Toad Words(40)

The words seemed to steady the queen somehow. She nodded once, sharply. “No. I am not. Very well. I will be less fair still, if that it what it takes.”

She rapped the mirror with her hand and it turned obligingly into a true mirror, with a face that did not move of its own accord.

“I have been young,” she said. “Now I must be old.”

In her veins, the witchblood coiled and stirred.

Her face in the mirror sagged. The lines drawn hard around her mouth grew soft and sagged. Her eyelids became crumpled rice paper. The veins in the back of her hands stood up in ropes and hoarfrost crept through her hair.

The mirror reflected it back, pitiless and pure.

Even a heart as black as the queen’s could ache a little for how easy it was to become old.

“Now,” said the queen—and even her voice was old, as thin and bony as her hands. “Now.”

“My queen,” said the mirror—or perhaps it was only in her head. “O queen, what have you become?”

The queen laughed. The sound hurt her, high and crazy, but she kept laughing, like scratching tender skin until it bleeds. “How do I kill her?” she asked. “The last question for you, mirror. How do I kill Snow?”

The mirror, who saw everything that happened in the castle, remembered a white face in a gnarled tree. “Give her an apple,” it said.

“Poison,” said the queen. “Yessssss. That is well.”

She fitted her gnarled fingers into the half-moon shapes on the table’s edge, where the splinters were still sharp. She bore down.

Witchblood oozed beneath her fingers. She lifted her hand and gazed at her fingertips.

“Blood of my blood. Find Snow.”

She had done no real magic in almost a decade, beyond speaking to the mirror. Her blood had slept.

It was not sleeping now.

A great hollow beast roared in her veins. The mirror jerked when she brushed against it. The demon made a sound that was almost pain.

There.

She could feel it in her throat and in her belly. Snow was there.

The queen strode out of the bower—or tried. Her hips throbbed and one knee tried to buckle under her. She caught at the back of a chair for support and learned what it was to be old.

“Very well,” she said. “Very well! So be it.”

It came to her that Snow’s blood was young and hot and a draught of it might go down kindly. Her own blood roared approval.

She fed the pain to the witchblood, and hobbled out of the bower for the last time.

“She wasn’t very interesting anyway,” said the mirror-demon, and closed its eyes and went to sleep.





“No,” said Snow. “You are not going with me. I’m going with the pigs.” She tightened one of Greatspot’s cinches.

“My horse can carry two,” said Arrin. “We can go much faster.”

“I very much doubt that,” said Puffball. He eyed Arrin’s mare and snapped his teeth.

The mare, no fool, sidled to the end of her rein and tugged. Puffball snickered.

“It’s not about speed,” said Snow. “I want to go to the convent.”

“Convent,” said Arrin blankly.

“There’s a convent a few hours from the village—”

“Yes, I know. Sisterhood of Saint Mirriam, I think.”

Snow threw her hands in the air. “You knew there was a convent there and you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t realize that you were so interested in convents! It’s never come up!”

Snow sighed and dropped her forehead onto Puffball’s back.

“What’s a convent?” asked the boar.

“A place where human women live together. No men.”

“Seems a bit dull to me.”

“I can see the appeal sometimes…” muttered Greatspot.

“Sorry,” said Arrin.

“No, it’s all right,” said Snow, blowing a puff of air through her pale bangs. “It’s not as if we’ve talked about much of anything, other than how people are trying to kill me.”

Arrin winced.

“But yes. I am going to the convent. I was hoping there might be someone who would be willing to talk to—um—my friends here. In case something happens to me. You know.”

“Something might happen to you if you go alone.”

“She’s hardly alone,” said Greatspot mildly. “Would you like to fight two of us, hunter-man?”

“This is a stupid argument,” said Snow. “Let’s go.”

“But—”

Puffball and Greatspot strode out on either side of her. Arrin was left holding his mare in the middle of the clearing and feeling foolish.

Stomper, the largest of the boars, gave him an amused look. “You want some advice, hunter-man?”