The Halcyon Fairy Book

by T. Kingfisher

  Snow relaxed. Yes. All right. That makes sense.

  “And did you bring some truffles to sell? There are those who say that the Lord requires us to keep to simple fare, but I believe that He would not have made truffles if he did not expect for us to enjoy them.”

  “Yes,” said Snow. “I have a few. I’d be happy to trade for honey, if you have some. And I was hoping to talk to — to someone in charge.”

  “Certainly, my dear,” said the nun. She leaned the hoe against the fence and walked to a nearby bench. “Come, sit here and talk to me.”

  Did that meant that this nun was in charge? Was she an — an abbess or a Mother Superior? Snow wasn’t sure what the term was. Would the woman in charge be hoeing the garden?

  Someone has to do it. Just because my father never did — well, he was the king. Kings are above nuns, I guess, or at least somewhat off to the side, but maybe nuns can’t get other people to hoe the garden. Oh dear! But I couldn’t just walk up and demand to talk to the king, either.

  Perhaps she’s a sort of under-abbess, and I have to talk to her before I can talk to whoever’s in charge.

  This seemed most likely. Snow took a deep breath and plunged into her prepared speech.

  She left out any mention that she was the king’s daughter. She said only that she’d had to leave her situation, and she’d made friends in the forest.

  “The truffle hunters?” asked the nun, smiling.

  Snow nodded. “They — um. They’re shy.” She grimaced, because “shy” was entirely the wrong word, and possibly she was lying to a nun. “That is, they — they don’t talk to many people. They look a little … odd.”

  The nun nodded.

  “And they dig truffles, and they’re wonderful — they’re so kind, and they’ve taken care of me all winter. And this awful peddler — ”

  She spilled the entire story, shocked to find that she was still so indignant about the peddler and the boars that she was crying.

  The nun made sympathetic noises in the right places. At the end, she pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it in Snow’s hand.

  “Thank you,” mumbled Snow, wiping at her face. She hated crying. She had to be the color of a roasted beet. “Anyway … I had to stop that … I thought I did … but now I can’t leave them, because I drove him away, and I was only trying to help but I think I made it even worse!”

  The last word came out in a quiet wail and she crumpled the handkerchief against her face, embarrassed.

  “Oh, my dear … ” said the nun, and put her arms around Snow.

  It undid her completely.

  “There, there,” said the nun, because that is the only possible thing to say. She had the air of one who had been cried on by many young women. “There, there. It is all terrible right now, but we may yet put it right.”

  “I have to leave,” said Snow miserably, when she could talk again. “I’m afraid I’ll — well, I just have to. That’s all. But someone has to help them. And that’s all wrong, because they’re smart and good and they shouldn’t have to need someone’s help. The world’s awful. I don’t know what to do.”

  This sent her back into tears again. She mopped her face with the handkerchief.

  “Do you have to go at once?” asked the nun gently. “It seems that you are doing very well by them at the moment. If it is too hard living with them, you are welcome to stay here with us for a little while.”

  Snow’s heart leapt, and then immediately slammed back down. She had already endangered the boars. The queen would not hesitate to kill nuns, would she?

  “It wouldn’t be safe for you either,” she muttered. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her head ached.

  “The rules are different for us,” said the nun gently. “Many women find sanctuary with us. Even king’s daughters, sometimes.”

  Snow jerked back in sudden horror.

  “Oh, my dear,” said the nun, smiling. “No need to look at me like that. Your secret’s safe with me, I promise — although I fear it’s not much of a secret.”

  “It’s the hair, isn’t it?” asked Snow grimly.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Does everyone in the village know, then?” Snow could not bear the thought of that. Had they all been laughing at her? She thought she had done so well …

  “I don’t think so. Master Elias may have an inkling, but no secret ever passes his lips unless you pour gold into his hands. But I knew the woman who raised you well, and though it’s been awhile since she came out this way, she described you very well.”

  “Could I stay here?” asked Snow warily. “The queen — the queen is — ”

  “I know what the queen is,” said the nun. She sighed. “I know she is more than a match for me, too. I have no great power of my own and I cannot promise you safety.”

  “Then — ” Snow began.

  The older woman held up a hand. “But there is no safety in the world anyway. If I had to stand before the Lord and tell him that I had let a girl stumble off alone into the woods, because I was afraid … no. I fear that more than anything the queen can do.”

  Snow gulped.

  There was a little silence, while the bees buzzed in the early flowers. The nun leaned down and plucked a few stems of chickweed that were growing around the feet of the bench.

  “This is all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

  Snow nodded.

  “If you wish to think about it, I understand. For the love I bear your foster mother alone, we’d be happy to take you for a time, although — well — forgive me, but I cannot imagine you have a vocation, do you?”

  “A what?”

  “A desire to serve God,” said the nun.

  “Oh,” said Snow. The only priest in the castle had gone off with the king. “Um. I don’t think so?”

  The nun nodded. “Well. It would be unkind to trap you in orders then, as young as you are. You’d come to regret it soon enough. But you could stay with us for some time, and sort things out. Sometimes a little stillness is good for the heart.”

