After a time the Princess stood up, walked to the far side of the room, and removed a veil or hanging of some kind. I saw her hand pulling the veil away, but I could not see what it had covered.
I inched closer to the low, crenelated parapet, which was the only thing between me and the valley floor, a quite dangerous distance below. By craning my neck, I got a better view of her. She was standing naked in front of a tall mirror with wiverns carved about the frame. I had never seen a mirror that size in the fourteenth or fifteenth. I didn’t know they could make flat glass that size. The Princess put her hands out, beautiful hands, then stroked them down her face, and intoned:
“Lord within the glass, declare!
Lord, who holds my beauty thrall:
you have made me passing fair;
am I fairest of them all?”
A face formed in the glass. A dark face. Not dark in the sense of color, but dark in the sense of being hidden. It did not really show itself. It merely hinted at being. Despite this, I recognized it. It was Jaybee’s face. Not precisely his, but the paradigm of what his face was and meant in its totality. Seeing it, I could say, “This is the pattern from which Jaybee’s face was made.” When the voice came, it matched the face, full of a mocking, horrid laughter.
“One time you were, and then were not,
but now are fairest once again,
while she whose beauty is forgot
sleeps on among her little men.
Snow white of skin, and black of hair,
with gentle lips flushed sweetly red;
full long has she lain sleeping there,
with all believing she is dead.”
The Princess made a gesture, a stroking of herself, breast to hip, approving herself. She tilted her head, to get a better look at the line of her throat. “Full long she sleeps,” she cried in a jubilant voice. “Oh, long time, yes. And will, forever.”
In the mirror the dreadful being smiled and glanced my way. I gasped. Beneath my breastbone something flared into life, aware of deadly danger. My foot slipped on the roof, making a sound. The Princess whirled, like a great hunting creature, eyes wide, ears pricked. “Boots,” I whispered, “take me to my room.”
I was there! I slipped the cloak beneath the bed and myself into it with Grumpkin beside me, pulling my wimple off as I snuggled down, so my white old locks would show. I let the candle burn so she could see me there plainly. I shut my eyes, knowing she would come. Oh, yes, she would come down from her tower to see who had been spying on her. And she would come faster than any ordinary old woman could have come down all those stairs, thinking to find my room empty and me on the way.…
She was quick! The door opened. Someone peered in. I turned, as though sleepily, saying, “Whaa?”
The door closed, and she was gone. She believed someone had been outside her room, but she didn’t know who. Down the hall, I heard her open Giles’s door. And then close it. He really was asleep. I let time pass, scarcely breathing, pretending sleep. She might be watching. She might be hovering outside my window, like an owl. The candle burned to a smoky stub and guttered out.
Would she let it go at that? Would she ask that thing in the mirror who’d been spying on her?
More important, could it tell her?
“Fenoderee,” I whispered, “I need a friend.”
He slipped into bed beside me, yawning. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. His sickle rattled upon the floor. “Oh, you do need a friend, Beauty. Nastiness here. And you’ve got old Carabosse half sick with worry.”
“Worse than mere worry,” said a voice on the other side. Puck.
“What’s going on here?” I said. “Who is Ilene?”
“A witch,” said Puck, matter-of-factly. “She signed one of the usual witch contracts with the Dark Lord, her soul and body in return for being young and beautiful for a few hundred years. Of course, he threw a trick into it. He always does.”
“A trick?”
Fenoderee nodded; I could feel his head going up and down on the pillow. “Ilene remains beautiful only so long as there is no other female in the kingdom as beautiful as she. She started out in quite a large kingdom, had to dispose of quite a lot of pretty girls, and the word got around. They came after her with hayforks and torches, the Transylvanian kind you use on monsters, you know? So she moved to a smaller kingdom, and then one smaller yet. Here in Marvella, there weren’t all that many beauties to start with, and the last one she had to do away with was Galantha.”
“Galantha?” I asked.
“Galantha. That little springtime flower, the white one that droops its head.”
“Snowdrop?”
“That one, yes.”
What a really odd name for a child! Hadn’t one fairy tale been enough? Of course, that bit with the mirror had been a dead giveaway. Magic collects magic, Carabosse had said. “My granddaughter?” I asked, trying to disbelieve but not succeeding one whit.
“That’s right,” said Fenoderee. “Your granddaughter.”
“Who isn’t really dead!”
“No. Ilene tried, but she couldn’t kill Snowdrop. She sent a huntsman to kill her, and he couldn’t. She tried a cursed lace, then a poisoned comb, and that didn’t work. Snowdrop is one-eighth fairy, after all. Witches can’t be allowed to go around killing off fairies, even part ones. No, though Ilene tried several times to get Snow taken care of, everything failed except the apple.”
“The apple?” I started to ask. There was a sound outside in the corridor, and my bed was suddenly empty of anyone but me and Grumpkin. The door opened, and I heard Giles whispering to me.
“Beauty? Catherine? Lavender? Are you all right?”
He came in and crouched on the bed beside me. We whispered together as I told him part
