by Taryn Tyler
And then I was free. I was running through the wood. My feet landed, one after the other against the ground but I couldn't feel the impact. I seemed to be floating through the trees, whisking over the fallen leaves like a piece of the wind.
And then I had a dagger in my heart and I was dead. The pain hardened inside my chest so that my ribs almost shattered. Cracks wove their way across my skin, each with its own unique stab of pain. I looked down and saw my feet –no my hooves –leaving soft, dark footprints in the snow as I kept moving, trying to pretend that I was still alive. Trying to pretend that I could still move. My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the earth.
Pale, soft hands rolled my eyes shut.
The creatures from the carvings in my room in the manor danced in a circle around me. I couldn't see them but I knew that they were there. I knew what they were doing. They shook their dark wings and reached for me with long hissing tongues. They whirred around and around, brushing against me with their claws, opening their mouths to reveal sharpened teeth poking out of black, rotting gums.
The largest creature winked at me. He lifted a double clawed finger up to his lips, motioning for my silence. He grinned. His lips spread wide apart, cracking, and dripping brown blood down his chin.
Or were those my tears? Seeping into the ice. Crystallizing onto the ground.
A woman laughed. Soft, gentle laughter brushing against the air like a painter's stroke. Kind laughter. Playful laughter.
And then there were the screams, rolling on and on in the distance, growing louder each second. I tightened my eyes, wanting it to stop. Why wouldn't it stop?
“Lost.” A child said.
I opened my eyes. The girl blinked at me. The girl I'd seen in Papa's manor. The girl I'd seen led through the corridors in the dead of night when Lucille had thought I was asleep. The girl I hadn't heard scream.
I woke, wet with tears and sweat. Bits of straw clung to my neck and cheek as I lifted myself up in the loft. The glow of the fire shifted off the walls. Rose stirred across from me. Her wrist almost touched her forehead in her sleep. I crept to the edge of the loft and peered down into the shadows of the cottage.
Otto sat on his knees next to the fire. He stared into the flames. At the future. At the past. Bits of soot clung to his nose and chin, dusting the red curls around his face.
“Otto.”
He turned, looking straight up at me, almost into me.
“Was I screaming?”
Otto shook his head.
The sting of salt water grazed my lips and tongue. I wiped it away with my palm but the tears kept pouring down my face like unstoppable screams. “I will teach you to throw knives.” I said “And when you come back in the summer with your soldiers I will teach them.”
Rose
I didn't go to meet Boris on the new moon but when I went to that place in the cliff the next day there were two words imprinted into the snow.
NEXT TIME
I didn't go the next new moon either. Or the one after that. Or even the one after that. But when spring came and Otto showed no sign of leaving I began to consider it. I grew tired of watching Snow and Otto practice knife throwing together in the yard. I grew tired of listening to them talk about Lucille and how she would pay for all that she had done. They didn't understand why I wouldn't join their plans. They didn't understand why I didn't hate her as much as they did. I felt myself drifting further and further away from them until I could hardly stand being at the cottage at all.
The trees offered some solace. I wandered through them, singing as I listened to them thrum from deep inside the earth. I asked them if they had been getting enough water, enough sunlight, if anyone had bothered them, how the squirrels nesting in their roots or the birds sleeping in their branches were. Few had many complaints. They had lived too many years to mind an inconvenience that would be gone by the end of the season. Still, they liked to be asked. They began to move their roots and branches out of the way as I passed them, as glad for the company as I was. There was a willow who would sometimes lift her roots, bending them into a perfect seat for me to rest on. It was a comfortable place to sit. I would sing to her, forgetting for a moment how alone I was.
Some days the animals would join me. They didn't have names the way Snow and I did. They didn't speak with words or ask me what I had had for breakfast. But if I closed my eyes I knew where they were. They would hear me calling and they would find me. The birds perched in the tangles of my hair. The squirrels ran in circles around my feet. The rabbits sniffed curiously at my fingers and the foxes stopped a few short paces from me and stared with wide knowing eyes.
