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rainbowfic2012-08-31 10:35 pm
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-08-31 10:35 pm
Snow White Saturation: The Happy Endings We Can Find
Author: Kat
Title: The Happy Endings We Can Find
Story: In the Heart - Fairy Tale AU
Colors: Snow white saturation.
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, eraser, frame, canvas, stain ("Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." -- Buddha), feathers (revives, beatify, fruit), modeling clay (scar), beading wire (this picture), glitter (trust), glue (Intuitively, you know that the old road is changing as new paths appear. This could be a difficult transition, but keep in mind that your future happiness depends on your ability to let go of the past.), novelty beads (this picture, which I have been saving for the Fairy Tale AU).
Word Count: 5408
Rating: R
Summary: It's a very different sort of once upon a time.
Warnings: Child death, possession, child abuse, child abduction, attempted child murder, animal abuse, blink-and-miss-it mention of domestic abuse, sexytimes. Fairy tales are not nice to kids.
Notes: Limboing in under the wire with my last portrait for Postmodernism! Also a meme fill forshipwreck_light. Yes, I am still working on those.
1. true love's kiss
She still remembered every moment of the cold.
She'd been coming home with an armful of sticks for tinder, picking her way across the frozen stream, and the ice cracked beneath her and she fell. It was that simple, and it wasn't simple at all. She still remembered the water like a shock, the sticks skittering across the ice, her hair like ropes of blood in the water.
The dark thing that coiled around her, tendrils of smoke looping her wrists, the taste of ashes in her mouth, a hideous triumph souring her blood.
Her brother pulled her out and her family wrapped around her, but there was ice in her blood and water in her chest. She lived through the ducking and she lived through the fever but her mouth still tasted like ashes, her mind still rang with a false and wicked joy.
She was not surprised when the frost crept over her skin. She was not surprised when the dark and ugly thing bobbed to the surface. She fought it-- there was enough of her left to do that-- but she knew she could not win, only delay.
She managed to save her family, at least. She was proud of that.
She hid deep inside herself, after. What use was there in anything else? The dark thing had her, and the few glimpses she caught of its activities-- neck-deep drifts of snow, a boy's startled eyes, two children clinging to each other, frozen dead-- only made her hide further inside.
She knew dimly that she should be dead; that the ice should have claimed her long ago. She curled tight around the memory of her mother and father, her sisters and brothers, and held to that, though why, she did not know. The dark thing had her. She might as well let go and freeze, and yet she held on.
And then the boy came, the boy with the startled eyes, a man now. He'd seen her, her, and not the dark thing; he cared for her and came for her and she wailed and pounded at the walls of her own mind but the dark thing took him anyway, and laughed because she wept for him. Even when the other man, with hair like ice and eyes that burned, came and won him free, she still wept, because the dark thing had her and she would never, never be free.
Then he bent his head and kissed her, the man with the startled eyes, and the man with the burning eyes followed, and it was as if fire leaped out all at once, the summer heat she'd carried before the frost growing more and more intense with every touch, every brush of lips. The dark thing screamed and screamed and she fought it back, step by step, driving back the cold and horror with heat and life and love and...
When she opened her eyes, she tasted meltwater, summer apples, the scent of flowers on her tongue. She could have wept for joy.
She remembered that more than anything.
2. poison apple
Come, he said, come and walk with me, pretty girl. The stars are all alight and the breeze is warm, and the rye fields are golden under the moon. Come and walk with me in the lovely night, and see what I will show you.
She was stupid. She knew it. But she went walking with him anyway, and took the summer apple he plucked from a tree, and did not protest when he drew her arm towards him and kissed her wrist where the juice had run. She let him kiss her under the apple tree, and let him draw her down to the ground, and let him reach beneath her skirts, they said-- but let was the wrong word. Everything she had ever been told said that this was a sin, a thing that boys did and girls let them do, but he felt so good, and sounded so pleased when she touched him in return.
She didn't let him do anything, she told her parents later, when he was long gone and her belly began to swell. She chose it as much as he did. And if he laughed at her when she told him that there would be a child, if he struck her when she demanded he do right by it, she made a choice then too.
She shouldn't have gone walking with him. She shouldn't have taken the apple, or kissed him back, or wrapped her legs around him and threw her head back in pleasure. She did and her step grew heavy, her belly grew big, the villagers talked in low murmurs and she held her head high, because it was her choice, in the end. It was her choice, and she refused to be ashamed.
When the pain was done and her mother put her daughter in her trembling arms, she knew she would make the same choices all over again, every single one.
3. into the woods
The woods were deep and endless, strangely silent in the twilit darkness between the trees. Danny was used to the noisiness of the outer forest, the bird calls and sounds of animals crunching through the underbrush, the bursts of scent as she trod over patches of mint and mushrooms. Moss grew soft on the grounds and the trunks, there-- the bark was a warm living brown instead of this weird half-light grey-green. The outer forest was alive.
The inner forest smelled only of pine and dead things, and sounded of nothing at all.
Michael clung tighter to her hand, and Danny set her mouth, moved forwards.
She'd been suspicious, the first time her father took them out to the woods and left them. Michael had started to cry, but Danny had held him close and told him not to worry, it's all right, I have a good sense of direction, and she did, she'd got them home, hadn't she? Their mother had been so hysterically overjoyed to see them, wrapping Michael in her arms, even hugging Danny hard and quick. She'd filled their bellies with good bread and rich stew and put them to bed, and Danny had heard her shouting at their father afterwards as she hovered on the edge of sleep-- how could you lose them, how could you be so careless.
Danny remembered the pleased look on his face, the easy tones he'd used to tell them he'd be back, and wondered if he'd really been careless at all.
The second time, she knew for sure. He was more careful to lose them, took them deeper, and if she hadn't been making a very careful note of where they were they would have been lost for good. This time their mother didn't bother to shout at their father; she just gave them his dinner, and tucked them up warm in their bed by the fire.
The third time, Danny saw the look in their father's eyes. The third time, she was ready.
