Once
upon a time…
This is not a fairy
tale. But it has that same grain of truth, that same beginning that all stories
have.
Once upon a time, there
lived a beautiful girl. She had hair as black as night, lips as red as the
reddest rose, and skin as white as snow. She was born with death and raised in
hardship by her father and his six brothers. Later, they will be written as
dwarves. Later, she will be a princess. But for now, she is simply Gwyn, and
she is alone.
--
She runs away from her
home the night her father brings home the butcher’s son and tells her to greet her
future husband. She steals away in the night with her uncle’s hunting knife, a
loaf of bread, and a cloak for the cold. She is fourteen the day after she
leaves, but she hardly pauses to pay the thought mind. There is work to be
done.
Her uncles had raised
her like a boy—she could swim as quickly as a fish and
hunt alongside the fiercest hawk. But her grandmother had raised her as well,
had taught her to tell the time from the sun in the sky, to decipher words on a
page into words on the tongue, how to sew fabric and cook a meal. If she were a
boy, she would have been home the second day. But she is more than a boy.
The first time she
kills is of necessity. The man tries to take what she has no intention of
giving, and in the end, as she watches the knife slide back out of his chest,
she is confident in her choice. When she sees his picture in a tavern the next
afternoon with the promise of a handsome reward for his return dead or alive,
she considers it a boon. She returns to where she hid the body and saws at his
neck until his head falls free. She nearly loses her nerve, but reminds herself
that she has done the same to pigs for years. She drops the head on the bar and
demands her coin, and she gets it.
--
It gets easier as time
goes on, and her reputation begins to spread. The last two criminals she killed
had been whispering about her in the moments before she came up behind them. They say she’s not human, said one. They say her skin is like snow, says the
other. When she brings their heads in for her reward, she asks the barman, who
laughs at her. They all call you Snow
White, he says, because your skin is
as white as the snow and your feet fall as softly.
--
The Queen has asked for
the best hunters in the land, and she is here. The men laugh and the women
sneer when they see her, her skirts messed from the forest, her hair a dull
black, her pale skin smudged with soot and earth. She lodges a knife through
the heart of the target and lets the steel of her blade quiet their murmurs.
When the Queen steps forward, she smiles at her, asks her name. Gwyn, she says. She kneels at the ground
at the Queen’s dainty feet and feels the weight of the hand on her shoulder. I charge you to accept my quest—to go
forward and spill the life blood of the once-Prince of this realm. I charge you
in this quest to hunt him to the ground and make him pay attempts upon my life and the power of the kingdom.
I charge you in this quest to protect your land and your Queen. Thrice I charge
you and done, your bounty paid on mission’s end.
--
She readies herself
that night. She wears the hunter’s garb she had fashioned for herself, a thick
cloak to keep away the cold, and a leather belt at her waist to hold her sword
and daggers. She rises at dawn and slips away from the castle, her hair bound
back in a braid to her thigh, her face newly cleaned, her swords sharpened and
her pack of supplies hanging by her side.
She follows his trail
through the forests and past the villages, skirting around the fires and the
blades of taverns. She sees the twists of trees and the fall of leaves and
understands that this is not how it should be, that he has passed before her
here, and she finds his hidden footsteps on the ground. She hunts after him,
through shadow and through heat, moving from blistering noon to frigid night.
She watches the land pass by under her feet, and she sees what lies before them
both: that wretched kingdom to the North, cold and dead and desolate, a land
blighted by curse where no bird flies and no grass grows. He is easier to track
here, out on the plains, and she sees him in the distance, a figure draped in
crimson on a shining white horse. She lurks in the treeline and waits for him
to move on enough before she plunges down the slope and follows, still,
relentless.
She follows him across
the barren waste, stopping at night and taking refuge in outlying abandoned
huts, not daring to light a fire for fear he would smell it and search her out.
The sun is a muted light when it rises, the sky a washed out blue. Colors fade
here, stretch out and warp like the land. It is unnatural. Still she shadows
him, watching as the spires of a castle rise on the horizon. The sun sets and
the stars glow, dim and distant. As they grow closer to the castle, she sees
that briars have burst out of the stone, encircling the building, but he weaves
through them as the night grows darker. She follows, ever-careful. The
courtyards are empty, she thinks at first, but then she sees them: bodies,
human bodies, and the bile rises in her throat before she sees their chests
rise and fall in the even, easy rhythm of sleep. Dust has gathered on their
skin and their clothes, and the prince pays them no mind, prodding them with
his feet when they obstruct his path.
