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rainbowfic2012-04-27 07:08 pm
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-04-27 07:08 pm
Entry tags:
- author: kat,
- color: cloud white,
- color: green,
- story: in the heart,
- style: graffiti,
- style: portrait,
- style: saturation,
- supply: acrylic,
- supply: beading wire,
- supply: chalk,
- supply: eraser,
- supply: glitter,
- supply: glue,
- supply: modeling clay,
- supply: oils,
- supply: seed beads,
- supply: stain,
- supply: yarn
Cloud White Saturation with Green 12: Sand and Snow
Author: Kat
Title: Sand and Snow
Story: In the Heart: Fairy Tale AU
Colors: Cloud white saturation, green 12 (greener pastures)
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, eraser (fairy tales), acrylic (life altering situations), stain ("whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922), beading wire (hikers huddled around a fire), oils (escape), modeling clay (love), seed beads (Lars appears a couple of times but the story isn't about him), chalk (porters in snow), yarn (dawn light), glitter ("Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." - Muhammad Ali), glue (the path ahead of you appears to be clear, enabling you to see where you're going.), graffiti.
Word Count: 7421.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Christine Warmind will not let them take her siblings.
Warnings: child disappearance, threats of being burned alive, bear-induced death.
Notes: Did anyone realize Christine was married to Joanna's youngest brother before this story?
2. Cumulus
When she was a child, everything was beautiful.
Christine could remember it very clearly. Her mother and father hand in hand, head to head and heart to heart, her brothers and sisters dancing back and forth across the vast green grass as the blue sky arched over their heads, and the clouds drifted in the sky like the fat, contented sheep that grazed in their meadows.
She knew it was not always that way. There were darker days, when the winter closed in around their long wooden house, when even the packed moss could not keep the cold and the snow out, when they bickered and sniped at each other, eager to be out. There were days, too, when her father took his sword and helmet and went a-viking, and she and her mother and her siblings and the thralls stood at the door of the longhouse, watching him go, wondering if he'd ever come back.
But even those days had a seed of beauty, in her memory. When the snow piled up around their house, they could sit all together before the fire, Theo on their father's knee, the baby in their mother's arms, Christine on the floor feeding sticks to the blaze and the thralls about their business, all of them listening as her father or the skald wove a story to fill up the endless night. When her father left, she always knew in her heart that the gods would lend him strength, and he would come home once again, bearing treasure and thralls and kisses for his children. That was the way the world worked, when she was a child. That was the way life was meant to be.
5. Mushroom cloud
The newest baby was a boy, her new youngest brother, to add to her and four-year-old Theodore and two-year-old Anna. Her father lifted him onto his knee as he sat in the high seat, sprinkled water over his soft infant head and raised him high. "This child was born to my wife!" he boomed, in a voice that carried to the darkest corner of the hall and sent shivers of happiness through Christine's bones. "He is my son, the blood of my blood. He shall be called Lars."
Lars, the name of her great-great-uncle, a strong man and a worthy warrior, favored of the gods. He would be a strong boy, then, and when he grew up he would be a great warrior, one who would lead men into battle and never know the taste of fear. He would die as her great-great-uncle had, in battle and laughter, surrounded by many dead to speed his name to the gods. It was a good fate, that carried much glory with it, and Christine's heart swelled with pride at the sight of him. Even her mother, weary from the weight of childbirth, lifted her head in joy.
He slept in the same cradle that Christine and Theodore and Anna had once shared, the elaborately-carved pinewood cradle that only her father's children could use. They placed the cradle by the fire, in the place of honor, most warm and most secure. For the whole first year of her new brother's life, her father and mother slept beside the cradle, and the children beside them in stair-step order, Christine, Theodore, Anna, the thralls around them, warm and cozy, the air so thick with love Christine could almost taste it.
She woke the morning of her brother's first birthday to her mother's screams, cutting through the air like the death-scream of a hare, chilling her heart until no warmth could penetrate.
She didn't even know what was wrong, but she knew that nothing would ever be all right again.
16. Head in the clouds
They put the cradle away, after. Her mother could not bear to see the emptiness where her brother Lars had once lain, and so they put it away, and their lives went on.
Her father grieved; Christine knew it, for she saw the tears that crept from his eyes as he bent his head over his armor. She knew he hid them because it was unmanly for a great warrior to cry, but she thought no less of him for it. Her mother grieved too, though she did not cry at all; Christine knew it, for she saw her mother's hands press on her swelling belly, as if she could keep the new child within her, safe from the darkness. Theodore and Anna grieved; but they were children, and it passed away soon. The thralls grieved; for they too had been fond of the little child who reached up to them and patted their weathered faces.
Christine did not grieve, for she was certain he was not dead.
The cradle had been empty. There had been no infant inside it, nor the body of an infant, so her brother was not dead. She was certain in her heart that he had been taken by the gods to be raised up as a great warrior, and when he was grown he would come back to them. He would sweep her up in his great arms and kiss her, would call her "little sister" laughingly, for though she was older he would be so much bigger than she. Theodore would be a great prince, then, and he would welcome their brother home. Anna would be a great lord's queen, and she would distribute amulets to celebrate the occasion. The new baby, Mortimer, he would be a skald, and would sing the story of their brother to men all over the world. Their parents would weep then for joy, not sorrow, and everything would be as it was.
He would come home. Christine was certain of it.
3. Nimbus
The gods did not think it fit that she should be so certain, for one by one, her family began to diminish, and as they went, her hope and heart began to shrink.
They took her mother first. The baby in her belly was not one baby but two, and she died screaming at their birth. Their father grieved so that he did not even name the babies until they were a year old, a year that Christine spent in fear, certain that he would leave them in the snow to die. But he took them eventually, sat them on his knee in the great hall and called them Eliot and Elisa, after the orphan twins of legend; Christine heard their names, and felt her stomach twist.
For a few years, then, they managed. Her father went a-viking more often and stayed away longer, but he still returned with treasure and thralls and kisses for his children. Her brothers grew leggy and strong, learned from the thralls to hunt and fight and drink boisterously as a man should. She and her sisters grew strong and tall and lovely, learning to sew and plant and manage the household. It was a good life.
Then one summer, her father did not return.
Christine was just sixteen, of an age to be married, but obviously that could not happen now. She grieved for her father, as her sisters and brothers and thralls did, but she could not grieve or dream too long-- she had a household to manage, brothers and sisters to raise. She did her best, but it felt still as if something was missing, without her father to sweep them up in his arms and kiss them. Still, she cherished the hope in her secret heart that one day, her brother would return.
One day, everything would be as it was.
17. Lost in the clouds
Theodore came to her on his sixteenth birthday.
"Sister," he began, his voice hesitating. "Sister, I have often thought of our lost brother."
Christine's hands paused on the thread she was spinning, for a breath so short she was sure her brother had not seen it. "I have as well," she said. "I have hoped that he will return some day."
Theodore let out a breath. "I am sure that he would," he said, "if he could, but sister, I think perhaps he cannot."
She looked up sharply. "You think..."
"Think on it," he said, sitting beside her on the bench. "Who could have taken him from the cradle by the fire? I am sure a witch did it. Perhaps one who longed for children and could not have them. She took him away and raised him as her own, and he knows nothing of us. It is the only explanation, sister. You must see."
Christine lowered her head. She still hoped that the gods had taken him, but she could not deny that her brother spoke much sense. "Then what can we do?"
"I must go in search of him," Theodore said, and though she looked sharply at him, she could only see sincerity in his face. "I must go and bring him back."
"You cannot," she said, her voice as even as she could make it. "You must see, brother. If you go, the high king will come to our longhouse and see that our father is gone, and there is no man to hold it. He will take it, and all our things, and give them to his men. He will take your brothers and give them as warriors. He will take your sisters and give them as brides. You must be here."
"Mortimer is old enough," Theodore said. "He is only ten but he looks and fights as a much older man. He will protect you, and I will return with our brother, and you will have another sword-arm to guard you against the dark."
The wool slipped through her fingers as the spindle wound it into thread.
"Go if you must," she said, at last. "But if you do not return in a year, Theodore, we must count you dead."
"I will go," he said. "And I will return."
He did not.
18. Another cloudy day
One by one, her siblings slipped away.
Anna was the next to go, on her own sixteenth birthday. "Sister," she said, "Theodore is gone, and will not return, but we still have need of our brother. Let me go. Without him, there is no one to negotiate a marriage for me, and you can manage the household. You have no need of me. I will return in a year, or not at all."
