Page 45 of Hemlock & Silver

In the morning, I was not dead. In fact, I woke up at dawn, probably because I’d slept for half the day yesterday. There was a furry weight against my back. “Grayling?” I asked.

“No, it’s one of the other cats.”

“I haven’t seen any other cats.”

“They’re down in the stables, catching mice.” He sat up and yawned. “Why are you awake at this hour? I thought you were a sensible sort of human.”

I told him about my experiment trying to bring the bird through the mirror. He was unimpressed. “What did you expect would happen? Living things are hard.”

“Potatoes are alive.”

There are few things in life more disdainful than a one-eyed cat. I could actually feel my hair withering under the force of his stare. “ Potatoes, ” he said at last, “do not make gods .”

I was not expecting this argument and so responded with an articulate “huh?”

Grayling leaped off the bed and stalked into the mirror, tail twitching. Since very few cats enjoy being chased, I went to the privy instead.

Potatoes don’t make gods. Hmm. That implied that the living things that didn’t pass through did make gods. Which meant that the ability to make a god was somehow essential to whether an object could pass through a mirror, which meant… I had no idea what that meant.

We don’t actually have gods in my country, as you may have noticed, just saints.

The story goes that our gods were pitiless and cruel, and in despair, humanity began to pray instead to the beasts of heaven, to Rabbit and Bird, Adder and Toad, and all the rest. The beasts of heaven rose up in their numbers and slew the pitiless gods, and since those days, we have called only upon the saints.

In fairness to Grayling, there was not a Saint Potato.

If you wanted a good crop, you called upon the Saint of Bees.

(Not Saint Bee, because this saint is not singular the way the others are.) Did this mean that bees were capable of making gods?

What kind of god would a bee make? I pictured tiny evangelists standing outside a hive, preaching the gospel of bees.

Hmm, maybe Grayling has a point. How would a potato preach to the other potatoes?

You just don’t get that many missionaries among root vegetables.

All of which was mythologically interesting, but not terribly useful.

I splashed water on my face. Maybe there was a humor associated with god making and the mirror version was deficient in it?

Or wasn’t deficient in it, and the presence of that humor meant that it couldn’t pass through? A mirror-humor, say. Anti-sanguine.

Or maybe Grayling was messing with me because I’d woken him up early.

I made my way down to the kitchen, where the staff was already awake and baking, and begged some cold meat and cheese. As I went, I looked around for mirrors. I’d overlooked the ones in the pocket garden, so what else had I overlooked?

The only ones I found seemed innocuous enough. A band of mirrored tiles no wider than my thumb ran across the top of an alcove in one of the hallways. No one could possibly fit through that. Though perhaps they could pass something through. Like a dagger, or a message.

It was in a thoughtful frame of mind that I went out into the garden to watch the desert come awake. A hummingbird zipped past, focused on the red sage flowers, and I wondered if he was the real-world version of the one I’d carried away.

I sat there for perhaps an hour, soaking in nature’s glory and putting off confronting Snow.

Then I went to speak to Rinald, the horse leech, to ask about an herb I’d seen and put off confronting Snow.

Then I went to the workroom, fed the chime-adder, let the rooster wander around, and finally couldn’t invent any more ways to waste time and went to confront Snow.

Getting Snow alone to talk to her was easier than I’d expected. Nurse had planted herself alongside Snow, clearly planning to be present, but I cleared my throat and said that I had a question or two of an… ah… delicate nature, and perhaps she could make sure none of the maids were listening?

I could practically see the fire in her eyes when she thought of the way gossip spread, and she ushered us out to the balcony and went back inside, loudly ordering various girls to fetch things, clean things, and take things away.

Snow went to the railing, then looked back at me with a questioning half smile. “Yes?”

I had been hoping all morning that I’d have an idea about how to approach a twelve-year-old girl about her activities in a bizarre secondary world inside the mirror. Unfortunately nothing had come to me, so I fell back on Javier’s advice.

“I know about the mirror.”

Snow inhaled sharply. I waited to see if there was anything she wanted to say, but she turned and stared out over the desert, her face expressionless.

“I know you were watching me. And I know that it’s mirror-food that’s making you ill.”

