Snow Roses

by Taryn Tyler

  Because I knew she didn't need me the way she thought she did.

  Maybe she knew that now too.

  “Lucille was wrong.” Otto said “I will love again.”

  Then I remembered what had been wrong with the gardens, why they had seemed so dead. The roses, red and white, tangled together in a long vine. The roses I had sung into being by wishing before I even knew I had the power in me. The roses that bloomed every day of the year, wide and soft and fresh as if it were the beginning of summer.

  They hadn't been blooming.

  Snow

  “ It's unmarked.” Otto said.

  “Yes.” I stared down at the soft rounding edges of the grave where the snow rose over the earth. It was a soft bed, a quiet place to sleep despite the cold, and close to the cottage as if even in death she couldn't stray far from it.

  “Does Rose ever come here?”

  I looked up at the man standing next to me near the edge of the forest. He looked nothing like the red bear. Nothing like the friend who nuzzled me in the cold of winter and watched me practice throws. I gazed past him into the trees. There were so many shadows even in the daylight, each covered with tiny pieces of ice. “I've never seen her here but . . . sometimes she goes on walks by herself. Maybe she comes here then.”

  “Maybe.” Otto said. “Why is the grave unmarked?”

  The wind whirred around us, tangling the loose threads of my hair. I pulled them out of my face. They stuck in my fingers. “I don't know.”

  Otto knelt. He pressed his hand into the snow. It looked small on top of the cold, icy mound, almost like a child's hand-print. “Her Gran. My nurse.” He stood and dusted snow crystals off his hand. They sprinkled onto the ground, disappearing into the thick layers of white. His face was so much like Rose's. He even set his jaw tight with determination the way she did when she had made a decision. He turned toward me. “Rose said you are hiding from Lucille too.”

  I nodded.

  He looked back down at the grave, then turned around and headed back toward the cottage. I followed him.

  Rose wasn't inside. She had started the laundry but then abandoned it, leaving a pile of our stockings on the floor and my extra shift soaking in a bucket of ice-cold suds. Our bedding drip dried from the washing line she'd strung across the room.

  I turned to look at Otto. “I think you've been a bit of a shock to her.”

  Otto stared at the dripping cottage, tense, distracted. “I've been a shock to myself.”

  I finished the laundry and Otto and I left to find something alive to put in our stew. We brought the rabbit traps, but I hoped that with the two of us we could bring home a deer.

  “How?” Otto asked. “We don't have a bow.”

  “I have a knife.” I said.

  Otto looked unconvinced. He held on to the traps as we moved through the trees in silence, listening for the sounds of our prey. We couldn't see the ghosts in the daylight but we could hear them from time to time, whispering with the trees. “Lost.” They said over and over, a softly hissed warning caught and tangled into the wind, sticking to our ears like dusty cobwebs.

  “How do you get used to it?” Otto asked.

  “They won't hurt us,” I assured him. “Rose says that they are our protectors.”

  Otto shook his head. “Rose scares me.”

  I turned to face him. “Why? She's your sister.”

  Otto ran his fingers through his curls, raising both eyebrows. “She talks to ghosts and lights fires with her voice. Doesn't that scare you?”

  I shook my head. “Never. She talks to the trees too. And the animals. If she were here with us she could call a deer so that we wouldn't even have to look for him.”

  “Really?” Otto stared at me with interest. “Would she?”

  I shook my head again. “She doesn't like to see things killed.”

  Otto and I had already set up three of the cage traps, hidden neatly in the right kinds of shrubbery, when I first saw the deer tracks. They were minted into the snow like a scattering of summer leaves. I turned to Otto, placing my finger to my lips. Otto abandoned the last of the traps and we followed the thin, whisking trail of prints through the trees.

  The tracks led us through a thick mess of blackberry bushes with thorns iced over like tiny knives and leafless branches weighed down with heavy globs of snow. The bushes tore and scratched at my cloak and skirts as Otto and I made our way through them, trying not to crunch the snow with our heavy boots. Oaks canopied the sky overhead, obscuring the tracks with their shadows, but we moved forward. Slowly. Carefully. Following the light brushes of prints until we reached a clearing.

