by Taryn Tyler
Not quite a lie. A half truth.
“Constanze is dead.” Hans said. “She is dead because she fed you. She is dead because she kept you from eating what the queen had prepared for you.”
Dead. Gone. Because of me. Because of what I had seen.
Christmas, he'd said it tasted like, but I knew better. It had tasted like the powder Lucille had sprinkled it with. Just before she'd looked up at me, her green eyes glittering in a flawless smile that never touched her lips.
I stood still, unable to move or speak. I could hear Hans breathing less than a pace in front of me but the sound seemed far, far away. My breath tightened, wrenching what had been trapped in my chest since papa's death out like an old wash rag, rancid with soap.
Terror. Terror that had kept me in my chamber for months, hiding itself in grief. Terror that had been afraid to give itself a name, afraid to speak, to even remember the things that I had seen. So many things I didn't want to know.
“Lucille wants me dead.” My words hiccuped into the night, hardly audible in the darkness.
“It was meant to look like an accident.” Hans said. “The dead king's daughter taken by her own grief --but you've lasted longer than she expected. Desperation has made her bold.” He drew his dagger and lifted it over my head. It dripped from his fist like a piece of stalagmite.
I stepped back. I pulled my own little knife out of my cloak pocket. Hans had given it to me himself. One quick slice across the jugular, he'd told me. One slice in the right place and he would be dead. I gripped the hilt tight in my palm but I knew I could never hurt Hans. Not after so many early mornings when his teachings had been my only comfort.
“Run.” The word slithered out of his mouth, quick and hushed. “Run, Snow. As fast as you can. As far as you can. I make no promises about what will happen if I catch you.”
He didn't have to tell me again. I turned and I ran. My body thumped with the rush of my blood. My feet pounded against the forest floor. I didn't know or care where I was running to. I didn't know or care how far I had to go. I only knew I had to get away. Away from Lucile. Away from nightmares and the meaningless complexities of my rug. Away from the reaching claws of the creatures carved on my ceiling. Away from Boris and the pale woman and the cold silence that infected the manor halls.
Away from Hans.
I never heard him behind me but I knew he was there, moving closer every moment. I wouldn't hear him until his knife was already singing through the air as it had on so many gray mornings of practice. Only I wasn't a straw man. I wouldn't be there to see him rip it back out of my chest.
Dark branches tangled together, blocking my path. I dodged over and under and around thick knobs and thin, stinging vines. My feet grew numb. The gauzy silk of my shift caught in a mesh of thorns. The threads ripped apart from my wrist up to my shoulder. I didn't realize the flesh beneath it had been punctured until I saw the blood drip onto the snow in front of me. The ice crunched like tiny shards of glass beneath my feet. I plummeted forward, numb of everything but the desire to keep moving.
The bushes stirred with creatures of the night. Or were those my own reckless steps? Every frightening tale my tutors had ever told me about forests screamed for attention inside my head but I paid them no mind. What did it matter if something awful jumped out of the shadows to gobble me up? I would likely freeze to death by morning anyways.
Burs clung to the edge of my gown and cloak. Branches scraped across my skin, stinging my cheeks and forehead. The trees began to thin, exposing me to the eyes of the wild as well as my hunter. A clearing loomed before me. Before I had fully comprehended it, I was standing in it. The dark shadows of a cottage stretched against the ground in the blinding glare of the moonlight.
I stopped. The night echoed around me, still and pregnant with horror. My heart pounded inside my chest, leaking pain into my neck and belly until I thought it would burst with soreness. A gust swept through my hair and gown, prickling my skin with its teeth.
How long had I been running? I looked to either side of me, listening for the signs of Hans I knew I would never hear.
A shrill cry shot through the night. It vibrated through me like the sounds scrambling to escape from inside my own soul. Grief. Horror. Anger. Helplessness. The sound screamed through my ears into my breast, my stomach, my toes.
My own lips were still, my lungs frozen stiff with fear and weariness. My side and chest ached. Past exhausted, I climbed over the shambles of a fence that surrounded the cottage and made my way through the yard.
