Toad Words(25)

They stared at one another for a moment, and then Snow sank into a curtsey. It wasn’t a very good one, which the queen noticed with satisfaction, but the treacherous candlelight molded itself along the line of Snow’s throat and all the queen’s pleasure turned to ashes.

“Your Grace—ah—”

The queen reached out and caught Snow’s wrist and pulled her hand up.

What is she staring at? Snow wondered.

The queen was staring at her daughter’s hand. It was a young hand, still, the backs dimpled at the knuckles, the fingers round and smooth and still faintly slick from cramming herbs into bottles of oil.

The queen’s own hand, holding Snow’s wrist, had deep hollows along the back, with the tendons standing out in sharp relief and the knuckles cutting hard diamonds in the skin. They were not old, but they were the hands of a woman who was no longer young.

Under her fingers, the queen could feel Snow’s pulse. The witchblood in her was very weak, lying like a drift of spider silk across her veins. This girl would never need to fear the touch of iron, or at least, not more than any other mortal.

“Your Grace?” asked Snow.

The queen dropped her wrist as if burned and turned and stalked from the room.

The entire encounter had lasted less than a minute.

It had not occurred to either of them that Snow might call her “Mother.”





The queen brooded in her bower for three days, and then she summoned the chief huntsman to attend her.

The huntsman’s name was Arrin, and he did not love the queen. He owned his own cottage, out of sight of the great looming castle, and under the law of the land, the queen could not take it from him. Still, he dared not disobey, because the right of hunting the forest was the monarch’s to give or take away, and he did not wish to be reduced to poaching to survive.

He thought sometimes of leaving, but his aunt was very old and lived in the castle. She had never married, and Arrin did not want to leave her to die alone.

The queen’s summons filled him with dread, and he climbed the steps to the bower with his heart thudding in his ears. Had she learned of the servants smuggled away? Was he going to his death?

He could have overpowered the queen if she had been merely human, but the castle-folk knew of the mirror and knew that she was not quite mortal, and they feared what powers she might stir in her own defense.

Arrin stood for a long few moments before the door. The heavy oak was spattered with knots and looked as if small animals were living in the grain and gazing out at him with round, frightened eyes. He took a deep breath and went in.

The queen was gazing into the mirror and combing her hair. “Huntsman,” she said. “You have come. Good.”

The huntsman bowed deeply and waited. He could see himself in the mirror, behind the queen. His skin was dark and he wore his hair cut very short. His reflection seemed to take up less space in the mirror than it should have.

“The girl, Snow,” said the queen, and nothing more, while the bone-handled hairbrush moved in slow hissing strokes through her hair.

“Yes, my queen?” said Arrin finally, which the silence had gotten so thick that it lay like a coating of dust upon his tongue.

“You will take her into the forest and kill her,” said the queen, with no inflection at all. “You will do this now, at once.”

Arrin looked up, startled, and his eyes flicked to the mirror, and the eyes of the queen, who was watching his reflection. For a moment their gazes met in the glass, and Arrin felt a breath of ice touch the back of his neck and slide coldly down his spine.

I cannot do this, he thought, and then I cannot refuse or she will kill me, and then I will smuggle her away, like the other servants, I will take her to the crossroads, it will be hard for her but it is better than death—

The hairbrush clicked down on the table, and he knew that he had been silent too long. “Yes, my queen,” he said.

“Bring me something,” said the queen, watching him in the mirror. “Bring me proof of her death. Her hand—no.” It occurred to her that a handless girl might still live. “Her heart. Bring me Snow’s heart, so that I know that you have done as I command.”

“Yes, my queen,” said the huntsman, and bowed his head.





Snow was gazing up into the leafless apple tree and thinking about climbing it—the first hard freeze had caught a few tiny unripe apples near the top, and those were always sweet—when Arrin rode into the courtyard on his horse and said, “Snow?”

“Hmmm?” Snow did not know Arrin well. He was young for his position, but his face was seamed and scarred, and he was often away from the castle in pursuit of game. “Yes?”