Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(64)

The Queen’s hands were not as Emer remembered; once soft as silk and pale as moonlight, they were now red, the skin split and dry, callused, coarsened from gripping sword and reins. But the eyes, silvery blue, the gaze wide and wise as an owl’s—those were her mother’s without doubt. Emer nestled into the embrace, feeling as much as hearing a thrum as the White Bride crooned her love.

? 202 ?

? Angela Slatter ?

“Oh, sister, how sweet!” The Black Bride teetered on the edge of the dais, shuddering with the effort of her magic. “What was lost is found.

You didn’t look for me like that, not even to make sure I was dead.”

“A mistake I will not repeat, sister,” said the White Bride as she rose.

“Now, now, sister, don’t be too hasty. Didn’t I give her back? Isn’t she safe? Isn’t she lovely and whole, unlike we who still wear our battle scars? Didn’t I give you hope?”

“Only as one doles out breadcrumbs, sister, for without hope, suffering tastes flat,” said the White Bride, which set the Black Bride off into peals of laughter.

When she calmed, wiping spittle from her lips, she looked fondly at Emer and the White Bride. “Didn’t I say so, little one? That we know each other as well as we know ourselves? You should find this no surprise at all then, sister dear.”

And the Black Bride clapped with a noise like a lightning strike and shouted something Emer couldn’t quite comprehend, a word that slipped over her ears like oil across skin, and left nothing in its wake but a slight ringing. Where her mother had stood, half-buried under the fox fur hood, was a sleek alabaster she-hare with eyes of silvery blue. Emer could do nothing but stare through hot tears as the Black Bride hobbled down the steps and scooped up the animal that made no move to run.

“No feathers for you on this occasion—I do like variety. I would we had more time for thrust and parry—I could play this game forever—but you’ve taken so long to find us that my time is running short. Your child must be swift if she wishes to save you.”

An iron cage, which had not been there moments before, appeared at the foot of her throne. The Black Bride urged the animal in and latched the door. “Best keep her here, though I’m sure she’d be terribly popular with the boys,” she cackled, then shuddered into a fit of coughing that resulted in something nasty spattering on the stone floor. A spaniel footman hurried forward to lap it up. Emer shuddered to think of her mother at the mercy of the legions of bucks, whose noses twitched at the smell of a female.

? 203 ?

? Flight ?

Unsteadily, the girl picked herself up and wrapped her mother’s cloak around her, clinging to the warmth left within. She worried at the hood between her fingers as she tried her voice, found only a raucous sound, tried again and managed, “Why? Why all this?”

The Black Bride gave her an astonished look. “For the sport, of course. The vengeance.”

Emer looked at the hare, the Queen-that-was, and quivered. “If I was the bait, then she’s taken it. You win . . . What use have you for me now?”

“I thought I’d have more time,” the Black Bride murmured, not to Emer, but to the ghosts, the nobodies with whom she regularly conversed. Blinking, she looked down at the girl, as if calculating fitness for purpose. “You’ll have to do.”

“Do what?”

“You want your freedom, don’t you?”

Emer nodded. The Black Bride mirrored the movement and went on.

“Retrieve something for me, and we’ll see what we shall see about that.”

“That’s hardly a bargain,” Emer said, surprised at her boldness.

The Black Bride ignored her.

“I’ve sent that lot many times.” She shrugged dismissively towards the milling crowd of ravens, “and all they’ve brought back are excuses and complaints about the loss of this cousin or that brother. What I need can be obtained only by someone with pure intent—and we both know that’s not me—once it’s taken, of course, it can be handed over to whomever the acquirer pleases. It seems a fair price to me, for your liberty.”

“And my mother—her life, freedom, her true form,” Emer said.

She had listened for so long to the Black Bride’s tricksy tongue, to conditions that seemed carelessly worded but were not, to deals she’d made with all those princes who now wore fluffy tails and pointed ears.

“Very well, clever little miss.” The woman frowned, curious. “What did you think about? When you were bird-brained?”