by Anita Valle
She makes a disgusted sound but continues. “The war lasted for months. I saw fires and heard screaming, mostly around the palace. The Wood burned from one side to the other. I stood at the window, with you in my arms, and watched the kingdom turn black.”
“We didn’t get attacked here?” I ask.
“The palace was the target. Not a small tower lost in the hills. Occasionally, a foolish band of men would find their way to this clearing.” Her pale cheeks round as she smiles. “I practiced my magic on them. I learned how to aim and manipulate the ice. I wrapped it around their faces until they suffocated. I impaled them on spikes that shot up from the ground. I trapped them in blocks of ice but left their heads free and I made them tell me what was happening in the kingdom before they froze to death.”
I’m sitting quite still now. Well, that was… super creepy. I didn’t know she could do that – kill people with her magic. She only uses it to fill the kettle, block the door, seal the cave that leads to our clearing. Snowy is a boring person who uses her magic for boring things. I’ve never seen her do anything like that.
“How’d the war stop?” I ask, more respectfully.
Snowy shrugs. “I was never quite sure. It got quiet again. I started to venture out for food, once I felt sure of my magic. Little by little, I heard about the new queen.”
“Who is she?” I ask.
Snowy sighs. “I haven’t met her. Don’t plan to, either. She is cruel and vicious, nobody likes her. I’m surprised she’s lasted this long.”
“So, it’s just her, no king?”
“No, there’s a king too. But nobody talks about him, it’s the queen who holds the land.”
“Then let’s take her down!” I say, thumping the bed with my hand. “We’ll go there and you can bury her in a block of ice. And we’ll take back the palace!”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to go back there. And see the room where Hunter….” She closes her eyes.
I roll my own. “And that’s why we’ve stayed here all this time? This doesn’t explain your ‘dark days,’ you know.”
Snowy turns blazing eyes on me. “The queen doesn’t like young girls, especially ones about your age. They’re being found dead all over the kingdom. Is that dark enough for you? Horrible deaths too, slashed and mangled and left to bleed in the snow. So, excuse me for precaution but I don’t want that happening to you!”
I’m silent. My eyes dart around while I think. Those girls - young girls like me. I’ve never even seen a young girl. But in some of my books there are drawings. In one book, there’s a lovely picture of a girl with pink cheeks and long yellow curls. I used to stroke her image with my fingers and imagine we were friends. We did everything together, she was very real to me. So, it is her that I imagine now, dead in the snow, her yellow curls spread around her.
“How… how is this happening?” I ask.
Snowy rubs her eyes. “The queen has magic, I think. One of the reasons I’m not sure I can face her. She can control things. There is talk of a very large animal who does her bidding. That’s what’s hunting the girls.”
“What do you mean, a large animal? What kind of animal?” My eyes are wide.
“I haven’t seen it myself. But everyone calls it the Beast.”
~*~ 5 ~*~
Well. That was something. Actually, I feel pretty sick about it. But I don’t tell Snowy.
Snowy’s out getting food. I gave her a teardrop, not too hard after that story. Now I’m sitting on the floor of my organ room with my back to the stone wall. Sometimes I just run out of things to do. I jiggle my ankles and try to imagine what the Beast looks like. And what I’ll do if it ever comes here.
“Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”
I freeze, every bone, every muscle, as if Snowy just zapped me with her ice.
Because that wasn’t Snowy’s voice.
I stand slowly, sliding up against the wall. My heart bumps and crashes around. I don’t know what to do. I need Snowy! Unless… unless I heard it wrong and that was Snowy. But it didn’t sound like-
“Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”
No, that’s not Snowy. I crouch and hug the wall. I’m scared. I’m shaking. I think about running to my bedroom and hiding inside a trunk. But my hair won’t fit.
“Come on, Rapunzel, I know you’re up there.”
The voice sounds… different. Not scary, exactly. But deep and strange. I start to wonder what’s out there, what it looks like. But the fact that it’s calling to me – by name – is more than I can handle. I stay crouched and hope it goes away.
