by Dawn Steele
Nevue had the grace to hang her head. “Things have changed.”
“Only your perception of me has changed. I have not.”
Nevue glanced at his left hand. “Can you blame us?”
Indeed, a full human hand – pink and startling in its perfection – flexed in the red appendage’s stead. The new skin was as smooth. He had to give kudos to the Sporadean biologists; they knew what they were doing.
The enormity of what he was about to do floored him. Here he was, a traitor to the Sporadean cause. The one he loved most in this world wanted nothing to do with him. The natives he was trying to save were leery of him. The things he thought he wanted most back home – a chair at the Redwood Table and Gnomica – floated away from him infinitesimally.
He had never felt so alone. He wondered if he would have the strength to continue. And bitterly, he contemplated: for what?
Were these natives even worth it?
They rode on for many days. Meanwhile, the moon was waxing. During the nights, the Northern Lights blazed in the sky in a shimmering veil of green and amber. Aein lay on his back to gaze at them, thinking of home. Every time self-pity dug its talons into his side, he winced and shifted his body.
Throughout the journey, Aein got to know the Bambenga better. Besides Nevue, Ravanne, Maise and Flyx, there was Calastra, the most beautiful woman in the tribe.
“So she reminds us again and again, shrilly,” Ravanne said in chagrin. As the days wove by, she warmed up to him. Almost like old times.
Too bad she was the only one.
“Is she really that beautiful?” Aein said.
“See her bottom?”
They sat a distance away from the campfire beneath the Aurora, which was streaking purple tonight. Calastra danced around the fire.
“It’s . . . pear-shaped,” Aein observed.
“Exactly. If you have a bottom like hers, you would be the prey of all the men in the Bambenga tribe.”
“I think you are all too consumed by physical beauty.”
“And you are not?” Ravanne scoffed. “You who have the face and body of Apollo himself?”
“Who is Apollo?”
“Never mind.”
Aein noted that she wisely refrained from mentioning Snow White.
At the campfire to which he was not invited, slender Omeny danced as if the ground were covered with eggshells, so mincing was she in her bare feet. Her cheeks were tattooed with blue sigils of her tribe.
“She did that to spite her mother,” Ravanne said. “She has other tattoos on other parts of her body as well, all done to anger her parents and bring shame to the man they would have her marry.”
Dio was singing a strangely beautiful melody that trailed with the sparks hissing from the fire.
“She sings the most beautifully of us all,” Ravanne explained. “Singing is a prized art much desired among the men of our tribe.”
“The men of your tribe seem shallow,” Aein remarked.
“As are all men.”
So the men in this world are not worth saving but the women are, Aein mused. Careful, he warned himself. You have no right to judge anyone. He wished he could stop the seesawing of his emotions towards the natives. He hated to think it was all because Snow White left him.
#
Snow White was in her stepmother’s secret antechamber again, crouching in the closet with the door half open.
Queen Isobel stared at her sister, Imogen, in the mirror. The sleeves and pleats of Imogen’s long black dress were black feathers stitched together in a complicated fabric.
“Alive and well, is she not, sister?” Imogen mocked. “Needless to say, Snow White is still the fairest woman in the land. In all that time you thought she was dead, the seconds bleed away. Soon, there will be grey in your hair, creases at your eyes, brown spots on your cheeks. Perhaps you should give it up, sister, and accept defeat.”
“No.” Fire flashed in Isobel’s eyes.
“Let me be you, sister. Let me take to wing and fly to the farthest reaches of Lapland to kill her.”
“Just as you killed Esmeralda?”
“I killed Esmeralda?” Imogen let out a peal of laughter. “Sister, you are sorely mistaken. It has always been you who have been the murderer. I am nothing but the voice of your better half.”
Confusion flitted on Isobel’s features. The mirror rippled, and Snow White saw a toddler running through the Enchanted Forest. Sun dappled on the little girl’s giggling face as she stumbled over a log.
“Esmeralda! Daughter, be careful!” called a younger Isobel, running in her skirts behind the child.