Vines wound their way across the ground like shadowy serpents in the dark, dead or dormant for the winter. Were those footsteps pattering against the earth? Was that my own deep breathing or the panting of some forest creature? I only knew it couldn't be Hans. He would never make that much noise. I gripped my knife, ignoring the tightening itch of my own sweat that covered the hilt.
The cry sounded again. It was closer now, muffled only by the thin cottage walls. I should have been moving away from it but somehow I couldn't. Not when it had felt so much like a cry wrenched from my own being.
I stopped when I reached the cottage door. It was open, creaking back and forth on its hinges. A thick darkness loomed inside.
“Hello.” My voice came out stronger than I expected. I pushed against the door. The wood groaned, opening bit by bit beneath the pressure of my hands. I stuck my head into the blackness and stepped inside.
A girl with thick red curls and a red cloak whirled around to face me from across the room. I could only just make out her face in the dim light the door let in. Round hazel eyes. A thin, curved nose. I recognized the glazed look in her eyes. The lifeless half circle her mouth made. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry but she had forgotten how.
I wished that I could show her.
Then I saw the gore in the bed next to her. What had once been an old woman lay crumpled and lifeless among the quilts.
“Close the door.” The girl's whisper was urgent. “Close it now.” Her eyes were fixed on the space behind me just a little to the left. There was that heavy sound of breath again, unmistakably real and far too even to be my own.
I turned around.
Bright amber eyes blinked in the darkness outside. Moonlight gleamed against pale yellow fangs. Dark tufts of fur raised along haunches bigger than any I'd ever seen in waking life.
I stepped back into the cottage. I reached for the door. The wolf creature sprang forward. His weight pushed against mine through the splintered frame of the door, flinging me onto the floor. I landed with a crack against the wood. My back and shoulder sickened with pain.
The wolf creature stepped inside. He brushed past me, approaching the red girl. Slowly. Languidly. He released a low growl. Almost a purr. The hunger in his eyes was not the wild need of an animal. It was calculated. Patient. Infected with greed and desire. The eyes of a man.
The red girl thrust out her chin. She clenched both her hands into fists. “You killed Gran.” The accusation crackled with fire.
The wolf creature paced back and forth, moving closer to her with every step. His growl deepened.
I gripped the hilt of my knife and pulled myself to my feet. The blade was small but sharp. Deadly if grazed across the right artery. I wasn't sure I could puncture the wolf creature's brain even if I did manage a thrust through his eye. Even his throat was risking too much on chance. But his belly. If he pounced on me I might have just enough time to jab upward in the right place before he did any lasting damage to my flesh.
I took a deep breath. My heart hammered in my chest. My limbs felt like a pudding boiled wrong but I forced them to move.
It happened in the fall of an ax blade. I screeched, rushing toward the wolf creature. Claws scratched against the floor. Fur blurred across the room. Teeth sank into the side of my neck, tearing pain and the salt scent of blood down into my shoulder. I fought to shove it out of my mind as I pushed the knife upward. The blade tore into the soft flesh of the wolf
creature's belly but before I could twist it into his bowel tissues he leapt back.
The wolf creature released a yelp of pain followed by a long, angry howl. It wasn't until the red girl rushed to my side that I realized that I was screaming too. She grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up onto my feet. My head clouded from the motion. The room swirled like the useless weave of my chamber's rug. My knife dropped from my slackened fingers, clattering against the wooden floor, splashing into the same thick wolf's blood that dripped down my palm and wrist. My own warm blood leaked down the back of my gown, spreading into the sleeve of my chemise.
“Run.” I hissed at the red girl. If she was quick she could make it to the door before he got his bearings back.
“Are you daft?” She hissed back. “Not without you.” She wrapped my arm around her neck, supporting my limp, bleeding side. I scuttled with her toward the door, too weak with blood loss to protest. The door wasn't far. Only a few more steps.
