Page 60 of Hemlock & Silver

Neither of us moved. It was so warm, and there was so much color. Sunlight streamed through the thin slats in the shutters, and the tiles were red and orange with flecks of black, and the walls were white, and I wished that I could breathe in the colors or eat them or something.

“Look at us go,” I said, after a while.

“We do seem to be moving awfully quickly.” He groaned. “Enough, or we’re both going to fall asleep.”

“Sleep is everything I want in life.” I pushed myself to my elbows and looked over at him. He looked exhausted and disheveled, and I had a strong desire to kiss him. All I’d have to do was roll to one side and… Slow down. There’s a large gap between doesn’t find you repulsive and kissing.

I tried to think unromantic thoughts. Fortunately one came immediately to mind. “Do you think Grayling made it out okay?”

“I’d be very surprised if he didn’t. He’s awfully smart for a…” Javier paused, then shook his head. “No, I still don’t think he’s a cat.”

I flailed my arms at him, and he changed the subject. “We need to get our story straight. People will have realized that we’re missing. You’ve been gone for at least a day, and I didn’t show up for duty last night.”

“Right. No rest for the wicked.” I pushed all thoughts of kissing aside and sat up. “So, what supposedly happened? Did I fall in an old well or something?”

“You were kidnapped by the poisoner,” Javier suggested, “and taken out into the desert. Hours away. You don’t think you could find it again.”

“How’d you find it?”

“I caught sight of them off in the distance and recognized you. I thought it was something innocuous, like gathering herbs, so I just went out to meet you. Then I realized you had a sack over your head.”

“Oh, did I? How’d you recognize me with the sack?”

Javier gave me a look. “Please. I’d know you anywhere.”

“Really?”

He looked away hurriedly. Was that a flush? Blessed Saint Adder, it was. Maybe kissing wasn’t completely out of the question after all.

“Anyway, I gave chase and found where they took you, then fought them off and ran away with you.”

I grinned. “How many of them did you fight? A dozen?”

“Two,” he said sternly. “We’re trying to make this story plausible.”

“What if the guards ask you to lead them to the poisoner’s camp?”

“I will be mysteriously unable to find it again. I was too busy not being seen, and everything here looks alike.”

“Fair. Did we meet the poisoner?”

“Probably, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“And I had the sack over my head.” I considered this. “Not too bad. If anyone starts to grill me, I’ll just burst into tears.”

Javier gave me a wary look. “Can you do that on command?”

“Usually? No. Right now? I’m so tired that I’m going to start crying if someone looks at me funny.” I groaned and hauled myself to my feet. “Which is a bad thing, because the very first person we should talk to is Snow.”

The maids gaped at us as we burst into Snow’s quarters.

Nurse’s mouth fell open, but she immediately positioned herself between us and her charge.

I briefly wondered why, then realized that Javier had never come here with me before.

A strange man charging into the princess’s quarters would have been bad enough, but a quick glance in the mirror showed that I looked like I’d been dragged backward through a cactus.

My braid had failed hours ago, my clothes were rumpled, and I had hollows under my eyes as deep as Cholla Bay.

“ Healer Anja? ” Nurse said. “What are you—”

“I wasn’t really going to do it!” Snow cried, backing toward the balcony doors.

Her voice sounded like breaking glass. It was enough to throw Nurse into confusion, and that was enough for me to stride past. She tried to get in my way again, and Javier stepped between us. She actually bounced off his chest and backed up with a startled cry.

I left Javier to do what he did best and went after Snow. Behind me, I heard “What is the meaning of this?” but Nurse’s heart didn’t seem to be in it.

Snow had backed past the double doors and was looking about wildly for somewhere to run.

The only option was over the balcony, and I closed the gap hastily to make sure she didn’t try.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Snow, it’s fine. It will be okay.

” It was not actually fine, and I couldn’t see how it would be okay, but sometimes the words matter less than breaking someone’s panic.

Snow stared up at me. “I wasn’t going to do it,” she whispered. “I told her I couldn’t.”

“I know.” I held up both hands. “I’m not angry. It’s okay.” Actually, on some level, I was unutterably furious, but I could work through that sometime in the future when lives weren’t hanging in balance. It didn’t matter anyway, because Snow’s disbelief was obvious.

“Tell me about your sister, Rose.”

Snow looked away, her lips pressed together.

I took a deep breath and gripped the railing.

Tell them something wrong so they can correct you.

I hoped it worked as well on Snow as it did on Grayling.

“Fine. I’ll talk, and we’ll see if I’m right.

You’ve known the Queen in the mirror for a long time now.

You eat the apples that—what, allow you to manipulate the mirror-world better?

Something like that?—so that you can bring living mirror-things through.

Mirror-people to replace real people, ideally. ”

Snow remained stubbornly silent.

“Your mother knew about the mirror, of course. I imagine you saw what she was doing and stole an apple—”

“I did not !” Snow burst out. “Mother gave it to me!”

I looked out into the desert so that Snow couldn’t see my smile.

Gotcha. “Very well. She gave you the apple and took you through the mirror, I imagine. And you met your sister’s reflection there, didn’t you?

A little girl just like Rose. A waking reflection who could talk to you.

And you started trying to bring her through. ”

Snow’s shoulders slumped. “I wanted her to play with my Rose,” she whispered. “She was always bothering me to play with her, and I thought maybe if she had someone else…”

I nodded. “I have two younger sisters. I remember what it was like. They never leave you alone, even when you have something important to do.”

