Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust

  “Oh, but—”

  “Now just sit right here,” he said, ushering her to a chair and kneeling beside her.

  There was nothing to fear, Lynet told herself as she held her arm out for Gregory. She had never looked away when watching Nadia, and she didn’t look away now as Gregory made a thin cut on her arm and her blood rose to the surface. He focused intently on her blood, drawing it from her vein into the vial.

  Her blood in exchange for helping Mina. All in all, it was a small price to pay.

  * * *

  She thought she saw Nadia again the next day.

  She was crossing the university courtyard on the way to the old church and she saw a flash of a dark braid from the corner of her eye. But when she turned to look, she saw no one resembling Nadia in the courtyard.

  Lynet was still shaken by her own disappointment when she entered the church. Her head was full of ghosts today. When she’d woken that morning, she had a moment when she forgot that her father was dead. And then the memories flooded in, and it was like hearing the news for the first time again, the ringing of a bell echoing in her head.

  Gregory had told her she could look through his books while he worked in the laboratory, and though she had the feeling he was humoring her, she browsed through the shelves, looking for something that might show her how to help Mina. But even as Lynet started to pull books from the shelves, she wondered if she was only fooling herself into thinking she could find the secrets to her stepmother’s heart here. Gregory was the one who had shaped that heart—if he didn’t know how to cure it, then how could Lynet?

  With a stack of books balanced on one arm, Lynet reached up for a thick red volume on a higher shelf, only to feel the entire stack slip through her elbow and land noisily around her feet. With a sigh, she bent down to collect the books, hoping none of them had been damaged in their fall. As Lynet retrieved one book that was splayed across the floor, a folded piece of paper slipped out from between the pages. The paper was yellow around the edges, but it was still stiff, meaning it probably had been tucked away and forgotten.

  Sitting on her knees, Lynet unfolded the paper, her eyes immediately going to the two names written there, one at the top of the page—Mina—and the other at the bottom—Dorothea. It was a letter to Mina from her mother. Had Mina ever seen it, though? Had she placed it here herself?

  My dear Mina, it began, I can’t leave without saying good-bye.…

  Lynet told herself she shouldn’t keep reading, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the page, and by the time she reached the final words, she was glad she hadn’t stopped. Long ago, Mina had told Lynet that her mother, Dorothea, was dead. When Lynet had first started reading the letter, she had thought it was a mother’s final good-bye to her daughter before she died. The letter was a good-bye—but not from a dying mother. Lynet read through it again to make sure she wasn’t mistaken, but there was no question that Dorothea wasn’t dying, only leaving.

  And according to this letter, she had left because she was frightened of Gregory.

  Lynet’s stomach lurched, remembering Gregory telling her that she was his true daughter. She felt a pang of sympathy for the girl who had become her stepmother, living alone with a man who saw her as a failed experiment, a blemish on his own abilities. She was worth nothing to him, and Lynet knew that Mina must have felt it every day of her life.

  If I’d had a father like yours growing up maybe I wouldn’t care about being queen either.

  Mina had told Lynet that no one could ever love her, but Mina’s mother had loved her—the proof of it was here, in three words written at the bottom of the page. Lynet wondered if Gregory knew about Dorothea’s letter, if he had lied to Mina about her mother’s death. Glancing warily in the direction of the laboratory door, Lynet tucked the letter into the front of her dress.

  She started to rise from the floor when a burst of pain in her chest forced her back to her knees. Her heart was racing, a frantic bird trying to escape tightening constraints, and when she tried to move, her surroundings all bled together and her head started to pound. She tried to take deep breaths, but they sounded more like sobs instead. Was this because she had been away from the snow for too long? Had she let herself grow too weak?

