White As Snow (Fairy Tale) (18 page)

Read White As Snow (Fairy Tale) Online

Authors: Tanith Lee

BOOK: White As Snow (Fairy Tale)
5.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Under the cliffs and up and down their shelves, and away and away inside them, rambled the miners’ town. By day (and they kept rigorously to rituals of day and night down here) it was mostly quiet.
But from the galleries and chambers
inside
the rock came continuous weird ringings and mumblings, like far off bells under the sea, or giants moaning.
How terrible it is, this place,
Coira wonderingly thought, as if she were coming awake at last, not out of a dark dream but into one.
 
 
A cottage on a hill—this was how Tickle described it, with a bark of laughter. It was a shack of castaway beams from the mines, and stones. However, it looked across the hills of rubble and rock to the valley where the peculiar Prince of Hell, evidently some other thief, had his mansion.
Nothing Coira had beheld was like this vista. But she had been shown very little.
Was it like Hell? If so, the classical Hell of shades and shadows, or the Christian one of flames?
For a fact, there were odors of sulphur in these caverns. But Belgra Demitu had reeked of that now and then from its Oracle. Here phosphorous flared in the dark, particularly near the river. And lanterns and torches, shallow clay lamps, fat candles—these fires, static or mobile, were everywhere.
The mansion of the prince itself blazed with red lights. From this distance, it was vivid as a dying sunset. But the architecture seemed like that of all the dwellings, an amalgamation of rubbish. Less a sunset than a bonfire.
A stream pushed through the rock valley. The Underworldians called it Woe Stream, feeding a pool they called Lethe. Trees grew there—or so it was said by those who had made the pilgrimage to visit the Prince of Hell.
Strangely, a tree of sorts grew by the dwarves’ shack, which stood in an isolated position on its “hill.” The tree, which hung down like a willow, consisted of the
roots
of a tree which had somehow established itself in the quarries overhead. Its tendrils were ghostly with the marble dust. When vibrations shook it, as off and
on they shook all the Underworld, puffs of white breath blew off from it. The shack had, from this, become powdered, too. When the torch was alight by the door, everything shone like the dull, dire stars in the cavern’s roof.
 