It was the ghosts whose company I enjoyed the most. They understood why my song had grown so mournful. Still, I couldn't tell them how beautiful the sky was or that I couldn't wait for the summer berries to be ripe again. I couldn't tell them that I couldn't be a princess because I belonged here. All they understood were tears. Tears and the long, mournful melodies that sometimes soothed them.
It was still the afternoon of the new moon four months after Otto had joined us in the cottage. I returned from a romp in the wood. I placed my hand on the door, then stopped. Laughter came from inside. Otto's, soft and deep. There was humming.
Snow trying to hum anyway. Whatever melody it was supposed to be was obscured by the course, uneven way she jumped from note to note. Still, my ears lingered on the sound. The corners of my mouth lifted in an unwilling smile. I had tried to teach her to sing
--so had her tutors --but her music was as useless as her cooking.
Most of her cooking.
I crept over to the window and peered inside. Snow and Otto were dancing. He had one hand on her waist and the other bound inside her fingers, leading her around the tiny little cottage as if it were a ballroom made for nothing but the gentle rhythm of their steps.
Snow's voice may not have made music but her feet did. She glided alongside Otto in perfect unison, dipping and twirling. Both layers of her skirts spun outward then rested against her bare ankles. Against her bent knees. I'd been concentrating so hard on my own feet when she'd tried to teach me to dance that I hadn't realized how beautiful her movements were, how precisely and gracefully she melted from one position to the next. Like a goddess. Like a swan.
Otto didn't kick her shins. He didn't trip and pull her to the ground.
They should have been dancing in a ballroom, not a tiny little cottage that didn't even have a bed anymore. They should have been dressed in silk and dazed from too many courses of wine. Lucille had taken more from them than she had ever taken from me.
I stepped away from the window. They wouldn't thank me for interrupting. And what would I do if I joined them inside? Stand on the stool and watch? Spin around in my clumsy country feet?
I turned around and headed for the cliffs where Boris had said he would be waiting for me. The walk wasn't long and the ghost kept me company.
It was dark when I reached the cliffs. Like soot. Like the black center of an eye. Even the stars were blotted out by the thick foliage over my head. I stood at the edge of the cliff, imaging that I could see down. Imagining that there was no bottom.
I didn't see Boris when he appeared behind me. I didn't hear him. I just knew he was there. The same way I knew where the woodland creatures were. I felt him moving across the forest floor the same way I felt the night sky brush against my skin.
“Hello.” He said.
“Hello.” I turned around to face him, though neither of us could see the other in the darkness. I had expected a more enthusiastic greeting.
“I thought you would come.” I could hear his smile. His mad, ridiculous smile. “If I waited long enough. You don't trust me, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Good.” He lifted his hand. His fingers touched the curls running alongside of my face. “I am, without a doubt, the most dangerous thing in these woods.”
I laughed. “Hardly.”
He drew his hand a
way from my hair. “You don't believe me?”
I rested my hands on my hips. “I'm a witch, remember? The trees speak to me. The forest creatures come when I call them. I can light fire with my voice and I don't need light to see. If one of us should be afraid it should be you.”
Boris laughed. “You may be right. There's not much a mere man can do against that kind of charm. Come.” He dropped his voice to a whisper “You shouldn't stand so close to the edge.”
I took his hand and let him lead me away from the cliff. A stone rattled off the edge and dropped over the side. I listened, counting how many seconds before it hit the bottom. Twenty six. Twenty seven. It must have been a heavy stone.
“Do you hear water?” Boris asked.
“Of course.” I said. The brook widened to a river just before it met the cliffs. The crash of it pouring over the edge could be heard for miles like the purr of a giant cat.
“Let's find it.” Boris tightened his hand around mine and we followed the edge of the cliff, moving toward the sound of water. The steady pour rose to a roar as we got closer. We had to shout to hear each other speak.