  Trying to think clearly, Lynet emptied some of her purse into her cupped hands and let the coins become snow again. She nearly sobbed into the pile of snow, such a relief was it against her fevered skin. For the few minutes before the snow melted through her fingers, the world stopped spinning and Lynet started to breathe more normally. The pain had lessened, but her heart was still speeding, and she felt utterly drained, bloodless—

  Bloodless. Lynet thought of the blood she’d given to Gregory last night. Was that why she was so weak today? Had the loss of the blood exhausted her beyond her limits, or were Gregory’s experiments affecting her, pulling on some invisible thread between her blood and her heart?

  Lynet staggered to her feet, tucking away her purse. She had to stop Gregory before he conducted any more tests. He must not have known.… But then, that letter from Dorothea proved that Gregory knew more than he revealed.

  There was no lock on the door, so Lynet burst into the laboratory without warning, not giving Gregory the chance to deny her entrance.

  The laboratory was larger than she’d expected, a round room with a high window that let in the golden sunlight of the South. The room reminded Lynet of Nadia’s workroom—the same assortment of jars on shelves, the same long table, though this one was covered in glass apparatuses that she had never seen before.

  And yet, this room was as different from Nadia’s as Nadia was from Gregory. It was the difference between the natural darkness of night and the stale darkness of the crypt.

  Gregory had been hunched over the far end of the table, but he looked up in surprise when he heard the door. “If you wanted to come in, Lynet, you only had to knock,” he said.

  “What are you doing with my blood?” she demanded.

  “Exactly what I told you. And I’m very pleased with the results. Come,” he said with an eager wave of his hand, “let me show you what you can do.”

  Lynet made her way across the room, passing shelves full of jars with unknown contents, including a withered, brownish lump that made her shudder violently for some reason. At the far end of the table was the now empty vial that had held her blood. She peered down at the table, trying to understand the relationship between the items of the strange collection gathered there. Alongside the vial were small piles of sand, as well as two open glass jars. In one of the jars was another pile of sand, but in the other was a small field mouse, its tiny paws trying to climb the side of the jar.

  “Do you see?” Gregory said, gripping her upper arm to bring her closer. “The mouse is yours—made from sand and blood—your blood. You can only work with snow, but with your blood, I can shape anything. And the mouse has a heartbeat, which means it’s truly alive, Lynet.”

  Lynet put her fingertip against the jar and watched as the mouse tried to paw at her through the glass. She heard the excitement in Gregory’s voice, but all she felt was empty. “When you used my blood to make this, it nearly killed me,” she said, her voice strained. She looked up at Gregory. “Did you know that would happen?”

  Gregory snorted. “Oh, you’re exaggerating. It’s disorienting at first, I know, but that initial weakness will pass. Creating you nearly killed me, of course, but humans are complex, and I had a number of failed experiments before I managed to get you just right. Not to mention I was much older than you at the time, whereas you, Lynet … you’re still so young, your heart so strong. You have so much life to give.…”

  There was a hunger in his eyes as he reached out to touch her cheek, and Lynet flinched away. She still had her dagger at her waist under her cloak. She needed to distract him so she could reach for it without his noticing. “I … I’m still not feeling well,” she said. “Perhaps I should go.”

  His eyes darted toward the door, a
nd Lynet knew he was thinking that if he let her out that door now, she would never come back. He edged closer to her and shook his head in confusion. “You can’t leave now. You’re the answer I’ve been searching for. All these years, I’ve been trying to reverse the effects of your creation—my aging, my weakness. I even came here hoping medicine would help me since magic only worsened my condition, but to no success. Think of all that potential wasted, Lynet! I had only begun to discover what I could do before I grew too weak to continue. But now that you’re here, we can unlock all the secrets of our magic together. If you stay here with me, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish together. This is what you were meant for.”

  Lynet took a small step backward. She had always thought she was meant to become her mother—and now, finally, here was confirmation that she wasn’t her mother, that she had a purpose and an ability that was all her own. She had been torn between wanting answers about the nature of her existence and wanting to leave her old life behind—and now Gregory could offer her both. She could be reborn in his image instead of her mother’s. Was that what she wanted?