  Snow sighed. She had a great deal of stillness with the boars, but she would have liked a human stillness, broken by the sound of human voices.

  “It seems too easy,” she said tiredly. “If I had known, I could have come here earlier.”

  The nun smiled. “Sometimes things are easy. We just get used to them being hard.”

  “There’s also … well … my friends.” Snow looked down at her hands. “I meant it. I can’t just leave them.”

  “Do you think they would be able to find you, here?” The nun gestured at the woods around the cleared land.

  Snow’s gaze strayed to Greatspot and Puffball, who were pretending not to listen.

  “I expect they could,” she said, a bit dryly. “I’ll think about it.” She stood, suddenly feeling the need to move. “If you know my foster mother — can you get word back to her that I’m all right? That she could come out here, and maybe we could meet?”

  “I can try,” said the nun, looking up at her. “I can certainly try.”

  Snow nodded, then flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m asking you all these things, and you know who I am — and I haven’t asked your name.”

  The nun smiled. “My name is Mother Clara. I am the abbess here.”

  Snow went home in a thoughtful mood. She had traded two truffles, with reckless generosity, for four large crocks of honey. The pigs were very interested.

  “Sweetness,” said Puffball. “We could put it over potatoes.”

  “You can’t put honey on potatoes,” said Snow.

  “Why not? Do the potatoes explode?” He rolled an eye up at her.

  Snow paused. “I … I don’t think so … ”

  “They do sometimes,” said Puffball mournfully. “Potatoes, I mean. If they’re too green and you put them in the fire whole.”

  “You’re thinking of eggs,” said Greatspot.

  “I could have sworn it was potatoes.”

  Snow gazed
over their backs vaguely, as they snuffled to one another.

  She could go to the convent for a little while. They would take her. If she dyed her hair, she could stay there, and get to know the nuns.

  Maybe Mother Clara would be willing to be an agent for the pigs …

  “What did you think of Mother Clara?” she asked.

  Puffball shrugged. “Humans,” he said. “Seemed nice enough. Never been a good judge of humans.”

  Greatspot, unexpectedly, said, “I liked her.”

  Snow glanced over, surprised.

  “She smelled clean,” said the sow. “Willing to get down in the dirt, though, with the weeds.” She gave a rippling, whole-body shrug. “And she tossed me a bun when you were trading for the honey.”

  “I didn’t get a bun … ” muttered Puffball.

  “Neither did I,” said Snow, and Greatspot looked smug as only a four-hundred pound pig can.

  Arrin caught up with them before they had gone more than a quarter mile into the woods. “Well?” he asked.

  “Well what?” asked Snow.

  “Well … ah … nuns?”

  “They were nuns.”

  Puffball grunted something too quietly for Snow to hear, but it made Greatspot laugh.

  Arrin slid off his horse, fidgeting with the reins. Snow relented. “I spoke to the Mother Abbess. She says that I can stay with them for a bit, while I figure out what to do about the pig’s agent — but I’m afraid to.” She scowled. “What if the queen comes after them? Are queens more powerful than nuns?”

  Arrin considered this. “I don’t think she’s got the same power over them as she does back home,” he said.

  Snow had a brief moment of confusion. The word home evoked the boar’s den, the enormous chimney and the smell of potatoes and the scrape of gigantic frying pans. It occurred to her, belatedly, that Arrin meant the castle.

  She tried to remember her room in the midwife’s cottage. It was a small, bright picture a great distance away, and she could not bring it into focus. For some reason, all she could think of was the room she kept in the castle, with the sheets that chafed her and the queen’s presence burning overhead.

  They walked in silence. Last year’s pine needles crunched underfoot, and the wild primroses were glowing among the trees.

  “She recognized me,” said Snow.

  Arrin jerked as if struck. “What?”

  “She recognized me. She knew who I was. It’s my wretched hair.” Snow scowled up at her bangs.

  “You can’t go back,” said Arrin firmly.

  Snow raised a pale eyebrow.

  “She might turn you in to the queen. You can’t take the risk.”

  “She’s a nun,” said Snow. “I don’t think nuns are allowed to do that sort of thing.”

  Arrin gritted his teeth. “Snow, you haven’t known all that many people, at the castle. Don’t — don’t trust too easily. Not everyone is trustworthy.”

  “My own mother is trying to kill me,” said Snow dryly. “What do I have left to fear from strangers?”

  Greatspot thumped a hip into her, half warning and half reassurance. Snow rubbed the sow’s back.

  They walked on for a little while, and then Arrin said, “The king is returning home.”

  It was Snow’s turn to jerk in surprise, and then she thought this is the way we have talk to each other. Everything we say is like a blow.

  It’s not my fault. Or his. Maybe it’s no one’s fault. The world keeps handing out blows.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I went to the tavern in town while you were speaking to the nuns. Everyone’s talking about it. And yes, they recognize me there, but word has not gone out that I am being hunted.”

  “Likely it hasn’t gone out that I am, either.”

  Arrin shook her head. “It’s been a few days for me, but months for you. And I am not a king’s daughter.”

  Snow sighed. Of course that would be the way of it.

  “They’ve seen him,” said Arrin. “He’s a few days away. He’s got an army, and — ah — ” He took a deep breath. “A new young wife, they say.”

