Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust

  It’s true, whispered a traitorous voice in her head. I’m not strong, I was never strong, I was only pretending. What was the use of climbing trees or high towers if she was just going to end up here, lying helplessly in the snow? She’d tried to convince herself that she wasn’t delicate, never understanding that the only reason she had to try so hard to prove it was because she had never really been tested. And now that she had been tested, now that she had failed so miserably, she knew that she had never been strong—only lucky.

  She forced her eyes open and slowly sat up. She had left a dark stain in the snow that she knew was blood from the wound on her throat, and for a moment, she was entranced by the sight of it, a distraction from the thoughts that troubled her. The blood served as a reminder of who she was, what she was made of. She was not her mother’s child—she never had been. She was blood and snow, and so she would be like the snow, like the pine needles, like the winter wind: sharp and cold and biting. Snow didn’t break or shatter, and neither would she. All she had to do was be true to her nature.

  Cold as snow, sharp as glass. Lynet rose to her feet. She still had a long way to go.

  * * *

  When Lynet first heard the sound of hoofbeats behind her, she didn’t hesitate. Immediately, she scrambled off the main road, diving into the maze of trees, knowing that she might become hopelessly lost as a result. There was only one reason she’d hear horses coming from the direction of Whitespring in the middle of the night—Mina had sent someone after her, to hunt her down.

  Lynet thought quickly. What did it matter if she escaped her pursuer only to end up dying lost in the woods? She had to keep the main road in view somehow, even if just to know when the danger had passed and it was safe to stop hiding.

  Lynet found a tree with low enough branches to climb and went up as high as she dared, until she had a decent view of the road stretching in both directions. She had acted just in time—only a few seconds after she was hidden in the tree, she saw two men on horseback riding past.

  She had been right—they were from Whitespring and wore the uniforms of her father’s guards. But when the moonlight struck their faces, she knew these men didn’t belong to her father. One of them had a long scar running down his neck, and both of them had dark, blank eyes, like two reflective pools. Her stomach twisted as she remembered looking up into those same eyes, certain she was about to die.

  The two men rode on, but soon others followed, Mina’s huntsman among them. They were riding more slowly, holding their lamps up to peer into the woods. A few of them were on foot, spreading out into the trees.

  Lynet tried not to breathe, hoping that they wouldn’t come near her tree, that they wouldn’t look up and shine their lamps directly on her. She couldn’t do anything but wait—if she tried to climb higher up, she might make too much noise or attract their attention. Worse, she might slip and fall, landing at their feet with a broken neck. Their search would be over then.

  She lost sight of the soldiers—she thought there were ten of them, not counting the two that had ridden on ahead. But then she heard a noise from below and saw the golden light from a lamp approaching her tree.

  It was the huntsman who stepped out from between the trees, holding his lamp high. He was looking up, searching the pine branches for a frightened girl who might be huddling there.

  Lynet was thankful for her dark brown dress and hoped that if she kept her head down, her hair hiding her face, she would appear as nothing more than a shadow. She heard her breath coming out in shallow spurts, and she put her hand over her mouth, waiting, waiting.…

  But the huntsman didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about his task. The others had been searching with a single-minded determination, but the huntsman moved more slowly, turning his lamp from tree to tree after only a glance upward. When he came to her tree, Lynet’s heart pounding against her chest, the lamplight didn’t even come close to her, swinging in a low arc far below her perch.

  She was lucky it was him. Any of the others might have discovered her hiding place, but the huntsman hadn’t let her escape only to capture her again. She didn’t think he would let her go a second time, but she could tell that he was hoping not to find her in the first place.

  She didn’t come down from her tree until the last of the soldiers was beyond her vision down the road, and even then she waited a little longer before slowly, carefully climbing down.

  The knot in her stomach loosened, but it didn’t go away entirely. Lynet guessed the purpose of those first two riders. They were to go all the way to town and wait there in case Lynet emerged from the woods before the others found her.

