Snow White and Rose Red (10 page)
Read Snow White and Rose Red Online
Authors: Patricia Wrede
Blanche blinked at her younger sister, then set her basket carefully on the ground and curtsied. “I do thank thee for thy approval, O wise one,” she said demurely.
A handful of twigs and leaves showered over Blanche’s head. “Goose!” Rosamund said, fixing her sister with a mock scowl. “There’s thy approval, if thou‘lt make fun of me.”
“Not soon again, thou mayest be certain,” Blanche responded, brushing bits of plants from her shoulders. “Come, let’s lay the circle.”
The two girls put their bundled herbs on the mossy forest floor and removed the plants they needed. These they set on the ground around them, placing them carefully to form an unbroken circle. A warm breeze made soft rustling noises in the leaves above them and stirred the strong herb smells into a single, pungent scent. Then they knelt beside their baskets and said their prayers aloud, before laying themselves side by side on the moss to sleep.
In the days that followed Hugh’s collapse, John remained close to his brother’s bedside. At first, Hugh lay motionless, his face a lifeless, waxen mask that by its lack of expression betrayed just how many of his thoughts and feelings had formerly shown through his Faerie manner. Gradually, a flush rose beneath his skin. His long fingers plucked fretfully at the quilted satin coverlet, and soon he was tossing feverishly on his sickbed.
For a week, Hugh lay in an airy, light-filled room, alternating between deep unconsciousness and fits of restlessness. He would take water from his brother’s hands, and sometimes a little barley gruel, but even on the rare occasions when his eyes were open there was neither reason nor recognition in their depths. The vast array of Faerie powers that were brought to his aid were helpless; the most that they could do was to still, for an hour or two, the querulous motion of his hands.
“Can you do nothing?” John demanded of the chief physician for the twentieth time.
“Without exact knowledge of the spell that troubles Prince Hugh, my skill avails but little,” the healer replied with regret.
“There’s the spell; observe it!” John said angrily, waving at his brother. Hugh lay like a marble statue on the bed, the coverlet barely moving with the rise and fall of his chest.
“This have I done, so far as I am able,” the healer said carefully. “That is to say, the effects of this enchantment are plain, as you have said. But what of the purpose of this charm? What of the mechanics of the spell? Can you tell me if it was accomplished by words, or by ritual, or by the virtue in specific plants, or with the aid of some object of power? Whether ‘twas intended to entrap the Prince your brother, or whether he has accidentally fallen foul of some dire spell intended to work otherwise? Knowing these things, I might begin to fashion a remedy; without such knowledge, I can but guess and hope.”
“Then at least tell me what to expect,” John said. “What is this enchantment doing to Hugh? How shall this end?”
“It ends in misery and mourning,” said a cool voice from behind the two men. They turned as one, and the healer made a deep obeisance. The Queen of Faerie stood in the doorway with her ladies-in-waiting about her. Each of the women wore something that was the white of Faerie mourning—a sash, an armband, the lining of her sleeves. The Queen herself was all in white, from the small hood she wore to her pearl-covered slippers. Her sleeves were edged with ermine, and a ruff of stiff white lace stood out around her neck. White did not become her.
“What meanest thou, Mother?” John said.
“There’s naught that can be done for Hugh,” the Queen said. Her pale face was bleak as she stared down at the bed where her youngest son lay. “His very essence hath been riven from him; soon he will lose even the outward semblance of a man.”
John stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the stiff white brocade of the Queen’s wide skirts. “No.”
“Yes,” said the Queen implacably. “Thou hast but to look at him to see the truth; the change is even now begun.”
Slowly, unwillingly, John’s head turned to look at his unconscious brother. The clear, pitiless light of Faerie poured through the long windows overhead, relentlessly marking every alteration in Hugh’s face. His nose seemed longer, and beneath the shadow of his unshaven beard his jaw was narrower. His lips were thinner, and his forehead sloped slightly backward. His neck had thickened; so had his shoulders and arms. The long fingers were thicker, too, and shorter. Even his fingernails had changed; they were dark and bruised-looking, and hard as horn. There was no longer anything remotely elegant about the figure on the bed, though no one could have claimed with any success that it was not Hugh.
“No!” John said again, just above a whisper. “Not Hugh.”
“Yes. And when he is become a beast, he must be cast from Faerie. That is the law, and not even I can change it,” the Queen said coldly. “Therefore I and all my court have put on mourning for my son.”
“‘Tis not too late to stop this spell,” John insisted. “It cannot be!” He glanced at the physician for support.
“If we knew more, ‘twere not too late,” the physician replied reluctantly. “But where to learn what we must know, I cannot say. This spell comes out of mortal lands, I think, and mortal ways are passing strange.”
John turned back to the Queen, his expression intent. “Then let me go into the mortal lands and seek a remedy—”
“You!” The cold immobility of the Queen’s face made the bitter anger in her voice cut deep. “This abomination is your doing, yet you think only of how swiftly you may evade my edicts and return to your beloved mortals! You care naught for your brother, nor for me, nor for the realm of Faerie.”
