by Dawn Steele
When Snow White finally came out, her eyes wore a sheen of pain.
“What is it?” Aein said tersely. He seized her hands and was gratified that she did not pull away. Her cheeks were bled of color however. His heart drummed with a beat too loud for his ears.
“She told me four things.” Snow White’s hands were limp. His alarm intensified. “The first, that my stepmother is not through with me and is now aligned with the world of shadows to bring about my death.”
Aein swallowed. “I will protect you. I will – ”
“Let me finish.” Snow White closed her eyes, then opened them again. “The second, that I will meet another man who will change my life. The third – ”
Her trembling hand went down to her belly.
“What?” Aein whispered.
“That you have withheld some truths from me. Truths that have serious repercussions on me.”
So it was here, the revelation. Aein cringed from her words even though she uttered them without an inflection of anger.
“And the fourth. I’m with child,” Snow White rasped, her knees collapsing beneath her swaying body. “Oh Aein, what have you done to me?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Snow White couldn’t even begin to piece together the bewilderment she felt. The smell of stone and brickwork wafted very strongly from the wall she found herself clutching. Her knees were bent in a painful angle and she felt hard dirt beneath her rump.
She must have fallen and she hadn’t even realized it.
She heard voices around her, as though from afar. They floated in and out of her ears, which seemed stuffed for some reason, and so she only heard fragments that didn’t make sense:
“Snow White . . . breathe deeply . . . ”
“Are you all right, child – ?”
“Didn’t mean to – ”
“ . . . happened . . . ?”
One voice in particular coalesced into coherence. Its timbre was different. A man’s voice, riddled with anxiety.
“Snow White,” it repeated. Warm hands held and massaged her wrists. “Snow White, are you all right?”
No, I’m not, she wanted to say, but the words congealed in her throat. For a moment, she stared blankly at the apparition before her. A man’s face. A handsome man. He had a name, she was certain.
Aein.
It all came hurtling back with the brutality of a rockslide.
He lied to me.
Chiva’s soft voice floated back in wisps. Beware, Snow White, he’s not who he says he is.
Then who is he? she had cried out in anguish. Don’t speak in riddles, Mother Chiva. Please help me understand.
He is an . . .
“Otherworlder.” Snow White’s voice came out in a gasp. She blinked several times. Her vision focused, and she discerned, with great clarity, the startling brown eyes of the man before her. If he was even a man. “Chiva said you come from an otherworld.”
A stunned silence met this. Snow White became aware of the faces surrounding Aein’s. Skins the color of creamy chocolate, lit by a single flickering torch on a wall sconce. Lips parted in shock. Jawbones unhinged. Eyes slid uneasily to Aein, then back to one another.
From somewhere in the dark, the ping, ping, ping of arrows striking tin mugs trailed upon the chilly night breeze. Aein’s stricken face was very close to hers.
“Snow White,” he said hoarsely, “we have to talk.”
She could not reply. Her tongue was rooted to the ceiling of her mouth.
Nevue (yes, that was her name, Snow White hazily remembered now) shifted on her feet uncomfortably. “I know we should leave you two alone to talk,” she said, clearing her throat, “but in light of the circumstances, do you think this will be all right?”
She directed this at Snow White. It took several seconds for its implications to sink in.
Aein can hurt me.
He who had wrapped her in his arms, whose mouth merged with hers as he melded deeply with her body. He who whispered I love you, I love you, I love you over and over in her ear until she drowsily drifted to sleep, as contented as a woman who is passionately loved could be.
But now an undercurrent of menace hung in the air. The Bambenga were tense, uncertain. Their hands went to where their daggers would be had they not been confiscated.
Snow White’s palm moved out of its own volition to her flat belly. She found her voice. “It’s OK, Nevue. You can leave us alone . . . to talk.”
The Bambenga were at first reluctant, but Nevue ushered them away, speaking in a low voice filled with clicks and vowels. One by one, they melted into the darkness.
“If you need my help,” Nevue threw back to Snow White, “just call. We’ll be over there by that clump of houses.” Her words were layered with meaning. We’re within earshot. If he attacks you –
Snow White weakly nodded.
After a while, the kneeling Aein folded his long legs and sat before her, their knee tips almost touching.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he said softly.
“You said you were from the east.” The chilling breeze numbed her. It was so much colder here in Lapland.
He looked ashamed. “I am sorry. The truth was not palatable.”
“Otherworld,” she repeated. “I don’t understand that word. I thought you a god. But Chiva says you are not a god.” Her eyes turned accusing. “I’d even pegged you for a demon, but you’re not a demon. What then does Chiva mean by otherworld?”
Aein paused. Then haltingly, in bits and pieces, he began to speak about himself. Who he really was. Where he really was from. Snow White listened, the images tumbling in her skull. Ever since the healing incident in the Barren Lands, she had suspected as much. But the rational part of her mind insisted that he was from the East – didn’t they have special arts? In a land where magic mirrors existed and witch queens held discourses with their dead sisters, anything was possible even though her scientific brain fought against it.
