Toad Words (14 page)

“I know,” said Snow. “I shouldn’t talk like you don’t.”

“Courage, child. I think you’re more nervous than we are. We’ll protect you, though—even if your mad queen is out and about.” She raised her snout in a smile.

They reached the edges of the woods and looked down on Mousebury.
 

To Snow’s eyes it was an enormous rambling town, twice the size of the one around the castle. There might be over a hundred souls in a town that large! And there was a little stone church and a large stone inn with a sign outside.
 

There was a grinning pig on the sign, over a tankard of ale. Perhaps that was a good sign.

The edge of the forest stretched away in a broad semi-circle around the town, sheltering three sides. There were cleared fields dotted with rows of green and a broad road that ran from the middle of the town, away from the forest. When she shaded her eyes, Snow could see the road gliding into the distance and vanishing over the hills.

I could follow that road. I could start walking and no one would know where I had gone. No one would miss me—well, except for Arrin, I suppose, though he keeps telling me I should be going—

Greatspot shifted under her hand. Snow took a steadying breath.
And the pigs. I can’t leave them. Not without making sure that they can trade their truffles for what they need.
 

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
 

At the end of her life, if Snow had looked back, she would have said that the greatest act of courage she ever showed was walking up to a farmer in a field—an old, weathered man, who was staring at her in absolute astonishment—and saying “Pardon, sir, but I’ve some truffles to sell and I was wondering if you might point me at someone who’d be interested.”

She had rehearsed it so many times in her head that it came out as one long run of syllables—
pardonmesirbutIvesometrufflestosell
—and he was staring at the pigs with their panniers anyway.
 

“Eh?” said the farmer.
 

Snow took a deep breath and repeated herself, more slowly.

“Truffles,” said the farmer. “
Oh.
Aye. I suppose these are truffle pigs, then?”

“Yes,” said Snow. “Very—very fine truffle pigs. Yes.”

Greatspot lifted her snout and smiled at the farmer. Puffball kept his head down and tried not to look like a gigantic wild boar that could tear a field apart with his tusks. This was a losing proposition.
 

“Clever makin’ ‘em carry like that. Wouldn’t have thought you could stop a pig rolling. You want to go down to the middle of town,” said the farmer, pointing. “Cook at the inn’ll give you sommat for a truffle, and if you’ve any more, go over to Elias the merchant. He’ll buy ‘em to sell later, out on the road.”

“Thank you,” said Snow gratefully.

“Mind,” said the farmer, holding up a hand. “Go to Cook first, if you’ll hear a word of advice. Cook’ll give you a fair price. Elias won’t cheat you, but he’d milk blood from a turnip if he could. If he knows what Cook’s paying, he’ll have to match it, you hear?”

“Yes.” Snow took a deep breath. She had haggled with the peddler—although she’d been angry, so it hardly counted. The notion of haggling with someone else, someone who could say “no” easily, that was harder.
 

Still, she had come to the end of what being quiet and biddable could do for her.
 

“Thank you,” she said. “That is good to know.”

“Good luck,” said the farmer. “Keep those pigs out of my field, though, eh?”

“I will,” said Snow. She put a hand on Greatspot and Puffball, and they walked forward, toward the town.

The cook was easy. Even though she was very different than the cook at the castle, there is a kind of universal similarity among good cooks. She came to the door behind the inn, where Snow stood with the pigs.
 

The cook took a truffle, rolled it between her fingers, sniffed it, and laughed out loud.

“I’d take your whole bag,” she said. “All of them, if I had a king’s ransom lying about and could afford them.”
 

Snow, who was getting very odd looks from the stableboy, said, “Will you take one, then?”

“I will,” said the cook. “I’ll turn my husband upside down, until he coughs up the money. And I’ll give you a plate of stew while you wait, shall I?”

Snow reached inside herself and pulled out a smile.

“Make it three,” she said.

