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numericalpie · 2 months ago

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WCW 3: The Long Road to the End of Winter

Here's my offering for day three of @wintercourtweek: the Snow Queen story I've been threatening for years. Hope y'all enjoy!! Bonus points to anyone who traces out Viviane's journey.

“Viv!” Kal yelled.

She slammed to the ground, face right into the snow. A clump of ice whistled over her head, landing softly right next to her nose.

“Kal,” she giggled, getting back up. “You can’t tell me when you’re about to throw.”

Viviane picked the snowball back up - soft snow, today, so the near-perfect lump he’d carefully twisted stayed together just fine in her hands.

“And you’re not supposed to make them perfect,” she shouted, throwing it back at him.

He ducked; it hit the side of his shoulder.

“Ow,” he said, laughing. “It’s so hard!”

“It wouldn’t be if you didn’t make them so tight,” she exclaimed, throwing more at him. Smaller and lighter, partially because at seven to his eight Viviane was two hands shorter, and partially because she cared so, so much less.

You weren’t supposed to care. Viviane had known that since birth. There was enough else to care about, gods knew, or so Mama always said. You have to take care of the big things, my Vivianna, and forget about the small ones, lest the snow queen herself comes to steal you away from your troubles, away from us.

But apparently no one had bothered to tell Kal that, or no one else, because no matter how many times she told him he wouldn’t stop.

“You make more than I do,” he complained, unable to dodge all of her barrage. “It’s not fair!”

She laughed. “I work faster! That’s what you get for making them tight!”

He threw another suspiciously round and well-formed snowball at her. Viviane ducked behind a drift of snow, giggling.

She had seven - wait. She recounted. Six snowballs. That was enough. Probably. She could untie the kerchief Mama demanded she wear whenever she played with that boy and fill it with her snowballs and run over to where he was and dump them all on his head, and then he would admit defeat and they could go inside and Mama would tut disapprovingly at how wet her kerchief was but would warm milk up for the both of them anyways. And then eventually it would grow dark and he would go back to his home, high on the hill (Viviane had never been: Mama said it was too beautiful for a dirt-covered urchin, laughing and scrubbing at her hair; Kallias just said her home was more fun) and then tomorrow they could do it all over again. Forever and forever and forever.

Viviane silenced her giggles and scraped the snowballs into her kerchief, braids coming loose around her head. The tails would get all snowy and wet, later, but that was alright. Mama would say she was mad but wouldn’t be, and tomorrow she’d just have to promise to wear her kerchief again.

(She wouldn’t, but Mama didn’t need to know that.)

______________________________________________________________

“Kal?” Viviane asked, quiet, nervous.

One of his friends said something, she couldn’t hear what, but a laugh rose from the group of all of them, well-dressed boys together for their short teatime. White tunics, furs, fine and pretty; Viviane smoothed her worn dress, the one Mama had embroidered a year ago, the one she’d promised to make as pretty as anything they wore over there. It wasn’t, obviously, but Viviane liked it anyways: little flowers from the lípa in spring sketched around the neckline and the sleeves and the waist, fine as anything Mama ever did.

Perfect stitches by candlelight, as pretty as anything that could be bought over there. Good thread that Mama saved up for two months to buy. And now a stain, she could just tell, or what was going to be a stain, bloodred and obvious, if Kal would not help her this instant.

“Kallias?” she tried again, louder.

One of them - she did not know his name; had patently decided against learning it the second he first mouthed off at their teacher - looked at her and laughed.

“Oh, Kaaaaaalllll,” he sang, snickering. “A giiiiirl wants to speak to yoooouuuuuu.”

“Would you shut your - “ Kallias began, turning around with a glare in spite of the chuckles that were currently spreading red poppies across Viviane’s cheeks. She looked down at her toes.

“Viviane,” he said, much lighter. “Do you need -”

“It’ll just take a minute,” she interrupted, not meaning to. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter by the minute.

Maybe she would just die. That would be easier, and Mama would not be angry about her dress if she were a corpse. Probably she wouldn’t.

“Over there,” he suggested with a tilt of his head, and Viviane almost ran because it meant she would get away from the rest of them. Laughter chased at her heels.

