Glass

by Alydia Rackham

“Never become disheartened,” Reola murmured in her ear. “And always remember: you must clearly distinguish the curse from the cursed.”

  “Yes, I’ll remember,” Rose whispered. Reola held her for just one more moment, then backed up and put her calloused hand to Rose’s face and grinned.

  “You’re off on a great adventure, child! Keep your chin up!”

  “Thank you,” Rose nodded, trying to smile in return.

  “I’m off to wake up the others and get breakfast started,” Reola said. “Safe journey! We’ll see you soon.” And she took the chalice back from Rose, turned, and strode back the way she had come.

  “I have something for you,” Daisy said, stuffing her hand in her pocket and pulling out a small, folded piece of weathered paper. Rose frowned at it.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an eitil,” Daisy answered, holding it up in her open palm. “Write whatever you want on it, and then tap it and say, ‘Go to Daisy.’ Open a window, and it’ll come flying right back to me. I’ll read what you wrote, I’ll tap it once and say ‘vanish,’ and your words will be gone. I’ll write a message to you and say, ‘Go to Rose,’ and it’ll find you. And you’ll do the same thing I did, and send it back.”

  “How marvelous!” Rose breathed, carefully taking it from her.

  “Don’t lose it,” Daisy warned, lifting a finger. “My grandmother gave it to me and she’ll have my head.”

  The folded paper felt oddly light in Rose’s hand, and quivered, just slightly. She fought back tears.

  “Thank you, Daisy,” she whispered, her lip trembling.

  “None of that,” Daisy urged, gripping Rose’s upper arm. “You’re a real Curse-Breaker now. And you’re not to imagine that you’re ever alone.”

  Rose lifted her eyes to see Daisy giving her a firm, bright look. So she nodded, tucked the eitil in her breast pocket, squeezed Daisy’s hand, then turned and mounted Devon.

  “Good luck!” Daisy cried, stepping back and waving. Rose waved back, turned Devon toward the great, ancient gate, gently urged him forward with her heels…

  And, quite by herself now, Rose trotted out of the Fortress of Maith, and into the world.

  Rose lifted her face, and gazed at the great mountain pass before her.

  She had traveled for two days on the open road—down, down, down the mountain and into the spreading, green valley. The air had warmed, and flooded with different, richer scents. Bees buzzed and bumbled through the emerald hay, white and yellow butterflies drifted through the blooming clover. As she rode, she drank in all the sights around her, listening to every unfamiliar sound: different birds chirping in the hedges; the rustle of different kinds of leaves in the towering trees that bordered the singing, sparkling rivers; the jangle of cattle bells, the bleating of herds of sheep as their shepherds hustled them across the rolling hills and out to pasture, the swift black-and-white dogs swooping around them all the while.

  At night, she slept in a small tent beside the road, warm and dry, with Devon tied just outside. Before entering each night, she would carefully snap her fingers at the four corners of her tent, laying down protective spells.

  How unlike her great, familiar, solid fortress was this tent. The cool wind rustled its walls, the owl hooted as if he stood at her elbow, and the trees muttered in a language she had never learned.

  During the days, sunlight cast a golden haze over the meadows, and warmed Rose to her core, so that she had to remove her cape and gloves, and put on a straw hat to escape sunburn. As she passed through the small villages, children and adults alike gaped at her—and she became starkly aware that she dressed very unlike they did, and the women wore their hair in different braids. That, and they doubtlessly could not recognize her face.

  She had not traveled through this valley since she was five years old.

  And then this, the afternoon of the second day, brought her to a halt.

  She held her map out before her as she stood beside Devon in the center of a tapering road. Sparrows pensively twittered in the tall hedges to either side. And she gazed up at the path ahead. The path she had tried to convince herself was entirely the wrong one.

  But the map she gripped in both hands told her it was, indeed, the only one.

  Before her loomed dark twin mountains, their craggy faces frowning, ancient fir trees hanging round their jaws like ragged beards. And standing between these sullen brothers lay a thick, tangled black forest, as impenetrable as a wall.