She stuffed bread and cheese in all her pockets, and in Michael's. They both wore both their shirts and breeches, though Michael complained it made him too hot. She made him wear his sturdiest boots too, and cut him a good walking stick, and sneaked a knife beneath her jerkin, wrapped up in a knitted shawl that would serve Michael for a blanket. She stayed close to him on the long, long walk out into the depths of the forest, ready to pick him up and run.
When their father turned to them, deep in the dark woods, and brought out his knife, she was ready.
Michael was crying, steady but silent, as they forged on ahead. Danny blinked back tears of her own, but refused to be unhappy.
No matter how dark the woods, no matter how scary, they were better off here than home.
4. glass slipper
For Gina's coronation, the glassmakers outdid themselves.
She thought it was not only because they felt themselves, rightly, to be her kingdom's glory. She thought, from the shadowed looks and hollowed cheeks she saw among them, that they regretted the mountain, felt guilty for her isolation. She could have told them it was not their fault, could have smiled on them and said that no one could have turned her father aside when he thought he knew what was right, but she was angry at them still, a little, and did not.
But she thought she could forgive them for this. For the glass crown, with full-blooming flowers in many shades. For the pure-glass necklace, fragile tiny tendrils and broad leaves of green winding around a thick brown stem. For the silver chains and bracelets jeweled in glass beads, colors dotted and swirled 'round other colors, fire red and water blue, Ivy-colors, heart-colors.
For the slippers she wore to be crowned; heavy glass, fragility and strength all in one. Glass slippers for a glass queen, who lived on a glass mountain, with a glass heart; born in fire, raised in water, and displayed now, triumphant.
It was the slippers she loved most, for they were the most of her.
Perhaps she could forgive them, for this.
5. hedge of thorns
She first met him when Ruth was so sick, flush-faced and crying out in her sleep. Their father did not like them seeing physicians-- he did not like them seeing men-- but what else was to be done? Ruth was so sick, and Nadia sickening, and Ahava was getting ill now, her cheeks turning hectic red in the night, heat rising in her forehead.
It was perhaps only natural that their father loved Ahava most; she was the daughter of his second wife, his best-beloved wed for joy and not for state, over his first wife's objections and tears and finally ultimatums. And Ahava was the only child she would ever give him-- Joanna had been only a girl, but she still remembered the blood and screams and the ashen look on the midwife's face. Of course he would love Ahava most of all his children, excepting perhaps only his sons. It was natural, even if her mother and siblings refused to acknowledge it, and Joanna tried not to let it hurt her.
Besides, Ahava was a sweet girl, and so eager to please. Her other sisters, her brother Jasper, they would not even acknowledge the girl, and Joanna could not stand to see the sorrow on her face. So she sat with Ahava while the physicians were with her sisters, while they argued over Ruth and Nadia, and stayed away from Ahava for fear of what the Sultana would say. She thought perhaps she could duplicate their cure for her sister, keep the peace between her father and mother and Ahava's shy, sweet mother.
But one of them was from far away, and he either did not know of the Sultana's power or did not care. He came to Ahava when the others would not, and felt her forehead and checked her skin, and said yes, my daughter had this same illness when she was young but you need not worry, princess, she is fine and healthy today. He showed Joanna what to do for Ahava, how to sponge her brow and keep her cool and brew the herbs that would help, and he squeezed her hand and smiled at her and told her not to worry, everything would be fine.
It was impossible, it was foolish in the extreme, and yet Joanna looked at that smile and believed him, believed every word he said.
She sponged Ahava's brow and fed her the tea and stayed with her until she was better, and tried very hard not to think of the smile in the physician's eyes.
6. transformation
Felipe loved the snow. There was something about it so quiet and endless, about the cold kiss of snowflakes on his cheeks and the way the world went white and frosted when they caught in his eyelashes. His grandmother hated it because it made her bones ache, and Zack hated it because he had to climb down the tenement stairs and up the other tenement stairs instead of just climbing across through the window, but what was that, to the beauty of the world softened and smoothed by snow?
His grandmother told them both stories during the long winter nights, for to keep two boys occupied and entertained otherwise was a challenge beyond her years. Zack liked the stories of spring and summer, warm stories, happy stories, full of toys and games and flowers. Felipe liked those too but his favorite was the story of the Snow Queen, the queen of the winter bees, the buzzing snowflakes that swarmed out of the sky. Not that his grandmother would ever tell it again, after the once-- she looked at his interested face with sharp eyes, and refused ever after.
There was one evening sharp in his memory, clear as an ice crystal, when Zack had been talking about something and he had been looking out the window. The snow-bees were dancing in eddies and whirls; they were happy, he thought, and wondered if that meant the queen was nearby. He'd wondered what she was like, all the long years since his grandmother had told that story-- he'd pictured something like a very large bee, with a crown of icicles.
But she was not a very large bee. She was a girl.
He nearly backed away from the window, when he saw her. She looked like a girl, yes, but she was not a girl, she was... there was something wrong about her, something in her sharp face and frozen-blood hair that spoke of howling winters and bodies frozen in the snow. It made him want to run, made him want to pretend he'd never seen her, except.
Except.
She looked at him, straight at him, with ice-blue eyes full of cruelty and pleasure, and then she blinked and the girl was looking back at him. She was frightened, he thought, and lonely, and trapped, and he put his hand up against the window, melted little holes in the frost with his fingers. She looked at him for an endless moment, that girl with the frightened, lost eyes, and then she blinked and was the Snow Queen again, cruel and heartless and uncaring.
He tried to forget the girl, tried to let go. He could not.
When he saw the Snow Queen two days later, when she lifted an ice-white hand and beckoned to him, he followed her, because he could not forget that girl.
7. make a wish
When Jake was a child, he used to dream that he was secretly a poor woodcutter's boy, the handsomest, most capable youngest son of three, or better yet, the son of a king given to his parents to raise in secret. Those were the people who had the adventures, in the stories his nurse had told him, the stories his sisters whispered to each other in the dark. Those were the people who went out into the world and came back rich and famous, with beautiful wives and comrades for life.
People like him, a child of prosperous merchants, an only son with sisters on either side, no one ever told stories about them.
His sisters laughed at him, when he said that. The stories weren't true, they said; none of the people in them were real. They were only tales to while away a winter's evening, or cajole a sleepy child into closing its eyes. They weren't real.