They returned from Mousebury long after dark, the panniers weighted with many things—flour and potatoes and bags of salt and great harsh chunks of soap. (The pigs were somewhat bemused by the soap, but willing to go along with Snow’s whims.)

Elias the merchant had been honest with her—there were too many truffles for him to sell in Mousebury, and he could not buy them all at anything approaching a fair price. But he bought half the sack, at only a little less than Cook had paid, and gave her the price half in gold and half in barter. Snow felt that she had not done too badly by her friends.

“Come back in a few months,” said Elias, as she tightened the strap on a pannier and tried to balance potatoes on one side and the flour on the other side of the very patient Puffball. “Come back and bring me more, and I’ll be able to take them out to the great summer fair. Then I can buy more from you.”
 

Snow nodded. She did not know what to say. Would she be here in three months? Would her father have come home? But how could she leave the boars when they needed her?

But the cook had said something before she left that had given Snow sudden hope.
 

“You know,” said the cook, scraping the last of the stew into Puffball’s bowl, “you know, if you’ve got some truffles left to sell, you might try the convent up the road.”

“Convent?” asked Snow, surprised.

“Aye. The Sisterhood of Saint…ah…bother. Saint something. Well, there’s only about a dozen of them, but they’re decent women. A few hours walk that way. Their honey is good, but their beer is better.”

“Thank you,” said Snow, taking her own bowl of stew. “I’ll have to visit. Which way did you say?”

A convent,
she thought, as the cook rattled off directions.
No one cheats nuns. I’m pretty sure there’s a hell just for that. I wonder…I wonder what they’d do if they found out the boars talked…Well, I suppose they could scream “Black magic!” and try to hit Puffball with a broom. He’d probably think that was funny.
 

Puffball put his head up and licked the last of the stew out of her bowl, and Snow was so distracted that she let him.
 

She turned the thought over in her head again, as they walked home. A convent. Hmm.

Noblewomen went into convents sometimes. Snow had heard about it third-hand—so-and-so’s widow had gone to the convent, or so-and-so’s daughter. She’d never thought about applying it to herself.
 

Would I want to be a nun? What do nuns do? Keep bees and brew beer, apparently…I could do that…I always wanted to help the gardener with his bees, but he said they didn’t like fidgeting…

“I don’t know about these little metal things,” said Puffball, yanking her back to the present. “You can’t eat them and they’re hard to pick up. I’m afraid I’m going to swallow one if I try.”
 

Greatspot rolled her eyes. “It’s a human thing,” she said. “Humans love the little metal things. You get them and then humans will give you potatoes for them. Lots and lots of potatoes.”
 

“You can
eat
potatoes,” said Puffball.
 

“The humans might eat these metal things. Like turkeys eating gizzard stones. Don’t be rude, Puffball, not everyone has teeth like us.”

“Oh,” said Puffball, startled. “Sorry, Snow.” He pushed his shoulder against her. “You can have my metal things for gizzard stones if you want.”

Snow rubbed her hand over her face. There was something trying to get out of her chest, and when she opened her mouth, she found that it was a laugh.
 

It was late evening. The shadows were falling kindly. And Snow had cleaned herself up and brushed out her hair, so that she did not look too wild when she went into town, and like many people, she was almost beautiful when she laughed.
 

And at that moment, the queen’s fingertips lay across the magic mirror.
 

“Snow,” said the mirror, showing all its teeth. “Snow is still fair, O queen.”
 

The queen sat still, as still as one who has been dealt a mortal wound.
 

Very softly she said, “Snow is dead. Snow is nothing but bones in a hole.”

The mirror rippled in a shrug.
 

“She lives, O queen.”

The queen reached out and touched the box with the heart in it. There were smooth patches in the carving from where she had caressed it, all the long hours of the day.
 

(And now, reader, I will tell you that the queen was evil, surely, and the heart was a symbol of her triumph—but I cannot swear that she did not stroke the box of the heart from some strange maternal affection as well. Witchblood is twisty and those it twists have minds that turn back on themselves like brambles.)

