“My mother is the castle midwife,” said Snow, closing her eyes.
The abbess patted her hand. “I sent for her, and will tell her you said so.”
There was a little silence. Snow stirred. “The boars?”
“Your truffle-hunting friends,” said the abbess, laughing. “They were a surprise. I had expected fairies, you know, or possibly dwarves, and I was a little concerned by it. They are not safe friends, and some are devils in disguise. But I could not understand why they would need a human to bargain for them. Your friend Greatspot was a revelation. If she were human, she would make a marvelous abbess, I think.”
Snow thought about a time last winter, when Greatspot had gone into heat and had spent several days away from the den with Puffball. It did not seem terribly appropriate to mention this to a nun. She settled for a nod.
Mother Clara patted Snow’s hand again, and rose. “Rest. When you are strong enough, we will take you out to the garden. Men are not allowed within these walls, and I fear Master Arrin is going half-mad wanting to see you.”
Master Arrin was in fact going half-mad, and had been for several days. When Snow, assisted by Juniper on one side and Mother Clara on the other, made her way into the garden, Arrin nearly flung his arms around her. (He did not, largely because Mother Clara was there.)
“You’re alive,” he said, as she settled on a bench.“I was afraid — you were so limp and your breathing was terrible — ”
She smiled. “I still sound terrible,” she said. Her voice still sounded hoarse and hard, like a crow laughing. “It’s not painful, but they tell me it may not ever recover. Oh, well. I got off lightly, really.”
“I should have come sooner,” said Arrin. “Or never left you alone.” He sank to his knees next to the bench.
(Mother Clara shared a look with Juniper, which did not — quite — include rolled eyes.)
Snow shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the queen. She would have found a way. At least … at least it’s over now.”
“You were very brave,” said Arrin.
Snow looked at him blankly.
But I wasn’t brave, she thought. I was brave before, when I talked to the farmer. I was frightened and I did it anyway. I was brave when I went to the nuns. Being attacked by the queen — that wasn’t brave. I just wanted not to die.
She wondered if he would understand. She thought not.
She wondered if, given time, she could teach him.
And then she thought, he rode from the boar’s house, all that dark way, with me rasping for breath in his arms. And perhaps I don’t understand what that was like, either.
It is possible that we might teach each other.
Mother Clara cleared her throat discreetly. “It may be useful for both of you to know that the king has disinherited Snow and remanded her to my care. I believe he would like you to discover a vocation and take orders, but I made him no promises. In any event, you are welcome here as long as you would like to stay.”
Snow exhaled, leaning back on the bench. “Thank God.”
“God most likely had a hand in it,” Mother Clara agreed. “At least by way of his humble servant.” She smiled demurely and Juniper snickered.
Arrin took Snow’s hand and squeezed it hard. “Then I will come and see you again.”
“Yes,” said Snow. “I think I’d like that.”
Odd Season
It was an odd season.
The wild geese threaded the sky through
the equinox’s needle
the sugar maples burned upon the hill.
The bear came walking down the road
through the middle of town.
My neighbor saw him,
said he looked like he was going somewhere
not quite in a hurry.
Everybody stopped to watch.
Couldn’t get out of the way fast enough
and then there wasn’t any need
because the bear kept walking
didn’t look right or left.
Somebody grabbed a gun from their truck
and somebody else told him to put it away
and not to be a goddamn fool.
He left holes in the road
shaped like bear tracks.
In another place they should have filled with turquoise
but here they were red clay and an inch of clear gray water.
The tracks ran past my neighbor’s garden.
She planted wild lupine around them
which never does too well on clay.
These grew all right. Maybe that was the miracle.
For the rest of us
we didn’t talk about it much
it was one more odd thing
in a season already filled with them.
Acknowledgements
I always used to roll my eyes at those five-page acknowledgements that showed up in the back of various books.
Then I became a writer. Heh.
Thanks go, therefore, in no particular order, to Sigrid Ellis for buying a short story and setting me down this dark road, to Maggie Hogarth for cover consultation and a lot of good advice about self-publishing, and to my friend Mur Lafferty, who writes short stories and runs a podcast that buys short stories, for discussing the existence of such things as if they were normal and not from some weird other dimension inhabited by people who are not me.
Thanks also go to Terri Windling, for running a poetry week on her blog which led to a couple of the poems in here, and to many long ago folklorists, without whom the world would be a far drearier place.
Thanks forever and always to my kind blog readers who have read my stuff and uttered variations on “I like this!” and occasionally even “I would buy this!” which is possibly the most heartening thing that a reader can say to an author.
Huge, massive, Sharknado-sized thanks to KB Spangler, who edited “Boar & Apples” and left snarky comments in the sidebar and who is probably reading this right now and judging me for not having used semi-colons. (Seriously, what is with editors and semi-colons?)
Likewise, thanks to my three faithful proofreaders, who went through it in record time and caught so many errors that I went and hid under the bed for awhile. Cassie, Jes, and Josh, you three are awesome and if you ever need a kidney, I will start hunting down strangers with your blood type.
And finally, my thanks and all my love to my husband Kevin. There is a place in everything I write, at about the 3/4th mark, where I lose all my confidence and force him to read it and tell me whether or not it will shame my ancestors. He has therefore endured more cliffhangers than any man should be forced to endure, as well as me hovering over him while he reads, going “You twitched! What made you twitch? Was it a funny bit? Was it a bad bit? TELL ME TELL ME OH GOD IS IT HORRIBLE?!”
Despite this, he stays married to me. (I think it’s because I buy him sushi.)
You are all the best sort of people and I am flattered that you let me hang around with you.
Editor’s Afterword
The original fairy tales quoted use multiple grammatical, spelling, stylistic, and typographical conventions that are no longer standard usage. Rather than update all of them, with the exception of removing spaces preceding punctuation and using current American conventions for quotation marks, I have left them as originally published. I have also maintained the informal style and internet conventions of the original blog posts wherever possible. My thanks to Ursula Vernon, NESFA, and Arisia for allowing me to work on this project. Special thanks to Anna Bradley, Ann Broomhead, Dave Cantor, Lis Carey, Gay Ellen Dennett, Dave Grubbs, Rick Katze, Alice Lewis, Tony Lewis, Ben Levy, Geri Sullivan, and Tim Szczesuil who were all generous with their help. Any irregularities or errors that remain are mine. I would also like to thank my friends and my family, especially Elizabeth Bear, Beth Coughlin, Scott Lynch, and Karen Westerholm, without whom there would be neither me nor this book. — Sheila Perry
Technical Notes
&
nbsp; All material was submitted electronically and was set in Adobe Garamond, Golden Type ITC, Minion, and Sunantara, as well as Franklin Gothic and Magneta (on the dust jacket), using Adobe InDesign. The book was printed and bound by Sheridan Books of Ann Arbor, Michigan, on acid-free paper.
No birds, toads, or fairy-tale creatures were harmed during the making of this book.
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