When he was seven his father apprenticed him to a kind man in the village, a leather-worker who taught him and fed him and let him go home to his family on Sundays. By then he was old enough to know that stories didn't mean anything-- it was like his sisters had said, they weren't real. Apprentices, grown-up boys, they shouldn't believe in these kinds of things.
He still did, though, in his secret heart. He still wished for impossible things, and thought maybe, maybe...
Then one Sunday he went home and there was nothing left, nothing, only ashes and charred bones under dark, heavy trees. He closed his eyes, fisted his hands until his nails cut into his palms, and wished with all his might that the story would happen, that he'd open his eyes and it would be all right, everyone would be fine, he'd open his eyes and his mother and father and sisters would be standing on the porch, asking what he was waiting for.
He wished it so hard that he jumped when someone touched his shoulder, and opened his eyes, expecting his father, because of course it had worked, the stories didn't lie.
He opened his eyes, and saw his father's next-door neighbor and the sadness in his eyes, and the stories died.
8. fairy godmother
Christine was sleeping when the witch came.
Alan stayed with her, sitting on the side of her bed, their new little daughter asleep between them with her tiny fists in the air. He smiled foolishly and stroked one of those fists, watched it relax into an open hand. His daughter, their daughter-- he knew now how his father had felt, when Ahava was born, and he thought he understood a little everything his father had done.
You don't, someone said, but you will, and he looked up at a woman with rich red hair and deep brown skin and soft, sad blue eyes.
He should have been frightened, should have jumped up and demanded to know who she was and how she had come there, but he thought perhaps he knew. Christine had spoken of a witch who showed her how to save her family, who brought her here to him, and brought her siblings back all around her. He could see her in this woman, in the softness in her eyes when she looked at Christine.
Well, then.
In the end he said nothing, because Annelise woke up and mewled, experimentally. Christine stirred, and witch or no witch she needed her rest, so he picked up the baby and tried to quiet her. She grabbed on to his hand, small soft fingers curling around his darker thumb, but mewled still, small whimpers working up to a great cry.
Then the witch was beside him and touching the baby's cheek with one finger, soft, like a drop of water. Annelise quieted immediately and stared up at her with wide blue eyes.
She will be happy, the witch told him, stroking the baby's cheek and forehead. She will never have anything to fear. She will make you very happy, and very proud.
She already does, he said, just as quietly, rocking his daughter closer.
I know, the witch said, and left.
9. stolen child
He did not believe the truth, when he first heard it.
What a foolish thing for anyone to say! Of course he was not a human, he was a bear, a great snow bear with white fur and big paws like his mama's. His mama always said that he was a bear, and his mama never lied, so what else could he be? He changed sometimes into a human but so did all of the great snow bears, when they wanted to-- had he not seen his father and mother do it? Had he not learned to change his skin from them?
He was twelve when a tall and lanky man found him, and grabbed his shoulders, and shook him and told him that he was his brother, stolen long ago, and he was a human. Lars did not believe him, or the pretty dark-haired girl who tried persuasion, nor the young man who sang him a song, nor the twins who came after them. They all greeted him as brother and individually he could ignore them, but all at once...
He asked his mother, when he was twenty and the twins had gone away. He asked her what they meant, why they called him brother, when all the world knew he was her son and a great snow bear, and there was nothing more to be said about it. He asked her to tell him that he was her son, her child, born of her body, and he felt his heart crash when her eyes slid away.
It took him years to forgive them, after that. He heard the whole story, of course-- the dead cubs, his mother's broken sobs, his father trying desperately to find a way to save her. One child taken from a family that had so many had not seemed to be so large a crime, but he saw in the eyes of... of his brothers and sisters that it had been larger than anyone could contemplate. One child was all children. He could not believe that they had done that.
He could, and did, believe that they loved him. They had raised him, had cared for him, and if they lied to him it was not because they did not love him, much the opposite. What he could not yet believe was that he could still love them too.
It took him years, years and his family, years and his friends, before he went north once again.
10. magic beans
Afterwards, all Michael wanted was a garden.
His sister was the heroine, he knew that. This was not a story for him, whose bones broke at the slightest provocation. His heart was rather harder than that but it was not a story for those with hard hearts, only those with hard bodies. It was his sister's story, and he was a side character.
He didn't mind that. Stories were not kind, though they were not cruel either; stories were stories, they had their own goals, and he wanted no part of them.
What he wanted was a garden, to grow green in the summer and ripen in the autumn, to lie dormant under the snow and burst into bloom in the spring. He wanted the seasons, he wanted a settled home, a cozy little house to roam from and return to, a place where he was safe, forever, where his sister could always find him and his life could always be.
If a giant beanstalk ever grew in his garden, he made a vow to himself then and there that he'd chop the damn thing down.
11. straw into gold
It happened on the first sunny afternoon of spring.
She'd been home now for three months, through the whole cold winter, and none of the things she'd feared had happened. Her mother had not come back, with her harsh slapping hands and harsher sharp-edged words that still cut at Olivia's soul. Gina was still on her mountain, even if her uncle had taken her kingdom from here, and if she was not happy, she was at least safe. And her father... her father had not turned her away, but gathered her closer and closer as the days went on.
He did not hover around her after the first few days; she'd feared that a little, feared it would mean only guilt and not love. Instead he was just there when she went looking-- in his office, in his stillroom, in the sitting room by the fire with a book, looking up and smiling at her as if she'd never been gone. And every night he kissed her forehead, smoothed her head back and said I will love you forever, my darling, my Sunny, I will love you forever.
It was beginning to help. She still heard her mother's voice in the back of her head, spitting and tearing at her, but it was beginning to help.
When she was a little girl, she would always come out to the garden on the first sunny day of spring and help her father get it ready for planting. The herbs could be left alone, after he checked to be sure they had survived the winter, but the flowers were delicate and had to be tended carefully. Roses and hyacinths and the marigolds, her favorite, bright bursts of sunny orange color in the otherwise rather muted garden.
They were still there, on this first sunny afternoon of spring so long after she'd seen them last, in a little glass forcing-case by the corner of the house. They were blooming already-- the case, she thought, not that she really knew how gardens worked. Beautiful and bright and sunny and... she hadn't thought her father would keep them.
