh. All that will be forbidden them is your heart. That I shall bring home with me, safe in a locked, lightless box.
The gatekeep steps into our path as we approach, my daughter’s mittened hand clutched tight in my own. It takes four more steps to reach him. I do not like four as a number—it is slippery and too easily split in twain—but I dare not take a fifth.
“Weather’s closing in, Your Highness,” the gatekeep says, his shoulders squared.
My daughter squeezes my hand. Mama, she starts to say, but I shush her quickly. The sky above us is a weak blue and utterly clear of clouds.
“We are only going down to the village,” I tell the man. “We will not tarry long.”
“The little one will catch a chill.” He does not move, though his fingers tighten their grip about his staff. “Best get her back inside.”
“Thank you for concern, but we—we are warmly dressed, the both of us.” As I tug my daughter forward, the gatekeep too takes a step closer. So close that his broad, leather-clad chest almost bumps my own. His breath fogs as he speaks and I can smell the warmth of it.
“You may go to the village if you wish it,” he says. “But the little one should go back inside.”
For a moment, I’m too flustered for words. Then I picture my stepmother and the manner in which she used to conduct herself when I was a child. How imperiously she would speak to everyone, even my father himself. I draw myself upright. “Do you propose to tell your mistress what she might do with her day?”
The words taste flat as failed bread in my mouth and the gatekeep doesn’t so much as flinch. “On instructions from His Grace, your master and mine both. He did not wish the princess away from the castle in his absence. The winter is foul and the woods are wild and he would not have his only daughter come to any harm.”
He smiles now, a genuine smile, yet my daughter hides her face in my skirts. Part of me wishes to push past him regardless, to see if he will truly dare to lay a hand on his royal mistress. But another, more certain part burns with the humiliating knowledge that he would not hesitate to do so. My jaw begins to ache, so hard are my teeth clenched together.
“Mama? Are we not going to the village today?”
I forced a smile to my lips. “No, my pet. This kind gentleman thinks that it will storm, so we had best stay warm and dry by the fire.”
She kicks at the dirty snow that lies piled at the side of the path. “I wanted to see Klaus.”
“Silly poppet, Klaus is not in the village. I told you, he’s with all the big horses now.”
The gatekeep laughs, a far from pleasant sound. “You’d be best served looking for that old nag in the knackery.”
My daughter stares up at me, confused. I glare at the gatekeep but the man merely winks. “That’s—that’s a place where the big horses live,” I tell her quickly. “Come, my pet. We shall go down to the kitchen and have Cook warm you a mug of honey-milk.”
“I’m not cold, Mama,” she replies, her words frosting in the air. “I want to see the knackery. Please can we visit the knackery?”
The gatekeep’s rough laughter follows us up the path as I drag my protesting daughter back to the castle, and I curse him beneath my breath. High in the sky above, a raven flies in a slow circle. I curse it as well, wishing for its feathers to turn to stone, for its abruptly heavy body to fall to the ground and shatter like so many thwarted dreams.
It takes one hundred and nineteen steps before we are inside once more. I don’t care for that number, either. It has sharp edges and seems keen to draw blood.
I shall bind you with silken threads, wrapping them around and around your body until every inch of skin is cocooned. Only your eyes shall remain uncovered, so that I might peer into them over the days and weeks it will take for you to wither and waste and starve, stoically, silently, to your death.
My husband doesn’t care for the stories of my childhood, of the times before he jolted me from my poisoned sleep and lifted me boldly from the coffin, but my daughter loves to hear them. Each night, I sit by her bedside and tell her tales of the kindly little men who took me into their mountain home when I was lost, and for whom I kept house for several months. I tell her how I would make their beds and darn their socks and prepare their dinner the way they taught me. I do not tell her about poisoned combs or apples, nor about coffins made from glass; she is too young for such horrors.
Neither do I mention my stepmother. My daughter will have too many questions that I’m still unready to answer.
Instead, I relay happier stories of happier days—for there were many happy days betwixt the huntsman and the coffin—as well as the stories that the dwarves used to tell to me. Tales of crafty foxes and wise, well-born hares; dancing princesses and frogs with jewels hidden deep in their bellies; mighty frost giants who once lumbered through the mountains, and mischievous pixies with a taste for stolen sweets.
“Can we leave a cake out for the pixies?” my daughter asks me tonight.
“There are no pixies in our part of the world, my pet. It would only be a family of rats who come to nibble on your cake.”
“Talking rats?” she asks hopefully. “Magic rats?”
Smiling, I set aside the nightgown I’m hemming. My daughter grows so fast; this is the second time I’ve let it down and there won’t be fabric left for a third. “No,” I say. “Fierce and hungry rats who will gobble up their cake and then creep under the blankets to nibble on your toes!” I grab her foot and tickle it until she shrieks.