Christine bowed her head, and let her sister go.
Four years passed, without sign of her sister or her brothers. Mortimer lifted his chin then, and said that he would go. "I am not a warrior, sister, I am a skald. I will go, and I will sing of our lost brother to the four winds. One of them will know him. One of them will bring me to him. I will go, and I will bring him back. Eliot will protect you. I will return in a year, or not all."
Christine bowed her head, and let her brother go.
The twins left together two years later, moving and speaking as one as ever they did. "We will find our brother," Eliot vowed. "The thralls will protect you, sister. We will go forth in opposite directions, and we will find the one who has taken him. We will bring him home, sister. We will not fail you. We will return in a year."
Christine bowed her head, and let her siblings go.
In a year, she was twenty-seven, an orphan, and alone-- where she had had six siblings she now had none. The thralls cared for her as best she could, but she was too old to marry, too young to hold her longhouse, too alone to make her way. The sky was never blue anymore, always dark and cloudy. The sheep grew thin and lean; her treasure waned; her hope died.
Her siblings were dead. And her lost brother, her secret hope, he had been dead from the beginning.
Perhaps it was time she died too.
19. Looking for shapes in the clouds
The witch came in the dead of winter.
She announced her coming with a breath of summer, a faint wisp of warmth against Christine's cheek, the scent of flowers on the air. She looked sharply up from her seat huddled on the high chair, saw the thralls gathering together at the door. Something was happening, something... unexpected.
She gathered her strength around herself, and stood, just as the witch came through the door.
She was beautiful, and utterly unlike anyone Christine had ever seen. Her skin was the color of tree bark in spring; her eyes the blue of a summer sky, her hair the rich red of the autumn leaves, her smile the white of winter snow. Every step she took brightened the air around her; every movement she made wafted the scent of flowers before it. Christine caught her breath as the witch turned her summer-blue eyes on her, and smiled, gently.
"Child," she said, and Christine fell to the floor, put her forehead to the ground, for surely it was a goddess she addressed, a sorceress who could command the seasons. But the witch bent down and lifted her to her feet, brushed her nut-brown hair away from her brow, and smiled down at her with just such as smile as she remembered her mother wearing.
"Child," she said, again. "Do not fear me. I come to you with a message; your hope is not false, and your family is not lost."
Christine's voice froze in her throat; she let her hope fill her eyes.
"They are trapped," the witch went on, voice soft. "They transgressed, all of them, and they are trapped now, as is your lost brother. You can free them, but you must find them first."
She looked past the witch, to the thralls standing behind her, hope and fear warring in their eyes. "My people..."
"Do not fear for them," the witch said, quietly. "Whether you succeed or fail, you will never return here. If you go, I will see to it that your people are cared for and protected from those who would hurt them."
"And if I stay..." Christine let the question die unspoken, but the witch spoke anyway.
"They will live, but your brothers and sisters will be lost." The witch looked down at her with such compassion in her eyes it made Christine want to weep. "If you fail, they will also be lost, as will you. I understand if you fear it, child. I understand if you will not go."
"I do fear it," Christine said, quietly. "But I will go. How can I not?"
The witch closed her eyes, then leaned in and kissed her forehead. A strange warmth spread through Christine's body, and she closed her eyes to better feel it. "Then go, child. Go, and do not fear the winter. Find your brothers and sisters. When you do, you will learn more."
When Christine opened her eyes, she stood in the midst of a vast snowfield, alone.
1. Cirrus
The witch had not sent her out unguarded. She wore her mother's best winter dress, of bearskin tanned with the fur still on and lined with rabbit. She wore too her father's winter boots, of the best waterproofed leather, with rabbit-skin linings and three layers of her favorite knitted socks, the best deerskin snowshoes strapped on over the soles. Her long hair was braided now, beneath a rabbit skin cap with flaps to cover her ears. She wore a pack, that proved to contain food and a bone comb, a tinderbox and gold coins, a compass and a waterskin, all bundled up in warm blankets. All the things she needed to travel, all the things her father had taught her to use when she was small, despite the fact that she was a girl and destined to stay at home.
She was grateful, so grateful, for his teachings now, as she shouldered her pack and set out across the snow. Step step shake, step step shake, the swinging walk came back to her. The chill nipped at her face, the thin winter sun caressed her head, the scent of snow touched her nostrils. Above, thin white clouds like shreds of wool hung motionless in an endless blue sky, hawks and eagles tracing lazy circles against them.
It was the most beautiful day she could remember.
For the first time since Eliot and Elisa had gone, Christine felt hope.
9. Coalescence
They found her, in the end, her brothers and sisters.
Theodore found her first, when she strayed into a swamp and became lost. A stork flew over her three times, then settled down and stalked its way to dry land, leading her step by step to safety. She never knew afterwards how she knew it was him-- perhaps the tilt of his head, perhaps the way he ran his long, sharp beak through her hair. But she knew, and thereafter he travelled with her.
Anna was a fox now, deep in the southern forests, who with sharp yips guided her away from a raging boar and the human hunt that chased it. Mortimer, a nightingale in the scrublands yet further south, sang sweetly to lift her spirits when she despaired of ever finding her siblings. The twins, long-armed monkeys in the hot, wet forests that were further south than anyone she had ever heard of had ever been, brought her food and water, and lifted her into the trees to sleep with them at night.
One by one they came back to her, guarded her, helped her in her quest. One by one she gathered them in.
And still, she could not find her lost brother.
11. Clouded over
"You will not find him," the witch told her, in a dream one night.
Christine sat bolt upright in her bedroll, and found herself once again in the cold, snowy pine forests of her youth. She walked barefoot in her sweet summer dress, deerskin embroidered with birds and butterflies, and felt no cold. The witch stood before her in no clothing but her own skin, her dark red hair floating around her as if she stood underwater.
"Why not?" she asked, her throat tight, for she knew the witch spoke of her lost brother, the one they had all lost so much trying to find.
"Sweet child," the witch said. "You shall not find him, because he must find himself first. He must break his trap himself, and then he shall find you. You need fear nothing for him, except perhaps that he may fail."
Christine closed her eyes, felt tears well up beneath her lids, and bit them back, for she was a maiden of the winter people, and they did not cry. "You swear to me that he shall be safe?"
The witch smiled, took two steps forward, and cupped her cheek. "I do swear, child. Even if he fails, he shall still be safe. And you have another task you must complete."
"My brothers and sisters," she said, and nodded.
"You have found them. Now you must free them," the witch said, and dropped her hand. "I shall not lie to you, child. The thing will be hard."
"Tell me," she said.
12. Cloud lore
"You must weave for all of them shirts of nettle," the witch began, with sorrow in her eyes. "You must make these shirts yourself, from start to finish; you must pick the nettle and spin it, weave or knit the cloth, and sew it with nettle thread. Only once you have completed these shirts will your siblings once more be themselves."
Christine had plucked a nettle once by accident-- she could still feel the sting in her hands. She shivered, but because she was a maiden of the winter people, she firmed her chin and lifted it. "I will do this thing," she said, steadily. "They are my brothers and sisters. For them, I will do it."
The witch nodded, but the sorrow still hovered behind her eyes. "I have not told you all, child. For the time it takes you to complete this task, you may not speak a word."
Christine took in a breath of air. Not speak? Not go to people for help, not see and speak with them every day? "Not a word?"
"Not one," the witch said, solemnly. "Nor may you cry out, in pain or sorrow, in pleasure or joy. You must be entirely silent from the time you pluck the first nettle to the time that you place the final shirt around your sibling's neck."
How could she do that? How much could anyone ask? The words were on Christine's lips.
But then she thought. Theodore and Anna protecting her, leading her to safety or away from hunters. Eliot and Elisa, bringing her food and water, finding her safe places to sleep. Her sweet little Mortimer, singing her songs of joy to raise her heart from sorrow. How could she not do it?
She set her jaw, and looked to the witch. "I will do this thing," she said. "They are my brothers and sisters. For them, I will do it."
The witch closed her eyes. "Then, child, I will help you as much as I can," she said, quietly. "Go now. Wake, and find your nettles. And remember-- not a single sound."
Christine nodded, and opened her eyes on the world.
13. Cloudscape
There were not many nettles in the forest where she had found the twins, so now she moved north again, towards the open scrublands where nothing but nettle grew. She explained as they moved north; told her brothers and sisters what was about to happen. Theodore flapped his wings agitatedly, Anna closed her sharp little teeth gently around Christine's ankle, Mortimer stood on her shoulder and chirped in her ear and the twins took an arm each, to hold her back, but she was their older sister, and what she ordered them to do, they must do.