We stopped when we reached the water. Drops of it sprayed up at me out of the darkness. I closed my eyes, memorizing where the sharp rocks were, where the deepest bits of water were.
Boris let go of my hand. He took off his cloak, then his shirt and dropped them in a heap on the ground.
I opened my eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Going for a swim.” There was that smile again. I could hear it in his voice. “Come with me?”
“You're mad.” I said, but the cold liquid rush of the water sounded more enticing every second. Even though it was only just past the last frost. Even though we were standing on top of a cliff in the dead of night. Or maybe because.
“You said it yourself.” Boris reminded me. “You don't need light to see by.”
That was me. How he planned not to fall onto a sharp rock when he hit the bottom was another matter. But I had already flung my cloak off and dropped it next to his.
“Do you want to go first or should I?” He asked.
“Together.” I said. We clasped hands again and approached the edge. The distance down was a little lower here but not much. I closed my eyes, trying to calculate the depth of the water. It was only just deep enough. If we landed feet first. If we didn't hit a pile of rocks. I took a step to the side, pulling Boris with me.
“Ready?” He asked.
“Ready.”
We jumped. The fall lasted only a second. It lasted forever. The cold chill of night ran its fingers through my hair, whispering over my arms and legs and neck. My heart lifted, bubbling up inside my throat. And then we splashed through the water's surface.
Cold. Colder than cold. It rushed over my head. It pushed against my arms and legs and skirt. It tried to leak into my lungs. I twisted, pulling my breastbone away from a sharp rock. I pulled my elbow in just before it grazed across another dagger edged stone.
Down. I was still tumbling down. Further and further as if the stream had no bottom. The water wasn't cold anymore. It was almost warm, lulling me to sleep with the force of its motion. I struggled not to draw breath.
My feet touched the soft and grainy ground. Boris let go of my hand, freeing it to pull myself up through the water. I kicked my toes into the gravel and then I was moving up. Slower now, zipping through the pull of the river, savoring the promise of breath in only a few short seconds.
I stopped. My skirts pulled at my hips, caught on the edge of a rock. Why hadn't I tied them around my waist before I jumped?
My lungs swelled with pain. They beat at my chest in anger at not being fed. I pulled back at my skirts then reached down to find the snag amidst the folds of floating fabric. My head swam with dizziness. My chest demanded air.
There. My fingers closed around the rough wool fabric caught between the rocks. I pulled. The fabric ripped and I was moving upward again.
Boris's hand found mine just as I burst through the surface. Cold air struck my face. I gulped it into my lungs then hiccuped out a procession of laughter, almost choking on the sound.
“What happened?” Boris asked. “I thought for a moment you'd turned fish.”
I grinned at him, shivering. My wet hair clung to my neck and face. “My dress caught in the rocks.”
“Come on.” He moved toward the shore, pulling me with him. “Let's get warm. I know a cave near here.”
My teeth chattered as I pulled myself out of the water. My head and limbs felt heavy. Drops of river rolled off my skin and out of my skirts. Boris and I left a trail of wet footprints leading up to a small cave hidden behind a collection of hawthorn bushes. The berries weren't ripe yet but I could smell the blossoms beginning to sprout as we crouched and crawled through the leaves and thorns. They scratched and prickled at my skin.
It was warm inside with plenty of room for both of us to stretch our legs or even stand if we had wanted to. Boris piled some kindling together in the center. “Can you really light fires with your voice?” He asked.
I answered with a quick hum. Deep. Sad. Dark, but full of energy. I felt the flames catch in the kindling, then spread with their own force. The cave glowed a soft shade of orange, darkened by our shadows against the earthen walls. A steady stream of smoke rose up over our heads like a silken thread, disappearing into the cracks in the earth above us.
Boris smiled, his lips crooked, his eyes mischievous. The smile was even more ridiculous than I remembered.
I moved closer to the flames, letting the heat scorch the surface of my skin. Shadows and stones littered the uneven ground. I touched a dark piece where the earth bent inward in a deep round curve.
