Chapter 11 ROSE
The fire burrowed low in the stones, hissing as it sucked marrow from the half-dry logs.
It was almost April, yet the cold clung to our valley cottage with the obstinacy of a ghost, and I hunched tight beneath the moth-eaten shawl that must have been Mother’s in her own girlhood.
Across from me, Snow hunched too, her head bent in concentration, hands a blur of white over the blue kerchief she was embroidering.
In a different mood, she would have drawn the lamp closer to light her stitches; tonight, she seemed content to sew by the flux of flame alone, as if candlelight might reveal something she preferred to keep blurred.
Mother’s back was to us at the hearth, but I could tell from the way she moved the spoon in the pot, she was not minding the stew at all.
It had been hours since she last spoke, and even then, it was only to sigh at the woodpile or scold the wind for smoking down the chimney.
I tried not to think of how, just weeks before, there would have been a fourth voice in the room, Magnus.
His grunts or snoring and low rumbles would have added to the night.
The cottage felt emptier now, the space around the hearth both too large and too small.
I was losing the battle with my nerves. Each time a log shifted, cinders leaped and died, and my mind would leap with them, tracing the pattern of sparks in the air and wondering if he was out there, somewhere, seeing the same constellations of light in the darkness of the trees.
Mother’s spoon struck wood with a hollow, almost ceremonial clack. For a long moment, she held it suspended, then set it with a careful click to the stones beside the pot. She turned, smoothing the front of her patched brown dress, and I recognized the shape of her decision before she spoke.
“Girls.” Her voice was rough and quiet, as if she’d spent the whole day arguing with herself before surrendering. “It’s time you heard a story.”
Snow’s needle froze in midair. I let my knees uncoil.
Curiosity bloomed inside me, but the way Mother said it—slow and deliberate, as though each word might crumble—made the hairs rise along my arms. We had grown up on her stories: saints with silver bones, devils in the shape of toads, hunters, and witches, and all manner of unlucky princesses.
She told them while baking, while braiding our hair, while scrubbing the kitchen, and sometimes, if she were in a mood, she would draw the shutters and whisper them in the dark.
But this was different. This was not the beginning of a story I was sure I wanted to hear.
Mother lowered herself into the old chair, the one with the arm hollowed to a groove by decades of nervous picking. In the flicker of firelight, I saw her features shift, lines cut by age and worry, but still containing a beauty that shone through the crags, like the sun behind storm clouds.
She folded her hands over her lap and began.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl,” she said, and though she tried for the old musical cadence, her voice trembled into the hush.
“A girl with a beauty that made the world ache. They said the snow grew brighter when she walked upon it, and the birds in the woods grew bolder, flocking just to look her in the face. Even the king—who had all the world at his feet—left his palace to see her with his own eyes.”
Snow, who was never one to let a tale slide by without a comment, barely breathed.
I could feel her watching me, waiting for me to smirk or roll my eyes at the cliché, but I was transfixed.
I saw the girl in the story, saw her as I saw my sister, with hair so white-blonde it was nearly silver, high cheekbones, and full lips.
I saw her as myself, too: red where the other was pale, freckled and rounder, but still prone to the kind of longing that made a person want to be the cause of a king’s journey.
I waited for Mother to smile, to let the tension out with a joke, but she only looked at us with eyes as deep and gray as the pond in February.
“Men came from everywhere,” she continued.
“They offered her jewels and horses, gold and honey, and velvet gloves.
But she would have none of them. She was waiting for love's true call.”
A noise thudded against the window behind me, harder than a pinecone, softer than a fist. I jumped, then tried to cover it with a cough. Snow’s hands flew to her mouth. Mother barely blinked.
“A bat,” she said, as if she’d predicted the interruption, but I could see from the tightness in her jaw that she was only half-certain. A flutter of wings dissolved into the night, and we gave a nervous giggle.
Mother’s voice grew softer, lower, and the firelight deepened the shadows across her face.
“She refused the king,” she said, “because he was too old. Because she was a proud, silly girl who thought herself too fine for wisdom, too bold for safety. She wanted youth, handsomeness, laughter in her bed instead of silver hair and steady hands. She turned away from the man who would have cherished her, who would have laid kingdoms at her feet, and instead…” Mother’s mouth tightened, “…instead she chose a different man.”
