Before the Snow (2 page)

“Let's get you out of here,” Nepenthe said, reaching for the boy.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he said, recoiling from her. He pressed himself against the wall so hard, he seemed to want to disappear into it.

“That's the beauty of me. You can't hurt me. You may be able to freeze me for a while, but you can't kill me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. His eyes widened with curiosity.

If he can shake his guilt even for the briefest of moments, perhaps there is still hope for him. Perhaps he can shake this forever
, Nepenthe thought.

She concentrated and her skin turned to water. She could feel the water flow from every pore. Nepenthe could see how she must look in his eyes. She was a girl made of water. She spared him her tentacles for now. She wanted to show him that other magical people existed. That he wasn't alone. She didn't want to scare him.

The boy inhaled sharply. Nepenthe wasn't sure how he was going to react. Maybe he would get the parallel between them. But there was always the chance he would behave as her classmates sometimes did—with ignorance and meanness.

He mustered a small sad smile and stood up. He wouldn't take her hand, but he followed her out of the Throne Room and into the garden. There were more statues—the real kind—among the flowers and bushes.

“I was mad. I was mad because she wouldn't let me have my way. And now she's . . . ,” he said, walking to a bench and sitting down. He glanced at Nepenthe and then back toward the Throne Room.

“You don't have to tell me,” she said.

But she could see he needed to get it out.

“The guards came when she screamed. They asked what I did. One of them called me a monster. Another said I was a . . .”

“Witch?” She finished the thought for him.

He nodded.

“It's not a bad word,” she countered. “It's what I am. It might be what you are.”

Rushing out to find her, the River Witch pulled them apart.

Nepenthe squeezed the boy's shoulder before getting up. He looked up at her, seemingly stunned that she had not turned to ice. His look of gratitude melted her heart even more.

“Nepenthe, it's time,” her mother said. “The other witches are here to do the Memory Spell.”

“Do we have to? I think in time he will understand that this wasn't his fault,” Nepenthe said.

“The boy has another destiny. One that doesn't involve his Snow. One that won't be possible if we don't erase this moment from history. When he takes a life, it must be with intent. That is how it must be.”

“Is that what the oracle says?” Nepenthe asked. “The one about the Coven helping the crown? I thought everything depended on the Snow Queen, not a Prince.”

“The Snow Queen's fate will reveal itself in due course. For now, this is what the King says, and we have to respect the King's wishes.”

“
What about the Prince's wishes?” Nepenthe asked, but her mother had no answer for her.

4

They would perform the Memory Spell in the garden. Nepenthe walked with the boy the few steps from the bench to where Cassia, the Witch of the Woods, had drawn a pentagram in the perfectly manicured grass.

The Witch of the Woods was somewhere between a woman and a tree. Her hair wasn't hair at all—it was tiny branches plaited together that hung down to her waist. Patches of soft bark covered her skin. And hair-thin twigs made up her expressive eyebrows. Her arms had human joints but branches again made up her forearms and fingers. The dress she wore was a papery burlap, and through it Nepenthe could see a mess of roots where her legs should have been.

Next to her, the Fire Witch's hair cascaded down her back in scarlet waves, and her face was heart shaped and expressive. The Fire Witch, Scoria, looked almost human. Almost. But she had more in common with a flame than with humanity. She was quick to flare and flickered in and out of their lives, disappearing from the Coven at will. But she showed up today, because Nepenthe's mother had asked her.

The Fire Witch always had an air of superiority, Nepenthe thought. A single spark could claim almost everything the Witch of the Woods was. Another reason why having a River Witch was important. A River Witch could douse the Fire Witch's power with her own. The Three represented a balance of power and nature. And since Nepenthe's mother had stopped being the River Witch, that power was upset.

The boy looked up at Nepenthe askance.

“My mom and her sisters are going to take your memory of this away,” Nepenthe whispered in his ear. “You won't remember any of this.”

“But I did this,” he said. “It's horrid and I will remember it forever.”

“No, you won't remember a thing. That is what the Coven's magic is for. Trust me.”

She didn't know why she was telling him what was going to happen. She wondered if maybe it was better if they just did it and he didn't know it was coming. He would never remember her words.

“Trust is a choice,” he said.

When she let go of his hand, she leaned down and whispered her name into his ear. She knew he would not remember anything. Not even her. But she would know that she told him.

The Witch of the Woods raised her branches to begin.

The boy took a step forward.

Breaking a few sticks from her side, the Witch of the Woods formed a pyre in the center of the pentagram. The Fire Witch lit it with a breath of white fire. The white flames danced up toward the sky.

The boy looked back at Nepenthe, and she urged him on with a nod.

But as she saw him step into the pyre, she heard herself gasp. She resisted the urge to pull him out. To douse the flames with whatever water she could muster.

White flames rose around him. But his skin, his clothes, seemed untouched by the flames.

“We warm the blood, we melt his curse,

We warm the blood, we melt his curse . . .

Snow be gone . . .

All he touched and all who touch him will dispel from his memory like the ashes . . .

Forget
this day,

Begin anew without Snow, a Prince remains . . .”

The flames died down. And the boy opened his mouth. A stream of snow spewed out and up into the air. But the snow did not drift down to the ground; it swirled into a mass in the air, thrashing back and forth as if it was battling itself.

The Witch of the Woods chanted louder, and the violent snow cloud descended in their direction suddenly. The Witch of the Woods was pushed back by the force. She clung to the snowy ground with her roots to right herself. The snow cloud reshaped itself into what almost looked like a face; its giant mouth gaped open and threatened the Witch of the Woods again.

The Fire Witch raised her arms, and flames shot out toward the cloud. But the blast was unnecessary. The snow fell down to the ground, blanketing the witches, Nepenthe, and the boy, who collapsed in a heap next to the pyre.