 
Two days before, as they had come up into the hills above Korchlava, Coira had seen her father’s city below. It had been days away, and meant nothing. But a voice had spoken in her head, chill and precise:
Draco is king there
.
The city was indecipherable, a vague mass. It might have been only geographical, if Soporo and Proud had not pointed it out to each other.
But the first night below, a night timed by one of the candle-clocks Tickle had acquired in Elusion’s market, Coira dreamed she left the shack-cottage and walked over the rocks towards the red-windowed Hell palace in the valley. And it became instead her father’s palace in Korchlava.
In the dream she presently arrived. She stood in a courtyard. The yard was like those she remembered from Belgra Demitu, but for the luminescent dark and dusty torchlight.
A wedding was taking place.
Quickly she understood it was her father Draco’s wedding to her mother, the bitch-queen Arpazia.
The crowd in the dream jostled and whistled and grunted.
Then Draco appeared. He was as Coira recalled him from earliest childhood, big, flushed, black-bearded. He wore a golden diadem. The woman who walked at his side, pristine in a slim white gown, held something up before her face.
The crowd grumbled. They could not see her.
“What is that she’s holding?”
“Make her take it away so we can look at her.”
“It’s a mirror!” a voice cried.
“A mirror! A mirror!”
“And real glass with a silvered back,” said a grating and salacious voice almost in Coira’s ear. “Worth a fortune. And we never knew.”
“As well,” said someone else. Coira opened her eyes and saw Proud standing between her and the light. “Robbers would have been after it.”
“I’m glad we never knew it was there,” trembled Want.
“We were perched on it, like God on His glass throne.”
Coira sat up. A sleeping place had been made for her. unasked, by Want and Tickle, and decorated with cushions from the wagon (Vinka). The bed was in a kind of alcove at one end of the shack’s large lower room. Vinka had also hung a shawl to screen it, partly concealing Coira from the dwarves or the dwarves from Coira.
None of them took any notice of Coira now.
They were all of them by the fire-pit. Something had been dragged there and laid on rugs, half-propped up by a small chest. They had been unloading the wagon, since they meant to barter the horses tomorrow, before arranging their work in the mine.
“Where did he get it?”
“Cirpoz—he’ll have stolen it.”
Coira could see it now, how it gave off a sharp glister every time the flames brightened. It was like a slice of water lying sideways. Like Lethe’s clear pool of forgetting.
“My mother’s mirror.”
They craned round and looked at the stupid charity child. None of them spoke.
Then Soporo said, “Mistress said, whose?”
“My—my mother’s. The queen, Draco’s first wife.”
Soporo hawked and spat in the fire. It spat back, green. (And the mirror was an emerald newly mined.)
“Mistress is princess-mistress. I forgot.”
Stormy, kneeling the other side of the fire-pit, said, “It would he a queen’s mirror. Who else could own such a thing?”
“They’re magic. Dangerous,” Vinka now. “Smash it!”
“That’s bad luck,” said Tickle. “Mirrors are full of souls …”
“Sell it,” said Greedy. “Sell it tomorrow.”
When had Coira ever heard them speak so much?
She had risen. She walked across and stood gazing down at the mirror where it lay, slantwise.
The silver lid, with its gold ornamentation, lay open like a broken wing. Soporo was crouching, fingering its costliness. Want had shrunk aside, frightened as usual.
… And the mirror
saw
…
Coira looked down and down into the mirror’s glass.
What did it show? The uneven ceiling of the shack, held by splintered beams. A wall. Firelight. And, deep in the circle, as in the pool of forgetting, a leaning woman, slender, white, great-eyed, holding back two waves of inky hair with her narrow hands.
Is that me? Is that Coira? Or
—
Is it she
—
my mother
—
as I saw her that day I said, “You’re so beautiful—more beautiful than anyone in the whole world.
”
Coira felt she would soon fall into the mirror-pool, whirl down for ever and he lost.
And then Stormy appeared beside her, bending over to tap the glass with his strong smith’s hand.
And then Proud was leaning over too, admiring his golden glamour. Here and there he had been shown himself in metal mirrors. He almost knew what he looked like.
It was Proud, offended, who cried, “What are you at—?” as Stormy scooped huge handfuls of soot and dirt from the edges of the fire and smeared them across the burning surface of the glass.
A
ND THE MIRROR GAZED through the dirt and soot, through miniscule cracks of light left unsmothered.
I am fire, said a torch beyond the door.
I am darkness, said the dark.
I, too, answered the mirror, am now both.
But the mirror watched through the cracks Stormy had inadvertantly left. It had been leant on a wall, and fixed there by ropes, and bits of sack hung on it, so mostly disguised, it looked only like part of the uneven plaster of mud over stones and beams, with holes in it, not glass.
Its eyelid had been taken off. The silver and slight gold were gone, to be smelted down by Soporo and Greedy, who were skilled in this method.
Naked, the mirror. Unable to close its eye, gazing through the dirt.
Vinka passed by. She did not like or look at the mirror. She knew she was beautiful and had nothing to ask.
Want hid from the mirror, pretended it was only the wall.
The dwarves came and went, establishing themselves and their employment.
Coira stole to the mirror once, when she was alone in the shack-cottage. She touched the black muck which obscured the surface. Then Coira spoke aloud. “I still won’t look at you. I may see her there. Her reflection, caught there.”
For Coira had seemed to see Arpazia in the mirror, that first time when she stared in and saw herself.
 
