by Taryn Tyler
The silky monotone of her voice stopped. The wheel kept spinning, dragging her thoughts on into the almost silence, turning them over and over inside my mind. I shivered then shook my head. The wool moved in my fingers, leaving a glitch in the thread. “That's not true.” I said. “My Gran was old and she was beautiful. She laughed. She danced.”
Her joy had made her beautiful. Her love.
“Then she was fortunate to have had you, blinded by your love for her.” Her voice grew terse, hints of anger or mockery pushing against the careful, syllabic lilt. She stood, brushing her skirt down, freeing it of wrinkles. “Enough spinning. You've done well. Only one hitch and you chose the most well carded wool. If the queen is pleased with the thread you will have work to keep you awake and thinking for weeks. Let me clean that cut for you.”
I lifted my feet off the pedals and let go of the wool then stood and followed her to a pitcher of water set out on a high table near the corner of the room. She sprinkled salt into a bowl and poured the water in after it, swirling and swishing them together inside the pewter. “Pricks and cuts are very common down here, as you might imagine. We are kept prepared.”
I gave her my hand. She peeled off the wool strip and dipped my hand down in the water. The cut stung. Like nettles. Like bee knives. I bit my lip, holding back a gasp. Bits of red floated off into the water in an inky cloud, dark at first, then paler and paler until I could no longer tell it apart from the murky liquid.
“You didn't get this from spinning.” The woman ran her thumb over my finger, just next to the wound. “How did you get it?”
“A broken cup.” I didn't say that I had broken it on purpose or that I had used my blood to write Snow a warning. I was wasting so much time with this woman. “Do you really believe that no one will love you when you are old?” I asked because it seemed to be the only subject that interested her and I didn't want to sound overly inquisitive about the queen.
“I know that no one will. Men rule the world, child. They will always believe that they are stronger than us. They will always believe that they are wiser. What do we have left to offer them when we are no longer beautiful? It is the only power we are allowed.” The stroke of her thumb against my finger grew softer, slower.
I pulled my hand out of the water and shook it dry. Bits of water brushed against my nose and cheeks. “Shall we show the queen the thread?” I asked.
The woman smiled. Her eyes glittered like the forest at sunset. “Of course. Hand me the needle. I will take it to her at once.”
Lucille was in the manor. That at least was something. She might have sent men after Snow but she hadn't gone herself. And there had been no men in the wood. If they were searching they were searching in the wrong place.
I walked back to the spinning wheel, reaching for the needle covered in fine white thread. Like spider silk. I pulled it off the neck of the spinning wheel. The cool, silver-colored steel touched the open wound on my finger.
It tingled. It stung.
Involuntarily, I dropped the needle. I turned to look at the woman with an apologetic smile. She watched me, still smiling.
My finger went numb. My hand was tingling now, then my wrist, then my arm.
I looked down at the needle, lying on the ground with pure white thread wound around it. Poison. How had I not guessed? This woman, smiling at me, urging me to hold on to every ounce of power I had, was Lucille –somehow, despite her age –and she had poisoned me. How would I ever warn Snow now?
I turned and stepped toward the door. I pressed my weight down into my knee. It gave way. I wobbled and fell to the ground, barely able to catch myself with the palm of my hand --the one that hadn't touched the needle. That one dangled at my side, slack and unmoving. My skin was hot, my insides cold. I could hardly move.
Suddenly I remembered the ghost girl. The one whose heart Lucille had eaten. The burning pain in her chest. How she had struggled and struggled, unable to move as a knife blade sliced into her. This poison wouldn't kill me. I wouldn't be released that painlessly.
Down on my knees, my stomach swirling with sickness, my vision blurred, forcing myself to stay conscious, I looked up at the queen. At Lucille. “Power isn't everything.” I said.
She stepped toward me. Her smile didn't change. Her dark brown curls swished and swayed around her perfect neck and chin. “It is. You have much of it. I can feel it in the air around you. Raw, unbridled power, there for me to take.”