“Stop it, Mama! Stop it!” She’s almost breathless as she struggles to pull away.
Laughing, I release her and begin to straighten the bedclothes. “Come now, fidget. It’s past time you were asleep.”
She wriggles beneath the quilt. “Can we visit the pixies, Mama?”
“One day, perhaps.”
“When? When?”
“The
y live very far away from here.”
“But we can use magic and fly to see them, quick as blinking.”
“Hush now.” I pull the covers up to her chin.
“But Mama, we can—”
“Hush!” Though her talk is fanciful, I don’t like to hear my daughter speak of magic. “It’s no small thing, my pet, to use magic. There is always a cost.” I kiss her three times, once on the forehead and again on each cheek, before gathering my sewing together. The candle flickers as I pick it up, casting moving shadows on the walls. My daughter cringes to see them.
“Surely you’re not still afraid of the dark?” When much younger, she cried whenever her candle was taken away, but many years have passed since then.
“No, Mama,” she whispers, her gaze flitting to the corner of the room. “But sometimes he is there when I wake up.”
“Who? Who is there?”
“The Night Man. He watches me in the shadows. I don’t like him, Mama. I don’t like his watching.”
“Is he here now?”
“No, Mama. You have the candle. He does not like the light.”
“It is a dream, my pet. A nightmare and nothing to fear.”
She frowns, doubtful, and I lean over to kiss her again. Forehead, cheek, cheek. “I shall leave the candle then, shall I? Just for tonight?”
I find my way back to my own bedroom by moonlight and memory, keeping one hand on the wall as I creep along the corridors. It’s a luxury to leave a whole candle to burn while my daughter sleeps, but the way she spoke of the Night Man chilled me.
I don’t like his watching.
Has he visited her, this Night Man, while her father has been away? I hadn’t thought to ask it and, surely, it is a foolish question. It’s only a nightmare. It must be a nightmare.
You know his heart.
I do. I do know his heart.
I will come upon you in darkness, my breath burning hot on your cheek. My ungloved hands will close around your neck and my fingers will squeeze, unrelenting, throttling your startled cries. You will die with your last words lodged, unspoken, in your throat.
I knock my customary three times but do not wait for an answer before unlocking the door to my stepmother’s room and swinging it open. The woman is sitting on the edge of her bed, jerking a robe over her bony shoulders. She wears nothing underneath; I glimpse the sag of a breast, the wrinkle and fold of belly skin pale as fresh cream. Her long, grey hair is dishevelled, hanging in tangles about her face, and her feet are bare. Quickly, I turn away, an apology stammering to my lips.
I’ve never sought such intimacy; my skin burns with it.
“What did you expect?” my stepmother asks. “I’ve scarce had warning of your visit.”
“But it’s past noon!”
“Do you suppose me unduly burdened with morning chores, Fairest? Or blessed with a surfeit of company for whom I should make myself presentable?” She waves a hand at the corners of the ceiling. “The spiders here care not a whit for appearances, I can assure you.”
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve not spared much thought for how she spends her days. She is fed; she is clothed. I keep her moderately stocked in embroidery thread, albeit often coarse and dull of colour, and have even brought the occasional book from my husband’s ever-shrinking library, as she once expressed a yearning for words. Royal histories, mostly, but also some volumes of verse. If I’ve ever had cause to think on my stepmother all alone in this room, it has likely been to imagine her daydreaming by the window with book or embroidery hoop in her lap, still elegant despite her fading finery, with all that wild hair swept into its usual immaculate coiffure.
It is a shock to witness her so … diminished.
“I—I have come to ask—that is, I wish to know—”
“You might meet my eye when you speak to me, Fairest. It would be polite.”
I turn around to find my stepmother now risen from the bed, robe tied close around her body, fingers working her hair into a rough braid. I’m careful not to look at her feet, though I glimpse her two canes leaning nearby. “I wish to ask about your—your mirror.”
Her eyes narrow. “You told me that you have never gazed upon it.”
“I’ve not had need … until now.”
The woman takes up her canes and hobbles across to the small table where the two of us normally sit. With a soft groan, she lowers herself into a chair, then gestures to the one remaining. “I have nothing useful left to tell about that thing.”
“I’ve come to ask your aid in … crafting a question. One that it must answer clearly, without trickery or guile. One that is … is…”
“Unambiguous? Fairest, there is no such question. The mirror will know your purpose as soon as the words part your lips. It will twist its own words accordingly.”
“If it may only answer ‘yea’ or ‘nay’? How can that be twisted?”