She still didn’t look at me, but red lines bloomed around her knuckles as she gripped the railing.

“Snow,” I said, gentling my voice as much as I could, “I’m not angry you were spying on me.

Well, I was upset at first, but I got over it.

” I really didn’t want to lie to her. I was still grateful to the herbwife telling me the truth about poison all those years ago.

“But if you keep eating mirror-food, you’ll get sicker and sicker. What you’re doing is dangerous.”

The sharp, explosive sound that came from her throat held more disdain than words ever could. She finally turned to look at me. “Do you think I want to eat it?”

I had to fight my instinct to take a step back. The look in her eyes was of a small, cornered thing turning to bite. “Err… well…”

“Tell me where she’s keeping my sister, and I’ll never touch an apple again.”

“Your sister?” I repeated inanely.

“Rose,” Snow said, in the talking-to-stupid-adults tone that I knew so well from my own childhood.

“But Rose is dead,” I said, because Isobel was right about my tactfulness. I started cursing myself before the last word was even completely out of my mouth. “I’m sorry—”

“You don’t understand anything, ” Snow said, her voice as cold and intense as a driving rain.

She turned on her heel and stalked away into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Nurse and the maids watched her go, then turned, practically in unison, to look at me.

Nurse’s expression had turned hard as glass.

She had trusted me, and I’d upset her charge.

“Right,” I muttered. “That went well.” The path to the door, past looks both curious and accusing, seemed to take hours. I mumbled something about coming back later and slunk out.

Well. Now what?

Tell me where she’s keeping my sister, and I’ll never touch an apple again. What did that mean? Rose was dead. Snow had to know that. Was this some kind of delusion born of grief? And who was the she that Snow was referring to?

I’d hoped to get more answers, and now I had even more questions. What did Rose have to do with any of this? And keeping her ? Did she think that someone had kidnapped Rose instead of murdering her?

It wouldn’t be the first time that grief had led to someone making up elaborate fantasies about their loved ones secretly being alive.

I found an alcove with a bench and sat down with my head in my hands.

I am not equipped to deal with things like this.

This needs someone who understands minds. I just do poisons.

Healer Michael, I wish you were here. You could handle the emotional part.

I rubbed my temples wearily. Well. Healer Michael wasn’t here. And at least now I was sure that Snow understood she was poisoning herself but thought she was doing it for a reason. That’s progress? Maybe?

I’d talk to Javier. Maybe he’d be better with kids.

Hell, maybe he had kids. And he could help me write the letter to the king saying all this, and surely the king could afford the very best healers for broken minds…

but if I tried to write anything about the mirror-world in the letter, the king was going to send healers after me, not Snow.

Oh Saints, what am I supposed to do now?

I couldn’t tell the king the full truth, obviously. I’d do Snow no good if I got locked up in an asylum. If I were gone, that would leave this mysterious she free rein.

Well, at least we’ve figured that much out. Whoever is bringing Snow mirror-food is female. That has to narrow it down.

A servant girl walked down the hall and gave a quick, startled smile when she saw me.

I watched her walk away. Surely she was too young to be poisoning the king’s daughter, and why would she even want to?

For that matter, I had no proof that the poisoner was anyone staying at Witherleaf, or at least, not staying in the real world.

For all I knew, they could have come from elsewhere and were living in the mirror-villa, watching us through the reflections.

I jumped up, suddenly paranoid. There were the small mirrored tiles that I’d seen here and there, but how many hadn’t I found? Javier had mentioned assassins, but what about spies?

For that matter, Snow herself had been spying on me, and while she hadn’t done anything, it was still… well, it was weird . Even if Javier was being paranoid about the assassin thing, there are just not that many situations where I want to be watched in my sleep by a twelve-year-old girl.

Actually, being spied on while I was awake wasn’t that much better.

Calm down, I told myself firmly. You’re panicking, and that never helps anything. You know there can’t be mirrors in the main hallways because you’d have seen the colors when you went through the mirror- villa.

That was true. There were incidental mirrors in some of the smaller passageways, but it seemed like there were more in the garden than inside the villa itself. That only left the ones in my room and, of course, the tiles in my bathroom.