She stared at the corner of their schoolroom, just through the window, determinedly not turning around so she wouldn’t have to see him laugh back.

“What is it?” Kallias asked, and Viviane could not help but relax, because he was not laughing at her, he sounded kind and confused, as always.

“I need your scarf,” she explained in a rush. A red, flushing rush. “Please. Or a kerchief. Or a scarf. Something you can give up. Please.”

“Why?” he asked, reaching for his neck, for the scarf he was wearing. Viviane blushed a little more.

“I -” she hesitated. “I’m… I’m going to get something on my dress, if I don’t have something.”

Kallias frowned, carefully folding his scarf so he could hand it to her in a neat little square. “Won’t it wash out?”

No. Viviane searched for an explanation.

“It won’t,” she said, swallowing. “And Mama will be so…”

“Angry?” he guessed, handing it to her. She couldn’t help but finger the fabric - fine and brown and probably more expensive than anything she’d held in her whole life.

And she was going to bleed all over it. Practically

“I’m sure your mother won’t be angry,” Kallias said, smooth and kind and very, very wrong. “Especially if it isn’t your fault.”

It is my fault, Viviane thought, paling. I was stupid enough to leave without my cloths.

Was he going to make her give them back? Oh, oh, Mother, please no. Please, Mama would be so -

“But by all means,” he concluded, smiling. “Need anything else?”

“No,” Viviane said, nodding vigorously, barely holding back the urge to clutch the scarf to her chest like a beggarwoman with a coin of gold. “Thank you. So much. I promise, I’ll pay you back for it.”

Somehow. The money - the money would take her months, especially now that Mama was pregnant. Months of darning socks and mending shirts behind the counter in the village, the little job that Mama almost killed her over. No daughter of your father -

Viviane shut away the memory. She’d pay him back. Or tutor him, or something. Expect he definitely didn’t need tutoring. Um. She’d… find something.

“I have other scarves,” he promised. “Don’t worry a minute. Anything else?”

Gods, Viviane thought, looking at him, he really is so stupidly nice.

Then what she had just thought hit her in full force, and she waved him away as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t see how badly she was blushing.

______________________________________________________________

Viviane looked down at the poppies, red and pretty, bunched together on her desk. Her favorite flower, still sharp, fresh, beautiful.

She swore loudly and shoved the desk in front of her. It heaved along the floor, heavy and wooden, not nearly so far as she would’ve liked.

Viviane groaned and shoved it again, further, pushing the chairs in front of it further. They fell over, legs clanging against the desks in front - metal, thin and cheap but still metal, and she swore louder because the chairs definitely left scratches in the metal. And their teacher wouldn’t know it was her, but the next time he held class he would point to them and ask, loudly, what urchin did this? What vermin was so classless, so -

“Viviane?” a familiar voice asked, very cautious.

She straightened immediately, twisting and lifting off of the surface of her desk quick as if it could burn her.

“Kallias,” she said, sighing. “At least it’s you.”

The rest of that sentence went unsaid: you, and not any of the others, not them.

“I heard about your mother,” he said, quiet, walking forward to stand next to her. “I’m sorry.”

Viviane bit back her instinctive are you? Are you sure? You, who used to -

“I’m, um,” he started, looking at the mess she’d made of their schoolroom casually. As if it were any ordinary scene. “I know it isn’t much, but I thought you could use something to make you smile.”

He nodded at the flowers, crushed against the floor; Viviane’s stomach sank to her feet.

“I thought, um,” she said, swallowing. “I thought they were from someone else.”

“Oh?” he asked, polite as anything. If he was offended, it didn’t show.

“Milo,” she explained quietly, and something flashed in his eyes, something definitely flashed in his eyes, but Viviane could not bear to look past that.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. It couldn’t.

“Milo,” he repeated, tone unreadable.

Then: “I think I would throw around a few chairs, too.”

Viviane snorted, and then she could look at him again.

“With Nora - the baby,” she corrected at the confusion on his face. He wouldn’t know, obviously. She should’ve known that. Idiot.

“With the baby, I can’t afford to live alone,” Viviane continued, gaze flicking down to her feet. “I need, um.”

She looked up: he was still studying the chairs, casual and calm.

