A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(12)
“Ah.” My brains feel like hot cheez whiz, but I distantly remember versions of Snow White where she’s adopted by robbers or brigands rather than dwarves. Spanish, maybe? Or Flemish? Either way, I’m pretty sure her mom takes another shot at her, and she deserves a heads up. “Listen, Snow White,” I begin.
“Sneeuwwitje.”
“Listen, Sneeuwwitje—”
The queen shrieks from the cave entrance. “Zinnia! Tell these ruffians to unhand me!”
I shout back without turning, “Tie her up tight, boys, she’s super dangerous.” There are muffled sounds of fury in response, a definite uptick in swear words.
I try again. “You might already know this, Sneeuwwitje, but your mom is definitely going to try to kill you again. So if anybody shows up with an apple, or a comb, or whatever, just say no.”
Sneeuwwitje nods solemnly. “She gave me a demon’s ring, which sent me into a deep sleep. How did you know?”
I squint at the stained leather of her clothing, the calluses across her palms. “If she already put you to sleep … how come you aren’t married to a prince right now?”
“Oh, I told him no. I have seventeen husbands already.” An extremely compelling dimple appears, presenting a convincing argument that a man might share one-seventeenth of this woman and count himself lucky. “Eighteen just seemed greedy.”
“Sure, yeah,” I say faintly, making a distant mental note that not all princesses need saving.
Someone shouts a warning. Footsteps pound across the sand. The queen’s fingers close around my ankle and she grins fiercely up at me, a doubled trail of blood leaking from her nose and a mirror in her hand.
I have time to say, “Oh, for fuck’s sa—” before the world dissolves again.
* * *
THE NEXT WORLD has the sleek, blue-lit aesthetic of far-future science fiction. The walls are stacked with cold metal coffins. Waxen faces stare from their small, frosted windows, dead or sleeping, their lips a sickening, poisonous red.
The queen hisses between her teeth and flings us back into the void.
We land on a steep and lonely mountainside. For a moment I think we’re alone, but then a branch cracks. A long-legged dog trots past us, its coat silken silver, its eyes fixed on some invisible purpose. Six more follow at its heels, a soft river of paws and skulls and sterling fur.
“What—” the queen begins, but a woman comes loping into the view after the dogs. She has hair the color of the moon and a dress the color of snow, and her eyes widen when they land on the queen. For a moment I think she might bare her teeth or set her hounds on us, but then her eyes slide to me. She bows her head, as one would to a fellow soldier in a long war, and runs on after her dogs.
The two of us are left standing together in the pine-scented silence, unsure whether we’ve been blessed or cursed. The queen takes my hand almost gently this time, before she lifts the mirror again.
A college campus full of ivy-eaten buildings and signs in Korean, where one extremely beautiful boy is offering an apple to another equally beautiful boy.
A sumptuous wedding feast that seems to involve seven ogres and a princess in a gown of richest red.
A hunched woman offering a comb to a little girl, her lips curving in a cold smile.
I can feel myself coming undone, unspooling into the endless whirl of dead girls and coffin lids, wicked mothers and poison apples. The same story repeated again and again, like a woman standing between two mirrors, reflected into infinity.
And then another forest, curled and black beneath a starless sky. I wrench my arm away from the queen and pluck the mirror from her other hand. She’s too weak to stop me, her skin clammy and chilled, her limbs shuddering.
She rolls onto her stomach beside me, panting into the dark muck of leaves and earth. “This is where you draw the line?” she spits. “This is where you choose to stay?”
She has an extremely good point. The woods around us bear no resemblance at all to the first forest we landed in, with its flower petals and birdsong. The trees here are knotted and bent, like snapped bones that have healed poorly, and the darkness is the kind that makes your eyes ache if you look at it too long. I’ve hit a couple of versions of Sleeping Beauty that edged into horror, and returned with new scars and probably some undiagnosed PTSD. Charm threw a fit about it, and the next time I left home I found a new pocketknife and a first aid kit in my pack, along with a note reading Don’t die, bonehead in Prim’s fancy calligraphy.
So, no, I don’t love the Grimm-dark vibe of these woods, but I’m tired on a subatomic level, my muscles shaking and my teeth chattering, and I’m done channel surfing at someone else’s whim. “Why not?” I make an effort to crawl away and manage several consecutive feet before collapsing against my own backpack, mirror still in my hand. “Look, you’ve got to give it a rest. You’re going to kill yourself at this pace.”
“As if you care about my fate.” Her voice darkens, silky and low. “Beyond your base desires, of course.”
“My what?”
The queen raises herself to her hands and knees just so she can do a haughty glare at me. “It’s a little late to feign indifference. You kissed me.”
I’m torn between explaining that my kiss was actually a failed escape attempt and clarifying that there’s nothing especially base about desiring a tall, dangerous woman with terrible vibes (whomst among us, etc.). Instead, I say, “Whatever. I just need a break from that mirror, okay?”