They would help her, she knew. They would hate watching it, they would suffer with her, but they would help her, for they were her brothers and sisters.
The nettles stung her hands like a thousand bees, the first time she plucked one, and as the heap of nettles in her knapsack grew higher and higher, she wept more and more, until her tears fell ceaselessly, even as she worked. The twins brought her water to bathe her hands, Mortimer sang all the cheeriest tunes they all knew, Theodore and Anna stroked through her hair or cuddled against her leg, but still she wept, even as she spun, even as the first shirt took shape.
And yet, as she stitched the sides of the first shirt, she realized that she had not wept in some time. Her hands still burned, the nettles still stung no matter what she did to ease them, but she had stopped weeping, and the pain, once unendurable, had subsided to an uneasy murmur at the back of her mind.
She set the first shirt aside three weeks later. It was a rough thing with no sleeves and no hems, made of lumpy thread and no joy to look upon, yet it was a shirt, and she had finished it. The first. Four more to be made.
The first shirt, the second, the third, matched one by one to her siblings. She had just begun to spin the thread for the fourth when the storm hit.
4. Mist/Fog
Christine never knew afterwards how she held on to her pack, when the thunder deafened her, the rain blinded her, and the wind whirled her away, spun her brothers and sisters into the air and pushed her along the ground. It was a miracle that she had not cried out in fear; the only miracle she was to be granted, for at some point her fear overcame her and darkness crept into her vision. When she woke, she was alone, on flat, empty ground, in a sea of mist.
She wandered, then, she did not know for how long. She could spin while walking, and she did, grateful that she had already picked more nettles than she would ever need, for this land was wide and empty of life. Beneath her feet the stone changed slowly to sand; above her, the sun turned slowly to a white-hot ball of flame.
It did not matter, she told herself, even as her stomach growled hungrily and her skin blistered under the burning sky. Her brothers and sisters had found her once: they would find her again. She only needed to keep spinning. Soon she would free them. Soon they could all go home.
But the sand was shifting beneath her feet, the sun beating down on her from the sky. The mist closed in tight around her, crept into her heart and mind until nothing seemed real anymore. She slid down onto the sand at last, sat down, her hands stilling on the drop spindle. The grey of the mist crept into her eyes, her heart, smothered everything but the stinging in her hands, the hot sun on her face, the feel of the sand beneath her.
She closed her eyes.
15. Soft as a cloud
She woke in a chamber so airy and light that for a moment, she thought she floated, high up in the sky, where there was no sand to abrade her skin.
It was a reasonable illusion. The couch she lay upon was soft and white as a cloud, surrounded by curtains so white and frail that they looked like mist, like the shreds of clouds that drifted in the sky on particularly fine winter days. The room around her was built of palest alabaster, with the most fantastic shapes carved and set in the walls. A breeze, warm as skin, caressed her face; the scent of flowers, rich and heavy, lingered her nostrils. She felt no pain, for her hands had been expertly bandaged and salved. She raised them, to better see, and a hand parted the curtains.
"Oh, good," the man said, "you're awake. The doctors weren't sure if you would live."
Even had she not sworn not to speak a sound, she would have been speechless at this man, for he looked like no one she had ever known.
He had no beard, to begin with. Her brothers and her father and every adult man she'd ever known had had a beard like a thicket, but this man had only smooth, tanned skin, darker even than the skin of the thralls taken from the Inner Sea. He smiled at her, and his dark eyes, like pools of black water, smiled too, his ink-black eyebrows arching. He wore a turban that hid all his hair, but she thought it must be ink-black too, like his eyes.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice kind and warm as his smile.
Christine shook herself from her reverie, touched her throat, and shook her head.
"You can't speak?" He tilted his head to one side. "That must be troublesome."
She did not hear him, for she had remembered her shirts, the nettles and her knitting-- so close to finishing, and if she had lost them... Frantically, she began to pat the bed around her.
"Oh," the man said, and bent to one side. When he straightened, he held her pack. "Are you looking for this? The doctors say it is what has hurt your hands."
She snatched at it, and he pressed his mouth together. "Take it, then, but please be careful. You have such lovely hands. It is a shame to damage them as you do."
Christine lowered her eyes, unable to look at him. He did not know her. He was beautiful, the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and he did not know her.
She took out her spindle and the nettles she had prepared, and began to spin. The bandages made her hands clumsy, so she took them off, and suffered again the sting.
The man sighed, but said nothing.
She was careful to seem absorbed in her work, but she knew every move he made, until he finally left.
10. Partly cloudy
She learned from the servants that chattered around her as she lay in bed that the man was Prince Alan, the youngest of the sultan's six children. What a sultan was, she did not know, though she thought him a sort of king-- nor did she know how she understood their speech, for when she really listened, she heard rhythms and sounds strange to her, a sweet sing-song language not at all like the guttural harshness of her homeland. She was very far from that homeland, then, and alone.
Or... perhaps not quite. For she knew Alan, as confused as he was by her insistence on her painful task, was her friend; she heard the servants say so. She heard that he had rescued her, stumbled across her lying lifeless in the sand and brought her home to this palace of alabaster and tile. He had ordered her care. He had fought for her right to stay when his family objected. He had demanded that she be kept safe, and so she had been.
Christine kept her head down and feigned incomprehension; it was only when Alan came to visit her that she did not.
He spoke to her of everything. Of his sisters the princesses and his brother the grown-prince, of his father and mother, of his father's shy second wife and her daughter, his half-sister, the two of them never spoken of or allowed into the family circle, except by Alan and his sister the Princess Joanna. As they grew more comfortable together, he brought Princess Joanna with him; once or twice he brought the mistress and her daughter too, and for a moment Christine could close her eyes and pretend she was at home, her family surrounding her and the thralls too, chattering voices and bursts of laughter.
She was far warmer here than she had ever been there, of course. And, if she was honest with herself, she was happier.
At home there had always been another task to do, another person to care for, another conversation to have or bed to make or floor to sweep, and all of it needed to be done if her people were to survive another winter. Here, she need do nothing but concentrate on her self-appointed task, or sit and dream in the sun by the window once the doctors allowed her out of bed. She was ashamed to admit that she did much dreaming, so much that it took her a month to finish the fourth shirt.
She was even more ashamed to admit that much of her dreaming involved Alan.
Impossible, of course. He was a prince, and however kind to her he was, she was certain that he never looked on her as more than the strange wild girl he had found in the desert, who could not or would not speak. She was a princess in her own right, of course, a daughter of the frozen north, but his land knew nothing of hers or of her people. To them she was nothing, less than nothing.
And there was more. She had not seen her siblings since the storm. She was certain they were alive-- the witch would have told her were they not-- but she knew nothing of their fate, and she had slowed in her work, and all because of a pair of ink-dark eyes and a smile that meant nothing beyond kindness.
She closed her eyes, and took up her work again.
8. Albedo
She sat by the side of the pool in the family's inner court, bathing her sore, abused feet in the water, and spun. Thread for the last shirt, now... she'd prepared all the nettles, and she had almost enough thread. Soon she would be ready to knit the shirt. Perhaps five days, if she worked at her slower pace, three if she worked faster. Another day to stitch the sides shut and the five shirts would be finished. It would be up to her siblings then, to find her so that she could free them.
Almost done. Then she could speak, and then maybe Alan...
She was seated behind a bush, out of sight from the rest of the courtyard, so when the servants came for cool water to bathe the princesses' brows, they did not guard their words.
"...the vizier does not like her," one said to the other, in her high, twittering voice. "He says that she is a witch."
"She is," said the other. "Have you seen her? She knits all the time, and with stinging nettles. If she isn't a witch, she's mad."
Christine paused in her spinning, and realized that they spoke of her.
The vizier did not like her?
One of the girls sank her voice with excitement. "He says that she is bewitching the prince."
The other gasped. "Prince Jasper?"
The sound of a smack echoed across the water. "Don't be a goose, Prince Alan."
"Oh," the other said, dismissively, as Christine shook her head over their foolishness. "Him she can have. Prince Jasper is the handsome one."
"Oh, yes," the first said, and their conversation dissolved into giggles.
Christine took up her spinning again, thoughtfully.
So she had an enemy. What was more important... perhaps, she had hope.