--
He finds his way to the
foot of the tallest tower and strikes a fire. He lights a torch and slides in
through the broken wooden door, clearly accustomed to the ruin and decay,
familiar in this environment. She follows him in, and then up, and up further,
climbing a seemingly eternal winding stair. She pauses in the shadows behind him,
the dark that falls in the wake of the curving stair, and waits carefully,
matches her pace to his. Her feet fall lightly on the stairs, petals falling on
the stone as together they wind higher and higher. She feels the strain in her
thighs, her stomach, corded muscles tightening and straining, and she fights to
keep her breathing even, to match his.
Finally, he comes to a
halt. There is a bump, a mumbled curse, and then the groaning of door hinges.
It slams as it hits the wall. The torch makes a hollow, rattling noise as it
falls to the ground, the orange light fading away. Dim sunlight filters into
the stairwell, the pale white light just visible from where she stands in the
darkness. Then nothing—
There. A rustling,
first quiet and then more pronounced. He is disrobing. She creeps forward, back
pressed against the uneven stone wall, until she stands in the mouth of the
door, until she can see him. He is naked, his back to her, a long, scarless
expanse of skin. Before him—before him lies a beautiful woman, sleeping on the
bed. She frowns, moves back more firmly against the wall, watching. He takes no
care not to wake her, peels the blanket away and casts it on the floor. She
hears more shuffling, sees the muscles shifting under his skin, and then the airy
blue fabric of a dress is cast aside. She sees him take two pale legs in his
hands, lifting them up and spreading them wide as he kneels between them on the
bed, facing away from her, making ready to take the woman as his own.
She moves, then, quick
as a snake in the tall grass, until she is pressed up against his back as
closely as the knife is pressed against his throat. He tries to fight; his
elbow moves to jab into her side, his legs try to force him away from the bed.
She grabs the skin under his bicep between her nails and she twists until the
blood flows. He stills and quiets with a whimper. The sleeping woman remains
still.
Who
is she to you? she asks.
No
one,
he answers. Just a girl, just here, I
thought—
Fool,
she says, and slits his throat.
She lets his body fall
gracelessly to the floor, stoops down and uses his tunic to wipe her knife
clean. She stands and inspects the woman more closely. The linens around her
are covered with dust (where the princeling has not disturbed them), and her
hair is full of it, but her face has no lines, her hair no silver. She reaches
down and covers her with a blanket to preserve her modesty, and then she sees
it: a small swell of old, rusted blood on the tip of a slender finger. She
lifts it up, inspects it, and finds a splinter of golden flax dug deep into the
flesh. She tries to pull it out with her fingers and fails, so she lifts the
hand to her mouth and sucks away the blood, pulls out the flax.
It is as though the
world around her takes a breath, alive when before it had been dead. The air in
the room moves, the clouds thin, and a bird chirrups, sweet in the new electric
air. Beneath her, the woman gasps; the fingers curl about hers.
The woman smiles like a
sunrise, and as though pulled by her, the sun lifts itself from the horizon. It
is the proper sun, hot and golden, the sky a myriad of hues—lit blue and purple
and pale white at the edges. As Gywn watches, the ground begins to bloom. Trees
unfurl in riotous blossoms, and a bird swoops by the window, chirruping as it
slices through the air. She turns to look at the woman, amazed. Are you an enchantress? she asks.
No,
she replies. I am a princess.
Her name is Phoebe, and
she walks with Gwyn through the castle, trailing her hands over the stone,
brushing her fingertips against the pale cold skin of the people they find. She
watches with amazement as life settles over
their faces again, just as the dawn had stolen over the sky, and she looks at
Phoebe in awe, but says nothing.
--
When the court is
restored, the King takes his place. He addresses Gwyn, thanks her for saving
his daughter and his kingdom. He asks for his brother, and Gwyn can only tell
him that the kingdom his brother once ruled is now ruled by a man named Adam,
who was once under and enchantment and had now been freed.
The King’s face grows long with sadness.
