White As Snow (Fairy Tale) (23 page)

Read White As Snow (Fairy Tale) Online

Authors: Tanith Lee

Again, her eyes were wet. She had remembered how to weep. She hid it, and stumbled down.
Among the booths she waited, watching the hill path and the white mist. She had found herself. Naturally herself would return, to be found again.
Once or twice people came to her and wanted the fruit. Arpazia let them take it, not reaching for their coins, so they scoffed and did not pay, or else tossed the payment in among the apples.
Her tears dried. The ache in her back and hands turned to itching. She thought,
I must follow her, wherever she goes.
She did not expect her younger self to know herself. Arpazia was in clever, perhaps supernatural, disguise.
It would be easy to kill her.
No, that was wrong. Easy to kiss. To hold.
What did it mean?
“White as wood,” sang Arpazia under her breath, “red as snow, black as blood.” So passersby now avoided her, knowing her for what she must be, a beldame speaking maledictions.
 
 
Later the sky darkened. The spring day veered. Gouts of thunder cloud herded up the sky, and rain fell in steel lines.
The market was full of rain, curses, and running figures. A man from the orchard village bumped against Arpazia. “Go on, gran. Get to the tents.”
Go here, go there. Which tents?
She pretended to do as he said, but hung back.
Soon after, Coira and the dwarf came down from the higher hill, through the rain.
She had a shawl over her head, and he carried something in a bundle.
They passed Arpazia within the length of her arm, not seeing her, overwhelming her by proximity.
Again, she moved to follow them.
In the rain, gliding between its stitches, this seemed simpler than ever, and besides, she felt now, the Crone, that they were the only three real beings in that landscape. Then the dwarf too ceased to be real, and only
she
was, only herself, twice over.
So she pursued herself, now without any true fear of loss, along the hills and so to a cavelike doorway in the land’s side.
She had made believe she was cunning, but now she was. She paused to let herself go in—in there to the dark beyond the dark of day. And then she went, without haste. And meeting the next man, some other guard who blocked her way, Arpazia said, “Let me through. I’m with that girl. I am her mother.”
The guard stared down at her. “Yes, you look as if you are. Both damned witches. Go on, then.”
And Arpazia went through into the hill, after her daughter who was her own self, through into the Underworld of Hell, armed only with a basket of dead apples.
Sanguinea Blood-Red
H
EPHAESTION AND COIRA HAD been lovers through the last of the winter below ground.
They were not excessively overt, but even so, it was not to be missed by the five others who shared the house.
Proud spoke first, to Hephaestion.
“Stormy, it’s all well enough, but you should leave off now.”
“Leave off what?”
“Come, you know what I mean.”
Hephaestion did know. “That’s between her and me.”
“She’s
human
,” said Proud. All the contempt of his superior species blazed in his voice. He had never been wise.
Stormy shrugged. “Not tried such a girl?”
“Be sure, I’ve had my pick. But how can you go on?”
“I like it. She likes it.”
“Do you want to be separate from us? Deny us?”
“Don’t be a fool. What about Soporo?”
“That is never the same.” It was not. “Leave her alone. Best
of all, send her away. She’s served her purpose—we’re all right in these mines, we don’t need her. Let her find someone her own
height.”
Hephaestion said, looking at the floor, “It’s more than beddances. She and I are companions.”
Proud made a speech. It concerned loyalties and un-women that might be used, but not taken up. Hephaestion left him to it, and looking round, Proud found himself orating at the air.
Soporo spoke next, on the track where they all met in the “mornings” before the mine.
“Is she good? Is she pepper-hot? Tell me, what can she do? Can she do
this
—
this,
then?”
When Hephaestion would not provide one explicit word, Soporo called him names, even attempted to start a fight. Greedy dragged him off.
“She’s a white stick of nothing!” yelled Soporo. “Is her cunt that white? You’re welcome.”
None of the others said anything. Vinka hurled a pot at Hephaestion’s head, meaning to damage him—hut he was accustomed to her from years ago, and dodged the missile. As it smashed to bits, her eyes shot venom at Coira, who was standing by the fire. Then Vinka raised her skirt high up, displaying her belly and legs and sexual center, not to Stormy, but to the girl. Coira had occasionally seen Vinka nude, Want also. These two dwarvixens had condensed, beautiful bodies, full-breasted yet blossom-skinned, like babies, their short childish legs smooth, the pudenda hairless as if scrupulously shaved. But this showing was offensive, dreadful. Coira looked away, and Vinka let down her skirt with the slashing noise of a whip.
That day she and Want left the shack and did not return. Greedy too did not return that “night,” nor any night after. Hephaestion learned from an insulting Soporo that these three had set up another home elsewhere in the cavern.
After that only Proud and Tickle remained on the shack’s upper
floor. Tickle did nothing differently, but Proud was curt, and to Coira he would never now speak.
“I’m sorry,” said Coira to Hephaestion.
“Why? You didn’t do it.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I have no powers of my own, that I’m helpless under your witchery? Perhaps I am, but it’s my choice to be so. Let them sulk.”
She had learned to cook from the dwarves. She stirred the kettle of vegetables she had kept going for him, Trickle, and Proud. She did not argue, but she was very still. And when Trickle came to take the bowls for Proud and herself, Coira turned her head. That former gesture Hephaestion had memorized, and saw even in dreams.
They, too, did not discuss the severing again. They went on together. It was only a brief silence which would sometimes occur between them, dividing them for a moment like a distance of many miles.
 