Nepenthe reached for him again, but she was stalled by her mother.

“Let him be,” she whispered.

Looking slightly terrified, the King approached and crouched over his son. The King's hands were shaking as he leaned over and checked for breath. He nodded to the witches in thanks and then lifted the boy up into his arms and carried him away.

Nepenthe looked up at her mother.

“He can't see us, child; he can't know us.”

When it was over and Nepenthe and her mother were in the carriage riding home, the sun began to rise.

Nepenthe stared at her mother's profile in shadow, contemplating her. Her mother, who had taught her every day that magic was something to be reckoned with, had just made her help wipe that boy's magic away.

Her mother had spent every day educating Nepenthe about her choice. The River or the land? Hadn't they just taken that boy's choice away? How could he live fully not knowing what he had done or what he was capable of?

“I know you don't approve of what we did back there,” the River Witch said quietly.

“I think it's going to be worse for that boy not knowing what he did. I think the sadness won't have a name, but it will be there all the same,” Nepenthe said.

“Perhaps, but this way he can grow up and have a normal life—sad or not,” the River Witch replied. “It won't be a life tainted by murder, even one done by accident . . .”

“But he's not normal, Mother.”

“And perhaps one day there will be a consequence for that . . . for all of us.”

The River Witch didn't live to see how true her words were. But she couldn't have been more right.

Nepenthe was more confused than ever. She had never felt power like what she saw in the garden. The only thing she knew for certain was that she would not forget that little boy, even though he had forgotten all about her.

5

The next few days were a blur of land and water for Nepenthe. She was no closer to choosing between the two, but the water always seemed to have a slight edge. Little did she know that like the boy, the decision would be taken from her.

Then one day when she returned home from the academy in town she knew right away that something was wrong. Water had flooded the house.

She walked through ankle-deep water that was still rising with every step.
Has the Grotto somehow flooded?
she wondered. But the water itself told a story. It was brackish and gray, not the clear blue water of her Grotto. The water somehow seemed sick or worse.

“Nepenthe . . .”

The water carried her name to her in an urgent whisper, and she waded toward its source.

She found her father clinging to life in the study. He was on his belly trying to crawl through the water. There was a trail of blood from where he had been gutted in the foyer. Blood floated on the water. Nepenthe pulled him upright enough to see the wound. She grabbed a blanket from a nearby chair and wrapped it around the seeping hole in his chest. She patched him up as best she could, but she was only a girl and there was too much blood.

Water hit her father's face and her own. But this time, from above. It was raining in the house. She knew it was her doing, but she couldn't stop it.

The River Witch's name was on his lips. Nepenthe had tried to save him, but she did not have enough power. He ordered her to find her mother, and Nepenthe left his side, wrapping his own hands over where hers had held the cloth over his wound.

He couldn't tell Nepenthe who did this to him. He would only say the River Witch's name on a loop. His love for the River Witch meant more than who had taken his life.

Nepenthe found her mother in the Grotto. She had been returned to the water, facedown. Turning her over, Nepenthe found her mother's green eyes open, but not even a hint of her remained.

Nepenthe cradled her mother in her arms and called her name. She futilely prayed for a pulse, but there was none. She pulled the River Witch to her and heard an inhuman wail and the sound of thunder, like a storm was gathering in the Grotto. Nepenthe knew both sounds were hers. The walls wept water now, and the water beneath her mother swirled. She clutched her mother tighter to her. Her words were gone. There was only the wailing.

On the wall of the Grotto, she saw a word scrawled in what looked like blood: WITCH.

Did my mother write it?
Nepenthe wondered through the torrent of tears.

She heard the Witch of the Woods's voice calling from outside the house. Somehow word had gotten back to her and she had traveled by roots to find Nepenthe.

“I heard you, little fish,” she said, her branches outstretched to Nepenthe. “All of Algid heard you.”

She carried her parents' bodies outside. Behind her she could hear the house collapsing under the rising water. She did not look back.

Nepenthe and the Witch of the Woods took her parents to the River, where they were met by the rest of the Coven. The Witch of the Woods built a floating pyre, and they pushed her parents downstream. Nepenthe wanted nothing more than to follow them. Instead, she stood on the River bank surrounded by the Coven and watched as the Fire Witch lit the pyre with a stream of fire that seemed to drop right out of the sky.

“Who did this?” Nepenthe asked the Witch of the Woods over and over again.

“
There are people who will never accept us for what we are—not even in a place of magic like Algid. Your mother taught you that.”

“But if Mother had had her full powers, she could have fought off whoever it was.”

“We don't know that. She made her choice and she was happy with it. She was so thrilled to have you.”

Nepenthe let herself sink against the Witch of the Woods's bark-covered chest. It was simultaneously hard and soft. But even as the tears fell, Nepenthe made a promise. She would never be so weak that she could not defend herself. And she swore she would never love if it left her open to this kind of pain.

She had made her choice. Or her choice had been made for her. Whichever it was, Nepenthe was the River Witch now. She belonged to the water. And the water belonged to her.

6

“You still have a choice to make, Nepenthe,” said the Witch of the Woods. “But not today.”

“I have made my choice.”

“Not today,” the Witch of the Woods repeated.

The Witch of the Woods's home was the Hollow. It was a marvel of magic and roots. The Witch had used her roots to hollow out room after room beneath the ground. But Nepenthe had never felt at home under the ground like she did in the water. And now, with her parents gone, she could not bring herself to step inside.

Nepenthe spent days at a time in the water. No longer was she torn between land and sea. It was different living with the witches than visiting them. Before it was like going out and seeing a magic show in one of the villages. Now magic was all around her, all the time.