She sat there, not moving, wanting to hug her knees to her chest but being afraid that he would reach out to her. Because she couldn’t bear it if he touched her. Not right now.
“So everything I told you about the colonization is true,” he said.
“Except where the invading army would come from,” she replied bitterly.
“But nothing has changed.” His eyes were pleading. “Our gold for your trees. That is our plan!”
His face resembled a god’s as he eloquently spoke. Something stirred within Snow White as she studied the lines of his perfect nose, the curve of his cheekbones. Lines she had committed to memory.
“Aein,” she said abruptly, “what do you really look like? Is this your true face? Or is it just a body that you wear?”
His ashen expression told her all that she needed to know.
“My love for you is real,” he insisted.
“Based on a lie.” Her voice broke.
“Is it so terrible if I did not wear this face? Did you love me only because I am considered beautiful by your kind?”
A shudder shook her body. Somewhere from the depths of her stomach, a sob was travelling up to her throat. “Beauty has nothing to do with it. I would have loved you if you had no teeth and no hair. But at least, you would have been human!” The tears began to spool down her cheeks. “I need to know what you really look like.”
His slumped shoulders began to shake.
“You said you were a cripple.” Her voice rose. “A runt. What does a cripple in your universe look like? Show me!”
His expression was so wretched that she almost took pity on him, but she bit back her tongue. Salt tears stung her lips. No way she was going to let him wriggle out of this. She was going to drown him in it until he felt as rudderless as she was. She had a right to know what the hell she was carrying inside her!
For answer, he placed his shaking hand on the hard dirt of the ground. He dug into it with his fingernails and clawed out chunks of soil.
“Aein,” she began.
“No. You deserve to know.” He picked up a squirming red ant. It was barely larger than the flesh of his fingertip.
Snow White’s mouth went dry. A warning bell clanged. You wanted to know, something inside her screamed. Then open your eyes to look.
Aein held the ant up. “This is what we look like. Only with wings. And a foot taller than any human.”
Snow White stared at the wriggling ant. Her mind magnified the little creature, and she saw all the details she had committed to memory in her studies. Its frail antennae, twitching back and forth. The waving six legs. The three body segments. The large complex eyes, frightened out of its wits.
The world fell out from the bottom of her feet. A wind roared, merciless in the truths it carried.
I love insects, she numbly thought.
But I don’t want to give birth to one.
“Except for me,” Aein went on in a lifeless voice. “I don’t even have functional wings.”
If there was a soul still lurking within her body, she couldn’t find it right now. Somewhere between the first revelation and now, it had slunk – crawling on its belly – into the plains of Ursk.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, even though every instinct of hers screamed that it was true.
“You asked for my confession. I confessed.”
“I don’t believe you,” she repeated. Her ears roared with blood, pain, and her own convoluted thoughts.
He stared at her miserably. Realizing he still held the ant, he set it down. It was a respectful gesture that underscored everything he was.
“Wait,” he murmured to Snow White.
Her deadened senses followed him as he rose to his feet. He seized the single torch from the wall sconce. The flames flared in the sudden gust of movement. Their shadows shifted on the walls of the crowded houses, eerie elongated creatures from a netherworld.
Aein brandished the torch before him.
But wait, she faintly remembered, isn’t he afraid of fire?
“You have seen the way I move,” he said. “You have seen the way I heal.”
Without warning, he thrust his left hand into the fire. Snow White screamed. There was a rush of footsteps and voices calling all around her. Grimacing, Aein continued to immolate his own flesh up to his wrist.
Nevue was the first to reach them. “What are you doing? Did he hurt you?”
Snow White found that she had her hands clapped to her mouth. She was on her wavering feet. Her back was against the wall, trying to melt into it. As the Bambenga and several villagers came up, Aein withdrew his hand. The skin was now hard and red, but not wet like she would have expected from a burn. The red flesh bulged and gleamed like the cuticle of a beetle. Smoke continued to rise from it, and his fingers had fused into a single appendage. Black serrations, like those from a crab’s claw, were embedded into its edges.
It was all she could do to stop herself from crying out.
She gazed at the pulsing red exoskeleton that was his hand. Aein’s face reflected the flickering torch, as beautiful as ever. Her heart wrenched at the irony of it. What could possibly lie behind that perfect mask?
Ravanne broke the silence. “So that’s why the seven of us were sent the dream. Something will happen at the mountain. It is the bridge between two worlds.” She looked sharply at Aein. “That’s where your armies will enter, isn't it?”
“Not if I can stop them,” he said. His red hand – if it even could be called a hand anymore – trembled.
Snow White was as exhausted as if she had been running a marathon. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
Aein’s eyes dropped with shame. Numbly, he told her about his healing blood and what he had done for her. His words rang hollowly in her ears. “I did it to save you,” he said. “Think what you must of me, but I did it so that you may live.”
She was too wrung out and empty to be surprised anymore. No wonder she was feeling so invigorated lately. The blood of another species now pulsed within her with its possible ramifications.
“What will happen to me?” she said tiredly.
“You are alive.”
“You are evading the question.”