Snow leaned forward, her eyes wide.
“He was young, yes. Handsome. Charming. And for a time, she thought she had won a better fate. But he was not what he seemed. He was a Bluebeard, a monster who kept his wives locked away, who murdered the ones who displeased him. The girl escaped—barely—pregnant with his child. And in her desperation, she went back to the king she had spurned.”
The shutters rattled with the sudden beat of a gust of wind, sending me jumping in my chair. Snow gasped. Mother didn’t flinch.
“The king forgave her,” she went on, her voice steady over the fire’s crackle. “He promised her safety. Promised her a crown. Promised to marry her, even though she carried another man’s child. But before he could, the wizard came.”
I swallowed hard as the hairs began to rise on my arms. Trepidation filled me, as if I had heard the story before.
“Alarion the Wise, he called himself. Wise in cruelty, perhaps." Cold sweat broke out down my neck. I knew that name. It was the same name Derrick had used when he told me about the curse on him and his family. Before I could follow the thread of my thoughts, Mother continued, not realizing how pale I must have become. "He came to the king’s hall, enraged that she had fled. His power was greater than any soldier’s blade. The king sent his men to spirit the girl away into the woods, but it was too late. The wizard cursed them all. The king, his hall, and every man within its walls turned to stone. Only the girl made it out alive.”
The fire spat, flames leaped high, and for an instant the room seemed to hold its breath. Mother’s gaze lingered on us. “Remember this, my girls: choices have prices. The forest remembers every bargain, every promise, every betrayal.”
Snow shivered. My chest felt tight, too full, as though the story had reached across years to wrap icy fingers around my throat.
A cold ran through me deeper than the one nesting in the stones. My jaw ached, the roots of my teeth jittering. I wanted to say that the story was nothing but a warning, an old wives’ bone-rattle. Instead, I whispered, “He told me the same. All of it. The king, the curse. The wizard.”
Snow’s fingers curled into the kerchief until her knuckles went white. She stared at me with round, frightened eyes, as if she’d missed something crucial, or as if I had. “Who told you?”
I licked lips that felt stiff, too raw for the room’s warmth. “Magnus.” Even saying the name aloud felt like conjuring. “Only he called himself Derrick. He said—”
Mother’s hand went to her heart so quickly I thought she’d clutched something pierced inside her. “Derrick?” she echoed, as if the shape of it hurt.
“He said his father’s name was Roderick,” I continued, the pieces slotting together with a sickness I didn’t want to taste.
Mother’s breath shuddered. “Saints.” She pressed her fists to her mouth, then let them fall. “He would have been your age,” she said, and then—as if she could not stop herself—“He was King Rodrick’s son. About the same age as me.”
Snow’s chair scraped sharply as she stood, horror and curiosity warring across her face. “Mother.” A single word, edged in bright danger. “Are you saying—”
Mother looked at both of us, realizing she had given herself away. With a loud sigh, she nodded, “Yes, that girl was me.”
Snow put a fist to her mouth, as if she could push the words back in. “What about the wizard—Alarion?”
Mother’s gaze dropped to the scuffed planks of the floor. “Your father. Yes. I’m sorry.” She looked up at me, then at Snow; a heavy sorrow hung around her.
So much was going through my head. Too much. If Derrick’s father were a king, then Derrick would be a prince, but that was the least of what was giving me a headache. Something far more important scratched at the ends of my brain. “He’s still alive, Derrick said he was hunting him. That the curse—”
Mother nodded, resigned. “He’ll always hunt me. It’s his nature to possess, to consume.” Something almost like a smile twisted her mouth. “But he never found this place. Not really. The forest hides what it loves.”
I closed my eyes and worked through the throb in my temples.
My head was a tangle of fairytales and facts: our father was a monster; Derrick was a prince; our mother was both a hunted bride and the rescuer.
I had grown up so sure we were the only people who mattered in this clearing, and now it felt as if every shadow outside the window was a ghost waiting to call our debts.
The silence gathered, thick and iron-heavy. I could hear the wind drilling again at the shutters.