Esmeralda fell on her elbows and picked herself up, still giggling. Isobel swept in from behind her and twirled her into the air. They both fell onto the leaf-strewn ground, laughing.
The mirror shimmered like water down a sheet of glass. Esmeralda was in her teens now, her beauty startling. Black hair fell in a shoal around her shoulders. Her blue eyes were large pools in her pale face. She balanced a bucket of water on top of her head, treading her way carefully back to the house.
Isobel watched her from the window. Her hands gripped the ebony sill with such strength that her knuckles bled white. On a side table lay a silver-backed brush with several strands of mahogany hair between the hard bristles. A single strand of grey hair was tellingly interlaid within. Beside the brush, a glistening half-red, half-white apple sat next to an immaculately polished carving knife.
“No!” Isobel’s voice cracked as her fists struck the mirror. “I didn’t kill her. I wasn’t trying to kill her that day. I was going to merely scar her face and do it gently!”
“Spoken like a true mother,” Imogen mocked. “Where is she now, your precious daughter?” Her dress was transformed into a pure reflection of Isobel’s own garb: a red and green chiffon gown that fell like petals to the floor.
Isobel looked down at herself and saw that she was now wearing Imogen’s black winged dress. The black feathers began to burn and fuse with her skin. Isobel screamed as she tried to pluck them out. She fell onto the floor. Her spine twisted and her neck whipped back and forth.
Snow White watched in horror as black feathers sprouted from her stepmother’s cheeks and hair. When the metamorphosis was complete, a large black raven flew through into the twilight, silhouetting the setting ball of the sun.
“Snow White.”
A hand touched her shoulder.
Snow White awoke in fright, the dream still vividly playing in her head. Ghost knelt beside her on the low bunk. Around them, the caravan rocked as six horses pulled it with great speed. They had been travelling day and night to Rova, the capital, with the city guards.
Ghost’s eyes peered unseeing at a point beyond Snow White’s head. “We will be arriving in an hour. You have to get dressed.”
Of course. Hastily, Snow White flung her feet out of the shaking bed. A clump of her black hair was left on the white pillow. She frowned, her hand snaking to her scalp. When her hand came away, a few black strands dangled from her fingers.
Warning bells rang in her head. Whatever was happening to her as a result of her alien blood was happening fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In Rova, the king’s castle sat atop a hill. Townhouses lined the city streets, their designs rudimentary compared to the more ornately decorated ones in Snow White’s kingdom. The castle wore battlements and walls ten feet thick. Snow White’s caravan trundled through the castle’s gates and stopped in a square surrounded by brown brick buildings and towers.
The guards from Ursk who had accompanied them alighted from their heaving horses. In their haste to get here, they had taken turns to sleep. They changed several horses during the journey, even flogging some nearly to death.
Snow White smoothed her cerise gown. It was worked with painstakingly embroidered winter flowers. Her hair was done up, as befitting a princess, though several strands still dangled from her head. She sighed. She had done her best, but her efforts were ne
ver going to fool anyone who knew a spit about grooming. She wouldn’t have made the effort anyway if she didn’t think it would help her cause.
Her thoughts fled to Aein. Her last glimpse of him lingered like a footnote in the unclosed chapter of their memories.
“Come,” Ghost urged her. “Remember everything we practiced together. Take a deep breath and keep calm.”
Easy for you to say, Snow White thought. You don’t have to see the look on the king’s face when I tell him his country’s freedom hinges on the dubious negotiations of my former boyfriend.
They sped into the great audience hall, only to be met by an officious-looking courtier who wore an even more officious-looking beard that fell to his navel. The beard was better groomed than Snow White’s hair.
“I am Sir Aleric,” the courtier informed Snow White stiffly. “His Majesty is indisposed to see you even if you’ve brought half the Urskian imbeciles with you. You will need to put in a request for an appointment if you are truly who you say – ”
Snow White hurtled past him, pushing him aside. Several castle guards scuttled around her and Ghost in a nervous flurry.