  She couldn’t go on into North Peak. She couldn’t go back to Whitespring. She was trapped in the woods until she starved to death or was found. Death waited for her in every direction.

  Lynet clung to the base of her tree, not knowing which way to go now. She was alone, outnumbered, and empty-handed, without anyone to help her—

  If you need help, ask the snow.

  She sank to the ground, turning the huntsman’s cryptic words over in her head. Perhaps it was some kind of riddle, but no matter how many times Lynet repeated it over to herself, she couldn’t find any other meaning.

  Lynet scooped up a fistful of snow and looked at it uncertainly. “Help?” she whispered. Nothing happened, but she didn’t even know what she wanted to happen, or what kind of help she was asking for. What she really needed was a cloak with a hood, something to hide her face so that if she managed to find a way into town, she would be inconspicuous. She was picturing the cloak in her head, something slightly shabby and dull, so it wouldn’t attract attention, when she noticed what was happening to the snow.

  It was moving, and Lynet let the snow fall from her hand in panic. But it still kept shifting, somewhere between snow and liquid, as it spread over the ground. And then, between one blink and the next, there was a plain black cloak lying on the snow.

  Hardly believing what she had seen, Lynet touched the cloak, feeling the heavy fabric between her fingertips, marveling that it was real. The snow had become a cloak for her, because she had asked. But how was that possible—

  Because I’m made of it, she thought, the answer both obvious and incredible at the same time. She’d always had a special knack for making shapes in the snow, forming intricate castles or shaping animals that almost seemed to come alive. And how else had the chapel’s glass windows shattered, unless Mina had made it happen by will alone? How else had those cracks spread out over the huntsman’s neck at Mina’s command? The soldiers with their glassy eyes and vacant expressions … they weren’t real at all. They were men made out of glass. If Mina’s glass heart gave her power over glass, then Lynet must have the same power over snow. She had been made from magic, after all—why shouldn’t some of that magic still remain in her blood?

  Lynet swept some pine needles aside and took up a handful of snow. Melt, she thought. The snow turned to water in her hands almost instantly, dripping from between her fingers. Despite everything, she wanted to laugh. It felt like moving another arm, an extension of her body that she hadn’t previously been conscious of.

  But Mina knew. She must have at least suspected that Lynet would have this power, since she was clearly aware of her own. Another secret Mina had kept from her, then, another piece of herself that she hadn’t known. There was so much she still didn’t know—about herself or about Mina. Neither one of them was the same person anymore. Lynet still held all the pieces—all of the moments she and Mina had shared together, the feel of Mina’s hands braiding her hair, the small comforts she had offered—but they seemed to be scattered around her, with no way to repair them without creating a distorted image, a cracked mirror. And in the spaces between all those cracks were Mina’s secrets, the Mina who claimed she was unable to love, the Mina Lynet had never known.

  Lynet still didn’t understand the strange powers that had shaped them both. For that, I suppose I’d have to ask the magician.
But Lynet couldn’t ask Gregory, because Gregory—

  Gregory was away in the South.

  She felt a prickling all along her skin, thrilling with a growing sense of purpose. She had already been planning to go south, but now she had a more exact destination: she could go to the university, find Gregory, and ask him all her questions. Perhaps he knew how to cure Mina’s glass heart, to make her capable of the love that Lynet remembered. Perhaps the cracked mirror wasn’t irreparable after all.

  But first she had to evade Mina’s soldiers. She had the cloak, but that wasn’t enough, especially if they kept moving south until they caught her. She had to mislead them somehow, to make them think she was headed somewhere else so they wouldn’t follow her. She stared down at the snow, wondering how it could help her now.

  And then she remembered being up in the tree, thinking that if she fell and broke her neck at their feet, their search would be over. I could make another me, she thought. Another girl made out of snow who looks just like me. Mina wanted her dead—so if Lynet gave Mina what she wanted, if Mina believed Lynet was dead, she would stop her search, and that would buy Lynet the time she needed to go to Gregory.

