That sort doesn’t like to admit she’s been reduced to stealing food, thought the cook. Poor soul! It’s only a few apples. Lord, if you’re watching, those apples are freely given. You don’t hold them against her soul.
(The cook was in the habit of lecturing the Lord, whom she considered a colleague.)
The queen crept out of the castle and away from the grounds. There was a little door by the garden, which she left open behind her. The gardener had a few things to say about that in the morning, but no one suspected the truth.
Snow’s trail was thinner than a strand of spider silk, but the queen had all the patience of madness. The days in the woods passed, one after another, as she followed the thin threads of witchblood. She raveled them up like a warrior feeling her way through a labyrinth, as though she was minotaur and maiden both.
She was not often hungry. When she was, she ate apples.
Except for one.
It had been the finest of the dried apples, the closest to whole. It took only a little magic to make the skin swell, becoming firm and green and glossy. The smell that came from it was the essence of autumn. It smelled of crisp frosts and crackling leaves.
In the heart of it, wrapped around the core like a fist around a knife-hilt, lay a spell.
The queen caressed the skin of the apple often as she walked, the way she had caressed the lid of the box that held the boar’s heart.
Her way was painful and limping. She picked up a length of green wood and used it as a staff, but there was nothing to be done about the ache in her fingers or the way that her hips joints seemed to grate inside their sockets.
The only thought that beat in her brain was Snow, Snow, her daughter with her hair like flax and her eyebrows like scars, her daughter who was sometimes fair, her daughter who had witch-blood in her veins.
Blood that would remind her own what it was like to flow thin and fast and hot.
She came to a place where the scent of Snow’s blood was wrapped through the branches of a tree, and she paused there. It was the place where Arrin had dismounted, the first night that he took Snow into the woods, and where the boars had found them.
She could sense the power that clung to the boars. Almost it masked the scent of witchblood, almost she passed by. But she ran her fingertips over the bark of the tree, and the tree shuddered, and the trail that led to Snow burned like a brand before her.
“When I am young again,” said the queen aloud, “I will deal with that fool I married. Let his new wife cry over his bones.”
The thought gave her a little strength and she toiled on, one hand on the apple in her pocket.
The king’s camp was a long ride from the boar’s den. They were not terribly far from the castle, all things considered, but an army moves slower than a single man on a horse.
Perhaps the king is moving slowly, Arrin thought. Perhaps he does not want to face what waits for him at home.
He rode on. The pigs moved silently through the forest behind him.
Snow poked up the fire in the hearth, preparing an early meal. She had treated herself to dried apples drizzled with honey, which she shared with Ashes.
“And now we should probably eat something,” she said to the little white sow, “or else we’ll keep eating apples and honey all night. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily.”
Ashes spoke but rarely, but she dipped her snout in what was, for her, a smile.
Snow slid one of the great iron frying pans into the fire to warm up and went outside to gather some sticks.
She had half an armload and was straightening up when she saw the old woman.
Snow jumped, dropping the sticks. The old woman stared at her, leaning on her staff.
A person, here! Someone’s found us!
The old woman passed a hand slowly over her eyes. Her hands were gnarled like tree roots, and her eyes were gray and dim.
She had appeared practically in front of Snow. Snow’s instincts said to run away, to bolt into the den — and what good would that do?
Are you going to hide in the house from an old woman? She’s — lord, a thousand years old, at least. A strong wind will break her in half. You’re as bad as Arrin, thinking every person you meet is a danger.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” asked Snow.
The old woman licked her lips to moisten them. Her gaze stayed fixed on Snow’s face.
“Apples,” she said.
Snow was grateful for the excuse to glance away, toward the den. “Are you looking for some? We’re running low, but we could spare a few, if you’re hungry.”
The old woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am selling apples.” He voice gained strength as she used it. “Yes. I came to sell apples.”
“All right,” said Snow. She doesn’t have a pack. Well, maybe she’s left it somewhere — or maybe she’s mad. I wonder. Her eyes don’t look right. “I could buy some apples.”
The old woman nodded and reached into her pocket to pull one out.
It was green. The familiarity of it struck Snow immediately — the shape, the color, something. She knew that apple, or at least the tree those apples came from.
The word home had not stirred her memory, but the sight of the apple did.
My tree. My friend. With the gnarled bark and the one branch you could sit in like a chair and watch people go by in the courtyard. It smelled like blossoms in spring and like thaw in winter.
“Where