He dug the heel of his right boot into the hard dirt. “I do not know. There has never been . . . documentation.”
Her scientist mind whirred, blending into the emotional tangle of her womanly instincts. “So I’m a live experiment,” she said.
“You know it is not like that.”
Several villagers surrounded them. Their blinded eyes turned to Aein. Their postures were wary, on guard. A quiet menace seeped into the night wind.
“Snow White,” Nevue interrupted, “now that we know the truth, none of this will change. We must make our way to the mountain to stop this abomination. No matter who Aein is, he is on our side now. I know this past hour has been a trial for you and indeed, for all of us, but we must go on. Will you come with us?”
Snow White paused. The weight of everyone’s expectations hung upon her shoulders. But she was squeezed out of every feeling that made her human. There was nothing left but a vague emptiness.
“I need to sort this out by myself.” Even her voice sounded like it was coming from a barrel. “I . . . don’t think I can be with anyone right now. I won't be following you to your mountain. I need some time away.”
She could see the despair and love shining from Aein’s face. “But where will you go?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Snow White,” Nevue said, “are you sure about this? Would you like one of us to come with you?”
No, she wasn’t sure. She just needed to come to terms with this backwash of unsettled emotions. “Your destinies lie in that mountain,” she finally said. “I will have to chart my own.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Nevue came forward to hug her. One by one, the Bambenga followed until only Aein was left. He stood there, his red left limb hanging from his human arm like a tumor. Even as she looked at it, his human skin was beginning to creep above the edges of the red appendage. The unnatural healing of his earthly flesh at work again. It wasn’t fair.
“I am sorry I hurt you,” he said. “I never meant to.”
Snow White lifted her chin. I am a princess, she told herself. I do not have to stand for lies. Her silence was resolute as she continued to stare him down, allowing him no impasse.
As Aein turned to slink away, Snow White felt a large chunk of herself tear out with him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
All she wanted to do was to lie down and sleep her nightmares away, but Snow White made herself plod back to Ursk. Her mind was too enveloped to think about anything right now but placing her feet on the track – left, right, left, right – one after the other. Her body sagged. The night closed in around the flickering torch she brought with her, the very one Aein had burned his hand upon.
This will not break me, a haunted voice whispered. Aein’s beautiful face danced, and she blinked him away and hardened the shell around her heart.
A shadowy figure loomed before the arc of light.
“Halt, lone traveler,” said a clear, sweet voice. The blind girl with many daggers appeared, the very redness of her smock a contrast to her milky eyes. “Mother Chiva has instructed me to aid you.”
Snow White was too drained to say anything.
The girl continued, “I am Ghost. You intend to journey to Ursk, where you have a mission.”
“You know my mission?” Snow White said, surprised. “I don’t even know it myself.”
“It will be clear to you as soon as you reach the city. Mother Chiva knows you have chosen this path for yourself and she does not wish you to go without protection.”
Snow White had neither the energy nor the inclination to question this. She just nodded, her head almost lolling on her slumped shoulders, and trudged ahead. It would be good to have Ghost as muscle, seeing as in her current state, she would be easy fodder for any attack. It would also be good
to be accompanied by someone who couldn’t see the possible monster she was going to turn into. Snow White felt the chill of the night in her bones. She pulled her cloak closer around her neck.
In about an hour, they reached the outskirts of Ursk. They went straight to the Citadel. The city guards here wore blue livery and cropped blond hair. Chiva was right after all. She did have a mission. Somewhere on the journey to Ursk, her resolve magnified, enforcing the steel in her spine.
The guard at the Citadel’s gate was taken aback. Despite the smudges on her cheeks and the dust in her hair, Snow White stood tall and queenly.
“I seek immediate audience with your king,” she said. “I have to something to tell him that impacts the fate of your kingdom.”
It was a good thing the guard spoke a smattering of German. “What . . . is it concern?” he said, unable to take his eyes off her face.
“The invasion of Lapland by a deadly enemy.”
#
Autumn came to Lapland. The trees were ablaze with brown and red and crimson and gold. The evergreens sprouted everywhere, and the wild grass rippled in the wind as though invisible snakes coasted through them. Glacial lakes that mirrored the sky dotted the landscape and provided a sweet source of water for the thirsty travelers. The autumn breeze was fresh and crisp with the scent of pine, flowers and hunger. The very air itself was charged.
Aein rode beside Nevue. They were guided by Nevue’s map. The mountain destination was marked very clearly on it with an ‘X’, courtesy of Chiva. ‘MT. NORDSTROM’ was inked on the side of the ‘X’, and below it in smaller letters: ‘The Pass of Doubt’.
Since leaving the village, Aein had spoken very little. The Bambenga, although cautious, left him mostly alone.
“You are entwined with our destinies whether we wish it or not,” Nevue said. “We will not harm you if you do not harm us.”
Aein’s mouth twisted in chagrin. “I am still the same man with whom you sailed from Skiva to Ursk. I broke bread with you. Fought by your side. Showed you kindness when none would. What makes you think I would harm you now?”
