“Could I stay here?” asked Snow warily. “The queen — the queen is — ”
“I know what the queen is,” said the nun. She sighed. “I know she is more than a match for me, too. I have no great power of my own and I cannot promise you safety.”
“Then — ” Snow began.
The older woman held up a hand. “But there is no safety in the world anyway. If I had to stand before the Lord and tell him that I had let a girl stumble off alone into the woods, because I was afraid … no. I fear that more than anything the queen can do.”
Snow gulped.
There was a little silence, while the bees buzzed in the early flowers. The nun leaned down and plucked a few stems of chickweed that were growing around the feet of the bench.
“This is all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”
Snow nodded.
“If you wish to think about it, I understand. For the love I bear your foster mother alone, we’d be happy to take you for a time, although — well — forgive me, but I cannot imagine you have a vocation, do you?”
“A what?”
“A desire to serve God,” said the nun.
“Oh,” said Snow. The only priest in the castle had gone off with the king. “Um. I don’t think so?”
The nun nodded. “Well. It would be unkind to trap you in orders then, as young as you are. You’d come to regret it soon enough. But you could stay with us for some time, and sort things out. Sometimes a little stillness is good for the heart.”
Snow sighed. She had a great deal of stillness with the boars, but she would have liked a human stillness, broken by the sound of human voices.
“It seems too easy,” she said tiredly. “If I had known, I could have come here earlier.”
The nun smiled. “Sometimes things are easy. We just get used to them being hard.”
“There’s also … well … my friends.” Snow looked down at her hands. “I meant it. I can’t just leave them.”
“Do you think they would be able to find you, here?” The nun gestured at the woods around the cleared land.
Snow’s gaze strayed to Greatspot and Puffball, who were pretending not to listen.
“I expect they could,” she said, a bit dryly. “I’ll think about it.” She stood, suddenly feeling the need to move. “If you know my foster mother — can you get word back to her that I’m all right? That she could come out here, and maybe we could meet?”
“I can try,” said the nun, looking up at her. “I can certainly try.”
Snow nodded, then flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m asking you all these things, and you know who I am — and I haven’t asked your name.”
The nun smiled. “My name is Mother Clara. I am the abbess here.”
Snow went home in a thoughtful mood. She had traded two truffles, with reckless generosity, for four large crocks of honey. The pigs were very interested.
“Sweetness,” said Puffball. “We could put it over potatoes.”
“You can’t put honey on potatoes,” said Snow.
“Why not? Do the potatoes explode?” He rolled an eye up at her.
Snow paused. “I … I don’t think so … ”
“They do sometimes,” said Puffball mournfully. “Potatoes, I mean. If they’re too green and you put them in the fire whole.”
“You’re thinking of eggs,” said Greatspot.
“I could have sworn it was potatoes.”
Snow gazed over their backs vaguely, as they snuffled to one another.
She could go to the convent for a little while. They would take her. If she dyed her hair, she could stay there, and get to know the nuns.
Maybe Mother Clara would be willing to be an agent for the pigs …
“What did you think of Mother Clara?” she asked.
Puffball shrugged. “Humans,” he said. “Seemed nice enough. Never been a good judge of humans.”
Greatspot, unexpectedly, said, “I liked her.”
Snow glanced over, surprised.
“She smelled clean,” said the sow. “Willing to get down in the dirt, though, with the weeds.” She gave a rippling, whole-body shrug. “And she tossed me a bun when you were trading for the honey.”
“I didn’t get a bun … ” muttered Puffball.
“Neither did I,” said Snow, and Greatspot looked smug as only a four-hundred pound pig can.
Arrin caught up with them before they had gone more than a quarter mile into the woods. “Well?” he asked.
“Well what?” asked Snow.
“Well … ah … nuns?”
“They were nuns.”
Puffball grunted something too quietly for Snow to hear, but it made Greatspot laugh.
Arrin slid off his horse, fidgeting with the reins. Snow relented. “I spoke to the Mother Abbess. She says that I can stay with them for a bit, while I figure out what to do about the pig’s agent — but I’m afraid to.” She scowled. “What if the queen comes after them? Are queens more powerful than nuns?”
Arrin considered this. “I don’t think she’s got the same power over them as she does back home,” he said.
Snow had a brief moment of confusion. The word home evoked the boar’s den, the enormous chimney and the smell of potatoes and the scrape of gigantic frying pans. It occurred to her, belatedly, that Arrin meant the castle.
She tried to remember her room in the midwife’s cottage. It was a small, bright picture a great distance away, and she could not bring it into focus. For some reason, all she could think of was the room she kept in the castle, with the sheets that chafed her and the queen’s presence burning overhead.
They walked in silence. Last year’s pine needles crunched underfoot, and the wild primroses were glowing among the trees.
“She recognized me,” said Snow.
Arrin jerked as if struck. “What?”
“She recognized me. She knew who I was. It’s my wretched hair.” Snow scowled up at her bangs.
“You can’t go back,” said