And then I couldn't move at all. The floor pressed hard into my face. My head ached and ached and ached. I felt drool drizzling out of my mouth onto my chin but I couldn't move to wipe it away.
I was conscious and then I wasn't and then I was again. There was blackness, everywhere inside me. Blackness instead of a fire. Blackness instead of a song. Blackness instead of a heart. Blackness instead of a mind. I wasn't sure who I was. I wasn't sure what I was doing. My arm twisted under my chest. My elbow stuck into my gut. It hurt.
People were shouting. There was an argument. Someone didn't want me on the floor. I tried to get up. I couldn't move. How long had I been here? How long had I not been here?
More shouting. The room swam, teetering back and forth, up and down. Feet clattered around me. Two pairs. Three pairs. Six. And then only one. Hands gripped firmly around my waist, dragging me away.
I don't remember how I got to the room. I don't remember being stretched out on the sofa or hearing the lock to the door click shut.
I just remember his lips, pressing down onto mine, hard, desperate, greedy. His tongue, wiggling inside my mouth. His whole body, stretched out on top of mine. His hot, sickening touch, pouring into my lungs, choking out my breath, rubbing against my stomach and back.
I tried to scream. I tried to kick and writhe and pull his eyes out with my fingers but Lucille's poison held me still, unable to move, unable to summon the song, dying inside me. I tried to melt his flesh off of his bones.
I felt his hands run down the nape of my neck, his fingers dig into the back of my shoulders, his tongue flicker between my breasts. I felt him pull up my skirt and push open my thighs.
He didn't try to be gentle. Why would he? There was nothing I could do to stop him.
Snow
I sat in the dark, waiting. Otto had said that he would be back as soon as he told Rose why I wouldn't be home. He wouldn't let me go with him. He wouldn't let me leave the hovel. “This is the safest place you could be.” He had insisted, over and over. “She knows you're alive now. She doesn't know where you are.”
But I hadn't been willing to let Rose think that I had left her without saying goodbye.
Sludge, the hobgoblin cook, handed me a cup sized bowl of hot pike and pine nettle soup. Bits of mushroom bobbed in the broth. I could hardly see it in the dim light of the fire. “Eat up, girl.” He said “You're going to have to get used to my cooking if you're going to stay here until your prince gets back.”
I set the bowl down, untouched. I hated the dark. I hated being kept in one place against my will, even for my own safety. Especially for my own safety. Why shouldn't Lucille find me here as easily as anywhere else? I couldn't stay here, waiting, all the way until spring.
The hobgoblin Trouble came up to fetch his soup from Sludge. “I suppose the witch will be here next.” He glanced at the empty bowl beside me. “Wasting our food alongside of you.”
I lifted the bowl off the ground and handed it to him. After we had saved him so many times it was galling to hear him still speak of Rose as if she were a thing. “She would never hurt you.”
The little man shrugged. “Them that have power don't often know how much.” He swallowed three spoonfuls of soup almost without chewing. “I don't suppose she would mean to though.”
“There.” I said “I knew you weren't solid hard all through.”
Trouble gulped down the rest of the soup without using the spoon and wiped his beard with the the back of his hand. “No more than you're solid cold.” He handed his empty bowl
to Sludge and joined the rest of his brothers on the other side of the fire.
The harpist hobgoblin struck up a string of melodies, one after the other. His fingers never stopped. They flung out soft tunes and lively tunes and fast tunes and slow tunes in quick succession so that I could hardly tell when one had ended and another had began. When the other hobgoblins finished their soup, one by one they began to dance. Their shadows flickered and fluttered against the earthen walls, swirling and kicking to the pull of the music.
I leaned against the wall, holding my knees next to my chest, watching, waiting.
Hiding.
The hobgoblins spun and pivoted and leapt to song after song but none of the melodies were anything compared to Rose's song. I wished I could hear her now, humming in my ear, keeping the nightmares and memories away.
