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“I’m Snow White. My stepmother slash mother tried to kill me on my eighteenth birthday, so I ran away and found the miner’s house. They took me in, but the dark Queen has come after me twice now, three times if you include the night I escaped, and tried to kill me. The first time she tried to strangle me with a necklace and this last time with a poisoned bracelet.”

“Oh, shit.”

I dropped my hands, with the ball vanishing.

She lowered hers. “I’m sorry, but Ruby said not to tell anyone here.”

“Understandable.”

“You won’t say anything, will you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Who did you think I was?”

I hesitated telling her. “My mother.”

“Your mom? You were terrified.”

“She is a terrifying woman. But I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

How do you explain to someone the last time you saw your mother, you bound her in her dragon form and locked her away in a dungeon?

“Ok. Should we start over?” Snow smiled, hesitantly.

“Yes.” I sat back on the bed and patted it, but could tell she was still cautious. “So, I wasn’t really going to blow your head off. That was a light ball. A little trick that most mage children learn. You seemed terrified by it, which told me you weren’t my mother, because she’d obviously know what it was.”

“A trick?” She walked over and sat beside me. “Can you show me?” Her eyes twinkled with excitement.

“Yes. But let me feel your magic again.” I held my hands out, and she laid her hands on mine.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the energy flowing between us.

“Do you feel that?” I asked, just above a whisper, peeking at her.

She didn’t speak, but her eyes told me all I needed to know.

She could feel it.

I had worked with a lot of mages before, but none were as powerful as her. Her power could be equal to my mother’s if not stronger, and that astounded me. “So you have never…” I couldn’t even say the words because I couldn’t even understand it.

“Use my powers?” She shifted her weight on the bed. “Never. I didn’t know until recently that I had them.”

She looked like there was more she wanted to say, so I pressed. “How did you find out?”

She looked around the room before her eyes settled on me for a second. “So…” she pulled her lips. “I had a dream of my mother, well, the woman I thought was my mother. She died soon after I was born… I later learned it was because her life was tied to mine. It was all part of the dark Queen’s plan. Anyway. I had a dream with her in it and she said I needed to get back to the castle to help my father. I needed to save him. She said there were things I needed to know, but she couldn’t tell me. She told me to talk to the wind and ask it to guide me to the purple mangor who would lead me to the white witch, Persephone.”

“Oh. Did you find her?” I had always wanted to meet the white witch, but my mother had forbade it, although she would never tell me why. She had mentioned Persephone’s name, but it was always with an extreme disgust, which obviously intrigued me.

“I did.”

“Where?”

Snow studied me and I realized I had been a little too eager. “I don’t know, really. It was in the woods somewhere. I asked the wind and followed it. I remember making turn after turn, just following it along, but had no idea how I got to the large tree.”

“A large tree?”

“Yea, by a waterfall.” She looked away, getting lost in a thought or something.