  “Mina and your father kept you away from me,” Gregory continued. “They made you scared of me, but I knew—I always knew—that there was a chance that we were alike, that you would share my gifts.” He smiled at her, and perhaps it was only the way the light from the window hit his face, but he seemed younger now, some color in his wasted cheeks, a hopeful glimmer in his eyes. How different he was from her own father, how willing to let her see the most fearsome and powerful parts of herself.

  He nodded, sensing her waning resistance. “In all the world, you’re the only one who can help me,” he said. “I’ve been wasting away for so long, Lynet—would you leave me now? Who else can guide you like I can?”

  Who else? His words echoed in her head, overlapping each other in an endless, muddled stream. And then the answer came to her with the sharpness and clarity of glass—

  Mina.

  Mina had power over glass, and Gregory didn’t know that. He had spent the past sixteen years trying to reach Lynet, but he had never even bothered to consider his own daughter. He could never help me cure her. He doesn’t know Mina at all. And if he didn’t know his own daughter, didn’t understand why Lynet would want to help her, then how could he ever understand Lynet?

  He took a step closer to her, and Lynet slowly backed away, her hand slipping under her cloak. Her fingers rested on the dagger hilt. “And if I refuse to stay with you?” she said.

  The smile froze on his face before fading away, his eyes flat and dull. “Well, then I’d have to admit that I’ve been less than honest with you about my reasons for wanting you to stay. You see, the truth is that I don’t need you. I just need your heart.”

  Lynet drew out the dagger just as Gregory lunged for her hand, his fingers wrapping around her wrist. He pushed her back against the table, the edge digging into her back, the dagger hovering between them. He had her other wrist in his grip now too, but they were locked in a stalemate, neither of them strong enough to overpower the other.

  “You’re not being fair, Lynet,” Gregory said through gritted teeth. “I made you, sacrificed my power and my vitality to give you life. Now it’s time for you to return it all back to me.”

  “By giving you my heart?” She tried to pull away, but she only ended up digging the table edge farther into her back.

  “You felt that pain in your chest earlier, didn’t you?” Gregory said. His fingers tightened, twisting her wrist, and Lynet’s grip on the dagger began to loosen. “Blood is the source of our power, just as I said, but the heart is the source of our blood. I grew weak because I drained my heart too quickly, but with yours—so young and healthy, so full of magic—I would be more careful. I would be strong again. Doesn’t that seem just, Lynet, that you should restore the life that you stole from me?” He gave a final twist of her wrist, and Lynet cried out in pain, her grip loosening enough to let him take the dagger from her.

  “I came here to cure Mina’s heart, not yours,” Lynet spat. He still had her other wrist in his grip, but she could feel his hold weakening now that he had the dagger. If she could just distract him—

  His face stretched into a hideous smile. “Do you still think you can help her? Let me show you what Mina really is. Look there.” He gestured to the shelves beside them, and Lynet glanced quickly from the corner of her eye, not letting Gregory out of her sight, to see what he was pointing at.

  But even before she looked, part of her already knew what she would see—that … that thing in the jar that had made her shudder. “Yes,” Gregory was saying, “you saw it already, didn’t you? That’s what remains of Mina’s heart. Even if you found a way to give her a new one, she will always carry that rotten heart inside. Do you see now how pointless it is to try to cure something that’s already dead? It’s too late for her, but not for me.”

  She kept looking back and forth from Gregory to the heart, trying to understand what that hideous thing had in common with Mina’s radiance, Mina’s fury. But even with her divided attention, she noticed that Gregory’s breathing had become heavier, his grip on her wrist continuing to slacken. All this exertion was exhausting him, and so Lynet put any thought of Mina’s heart aside and gave a final sharp tug. She may have been weakened, but years of climbing had made her stronger than she looked, and her wrist slipped free from his grip. She managed to make it down the length of the table before Gregory caught up with her, slamming both fists down on either side of her to trap her against the table. But Lynet had just remembered something about the dagger that was still clutched in his hand—she had made it from snow, and as long as she had the snow, she was never truly weak.