I always hoped you'd come home, he told her, when she asked, and kissed her forehead. I always hoped I'd see you again.
She put her head against her shoulder, and heard her mother's voice go silent.
12. bridge of birds
The night was still and silent, a full moon hanging in the sky amid a dusting of stars. Crickets and cicadas sang in the underbrush, and the great glass mountain rose against the sky like a heat shimmer, distorting what little light there was.
When she had first come to the glass mountain, it was because the horses screamed out their pain and she had heard. She listened to animals all the time, one ear on the humans, one ear on her friends, and she heard the stories-- hooves shod in sharp nails that stuck into tender feet, spurs digging bloody furrows into heaving flanks, and worst of all the fall, broken ribs, broken legs, broken necks. Horses were dying and no one seemed to care, but she did, Ivy did, she cared, and so she went.
She arrived just in time to see a knight ride at the mountain, just in time to see his horse fall.
She flew at him then, and clawed at his face, at his skin, at what little was exposed by the armor. When he took off the helmet to better speak to her, she hit him hard in the face, once, twice, three times, again and again until her knuckles bled like the sides of the poor heaving horse.
The other knights only stared, and flinched back when she got up, bloody and enraged.
No one else, she screamed at them, no one else will do this, no one else will hurt these animals, and one knight put up his hand and asked what about the princess, and she screamed at him so that her voice broke; no one else.
They fled her rage, and she crumpled beside the mountain, put her hand on it, and curled her hand into a fist. She was not fool enough to think they were gone for good.
So there was a princess atop the mountain? She asked the horse as she tended its wounds, and it nodded, told her that its master was determined to wed her and gain her kingdom. It seemed utterly ridiculous to her, putting a princess atop a mountain, but if there truly was one up there, perhaps she could put a stop to all this. Perhaps if Ivy went and got her she could tell the knights to stay away, never to return, never to hurt another animal.
She saw to the horse, then stood and looked up at the mountain. She was light, and small; perhaps a large eagle could fly her up there, if there was one around.
Yes. She would find an eagle, then go and see this princess, and put a stop to this once and for all.
13. crane wife
She said that as long as Nathan never watched her bathing, that everything would be all right.
He never did. Melanie had her secrets, and that was all right-- everyone had their secrets, and as far as he was concerned she could keep hers. What were they to him? He knew she loved him, and he knew she was faithful. What more could a man ask for? So she had her room for bathing, and he never went in there, and both of them, he thought, were happy.
For a long time, everything was all right. They lived together and were happy. In time she bore a son, with his father's wide blue eyes and his mother's air of hidden thoughts. He loved his son and he loved her, but he could do nothing to stop the darkening sadness he saw in her eyes. He could do nothing to stop the way she recoiled when the child came near her, the way she spent more and more time staring out the window, dreaming of another place.
He saw more than the serpent's tail the day he opened the door to her bathing room. He saw more than her lifted chin, heard more than her angry words. He saw the relief, and he heard the gratitude, and he let her go.
How could he do anything else?
14. sacrifice
When the blond man came walking out the snow hand-in-hand with a darker man on one side and his sister on the other, Aaron felt for a moment as if the world had been turned upside down.
Not that this was bad. He caught his sister in his arms and just held her for a long moment, and she let him even though she didn't really like being touched, because she was his sister, fully his sister, and she loved him. She was safe now, whole again, and what was he supposed to do now?
Of all his family, he thought he had given up the most. He did not begrudge this-- he had seen the darkness in his sister's eyes, and the terror in the increasingly brief moments that she was herself. When Danny and Lars stopped, when Ivy could not keep walking, he went on with his father and his stepmother and his sister, and when he could not keep walking he had stayed where he was, because he could not bear to go any further from her. His father and stepmother had had each other, so had Danny and Lars, Ivy had had her friends of feather and fur, and he was alone in a snowy expanse, a hermit trying to survive.
His sister was well. His sister was safe. His sister was herself again, after so very many years.
And he had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
15. happily ever after
On summer nights when the air felt heavy with promise and the stars were like diamonds on black velvet, the three of them sat tangled up with each other, outside where Summer could be warm. She feared the cold so much-- sometimes in winter when the snow fell heaviest, she would lie in bed and weep for fear, no matter what they did for her. Someday, Zack thought before this new winter struck, they would go south, away from the snow. But for now...
For now she sat beside him with her arm through his, her fingers combing through Felipe's hair where he sprawled across them both. She was looking up at the sky, thoughtful, quiet.
Then she lifted her hand from Felipe's hair and painted rainbows across the stars.
Felipe sat up with an exclamation, and Zack took it in, eyes wide. Color shimmered across the sky in ever-shifting shades, like a gossamer scarf drawn across Summer's skin. Blues and greens and reds and golds... he had seen this before, in the winter, before he saved Felipe and the both of them saved her.
You could do this before, he said, carefully, because she did not like to talk about the cold, but she only nodded.
I could always do this, she said, simply, and drew her hands across the sky again, color spilling in their wake. Felipe lay back down, the better to watch, and after a moment Zack did too, his head atop Felipe's stomach.
He could feel Felipe breathing, hear the little sounds Summer made when she was happy. He could reach out and touch them both, gather them in, let them fill the spaces inside himself that he hadn't even known were empty.
And he could lie here, entwined with them, and watch Summer paint rainbows across the stars, the colors lighting up her smile.
Oh, yes. He could lie here forever.
Title: The Happy Endings We Can Find
Story: In the Heart - Fairy Tale AU
Colors: Snow white saturation.
Supplies and Materials: Portrait, eraser, frame, canvas, stain ("Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." -- Buddha), feathers (revives, beatify, fruit), modeling clay (scar), beading wire (this picture), glitter (trust), glue (Intuitively, you know that the old road is changing as new paths appear. This could be a difficult transition, but keep in mind that your future happiness depends on your ability to let go of the past.), novelty beads (this picture, which I have been saving for the Fairy Tale AU).
Word Count: 5408
Rating: R
Summary: It's a very different sort of once upon a time.
Warnings: Child death, possession, child abuse, child abduction, attempted child murder, animal abuse, blink-and-miss-it mention of domestic abuse, sexytimes. Fairy tales are not nice to kids.