 
They were lovers, but he did not love her. He knew this well. And he had never lied to her, for all the loving things he said to her, which concerned her attractions, his desire, despite the value of her presence. None of this had root in love. These feelings were the offspring of fellowship and hunger—and of their unmatchedness, too, he made no secret of that.
Sometimes they even jested together about their dissimilarities. He might call her Tiny, Child, or Little Cat. After she had told him of the phenomenon of his shadow before the torch, she sometimes flashed out at him, smiling,
Giant.
They learned to be insolent to each other, too, in the manner of true friends.
She never stinted, however, though without demand, her murmurs of her love. He never again denied her or thrust the words away. And at certain times he relished—
loved
—her love, if he did not love her back. It was a fact which troubled him.
 
 
Another thing happened. After a while, sometimes he and she would leave the cavern and go up to walk on the hills.
The winter had been solid and immoveable, but then began to crack, showing it had lost heart. Light brightened and hurt their eyes.
“Look,” she had said, “there’s a flower.” It appeared doomed to him, nearly transparent, perched on a small patch of thawed, cold mud. “I wonder if herbs grow here. They grow everywhere. I’d thought,” she said, “of trying to find starry-seal in the spring, to help Vinka with her rages. Perhaps Tickle would take it to her.”
He had said, awkward, “That won’t bring Vinka round. She’ll throw the stuff in her fire.”
“Yes,” said Coira, without any annoyance or sound of disappointment. She continued, as the weather and land changed, to look for the plant. This was very like her. She expected nothing, yet was dutiful, honorable. However had she
expected
he would give in to her and
dishonorably
coerced him by a spell?
He did not ask her that. Not being in love with her, it was not a question he needed to put.
To Coira, there was no mystery simply because she had fallen in love. The emotion had been so gradual, then so sudden. It had filled her and overwhelmed her, love, wanting, demand, coming in across every barrier of her barren past. In this one instance, she could not and did not think. Love itself acted, and was.
She was fundamentally uncomplex, perhaps. The complexities of her past had made her so.
But he did not necessarily think this of her. They did not speak of earlier lives. Instead they invented a present, in which they lived together. Neither spoke of any future, either, more than a few days hence.
The starry-seal eluded her, although the hills grew brown, then green.
The entries to the marble quarries and upper mines they
avoided, coming out by one of the cavern’s lesser cave-doors. The guards there did not charge them payment now, only leered and laughed at them, the tall pale girl with her lusty dwarf. Hephaestion was used to mockery. She seemed oblivious. Certainly she disregarded it.
Presently a sunny day set the hills in a motion of brilliance. In the grasses only twenty steps from the cave-door, Coira saw the shoots of something and moved spontaneously toward it. Then, hesitated.
“What’s that? Is it the herb?”
“Not for Vinka,” Coira said. She said, “Febrifuga. Do you see on these twigs, the white flowers trying to come early?”
Hephaestion did not recall the significance of the herb, and Coira said abruptly, “If he didn’t suffer, would he be less a monster?”
“Who?”
“The man they call a prince in Elusion.”
“Hadz? Doubtful. You mean the pains in his head?”
“Oh,” she said, “let’s go on.”
This was her dismissive side. He had noticed, she could be also discompassionate,
heartless
, even. She swept things from her that could not be changed, having learned she must.
Would she do that with him, when they had parted?
 