For a long moment John was stunned into speechlessness. Finally he managed to stammer out, “My doing? I’d never harm Hugh; thou canst not think it!”
The Queen’s expression did not change. “You did not cast the spell yourself, but the responsibility is yours nonetheless. Your foolish wandering among the mortals has drawn their attention here. Had you not left our realm, Hugh would not now lie unknowing as he does.”
“Thou dost blame me without cause,” John said. “Let me prove it. If there’s help for Hugh in mortal lands, I’ll find it.”
“Seek not to repeat your thoughtless folly!” the Queen answered. “You’ve done enough already; now you shall stay in Faerie. But keep from my sight.”
The Queen turned and swept away. John, staring after her, glimpsed a quick, satisfied smile on the face of one of the Queen’s ladies, but he was still too dazed to wonder much about it.
In deference to his mother’s command, John, too, put on white mourning, though he refused to give up the hope that his brother could be helped. He began spending less time with Hugh; instead, he talked for hours with the physicians, then went to the adepts and the great magicians of the court. He pored over scrolls and tomes from deep in the archives of Faerie. And he became more and more convinced that the solution to Hugh’s difficulty lay outside Faerie, in the mortal world from which the spell had come.
When John sought the Queen, to try once again to persuade her to let him leave Faerie in search of a remedy for Hugh, he discovered that he was barred from her presence. The courtiers and officials were polite; he was, after all, the Queen’s son. Unfortunately, they were also firm. The Queen would not see him, nor would she lift the spell that hid the border of Faerie from him. John must remain in Faerie.
Enraged, John stormed away from the court and back to his brother’s bedside. What he found there was hard to endure. Hugh lay naked beneath the coverlet, for his attendants could no longer fit the linen nightshirts over his enlarged arms and shoulders, and a dark stubble of sprouting fur covered his skin wherever it was visible. His restless tossing was no longer silent; now he made small animallike growling noises, and as he growled his lips curled away from fat, yellow teeth. His nails were black and thick at the ends of stubby, awkward fingers, and the skin on his palms was like black leather. The worst of it was that, despite the mouth and nose that stretched into a narrow snout, despite the sprouting fur and heavy nails, despite all the changes that proclaimed so clearly that this was no longer quite a man, it was still recognizably Hugh who snarled and scratched at the edges of the bed.
John stayed beside Hugh’s bed all night, his expression bleak. At dawn, he slipped quietly away, and returned to his own room on the far side of the palace. He spent an hour in various preparations, then lay down to sleep. At noon he arose and dressed in his finest white doublet and hose. He swung a cloak of white velvet across his shoulder and fastened it with a silver chain. Then he picked up a small sack he had left lying beside his bed and went out of the room. He made his way swiftly through silent halls of alabaster and rose-marble, malachite and jasper. No one saw him leave the palace and disappear into the Faerie forest.
John quickly discovered that grim determination was not enough to defeat a spell set by the Faerie Queen. For two days he marched doggedly up and down and across and through all the places where he knew the passage out of Faerie ought to be, without finding a single trace of it. On the third day, Rosamund and Blanche arrived in Faerie in search of herbs.
John was not immediately aware of their presence, but early in the night, just after Rosamund and Blanche had lain down to sleep, he stumbled across their resting place. He recognized Rosamund at once. He was at first amused by her presence, but when he saw the ring of herbs surrounding the two girls he frowned. The spell affecting Hugh had come from mortal lands, and it was plain that these two mortals knew far more of Faerie than was comfortable.
For a moment, John was furiously angry. Then he looked more closely at the sleeping girls huddled together for warmth and at their makeshift protection. He frowned once more. Surely two such knowledgeable people would have come better prepared, had they intended to spend a night in Faerie. And if they had not intended to stay . . .
Eyeing the girls thoughtfully, John pulled a wand of peeled willow from the sack he carried. He concentrated briefly, then wrote in the air with the tip of the wand. Glowing letters formed where the wand passed, fading slowly into darkness. John read the odd, curving script and nodded. The girls had been kept from leaving, and by some spell of Faerie. He thought for a moment, then concentrated once again. A second time the wand wrote a golden message on the darkened air. This time John frowned. The spell that kept these two in Faerie was tied to him, not them. For the Queen of Faerie’s spell was stronger than she had intended, and it hid the border from all mortal and half-mortal eyes so long as John was seeking it. Since it was John’s attempt to leave that had trapped the girls, he felt in some sense responsible for their safety while they remained in Faerie.
His frown changed to a look of intense thought. Suddenly he smiled. A third time he stared in concentration at the wand, then wrote letters made of light. He stared at them until they faded; then, still smiling, he sat down at the foot of a nearby tree to watch over these unexpected visitors until morning.
CHAPTER · SIX
“One morning they awoke after spending a night in the wood and found a child in a shining dress of white sitting on the ground near where they had been sleeping. The child rose and smiled kindly at them, then went off into the forest without speaking. When the girls looked around, they discovered that they had been sleeping near a steep cliff; if they had gone any farther in the dark the night before, they would surely have fallen over it. ”
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