Notes: Limboing in under the wire with my last portrait for Postmodernism! Also a meme fill for
shipwreck_light. Yes, I am still working on those. 1. true love's kiss
She still remembered every moment of the cold.
She'd been coming home with an armful of sticks for tinder, picking her way across the frozen stream, and the ice cracked beneath her and she fell. It was that simple, and it wasn't simple at all. She still remembered the water like a shock, the sticks skittering across the ice, her hair like ropes of blood in the water.
The dark thing that coiled around her, tendrils of smoke looping her wrists, the taste of ashes in her mouth, a hideous triumph souring her blood.
Her brother pulled her out and her family wrapped around her, but there was ice in her blood and water in her chest. She lived through the ducking and she lived through the fever but her mouth still tasted like ashes, her mind still rang with a false and wicked joy.
She was not surprised when the frost crept over her skin. She was not surprised when the dark and ugly thing bobbed to the surface. She fought it-- there was enough of her left to do that-- but she knew she could not win, only delay.
She managed to save her family, at least. She was proud of that.
She hid deep inside herself, after. What use was there in anything else? The dark thing had her, and the few glimpses she caught of its activities-- neck-deep drifts of snow, a boy's startled eyes, two children clinging to each other, frozen dead-- only made her hide further inside.
She knew dimly that she should be dead; that the ice should have claimed her long ago. She curled tight around the memory of her mother and father, her sisters and brothers, and held to that, though why, she did not know. The dark thing had her. She might as well let go and freeze, and yet she held on.
And then the boy came, the boy with the startled eyes, a man now. He'd seen her, her, and not the dark thing; he cared for her and came for her and she wailed and pounded at the walls of her own mind but the dark thing took him anyway, and laughed because she wept for him. Even when the other man, with hair like ice and eyes that burned, came and won him free, she still wept, because the dark thing had her and she would never, never be free.
Then he bent his head and kissed her, the man with the startled eyes, and the man with the burning eyes followed, and it was as if fire leaped out all at once, the summer heat she'd carried before the frost growing more and more intense with every touch, every brush of lips. The dark thing screamed and screamed and she fought it back, step by step, driving back the cold and horror with heat and life and love and...
When she opened her eyes, she tasted meltwater, summer apples, the scent of flowers on her tongue. She could have wept for joy.
She remembered that more than anything.
2. poison apple
Come, he said, come and walk with me, pretty girl. The stars are all alight and the breeze is warm, and the rye fields are golden under the moon. Come and walk with me in the lovely night, and see what I will show you.
She was stupid. She knew it. But she went walking with him anyway, and took the summer apple he plucked from a tree, and did not protest when he drew her arm towards him and kissed her wrist where the juice had run. She let him kiss her under the apple tree, and let him draw her down to the ground, and let him reach beneath her skirts, they said-- but let was the wrong word. Everything she had ever been told said that this was a sin, a thing that boys did and girls let them do, but he felt so good, and sounded so pleased when she touched him in return.
She didn't let him do anything, she told her parents later, when he was long gone and her belly began to swell. She chose it as much as he did. And if he laughed at her when she told him that there would be a child, if he struck her when she demanded he do right by it, she made a choice then too.
She shouldn't have gone walking with him. She shouldn't have taken the apple, or kissed him back, or wrapped her legs around him and threw her head back in pleasure. She did and her step grew heavy, her belly grew big, the villagers talked in low murmurs and she held her head high, because it was her choice, in the end. It was her choice, and she refused to be ashamed.
When the pain was done and her mother put her daughter in her trembling arms, she knew she would make the same choices all over again, every single one.
3. into the woods
The woods were deep and endless, strangely silent in the twilit darkness between the trees. Danny was used to the noisiness of the outer forest, the bird calls and sounds of animals crunching through the underbrush, the bursts of scent as she trod over patches of mint and mushrooms. Moss grew soft on the grounds and the trunks, there-- the bark was a warm living brown instead of this weird half-light grey-green. The outer forest was alive.
The inner forest smelled only of pine and dead things, and sounded of nothing at all.
Michael clung tighter to her hand, and Danny set her mouth, moved forwards.
She'd been suspicious, the first time her father took them out to the woods and left them. Michael had started to cry, but Danny had held him close and told him not to worry, it's all right, I have a good sense of direction, and she did, she'd got them home, hadn't she? Their mother had been so hysterically overjoyed to see them, wrapping Michael in her arms, even hugging Danny hard and quick. She'd filled their bellies with good bread and rich stew and put them to bed, and Danny had heard her shouting at their father afterwards as she hovered on the edge of sleep-- how could you lose them, how could you be so careless.
Danny remembered the pleased look on his face, the easy tones he'd used to tell them he'd be back, and wondered if he'd really been careless at all.
The second time, she knew for sure. He was more careful to lose them, took them deeper, and if she hadn't been making a very careful note of where they were they would have been lost for good. This time their mother didn't bother to shout at their father; she just gave them his dinner, and tucked them up warm in their bed by the fire.
The third time, Danny saw the look in their father's eyes. The third time, she was ready.
She stuffed bread and cheese in all her pockets, and in Michael's. They both wore both their shirts and breeches, though Michael complained it made him too hot. She made him wear his sturdiest boots too, and cut him a good walking stick, and sneaked a knife beneath her jerkin, wrapped up in a knitted shawl that would serve Michael for a blanket. She stayed close to him on the long, long walk out into the depths of the forest, ready to pick him up and run.
When their father turned to them, deep in the dark woods, and brought out his knife, she was ready.
Michael was crying, steady but silent, as they forged on ahead. Danny blinked back tears of her own, but refused to be unhappy.
No matter how dark the woods, no matter how scary, they were better off here than home.
4. glass slipper
For Gina's coronation, the glassmakers outdid themselves.
She thought it was not only because they felt themselves, rightly, to be her kingdom's glory. She thought, from the shadowed looks and hollowed cheeks she saw among them, that they regretted the mountain, felt guilty for her isolation. She could have told them it was not their fault, could have smiled on them and said that no one could have turned her father aside when he thought he knew what was right, but she was angry at them still, a little, and did not.