 
Tickle and Proud had gone to the mines, and Hephaestion stayed back, as he sometimes did now, whole days at a time. Coira sensed in this, as in their walks aboveground, the holiday spirit of someone who was preparing to go elsewhere.
She did not say a word about it. She hid it also from herself as best she could. It lay deep within her, a little dull pebble scraping against her heart.
Today he told her of the spring market and fair in Korchlava. He did not say he would go to see it, or ask if she would like to see it. (He had never referred again to her father, Draco.) However,
he mentioned there would be by now a market here, aboveground.
She was washing the bowls in which they had eaten the pine nut porridge, just outside their door, under the white willow-tree claws of the roots that grew over the shack-house. Something made her turn and look down, toward the valley, where the mansion of Hell’s prince was.
So she saw a man climbing toward her up the cinder track. She knew him instantly.
“Hephaestion—she said.
He came out. “What now?”
“That man who was in Hadz’s house, the man who wanted the silver for Hadz. He’s walking up the track.”
They both glanced over at the mirror tied to the wall. More dirty sacks had been hung across it, and if you did not know, there was nothing to see.
Elsewhere the shack showed only its normal poverty. Anything from the mines which was stored there had already (mostly) been tithed by the prince.
Hephaestion stood fixedly. Coira stood by him. They waited until the man, the fat steward with earrings, came up on to their ledge. He was hot and out of breath, and behind him one of the prince’s ruffianly guards hefted a club and belt of blades.
The steward glared with unliking eyes as he regained his breath.
“Get me a cup of wine,” he then said to Coira.
She had it ready and held it out. The steward drank.
“Yes, I couldn’t forget the pair of
you
so fast. Well. You must please yourselves, that way. Is it true though that you’re a damned witch?”
“She is not.” said Hephaestion.
“That’s not what she told me. She was going on about her herb lore.”
“I know something about herbs,” said Coira quietly. “My nurse taught me.”
“Good. Praise the Christ. It’s for his hurts in the brain. He’s had
them
three
days now. Not screaming, he’s crying like a baby. You’d better find some of your weeds, brew them for him. I tell you now, if he dies, we’ll see some pretty horrors down here. And if he gets over it and you fail, he’ll have your skin for his wall. He’ll stuff his pillows with your long hair.”
Hephaestion said briskly, “Yes, master, she knows where the plant is. We’ll—”
“You will,” said the steward. He sat down by the bucket with the porridge bowls, took one out, let it fall hack so carelessly they heard it crack on the side. “This big guard will go with you, dwarfy. So no games.”
They went up by another way, the guard choosing it in case the dwarf and the girl tried to trick him—for if she had been lying, they might want to run off.
Hephaestion knew he had seen the herb, the Febrifuga. Yet he pondered as they ascended the cavern steps behind the bowel of the gold mines, which rang and moaned, if the market had since encroached, if feet had trampled the plant or other herbalists dug it up.
Emerging in the watery sun of day. he noted the guard blinking and squinting at the light, and considered knifing him quickly and rushing Coira away. But there were too many about, even if the market was only beginning, too many who would see and give their criminal fealty to mad Hadz.
Besides she said, almost at once, “Up there on that slope, look, it’s growing in clumps. It grows well, it’s tough and versatile.”
“No flowers on it,” said Hephaestion as they got nearer.
“It’s the leaves he’ll need,” she said, matter-of-fact as any nursing nun.
Then, as she bent to loosen the soil and he began to dig part of the shrub out, she added, “But it may not help him. Some it doesn’t.”
“Then we’re dead. I’ll take it down. You go off along the hill—make out you’re looking for a better plant—”
She shook her head.
He had seen, in other matters, how she was not to be shifted when she had made up her mind. For a second he wondered. For he had come to know her so swiftly, though he knew so little of her, too, less than he knew of anyone he had spent months with.
He took the bunch of Febrifuga. Its dark green leaves trailed over his arm. It had a pungent smell.
“How terrible,” she said, as they walked back, “how terrible he should cry like a child.”
Hephaestion saw her eyes were far off, looking at this image in her head. Some vicious and evil man weeping, reduced from all his mighty stature. Hephaestion did not pity Hadz at all.
“Do you care for him?” he asked lightly. The guard was behind, hanging back, not listening only watching.

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