 
Tickle’s time candles marked the hours. Each one burned for a day and a night, and they were as tall as Want or Greedy.
Within a day, Soporo, Greedy, Proud, and Stormy had gained work in the gold mines which circled round inside the cliffs. Tickle went with them; she was an able miner too. Want and Vinka preferred, when they could, to be out of the workings and see to the domestic side of things. Here, since they might choose for themselves, this was what they did.
At dawn—which was signaled by the blowing of trumpets about the cavern—the five miners rose, prepared themselves and set off.
They would be gone until the hour of upperworld sunfall, or even later, because it was winter in the upper world and the sun sank early. No trumpets marked this hour, only the time candles marked it, should you look at them. In any case, the mine workers, especially the clever dwarves, were often required to labor on beyond sunfall into the hours of “night,” even until midnight, which
was
signaled, by a single horn blown near the Hell-mansion in the valley.
The wages the dwarves received they brought back unfailingly to their shack-house. There they divided everything equally, even the portions of gold dust they had managed to purloin. Activity in the mines was often unsafe. The booming sounds which came from them represented engines of rock-crushing, or falls of rock. Often the dwarves returned much bruised, but by then they had revealed ancient scars to which the bruising was not comparable.
Want and Vinka ordered the shack’s day. They cleaned the upper and lower rooms a little, brooming out the white dust, which instantly settled again. They fetched water from a public cistern above Elusion Town. They went marketing. Coira joined in these activities. She was reckoned to be their mistress. Supervising them publicly was sometimes needful.
The cistern stood beside a cinder track. It was fed from the stream called Woe. The story said that any who drank much of the water eventually went mad from sorrow. The Elusians compensated by drinking colossal quantities of wine and beer and other potencies brewed by stills of the Underworld.
Farther down, the town wended round the cliffs and in parts went up into them. The always-night was gaudily lit up there. Guards patroled the entrances to the mines. They would search those who came out, but randomly, and they were bribable, and tended to be drunk.
The market was on a wide flat space, illumined by torches. Everything was barter there. Even coins were barter, and had different values than they would have done above.
During market excursions, Vinka and Want clung to Coira’s skirts, as if to hold her in check. Neither of her dresses, purchased
haphazardly during the journey, was very sturdy. Sometimes Want’s agitated clutchings tore the cloth. Then Vinka insisted Coira. get herself a better gown. “You’re mistress. We mustn’t be ashamed of you.”
Vinka, volatile, catlike, was never to be trusted—who was? Coira accepted a secondhand gown. It was of a yellowing milky silk, with heavy borders stitched with tarnished metal thread. Vinka had expressly chosen it. Vinka then bought a green dress for herself, the garment of a big child, which Tickle or Want would have to resew, for it did not quite fit Vinka’s form. Want (Covetousness) gazed at this finery with fearful dislike. Want wanted nothing.
The money they spent was from dead Cirpoz’s trove. Vinka assured Coira it was stolen anyway, perhaps from Coira’s own kingly father.
Coira carried most of the articles back from the market. They had by then bartered the horses for various goods, and she did not like to make the dwarvixens into beasts of burden. So she became their donkey.
In the market, and going about, they were not much stared at. All types of people lived in the caverns of Elusion. There were other dwarves, too, some immensely strong, and giant men seeming nearly twice the height of an average man. There were also stone-white Elusians, whose skin had been remade by the marble dust of the higher quarries, and others with pink eyes, and blacker than charcoal from the deposits of carbon and fire. Occasionally some man might attempt to help or hinder them. It was Vinka who saw them off, snarling and yipping. Though small, her fists were like steel—Coira had seen her break a pot with one and stay unmarked herself.
By evening, indistinguishable from other times save on the candle, the two housekeeper dwarvixens were preparing a meal.
This would be porridge or soup, kept bubbling on the fire for whenever the others might return. Want baked bread, laying the flat cakes on the hot ashes. Coira’s only culinary knowledge had been
with herbs, of which they had few and about which they asked no advice.
Coira was the child, still. Undoubtedly something of a nuisance. As often as they felt like it, Want and Vinka spoke in an invented gabble, or slunk off to their own area, curtained by a thick sack. Only if Vinka plunged into one of her terrifying furies would Want run to Coira, getting behind the girl, even among her skirts, as Vinka thrashed about the room, smashing crocks with her fists, slinging water on the fire and fire into corners, shrieking in what seemed to be demonic tongues. By now Coira had witnessed these rages several times. Valerian might, Coira thought, have assisted Vinka, or starry-seal. None of these was available, and besides, Coira had no compassion for Vinka. She had no compassion for anyone, she believed. No, none.