But she thought she could forgive them for this. For the glass crown, with full-blooming flowers in many shades. For the pure-glass necklace, fragile tiny tendrils and broad leaves of green winding around a thick brown stem. For the silver chains and bracelets jeweled in glass beads, colors dotted and swirled 'round other colors, fire red and water blue, Ivy-colors, heart-colors.
For the slippers she wore to be crowned; heavy glass, fragility and strength all in one. Glass slippers for a glass queen, who lived on a glass mountain, with a glass heart; born in fire, raised in water, and displayed now, triumphant.
It was the slippers she loved most, for they were the most of her.
Perhaps she could forgive them, for this.
5. hedge of thorns
She first met him when Ruth was so sick, flush-faced and crying out in her sleep. Their father did not like them seeing physicians-- he did not like them seeing men-- but what else was to be done? Ruth was so sick, and Nadia sickening, and Ahava was getting ill now, her cheeks turning hectic red in the night, heat rising in her forehead.
It was perhaps only natural that their father loved Ahava most; she was the daughter of his second wife, his best-beloved wed for joy and not for state, over his first wife's objections and tears and finally ultimatums. And Ahava was the only child she would ever give him-- Joanna had been only a girl, but she still remembered the blood and screams and the ashen look on the midwife's face. Of course he would love Ahava most of all his children, excepting perhaps only his sons. It was natural, even if her mother and siblings refused to acknowledge it, and Joanna tried not to let it hurt her.
Besides, Ahava was a sweet girl, and so eager to please. Her other sisters, her brother Jasper, they would not even acknowledge the girl, and Joanna could not stand to see the sorrow on her face. So she sat with Ahava while the physicians were with her sisters, while they argued over Ruth and Nadia, and stayed away from Ahava for fear of what the Sultana would say. She thought perhaps she could duplicate their cure for her sister, keep the peace between her father and mother and Ahava's shy, sweet mother.
But one of them was from far away, and he either did not know of the Sultana's power or did not care. He came to Ahava when the others would not, and felt her forehead and checked her skin, and said yes, my daughter had this same illness when she was young but you need not worry, princess, she is fine and healthy today. He showed Joanna what to do for Ahava, how to sponge her brow and keep her cool and brew the herbs that would help, and he squeezed her hand and smiled at her and told her not to worry, everything would be fine.
It was impossible, it was foolish in the extreme, and yet Joanna looked at that smile and believed him, believed every word he said.
She sponged Ahava's brow and fed her the tea and stayed with her until she was better, and tried very hard not to think of the smile in the physician's eyes.
6. transformation
Felipe loved the snow. There was something about it so quiet and endless, about the cold kiss of snowflakes on his cheeks and the way the world went white and frosted when they caught in his eyelashes. His grandmother hated it because it made her bones ache, and Zack hated it because he had to climb down the tenement stairs and up the other tenement stairs instead of just climbing across through the window, but what was that, to the beauty of the world softened and smoothed by snow?
His grandmother told them both stories during the long winter nights, for to keep two boys occupied and entertained otherwise was a challenge beyond her years. Zack liked the stories of spring and summer, warm stories, happy stories, full of toys and games and flowers. Felipe liked those too but his favorite was the story of the Snow Queen, the queen of the winter bees, the buzzing snowflakes that swarmed out of the sky. Not that his grandmother would ever tell it again, after the once-- she looked at his interested face with sharp eyes, and refused ever after.
There was one evening sharp in his memory, clear as an ice crystal, when Zack had been talking about something and he had been looking out the window. The snow-bees were dancing in eddies and whirls; they were happy, he thought, and wondered if that meant the queen was nearby. He'd wondered what she was like, all the long years since his grandmother had told that story-- he'd pictured something like a very large bee, with a crown of icicles.
But she was not a very large bee. She was a girl.
He nearly backed away from the window, when he saw her. She looked like a girl, yes, but she was not a girl, she was... there was something wrong about her, something in her sharp face and frozen-blood hair that spoke of howling winters and bodies frozen in the snow. It made him want to run, made him want to pretend he'd never seen her, except.
Except.
She looked at him, straight at him, with ice-blue eyes full of cruelty and pleasure, and then she blinked and the girl was looking back at him. She was frightened, he thought, and lonely, and trapped, and he put his hand up against the window, melted little holes in the frost with his fingers. She looked at him for an endless moment, that girl with the frightened, lost eyes, and then she blinked and was the Snow Queen again, cruel and heartless and uncaring.
He tried to forget the girl, tried to let go. He could not.
When he saw the Snow Queen two days later, when she lifted an ice-white hand and beckoned to him, he followed her, because he could not forget that girl.
7. make a wish
When Jake was a child, he used to dream that he was secretly a poor woodcutter's boy, the handsomest, most capable youngest son of three, or better yet, the son of a king given to his parents to raise in secret. Those were the people who had the adventures, in the stories his nurse had told him, the stories his sisters whispered to each other in the dark. Those were the people who went out into the world and came back rich and famous, with beautiful wives and comrades for life.
People like him, a child of prosperous merchants, an only son with sisters on either side, no one ever told stories about them.
His sisters laughed at him, when he said that. The stories weren't true, they said; none of the people in them were real. They were only tales to while away a winter's evening, or cajole a sleepy child into closing its eyes. They weren't real.
When he was seven his father apprenticed him to a kind man in the village, a leather-worker who taught him and fed him and let him go home to his family on Sundays. By then he was old enough to know that stories didn't mean anything-- it was like his sisters had said, they weren't real. Apprentices, grown-up boys, they shouldn't believe in these kinds of things.
He still did, though, in his secret heart. He still wished for impossible things, and thought maybe, maybe...
Then one Sunday he went home and there was nothing left, nothing, only ashes and charred bones under dark, heavy trees. He closed his eyes, fisted his hands until his nails cut into his palms, and wished with all his might that the story would happen, that he'd open his eyes and it would be all right, everyone would be fine, he'd open his eyes and his mother and father and sisters would be standing on the porch, asking what he was waiting for.
He wished it so hard that he jumped when someone touched his shoulder, and opened his eyes, expecting his father, because of course it had worked, the stories didn't lie.