When
I ruled, Adam was the youngest of my brother’s grandsons. That so much time has
passed—He looks at Gwyn. Will you accept my charge to visit my grand-nephew and bear him news of
my return? I offer you a rich reward for this and for your protection of my
daughter.
I
accept, she says, and she thinks of riding free in the
forest, of gazing on the ocean from the mountains on the coast. She leaves the
next day, thundering over turf on a massive horse, her braid whispering down
her back and to the horse’s flank.
--
King Adam is a massive
man, all muscle and brawn. She realizes later the cunning and guile that lurk
behind the muscles, between the tendons, inside the bones, insidious and
dangerous. For now, he smiles, benign, introduces her to his Queen, Dalia.
She is taller than
Gwyn, lissome like the branches of a willow tree. Her hair falls in honeyed
waves down her back, and her eyes shine greener than freshly-dewed grass in the
morning. She steals the breath from Gwyn’s lungs before she even speaks. She is
the most beautiful woman Gwyn has ever seen. She uses soft words, rounded at
the edges with a lilting accent, spoken with a smile and a gentle touch to the
arm or shoulder. She shows Gwyn to her room, and then to the dining hall, and,
later, after the King has gone in with his advisors, she gives Gwyn a secret
smile and pulls her away to show her a room full of books upon books.
I
spend my time here, she says.
And
your husband? Gwyn asks. Dalia’s eyes slant sharply
away, and Gwyn can see a shadow of fear flickering across her face—a warning,
the same warning she can read in the dark bruised circles on her wrists, in the
purple blossom across her neck half-hidden by powder.
He
spends his time as he pleases, she answers at last,
and Gwyn is not satisfied.
--
Gwyn lingers at the
castle longer than she means to, watching winter wax and wane, watching
spring’s flush return to the earth. She stays for Dalia. She walks with her in
the gardens and sits with her in the library, and she watches in silence as the
King lurks about the corners, snatching her away when she least expects it.
She comes back with
marks, with bruises, with welts from rope. She covers them up as best she can,
and when she fails at that she looks at Gwyn with eyes so full of wounded pride
that something wells up in her soul and seals her mouth closed. Instead she
paints lotion onto that sweetly tanned skin with her fingers, careful, tender,
always gentle to fix what the beast had broken. Sometimes Dalia will tell her
stories, how Adam was before he transformed. She says that he used to be a
beastly creature, with a wolf’s snout and a bear’s claws and the teeth of a
tiger, but he coaxed her in with soft words and gentle hands. She fell in love
with him that way, almost against her will.
It was her love that
saved him, she says one night, her hands tangling in Gwyn’s braid as she unties
it, strand by strand. He had told her—the spell would last until he could find
a maiden to love him as he appeared. And her love had cast away the exterior
demon and summoned forth the one inside, his true personality hidden away again
beneath a handsome face. Dalia leans down from the bed, curling in on herself, her
face pressed into Gwyn’s hair, and Gwyn feels her shaking with sobs, hot tears
splashing against her neck, and she cannot stop herself. She pulls away and
turns on her knees, pressing her face to Dalia’s, letting their noses slide
together, moving until their breaths mingle like lovers between their lips. Let my love save you, she says.
--
They flee in the middle
of the night. Dalia takes nothing but a few books and a cloak, and Gwyn takes
the knives and the largest horse in the stable. Dalia sits in the saddle first,
and Gwyn swings up after her, pressing against her back, smoothing gentle,
fluttering kisses into her skin, chasing away the fears and the scars. They thunder
onward, through the forest in the moonlight, their fingers twined together on
the bridle as they ride.
At dawn, they hear a
distant trumpet from behind. The beast has awoken and found his beauty gone.
Dalia shudders. Gwyn whispers reassurances to her and sinks in her heels,
heading away from the rising sun, racing the light as it shoots across the sky.
They turn south, and they head for the Queen who can protect them, who owes
Gwyn a debt.
--
They reach the Queen’s
castle at dawn the next day, Dalia nearly asleep in the saddle. Gwyn pulls her
from the horse and into the courtyard, lingering in the deepest shadows and
waiting until the guards pass by to slip into the chamber beside the Hall. She
tells Dalia to wait, pressing her into an alcove, and she creeps on nimble feet
around the passages, up the stairs, until she crosses a maid. She persuades her
that she bears an urgent message for the Queen, and obtains directions to her
chambers.