The wolf sprang back to life. Fur whirred overhead. There was a creaking of wood against wood as his paws pressed against the door, slamming it shut. Streams of moonlight disappeared along with our only escape.
“The loft.” The red girl whispered. “Let's hope he can't climb.”
We scrambled toward the ladder in the deepened dark. The red girl lifted me onto the first stave then hoisted herself up after me. Her arm clenched tight around my stomach. I could feel her soft rapid breath against my neck, close, almost comforting even in our panicked scramble.
The wolf creature sprang again. He landed above us on the ladder. Tufts of fur from his tail flicked across my eyes. The ladder wobbled backward and fell.
China shattered. Wood groaned. A kettle rolled out of the fireplace, barely missing the tip of my fingers as it thumped past. I lay on the ground again. Broken ladder spokes pressed against my arm. My head sang from the force of the fall. The red girl sat up beside me. The wolf creature rose beside her, snarling.
My eyes rolled toward my knife, still lying on the floor in the sticky smear of blood. Mine and the wolf creature's. I tried to lift my arm but it was pinned by the weight of the ladder. I closed my eyes, fighting against a fresh rush of pain. I opened them. The lines in the room began to run together again in a smudged, leaky mess. The remaining shards of my consciousness wavered.
I slid my foot across the floor, reaching for the knife hilt, but the wolf creature was already standing over me. His hot breath bled into my lungs, seeping into my wounds like fire.
“Get away from her.” The red girl jumped to her feet. She pulled something sharp and shiny out of her pocket.
The wolf creature turned toward her. He jabbed his head into her stomach, flinging her across the room. The object rolled out of her hand among the fragments of broken china.
I stretched my toes toward my knife, hooking them around the hilt while the wolf's attention was on the red girl.
He whirled back towards me. His amber eyes swarmed with fury.
I reached for the china shards scattered over the floor. My hand closed over a broken saucer. I lifted it off the ground and flung it at the creature. It slid off him, barely scraping the edge of his snout.
The wolf creature shook his head. He snarled, showing the sharp dagger points of his teeth.
I slid my foot upward, wincing at the sound the knife made against the ground. I reached for another dish. This time my fingers closed around the ragged edge of a mug. The newly broken china sliced through my skin. I flung it at the wolf creature. It crashed against the side of his snout, leaving a thin trail of blood above his nose. He moved forward, undaunted.
I turned my head to look at the red girl. My lips wouldn't move. 'Run' I tried to tell her with my eyes but she stood where she was, flinging broken dishes at the wolf, screaming for him to stop.
The wolf creature stopped just in front of me. He sank his teeth into my boot and jerked my foot away from the knife. He shook my foot back and forth in his jaw. My bones rattled. My ankle twisted. I tried to pull away but the motion only ground his teeth further into the leather of my boot and into my flesh.
The red girl screamed. The room shook with the sound, rocking up and down with the jerking movements of my leg in the wolf's jaw.
Footsteps pattered toward me. No. She was going the wrong way. Ink swirled before my eyes so that I couldn't tell one color from another. I steeled myself, determined not to give way to oblivion. Not yet.
A shout from outside. Fists pounding against the door. Another cry. Wood splintered. The floor shook with the force of a new pair of firm, determined footsteps creaking across the floor. My body moaned with nausea.
“Out. This is my job.” I barely recognized the voice through the sickening haze that fogged my brain. Short and rough as tree bark.
The wolf stopped shaking my leg. He growled then sank his teeth further into my foot. He pulled them out with a sudden jerk, ripping open the flesh. My leg dropped against the floor with a sickening thud of pain.
More ink swirled above my head. Red. Black. The ground heaved beneath me. A pair of hands touched my wrist then the side of my jaw. Probably the only two places on my body that didn't ache.
The wolf creature released one final howl then paws scurried against the wood. The vibrations jostled my bones, hammering pain into my dizzy mind. I closed my eyes, waiting for them to disappear and then I was only listening to the mad babblings of my dreams.