20. Waiting for rain
Now that she knew about the vizier, she paid closer attention to what the servants said around her. One or two of them she quickly found out as spies; the others took longer, except for the sweet, giggling girls who turned down her bed and brought her tea. They acted out of genuine compassion for her, and if they watched her from the sides of their eyes, there was only curiosity in their gaze. The others watched her with fear, or worse, hostility. And they watched her more, these days.
Christine had never wished more that she could speak.
She knitted faster, urgency born of fear. If she could only finish the shirts, if her siblings would only come, she could speak then, and tell Alan how she feared the vizier. He would protect her-- even if her hope was only hope, she knew that he would protect her. She just needed to finish, to save her siblings.
The days ticked by to the clicking of her needles, row by row, stitch by stitch. The fifth shirt was almost complete when it happened.
14. Cloud ceiling
One morning, the giggling girls did not come, and nor did her usual servants. Instead, a stone-faced old woman walked into the room, seized her arm, and pulled her out of bed. Christine clapped a hand over her mouth, barely stifling a sound in time. The stone-faced woman snorted, and shook her, and said, slowly and clearly, "You come with me. You make no spells. Come now."
No spells?
The cold of the north wind crept back into her heart, pushing out the summer breezes Alan had brought. The vizier had won. She was doomed.
And the fifth shirt, still unfinished, lay in her pack at the foot of her bed.
The old woman dragged her to a court, where she watched her own trial blurred by tears and pain. The words flew past her, over her, around her, only bits and pieces lighting in her ears-- "witch," "green spells," "enchanted His Highness" "burnt at dawn." When the words stopped coming, the woman snatched her arm again and hauled her to an iron cell, where she sat, cold and frightened, shivering as night descended.
She had not seen Alan at the trial, or the giggling girls.
She wrapped her arms around herself, then pressed her face into her hands. This place had seduced her, made her forget her responsibilities and what she owed to her siblings. She had not finished the fifth shirt, had not saved them when they were depending on her. She had let herself be caught up by Alan's dark eyes and the vast courtyard with its still pool of water.
She had trusted Alan to protect her, when she should not have-- not because he would not try, but simply because he could not.
Christine closed her eyes, pressed her face against her knees, then scrubbed her hands across her face. Time for her to lie down, and perhaps at least try to sleep. Her mother had always said that things would look different in the morning.
She went to the bed, patted her way across the rough burlap covers, touched the pillow, and gasped as her hand stung. The nettles....! and beneath them a note, that read, simply, "I'm sorry."
Alan.
Christine sat down on the bed, and began to knit.
7. Thunderhead
They brought her to the pyre just as the horizon began to blush pink with dawn.
It was a beautiful morning, and the first time she had seen what lay around the palace. They had built the pyre out front, before the imposing, dusty gates, but they brought her out through the back, stumbling on bare and aching feet through avenues of cool green myrtle and cypress trees, arching regally over her head as if to protect her from the endless sky. Orange and lemon trees stretched out their branches, heavy with fruit, their sweet scent a cry in the predawn dark. Water plashed somewhere; the huge white magnolias dropped petals on her head as they passed, like tears.
She would have liked to sit there, she thought, and dream away the time. Just there, beneath the orange tree.
They took her from the garden and marched her across sand that froze her feet. In a few hours' time, with the burning sun overhead, it would sear the skin of any who touched it. They came to the crowd that awaited her, surrounded by solemn, frightened, angry faces, the vizier looking smug, Alan and Joanna white-faced in a group of regal men and women. She fancied some of them turned away, or moved their hearts to pity at the sight of her, so thin and frightened in a ragged white dress with her dark hair tangling around her face.
Christine did not look at the pyre. She could not. Even when they marched her up it, even when she felt wood beneath her bare feet, she looked steadily out at the dawn, at the tentative fingers of light exploring the darkness, and thought of her brothers and sisters, who now would never be free.
"I'm sorry," she mouthed, as they bound her hands behind her back.
They came.
The nightingale first, little Mortimer, diving out of the sky with a shriek. Someone in the back of the crowd cried out, and the stork followed, Theodore, parting hair with his sharp beak and slashing at the vizier with his beak. The fox, sly Anna, ducking in and out of the crowd, nipping at ankles, harrying them away. The ties loosened around her wrists, and the twins, clever little monkeys, freed her hands, their own hands leathery on her skin.
The vizier, his face purpling with rage, started forward and gestured the guards to do the same. There was another shout and Alan burst forward, drew his sword, took a stance before the pyre. He glanced up at her only once, but she saw in his eyes everything-- that her secret hope was not just hope, that he knew what she needed now. He would buy her time.
She pulled the shirts from beneath her dress, ignoring the fresh stings of pain on her chest and hands, and threw the first over Eliot's head, the second over Elisa. The twins were clever enough to work their way into the sleeves on their own, so she turned and threw the third shirt over Mortimer, her tiny little nightingale brother lost within its folds. Anna scrambled up the pyre, quick and lithe-- Christine held the fourth shirt for her to run into, then caught up the last and looked for Theodore.
He flew to her, her brother, his wings spread wide, his beak outstretched. She threw the shirt into the air and he swooped towards it.
There was a noise like a great crack of thunder, and the heavens opened in rain.
6. Rainbow
"Witchcraft!" screamed the vizier, and slashed wildly at Alan. Christine cried out inarticulately and threw herself down from the pyre, pulled him back against the harsh wood of the pyre. He shouted, thrust her behind him as the vizier cried out again, in triumph this time. He had them trapped and he knew it, and his eyes lit on Alan with ferocious joy as he pulled his sword back.
Then there was nothing where he had been but a red mist and a wall of white.
The great bear reared back from the vizier's bloody corpse, stretching high over her head, and roared, a thunderous sound that shook her bones. Christine screamed again-- she could not help herself.
It left a burning in her throat, and she pressed both hands to her mouth, horrified. She had broken her vow, her one promise, and what if her brothers and sisters had not been all in the shirts? Were they trapped now?
The great bear had taken up a protective stance before them, and Alan, evidently believing he was no threat, was turning to her with a smile on his face. When he saw her expression, it disappeared.
"What..." he began.
"My brothers and sisters," she gasped, and scrambled up the pyre, driving splinters beneath her fingers, cutting her hands and feet. A moment later he put his shoulder beneath her foot and boosted, and she arrived atop the pyre rather suddenly, stumbling, almost falling...
A hand caught her elbow-- Theodore, smiling down at her, his nettle shirt turned to finest silk, his limbs as long as the stork's. Beyond him Anna, looking more regal and elegant than ever, her dark hair straight down her back to her knees, her smile sly as the fox but openhearted nonetheless. Mortimer, his shy smile unchanged, reached out his hands to her, the nightingale's joy in his eyes. The twins, identical mischievous smiles on their faces. Her brothers and sisters, soaked by the rain, whole and human, and smiling.
Christine burst into tears.
They all rushed her at once, all five of them, threw their arms around her and hugged her as her tears and the rain slowed together. After, they handed her down carefully to Alan, who took her in his arms and refused to let her cut and bleeding feet touch the ground. "Not until the doctors see you," he said, firmly, holding her as if she was something precious, swelling her heart. He would not even let her make her stumbling attempts to explain, merely held her closer and said, "I know there is some magic here, and I know you will tell me when you have rested. I am certain you have been very brave--" around her, her brothers and sisters nodded, and she flushed-- "and that is all I need to know."
"There is one more thing, sister," Theodore said. "When we were blown away by the storm, we did not come to find you right away."
"I know," Christine said, and smiled at Alan. "I was safe."
"Yes," Theodore said, "but that is not why we did not come."
"We found him, sister," Anna said.
"No, he found us," Mortimer corrected.
"We brought him with us," the twins added.
Christine stared at her for a moment, then at her other siblings, all with solemn faces and eyes dancing with joy. "Our brother?" she whispered.
The great bear padded up to them, and in a wobbling moment he changed; one moment there was the great white bear of her homeland, the next, a brawny young warrior, his beard shadowing his jaw. He smiled at her, and reached out his hands.
"Little sister," he said. "I have come home."
Far away, a witch with spring-brown skin and summer-blue eyes smiled.
Above them all, a rainbow sparkled into life.
Title: Sand and Snow
Story: In the Heart: Fairy Tale AU
Colors: Cloud white saturation, green 12 (greener pastures)
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, eraser (fairy tales), acrylic (life altering situations), stain ("whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922), beading wire (hikers huddled around a fire), oils (escape), modeling clay (love), seed beads (Lars appears a couple of times but the story isn't about him), chalk (porters in snow), yarn (dawn light), glitter ("Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." - Muhammad Ali), glue (the path ahead of you appears to be clear, enabling you to see where you're going.), graffiti.
