Toad Words(37)

Puffball put his head up and licked the last of the stew out of her bowl, and Snow was so distracted that she let him.

She turned the thought over in her head again, as they walked home. A convent. Hmm.

Noblewomen went into convents sometimes. Snow had heard about it third-hand—so-and-so’s widow had gone to the convent, or so-and-so’s daughter. She’d never thought about applying it to herself.

Would I want to be a nun? What do nuns do? Keep bees and brew beer, apparently…I could do that…I always wanted to help the gardener with his bees, but he said they didn’t like fidgeting…

“I don’t know about these little metal things,” said Puffball, yanking her back to the present. “You can’t eat them and they’re hard to pick up. I’m afraid I’m going to swallow one if I try.”

Greatspot rolled her eyes. “It’s a human thing,” she said. “Humans love the little metal things. You get them and then humans will give you potatoes for them. Lots and lots of potatoes.”

“You can eat potatoes,” said Puffball.

“The humans might eat these metal things. Like turkeys eating gizzard stones. Don’t be rude, Puffball, not everyone has teeth like us.”

“Oh,” said Puffball, startled. “Sorry, Snow.” He pushed his shoulder against her. “You can have my metal things for gizzard stones if you want.”

Snow rubbed her hand over her face. There was something trying to get out of her chest, and when she opened her mouth, she found that it was a laugh.





It was late evening. The shadows were falling kindly. And Snow had cleaned herself up and brushed out her hair, so that she did not look too wild when she went into town, and like many people, she was almost beautiful when she laughed.

And at that moment, the queen’s fingertips lay across the magic mirror.

“Snow,” said the mirror, showing all its teeth. “Snow is still fair, O queen.”

The queen sat still, as still as one who has been dealt a mortal wound.

Very softly she said, “Snow is dead. Snow is nothing but bones in a hole.”

The mirror rippled in a shrug.

“She lives, O queen.”

The queen reached out and touched the box with the heart in it. There were smooth patches in the carving from where she had caressed it, all the long hours of the day.

(And now, reader, I will tell you that the queen was evil, surely, and the heart was a symbol of her triumph—but I cannot swear that she did not stroke the box of the heart from some strange maternal affection as well. Witchblood is twisty and those it twists have minds that turn back on themselves like brambles.)

“Then what is in this box?” she asked.

The demon in the mirror grinned. It had been waiting for this question for a long, long time.

“The heart of a pig, my queen.”

She shot to her feet. The chair at her dressing table went over backwards and clattered to the floor.

“Bring me the huntsman,” she said.





Word travelled fast in the castle. The steward knew within minutes and the men-at-arms learned from the steward and the gardener heard it from the oldest man-at-arms and took it to the midwife.

The gardener might have run but he did not. He walked very carefully, holding the knowledge in his cupped hands, as if it were a cup filled too full to spill. He went to the herb garden where the midwife sat and he put his lips against her ear and whispered “Snow is alive.”

The midwife had grown old in the last season, and the bones of her hands were as fine as a bird’s. For a moment the gardener thought that the news had come too late, and then he felt the midwife’s arms go around and hold him hard. A few tears trickled out from under her eyelids and she whispered something into his shoulder that he did not hear.

The next day, she moved into his house, as he had long requested, and he never asked her what she had said and she never told him and they were very happy together. But that is neither here nor there and the future is a different country.

All through the castle went the word—Snow is alive. The queen seeks the huntsman. The huntsman’s life is forfeit.

And with this word came questions—What was in the box? She was told it was Snow’s heart! Who’s heart was it?

This question spawned many answers as the word spread. It was the heart of a bandit in the woods. It was the heart of a stag or a horse or a hound. It was the heart of the king who had died on Crusade. It was the queen’s own heart, placed there by some confusing magic. It was not a true heart at all but one made of clay (The maids who spread sweet rushes to cover the smell of rotting meat quickly discounted this one.).

Arrin himself was out hunting. He came back late that night, with a pheasant in his saddlebags, and saw the steward standing at the gate, with two men-at-arms on either side of him.