Toad Words And Other Stories by T. Kingfisher

Author:T. Kingfisher [Kingfisher, T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Red Wombat Tea Company
Published: 2014-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

She found Snow in the little room off the kitchen where the herbs were put to drying. She swept through the kitchen—“My queen!” said the cook—and followed the stirrings of her witchblood, like calling to like, until she found herself in the doorway of the herb room.

“It will be just a moment,” said Snow, who had her back to the door and thought that it was the midwife. “I’m just bottling the last batch up now.” She was bottling nothing more complicated than oil with herbs to give it flavor, but it had been an excuse to get away from the seamstress, who was already having visions of another gown, perhaps with enormous slashed sleeves belling away from Snow’s wrists.

The queen said nothing. Snow was wearing one of the new kirtles, which fit snugly around her breasts and waist, and the light was the generous and flattering light of a half-dozen candles. The shadows fell kindly across Snow’s cheeks and her hair seemed to glow in the darkness.

Snow held up the last bottle, stuffed with dark green leaves, and turned towards the door, smiling.

The queen saw that she was fair.

The smile wavered for a moment, as Snow searched her memory for who this woman was, and why she seemed familiar and somehow terrible, and then suddenly she thought the queen, it is the queen, here! and her smile died completely.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then Snow sank into a curtsey. It wasn’t a very good one, which the queen noticed with satisfaction, but the treacherous candlelight molded itself along the line of Snow’s throat and all the queen’s pleasure turned to ashes.

“Your Grace—ah—”

The queen reached out and caught Snow’s wrist and pulled her hand up.

What is she staring at? Snow wondered.

The queen was staring at her daughter’s hand. It was a young hand, still, the backs dimpled at the knuckles, the fingers round and smooth and still faintly slick from cramming herbs into bottles of oil.

The queen’s own hand, holding Snow’s wrist, had deep hollows along the back, with the tendons standing out in sharp relief and the knuckles cutting hard diamonds in the skin. They were not old, but they were the hands of a woman who was no longer young.

Under her fingers, the queen could feel Snow’s pulse. The witchblood in her was very weak, lying like a drift of spider silk across her veins. This girl would never need to fear the touch of iron, or at least, not more than any other mortal.

“Your Grace?” asked Snow.

The queen dropped her wrist as if burned and turned and stalked from the room.

The entire encounter had lasted less than a minute.

It had not occurred to either of them that Snow might call her “Mother.”

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