The Book of Snow & Silence

by Zoe Marriott

  My own voice choked and cut off then, throat clogged with revulsion. But it was enough. He bowed his head over my hands, shoulders hitching on a wet, shuddering breath. A single, hot tear dropped onto my wrist.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, reverent, as if he had received some kind of benediction.

  Then he straightened his shoulders and spoke, commanding and kingly, eyes still on me.

  “This incident is at an end. Princess Theoai and I are united once more, and of one mind. The wedding shall take place as soon as possible. Tomorrow.”

  A collective gasp disturbed the icy air. Miramand jerked in place as if she had been scalded. “Uldarana! What do you think you’re doing? Have you forgotten everything she said today? Everything she confessed?”

  “But you said she was under the control of foul magic. You said that Shell must die to save her from it. Wasn’t that true?” he asked, without looking away from my face.

  Miramand’s lips clamped together. “You can’t do this. I – your Father will never allow it.”

  “Father is dying. He cares nothing for any of this,” Uldar said, a cutting edge in his voice now that I had never heard before. Especially not directed at Miramand. “My will shall be done. Begin the preparations, Mother.”

  He turned away from her, dismissing her protests with something that was less even than contempt. It was indifference. Her words meant nothing to him anymore. She had done it. By the Three, she had finally managed to do it. She had pushed him too far. Her hold on him was broken.

  Now. Now, when it is too late.

  Uldar squeezed my hands firmly and released them. He beckoned his doctors to him and, still ignoring his Mother’s hasty, heated words of chastisement, hobbled slowly away into the Silingana. Most of the courtiers trailed after him, still looking shaken, upset and confused.

  Leaving me on Morogana’s rock with a fuming Miramand, her executioner, and her hand-picked thugs.

  She turned on me like a starved wolf, eyes glinting wildly. “Take her. Take her! Throw her back in her room and lock her in! I will deal with her, and my son, later.”

  I didn’t bother to look at the men closing in on me. In contrast to the Queen’s fulminating tones, my own voice was calm, precise. Deadly. “If any of you lay a finger on me again, I will have you all killed.”

  As one, the guards hesitated. Exchanged wary glances. And slowly began to back away, swords and guns lowering.

  “What are you doing?” Miramand hissed. She closed her eyes for a second, sucked in a long breath through her nose, and visibly tried to compose herself. “I am your Queen. Follow my orders and seize this woman.”

  “They’re not going to touch me,” I said matter-of-factly. “They’re not deaf, or stupid. The King is dying, and the heir to the throne is marrying me tomorrow. That means in a matter of days I will be their Queen. Your reign is over.”

  She stared blankly at me, the colour leaching slowly from her cheeks and lips. Sweat sprang up on her forehead. Her face was ghastly – truly, like the face of a dying woman. Her eyes lifted to meet mine again, and I felt a spark of hot, searing joy.

  That was fear. For the first time I saw fear in her, real fear. She had been ready to watch her own son die of poison she had administered rather than flinch before me – but now she had given herself away. She feared me, and I savoured it, letting the heat of my satisfaction cauterise the wounds inside me. Everything Miramand craved, everything she had fought, and manipulated, and lied, and schemed to keep was slipping from between her blood-stained claws. There was nothing she could do now to prevent it. It was her own doing.

  But it was still too late.

  The memory of Shell’s face as she plunged that dagger home twisted jaggedly as shards of sea-glass in my chest. I had given her the knife. I had given her the means. That beautiful girl, who had wanted only to know love, had died because of me. She was gone forever – and all because we had loved one another. All because she had the great misfortune to cross paths with me. With Miramand, who had looked at her and seen an obstacle. An inconvenient thing, which must be swept aside by any means necessary.

  The Queen was a monster. She could not always have been so. She must have had a choice – made a choice – just as I must do now. It would have been years ago, before she became so fluent in lies and wickedness, before she became the wretched creature who stood before me now, shaking and trying so hard to hide it that she looked like a pillar of white, chalky stone, flaking at the edges.

  Miramand had made her choice. She had chosen power. And she had walked a ruthless, solitary path, one from which there was no return. Had she ever known trust, or love again? For her husband, her son? Even herself? I didn’t think so. She must have murdered something in her own soul to grasp the position she had desired so much.

  If she had made a different choice, everything would be different here in this land of ice and snow. Uldar and Radugana would be different men, perhaps better men. I probably wouldn’t even be here.

  Now I too faced that crossroads. I knew what Shell would want me to do. I knew she would want me, above all things, to take the path that would give me freedom, and happiness. But Shell was not here.

  Rest is for the dead.

  I smiled. The old queen drew in a ragged breath.

  “In Yamarr we have a saying: the virtuous die young, and the wicked live on,” I told her. “You needn’t be afraid of me. I’m going to take the very best care of you. You see, you are going to live on. You’re going to live with what you have done. With what you have become. You’re going to live for a very long time, your Highness. Under my rule.”

  Pity is more bitter than death.

  The hot satisfaction had drained away. When I turned to go I felt nothing – no anger, no sorrow. Only the cold fingers of the wind that swept across the silent cliff top, scattering snowflakes in my path. It seemed that it did snow upon Morogana’s rock after all, sometimes. I had been right. Love is crueller than pity or death.