“Wait!” Sir Aleric cried. “You can’t go in there. There’s a – ”
Snow White shoved the ornate wooden doors of the throne room open. The chamber was very high. The domed ceiling was frescoed with white clouds against light blue paint. Black iron chandeliers hung above a floor made from stone slabs. A single red carpet track led from the doors to the throne, which was raised upon a dais. Courtiers were seated upon tiers of red velvet chairs on either side of the room.
The man who sat upon the throne was not what Snow White expected. He was in his late twenties, blond, with tousled hair that suggested he had just tumbled out of bed. He was handsome in a rugged way with a broad nose, a strong bearded jaw and a complexion that suggested he spent a lot of time under whatever sun Lapland offered. His clothes, although plain, were made of thick sturdy wool.
He looked more like a commoner than a king. His eyebrows beetled as she approached the throne, her strides too purposeful be deferential. Murmurs rippled through the courtiers.
Castle guards in blue livery immediately rushed to seize Snow White, but Ghost blocked them with a few chopping moves that left the guards sprawling in agony on the floor.
“Your Majesty,” Snow White called out, trying to beat off the oncoming guards. “You have to listen to me! My name is Snow White, princess of Bavaria. I’ve come to warn you of a great threat to your kingdom.” She elbowed a guard who seized her waist. “Let go of me!”
Ghost stepped forward, but the King held up a palm.
“Let her go,” he said. He had a deep voice that made itself heard without booming throughout the hall.
The guards hung back, wary.
“Your Majesty.” Sir Aleric stormed through the doors. He was very red in the face. His beard quivered as he spoke. “I tried to stop this harridan from interrupting you while in court, but – ”
“Not a harridan but the princess of Bavaria, so say my guards from Ursk.” The King spoke German with only a trace of accent.
Sir Aleric let out a few Finnish words in a rapid stream, gesticulating wildly at Snow White.
“He’s saying that you’re an uncouth, irreverent imbecile with straggly hair,” Ghost translated, deadpan. “He used the word ‘imbecile’ seven times.”
“Enough,” the King said. “I hear you, but I do not think this girl is an impostor. The princess of Bavaria is said to be the most beautiful woman in the world aside from its Queen, and I can clearly see this.”
Thank you, Snow White thought. I think.
Aloud, she said, “Thank you for the audience.” She made no move to curtsey. She would have looked clumsy doing it in her whalebone structured gown. “I’d thought the King of Lapland to be old and infirmed.”
“You refer to my father. He passed on two months ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Snow White bowed her head stiffly.
“You don't sound sorry.” The King seemed amused.
“I didn’t know your father.”
“Truthful as well as beautiful. You have come to seek my help, no doubt.”
Snow White told him about the probable invasion. When she finished, half the courtiers looked upon her in bafflement. Sir Aleric’s face was as black as a thundercloud. The King ran a hand across his beard.
“What would you have me do?” he asked.
“Send your armies to Mt. Nordstrom,” Snow White immediately said. “Surround this mountain and let no enemy force breach your borders.”
More hushed conversation among the courtiers.
“This story is . . . fantastical,” the King said. “Otherworlders, you say.”
“She speaks the truth.” Ghost stepped forward, the milky orbs of her eyes shining. “Chiva has foreseen it, she who foretold the manner of your father’s true death.”
The muscles on the King’s neck tensed. “And what is the manner of my father’s true death?” he inquired, his fists balled upon the armrests of his wooden throne.
Sir Aleric danced uncomfortably on his feet.
“It is not for the ears of everyone present,” Ghost proclaimed. “If you may permit me to approach, Your Majesty, I will whisper it into your ear.”
“Your Majesty,” cried Sir Aleric, “it is a trap! This girl is a well-known assassin from the city of the blind. She seeks to kill you at close range!”
Ghost’s expression suggested she had just swallowed curdled milk.
“Nonsense, Aleric. The City of Joy has always been our ally, their assassins an integral part of our armies.”