“I need a husband,” she blurted. It felt wrong to say, wrong to say to him, but then it shouldn’t have, because the prospect was absolutely laughable, he wouldn’t think of it, and she shouldn’t either.

Readers: she did, of course she did.

“Milo?” he asked, after a moment. “I - Milo? There isn’t…”

He trailed off, but Viviane could fill in the rest - anyone else? Really?

Viviane squared her shoulders.

“There’s other boys in the village,” she said, straight and easy. Totally. Very easily. Hopefully her blush wasn’t too bad. “So. I hope not.”

Kallias frowned, she saw, and immediately Viviane’s sense of self-preservation called her to look away.

“But marriage?” he asked. “You’re so young, Viviane.”

“I’m as old as you are,” she retorted. “Don’t tell me your father isn’t pushing you to wed.”

“That’s different,” he snapped. “For the estate. Not -” Kallias hesitated.

“It’s not,” she said. “Not different at all. And I have to do it. I have to.”

Kallias swore and sat down in one of the chairs she hadn’t managed to touch, so swiftly Viviane almost thought he’d collapsed, after she recovered her shock.

Kallias never swore. Oh.

“It’s not right,” he said, looking back up. “I’m sorry, Viviane. It’s not. You deserve…”

He trailed off. Viviane, without a response, sat down in the chair next to him, one of the one’s she’d moved.

“There’s my grandparents,” she said, very quietly. “But they’re miles and miles away, and I don’t have the money. I barely had enough to send them a letter when Mama -”

Her voice failed on the last word, just as she knew it would, because of course it would, and then Viviane could not help herself, she was crying, tears streaking across her desk.

And maybe Kallias could not help himself, either, because though it was light as anything she could feel his fingers, tracing slow, comforting circles on her back.

______________________________________________________________

The next week, Milo asked for her hand, smiling broadly in the middle of the street.

Viviane, exhausted, covered in the dust of the back room of the shop, did not bother to answer. He gave her a ring, the thinnest metal imaginable pounded into something that looked a little like a circle.

Idly, Viviane decided it had once been a spoon, one of the cheap ones they gave to tenant farmers. Which, she reminded herself, was the sort she would probably use for the rest of her life. Married to Milo, who would almost definitely spend the length of his toiling away on their land.

But what he lacked in silverware Milo made up for in having a house at all. Even if he always squeezed her hip or her shoulder or the side of her chest, almost bruising, even before they were engaged to be wed.

He had a house; Nora could go to school. That was enough.

Surely, that would be enough.

______________________________________________________________

Viviane woke that night to a knocking on her door, steady and loud. That was inaccurate: Nora woke to the knocking on her door, and Viviane woke to her screaming, and after she bounced her sister the required thirty times, after she hummed a light little tune that fit well enough to the steady beat of the knocks, Nora soothed enough that Viviane could pull her threadbare robe over her nightgown and answer the door.

Kallias stared back at her, at the little girl in her arms.

Viviane stared back. Nora’s fingers clutched on the strings of the front of her nightgown.

Kallias stared at her, lit only by a candle, miraculously shining even in the falling snow.

The first snow, auspicious.

Viviane stared back. Nora pulled at one of the strings.

Kallias stared at her, a sack that Viviane did not see in his hands.

Viviane stared back. Nora pulled so hard at the string that her nightgown started to open, and Viviane groaned and pulled it tight again.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” she whispered to her sister, knowing full well Kallias could hear her. He’d pretend he couldn’t, she knew; Viviane knew that better than anything.

Kallias cleared his throat, and Viviane looked up. For a moment they just looked at each other, quieter than the snow, falling softly all around them.

He handed her the sack, coins clanging as it shifted, noise softened by the fabric. Viviane held it to her chest, just as tight as she held Nora.

And then, with a little bow that made her giggle, the sort they always used in country dances that he was never supposed to attend, he left.

The next morning, so did she.

______________________________________________________________

Viviane had been at her grandmother’s home for over a year - through the long, cold winter, all of the slow mud of spring, and another winter after that, before she first heard the rumor.

Nora played in the grass, high by the mountainside where the perunika grew, when Grandmother first told her. Very casual, light, oh, by the way, some man has gone missing from your old village.