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw

  I walked through the clumps of staring, whispering hangers-on that clogged the corridors of the palace with my head held high, still dressed in blood. And I knew, Mother, that it was the first and last time I would ever wear any colour within these walls. Miramand had clothed me in white so that others would see me and think of weddings, of innocent maidens and the cold purity of snow. But to me, white had always been the colour of funerals. I would wear it from now on, to honour Aroona – who would never receive any memorial other than mine.

  When I reached my chambers they were empty and silent. I wandered them aimlessly for a time, examining myself for cracks. I had imagined I would break down, you see – that in privacy I would scream and wail, sob.

  I cannot.

  Something has frozen within me, something that Aroona’s touch had thawed. I do not know if it will ever thaw again, or if I want it to.

  In the absence of anything better to do, I have written my confession of all that has passed since I arrived here in the land of salt and blood and ice. Having committed ink to paper – having smeared my blood and Aroona’s blood across the pages – these words will always be a part of me. I shall never forget.

  This is the end of my account of my great fall. I have paid for what I thought I wanted with the only thing I truly needed. I will have the crown I longed for at last. But the cost is too high.

  *

  My quill faltered mid-stroke, leaving an ugly blotch on the thick cream paper. Beneath the deep, icy layers of numbness that had accreted around my heart, something stirred.

  I could hear voices. Not human voices – but voices all the same. In the sea below the palace, the orcas were singing again.

  It was a great, echoing song, and it resounded through the icy crystalline walls of the Silingana. Beautiful and eerie. Haunting. I stared blankly at the even lines of my own writing. The blood was drying now, on my hand, on the white feather
tip of the quill. My pen dripped red-tinted ink onto the page again, again, but I made no move to blot it.

  The whales – the sea people – must have found her, in the water. Found what was left of her. They knew what we had done, and they were mourning their lost daughter, their lost sister. Mourning her as no one save me ever would, here on the barren, heartless land.

  The thing in my chest stirred again, struggling. Trying to break free. I screwed my smarting eyes shut, my fist closing around the quill hard enough to make its thin, flexible spine crack. I must be going mad. I was going mad. There could be no words in the orcas’ music. Their mouths couldn’t shape them. I was imagining things. It was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  The thing in my chest tore at me. I threw down the broken quill and snatched up another. I must ignore the figments in my mind and finish writing. I scrabbled clumsily back through the pages, leaving dark, smudged fingerprints, until I reached the first page. The Book of Snow.

  In a mixture of blood and ink, I wrote the new title. The correct title.

  The Book of Snow and Silence.

  EPILOGUE

  She floats beneath the rippling light of the White Mother as it rises over the ocean. ‘Moon’, the people above call it. She shapes the word silently, savouring the taste of clean saltwater on her lips. The air above was thick with flavours, some sweet, some foul. None of them were like the taste of home.

  None except one.

  In the depths below her, her Mother and sisters, still relieved at her return, furious at her disappearance, and awed by her account of what transpired above, dance and sing comfortingly. Waiting for her. Encouraging her.

  Her body – her real body, restored to her by the White Mother’s grace – is almost vibrating with fear and excitement. She knows now, for the first time in her life, what she truly desires. But what she cannot know is whether she will be allowed to have it. The uncertainty aches in her bones.

  Letting the White Mother’s shining fill her heart and the fierceness of her yearning bear her up, she floats to the surface – and sings.

  Her voice takes flight, notes of devotion, of longing, of sadness and of love – more than anything, love, transforming and terrifying and beautiful – arrowing through the clear night air toward the one she needs to hear it.

  “Theoai!” Aroona sings. “Theoai! You alone shall hear my song! You alone are the one I love! Come to me! Come to the sea!”

  The wait is agonisingly long. She is forced to stop several times, sinking back beneath the waves. Her Mother swims upward in concern; Aroona waves her back down again with a furl of her tail. She is all right. She will sing all night if she has to.

  But she doesn’t have to. Like a shining ray of the White Mother’s radiance, Theoai appears at the edge of the cliff, the spire that the humans call Morogana’s rock. She heard. She has come.

  Aroona calls again, swimming closer, waving to attract Theoai’s attention. She hears Theoai’s sob as the human girl runs down the rock steps toward the water.

  “Aroona!”

  She stumbles on the stairs, and Aroona surges forward in a thrashing wave of foam to catch her if need be. The fall from there would kill a human. The sand burns and scrapes at her half-form’s tail as it never did her human feet, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as she manages to heave herself up onto the beach, and Theoai leaps from the last step. Nothing matters at all, because Theoai is in her arms again, kissing her again, filling Aroona’s heart with the touch and sounds and taste of home.

  “I thought you were dead,” the human girl whispers, drawing back to stare with her stunning obsidian eyes at Aroona’s real body. Her black and white markings echo those of her hunting form, and she has heavy curves of muscles and fat which keep her moving in the ocean. Most different, she knows, is the cloud of pale, feathery gills that drift around her head, almost like a human’s hair. “You look so different.”

