Page 102 of Hemlock & Silver
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 meseeher!” Her voice grew thinner as she talked, stretching like a tendon about to snap. “Shekeeps 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 toseeher. She’s mysister.”
“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 Isawher!” 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 thinkI’mcold-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 onlyby 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 howshe’dlearned. It didn’t seem like the Mirror Queen would casually dropby the way, I’ve been feeding hearts to reflections to see what happensinto 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.”
“Ido,” Snow declared, yanking herself free. “I’ll kill her! Iwill! 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.
CHAPTER 27
The captain of the guard was an amiable man with a face like an elderly bloodhound. His duties mostly consisted of breaking up fights between visiting servants and making sure no one got too drunk. There were fewer than a hundred people at the villa, after all. Kidnapping was an astounding break in his day, and judging by his face, he didn’t know whether to be excited or horrified.