“Oh?” Viviane asked, only half-listening. It was easier to work with a pattern, but she could not resist the challenge of the real model, the pretty purple iris swaying in the breeze. The quilt would sell, she knew it would sell, knew very well that she could make something nice enough to sway even the richest of them.

Grandmother hummed. “One of the lordlings. Odd, isn’t it?”

“Lordlings?” Viviane repeated, leaning forward to get a better look at the iris. It wouldn’t have the same dimension, she knew, not at all, but if she could manage the way the petals folded over each other - a decorative seam, maybe? The thread would be costly…

“Mmh,” Grandmother agreed. “Some name with a K, I think. You know Johanne goes on for so long.”

Viviane froze.

“Kallias?” she asked.

Grandmother snapped. “That’s the one.”

Viviane was suddenly completely, achingly certain that her heart was frozen inside her chest, that all of her was frozen, that the entire world was frozen.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

“Viviane?” Grandmother asked, concerned. “You look pale, dearest.”

She couldn’t move, so she didn’t, stared unseeingly ahead at the perunika swaying softly with the breeze.

It couldn’t be. It absolutely couldn’t. Kallias was going to marry some wealthy woman, the sort that wore silks and damasks and whatever else they called fabric that wasn’t cotton, and have a hundred children to inherit his father’s wealth before presumably dying of too much prosperity.

It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t. Not Kallias.

“Nora,” Grandmother called in some other frame of existence, some place that was not frozen in ice, “will you help me get Viviane inside? Too much sun, I think.”

Nora, all of two, bounded over. Her “helping” consisted mainly of pulling at Viviane’s leg, tugging, playful. Vivi, why won’t you play my game?

Viviane did not answer, not even once. She moved slowly, heard her bones creaking with every step as if she was one of the dead. And yet maybe it worked, because it was not until she was inside that the tears started to flow down her cheeks, and another eternity more before she thought to reach for her handkerchief.

______________________________________________________________

“Wait,” said Grandmother, when Viviane wanted to follow her first instinct and march down to the village and into his father’s beautiful marbled portico and ask what, under the sun, he had let happen to Kallias.

And Viviane remembered that her grandmother was not young, for all she had married young enough to still be a little off of old. And Nora was young, so young, and she could not leave her behind. Shame pooled oily and cold in the bottom of her stomach at the thought.

But she could not leave him to be dead, either, not after -

Not after everything. So she swallowed her pride and walked into the fishmonger’s stall and begged for work. He blinked at her, old and salt-warn, for all they lived so very far away from the sea. Once, Viviane had wondered where he could possibly have come from, back when the world still had bright colors and there was a sound aside from Nora’s bright little laugh to break through her world of silence.

Now, she didn’t care. Couldn’t. Mama had been right: there was too much else to worry about. Nora needed boots and Grandmother needed a shawl and Viviane needed to buy ink and paper and however much it would take to bribe the postman into delivering her letter into friendly hands. Not that there were many, not really, but some of her old classmates would tell her the truth.

Hopefully. Hopefully they would tell her the truth.

No, they would. They had to. Viviane had nowhere near enough money to secure a spot on the back of a wagon going over there. And even if she did, who else would she ask? There was no one else, no one aside from the few friends she used to have, the girls who didn’t snicker at her thin dresses. Surely the urge to gossip alone would be enough. Surely.

They would tell her the truth; Viviane was sure of it, absolutely sure. Especially if she paid the fare for their return postage.

A letter there, and back, and boots for Nora, and a shawl for Grandmother, and food for the winter, and their payments to the lord of Grandmother’s village. She could do it.

Viviane had to, so she did. Hours and hours and weeks and months of serrating fish with small knives in the back of the fish shop, guts spilling over her hands. Nights and nights and nights of sewing by candlelight, darning socks and fixing shirts and working yet again at that quilt. Someday it would sell. She knew it would.

And then, finally, she sent her letter. Her best penmanship, her precious ink, her parchment, her bribe, all neatly done. And the response: we’re all well. Harvest’s poor, but you know. Oh, yes, they sent out several search parties. No one found him. They held a burial a few weeks ago - empty casket. Do write again!

