come little children / i'll take thee away / into a land of enchantment
I don't think that's what she meant, Daisy-bird, Rook laughs, his antlers chuckling with him, snow raining down in drifts around me.
I look from the furry creature to the chocolate-colored girl once more before I pivot silently away, taking the first steps out of the clearing, abandoning Rook to his charade—before his shoulder cuts into mine and warm breath, smelling of pine needles and holly berries, blows against my cheek.
Not so quick, there. His voice is acid in a champagne glass. Being a bit rude, aren't you? If he means to guilt me this way, then the black stag does not know me enough. I sniff and watch in reprobation as his lips curl up, up, up; as he steps towards the girl, leers down at her companion. Lowers his head to paw, innocently, at the snow.
Leave, then. I'll have my own fun with them. The threat is thinly veiled and blackly taunting. Rook's white antlers gleam like swords, a tangled thicket of bone no weaker than forged metal. I would know. He'd nearly killed me with them, before.
I'll simply stop you.
Can you? When I'm expecting it, now?
A flock of blackbirds startle out of the underbrush. The sun, a red disc, rests its descent to watch us. Rook's eyes, pools of spilled milk, narrow in a mirthful victory when I turn back, the fury limning my answering smile enough to sicken me like poisoned berries.
“Dark magic?” I study her; the girl's voice is too soft, her demeanor too fine, to die by the boredom of a half-mad stag.
Picking my way back towards her, I reply acridly, “White magic surely wouldn't work if—”
“From each other. Some from you, some from me. I can cut you, and you can cut me, and then when our snow creature comes to life it can be entirely our own.” My gaze cuts upwards and laughter bubbles delightedly out from my throat.
Maybe I underestimated her. “What do you say?” Maybe she's as mad as Ma. “We could be like sisters in a way—blood sisters.”
It is my turn to level a gleeful smile at Rook, to watch with a cat's slow-blinking pleasure as grim shock works its way across his face. Have your fun with her, I taunt, snowdrops fluttering like wings from my hair. She'll exsanguinate you.
My mask falls back over my head and the world is a calming ocean of dark. In it, the girl's hair shines like filtered starlight. “... We can pack snow into the cuts to stop the bleeding, after.” I think of Ma, and how loudly she had shrieked when I had slipped home one day with a shallow gash in my knee.
Her anger had been worse than the cut, a hundred times over.
“I don't have anything sharp, though.” I touch my nose curiously, a little jealously, to the yellow moon on her shoulder. “Are you truly that powerful?”