  “This is my real shape. One of them,” Aroona says, a little anxiously. “When I used the knife on myself – ”

  Theoai flinches. Aroona touches the soft skin of her cheek in apology.

  “It broke the moon promise. I fell as a human, dying, but as soon as I touched the water my true body was restored, uninjured. I suppose no one ever thought of trying that way before.”

  “Did you know that would happen?”

  Aroona looks down.

  “You didn’t, did you?” Theoai draws her close again, dry, silky palms caressing the tough hide of Aroona’s shoulders. Her lips are softer than anything against Aroona’s forehead. “You are beautiful. So beautiful. Even your voice... I wished so often that I could hear your voice. Just once.”

  “Theoai,” Aroona croons, overcome, and the human girl shudders against her. “Do you remember what the Priest said? In the cave? Before they used those awful guns on him?”

  Theoai nods, confused, her face clouding with sadness at the memory. Aroona rushes to explain: “Don’t fear for him! I do not think any human weapon could truly threaten one of his age and power. He is already healed. But he says that the moon promise is still working. Just for tonight. My heart’s desire may return with me to the sea, and take on Selkoh form to live with me beneath the waves. If she wishes.” Theoai goes still. Frighteningly still. Aroona whispers, “If she – truly loves me.”

  The human girl’s eyes are shining. Shining with the liquid black light of the deepest depths. She does not speak. She doesn’t need to. Aroona knows her face so well. Aroona feels her own face slowly flooding with light, and joy. “You will come? You want to?”

  “More than anything. There is nothing but misery for me in the world up there.” Then she bites her lip. “But there is something I must do first. Can you wait? I’ll be quick, as quick as I can.”

  “We have until the Daystar rises. No longer,” Aroona warns.

  “I won’t be nearly that long. Promise you won’t leave.”

  “I promise. But Theoai! Theoai, you have to know – once you change, become like us, you won’t be able to go back. To your human form. Your human life. Ever.”

  “Why would I ever want to?”

  She turns away, dashing up the steps, her white skirts – white stained with red – flying around her legs.

  *

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw

  Hear me now, whoever is reading this – Mother, Aramin, Miramand, Uldarana. No one or everyone. I will sear the rotten heart from this kingdom, and topple with my own hands everything that was built and maintained with wickedness and corruption. Though your crown has not yet been placed upon my brow, I shall be the Queen that your people deserve.

  All you men and women of power, as you watch your fortress burn, remember that it was your own cruelty, your injustice and your complaisance, which brought this fate down on your heads. Remember that it was Theoai, the uncrowned Queen of Silinga and Yamarr, who destroyed the thing you hold dear.

  And above all, remember Aroona.

  *

  Aroona lets herself slip back into the water. She spirals down, her tail and fins cutting gleefully through the currents, to explain what is happening to her family. For a little while they all shift into their hunting shapes and rise up to dance and sing, breaching the surface with joyful swoops and dives. Calling Theoai back.

  Then Aroona’s oldest sister, Meelan, sings a note of curiosity. They all flip in the water to stare toward land.

  The castle is – glowing. Beams of red and gold light shine through the white walls, rippling up through the tall towers the way superheated water ripples through the dark depths from the volcanic vents at the very bottom of the sea. What does it mean? Aroona’s Mother asks. Is this the humans’ way of bidding their child farewell?

  Aroona lets out a snort of joyous, bubbling laughter. No, Mother. It’s something far better than that! She furls her body back down into its half-form, and swims to meet the white-clad girl hurrying down the steps t
o the sea.

  “I added a confession in Silingan to the end of a – a thing that I wrote, and put it in the library for safekeeping. That way they can’t blame anyone but me,” she confides breathlessly as she throws herself back into Aroona’s arms. “Then I went to the ballroom and opened the ninguid globes. All the ninguid globes I could find. The palace will be nothing but water and rock by dawn, and the Ice Breakers, all the mages – ”

  “Will be free.” Aroona draws Theoai to her. “No more walls of ice to hold up, day and night, night and day.”

  “If Uldar wants his castle rebuilt, he’ll have to pay them. In gold. It says so in their contracts.”

  Hands clasped tight, the two girls slide and wade into the water together. Theoai gasps at the cold, while Aroona concentrates on helping her to float. Neither of them pay any attention, anymore, to the land they have left behind. To the icy, crystalline towers of the Silingana on the cliff top high above, glowing with warmth for the very first time, glowing as if they have caught fire.

  Theoai is laughing, chanting. “I am free. I am free. Aroona, I am free!”

  And there in the silky black ocean, under the light of moon and stars, in the arms of the one who loves her, Theoai begins to change.

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hello, Dear Readers! I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading this book. It’s one of my favourite things that I’ve ever written and I really hope that you enjoyed it. If you did – or even if you didn’t, and you’d like to give me a piece of your mind about it! – please take a moment to rate the book on Amazon and leave a review, even if it’s only a few words long.

  Ratings and reviews make all the difference in the world to the success of a book, and if this book is successful, it will help to ensure that I can keep writing new stories for you in the future.

  Thank you.