Word Count: 7421.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Christine Warmind will not let them take her siblings.
Warnings: child disappearance, threats of being burned alive, bear-induced death.
Notes: Did anyone realize Christine was married to Joanna's youngest brother before this story?
2. Cumulus
When she was a child, everything was beautiful.
Christine could remember it very clearly. Her mother and father hand in hand, head to head and heart to heart, her brothers and sisters dancing back and forth across the vast green grass as the blue sky arched over their heads, and the clouds drifted in the sky like the fat, contented sheep that grazed in their meadows.
She knew it was not always that way. There were darker days, when the winter closed in around their long wooden house, when even the packed moss could not keep the cold and the snow out, when they bickered and sniped at each other, eager to be out. There were days, too, when her father took his sword and helmet and went a-viking, and she and her mother and her siblings and the thralls stood at the door of the longhouse, watching him go, wondering if he'd ever come back.
But even those days had a seed of beauty, in her memory. When the snow piled up around their house, they could sit all together before the fire, Theo on their father's knee, the baby in their mother's arms, Christine on the floor feeding sticks to the blaze and the thralls about their business, all of them listening as her father or the skald wove a story to fill up the endless night. When her father left, she always knew in her heart that the gods would lend him strength, and he would come home once again, bearing treasure and thralls and kisses for his children. That was the way the world worked, when she was a child. That was the way life was meant to be.
5. Mushroom cloud
The newest baby was a boy, her new youngest brother, to add to her and four-year-old Theodore and two-year-old Anna. Her father lifted him onto his knee as he sat in the high seat, sprinkled water over his soft infant head and raised him high. "This child was born to my wife!" he boomed, in a voice that carried to the darkest corner of the hall and sent shivers of happiness through Christine's bones. "He is my son, the blood of my blood. He shall be called Lars."
Lars, the name of her great-great-uncle, a strong man and a worthy warrior, favored of the gods. He would be a strong boy, then, and when he grew up he would be a great warrior, one who would lead men into battle and never know the taste of fear. He would die as her great-great-uncle had, in battle and laughter, surrounded by many dead to speed his name to the gods. It was a good fate, that carried much glory with it, and Christine's heart swelled with pride at the sight of him. Even her mother, weary from the weight of childbirth, lifted her head in joy.
He slept in the same cradle that Christine and Theodore and Anna had once shared, the elaborately-carved pinewood cradle that only her father's children could use. They placed the cradle by the fire, in the place of honor, most warm and most secure. For the whole first year of her new brother's life, her father and mother slept beside the cradle, and the children beside them in stair-step order, Christine, Theodore, Anna, the thralls around them, warm and cozy, the air so thick with love Christine could almost taste it.
She woke the morning of her brother's first birthday to her mother's screams, cutting through the air like the death-scream of a hare, chilling her heart until no warmth could penetrate.
She didn't even know what was wrong, but she knew that nothing would ever be all right again.
16. Head in the clouds
They put the cradle away, after. Her mother could not bear to see the emptiness where her brother Lars had once lain, and so they put it away, and their lives went on.
Her father grieved; Christine knew it, for she saw the tears that crept from his eyes as he bent his head over his armor. She knew he hid them because it was unmanly for a great warrior to cry, but she thought no less of him for it. Her mother grieved too, though she did not cry at all; Christine knew it, for she saw her mother's hands press on her swelling belly, as if she could keep the new child within her, safe from the darkness. Theodore and Anna grieved; but they were children, and it passed away soon. The thralls grieved; for they too had been fond of the little child who reached up to them and patted their weathered faces.
Christine did not grieve, for she was certain he was not dead.
The cradle had been empty. There had been no infant inside it, nor the body of an infant, so her brother was not dead. She was certain in her heart that he had been taken by the gods to be raised up as a great warrior, and when he was grown he would come back to them. He would sweep her up in his great arms and kiss her, would call her "little sister" laughingly, for though she was older he would be so much bigger than she. Theodore would be a great prince, then, and he would welcome their brother home. Anna would be a great lord's queen, and she would distribute amulets to celebrate the occasion. The new baby, Mortimer, he would be a skald, and would sing the story of their brother to men all over the world. Their parents would weep then for joy, not sorrow, and everything would be as it was.
He would come home. Christine was certain of it.
3. Nimbus
The gods did not think it fit that she should be so certain, for one by one, her family began to diminish, and as they went, her hope and heart began to shrink.
They took her mother first. The baby in her belly was not one baby but two, and she died screaming at their birth. Their father grieved so that he did not even name the babies until they were a year old, a year that Christine spent in fear, certain that he would leave them in the snow to die. But he took them eventually, sat them on his knee in the great hall and called them Eliot and Elisa, after the orphan twins of legend; Christine heard their names, and felt her stomach twist.
For a few years, then, they managed. Her father went a-viking more often and stayed away longer, but he still returned with treasure and thralls and kisses for his children. Her brothers grew leggy and strong, learned from the thralls to hunt and fight and drink boisterously as a man should. She and her sisters grew strong and tall and lovely, learning to sew and plant and manage the household. It was a good life.
Then one summer, her father did not return.
Christine was just sixteen, of an age to be married, but obviously that could not happen now. She grieved for her father, as her sisters and brothers and thralls did, but she could not grieve or dream too long-- she had a household to manage, brothers and sisters to raise. She did her best, but it felt still as if something was missing, without her father to sweep them up in his arms and kiss them. Still, she cherished the hope in her secret heart that one day, her brother would return.
One day, everything would be as it was.
17. Lost in the clouds
Theodore came to her on his sixteenth birthday.
"Sister," he began, his voice hesitating. "Sister, I have often thought of our lost brother."
Christine's hands paused on the thread she was spinning, for a breath so short she was sure her brother had not seen it. "I have as well," she said. "I have hoped that he will return some day."
Theodore let out a breath. "I am sure that he would," he said, "if he could, but sister, I think perhaps he cannot."
She looked up sharply. "You think..."
"Think on it," he said, sitting beside her on the bench. "Who could have taken him from the cradle by the fire? I am sure a witch did it. Perhaps one who longed for children and could not have them. She took him away and raised him as her own, and he knows nothing of us. It is the only explanation, sister. You must see."
Christine lowered her head. She still hoped that the gods had taken him, but she could not deny that her brother spoke much sense. "Then what can we do?"
"I must go in search of him," Theodore said, and though she looked sharply at him, she could only see sincerity in his face. "I must go and bring him back."
"You cannot," she said, her voice as even as she could make it. "You must see, brother. If you go, the high king will come to our longhouse and see that our father is gone, and there is no man to hold it. He will take it, and all our things, and give them to his men. He will take your brothers and give them as warriors. He will take your sisters and give them as brides. You must be here."
"Mortimer is old enough," Theodore said. "He is only ten but he looks and fights as a much older man. He will protect you, and I will return with our brother, and you will have another sword-arm to guard you against the dark."
The wool slipped through her fingers as the spindle wound it into thread.
"Go if you must," she said, at last. "But if you do not return in a year, Theodore, we must count you dead."
"I will go," he said. "And I will return."
He did not.
18. Another cloudy day
One by one, her siblings slipped away.
Anna was the next to go, on her own sixteenth birthday. "Sister," she said, "Theodore is gone, and will not return, but we still have need of our brother. Let me go. Without him, there is no one to negotiate a marriage for me, and you can manage the household. You have no need of me. I will return in a year, or not at all."
Christine bowed her head, and let her sister go.
Four years passed, without sign of her sister or her brothers. Mortimer lifted his chin then, and said that he would go. "I am not a warrior, sister, I am a skald. I will go, and I will sing of our lost brother to the four winds. One of them will know him. One of them will bring me to him. I will go, and I will bring him back. Eliot will protect you. I will return in a year, or not all."
Christine bowed her head, and let her brother go.
The twins left together two years later, moving and speaking as one as ever they did. "We will find our brother," Eliot vowed. "The thralls will protect you, sister. We will go forth in opposite directions, and we will find the one who has taken him. We will bring him home, sister. We will not fail you. We will return in a year."
Christine bowed her head, and let her siblings go.