  A body, she thought, sinking her hands into the snow. No, not just any body. Me. Become me.

  The snow started to melt in front of her. Lynet kept her own image in her mind, repeating her command over and over again until the snow shifted and liquefied under her hands. The snow stretched out and formed the outline of a human—but creating a perfect replica of herself was more difficult than making a nondescript cloak. The figure in front of her was an eerie imitation of Lynet, but the eyelashes were missing, the dress was the wrong shade of brown, and her fingers seemed to blur together. She’d also forgotten about the small cut on her cheek from where the glass in the chapel had nicked her. The image in her mind hadn’t been precise enough, so she concentrated again and again, making adjustments until she was looking down at her own body, clothed in her same brown dress with its fur lining. It was her exact image, except there was no heartbeat, no breath. She wondered if this was what her mother looked like at the moment of her death.

  Lynet shivered. She knew what else she had to do to make Mina believe that Lynet had died on her own in the woods, and she wasn’t eager to see the result.

  A broken neck from falling out of a tree, she thought, picturing it in her mind, and after the snow liquefied and solidified again, she stared at the body’s—at her—head, now lying at an odd angle, a reality that she had just barely avoided over and over.

  Lynet slipped off her silver bracelet, her first gift from Mina, and placed it around the body’s wrist. She felt light, almost weightless, like a spirit leaving her weakened body behind. Lynet was dead, just like her mother, and the girl who would emerge was someone new, shedding her soft skin to become something cold and untouchable. She had almost forgotten that today was her birthday.

  The first true birthday that I’ve ever had, she thought, slipping her new cloak around her shoulders. She lifted the hood to hide her hair and face, and she rose from the snow to begin her new life.

  21

  MINA

  Mina waited for Felix to bring Lynet to her, but instead he brought her Lynet’s corpse.

  She had been waiting outside the king’s bedchamber at dawn when Felix came to her, several hours after she had sent him and the glass soldiers into the woods.

  Mina had been frightened then, struck cold by the thought that Lynet was waiting for her, full of hate for her stepmother now. She almost wished that Felix hadn’t found her at all.

  Felix led her to the chapel, and Mina didn’t understand why Felix avoided her eye when he told her that Lynet was there, why he kept saying he was sorry.

  Several of the soldiers waited in the chapel, standing around the central altar. With a flick of his hand, Felix waved them aside, and he gently led Mina forward. And only then did Mina see that this was Lynet’s corpse, and Lynet was dead.

  Even as she bent forward to inspect the corpse, she still thought it was all some kind of trick, or that she had been mistaken, and she would see the faint movement of Lynet’s chest signaling that she was alive, but unconscious. But her chest remained still, and for the first time, Lynet’s heartbeat matched Mina’s own.

  Her neck was broken, and there was still a small cut on her cheek from where Mina had accidentally wounded her with the glass. No, Mina told herself, none of this was an accident. Lynet must have fallen, probably from a tree where she’d been hiding—hiding from Felix and the soldiers. Every piece of Lynet’s death came together, like a hundred tiny shards of glass, and together they formed a mirror that showed Mina her own face, her own guilt.

  Mina stumbled, and Felix took her by the arm, helping her stay upright. “Did anyone see you bring her here?” she asked, her voice a thin rasp.

  “No,” he said. “No one knows but you.”

  But they would all know eventually. The princess’s death, so soon after the king’s accident. Would anyone believe that Lynet had met a natural end? Or would they all assume that she had taken her own life, fearing for her father’s? Some terrible part of her whispered that she could use that assumption to her advantage, if she needed to shift suspicion away from herself.

  Hands trembling, Mina gently laid her hand on Lynet’s cheek. Her skin was as cold as it had ever been, her face just as pristine and beautiful. And yet the corpse was a pale imitation of the living girl; it was only a facsimile of beauty without the animation of Lynet’s face, without the spirit behind her eyes. Wasn’t that what Mina had secretly wanted—to strip Lynet of her beauty, to be the only woman worth looking at, worth loving?