“Just come to the window, Rapunzel. I won’t hurt you.”
My fear shrinks a tiny bit. It said it won’t hurt me. Then it can’t be a bad thing that’s out there. Maybe I can look for a second.
I stand up and inch along the wall toward the window. I won’t step in front of the glass. I just sort of lean sideways to get one eye past the wall. And I see it. Down in the snow, a figure, dark hair, an upturned face – and I immediately drop to the floor again.
“Ha! Saw you!” the voice cries, jubilant. “You’ve got red hair, very long. I’ve seen your mama use it to get up there. And I’ve heard your music. I just want to talk to you. Don’t worry, I’m a nice guy.”
I’m still scared but curiosity is taking over. I want to have another look. Slowly, I rise in front of the glass, my heart ready to stomp right out of me. I look at the figure.
It’s a… man, I think. He’s wearing pants and boots. But he doesn’t have a beard. His eyebrows are quite noticeable, thick and dark, like his hair. He raises a hand to greet me and smiles, which startles me. His smile is nothing like Snowy’s. It looks happy and shows a lot of teeth.
I don’t smile back but I’m fascinated. I’ve never seen another person this close. I want him to leave. But I also want to keep looking at him.
“Hello there!” he calls. “Why not open the window so I don’t have to shout?” His tone is cheerful. And a word suddenly enters my head: friend. I have always wanted a friend, a real one I can see and touch. Friends are good things to have, they make you laugh. And I never laugh at all.
I push one side of the window open, just a few inches. “Are you a friend?”
“I beg your pardon?” He takes two steps closer to the tower and lifts a hand to his ear.
I push the window out more. “Are you a friend?”
“Well… I’m friendly!” He grins. “My name’s Kay. I’ve been watching you from The Wood. It was your music that got my attention. You play amazingly.”
I can’t stop looking at him. “Are you a man?”
“I am now! Sixteen on my last birthday. How about you?”
“Fifteen.” My voice doesn’t sound like me, soft and unsure. “But I’ll be sixteen pretty soon.”
“Have you ever been out of that tower?” he asks with a serious face.
I shake my head. I don’t bother telling him that I used to play in the clearing. It doesn’t count for much.
His face changes in a way I don’t understand. A bit sad? A bit worried? But why should he be worried for me?
He smiles again and it’s a nice one. “So, no one has ever seen your pretty face but me?”
“Am I pretty?” From books, I have learned that being pretty is very important. The pretty girls always have lots of friends and even if bad things happen to them, they still find happiness in the end.
“Quite pretty. If you leaned out a little I could see you better. Unless you’re still scared of me.”
I’m really not, anymore. I push the window as far as it goes and lean out on my arms. Unexpectedly, I feel the urge to smile. So I do.
He smiles back. “Now let’s see the hair.”
He wants to climb up. But I’m not completely stupid. Miss-Snowy-Snow-Queen will freak out if she comes home and finds a stranger here. I don’t know this guy very well, but enough that I don’t care to see him impaled by an icicle.
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I shake my head.
“You don’t trust me. I get it,” Kay says. “Tell you what! I’ll come back tomorrow. And I’ll bring you a little present. What would you like?”
“I like gingerbread,” I say. “But you shouldn’t come back here. Make sure you smear away your footprints when you leave. If Snowy finds out, she’ll be really mad.”
“Is that your mama?”
“No, my sister, Snow White.”
Kay stares at me. “What did you say?”
“What?”
“Did you call her Snow White?”
“Yes.”
“The one who used to be the princess?”
“Yes.”
Kay looks stunned. “So, it is her. She’s the Ice Witch.”
I frown. “The Snow Queen.”
“Same thing. I knew she lived somewhere up in the hills, but I didn’t know who she was. I’ve been watching her from the trees for weeks. But you were a surprise. It looked to me like she was keeping you as a prisoner.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
“I wanted to talk to you alone, to see how things were. I thought I might be able to help you. But first! You need to trust me. So, I’ll come back tomorrow and bring your gingerbread. And we’ll talk some more. Just do me a favor, would you? Please don’t tell your sister I was here.”