“You shouldn't trust me, Rose.” Boris whispered.
I looked up at him. “You keep saying that. Why? Do you plan on running away again as soon as there's danger?”
Boris looked away. “You don't know what I am, Rose. You don't know . . . I told you I work at the manor. That's not true. At least . . . that's not everything.”
I leaned back against the wall, not taking my gaze from him. “Tell me the rest.”
He sighed. “I can't. You wouldn't . . . I don't know where to start.”
“Try.”
He closed his eyes. “I don't work at the manor. I live there. My mother is the queen.”
I stared at him. He was Lucille's son. Another blasted prince.
Boris opened his eyes. He looked straight at me, his smile gone. “My mother seduced my father to conceive me then killed him. She wanted a son and she always gets what she wants. I never had a choice. She made me what I am. A ---you shouldn't trust me.”
“I don't.” I said. The fire flickered. I looked down at the dark imprint in the ground then back at him. “You have a choice now. You don't have to go back to her. Not if you don't want to.” I didn't hate Lucille the way Otto and Snow did but it still made my skin crawl to be alone in a cave with her son.
He shook his head. “She finds people, Rose. No one can hide from her. Not forever.”
Snow did. Why had she never mentioned Boris before? Were there things about her life in the manor that she was still afraid to tell me? I looked back down at the dark imprint, fingering the shape's round edges.
“That's not all.” Boris said.
He had left me. All alone in the wood with a monster on the prowl. He had left me to find Gran's mangled body myself. I stared down at the dark imprint. Suddenly the shape seemed less arbitrary, less round and more blotted. There were smaller imprints scattered around the edge. Tiny, sharp little circles. Claw marks.
“I'm a wolf.” Boris said. “A were.”
Sick swirled inside my stomach. I looked up at him. Slowly. Afraid of the surges of fire coursing through me. “You killed Gran.” The words dropped out of my mouth one after the other like smooth, heavy river stones.
He nodded. All traces of his smile were gone. His head remained bent. As if he were tucking his nose in s
hame. As if shame would do him any good.
“Why did you bring me here?” I demanded. “To kill me?”
He shook his head. “Never. Why do you think it had to be tonight, on the new moon, when there was no chance of me turning? I told you not to trust me.”
I stared at him. A wolf. I could see a hint of wild hunger in his eyes. “You can't control it?” I asked, skeptical.
He shook his head. Drops of water rolled off his hair and splattered against my face. His wet hair stuck up around his ears like the hair on a dog's hunches. “Sometimes. It's unpredictable, but when there's no moon . . . that's the only night I'm fully human. The only night I can choose who I am. It's the night I choose to be here. My mother doesn't know.”
“You killed Gran.” I said again. “What did you choose that night?” I remembered her corpse laying in her bed with hollow eyes, smothered in blood and quilts. I remembered her throat, gashed open. Her ear falling away from her face.
“My mother wanted a monster, Rose. She chose my father because he was a wolf. I never had a choice.”
No choice. Like Greta had never asked me if I wanted to spin thread. Like the wood had never asked me if I wanted to be a witch. Like Otto had never asked me if I wanted to be his sister.
I stood up. I stared down at Boris in the hungry glow of the firelight. It flickered against the pale surface of his skin.
His lips lifted into a crooked hint of his smile. “When I look at you I know what I want to choose. I want to be human. I want away from my mother and the monster she's trained me to be but it's not so simple. She finds people. And the things I've done . . . if you knew, Rose. If you knew even half of it.”
He'd killed Gran. That was enough. Enough to make my stomach churn over and over as if it were trying to make butter. And yet . . . I couldn't hate him. Not the way I had when he was only an animal. Not with him gazing up at me with those wide, pleading eyes. I didn't want to hate him.
“I'm going home.” I turned around, crouching so I could fit through the mouth of the cave.
“Next new moon.” Boris said. “I'll be waiting.”