“You cannot impose such restrictions; it will answer as it will, with as many words as it chooses, or as few.” She leans forward. “Heed me well, Fairest. When you stand before that thing, when you peer into its depths, you also allow it to peer into you. It will see the very darkest of your fears; it will sup on them and find them delicious. And it will use them against you in terrible ways.”
“But I need to know!”
“You already know.”
“No, I suspect, I worry, I dread—that’s not the same.”
“It is enough for you to take your daughter and leave.”
The laughter bursts from me like a startled bird. Leave? How simply she puts it, I scoff, as though I might just pack a trunk, snatch my daughter by the hand and waltz out into the world. As though there are carriages and fine horses to carry us wherever our whims direct. As though no burly gatekeep would stand in our path, no armed men hunt us down should we persist.
As though, even if we can find a way to leave, we have a place to go.
“There are always ways, Fairest, if you have the knowing of them. And places.”
“This is a waste of my time.”
As I stand up, my stepmother reaches forward and grasps my hands. She moves more quickly than I would have thought her capable and this, along with the warm, dry press of her skin against mine, shocks me into place. I can’t remember how long it’s been since we’ve touched. The woman pulls herself to her feet, pulls me closer, her face inches from my own.
“I can help you,” she whispers, “but first I have need of some things.” Her breath is oddly sweet. It smells of spring blossoms, and of apples. My knees threaten to buckle and I find myself clinging to her as much as she does me. Her eyes locked with mine, she gives me a list, then asks me to repeat it back to her. “Again,” she says, and I do, twice more, as her thumbs move in slow circles over my wrists. At last, seemingly satisfied, she releases me.
My arms drop to my sides. I feel muzzy-headed, woolly, as though I’ve just woken from a troubled sleep. My mouth is dry. “You—” I cough, backing away from the table, away from the woman now supporting herself by its edge. “You spelled me!”
“Only your memory, Fairest. My needs are precise.”
“You—you wretched creature! I wish you had died on my wedding day!”
Smiling, she sinks back down into her chair. “No, you don’t. There is too much kindness in your heart, even now, even for such a wretched creature as myself.”
I am too furious to speak another word. I want to throw something, break something, break everything—but the only thing to hand is a pewter goblet which makes a hollow, unsatisfying clatter as I hurl it against the wall. How dare she? I will leave her to starve. I will tell the kitchen to send her nothing but spoiled milk and rotted meat. I will—I will—
“I can help you,” my stepmother says again. “Please—for your daughter’s sake.”
Jaw clenched to aching, I glare at the woman for one long, cold moment before marching from the room. My hands shake so badly, I drop the key twice as I try to lock the door behind me. As I stalk down
the corridor, my stepmother’s list rolls unbidden, unwanted, through my mind, each word a barb that catches and throbs. It so distracts me that I completely forget to count my steps.
I shall simmer you slowly, until your skin sloughs away and your flesh becomes soup. Your bones will be boiled for stock so that I might dine with special delight on the consommé drawn from your marrow.
The mirror chamber is cold, windowless, and dark. For several moments, all I know is my own breathing, shallow and fast, as I stand in the centre of the room with the door closed firm behind me. Then the glow begins. Faint at first, then brighter and brighter until I might be surrounded by a dozen candles, so forceful is the light that shines from the glass oval on the wall opposite me.
I haven’t seen the thing for years.
I’d forgotten how plain it is, had in my memory conjured an ornate, overwrought frame around its edge in place of the thin band of wood that actually bounds it. It’s smaller than I remember as well. I could have sworn the glass to be longer than the span of my arms, and near as wide, but in actual fact I could likely carry the thing in two hands without much effort.
Not that I would touch it in a million moons. My skin crawls at the very idea.
Well met, child.
The voice doesn’t seem to come from the mirror. It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, yet it fills my whole head, louder than any thought of my own, almost to the point of bursting. I can’t imagine a worse sensation than this.
What would you ask of me?
“I—I want … my daughter—is she … under threat?”
Only so long as she draws breath in this world.
“But here, in this castle, is she in danger?”
She will always be in danger, child. You cannot protect her from all the ills that may befall her.
My thoughts are thick and slow. I can’t summon the right questions to ask, the right words to pull the answers I need from the glass before me. There’s a sudden tightness in my chest and my breath comes too fast to catch. “My husband…”
He loves your daughter. More than he loves you.
Closing my eyes, I press fingertips to my temples, press so hard into those soft and pliant hollows that stars shatter behind my lids. The pain is an anchor. A compass. “And does he … does he desire her also?” For a heartbeat, I wish I could unsay those words, so solid do they sit in the air, so blunt and inescapable is the echo of them. But it is done. It is said.
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