The roses
leaned in the summer breeze, carrying pink and red petals over the fountains
and flagstone paths. She reached forward and snatched one soft red flake from
the wind and held it against her cheek. When she turned, she heard her mother’s
gentle chuckle and saw her wide smile. Her father stood at her mother’s back.
The tall king and the beaming queen, both so handsome and so full of pregnant
smiles.
“Make a
wish,” her mother whispered. “Blow it back into the breeze, and your wish will
come true the moment it hits the water.”
She looked
to her father, and he nodded. She sucked in a warm breath and blew her wish
beneath the wings of the petal. Its soft veins rolled among each other as they
whisked into the breeze, and the petal floated as though the air had become
water. The girl smiled and clasped her hands, and her parents took her
shoulders with their soft, loving hands.
The petal
rose higher and higher, far above the others in their gentle stream. The girl
felt her stomach rise as she, too, became lifted in the air. She looked to her
smiling parents, but their smiles became grins, and they looked upon her with
such sadness. She turned again to the petal, but it was beyond the stone gates
beyond the rose garden then. It twirled above the ponds and the white geese.
“Momma,” she whimpered, but the air
in her belly was too light for words.
The aroma of roses grew stronger as
the girl felt more airy. Her feet could barely feel the grass beneath her
slippers, and her hair lifted in the gusts. She turned to grasp her father’s
hand, but it was naught but powder when she touched it. The sun blew up in the
sky and swallowed the world in its brilliance. All that remained was the aroma
in the wind.
She felt
deadening cold shivers in her spine, her hips, her shoulders, and her cheeks.
The sun was still a blinding white explosion behind her eyelids, but fear muted
its strength. She breathed, but the air was wet and hurt her lungs. Her legs
and arms were numb.
When her
eyes focused, she first saw the azure sky. Then she looked at her bed around
and saw that it was of wilted roses. Untamed bushes of teacup buds, all white
and pink, poked up around her. The girl – nay, a woman in this strange world –
lifted herself onto an arm and looked upon the wooded world around her.
A young man
lay in the roses beside her. She looked upon his aquiline nose and his smooth
jaw, all twisted and torn with rose thorns. His velvet tunic and cape were
ripped and muddied. The woman reached to touch him, but her body was still
numb. To her other side were shards of glass strewn about the roses and an
epitaph: Lady Snow, the Fairest Maiden. The
words were strange and ate at her tired head.
Is that my name? she wondered.
The words
brought warmth to her fist, her knees, her neck, all the way to her breath. She
pushed herself from the bed of roses and held the young man in her arms. His
chest was still and his eyes marble. He had found his sleep a long time ago.
The woman touched his lips, but there was no breath. She kissed him and combed the
wilted petals from his soft hair.
There were
others, she remembered. The woman felt her heart pound hard against her chest
as she remembered that there were others – twelve of them – and she needed to
find them. She ached to stay with this strange man, but there was nothing she
could do for him. She lifted his knees and his magnificent shoulders and
carried him to her bed of death. The glass was gone, but he would be safe her
in his eternal peace. With one last touch of his pale cheek, she ran toward from
the brilliant sun into the quiet woods. In her waking mind, she knew the way.
Squirrels
and chipmunks dashed from her path as birds fussed in the oaks and maple
branches. She slipped on a bed of shattered walnut shells and leaves but caught
her step. The long funeral dress wavered at her feet and caught in the brush
until it was naught but a tattered web of gossamer. The slippers squished with
mud and rainwater, but she would not stumble again, for beyond the hill and
under the elm was the home of men that had risked their lives to shelter her.
She crested
the hill, but the cottage was naught but ash. Her eyes caught the cindered
bodies in her periphery, but she clenched them shut. The birds had already come
to clean up the destruction with beaks filled with food and golden trinkets.
The woman ran and waved her arms against the birds, and once they were gone,
she fell to her knees between two of the petite men. They held rakes and pick
axes even in death with firm grips, and as she gazed upon their fat knuckles,
she remembered how soft they’d felt against a young woman’s tears of terror.
Who would do this? She shook her head,
for as soon as she thought the question, she’d remembered. It was that jealous,
power-hungry tyrant. The queen of the realm who’d seduced and murdered her way
into the throne and could drill her way through a broken heart a thousand times
without a wince or a pity. Her step-mother, the witch from the dark forest, had
been here with her army of bewitched soldiers. Their butchery was as clear as
day.
One by one,
she dragged the corpses to the funeral garden. She dug twelve graves and wove
ivy vines and oak branches for markers. Each was buried with his weapon, a
rose, and a kiss to his cheek. When she’d finished, the moon had risen high
into the air, and Lady Snow was black with grave dirt. The forest was quiet
save a distant howl from a lone wolf, but when the leaves were still and the
wolf was quiet, all was silent save her angry, beating heart.
She
unwrapped the young man’s belt from his stiff waist and tied it around her own.
His sword in its leather sheath was light, and the cloth wallet was still
heavy. If she traveled by the goat path and river bank, she could reach the
outskirts by noon. There she could meet with the rebels and the Good King’s
spies to finally defeat the wicked tyrant – the woman who’d taken everything
from her. And if a fool highwayman or bandit ambush her on the way, heaven help
his soul.
Snow tore a
weak white blossom from the bush and left it on the young man’s hands. Its
white stem soaked with the blood by his heart until it was brown. “When this
flower blooms, this will be a new world,” she promised quietly. “I can never
thank you enough for what you’ve done. Goodbye.”
With her
promise and her spite, she started east.