  Burn, she commanded.

  Gregory let out a cry as the dagger burned his right hand, and as soon as he had released it, Lynet reached for the weapon. Ignoring the pain of the burning metal, she held on to the dagger and drove it into Gregory’s left hand, pinning him to the table.

  He screamed in pain, and before he could recover enough to pull the blade out, Lynet was running out the door.

  How much time did she have before he recovered and started to follow her? She needed a crowd, somewhere to lose herself so that even if Gregory came after her, he would never find her. Lynet raced away from the church, heading toward the university gates. If she cut through there, she could get back to the main road, and then he’d never find her.

  Students dodged out of her way as Lynet ran down the main walkway between the university buildings. She crashed into a few of them, but she didn’t let herself stop or slow down. She could see the pink of the roses in the courtyard in the distance—she was so focused on reaching the courtyard that she only barely noticed the blurry form of someone in her way, someone who wasn’t moving aside even as Lynet came crashing through—

  The breath slammed out of her as she collided with someone, both of them falling to the ground. Lynet hissed in pain as the burn on her right palm met sand, but she had mostly fallen on top of the other person.

  She immediately started to scramble away, but then she paused, her arms holding her up as she looked down at the girl she’d run into, the girl who hadn’t moved aside even when Lynet had come hurtling toward her—

  After all those uncertain sightings, she’d found Nadia at last.

  26

  LYNET

  At first they just stared at each other, both of them wide-eyed with disbelief. And then Nadia reached up and gently brushed her fingers against Lynet’s cheek, testing to see if she was real. Her eyes lit up when her fingertips met solid flesh.

  “Lynet?” Nadia whispered.

  The sound of her name broke Lynet out of her trance, and she remembered that she was supposed to be escaping—and that she was still awkwardly positioned over Nadia. She quickly rose from the ground, as did Nadia, who was still staring at her in awe. No wonder Nadia hadn’t moved aside when Lynet was running toward her—she probably thought she was seeing a ghost
.

  Lynet’s frantic run had caught up with her; her chest hurt, her legs wobbled, and her head spun from getting up so suddenly. She glanced over her shoulder, looking for any sign of Gregory. “I can explain everything later,” she said to Nadia, “but right now I need somewhere to hide.”

  Nadia didn’t answer. She was looking at Lynet in a daze, perhaps still not entirely convinced she was real.

  Lynet took Nadia’s hand and pressed it firmly. “Nadia, please. Gregory—Mina’s father—is looking for me, and I’m too weak to run.”

  Nadia had been looking down at their joined hands, but at the sound of the magician’s name, her head snapped up, her eyes focused and clear. “I won’t let him find you,” she said. Keeping hold of Lynet’s unburned hand, Nadia led her farther down the walkway, taking her through the side door of the main building that Lynet had visited on her first night here.

  They were approaching the foot of the giant staircase when Nadia suddenly froze and pushed Lynet back into a small alcove in the wall, shielding her from view with her own body.

  “What are you—”

  Nadia shushed her, and Lynet heard Gregory’s voice echoing in the large hall. He must have gone around and come in through the front gate—if she had reached the courtyard, she might have collided with him instead of Nadia. She quickly huddled behind Nadia’s tall frame as she heard Gregory describing her to someone, asking if she had been seen. And then she heard his faltering footsteps coming toward them. Nadia leaned back against the opening of the alcove, and Lynet tried to make herself as small as she could. Surely Gregory would walk past them without a second glance—

  But his footsteps stopped right by their alcove, and Lynet’s heartbeat was so loud, she could barely hear him when he spoke. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. Lynet couldn’t see the damage she had done to his hand, but his voice was hoarse and ragged. “What are you doing here?”