“Then what is in this box?” she asked.

The demon in the mirror grinned. It had been waiting for this question for a long, long time.

“The heart of a pig, my queen.”
 

She shot to her feet. The chair at her dressing table went over backwards and clattered to the floor.
 

“Bring me the huntsman,” she said.

Word travelled fast in the castle. The steward knew within minutes and the men-at-arms learned from the steward and the gardener heard it from the oldest man-at-arms and took it to the midwife.

The gardener might have run but he did not. He walked very carefully, holding the knowledge in his cupped hands, as if it were a cup filled too full to spill. He went to the herb garden where the midwife sat and he put his lips against her ear and whispered “Snow is alive.”

The midwife had grown old in the last season, and the bones of her hands were as fine as a bird’s. For a moment the gardener thought that the news had come too late, and then he felt the midwife’s arms go around and hold him hard. A few tears trickled out from under her eyelids and she whispered something into his shoulder that he did not hear.

The next day, she moved into his house, as he had long requested, and he never asked her what she had said and she never told him and they were very happy together. But that is neither here nor there and the future is a different country.
 

All through the castle went the word—
Snow is alive. The queen seeks the huntsman. The huntsman’s life is forfeit.

And with this word came questions—
What was in the box? She was told it was Snow’s heart! Who’s heart was it?

This question spawned many answers as the word spread. It was the heart of a bandit in the woods. It was the heart of a stag or a horse or a hound. It was the heart of the king who had died on Crusade. It was the queen’s own heart, placed there by some confusing magic. It was not a true heart at all but one made of clay (The maids who spread sweet rushes to cover the smell of rotting meat quickly discounted this one.).
 

Arrin himself was out hunting. He came back late that night, with a pheasant in his saddlebags, and saw the steward standing at the gate, with two men-at-arms on either side of him.

He halted his mare a dozen yards from the gate and narrowed his eyes.
 

“Arrin Huntsman,” said the steward. “The queen demands your immediate presence.”

Arrin met his eyes, and the steward mouthed the word
Run.

He wheeled his horse and spurred her back down the road.
 

The men-at-arms gave chase, more or less. A few ran after him on foot, shouting, and one or two of the younger, keener ones went for horses—but somehow the stablehands were a little slow bringing them out and the swiftest horse in the stable was in need of shoeing and by the time anyone was mounted and in pursuit, Arrin had vanished.

The steward brought this news to the queen.
 

“You lost him,” said the queen.

The steward inclined his head. “We have sent out search parties. They may yet find him. But none know the woods as well as Arrin and I have no man who is his equal.”

Her hand shot out and her nails slashed down his face, curving under his jaw. The steward felt a hot itch across his neck, but he did not flinch.

“I want him
found,
” said the queen. “Bring him to me. Alive or dead, it matters not.”

“Yes, my queen,” said the steward. He bowed to her and left the room, and only once he was well away did he stagger back against the wall and blot the blood from his face.
 

But Arrin was not found. The men-at-arms went out every day—the queen could see them from her window—and the steward made a speech that the queen could hear, about bringing traitors to justice. But they rode out slowly and rode back quickly and they were always careful to make a great deal of noise. They combed the same ground, armlength by armlength, and left vast stretches of the woods untouched.
 

And Arrin was not found.

(And I must tell you now, readers, that if you, like Arrin, are worrying for his elderly aunt, you need not. The queen would undoubtedly have punished her if it had occurred to her to do so, but knowing that Arrin had an aunt would have required her to take an interest in the lives of those around her. She did not know, and no one was inclined to volunteer this information. For her part, Arrin’s aunt fretted for her nephew, but she knew that he was much too canny to be caught by such lackluster efforts.)
 

Arrin went first to his house, as fast as his mare could gallop, and emptied out everything he could carry. He slung it on the mare’s back and led her away, first in one direction then another, up a streambed and down. He led her through dry leaves that would take no tracks and over hard-packed stones.