  And out from its depths drifted a cold, chilling breath of air.

  Rose turned, and gazed back the way she had come.

  Back up the pleasant, winding road that crossed the fields and met the villages…

  Back up, up the steep, sunny slopes, to the very height, where she could just glimpse the place where the Fortress of Maith ought to be.

  Devon nickered at her. She turned to look at him. His ears pricked up, and his dark brown eye watched her.

  She took a deep breath.

  “We’ve come this far, haven’t we lad?” she whispered. “Might as well see what’s on the other side.” She swallowed. “Right?”

  He dipped his head, and snorted.

  “All right then,” she whispered, rolled up her map and slipped it back into her bag. Then, bracing herself, she climbed up into the saddle again, settled herself, took up the reins, and urged him forward.

  The hedges on either side of the road dwindled to the ground as she passed, and finally abandoned the path altogether. The road itself grew rocky and bumpy, as if no one had ventured this way in…

  “In thirty years…” she whispered.

  The shadow of the mountains fell across her. She shivered. Devon snorted again, his hooves clattering over the stones. Rose gripped the reins tighter. The breeze cooled, disturbing her hair.

  Now, the great, bare forest stretched up in front of her, like the skeletons of giants leaning their tired, sleeping bones together. The path entered the wood…

  And seemed to vanish in shadow.

  Rose shivered so hard she almost bit her cheek, feeling all the heat drain out of her face. Devon hesitated to a halt.

  “We…” she gasped. “We have to go in.” She nodded hard. “We have to go in.”

  Devon took a step backward. Rose shook her head.

  “No. No, no. We have to go in.”

  Devon huffed, but she brought all her strength to bear on the reins and would not allow him to twist away. She lowered her head, pressed his flanks, and urged him forward, past the first two snarled trees.

  Five steps in, and the light filtering through the branches lost its golden hue. It turned stark, and vivid. Devon’s hooves scraped upon hardened earth…

  Earth that soon sparkled with a blanket of frost. Hoarfrost also coated the trunks and branches of the trees. Rose quickly tugged her cloak and gloves back on, and pushed her straw hat back to hang behind her. Her breath clouded around her face.

  The forest draped in a thick, shadowy canopy over their heads, closing in all around them. Bare roots crowded the narrow pathway. Rose glanced up and winced, sure that a low branch would reach out and catch at her hair…

  Then…

  Light. Light, up ahead.

  She frowned…

  And they pushed out of the barrier wood, and out into a clearing draped in pure, white snow.

  Devon stopped. Rose’s lips parted, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  Here, in the very height of summertime, she had walked into December.

  Looming pines, their branches frosted like cakes, stood in a half ring before her, as silent sentinels at the gate of the kingdom of Spegel. Bushes and vines tangled round their feet, shrouded in blankets of snow. Sunlight sparkled against the flawless, sugary surface. Devon’s feet sank halfway up to his knees.

  “Oh…” Rose breathed tightly, vapor surrounding her head.

  Nothing answered her. Not a breath of wind, not the chirp of a bird, nor a rustle in the undergrowth.

 
As if a sleeping spell had been cast over the entire wood.

  We knew this, she told herself. We knew the Snow Queen was here, we suspected something like this had happened…

  But repeating this thought didn’t ease the tension in her chest. In fact, it made it a great deal worse.

  Leaning forward, Rose peered ahead, toward a large gap between two of the pines. If she wasn’t mistaken, the path should carry on in that direction.

  If she was mistaken…

  “No sense in worrying about that now,” she muttered, shifting and ordering Devon onward. His long legs shuffled through the fluffy snow, toward the gap between the trees.

  Sure enough, though she could not see the earth of a path at all, a tunnel of sorts through the slumbering trees seemed to lead consistently in that direction.

  Devon dipped his head rhythmically as he pushed through the drifts, swishing his tail back and forth. Nothing answered his slight noises, nor the squeaking of the saddle. Nothing echoed through the stark and silent wood.