  She was glad now that she had told the young surgeon to leave Whitespring instead of inflicting some harsher punishment. She was glad there was someone else in this world who would carry the memory of Lynet’s eyes, her smile, the way she was always dashing down the halls instead of walking. Nicholas had his own memory of Lynet, and the courtiers would remember a princess who looked like her mother. But if that young woman had been Lynet’s friend, then she might have been the only person other than Mina to know Lynet as she was, not as she appeared.

  Felix’s hands gently came around her, trying to lead her away. “No,” she said. “Not yet.” She slipped the silver bracelet off Lynet’s wrist. She would keep it on her bedside table, beside the empty mirror frame that had once belonged to her mother. A collection of things she had lost, she supposed, or of people she had driven away.

  “Take her to the crypt,” she ordered, though it felt wrong. Lynet had always been so scared of the crypt, so certain that she would end up there beside her mother, both of them identical in death as in life. Now her fear had come true. “Try not to let anyone see you. I don’t want the king to hear about this before I tell him myself.”

  Felix led the others away, and Mina took a breath before returning to the king’s rooms. She wondered if this news would kill him.

  He was lucid when she sat at his bedside, though his skin had taken on a sickly gray tint. His first words were, “How is Lynet?”

  Mina kept her face still. “Why do you ask that?”

  He stared up at the canopy above his bed, eyes wide and unseeing. “I think I dreamt of her. I think … I think she was saying good-bye.” He closed his eyes, his face screwed up in pain. “I can’t tell anymore, I can’t tell who … which one of them I saw.…”

  “Nicholas…”

  “I keep hearing her voice in my head, telling me terrible things, the same things you told me—that she never cared about her mother, that she’s been unhappy—but I can’t remember if any of it is real.” He reached for her hand, and Mina took it in surprise. “Tell me, Mina, tell me—she was happy, wasn’t she? We were happy together.”

  Mina didn’t know if he meant Lynet or Emilia, and she wasn’t sure if Nicholas knew, either, or if they had come together to form one beautiful dead woman, far from his reach. He’d love me, too, if I were dead, Mina th
ought. For all the bitterness that lay between them, she knew that if she died on the spot, he would weep for her. He would mold her memory into a wife he could love, and he would worship her dead body just as he had shunned the living one. He loves nothing so much as his own grief.

  “Nicholas, you have to listen to me. I have to tell you something.”

  “She said good-bye.… Why did she say good-bye? Where did she go?”

  Mina had the curious feeling that she wasn’t in her own body, that she was watching from somewhere else, and she clasped his hand more tightly, willing herself to come back and finish what she had started. “She’s dead, Nicholas. Lynet is dead.”

  He released her hand at once, staring at her in disgust. “Do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you, Nicholas, I never have. It’s always been you who hated me.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I never hated you. But I can’t love you, and I think you’ll never forgive me for that. That’s why you’re lying to me now.”

  Mina sighed, wishing she had just waited for him to die rather than ever tell him. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m lying. Lynet is in her room.”

  “Get her for me,” he said, his eyes fluttering closed.

  “I will,” Mina said. “You’ll see her soon. You’ll see them both soon.”

  He murmured something under his breath, something that sounded like, “She said good-bye,” and tears began to flow from beneath his eyelids.

  “Nicholas?” Mina whispered, a hint of panic in her voice.

  But before she could say more, he was gone.

  * * *

  Mina stood alone in the chapel, staring at the jagged pieces of glass in the empty window frames. She shouldn’t have come back. The room reminded her of Lynet—something Mina had known would happen when she first brought Lynet here. She had been strangely nervous that time. Maybe she’d just been afraid that Lynet would see her too clearly, see the angry, homesick girl that she had been.