In a year, she was twenty-seven, an orphan, and alone-- where she had had six siblings she now had none. The thralls cared for her as best she could, but she was too old to marry, too young to hold her longhouse, too alone to make her way. The sky was never blue anymore, always dark and cloudy. The sheep grew thin and lean; her treasure waned; her hope died.
Her siblings were dead. And her lost brother, her secret hope, he had been dead from the beginning.
Perhaps it was time she died too.
19. Looking for shapes in the clouds
The witch came in the dead of winter.
She announced her coming with a breath of summer, a faint wisp of warmth against Christine's cheek, the scent of flowers on the air. She looked sharply up from her seat huddled on the high chair, saw the thralls gathering together at the door. Something was happening, something... unexpected.
She gathered her strength around herself, and stood, just as the witch came through the door.
She was beautiful, and utterly unlike anyone Christine had ever seen. Her skin was the color of tree bark in spring; her eyes the blue of a summer sky, her hair the rich red of the autumn leaves, her smile the white of winter snow. Every step she took brightened the air around her; every movement she made wafted the scent of flowers before it. Christine caught her breath as the witch turned her summer-blue eyes on her, and smiled, gently.
"Child," she said, and Christine fell to the floor, put her forehead to the ground, for surely it was a goddess she addressed, a sorceress who could command the seasons. But the witch bent down and lifted her to her feet, brushed her nut-brown hair away from her brow, and smiled down at her with just such as smile as she remembered her mother wearing.
"Child," she said, again. "Do not fear me. I come to you with a message; your hope is not false, and your family is not lost."
Christine's voice froze in her throat; she let her hope fill her eyes.
"They are trapped," the witch went on, voice soft. "They transgressed, all of them, and they are trapped now, as is your lost brother. You can free them, but you must find them first."
She looked past the witch, to the thralls standing behind her, hope and fear warring in their eyes. "My people..."
"Do not fear for them," the witch said, quietly. "Whether you succeed or fail, you will never return here. If you go, I will see to it that your people are cared for and protected from those who would hurt them."
"And if I stay..." Christine let the question die unspoken, but the witch spoke anyway.
"They will live, but your brothers and sisters will be lost." The witch looked down at her with such compassion in her eyes it made Christine want to weep. "If you fail, they will also be lost, as will you. I understand if you fear it, child. I understand if you will not go."
"I do fear it," Christine said, quietly. "But I will go. How can I not?"
The witch closed her eyes, then leaned in and kissed her forehead. A strange warmth spread through Christine's body, and she closed her eyes to better feel it. "Then go, child. Go, and do not fear the winter. Find your brothers and sisters. When you do, you will learn more."
When Christine opened her eyes, she stood in the midst of a vast snowfield, alone.
1. Cirrus
The witch had not sent her out unguarded. She wore her mother's best winter dress, of bearskin tanned with the fur still on and lined with rabbit. She wore too her father's winter boots, of the best waterproofed leather, with rabbit-skin linings and three layers of her favorite knitted socks, the best deerskin snowshoes strapped on over the soles. Her long hair was braided now, beneath a rabbit skin cap with flaps to cover her ears. She wore a pack, that proved to contain food and a bone comb, a tinderbox and gold coins, a compass and a waterskin, all bundled up in warm blankets. All the things she needed to travel, all the things her father had taught her to use when she was small, despite the fact that she was a girl and destined to stay at home.
She was grateful, so grateful, for his teachings now, as she shouldered her pack and set out across the snow. Step step shake, step step shake, the swinging walk came back to her. The chill nipped at her face, the thin winter sun caressed her head, the scent of snow touched her nostrils. Above, thin white clouds like shreds of wool hung motionless in an endless blue sky, hawks and eagles tracing lazy circles against them.
It was the most beautiful day she could remember.
For the first time since Eliot and Elisa had gone, Christine felt hope.
9. Coalescence
They found her, in the end, her brothers and sisters.
Theodore found her first, when she strayed into a swamp and became lost. A stork flew over her three times, then settled down and stalked its way to dry land, leading her step by step to safety. She never knew afterwards how she knew it was him-- perhaps the tilt of his head, perhaps the way he ran his long, sharp beak through her hair. But she knew, and thereafter he travelled with her.
Anna was a fox now, deep in the southern forests, who with sharp yips guided her away from a raging boar and the human hunt that chased it. Mortimer, a nightingale in the scrublands yet further south, sang sweetly to lift her spirits when she despaired of ever finding her siblings. The twins, long-armed monkeys in the hot, wet forests that were further south than anyone she had ever heard of had ever been, brought her food and water, and lifted her into the trees to sleep with them at night.
One by one they came back to her, guarded her, helped her in her quest. One by one she gathered them in.
And still, she could not find her lost brother.
11. Clouded over
"You will not find him," the witch told her, in a dream one night.
Christine sat bolt upright in her bedroll, and found herself once again in the cold, snowy pine forests of her youth. She walked barefoot in her sweet summer dress, deerskin embroidered with birds and butterflies, and felt no cold. The witch stood before her in no clothing but her own skin, her dark red hair floating around her as if she stood underwater.
"Why not?" she asked, her throat tight, for she knew the witch spoke of her lost brother, the one they had all lost so much trying to find.
"Sweet child," the witch said. "You shall not find him, because he must find himself first. He must break his trap himself, and then he shall find you. You need fear nothing for him, except perhaps that he may fail."
Christine closed her eyes, felt tears well up beneath her lids, and bit them back, for she was a maiden of the winter people, and they did not cry. "You swear to me that he shall be safe?"
The witch smiled, took two steps forward, and cupped her cheek. "I do swear, child. Even if he fails, he shall still be safe. And you have another task you must complete."
"My brothers and sisters," she said, and nodded.
"You have found them. Now you must free them," the witch said, and dropped her hand. "I shall not lie to you, child. The thing will be hard."
"Tell me," she said.
12. Cloud lore
"You must weave for all of them shirts of nettle," the witch began, with sorrow in her eyes. "You must make these shirts yourself, from start to finish; you must pick the nettle and spin it, weave or knit the cloth, and sew it with nettle thread. Only once you have completed these shirts will your siblings once more be themselves."
Christine had plucked a nettle once by accident-- she could still feel the sting in her hands. She shivered, but because she was a maiden of the winter people, she firmed her chin and lifted it. "I will do this thing," she said, steadily. "They are my brothers and sisters. For them, I will do it."
The witch nodded, but the sorrow still hovered behind her eyes. "I have not told you all, child. For the time it takes you to complete this task, you may not speak a word."
Christine took in a breath of air. Not speak? Not go to people for help, not see and speak with them every day? "Not a word?"
"Not one," the witch said, solemnly. "Nor may you cry out, in pain or sorrow, in pleasure or joy. You must be entirely silent from the time you pluck the first nettle to the time that you place the final shirt around your sibling's neck."
How could she do that? How much could anyone ask? The words were on Christine's lips.
But then she thought. Theodore and Anna protecting her, leading her to safety or away from hunters. Eliot and Elisa, bringing her food and water, finding her safe places to sleep. Her sweet little Mortimer, singing her songs of joy to raise her heart from sorrow. How could she not do it?
She set her jaw, and looked to the witch. "I will do this thing," she said. "They are my brothers and sisters. For them, I will do it."
The witch closed her eyes. "Then, child, I will help you as much as I can," she said, quietly. "Go now. Wake, and find your nettles. And remember-- not a single sound."
Christine nodded, and opened her eyes on the world.
13. Cloudscape
There were not many nettles in the forest where she had found the twins, so now she moved north again, towards the open scrublands where nothing but nettle grew. She explained as they moved north; told her brothers and sisters what was about to happen. Theodore flapped his wings agitatedly, Anna closed her sharp little teeth gently around Christine's ankle, Mortimer stood on her shoulder and chirped in her ear and the twins took an arm each, to hold her back, but she was their older sister, and what she ordered them to do, they must do.
They would help her, she knew. They would hate watching it, they would suffer with her, but they would help her, for they were her brothers and sisters.
The nettles stung her hands like a thousand bees, the first time she plucked one, and as the heap of nettles in her knapsack grew higher and higher, she wept more and more, until her tears fell ceaselessly, even as she worked. The twins brought her water to bathe her hands, Mortimer sang all the cheeriest tunes they all knew, Theodore and Anna stroked through her hair or cuddled against her leg, but still she wept, even as she spun, even as the first shirt took shape.
And yet, as she stitched the sides of the first shirt, she realized that she had not wept in some time. Her hands still burned, the nettles still stung no matter what she did to ease them, but she had stopped weeping, and the pain, once unendurable, had subsided to an uneasy murmur at the back of her mind.