At last the harp stopped. The hobgoblins ended their dance and slunk away to the edges of the cavern. They wrapped themselves in blankets spun from gold thread and went to sleep. I remained where I was, watching the smoldering remains of the fire and listening to the rough uneven symphony of their snores.
Lucille had found me at last. I wasn't as afraid as I had always thought I would be. I wasn't as afraid as I ought to have been.
Shuffling echoed through the passageway. I stood up, listening. Closer and closer, the shuffling came. Hands pattering. Knees dragging against the earth.
One of Lucille's soldiers? No. I was certain it was Otto. Why then was there only one pair of hands and knees instead of two? Where was Rose?
He appeared at last, a shadow at first, rising up off the ground. As he came nearer I could see the rust red of his curls and the long form of his nose glowing in the remaining smolder of the firelight.
“Where's Rose?” I asked.
Otto's face was drawn, his eyes worried. “She wasn't there.”
“She'll come back.” I said. She always did. After hours and hours of wandering the forest, all night or all day or some of both, she always came back.
Otto shook his head. For the first time I noticed the book he had brought back from Copshire folded under his arm. He handed it to me.
I opened the book. The words were hard to read in the faint, flickering light, but I recognized the messy scrawl of Rose's handwriting. It was a warning for me written in pale rusty brown ink like dried-
I looked up at Otto. “Is that blood?”
Otto nodded. “I waited to see if she would come back but . . .” He hesitated. I had never seen him so pale.
“What?” I demanded.
“Snow, there were wolf tracks. Leading into the cottage and leading out of it.”
I rolled my hand into a fist by my side, aching for my knife hilt.
“The wolf must be a servant of Lucille's.” Otto said. “That's how Rose knew she had found you.”
I shook my head, closed my eyes. “It's my fault. It's my fault again.”
“No.” Otto stepped toward me. He took my hands in his. “It's not your fault, Snow. It was never your fault.”
I stared at him, cold, unable to move.
He brushed his fingers against my cheek, hardly touching it at all. “I will find her, Snow. Lucille has poisoned your life, your inheritance, your sleep, but I'm here now and you don't have to be afraid anymore.”
“You're right.” I pulled back away from his touch. “I don't have to be afraid.” I pulled my hands out of his and stepped past him toward the cavern opening.
“Snow.” I could hear his footsteps pattering after me. “Where are you going?”
“I'm not going to hide anymore.” I said without turning. I didn't even slow my pace. “Find your army, Otto. Bring down Lucille. I'm going to find Rose.”
“Alone? Snow, you won't get past the guards.”
But I didn't care. I was already in the tunnel, already crawling as quickly as I could manage toward freedom. The earth scraped my hands and face and knees and shins. I bumped my head in the darkness and cut my ankle on a sharp stone.
“Snow.” Otto's voice grew fainter and fainter. “Snow, we don't even know if she's alive.”
I moved forward, feeling my way through the tunnel, crawling upward, frustrated that I couldn't move faster. More than once I pulled myself up only to slide down again, scraping my knees and chest and face against the hard earth. At last I could feel the night's draft grazing over my skin, soft and silent. I pulled myself upward, craving the freedom of the woodland air. Just a few more hand-lengths. I could already hear the scurrying of woodland creatures, the call of night birds, the song of the insects.
I put my hand through the opening. Thorns scratched my skin but at least the air was cool and fresh. I put my other hand out after it and pulled myself out of the tunnel, ignoring the brambles biting through my clothes and into the surface of my skin.
Once out of the tunnel, I rose to my feet. The night was alive, stirring with the sound of woodland creatures. Something rustled in the bushes. A hobgoblin? A fox?
A wolf?
My shoulder ached, remembering the feeling of teeth sinking through my skin, almost reaching the bone. My foot hurt, remembering the strength of the animal's jaw.