  They rode on thus for hours, Rose glancing ever back and forth, back and forth, searching for any sign of life…

  Yet, she saw no one.

  Cold began to seep through her trouser legs and her gloves. Frost teased her cheeks. She pulled her arms closer to herself, urging Devon to move slightly quicker…

  Half a dozen miles they must have traveled, sweeping through the narrow tunnel in the wood, the quiet of the grave following them all the while. And still, not even the flicker of a sparrow’s wing, nor the distant call of a wolf.

  Then, Rose frowned.

  Up ahead stood a strange figure beneath the deep layer of snow, off to her right-hand side. It did not look like a tree stump, nor a fallen drape of ivy. And as she neared, she slowed Devon so she could study it.

  As tall as she was upon her horse, it seemed an odd shape. She reached out with her gloved hand, and carefully swept some of the snow away—

  She gasped, and drew her hand back.

  For a flash of sunlight instantly caught upon the surface beneath.

  It was glass.

  Quickly, her heart beating quicker, she carefully dashed the snow away from the upper portions, watching the sparkling cascade…

  And then she drew to a still.

  Beneath that thick layer of feathery ice lay a sculpture of a young man with a twinkling crown. His bearded face bowed, he held out his hand, as if inviting a lady to take it. His face glimmered inwardly with a light like champagne, his crown gleaming gold, his eyes, half-lidded, concealing a sparkle of sapphire. And his robes—scarlet and fogged, bedecked with what appeared to be jewels of all colors.

  The full height of him glass, from his feet to the crown.

  Rose sat just as she was, staring.

  She had never seen such a thing.

  And the next moment…

  Another twinkling caught the edge of her sight.

  Her head came around…

  Lamps.

  Iron lamps to either side of the lane she followed—lamps with heads of cut crystal, sparkling beneath hats of frost. They had lit themselves, each with a blue flicker keener than starlight. And beyond them, rising up above the trees…

  The Palace of Glas.

  A jagged, spectacular height—like a mountain itself. Countless pointed towers, woven through with covered serpentine walkways and transparent corridors, threaded together by delicate, spidery black webs. Color flushed through the palace—deepest violet at one wing, to frosty blue, to blushing pink, to blood red, to heart-stopping orange, to shimmering gold, to peak each pinnacle with emerald and ruby sparkles. Millions upon millions of frames of glass, in countless arrangements and shapes. Within the depths of its halls, dots of firelight—like hidden diamonds—winked and shifted. The secret pulse and lifeblood of the palace. And it sat in the midst of the snowy valley like a jeweled bracelet on the arm of a white-skinned princess.

  And yet, no herald to announce her arrival. Not one guard to catch sight of her approach.

  Not a single living soul seemed to breathe within the borders of Spegel.

  Except Rose and Devon.

  She took a deep breath, dreadful pangs traveling through her chest.

  “We’ve come this far, haven’t we?” she murmured again.

  Devon did not reply, not even by tossing his head. He watched the empty lane before them, ears pricked forward.

  And then, of his own accord, the horse started toward the gates of the great, silent palace.

  Chapter Four

  And Entered the Palace of Glas

  Rose passed beneath the canopy of naked black branches that flanked the long lane, staring all the while up through it at the giant, rising towers of Glas. Now, she could distinguish the patterns that the panes of glass created. Upon the darkest wing: rolling clouds, then pointed starbursts; upon the left half of the main gate: fabulous blue snowflakes; upon the right half of the gate: green, intertwining vines with thorns; upon the central keep: climbing orange and yellow flames; and up, up the gold-and-milkglass towers which clarified to crystal as they climbed, outlines of suns, with far-reaching shafts lancing out from them.

  Soon, she fell into the marvelous castle’s shadow, and she could see that fantastic, feathery patterns of jack frost thickly coated the broad, colorful panes, climbing up toward the summits like ivy.