  I stopped. I knew this place. It was where Rose and I had lit the bonfire at midsummer. I stepped back, not wanting to be there. It made me wish . . .

  “Lost,” a ghost whispered over my shoulder. I tried to ignore the cold shiver that ran through me. A whisper of fear, tiny enough to melt against my skin.

  I turned to look at Otto. He stopped at the edge of the bushes beside me. His human bear eyes were intent, scanning the clearing for any other signs of life. His nose scrunched exactly the same way Rose's had when she had first begun to make sense of the writing in her Gran's books.

  Otto caught my glance. He smiled. “What is it? Did you see the deer?”

  I shook my head, pointing to the untouched white of the clearing stretched out in front of us. It glittered in the thick piles of sun like hallowed ground. “The snow iced over. There are no more tracks.”

  Otto twitched his nose. I wondered if he were resisting an urge to sniff the ground as he would have as a bear. “Then we'll have to search the edges of the clearing for them. If he isn't here he went back into the wood somewhere.”

  I nodded and stepped out into the clearing. The ground was hard, frozen solid beneath my feet. I almost slipped. Otto put his arm around my waist to help hold me upright.

  Something stirred inside the trees.

  Otto let go of my waist. He straightened, turning his head from one side to the other. He looked at me. “The deer?”

  I shook my head. “The tracks weren't fresh enough for that.”

  The bushes moved again.

  “Rabbits then.” Otto said but the sound was more like footsteps than scampering. The hurried footsteps of two tiny feet.

  “Hobgoblins.” I said.

  The word had hardly slipped out of my mouth when our ill mannered friend stepped out from behind a willow tree. The ice crystals clinging to the dormant vines dangled over the top of his head. He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at us. His matted gray beard draped over his wrists, smothered in bits of snow. The tiny wrinkles on his forehead bunched together like bark knots. “Where are my pearls?”

  “Your pearls?” I asked. “They belong to --”

  “You can have them.” Otto stepped in front of me, his voice eager. “If you tell me where you found them.”

  The hobgoblin's expression did not change. He tapped his foot. He looked from Otto to me and then back to Otto. “Will you tell the witch?”

  “No.” Otto promised. “I won't breathe a word to her.”

  The hobgoblin sighed. I would never have imagined so much air could be kept in his little lungs. “Meet me here tomorrow. Bring the pearls. I will tell you then.” He turned. The bushes rustled. An icicle fell off the willow vines, crashing into pieces against the ground, then he was gone.

  We found the deer tracks again on the other side of the clearing. They were fresher here without any collapsed bits of snow around the edges. The droppings were fresher too.

  “It's a young deer.” I said “The prints are pressed lightly and the hooves are pointed in the front.”

  “Who taught you to hunt?” Otto asked.

  “An old friend.” I said, remembering Hans's quiet, meticulous lessons in the still hours of the morning. It seemed a lifetime ago. How much had he really risked by letting me go? I didn't know what freedom was until he had sent me out into the wood alone
.

  We followed the tracks deep into the wood, stopping only now and again to examine rubbings against the younger trees. Otto had brought turnip and mushroom pies but we were gaining on our quarry too quickly to want to stop and settle the rumbling in our bellies. When it started to snow and we could still see the hoof marks, minted crisply into the mask of white, I pulled my knife out of my belt. We moved forward more carefully than ever, peering into the trees for signs of life.

  “There.” Otto touched my elbow. He pointed ahead, just a little to the left.

  The deer was barely visible through the trees. He had his nose to the ground, looking for bits of green beneath the layers of snow.

  I lifted my knife and edged toward him, one silent step at a time. When I was close enough to take aim I planted my feet into the ground and pulled the knife back behind my ear. I held the blade steady, tilted upward, just a little to the right.

  The deer looked up.