He opened his eyes, and saw his father's next-door neighbor and the sadness in his eyes, and the stories died.
8. fairy godmother
Christine was sleeping when the witch came.
Alan stayed with her, sitting on the side of her bed, their new little daughter asleep between them with her tiny fists in the air. He smiled foolishly and stroked one of those fists, watched it relax into an open hand. His daughter, their daughter-- he knew now how his father had felt, when Ahava was born, and he thought he understood a little everything his father had done.
You don't, someone said, but you will, and he looked up at a woman with rich red hair and deep brown skin and soft, sad blue eyes.
He should have been frightened, should have jumped up and demanded to know who she was and how she had come there, but he thought perhaps he knew. Christine had spoken of a witch who showed her how to save her family, who brought her here to him, and brought her siblings back all around her. He could see her in this woman, in the softness in her eyes when she looked at Christine.
Well, then.
In the end he said nothing, because Annelise woke up and mewled, experimentally. Christine stirred, and witch or no witch she needed her rest, so he picked up the baby and tried to quiet her. She grabbed on to his hand, small soft fingers curling around his darker thumb, but mewled still, small whimpers working up to a great cry.
Then the witch was beside him and touching the baby's cheek with one finger, soft, like a drop of water. Annelise quieted immediately and stared up at her with wide blue eyes.
She will be happy, the witch told him, stroking the baby's cheek and forehead. She will never have anything to fear. She will make you very happy, and very proud.
She already does, he said, just as quietly, rocking his daughter closer.
I know, the witch said, and left.
9. stolen child
He did not believe the truth, when he first heard it.
What a foolish thing for anyone to say! Of course he was not a human, he was a bear, a great snow bear with white fur and big paws like his mama's. His mama always said that he was a bear, and his mama never lied, so what else could he be? He changed sometimes into a human but so did all of the great snow bears, when they wanted to-- had he not seen his father and mother do it? Had he not learned to change his skin from them?
He was twelve when a tall and lanky man found him, and grabbed his shoulders, and shook him and told him that he was his brother, stolen long ago, and he was a human. Lars did not believe him, or the pretty dark-haired girl who tried persuasion, nor the young man who sang him a song, nor the twins who came after them. They all greeted him as brother and individually he could ignore them, but all at once...
He asked his mother, when he was twenty and the twins had gone away. He asked her what they meant, why they called him brother, when all the world knew he was her son and a great snow bear, and there was nothing more to be said about it. He asked her to tell him that he was her son, her child, born of her body, and he felt his heart crash when her eyes slid away.
It took him years to forgive them, after that. He heard the whole story, of course-- the dead cubs, his mother's broken sobs, his father trying desperately to find a way to save her. One child taken from a family that had so many had not seemed to be so large a crime, but he saw in the eyes of... of his brothers and sisters that it had been larger than anyone could contemplate. One child was all children. He could not believe that they had done that.
He could, and did, believe that they loved him. They had raised him, had cared for him, and if they lied to him it was not because they did not love him, much the opposite. What he could not yet believe was that he could still love them too.
It took him years, years and his family, years and his friends, before he went north once again.
10. magic beans
Afterwards, all Michael wanted was a garden.
His sister was the heroine, he knew that. This was not a story for him, whose bones broke at the slightest provocation. His heart was rather harder than that but it was not a story for those with hard hearts, only those with hard bodies. It was his sister's story, and he was a side character.
He didn't mind that. Stories were not kind, though they were not cruel either; stories were stories, they had their own goals, and he wanted no part of them.
What he wanted was a garden, to grow green in the summer and ripen in the autumn, to lie dormant under the snow and burst into bloom in the spring. He wanted the seasons, he wanted a settled home, a cozy little house to roam from and return to, a place where he was safe, forever, where his sister could always find him and his life could always be.
If a giant beanstalk ever grew in his garden, he made a vow to himself then and there that he'd chop the damn thing down.
11. straw into gold
It happened on the first sunny afternoon of spring.
She'd been home now for three months, through the whole cold winter, and none of the things she'd feared had happened. Her mother had not come back, with her harsh slapping hands and harsher sharp-edged words that still cut at Olivia's soul. Gina was still on her mountain, even if her uncle had taken her kingdom from here, and if she was not happy, she was at least safe. And her father... her father had not turned her away, but gathered her closer and closer as the days went on.
He did not hover around her after the first few days; she'd feared that a little, feared it would mean only guilt and not love. Instead he was just there when she went looking-- in his office, in his stillroom, in the sitting room by the fire with a book, looking up and smiling at her as if she'd never been gone. And every night he kissed her forehead, smoothed her head back and said I will love you forever, my darling, my Sunny, I will love you forever.
It was beginning to help. She still heard her mother's voice in the back of her head, spitting and tearing at her, but it was beginning to help.
When she was a little girl, she would always come out to the garden on the first sunny day of spring and help her father get it ready for planting. The herbs could be left alone, after he checked to be sure they had survived the winter, but the flowers were delicate and had to be tended carefully. Roses and hyacinths and the marigolds, her favorite, bright bursts of sunny orange color in the otherwise rather muted garden.
They were still there, on this first sunny afternoon of spring so long after she'd seen them last, in a little glass forcing-case by the corner of the house. They were blooming already-- the case, she thought, not that she really knew how gardens worked. Beautiful and bright and sunny and... she hadn't thought her father would keep them.
I always hoped you'd come home, he told her, when she asked, and kissed her forehead. I always hoped I'd see you again.
She put her head against her shoulder, and heard her mother's voice go silent.
12. bridge of birds
The night was still and silent, a full moon hanging in the sky amid a dusting of stars. Crickets and cicadas sang in the underbrush, and the great glass mountain rose against the sky like a heat shimmer, distorting what little light there was.
When she had first come to the glass mountain, it was because the horses screamed out their pain and she had heard. She listened to animals all the time, one ear on the humans, one ear on her friends, and she heard the stories-- hooves shod in sharp nails that stuck into tender feet, spurs digging bloody furrows into heaving flanks, and worst of all the fall, broken ribs, broken legs, broken necks. Horses were dying and no one seemed to care, but she did, Ivy did, she cared, and so she went.