Rose
The huntsman helped me bury Gran. He found a spade outside the cottage and dug a deep grave at the edge of the clearing where the shade of the woodland could just reach it. I worked beside him. I tried to think of the playful crinkles around Gran's eyes, the hoarse bark of her laughter, but all I could see was the carnage that had been in her bed when I'd arrived at the cottage. It might have been Gran's body but it was nothing like Gran.
By dawn the grave was finished. I helped the huntsman drag the mangled flesh out of Gran's bed. He wrapped her in her bloodied quilt. I wondered if he treated the animal carcasses of his trade with such tenderness. We lowered her into the hole and packed the earth over her.
The grave seemed to fill up quicker than it had been dug. As if the earth were still hungry. As if one life had not been enough to sate it. The winter sun drizzled overhead, bright and cool and damp. The surface of the snow melted off the tree branches, dripping the tears I couldn't shed myself onto the ground. A bitter wind swept over the clearing and I suddenly realized how fatigued I was. How it almost hurt just to stand upright.
When we were finished the huntsman looked at me from across the grave, waiting to see if I had any kind of prayer. I didn't have one. I should have at least cried but I didn't.
Greta, I remembered all at once. Greta would have to be told. The huntsman leaned the spade against a tree trunk and turned toward me, arms crossed. I couldn't tell if the shadows under his eyes were rings or smudges of dirt like the rest of his face was covered in.
“Don't go back to the village.” The huntsman said. “There is nothing for you there. It isn't safe.”
I almost laughed. “Not safe? The village?” What dangers could possibly lurk in the day to day drudgery of spinning thread and buying milk? It was the forest that had killed Gran. Had almost killed me. The forest with its ghosts and weres and hobgoblins. The forest I should never have stepped foot in. I had been warned. Ever since I was a child I had been warned of the dangers of these woods. No one came here.
Only . . . Gran would have died whether I had come or not. Wasn't it better to at least know? I swallowed. My throat swelled with pain. I wasn't sure that it was.
“Stay here.” The huntsman said again. “Look after Snow. She will look after you too once she heals. She's stronger than she looks.” His face was still and unreadable but a smile crept into his voice right at the end. Like a master craftsman unable to hide the pride of his work.
“Snow.” I repeated the name. Hardly a name at all really. Fragile, as if it would melt off my lips and d
isappear. The noble girl had been small but she'd looked anything but fragile facing the wolf creature with nothing but a little knife. She had held her ground with the stubbornness of a glacier.
The huntsman turned and headed into the trees.
“Wait.” I limped after him. My limbs resisted speed regardless of what my mind told them to do. “The wolf. What if it comes back?”
“It won't.” The huntsman didn't look behind him. He strode forward at a steady pace, moving further and further away from me.
“I can't stay here.” I shouted, breathless from trying to catch up to him. “Greta will worry. She'll . . .” Kill me herself most likely once she realized I'd left without her permission. The huntsman kept moving. I tried to catch up to him but his strides were long and quick. The distance between us grew further and further. “Come back.” I wasn't even sure he could still hear me. “I don't even know how to dress the girl's wounds.”
“Your Gran left books.” The huntsman's voice carried through the trees, surprisingly clear. I could barely see him now through the thickening trunks and branches.
How would he know what my Gran had left? He couldn't have had time to ransack her cottage last night between scaring off the wolf and cleaning up the blood and broken dishes. I stopped, unable to move another step. I could only just see his shadow as it slipped behind a great oak up ahead and then he was gone.
“I can't read.” I muttered, breathless with exhaustion. I doubted even the trees could hear me.
I leaned back against a tree trunk. The bark pressed through my cloak and bodice, rough and knobbly against my spine. A cold wind rustled through my knotted mess of curls. I breathed deep, absorbing the chill of the winter morning. My eyelids fluttered closed. A soft hum rose from my lips. One of Gran's tunes. I couldn't remember when she had sung it or if it had ever had any words. It vibrated deep in my throat, filling my whole body with its sound. The earth filled with memories of Gran just as the hole the huntsman and I had dug had filled itself with her body.