I wouldn’t dream of it.
~*~ 6 ~*~
I wake up. I can’t see a thing, just unbroken black. I hate sleeping without a candle, it’s like being blind. But when you have as much hair as I do, you can’t risk a fire.
I heard something. Something upsetting. It sounded like… oh, I don’t know. My sleep-soggy head is already forgetting, washing it away like a dream. But I know in my bones it wasn’t.
I sit up and listen. There it is - a scream. Starts low, then peals out long and high. In music, we’d call it a crescendo. My scalp crinkles from one side to the other and I’m bit hard by fear. I drop into the mattress and shove my body against Snowy’s.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
“What’s the matter?” she asks sharply.
“I hear something!”
The bed squeaks as Snowy shifts herself up. When I try to speak, she hushes me. We wait without a twitch in the black silence.
Another scream, thin and distant, ripe with frantic fear. I feel sickened.
“Stay there,” Snowy says. I feel the weight of her blankets flung over me as she leaves the bed.
“Where are you going?” I whimper.
“Just stay there!” She gropes her way around the bed and climbs the stairs to the organ room. I burrow under the blankets and curl into a ball. How could she just leave me here?
Barely a minute passes before I hear her again.
“Rapunzel?” she calls from the top of the stairs.
“What?”
“I need you to let down your hair.”
My eyes open wide. “You’re going OUT there?”
“Hurry, Rapunzel!”
My legs get tangled in the covers and I fall hard out of bed. “Ugh - coming!” I scrabble on all fours to gather up my braid, bunching it against my stomach. It’s cold from the floor. Hunched over my loops of hair, I patter up the stairs in my bare feet.
My organ room is freezing cold! She’s got the window wide open and the frozen air dumps in and spreads. She’s standing at the window in her white fur coat, the wind lifting long strands of her hair.
“It’s a young girl,” she says without looking back.
I stagger forward. “You can see her?”
“I can tell by the screams. The sound is moving. I think something is chasing her in The Wood.”
I gasp. “Do you think-”
“I don’t know!” Snowy says. “Now get over here and help me!”
I hurry to the window and toss my braid out over the hook. Snowy climbs onto the sill and takes careful hold of the dangling end. Letting her down is always harder than bringing her up. I lean back and release the braid, a handful at a time, my bare feet planted to the frozen floorboards. My toes go numb in seconds.
When the tension on my braid slackens, I yank it back and throw it into the room behind me. Then I rush to the window.
Snowy stands below me in the clearing. She walks forward, her boots leaving shallow prints in the snow, the fine hairs of her fur coat floating and quivering. She nears the edge where the ground becomes scruffy with weeds and small trees before it drops down the side of the hill.
Another scream lifts out of The Wood and Snowy turns her head to the sound. She lifts both arms and spreads her fingers in the moonlight. And then things start to get interesting.
Snow begins to rise from the ground. It floats up toward her hands in tiny white bits. Then the snow just behind her drifts upward. All around her, all around the clearing, snowflakes are rising into the night. They lift higher and higher until they’re flitting past my window. It looks just like it’s snowing, except that it comes from the ground instead of the sky. An upside-down snowfall.
Snowy spreads her arms. The snowflakes rise faster, thicker, and start to swirl. Her power has reached The Wood where the snow is now floating out of the treetops. Bare patches of earth appear like bruises on the ground as she lifts the snow into the air.
The snow spirals around her, thickens and spreads, a cyclone that constantly grows. I can barely see Snowy, now, behind the whirling white. I step back because the snow is beating the right side of my window frame and shooting into the room. I grab the glass doors and tug them shut. What is she doing? It looks like a blizzard out there.
A blizzard….
I look at the snow stuck against the wall near my organ, dusting the pipes in sparkles. And at the window again. A blizzard. So dense and furious it can’t be seen through. You can’t walk in this kind of blizzard. You can’t even see what’s in front of you.