“Your Majesty, I must protest. And so does the captain of your royal guard here.”
Snow White impatiently stepped up. “Then permit me, Your Majesty, to transmit the message. I daresay no one here fears a pen and paper. I will write down Ghost’s words and you can choose to read it for yourself.”
Titters ran nervously through the crowd. A look of admiration crossed the King’s face.
“By all means, Princess of Bavaria.”
A pageboy came up with a sheaf of parchment and a quill pen. I’m not going to write a book, Snow White thought, but graciously accepted them.
Ghost whispered in her ear, and Snow White painstakingly wrote: YOUR KINGDOM THINKS YOUR FATHER DIED IN HIS SLEEP, BUT HE WAS ABED WITH YOUR SISTER’S NEW HUSBAND WHEN HIS HEART GAVE.
She glanced at the words, taken aback. “Is this true?”
Ghost nodded.
The pageboy took the rolled parchment to the King. He read it, one side of his mouth twitching. Then he stood up and dropped it into a flickering brazier behind his throne. The parchment caught fire and shriveled into a curling black heap.
The King raised his gaze to Snow White’s expectant face. “Very well. You have my attention, Princess. Aleric, prepare the fifth squadron for the trek to Mt. Nordstrom. Prepare my horse. I intend to accompany the Princess here to see this possible invasion for myself.”
#
They set forth for Mt. Nordstrom in the morning. Snow White rode alongside Ghost while the fifth squadron, all two thousand cavalry strong, followed in orderly formation. The young King rode ahead with his captain. They conferred in low voices. When they were several miles into their journey, Snow White heard a familiar voice call out her name.
She turned in amazement. “Gustav!”
He galloped up on a roan mare, a broad grin on his face. “Can’t let you go to an alien visitation without me.”
She felt like clambering off her horse to hug him.
“How did you get here?” they said simultaneously, and laughed.
“The alien visitation was supposed to be top secret,” Snow White chided.
“You spilled it out in court. That’s as good as sending heralds to every hamlet and shepherd’s nook in Lapland. Besides, I always thought your boyfriend was a little off, especially with the daisies.”
“Dandelions.” Despite hersel
f, Snow White felt a pang.
After exchanging pleasantries and introductions to Ghost, Gustav explained that he had boarded a ship to Rova with Wilhem and his mother.
“Where’s Wilhem?” Snow White asked.
“Apprenticing with the Grand Master archers outside Rova. As for me, I’m in the Astronomy faculty.” He beamed. “I did it all by myself. I didn’t even need your introduction.”
“There you go.” Snow White was genuinely proud of him. “Where’s your mother?”
“In the castle kitchens. She’s been made sous chef.”
Snow White raised her eyebrows, remembering the episode at the docks. “Seriously? And did she say anything about me?”
“Only that you’d left real quick and you reneged on your promise to us,” Gustav said solemnly. “I saw your ‘missing’ notifications around Skiva. So I don’t hold it against you. I would have run out of there real quick myself.”
So he doesn’t know his mother tried to sell me for a career in a hot kitchen. The old Snow White would have immediately corrected this. But the new her – more sober, less impulsive, but still dressed in the same crumpled clothes – merely nodded.
Gustav eyed Ghost with interest. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
Gustav held up his thumb and forefinger. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“How many testicles do you want me to crush?” Ghost countered.
“Oooh.” Gustav mock shuddered. “Scary.”
They traveled on, a little too slowly for Snow White’s taste. But she would rather have an army surrounding Mt. Nordstrom than none at all. At night under the Aurora, they set up pavilions for the King and Snow White. It was becoming marrow-chillingly cold, especially on the plains where the winds swept from the north without barriers or mercy. Snow White shared her pavilion with Ghost. Every night, they peered at the moon and its looming deadline.
“Aein said he had to reach Mt. Nordstrom by the time three moons become full in the sky,” Snow White said to Ghost. “That was two-and-a-half months ago. Do moons become full here or are they obscured by the Aurora?”