  Snow nodded. The words had very little to do with her. “That’s nice for him.”

  The words were so idiotic, hanging in the air between them, that Snow felt herself blushing.

  “You should care,” said Arrin. “She’ll be your stepmother.”

  His words, in turn, hung in the air, and they were so profoundly stupid that Snow’s cheeks cooled. The entire conversation was absurd. It wasn’t just her.

  She trudged on.

  A year ago, she would have given anything to attract her father’s attention. She would have been making plans to go and meet him right now.

  Her winter with the boars had wrought some strange alchemy. Desperation had become indifference, almost without Snow noticing.

  How strange, how strange … you’d think you’d notice something like that.

  And instead you just sit up one day and think, “I used to care about that.”

  She felt an odd little pang, not so much of mourning but of a suspicion that she should be mourning, and wasn’t.

  (Some of it was witchblood, but sometimes even very ordinary people find themselves feeling this way.)

  After awhile, she said, “Do you really think I can just go home and live in the castle again? ‘This is Snow, she lives in the midwife’s cottage. Yes, she’s the king’s oldest daughter, why do you ask?’”

  “You can’t stay with the boars forever,” said Arrin.

  “No. I thought perhaps I’d go to the convent for a little while. And after that, who knows?”

  “Could I visit you there?” asked Arrin.

  It was a strange question. Snow didn’t know the answer, and turning it over in her mind, she wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Arrin was determined to go and speak with the king. Once he had seen Snow safely back to the boar’s den, he mounted his horse. “I’m going to tell him what has passed,” he said. “He should hear from me, what I was charged with, and what I have done.”

  Greatspot stood patiently while Snow undid the panniers, and then she said, “Wait, hunter-man. I’ll come with you.”

  Puffball nodded and stood up alongside.

  “What?”

  “It’s dangerous,” said Greatspot. “You plan to walk up to a king and tell him that you were sent to kill his daughter. Do you see that going well?”

  “What does a pig know of kings?” asked Arrin.

  “More than a king knows of pigs, I suspect,” said Greatspot, lowering her head. “We’ll stay well back, Puffball and I, but you may be glad of a friend in the woods, if all goes ill.”

  “They’re right, you know,” said Snow. “I don’t recall my father being a terribly … ah … calm man.” Arrin grimaced.

  “No one will see us,” said Puffball. “Unless we want to be seen.” He grinned with all his tusks.

  “We can’t just leave Snow alone,” said Arrin. He looked around the wooded glade. Leaf buds were coating the trees in a fine green haze, and the other boars had dispersed through the woods to look for early mushrooms.

  “They’ve been leaving me alone all winter,” said Snow, rolling her eyes. She slung the panniers over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

  “The bears are waking up,” said Arrin stubbornly. “One could smell the food and try to come in.”

  “Only ever two bears in this territory, hunter-man,” said Puffball. “The old black queen died in her den, and her oldest son’s been awake for a week. He’s over on the far side of the woods, digging up roots.”

  Arrin opened his mouth to argue, and Snow stopped on the doorstep of the den. “Ashes is still here,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Go talk to the king.”

  He looked into the mouth of the den and saw the pale, oblong face of Ashes, the small, silent sow. She saw him looking and d
ucked back inside.

  He mounted his horse and went to face the king.

  The queen had been in the woods for several days.

  She did not sleep. Her dreams the first night were all of the mirror, and she did not try again.

  The leaves crunched under her feet. By day, she followed the sun and by night, she followed the burning of the witchblood. Her joints ached and the small bones of her hands throbbed with age.

  Her pockets were full of apples.

  She had taken them from the kitchen, from the barrel of dried apples. It did not occur to her that the cook would not recognize her, as ancient as she now was. She hobbled through the kitchens and out the gate.

  The cook saw an old, old woman, her eyes glazed with madness, and did not begrudge her food. She would have spoken and asked after the old woman’s people, but there was pride in the hard, crumbled lines of her back.

  That sort doesn’t like to admit she’s been reduced to stealing food, thought the cook. Poor soul! It’s only a few apples. Lord, if you’re watching, those apples are freely given. You don’t hold them against her soul.

  (The cook was in the habit of lecturing the Lord, whom she considered a colleague.)

  The queen crept out of the castle and away from the grounds. There was a little door by the garden, which she left open behind her. The gardener had a few things to say about that in the morning, but no one suspected the truth.

  Snow’s trail was thinner than a strand of spider silk, but the queen had all the patience of madness. The days in the woods passed, one after another, as she followed the thin threads of witchblood. She raveled them up like a warrior feeling her way through a labyrinth, as though she was minotaur and maiden both.

  She was not often hungry. When she was, she ate apples.

  Except for one.

  It had been the finest of the dried apples, the closest to whole. It took only a little magic to make the skin swell, becoming firm and green and glossy. The smell that came from it was the essence of autumn. It smelled of crisp frosts and crackling leaves.

  In the heart of it, wrapped around the core like a fist around a knife-hilt, lay a spell.

  The queen caressed the skin of the apple often as she walked, the way she had caressed the lid of the box that held the boar’s heart.