I straightened, willing the pain to go away. I didn't have time for fear. Not even the remembrance of fear. I pulled in a long, deep breath, and ran.
My bare feet pounded against the earth. My heart pounded inside my chest. I concentrated on keeping my breath steady, moving faster and faster with each step. Leaves crunched underfoot and caught in my hair. I didn't stop. For the first time in my life I knew where I was running to. I knew where I had to go.
It had been so long ago and yet I remembered every rock, every tree and fallen log. I whirred past them, stronger with each step. Toward the manor. Toward Lucille. Toward quiet, empty halls and pale silent servants. Toward legions of grim faced soldiers and the unheard screams behind locked dungeon doors.
Toward every tangled nightmare of my past as if I had never left them.
Toward Rose.
I ran. Through bushes and nettles and ditches and puddles of mud. Around pines and oaks and willows and firs. I dodged and weaved and circled and side-stepped, running and running and running. I had to keep moving, to arrive at the manor in time to save Rose from whatever fate Lucille intended for her. I plummeted forward, one foot leaping after the other until, all at once, like a crack of thunder over the sky, I was standing in front of the manor.
The walls weren't as high as I remembered. I could see the torrents and towers of the keep poking out over them like sharp, jagged rocks in the almost dawn. The dark gray and brown shapes looked black as soot in the shadows. I hesitated for a moment, savoring the last safety of the trees, then stepped toward the wall.
There was no point in going to the gate. The guards might not recognize me but Lucille would and she knew I was coming. She had to know. What else could I do?
I moved along the shadow of the wall, searching for the crumbled spot Hans had taken me over all those years ago. I didn't have a rope but my grip had grown stronger in the years of life in the wood, my balance more sure. If the stones were spaced evenly enough, if no one had repaired them, if the stable still stood on the other side, I might manage the climb.
The wall hadn't been repaired. The slope in the structure remained where it had been since the siege before I was born. A peasant's revolt, Papa had told me, just a few years before his father had died and left the land to him. Lucille had enough wealth from her lands in the north to build the whole manor over if she wanted to. I could only imagine she had been too preoccupied with conquering other lands to bother with repairs. I could only imagine that she was so confident in the efficiency of her army and magic that she didn't believe she needed walls.
I could only imagine that she was wrong.
I lodged my foot over a stone then placed my fingers into the crack of another and began to climb. My fingers grew stiff and pale beneath the pull of my own weight. My elbows bumped and scratched against the stones. I chec
ked each ledge for stability before pressing my weight against it but the stones protruded outward, poking into my hips and breasts as I made my way up.
The stable footholds led me to the side, away from the crumbled bit of wall. Away from the only place I knew I could climb without breaking any bones. I edged back toward the center, reaching for a stable stone with my hand. They were large near the bottom and I had to stretch my arm far.
My fingers took hold of a stone. It didn't shake. I dragged myself back toward the center, letting my feet dangle. My weight pulled at my arms beneath my shoulders. My fingers screamed at me to let go.
At last I found a ledge for my foot. I landed on it and pushed myself up. My hands relaxed only a little, glad for whatever rest they were allowed.
Something tingled across my ankle. Tiny, almost invisible feet, crawled over my skin, making their way up my leg. My foot twitched. I gripped the stones tighter, resisting the urge to shake the ants off, to reach down and smack them away. My eyes watered. The ants tingled and sidled and itched their way up my shin as I felt for the next ledge.
The stones were smaller and easier to reach towards the top of the wall. They were also looser. One dislodged at my touch. It fell past my nose, landed on my shoulder and hit me in the knee. My foot slipped and I dangled again, gripping tighter and tighter onto the stone in my other hand. There was no more feeling left in my hands. My wrist tingled, swarmed by another line of ants. Then they were everywhere, crawling over the stone and my arms and my neck and my face. I wrinkled my nose, willing them to go away but there seemed to be more of them every second.