Yet this was not quite true.
She shared what tasks she could, mostly to evade tedium, rolling up the sleeves of the preposterous new gown, and tying a cloth round her hair, a shawl about her waist.
With supper, a bath was also got ready to wash and ease the five miners.
When they came in, the mining dwarves were like creatures from an awesome myth. Their eyes flashed white in blackened faces pared by the stress of great toil. But they did not seem unhappy.
Tickle was always first in the bath, amused and unselfconscious, throwing off her mining garments. The men followed when she was done, in random order, although Proud was usually the next after Tickle. And Stormy usually the last of all.
Vinka and Want scrubbed at them with cloths, oil, and fat-soap, rubbing and sluicing them until the water became like liquid pitch. Stormy, when the last, would have himself sluiced again by a clean bucketful—his only affectation.
Coira had been initially horrified to see them naked. It was not nudity that perturbed her, she had been partly reared by a pagan. Nor was her inhibition due exactly to their physical appearance. She
did not wish to see these beings nude. As she did not wish them to see her in such a way, and took care that they did not. They were now her constant companions. But like all companions of hers, could not be intimates. Inert, she had remained with them, but did not want to try to draw close to them. This stripping of coverings removed a barrier.
Nevertheless, she did see them. And presently, when Proud and Soporo irrelevantly called her over, she joined in, too, with this chore of washing them.
Their naked bodies were strange to her but not unattractive. They were so strong, every part of them put to use. They reminded her of trees, grown tall only in
girth,
their twisting sinews, the grain of their brown skins, the ribbed scars like a history, and the humps that rose from Soporo and Greedy like buildings carved from their wood. Tickle too was humped, but the skin of her shoulders, breasts, and of the hump itself, was an opulent creamy white. Seen in the bath, joking and friendly—most kind to Coira, sensing Coira’s rebuttal and unease—she reminded the girl of the nymph who had
changed
to a tree—or, of a dryad.
Coira coped with the baths well enough. She was circumspect but quite indifferent to the maleness of Soporo, which he flaunted at her insultingly, whispering lewdness as she scrubbed his back, alternately accusing her of hurting the sensitive hump, or suggesting she might rub that other part of him, rising engorged from the water. He always called her endlessly “mistress” at such times.
But she did not
like
to wash Stormy. And mostly she avoided it, leaving him to the slavish Want and falsely lascivious Vinka. And it was, with Stormy, his maleness which distressed her, but not only that.
In the terracotta lamplight, when he stood up to be rinsed by the final bucket, his fearful scarred beauty drove away her eyes. Of all the seven tawny, twisted, and muscled dwarves, he was perfect. His chest was like a bronze shield. His short bowed legs like carved ivory. Even his male weapon, couthly quiescent at his thigh, though large was well-made, and velvet-cased. Her gaze would drop quickly
down to his scar-ridged and bulging ankles, the feet which now angled, both, slightly the same way.
He, too, turned his back on her when he could.
But at night exhaustion ruled the mining dwarves. Bathed, they ate, shared their profits, and went to sleep in selected corners of the odd-shaped lower room.
 
 
As time and the candles passed, Proud and Tickle resumed sexual relations and went up the ladder after supper to the murky upper chamber.
Soporo meanwhile began an affair with a pair of mining women, “real” women who lived in one of the caves above the town, and absented himself from the communal shack. He would meet the others on the road to the mine in the un-morning, bright as gold from nights of ceaseless copulation.
Vinka and Want were more and more often off together. They eluded Coira, giggling from apparent maleficence. (She was reminded of Julah and Kaya.)
When in the shack, Greedy slept, farting melodiously from time to time, in a big crib he had made for himself out of bits of beam and straw.
They were already rich, Coira believed. They had successfully melted down the mirror’s silver lid. But none of them showed any urge to leave the Underworld, even to go up and see the sun. And none of them asked Coira’s opinion. Even in the matter of her mother’s looking glass. Coira owned them, therefore she belonged to them, and had no say.
As ever alone among others, Coira was now alone—and
alone
.

Other books

Company Town by Madeline Ashby
No Strings... by Janelle Denison
Valentine's Candy by Melissa L. Webb
The Hollywood Economist by Edward Jay Epstein
Sky Run by Alex Shearer
Insanity by Cameron Jace
Drawing with Light by Julia Green