“Ouch!” she cried as she pulled herself free of the thorny branch that was pricking through her cloak and into her right hand. Snow saw the blood trickle down her pale white palm and began to cry.
“Snow!” her mother said, drawing down close to her. “Are you okay? Where are you hurt?” She leaned in and Snow’s vision began to blur, as if the snow was falling harder now. Even through the haze, Snow could still see her mother’s dark eyes peering at her intently. “It’s all right, Snow. Everything is going to be all right.” She took Snow’s injured hand, pulled an embroidered handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed it into the snow, and then pressed it against her daughter’s wound. It cooled the burn from the cut. She wrapped the handkerchief tightly around Snow’s hand. “There. All better. We can clean you up when we get you inside.”
Snow pouted. “I hate roses! They hurt!”
Her mother smiled, her image softening along with the sound of her voice. She seemed so far away. “They can, yes, when you get nicked by a thorn.” She plucked a single red rose off the bush. It was petrified from the snow and frozen, but still perfectly preserved and almost crimson in color. Snow peered at it closely. “But you shouldn’t be afraid to hold on to something beautiful, even if there are thorns in your path. If you want something, sometimes you have to take risks. And when you do”—she handed Snow the rose—“you reap wonderful rewards.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Your Majesty.”
Snow looked up. Her mother’s sister and lady-in-waiting, her aunt Ingrid, was staring at them sharply. Almost angrily. Somehow, Snow knew this look well. “You’re already late.”
Seventeen-year-old Snow awoke with a start, gasping for air as she sat up in bed. “Mother!” she cried out.
But there was no one there to hear her.
There never was. Not anymore.
Instead, Snow was greeted by the sound of silence.
As she wiped the sweat from her brow, she wondered: had this been another dream turned nightmare, or was it a true memory? She had them more frequently now. It had been more than ten years since she’d seen her mother’s face; sometimes she wasn’t sure.
She hardly ever saw Aunt Ingrid these days. No one in the castle did. Her aunt had become all but a recluse, letting very few into her inner circle. Her niece, whom she was begrudgingly raising, was not one of them.
Aunt Ingrid always looked the same in dreams, maybe because on the rare occasion Snow crossed her aunt’s path in the castle, she always had on some slight variation of
the same gown. Although they were mostly similar in cut, she wore only the most beautifully tailored dresses, with the finest fabric their kingdom could offer, and only in shades of purple. The castle was indeed drafty, which could have been why Aunt Ingrid was never seen without a dark-hued cape that she coiled around her body like a snake. Snow couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen her aunt’s hair (she couldn’t even remember the color) because Ingrid always covered her head with a tight-fitting headdress accentuated by her crown.
Snow, on the other hand, couldn’t remember the last time she’d been given something new to wear. Not that she minded that much—who even saw her?—but it would have been nice to have a gown that didn’t tug at her arms or end at her calves. She had two dresses she rotated, and both were covered in patches. She’d mended her burgundy skirt, which she had made from old curtains, more times than she could remember. She didn’t even have any fabric left over to patch it anymore, so her skirt had become a rainbow of colors with beige and white patches covering the holes where the dress had torn on the stone steps or a rosebush.
Roses. What was the bit about the roses in her dream?
She couldn’t remember. The dream was already beginning to fade. All she could picture was her mother’s serene face. Maybe it was best to leave the memory alone. She had a lot to do today.
Snow pulled herself out of bed and went to the large window in her room, drawing open the heavy curtains. She’d resisted using the drapes to make a warm cape for herself so far, but if the next winter was as bad as the last one, she might have to resort to it. She let the bright light of day in and looked out at the grounds below.
Summer was in full bloom, giving the aging castle a glow it needed badly. While there was no denying that the castle’s exterior had deteriorated in the last ten years, she felt a sense of pride as she looked out at the garden and her mother’s beloved aviary. She had pruned the bushes, giving them a neat shape, as well as overturned and weeded the flower beds. Fresh blooms hung from silver canisters on the brick walls, making the garden come alive. It didn’t hurt that she’d been slowly cutting back the ivy that threatened to take over the entire castle. She could only reach so high, but at ground level the stone was clearly visible again, even if it did need a good scrubbing. (She’d add that to her list.) She could only imagine how the facade looked outside the castle gates. Her aunt forbade Snow from leaving the castle’s grounds. She said it was for Snow’s safety, but it made her feel like a prisoner. At least she could still come and go in the gardens as she pleased.
Being in the open air rather than cooped up in this castle was her own personal form of heaven. She wasn’t supposed to speak to the few guards her aunt still kept in employment, but at least when she passed another human being on her walk through the castle to the garden each day she didn’t feel quite so alone. Her aunt hadn’t let her make a public appearance in years (though there rarely were appearances these days, even for Queen Ingrid), and the castle seldom saw visitors. She sometimes wondered if the kingdom even knew there was a princess anymore. But there was no one to ask.
Snow tried to stay busy keeping up the castle. When she had too much time on her hands, she began to think a lot about all she’d lost over the last ten years. Her beloved mother, Queen Katherine, had fallen ill so quickly Snow never had the chance to go to her bedside to say goodbye. Her father had been too distraught to comfort her, instead turning to Aunt Ingrid, whom he soon married. Snow could still hear the whispers about the union, which seemed more like it was done out of necessity than love. She assumed her father had wanted her to have a mother, and Ingrid had appeared to be the next best thing. But she wasn’t. Snow noticed her father never again smiled the way he had when her mother was alive.
Perhaps that was the true reason her father had run off only a few months later: he’d had a broken heart. At least, that’s what she told herself. It was too hard to believe what Aunt Ingrid told everyone—that her father had lost his mind. Aunt Ingrid said that without Katherine around to help him govern the kingdom, King Georg had become overcome with grief. Snow once heard her aunt tell the court that Georg spoke to Katherine as if she were still alive, frightening guards, servants, and even his own daughter. But Snow didn’t remember him doing that.
Her last memory of her father was in the aviary. She had snuck out there to take care of her mother’s birds. Sensing someone’s presence, she’d turned around to find the king watching her with tears in his eyes.
“You remind me so much of your mother,” he’d said hoarsely. He reached out and gently stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry she isn’t here to see you grow up.”