The mirror said nothing. It was not in the habit of volunteering information.
“Now,” she said, sitting up straighter. “Now tell me! Who?”
The mirror licked its lips, and cast its vision out, out, out …
Snow curled in her nook in the fireplace. Her hair stuck to her forehead in strings. Her white skin had turned red and her nose was shiny and there was snot on her upper lip. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of grief.
And the mirror saw her, her face screwed up and hideous with grief … and passed on.
“You are the fairest,” said the demon in the mirror, and the queen stroked the box with the old sow’s heart and smiled.
Snow woke slowly. It was not a terribly comfortable bed she had made for herself, huddled against the stones of the wall, but you cannot cry so hard and heavily and not exhaust yourself. She thought that she could have slept another hour at least, but the other residents of the den were up and moving.
The pigs were bustling about, preparing food. The only sign that they had lost a loved one the night before came when three boars and one of the feral sows stood before the coals of the fire.
Snow could not read their faces, but she thought that looks passed between them.
“Well,” said one of the boars. “Well.”
“Someone must,” said another boar.
Two more gathered, and they looked to the feral sow called Greatspot.
“Very well,” she said. “If you are sure.” She looked over their heads to her sisters.
The saddle-marked one said, “Yes.” The other feral sow, the smallest of the seven, nodded.
Greatspot caught a poker up in her teeth and knelt before the fire. She jabbed it once, twice in the fire, and the sparks blazed up. A boar beside her — Snow thought the others had called him Stomper — was ready with a log clasped in his teeth, and threw it into the fire.
It caught quickly. Greatspot turned away from it, and that was that.
Snow stood up. The saddle-marked sow (her name, Snow learned, was Juniper) stood on her hind legs and pulled one of the great frying pans down from the wall.
They were odd pans. A boar’s trotters are not well suited to grasping, so they held the handles in their mouths. Each handle had a crosspiece made of oak, scarred and dented with the imprints of their teeth.
It turned out that Snow was not required to cook with the frying pans right away (which was just as well, because she could barely lift them.) Where the boars ran into trouble was in preparing the food. They were very fond of omelets, but cracking an egg without getting shell everywhere is a difficult knack, even for human hands. They could hack potatoes apart (the boars were also very fond of potatoes) and use a few herbs, but there their skills deserted them. Without fingers, they could only do so much.
So Snow, who was feeling very lost and very alone, went to the wooden table and rolled up her sleeves and began chopping up potatoes, because this was a skill that she understood very well.
She had never particularly liked chopping potatoes, but she didn’t mind now. When you are in a room full of people who all know where they fit in and what to do next, there is nothing so cheering as a task that you can do and do well.
She thought she had gone through most of a bushel before Juniper laughed a throaty hog-laugh and said, “Enough! Can you do onions as well?”
She could and did. Juniper seemed so pleased with the results that the tears in Snow’s eyes were not all from onions.
Breakfast was potatoes and onions fried on the fire, with rough salt tossed over it. (Juniper dug the salt out of a bag as big as Snow’s torso, using a rough wooden scoop held in her teeth, and flung it over the pan with a jerk of her head.)
By the castle cook’s standards, the meal was rough and awkwardly seasoned. By Snow’s standards, it was the greatest thing she had ever eaten. She had only had a single apple since leaving the castle the day before.
The pigs ate astonishingly neatly. They did not use silverware, but they each had a deep bowl. They grunted and snuffled, true, each to their own, but did not slop them around, and when they had seconds and thirds, they did not squabble over who got which share.
In fact, it was a great deal more civilized than watching the guards-men eat in the guardhouse.
There were seven. The boars were named Stomper and Hoofblack, Puffball, and Truffleshadow. (Stomper was the one that Snow had ridden the night before.) The sows were Greatspot and Juniper, and the littlest one, who rarely spoke, was named Ashes.
The boars were brothers, the sons of the old sow. Greatspot, Juniper, and Ashes had come from somewhere else, and speech had been given to them in some fashion that Snow did not quite understand.
“A gift,” said Greatspot. “Not an easy gift, but a great one.”
Ashes nodded.
After breakfast, the pigs went outside. Snow trailed after them, gasping in the cold bright air.
For the most part, the pigs seemed to be occupied in snuffling about for acorns, but Juniper and Puffball were doing something else, putting some kind of contraption on Puffball’s back.
“Here,” said Juniper. “Can you help? This bit’s … stuck under … ”
Snow jumped to help.
The contraption was a pair of baskets, like panniers, that went over the boar’s back. These had clearly been made by human hands, the workmanship neat, if worn. A strap had gotten twisted, which was easy enough for Snow to correct. She settled the baskets more evenly on Puffball’s back.
“There we are,” said Juniper, pleased. “Now we’re going to gather firewood. Would you like to help?”
“Yes,” said Snow, grateful for the task, “I’d like that.”
That night, when Snow settled into the nook beside