She arrived just in time to see a knight ride at the mountain, just in time to see his horse fall.
She flew at him then, and clawed at his face, at his skin, at what little was exposed by the armor. When he took off the helmet to better speak to her, she hit him hard in the face, once, twice, three times, again and again until her knuckles bled like the sides of the poor heaving horse.
The other knights only stared, and flinched back when she got up, bloody and enraged.
No one else, she screamed at them, no one else will do this, no one else will hurt these animals, and one knight put up his hand and asked what about the princess, and she screamed at him so that her voice broke; no one else.
They fled her rage, and she crumpled beside the mountain, put her hand on it, and curled her hand into a fist. She was not fool enough to think they were gone for good.
So there was a princess atop the mountain? She asked the horse as she tended its wounds, and it nodded, told her that its master was determined to wed her and gain her kingdom. It seemed utterly ridiculous to her, putting a princess atop a mountain, but if there truly was one up there, perhaps she could put a stop to all this. Perhaps if Ivy went and got her she could tell the knights to stay away, never to return, never to hurt another animal.
She saw to the horse, then stood and looked up at the mountain. She was light, and small; perhaps a large eagle could fly her up there, if there was one around.
Yes. She would find an eagle, then go and see this princess, and put a stop to this once and for all.
13. crane wife
She said that as long as Nathan never watched her bathing, that everything would be all right.
He never did. Melanie had her secrets, and that was all right-- everyone had their secrets, and as far as he was concerned she could keep hers. What were they to him? He knew she loved him, and he knew she was faithful. What more could a man ask for? So she had her room for bathing, and he never went in there, and both of them, he thought, were happy.
For a long time, everything was all right. They lived together and were happy. In time she bore a son, with his father's wide blue eyes and his mother's air of hidden thoughts. He loved his son and he loved her, but he could do nothing to stop the darkening sadness he saw in her eyes. He could do nothing to stop the way she recoiled when the child came near her, the way she spent more and more time staring out the window, dreaming of another place.
He saw more than the serpent's tail the day he opened the door to her bathing room. He saw more than her lifted chin, heard more than her angry words. He saw the relief, and he heard the gratitude, and he let her go.
How could he do anything else?
14. sacrifice
When the blond man came walking out the snow hand-in-hand with a darker man on one side and his sister on the other, Aaron felt for a moment as if the world had been turned upside down.
Not that this was bad. He caught his sister in his arms and just held her for a long moment, and she let him even though she didn't really like being touched, because she was his sister, fully his sister, and she loved him. She was safe now, whole again, and what was he supposed to do now?
Of all his family, he thought he had given up the most. He did not begrudge this-- he had seen the darkness in his sister's eyes, and the terror in the increasingly brief moments that she was herself. When Danny and Lars stopped, when Ivy could not keep walking, he went on with his father and his stepmother and his sister, and when he could not keep walking he had stayed where he was, because he could not bear to go any further from her. His father and stepmother had had each other, so had Danny and Lars, Ivy had had her friends of feather and fur, and he was alone in a snowy expanse, a hermit trying to survive.
His sister was well. His sister was safe. His sister was herself again, after so very many years.
And he had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
15. happily ever after
On summer nights when the air felt heavy with promise and the stars were like diamonds on black velvet, the three of them sat tangled up with each other, outside where Summer could be warm. She feared the cold so much-- sometimes in winter when the snow fell heaviest, she would lie in bed and weep for fear, no matter what they did for her. Someday, Zack thought before this new winter struck, they would go south, away from the snow. But for now...
For now she sat beside him with her arm through his, her fingers combing through Felipe's hair where he sprawled across them both. She was looking up at the sky, thoughtful, quiet.
Then she lifted her hand from Felipe's hair and painted rainbows across the stars.
Felipe sat up with an exclamation, and Zack took it in, eyes wide. Color shimmered across the sky in ever-shifting shades, like a gossamer scarf drawn across Summer's skin. Blues and greens and reds and golds... he had seen this before, in the winter, before he saved Felipe and the both of them saved her.
You could do this before, he said, carefully, because she did not like to talk about the cold, but she only nodded.
I could always do this, she said, simply, and drew her hands across the sky again, color spilling in their wake. Felipe lay back down, the better to watch, and after a moment Zack did too, his head atop Felipe's stomach.
He could feel Felipe breathing, hear the little sounds Summer made when she was happy. He could reach out and touch them both, gather them in, let them fill the spaces inside himself that he hadn't even known were empty.
And he could lie here, entwined with them, and watch Summer paint rainbows across the stars, the colors lighting up her smile.
Oh, yes. He could lie here forever.
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Wow.
Wow. It's like a tapestry of words, all rich and lovely with the images and emotions. I love how everyone's stories intertwine to some degree, again, the imagery (Gina's glass accessories, Summer's residual magic, etc) is perfectly fairy tale without being cliche, and how everyone is so human throughout is what makes me wish it was all real.
Lovely, lovely work.
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The last section is my personal favorite too. That, or crane wife.
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*giggle*
I CAN'T DO IT THE MORE IS TOO SWEET. SO MUCH SWEET AND OH MERCY THAT END WITH THE LIGHTS AND THE.
*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEING AND GLOMPING ENSUE*
It's like- everybody's here. And they brought hugs! And the hugs are in the form of sensory information so clear and sharp and achingly perfect it makes my eyes tear up and my mouth taste things and /I SMELL COLD DAMNIT/.
Some favorite moments, it was really hard to pick...
#2. All of it. Prompt interpretation plus the voice plus never going to look at apples the same way ever again.
The tender resolution to fairy-tale Olivia's story, which is not too sweet and doesn't spoil the end of the original at all (because that was... it was made of hope and dread and cool).
Ivy chatting with the horse after scaring off the knight. It's so Ivy and ivy rocks my socks.
Learning how Summer became the Snow Queen (and I adore what you did with her red hair in the snow storm looking like blood- that was genuinely creepy).
"And he had no idea what he was supposed to do next. "
THE END.
I need more thanks than I can fit in a mere comment for this. If this requires a video of me dancing around?
I WILL DO IT.
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Thank you! Very much! For all of this comment! I will cuddle it and love it and print it out for my kitty to play with.
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