Viviane would not; she could barely stand to look at the letter in the first place.

“Wait,” Grandmother reminded her, creaking in her chair by the fire. Viviane flew from the room, planting herself in the snow outside, again, outside, as if it could cleanse her.

She could not go, she couldn’t, she couldn’t, and she shouldn’t, because Kallias was nothing more than a kind wealthy man she knew in her youth and she should not go.

Nora needed her. Grandmother needed her.

Viviane knew: she could not go.

But, oh, she wanted to. She could not help wanting to. Viviane threw herself back into her work, hours and hours of fish and thread and scrubbing Nora’s hair in the washbin. Of finding willow bark for Grandmother to rub on her joints whenever it rained, haggling for cloth from the women in the market, unpicking the dresses Nora grew out of and putting them back together with wider shoulders and four inches added on to the hems. Days passed, cyclical, dreams: she woke in the morning and braided her hair as tightly as she could, floated down to the village, scrubbed against scale and bone, thoughtless. Returned in the evenings to smile at Nora, faraway and wrong, so wrong in her home, in her bones; to ignore the looks Grandmother gave, searching, afraid.

“My dear,” Grandmother said, one evening when the sky was dark because it was the winter so it was always dark. “I think you should sleep more.”

Viviane did not respond. In truth, she did not hear: her focus was on the muslin in front of her, the pinned-together segments that would soon be yet another reworking of Nora’s favorite dress. Assuming it did not dust away to nothing before she finished.

“Viviane,” she said, louder, and Vivianne finally looked up.

“Grandmother?” she asked. The urge to yawn struck and she did not fight it, did not fight the urge to let it stretch her jaw in half.

“You should go to bed,” Grandmother said. “I’ll finish the dress.”

Viviane waved her off. “I’m fine. I promise.”

Grandmother frowned. “Don’t lie, my girl.”

“I’m not,” Viviane said, lying. “I’m not tired. Youth.”

Her grandmother snorted. “You just yawned for a sixth time. Bed, Viviane.”

Viviane pulled her needle through the fabric of what had already been, twice over, a sleeve. “As I said. I’m well.”

“You’re not,” Grandmother said, reaching forward to snatch the needle out of her hands. Viviane sat back in her chair with a sigh, hard wood against her spine.

“You haven’t been since that man died.”

“Went missing,” Viviane corrected, route, unthinking. “Not dead.”

Grandmother sighed and reached for the cloth. “Either way,” she began, tone certain of which way, “you ought to rest.”

“No use,” Viviane said, pulling the cloth back to her own lap. She took the needle - Grandmother let it go - and sighed, because the thread had come unhooked through it.

“Every use,” Grandmother countered. “He’ll hardly be found by your efforts.”

Viviane licked the end of the thread so it would come smoothly through the eye. “I see his face, Grandmother. When I dream.”

It was thirty stitches before she realized her grandmother had never given a response. Viviane looked up from her fabric, from the sleeve now fixed to the bodice.

Grandmother stared at her, sorrow shining like the moon in her eyes.

______________________________________________________________

“Where are you going?” Nora asked, for probably the fortieth time.

“Away,” Viviane told her, stirring the pot bubbling by their tiny stove. A few more preserves with the berries, a few more carefully stored and put away so Grandmother would have enough to last until she came home.

“When?” Nora asked, pulling at her feet.

Viviane clucked. “Not for a long time, little sister.”

She reached down to readjust the kerchief that slung back on Nora’s head. It was cold, even in the beginning of spring, snow still melting on street corners and clutching at the sides of the mountains. No perunika, not yet.

Nora groaned and pushed it back. Viviane could not help her smile.

“Gremlin,” she said, fondly.

“But when?” Nora asked, insistent. “You can’t leave until my name day. You promised you would make me a cake.”

“I did,” Viviane remembered, stirring the pot. No sugar, but that was just as well; Grandmother didn’t like sweet things, and Nora had never really had any. “And I won’t leave until the lípa bloom, Nora. You know that.”

“But why,” her sister begged. “Vivi, why?”

Viviane set down her spoon. “Why am I going?”

She untwisted her kerchief while Nora nodded vigorously, shaking her leg from the force of her rocking. Her hair spilled out, blond braids falling down her back.