The Queen rises when
she enters, but looks unsurprised. Gwyn explains everything. She tells of the
Prince’s attempted rape and his quick demise. She tells of the sleeping beauty
that she found before her, the flax, and the breaking of the hundred years’
curse that had lain over the kingdom like a cloud of darkness. She speaks of
the journey to the shore, the castle of King Adam, and watches the Queen’s face
darken. He was a man? she asks. He found love?
He
tricked his wife, Gwyn says. He hurt her. I took her.
So
you seek my help to escape him, the Queen says. You have my protection.
So
readily?
She smiles, then, a
cold smile that reminds Gwyn of how much power the Queen wielded even before
she was queen. He was a man when I went
to him, she says. He was a beast when
I left him. I saw his soul the day he struck my face, and I cursed him to
appear as his soul was until he found one who could love him as a monster. I
suppose his cunning can overcome even that. But where is the poor child?
Gwyn explains, and the Queen
summons her to them. When she stands before them, Gwyn feels blind for not
seeing it before—the curve of their noses, the color of their eyes, the fall of
their hair. Mother and daughter fall into each other, Dalia’s body shaking with
sobs, the Queen gently carding through her hair as her cries calm to hiccups.
She turns and opens her arms to Gwyn.
You
have brought my daughter back to me, she says, and enfolds
her in warmth.
--
When the Beast comes,
he brings a hellish army made of wolves and men with brutish teeth, thugs,
strange half-formed creatures from the night. The people rally around their
beloved Queen and their new Princess, and the Queen names Gwyn commander of her
forces. She takes it in stride, and for their part the soldiers do the same.
They ride out behind her to face the nightmares in the daylight, screaming for
their Queen, refusing to back down or turn away as she leads the charge.
She loses track of the
battle quickly, the roar of blood and death loud in her ears. She is drenched
in the stuff, matted fur stuck to her blade, and she misses the stroke that
disarms her entirely. Her ears ring and her vision flickers as she looks up
from the ground, her head spinning. The Beast looms over her, and it seems to
her that she can see the animal in him, a ghostly façade over his handsome
face. She turns, tries to crawl to her feet, but he snatches her braid and
hauls her towards his blade.
She screams, struggles and kicks, but to no avail.
Her breath coming in screams, she closes her eyes and listens for the sound, the swish, the blade slicing through air.
She follows it, moves with it, and suddenly the pull on her hair is gone. Her
head slams forward into the ground.
He snarls at her and
swings down again, but she rolls and blocks him with the steel of her gauntlet.
Her hand burns with the blow, her wrist too weak to do anything but fall prone
at her side. He laughs, loud and mirthless, and raises his sword above his head
with both of his hands, the tip above her neck. She watches him, unable to
move, her blood pounding in her ears.
His head flies with an
arc of crimson light, a steady stream that looks nearly like a roll of scarlet
silk that spatters across her, a spray that coats her skin. His body collapses
to the ground beside her, sword clattering down, and she turns to look at her
savior. Dalia stands above her, chest heaving with panting breath, tears and
blood mingling on her cheeks, her long sword bright silver and red. He was mine to kill, she pants,
half-sobbing, and you are mine to protect
as I am yours.
She reaches out a hand
towards Dalia, and feels their fingers slide together before the world goes
very bright and then fades to black, a tunnel that encompasses her as the
sounds all fade away.
--
After the battle, the
army moves back to the castle, exhausted but triumphant. The Queen in her
throne room breathes a sigh of relief and moves to embrace her daughter,
covered in blood and the dust of the battlefield, and then to Gwyn, who is
drenched in the wreckage of war. Mother,
says Dalia, I love her.
I
know,
says the Queen. She smiles. I’ve
commissioned another crown.
--
Gwyn and Dalia are
crowned the day of their wedding. They kneel before the Queen, fingers twined
together as the crowns are placed gently on their heads, the weight pressing
down on their curls. Together they stand and face the cheering audience,
lifting their joined hands.
Long
live the Queens! the crowd cheers.
And they live long—and
busily—and eventfully—and perhaps even happily ever after.
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