  No hesitation. I flung the knife into the air. It whizzed through the cold, landing hilt deep into the animal's throat. His eyes widened in surprise. His legs wobbled, then he toppled onto the ground. Flakes of snow scattered into the air as he hit the earth. I waited a moment, letting the bulk of the blood drain into the ice before we approached. There was no point in watching him struggle the last short breaths of his life away.

  “I've never seen anything like that.” Otto said.

  It was late afternoon when we returned to the cottage. Rose was still nowhere to be seen. Otto followed me to the shed and set to work, helping me skin and carve the deer carcass.

  “This is what I was doing the night I met you.” I told him. “Only it was a pair of rabbits.”

  Otto laughed. “Did I try to take them from you?”

  “No.” I pulled a carving knife off the wall and handed it to him. “Not until after Rose had cooked them into a stew. You scared us nearly to death. We thought you were a wolf.”

  It was dark by the time we finished. Rose hadn't returned. Otto seared three long cuts of venison in the fireplace while I bathed. They were still hot when I devoured mine, hungrier than usual from the day's work. I glanced at the remaining two cuts cooling on the table next to a bowl of apples. One for Rose when she decided to come back and one for Otto when he finished his bath.

  “Is it too cold?” I asked him through the curtains. I had tried to hurry but there had been so much blood and the warmth of the water had been so delicious.

  “It's perfect.” He promised.

  I picked up an apple, balancing it for a moment in my hand, but I was too tired to eat anymore. I set it down again and let my eyes droop for a moment.

  I woke with Otto standing over me. I lifted my head. My neck was sore. A glittering stream of white light leaked in from the window, spilling over the floor. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and twisted my neck to see Otto more clearly.

  “You were crying.”

  “What?” I turned my neck the other way.

  “In your sleep.” Otto said. “You cried.” He reached for my face as if he would wipe what remained of the tears away then pulled his hand back.

  “Nightmares.” I said. “I can't remember them now.”

  Otto knelt next to the chair. He placed his hands on my shoulders. His grip was gentle but firm. Almost authoritative. “It's because of Lucille isn't it?”

  I said nothing.

  “We have to fight her, Snow.” His voice was urgent, as if all the world depended on what I would say next. “We have to take back the things she took from us.”

  I shook my head. “We will die.” Like Papa. Like Dana and Elise and Constanze. Traces of the nightmares fluttered back through my head. Traces that took no shape but made me want to close my eyes again and shake my head until they went away.

  Otto sighed. He let go of my shoulders and shook his head. “Better death than fear. I will fight her, whether you want to help or not. She's taken too much from us. All of us. When spring comes --as soon as the snow melts-- I will go back to the north. I will gather whatever remains of the castle garrison and together we will defeat Lucille.”

  “Your soldiers will all be loyal to her now.” I said.

  “Not all of them.” Otto insisted. “We had a very loyal garrison.”

  “Then they will be dead.” I said.

  “Please, Snow. Believe that I can do this. Help me do it.”

  I stared at him, confused. “What help would I be?”

  “You know the manor. And you are an expert with a knife. ”

  I shook my head. “I'm a hunter not a soldier.”

  “Then teach me.” Otto said “I can teach my soldiers when I find them. We will need stealth. A way to attack that the queen won't see coming.”

  I shook my head again. He was mad if he really thought he had any kind of chance against Lucille.

  That day I made Otto a waistcoat and overcoat out of the pale blue fabric we had bought in Copshire. Rose, who had come home at last during the night, had hoped to make us both new dresses but there was only enough fabric left for a single sash. Rose trimmed and hemmed the edges then sat across from me, embroidering violets and vines on it with purple and green thread while I stitched the finishing touches into Otto's waistcoat. Every few seconds the sound of a mason hitting the roof cut into the silence. Otto, patching up the leak in the roof. I told him that I could manage it myself but he had insisted.

  “ Do princes even know how to fix roofs?” Rose asked. “I thought they had their own thatchers and carpenters for that.”