Carefully, she tied it around Nora’s head, smiling at the way her sister scrunched her nose. Viviane untied the kerchief she’d had, too, wrapping it around her own head even though it was still wet with spring-melting snow.

“There. Isn’t mine better?”

Nora grumbled something unintelligible, which was probably for the best.

“I am going,” she said, leaning down to gather her sister up and into her arms. It was difficult; she was heavier than she’d once been.

Viviane knew she wouldn’t be able to lift her at all when she returned. The thought made her nauseous.

“I am going,” she repeated, patting softly against her sister’s warm back, “because a very dear friend to me, and you, is in trouble.”

“Trouble?” Nora gasped. “That’s not good. Grandmama says to stay out of trouble.”

“She’s right,” Viviane agreed. “You must listen to her, Nora, always.”

“Grandmama scares me,” Nora confided into her neck. Viviane lowered herself to the ground to sit, not able to bear the weight standing for another moment.

“Me too, sometimes,” Viviane admitted. “But only because she’s right and she doesn’t worry about saying right things nicely. Not all the time.”

Nora frowned, she could feel it against her neck. “But why are you going? Why, Vivi?”

“I told you,” Viviane said, patting her back again. “I have to. But not yet, and I promise I’ll come back. I promise, Nora.”

“You have to do the things you promise,” Nora said, the wisdom of all the ages made clear in her tone.

Four, Viviane thought. Four and when I return she will probably be six.

“I know,” she agreed. “I will. I promise.”

______________________________________________________________

Viviane did not weep at their parting. Head level, spine straight, satchel packed with food and clothing, her needles and a few scraps of fabric and thread. She counted the coins she was leaving behind - all that she’d worked for, toiled in the night and day and hours in between for almost two years to gather. Just enough, hopefully, to sustain Grandmother and Nora until she could return, enough to buy food or medicine if Grandmother got hurt, enough to pay the taxes for a few years if she didn’t.

It was enough, it had to be. It had to be.

Nora wept; Grandmother did not, but she looked like she could, which was how Viviane knew it was time to leave. The lípa bloomed, outside, lime trees holy on the hills.

Kallias was waiting, somewhere. She had to go.

Viviane did weep hours later, slowly climbing the path back to her old village, to the place she knew her journey had to start, but that was alright. Surely, that was alright.

______________________________________________________________

The tombstone before her was smooth marble, beautiful and cold. Viviane could touch the letters carved in the surface: KALLIAS MILKOVICH, clear and fine.

She turned to the side and vomited in the grass, just far enough so that she was not puking over his empty grave. Her kerchief - Nora’s - came unbound somewhere in the middle, landing in the patch of nausea she left in the grass. As if she needed the day to get worse.

Her old friends had received her well enough - tea, the sort served in any farmer’s kitchen, wives covered in dirt or coal dust by association asking after her sister, the husband she really ought to have had. They grew colder when she asked of him, questioning, suspicious, before finally swearing that they had no part in it, Viviane, whatever you think you are implying, and no paid spy of them will have a place in our homes as a friend!

I’m not, she’d sworn, but they did not care and frankly enough in their place she wouldn’t have either, so she left, head down like a traitor, a woman with shame enough to hide.

Someone tittered, she could hear it in the wind, and when Viviane looked up a woman in fine clothing, black fur and wool cut beautifully to her frame, was pointing at her from a few graves away. She could feel the poppies rushing to blush her cheeks, a girl again, and so Viviane ripped her kerchief from the ground and ran for shelter anywhere. Anywhere she would be free of eyes and empty graves and them.

She ended up beneath a lípa, the one that grew strong and thick and tall by the very edge of the cemetery. Wide roots, wider trunk; just enough to shelter herself by the side of it and sob into the dirt at its feet.

The tears coursed, hot on her cheeks, and every time she tried to wipe them away there was just more to follow. And she could barely wipe them away, because her hands were shaking - her whole body was shaking - and Viviane could not help it, could not help the noises she was making, somewhere between animal and girl.

Eventually, inevitably, she grew quiet, and her body stilled, and Viviane decided that it was really rather cold under the lípa but she could not move, not if she tried. The branches swayed, above and around her, the last bloom of flowers honey in the breeze.