She’s blinding it. If something – the Beast or whatever – is chasing a young girl, it can’t see where it’s going, now. Neither can the young girl, of course, but it will give her a chance to hide or at least distance herself from her pursuer.
Snowy is trying to save her.
I hug my nightdress to my body, amazed. I had no idea Snowy could do something this big. She told me she was the reason our kingdom is always cold, but I never saw her pull a blizzard out of her sleeve, so to speak. Is the whole kingdom going through this? Can she really do that? For the first time ever, I feel a teensy bit afraid of Snowy.
And I’m shivering. I run on tiptoes down to our bedroom and dive under the blankets, huddling in a spot still partially warm from our bodies. I listen to Snowy’s blizzard swoop and wail around the tower. It’s almost as scary as the screaming was.
Oh yes. She is the Snow Queen.
I have to get out of here.
~*~ 7 ~*~
“Oh my stars, I’m exhausted.” Snowy slumps in a kitchen chair, her feet held up by the washtub, turned over. I’m standing by the stove, waiting for water to boil. She asked me to fix her a strong cup of tea. Under the circumstances, I decided not to give her an attitude about it.
“How do you do that?” I ask carefully. “How do you not freeze to death?”
Snowy smiles at me. She came in pale, with blue lips and fingers, but her eyes blazed triumphant. I think she’s proud of herself.
“It wasn’t easy,” she says. “I sustained it for an hour. Thought my arms were going to break off!”
“Do you have to lift your arms?” I ask.
“It helps. To direct the flow of magic. It’s always come from my hands.” She grimaces and massages her fingers.
“But how do you not freeze to death?”
“It’s heavy work, lifting that much snow. Like pushing rocks uphill for an hour. It keeps me warm. But I did start to shiver at the end. I was weakening.”
“Do you think it worked?” A sputtering trail of steam flows out of the kettle and I grab a dishcloth and lift it off the stove. I have Snowy’s cu
p ready on the kitchen table. I tip the kettle and pour, using a small wire strainer to catch the tea leaves. It smells hot and bitter, but that’s how she likes it.
Snowy sighs. “I don’t know. I’ll go out when the sun comes up and look around. Ask if anyone was in trouble last night. I hope the fairies were helping her too.”
“Why?” I set the cup on a saucer and carry it to her. “You don’t do stuff like that. You always say you don’t care about the kingdom.”
“I don’t,” Snowy says. “But it sounded like a girl your own age to me. For all I know, it could’ve been your sister. Our sister.”
“Oh….” I didn’t think about that. I tend to forget about my twin sister. After all, I have no memories of her. But when I do think of her, I feel resentful. Wherever she is, I’m sure her life is better than mine. I bet she lives in a village and has lots of friends. I bet she wasn’t locked away and raised as a prisoner. I bet she has seen things like horses and carriages and streets and shops. I bet she goes outside whenever she wants.
“Did she look like me?” I ask.
Snowy shrugs. “She was just a baby when I lost her. I ran out of the palace with both of you in my arms. Your little heads were right under my chin, you with red hair, she with brown. And then that horrible creature stole her from me - Cinderella’s fairy godmother.”
This part I’ve heard before. And that Snowy never saw them again. We don’t know where my sister is or what name was given to her. But the fairy – Godnutter, she’s called – is considered a disgrace by her kind. Fairies are supposed to do good things for people, not go around snatching their babies.
Snowy sips her tea and sighs at its warmth. I’m sitting on the kitchen table, my braid hooked over my swinging foot. I think about the blizzard again.
“Can you make it snow from the sky?” I ask.
Snowy shakes her head. “I can’t form clouds in the sky. That’s bigger than me. All I can do is freeze the moisture in the air and tell it where to go. The kingdom remains in winter because I keep the air as cold as possible. I barely have to think about it. This land is mine, whatever that lunatic at the palace may think. Hunter’s death froze my heart and the kingdom froze with it. It knows I am its queen.”