  “Princes are soldiers.” I said “They learn what they need to to lead men into battle.”

  She looked back down at the sash in her lap. I watched her pull the thread through in silence. The wind whistled outside, sending a shiver of cold through the hole Otto hadn't finished repairing. I'd never seen her concentrate so hard on anything before. Almost as if she had forgotten her own existence in the precision of each stitch.

  “Rose.” I said.

  She didn't look up.

  “Rose, are you all right?”

  She kept stitching.

  “You're so quiet.” I said.

  Her head snapped up. Her eyes flared, almost the way they did before she lit the fireplace with her hums. “Can't I be quiet if I want?”

  I blinked, startled by her sudden irritation. “Yes. Of course. It's just . . . not like you.”

  Rose looked back down at the sash. Soot sifted in the fireplace. Otto's mason hammered against the roof. The wind howled. The windows rattled. She pressed her lips together. Finally she looked up. “Otto tells me he wants to fight Lucille.”

  I nodded. His proposal had been nagging at me all day. I had been hiding from Lucille for so long. I had never even wondered if I could defeat her. I couldn't --of course I couldn't -- but I had never even wondered.

  Rose snorted. “If he believes that I will help him simply because he says that I am his sister, he is mistaken.”

  “Aren't you tired of being afraid?” I asked.

  Her eyes burned, staring straight through me, scorching a hole into my mind. “Who's afraid?”

  Not her. Never her. It had been a silly question.

  “I am.” I looked down at the unfinished waistcoat in my lap, fingering with the thread but not pulling a stitch. “I let Lucille do things

  –terrible, terrible things --because I was afraid she would eat my heart. I was afraid she would poison me. I was afraid she would make me dance in her iron shoes. I did nothing. I said nothing when I should have spoken. And then I ran.”

  Rose shook her head. “You didn't run. You survived.”

  “I didn't even want to do that.” I remembered the tempting sweetness of the fruit Lucile had sent up to my room that last day. How I had longed for oblivion, for sleep without nightmares.

  “But you did.” Rose said. “You are strong, Snow. I can see that, even if Otto can't.”

  I looked back up at Rose. “I ran. I'm still running. We both are.”

/>   Rose set the unfinished sash down onto the table between us. “Snow, don't let Otto use your suffering for his revenge.”

  I clenched my left hand as if the familiar handle of my knife rested there. “It's my revenge too. I have every reason to hate Lucille.”

  “You've decided to fight with him then?”

  I bit my lip. “I don't know. I only know that Lucille took Papa and everything else I ever knew away from me and then sent me into the wilderness to die. She took your birthright too, Rose.”

  The door burst open. Otto stepped in, trailing dribbles of melting snow onto the floor. He shook the delicate flakes out of his hair and hung Rose's cloak up on the hook. I almost laughed. He looked for the first time since he had changed almost like the cold, wild animal who had first wandered into the cottage.

  The three of us ate supper in complete silence, listening to the structureless howls of the wind outside. Rose went to bed before we started on the roasted apples and I was left to show Otto how to roast them myself. They turned blacker than they should have and I burnt my fingers pulling them off the fire. Otto knelt next to me, blowing on my fingertips to cool them.

  It was dark out, the lightless night of the new moon, and for a moment I thought I heard the chilling call of a wolf. My neck and foot and shoulder ached with the memory of their wounds. I touched the thin, silken scars that ran across my shoulder to remind myself that that was all that remained of the gash that had once been there, and bit into the warm, tender apple flesh.

  I slept hard that night and dreamed long.

  I dreamed that the vines of a dead rose bush wound their way around me, holding me still, grinding their thorns into my flesh. Drips of blood tickled their way over my skin, scattering onto the ground beneath me like a gentle pattering of rain. I hovered over the ground, suspended, unable to move, unable to speak. I tried to cry out for help but sounds withered inside my throat, choking me until I could no longer breathe. The vines pulled tighter and tighter around me. The thorns cut deeper, scraping the surface of my bones.