Snow nodded furiously. I wondered if the whole situation could have been averted if there had been more children Rose’s age around.

No, probably not. Some tragedies are like landslides, and once they’re up to speed, there’s no diverting them.

“So you worked out that if you ate enough mirror-food, you could bring the other Rose through. But not for very long, right?”

“Not at first. I got better at it, but it still wasn’t for very long.

Twenty, thirty minutes. They used to play at being twins, and sometimes they’d play tricks on Nurse.

Rosie—the other Rose—would go into a room and then turn to dust, and then Rose would come up behind Nurse while she was looking. ”

“Not at first…” I repeated. “But then Rosie could stay out longer, couldn’t she? All of a sudden?”

Snow nodded. “Because Rose was in the mirror, I think? Rose had an accident and hit her head, and mirror-mother was taking care of her. But she needs quiet, and they can’t move her while she gets better. So Rosie came out to pretend to be Rose so that no one would wonder where she went.”

So that was the story the Mirror Queen had told her. Clever. I closed my eyes and damned the woman to the deepest hell Saint Badger could dig.

“But then Mother… with the knife…” Snow took a deep breath.

“Now she and Rosie are gone, and Rose is all I have left. But mirror-mother won’t let me see her!

” Her voice grew thinner as she talked, stretching like a tendon about to snap.

“She keeps saying that if I just eat enough apples to bring other people through, she’ll make everything right.

And I looked and looked, and I couldn’t find Rose, and now I’m stuck out here while she’s back home at the palace.

I just want to see her. She’s my sister . ”

“Snow…” Healer Michael would have had a gentle way to do it, a kind way.

The only way I knew was to drop the truth like an anvil in a millpond.

“Snow, reflections can only stay in the real world if they’ve eaten the real person’s heart.

Rose is dead. The Mirror Queen killed her so that her reflection—Rosie—could stay out here. ”

Snow stared at me for a long, long moment, then flushed suddenly red, so red that her eyebrows stood out as starkly white as her eyes. “Her h-heart?”

I nodded. “The Mirror Queen found out how.”

“But I saw her!” Snow wrung her hands together. “I saw Rose! She was alive!”

I inhaled sharply. Had my theory been wrong? Had I just traumatized the hell out of a child for no reason? “Where did you see her? It’s very important.”

“In mirror-mother’s bedroom. She was asleep in bed, though, and I didn’t get to tell her I was sorry and hoped she got better soon.”

“When?”

“I…” Snow’s throat worked. “Right after mirror-mother said she’d had an accident. She told me not to tell my mother, that Rose would get in trouble because she wasn’t supposed to be in the mirror by herself.”

So the Mirror Queen cut out a child’s heart, fed it to her twin, then cleaned her up and put her in her own bed so she could parade the corpse in front of the child’s sister. And people think I’m cold-blooded. “Snow,” I said, “I’m afraid that… well… that probably wasn’t… I mean, Rose wasn’t…”

Something died in Snow’s eyes, something I recognized only by its sudden absence. “She was dead, wasn’t she,” said the king’s daughter, in a flat, final voice.

Part of me said that I was the adult and should invent some comforting lie. I ignored it. “I think she probably was. I’m sorry.”

Snow swallowed hard, then turned and rushed directly at me. I started to step back, but she flung her arms around my waist, buried her face in my midriff, and began to sob.

Oh shit. I had lifted my hands out of the way instinctively.

Now I lowered one and patted her on the back, saying, “Um… there, there. It’s okay.

” It wasn’t okay, it would never be okay, but what else could I say?

I knew what it was like to have younger sisters you loved.

I could well imagine the weight of guilt that had driven Snow to keep serving the Mirror Queen in the hope of someday seeing Rose again.

The queen—the real queen—hadn’t realized that Rosie had taken Rose’s place until Nurse told her about how she’d changed.

Then she’d realized quickly enough. She must have known how such things happened.

I wondered how she’d learned. It didn’t seem like the Mirror Queen would casually drop by the way, I’ve been feeding hearts to reflections to see what happens into conversation, but the saints only knew what kind of twisted relationship the woman had had with her reflection.

Nurse, seeing that Snow had broken down, made another determined effort to get past Javier. I was just as glad to hand her over to someone who could make the proper soothing noises. Once the transfer was complete, I knelt down beside Snow and said softly, “Snow, listen to me.”

One watery blue eye blinked at me from the shelter of Nurse’s gown. I patted Snow’s back again. “I’m sorry. But it can be over now. It can all be over. Don’t go back in. Don’t eat any more of those apples. As long as you don’t go back, she has no power on this side. Do you understand?”

Snow choked something out. I couldn’t decipher it, but Nurse, clearly shocked, said, “Now, now, dear, we don’t say things like that. You don’t want to do anything nasty like that.”

“I do, ” Snow declared, yanking herself free. “I’ll kill her! I will ! She lied to me, and she… she…”

“The worst thing you can do to her is stay here,” I said. The saints only knew what Nurse was making of the conversation. “Then she’ll have nothing. Just stay out and she loses. Forever. Can you do that for me?”

Snow shuddered, but nodded. “But she… oh, Rose …”

Nurse swept her up in her arms again, and Javier and I went quietly away, leaving Snow to her long-deferred grief.