  She emerged from the lane into a broad, open yard, and halted, gaping at the mountainous height of the palace, marveling at the thick tendrils of sparkling ice that crawled up its sides, as if locking it into place—and the caps of sugary snow that frosted its hundreds of roofs like a cake.

  Before her waited a giant arched gate, bearing a transparent blue portcullis whose teeth bit down into their snow-locked catches, forbidding anyone from entering or leaving. No footprints marred the virgin snow on either side. And no sound issued from within the palace walls. The pall of utter winter bound it all in silence.

  Rose took a deep breath.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Her bright voice echoed against the walls and into the empty courtyard beyond the portcullis.

  Somewhere behind her, the branches of the trees gave a tiny shiver.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” she said again, louder. “I am Rose Melhorn, come from the Houses of Healing at the request of His Highness, the Prince of Spegel.”

  She waited.

  Devon snorted, and stamped his foot.

  Still, nothing.

  Rose got off the horse. She slid to the ground, her feet sinking calf-high in dusty snow, and strode toward the portcullis. She heard Devon shuffle behind her.

  “There has to be a bell or something…” she muttered, searching.

  There. In the wall, a small alcove about shoulder high, bearing a metal handle. She reached out and grasped the handle—

  Tugged.

  She grunted in alarm. It was frozen.

  “Good grief,” she muttered again, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them in her pockets. Then, she brought her hands up, closed her eyes, and breathed into her hands.

  Heat from within her chest—heat from the Source—welled up inside her, and swelled out into her palms. She opened her eyes again, stretched out and grasped the handle.

  Ice snapped.

  It flaked off of the metal handle and fell. The rest melted against her skin.

  She wiggled the handle, breaking its hinge free, then, with a sharp jerk, pulled it upward.

  “Ding, ding, ding, ding!”

  A bright, silvery chime rang out at the top of this deep violet wall, vibrating down through the panes.

  And then—footsteps.

  From up above.

  Rose quickly let go of the handle, stepped back, rammed her gloves back on, and stood at attention.

  About twenty feet above her, a window slowly opened.

  A pale man leaned out, and peered down to look at her.

  He wore sky blue lined with white fur, and silver buttons that winked. He also wore a
white fur cap, and had a curled black mustache. He frowned.

  “Was it you?” he called down.

  Rose blinked.

  “Was it me what?”

  “Did you light the lamps?” he demanded.

  Rose tilted her head further back so she could see him properly.

  “What? The ones along the lane?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he shot back.

  “No!” she shook her head, surprised. “They…They seemed to light themselves when I arrived!”

  The guard frowned more deeply at her.

  “But you did ring the bell.”

  “Yes…” Rose answered, gripping her fingers together.

  “No one has rung that bell in decades,” he stated—as if accusing her. Rose braced herself.

  “I did try shouting,” she said. “But no one seemed to hear me.”

  He gave her a narrow look.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Rose Melhorn, from the Halls of Healing,” she repeated. “I’ve come in answer to the request sent by His Highness, the Prince of Spegel.”

  He stared at her.

  “You are the doctor?”

  Rose smiled a little.

  “I am indeed.”

  “You’re too young,” he decided.

  Rose opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, she mustered a reply.

  “I have my references with me if you would care to see them.”

  He said nothing for a long moment. Rose tried not to bite her lip.

  “Stay where you are,” he commanded, then disappeared, shutting the window.

  Rose shifted, starting to lose feeling in her feet. Devon snorted again

  “Sh,” she soothed. “We’ll be warm soon enough.”

  In a matter of moments, a deep grinding and snapping issued from within the chain workings of the portcullis. The heavy glass resisted for a moment—then heaved upward with a groan. The teeth gnawed loose of their settings, and the great jaw opened.

  The same guard strode out to the center of the opening, his hands behind his back, a curved sword gleaming at his belt. He wore black trousers and fur-lined boots. Lifting his chin, he strode out toward her through the snow.

  “Let me see,” he demanded, holding out a gloved hand. Rose quickly darted to her saddle and grasped her bag, reached down inside and called to mind the papers she wanted.