She set the first shirt aside three weeks later. It was a rough thing with no sleeves and no hems, made of lumpy thread and no joy to look upon, yet it was a shirt, and she had finished it. The first. Four more to be made.
The first shirt, the second, the third, matched one by one to her siblings. She had just begun to spin the thread for the fourth when the storm hit.
4. Mist/Fog
Christine never knew afterwards how she held on to her pack, when the thunder deafened her, the rain blinded her, and the wind whirled her away, spun her brothers and sisters into the air and pushed her along the ground. It was a miracle that she had not cried out in fear; the only miracle she was to be granted, for at some point her fear overcame her and darkness crept into her vision. When she woke, she was alone, on flat, empty ground, in a sea of mist.
She wandered, then, she did not know for how long. She could spin while walking, and she did, grateful that she had already picked more nettles than she would ever need, for this land was wide and empty of life. Beneath her feet the stone changed slowly to sand; above her, the sun turned slowly to a white-hot ball of flame.
It did not matter, she told herself, even as her stomach growled hungrily and her skin blistered under the burning sky. Her brothers and sisters had found her once: they would find her again. She only needed to keep spinning. Soon she would free them. Soon they could all go home.
But the sand was shifting beneath her feet, the sun beating down on her from the sky. The mist closed in tight around her, crept into her heart and mind until nothing seemed real anymore. She slid down onto the sand at last, sat down, her hands stilling on the drop spindle. The grey of the mist crept into her eyes, her heart, smothered everything but the stinging in her hands, the hot sun on her face, the feel of the sand beneath her.
She closed her eyes.
15. Soft as a cloud
She woke in a chamber so airy and light that for a moment, she thought she floated, high up in the sky, where there was no sand to abrade her skin.
It was a reasonable illusion. The couch she lay upon was soft and white as a cloud, surrounded by curtains so white and frail that they looked like mist, like the shreds of clouds that drifted in the sky on particularly fine winter days. The room around her was built of palest alabaster, with the most fantastic shapes carved and set in the walls. A breeze, warm as skin, caressed her face; the scent of flowers, rich and heavy, lingered her nostrils. She felt no pain, for her hands had been expertly bandaged and salved. She raised them, to better see, and a hand parted the curtains.
"Oh, good," the man said, "you're awake. The doctors weren't sure if you would live."
Even had she not sworn not to speak a sound, she would have been speechless at this man, for he looked like no one she had ever known.
He had no beard, to begin with. Her brothers and her father and every adult man she'd ever known had had a beard like a thicket, but this man had only smooth, tanned skin, darker even than the skin of the thralls taken from the Inner Sea. He smiled at her, and his dark eyes, like pools of black water, smiled too, his ink-black eyebrows arching. He wore a turban that hid all his hair, but she thought it must be ink-black too, like his eyes.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice kind and warm as his smile.
Christine shook herself from her reverie, touched her throat, and shook her head.
"You can't speak?" He tilted his head to one side. "That must be troublesome."
She did not hear him, for she had remembered her shirts, the nettles and her knitting-- so close to finishing, and if she had lost them... Frantically, she began to pat the bed around her.
"Oh," the man said, and bent to one side. When he straightened, he held her pack. "Are you looking for this? The doctors say it is what has hurt your hands."
She snatched at it, and he pressed his mouth together. "Take it, then, but please be careful. You have such lovely hands. It is a shame to damage them as you do."
Christine lowered her eyes, unable to look at him. He did not know her. He was beautiful, the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and he did not know her.
She took out her spindle and the nettles she had prepared, and began to spin. The bandages made her hands clumsy, so she took them off, and suffered again the sting.
The man sighed, but said nothing.
She was careful to seem absorbed in her work, but she knew every move he made, until he finally left.
10. Partly cloudy
She learned from the servants that chattered around her as she lay in bed that the man was Prince Alan, the youngest of the sultan's six children. What a sultan was, she did not know, though she thought him a sort of king-- nor did she know how she understood their speech, for when she really listened, she heard rhythms and sounds strange to her, a sweet sing-song language not at all like the guttural harshness of her homeland. She was very far from that homeland, then, and alone.
Or... perhaps not quite. For she knew Alan, as confused as he was by her insistence on her painful task, was her friend; she heard the servants say so. She heard that he had rescued her, stumbled across her lying lifeless in the sand and brought her home to this palace of alabaster and tile. He had ordered her care. He had fought for her right to stay when his family objected. He had demanded that she be kept safe, and so she had been.
Christine kept her head down and feigned incomprehension; it was only when Alan came to visit her that she did not.
He spoke to her of everything. Of his sisters the princesses and his brother the grown-prince, of his father and mother, of his father's shy second wife and her daughter, his half-sister, the two of them never spoken of or allowed into the family circle, except by Alan and his sister the Princess Joanna. As they grew more comfortable together, he brought Princess Joanna with him; once or twice he brought the mistress and her daughter too, and for a moment Christine could close her eyes and pretend she was at home, her family surrounding her and the thralls too, chattering voices and bursts of laughter.
She was far warmer here than she had ever been there, of course. And, if she was honest with herself, she was happier.
At home there had always been another task to do, another person to care for, another conversation to have or bed to make or floor to sweep, and all of it needed to be done if her people were to survive another winter. Here, she need do nothing but concentrate on her self-appointed task, or sit and dream in the sun by the window once the doctors allowed her out of bed. She was ashamed to admit that she did much dreaming, so much that it took her a month to finish the fourth shirt.
She was even more ashamed to admit that much of her dreaming involved Alan.
Impossible, of course. He was a prince, and however kind to her he was, she was certain that he never looked on her as more than the strange wild girl he had found in the desert, who could not or would not speak. She was a princess in her own right, of course, a daughter of the frozen north, but his land knew nothing of hers or of her people. To them she was nothing, less than nothing.
And there was more. She had not seen her siblings since the storm. She was certain they were alive-- the witch would have told her were they not-- but she knew nothing of their fate, and she had slowed in her work, and all because of a pair of ink-dark eyes and a smile that meant nothing beyond kindness.
She closed her eyes, and took up her work again.
8. Albedo
She sat by the side of the pool in the family's inner court, bathing her sore, abused feet in the water, and spun. Thread for the last shirt, now... she'd prepared all the nettles, and she had almost enough thread. Soon she would be ready to knit the shirt. Perhaps five days, if she worked at her slower pace, three if she worked faster. Another day to stitch the sides shut and the five shirts would be finished. It would be up to her siblings then, to find her so that she could free them.
Almost done. Then she could speak, and then maybe Alan...
She was seated behind a bush, out of sight from the rest of the courtyard, so when the servants came for cool water to bathe the princesses' brows, they did not guard their words.
"...the vizier does not like her," one said to the other, in her high, twittering voice. "He says that she is a witch."
"She is," said the other. "Have you seen her? She knits all the time, and with stinging nettles. If she isn't a witch, she's mad."
Christine paused in her spinning, and realized that they spoke of her.
The vizier did not like her?
One of the girls sank her voice with excitement. "He says that she is bewitching the prince."
The other gasped. "Prince Jasper?"
The sound of a smack echoed across the water. "Don't be a goose, Prince Alan."
"Oh," the other said, dismissively, as Christine shook her head over their foolishness. "Him she can have. Prince Jasper is the handsome one."
"Oh, yes," the first said, and their conversation dissolved into giggles.
Christine took up her spinning again, thoughtfully.
So she had an enemy. What was more important... perhaps, she had hope.
20. Waiting for rain
Now that she knew about the vizier, she paid closer attention to what the servants said around her. One or two of them she quickly found out as spies; the others took longer, except for the sweet, giggling girls who turned down her bed and brought her tea. They acted out of genuine compassion for her, and if they watched her from the sides of their eyes, there was only curiosity in their gaze. The others watched her with fear, or worse, hostility. And they watched her more, these days.
Christine had never wished more that she could speak.
She knitted faster, urgency born of fear. If she could only finish the shirts, if her siblings would only come, she could speak then, and tell Alan how she feared the vizier. He would protect her-- even if her hope was only hope, she knew that he would protect her. She just needed to finish, to save her siblings.
The days ticked by to the clicking of her needles, row by row, stitch by stitch. The fifth shirt was almost complete when it happened.
