come little children / i'll take thee away / into a land of enchantment
Did you used to like the sn—
I muffle a cry when I topple against Rook's shoulder, the knee-deep snow beneath me crumbling away to reveal a gaping gopher-hole beneath. Reluctantly, Rook slows his infernal pace down to steady me, his antlers skating like ice over my neck.
The snow? he repeats, mockingly, tugging at one of my braids. Hmm. Maybe.
I am made so cold by the plunge into the snow pit that I stand frozen until Rook's breath melts the frost on my lashes, and I blink back to life. Maybe? I push him away, scrabbling from the pit. Snow (and snowdrops) rain from my hair. He scoffs.
You look ridiculous, Daisy-bird. Stop flailing, it'll only make it worse.
I am about to snap back that it hadn't been at my insistence that we'd left the cave in the woods, and that I'd only left it because he'd taunted me with the promise of a warm meal in town, when he lowers his head and begins to dig a rough track through the snow with his antlers.
I am so cold that this is enough to chasten me.
...I spent my winters indoors. My father—he was a court advisor.
He looks back towards me, awaiting my confirmation. I nod sullenly.
Then he couldn't have made me do much of anything, when we wintered, except drink the melted chocolate and read a library of books. I crook my brow and he shakes his head. No. Not that library. His own collection.
I nod again, pretending that I understand. My limbs are as dull as wood, solidifying where they ought to bend as I hobble onto the path he's carved away. Hopping inside the hoofmarks he leaves behind, we continue our slow way through the river of snow.
Melted cho-co-late. I pull a thin icicle off a hanging branch and tap it against his antlers. What is that?
His milky eyes narrow, but he answers me anyway. A drink, warm. Sweet if you add sugar. Bitter as your Elder's herbs if you don't.
So we are going to town to get this cho-co-late? Rook nods evasively, snow shaking off his antlers like salt. I am so cold that I pay little mind to the fact that the skeletal oaks leering down on us don't look much like the slumping oaks we'd passed on our way from town, back to the safety of the forest.
The sun is dipping into red dusk when Rook nudges aside a branch heavy with spiny frost, revealing an expanse of untouched white so bright my eyes glisten over with tears. He continues forwards, feigning ignorance, until I recover enough to grab at a tine of his antlers with my mouth and yank him back. He hisses. I snarl.
“What is this, Crow?” My voice echoes shrilly across the empty, sparkling field. He had promised me—warmth! Melted cho-co-late. I brush back a braid fallen into my eyes and bare my teeth. “Unless you mean for me to start rooting around in the snow like a wild boar, then you've tricked me!” It wouldn't be the first time. I think of the wasp's nest, the barely-hidden spite, the laughter like a hawk's in the night. But that had been weeks ago.
I'd thought he'd gotten over it.
Rook paws at the snow like a dog and I gnash my tongue against my teeth to keep from screaming. A pitstop. I don't have time to snarl in anger at his foreign word before a child's voice rings across the white field and tenses me up like a deer in a trap.
“Are you Maybird? Do you want to help me build my Snow Pony?”
I whip towards the voice, braids flying, my shoulder pressing (angrily) to Rook's. My mask wobbles like a severed head on my neck. Through the skeletal tangle of his antlers, I trace out the silhouette of a girl walking towards me, her knees raised high over the snow, a spill of pale hair cascading over her thin neck. I hear Rook's laugh like a sparrow's song in my head. She's the color of chocolate.
I look from the girl to the laughing black stag besides me.
But the cold numbs me first. Carefully, I raise my mask over my head and pluck a wilted snowdrop from my braids in disgust. I look at her sideways, frown at the strange animal curled up on her back, and say, disbelieving, “You're making a new body from the snow?” I sniff. “Your dark magic doesn't interest me. And anyway, where will you get the blood to raise the snow body when you're finished?”
I stare at the furry thing resting on her back. I don't quite say it, but I think it darkly. That doesn't look like it'll give you enough.