14. Cloud ceiling
One morning, the giggling girls did not come, and nor did her usual servants. Instead, a stone-faced old woman walked into the room, seized her arm, and pulled her out of bed. Christine clapped a hand over her mouth, barely stifling a sound in time. The stone-faced woman snorted, and shook her, and said, slowly and clearly, "You come with me. You make no spells. Come now."
No spells?
The cold of the north wind crept back into her heart, pushing out the summer breezes Alan had brought. The vizier had won. She was doomed.
And the fifth shirt, still unfinished, lay in her pack at the foot of her bed.
The old woman dragged her to a court, where she watched her own trial blurred by tears and pain. The words flew past her, over her, around her, only bits and pieces lighting in her ears-- "witch," "green spells," "enchanted His Highness" "burnt at dawn." When the words stopped coming, the woman snatched her arm again and hauled her to an iron cell, where she sat, cold and frightened, shivering as night descended.
She had not seen Alan at the trial, or the giggling girls.
She wrapped her arms around herself, then pressed her face into her hands. This place had seduced her, made her forget her responsibilities and what she owed to her siblings. She had not finished the fifth shirt, had not saved them when they were depending on her. She had let herself be caught up by Alan's dark eyes and the vast courtyard with its still pool of water.
She had trusted Alan to protect her, when she should not have-- not because he would not try, but simply because he could not.
Christine closed her eyes, pressed her face against her knees, then scrubbed her hands across her face. Time for her to lie down, and perhaps at least try to sleep. Her mother had always said that things would look different in the morning.
She went to the bed, patted her way across the rough burlap covers, touched the pillow, and gasped as her hand stung. The nettles....! and beneath them a note, that read, simply, "I'm sorry."
Alan.
Christine sat down on the bed, and began to knit.
7. Thunderhead
They brought her to the pyre just as the horizon began to blush pink with dawn.
It was a beautiful morning, and the first time she had seen what lay around the palace. They had built the pyre out front, before the imposing, dusty gates, but they brought her out through the back, stumbling on bare and aching feet through avenues of cool green myrtle and cypress trees, arching regally over her head as if to protect her from the endless sky. Orange and lemon trees stretched out their branches, heavy with fruit, their sweet scent a cry in the predawn dark. Water plashed somewhere; the huge white magnolias dropped petals on her head as they passed, like tears.
She would have liked to sit there, she thought, and dream away the time. Just there, beneath the orange tree.
They took her from the garden and marched her across sand that froze her feet. In a few hours' time, with the burning sun overhead, it would sear the skin of any who touched it. They came to the crowd that awaited her, surrounded by solemn, frightened, angry faces, the vizier looking smug, Alan and Joanna white-faced in a group of regal men and women. She fancied some of them turned away, or moved their hearts to pity at the sight of her, so thin and frightened in a ragged white dress with her dark hair tangling around her face.
Christine did not look at the pyre. She could not. Even when they marched her up it, even when she felt wood beneath her bare feet, she looked steadily out at the dawn, at the tentative fingers of light exploring the darkness, and thought of her brothers and sisters, who now would never be free.
"I'm sorry," she mouthed, as they bound her hands behind her back.
They came.
The nightingale first, little Mortimer, diving out of the sky with a shriek. Someone in the back of the crowd cried out, and the stork followed, Theodore, parting hair with his sharp beak and slashing at the vizier with his beak. The fox, sly Anna, ducking in and out of the crowd, nipping at ankles, harrying them away. The ties loosened around her wrists, and the twins, clever little monkeys, freed her hands, their own hands leathery on her skin.
The vizier, his face purpling with rage, started forward and gestured the guards to do the same. There was another shout and Alan burst forward, drew his sword, took a stance before the pyre. He glanced up at her only once, but she saw in his eyes everything-- that her secret hope was not just hope, that he knew what she needed now. He would buy her time.
She pulled the shirts from beneath her dress, ignoring the fresh stings of pain on her chest and hands, and threw the first over Eliot's head, the second over Elisa. The twins were clever enough to work their way into the sleeves on their own, so she turned and threw the third shirt over Mortimer, her tiny little nightingale brother lost within its folds. Anna scrambled up the pyre, quick and lithe-- Christine held the fourth shirt for her to run into, then caught up the last and looked for Theodore.
He flew to her, her brother, his wings spread wide, his beak outstretched. She threw the shirt into the air and he swooped towards it.
There was a noise like a great crack of thunder, and the heavens opened in rain.
6. Rainbow
"Witchcraft!" screamed the vizier, and slashed wildly at Alan. Christine cried out inarticulately and threw herself down from the pyre, pulled him back against the harsh wood of the pyre. He shouted, thrust her behind him as the vizier cried out again, in triumph this time. He had them trapped and he knew it, and his eyes lit on Alan with ferocious joy as he pulled his sword back.
Then there was nothing where he had been but a red mist and a wall of white.
The great bear reared back from the vizier's bloody corpse, stretching high over her head, and roared, a thunderous sound that shook her bones. Christine screamed again-- she could not help herself.
It left a burning in her throat, and she pressed both hands to her mouth, horrified. She had broken her vow, her one promise, and what if her brothers and sisters had not been all in the shirts? Were they trapped now?
The great bear had taken up a protective stance before them, and Alan, evidently believing he was no threat, was turning to her with a smile on his face. When he saw her expression, it disappeared.
"What..." he began.
"My brothers and sisters," she gasped, and scrambled up the pyre, driving splinters beneath her fingers, cutting her hands and feet. A moment later he put his shoulder beneath her foot and boosted, and she arrived atop the pyre rather suddenly, stumbling, almost falling...
A hand caught her elbow-- Theodore, smiling down at her, his nettle shirt turned to finest silk, his limbs as long as the stork's. Beyond him Anna, looking more regal and elegant than ever, her dark hair straight down her back to her knees, her smile sly as the fox but openhearted nonetheless. Mortimer, his shy smile unchanged, reached out his hands to her, the nightingale's joy in his eyes. The twins, identical mischievous smiles on their faces. Her brothers and sisters, soaked by the rain, whole and human, and smiling.
Christine burst into tears.
They all rushed her at once, all five of them, threw their arms around her and hugged her as her tears and the rain slowed together. After, they handed her down carefully to Alan, who took her in his arms and refused to let her cut and bleeding feet touch the ground. "Not until the doctors see you," he said, firmly, holding her as if she was something precious, swelling her heart. He would not even let her make her stumbling attempts to explain, merely held her closer and said, "I know there is some magic here, and I know you will tell me when you have rested. I am certain you have been very brave--" around her, her brothers and sisters nodded, and she flushed-- "and that is all I need to know."
"There is one more thing, sister," Theodore said. "When we were blown away by the storm, we did not come to find you right away."
"I know," Christine said, and smiled at Alan. "I was safe."
"Yes," Theodore said, "but that is not why we did not come."
"We found him, sister," Anna said.
"No, he found us," Mortimer corrected.
"We brought him with us," the twins added.
Christine stared at her for a moment, then at her other siblings, all with solemn faces and eyes dancing with joy. "Our brother?" she whispered.
The great bear padded up to them, and in a wobbling moment he changed; one moment there was the great white bear of her homeland, the next, a brawny young warrior, his beard shadowing his jaw. He smiled at her, and reached out his hands.
"Little sister," he said. "I have come home."
Far away, a witch with spring-brown skin and summer-blue eyes smiled.
Above them all, a rainbow sparkled into life.
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OH MY GOD KAT THIS IS BRILLIANT HOW DO YOU DO SUCH WONDERFUL RETELLINGS.
I've always loved Christine, and the whole family is great; I adore seeing so much from her perspective, and how much she loves and cares for her siblings, and she will not let harm come to them, no matter what. AMAZING job.
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And THANK YOU <3333333 She adores them, she's their mother in a lot of ways since their mother was sick during a lot of their childhoods. And if you try and hurt them, she will cut you. With a bear, now that Lars has so helpfully turned up.
THANK YOU! I'm so glad you liked it this much. Next up, Olivia and Donkeyskin. :D
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I love the rhythm of your prose here, the way certain phrases are like refrains or choruses (clearly, your gift with poetry shows here). I love how strong the bonds are with Christine and her siblings, how they still recognize her even in their animal forms, how she takes on the painful task of the nettle shirts without even thinking of how much she'll suffer for them. And she does suffer a lot, even with Alan, Joanna, Arelie and Ahava for company.
I just. Oh man. The imagery, the storybook feel. YOU SHOULD BE SO DAMN PROUD, BB. SO. DAMN. PROUD.
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THANK YOU <33333
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