She watched them float, frozen like ice by the roots.

River, she heard, from nowhere and everywhere, and Viviane jumped.

She got a bearing on herself, quickly, turning around in a circle almost violently fast, nearly falling over her own feet. No one was there, just as she knew no one would be there - why would they bother? Hardly anyone came to the wealthy cemetery, and the Mother herself knew full well that they never stayed for long.

No. No one was there, and there was no noise, other than the breeze. She’d made it up.

Losing her mind, then. Viviane could work with that. She sat back in the dirt, not caring that it was undoubtedly creeping its way onto her skirt.

River, she heard again, and this time she did not jump, but leaned back against the lípa. It was strong against her back, steady though its branches rocked like a ship on the faraway sea.

RIVER, she heard, or rather felt in the very bones of her skull, vibrating through her entire being.

Viviane looked back at the lípa in shock. When she was a girl, a very small girl, Mama had told her: oh, darling, you know you must trust in the lípa, the Mother’s trees.

She scrambled to her feet and ran like a madwoman for the river. That was a stretch, or it ought to have been: when she was a girl it had been little more than a steady stream with fish flipping through its currents. Something must have changed, though, because she could hear it as she approached, the steady gurgle of the waters, a hundred lengths wider than she had thought it was. Perhaps a hundred times stronger, too, whitewater in patches, spraying wild in the air.

River, she thought. I am at the river.

Viviane waited. Nothing happened, nothing but the flow of the water, the spray in the air.

“I’m here,” she said, out loud.

The water continued to flow, fast and cold.

“I’M HERE,” she shouted, loud and sharp, carrying only a short while across the water. No response, of course, nothing of note from the gods.

Viviane folded like one of Nora’s ragdolls against the shore and began, again, to cry.

“Please,” she sobbed against the ground, cold beneath her. “Please. I just want to find him. Even if he’s…””

She could not get out the word, dead, it stuck to the inside of her throat. It did not much seem to matter to the rushing water.

“I’ll trade,” she said, desperate and perhaps a little mad from lack of warmth or sleep. “Here.”

She threw her kerchief, Nora’s kerchief, the one she’d spent hours stitching careful lípa blossoms onto, into the water. It carried it away, down and under the currents; Viviane gasped with immediate regret.

And then, because she really had nothing better to do, Viviane waited. Just sat there, staring at the river, while the sun drifted higher and then lower in the sky, reflecting off the water like something holy, which in truth it probably was.

Something dark and wet floated across the top of the water, she noticed, after minutes or hours. It traced its way back to her, against the current, gentle and slow.

Nora’s kerchief. She ripped it out of the water in disbelief, laughing with no little shock.

Against the current, she realized, feeling the imprint of the lípa in her hands.

A boat was tied up, not very far away, a shabby little thing of wood and rope and the odd rusted nail. Viviane untied it, mad as anything, far away from her body and very near it at the same time. She would have left coins behind for the trouble, if she had any to spare, but she did not. Besides, it was decrepit, almost falling to pieces in the water. Hopefully whoever owned it would not mind.

Hopefully it would not break beneath her on the river, but Viviane did not think of that for more than a moment. Heart in her throat - kerchief, soaking wet in her hand - she untied it, leaving the rope on its little dock. The boat creaked when she settled onto it, but Viviane could not blame it for that. She did not take a breath until she had been on it for minutes without it falling apart, though.

Only after she’d managed to breathe, in and out, did she push away from the shore. The river picked them up almost immediately, the little boat and her, whisking them away from the land so quickly Viviane wondered if she should be screaming.

She didn’t, though. The river was fast but friendly, almost kind. Viviane felt the boat rock to and fro in the currents.

And then, without noticing, Viviane fell asleep.

______________________________________________________________

Viviane twisted in her blankets, reaching back to brush against the soft pillow underneath her head. Black night rested upon her eyes, still, inviting and beautiful and so enticing she could not help but sigh and twist back over. Her hip sank a little further into the mattress, feather-light, almost molding itself to her bones.

Her eyes flew open and she shot upwards, shoving off the fine blankets of wool and fur. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. The bed was one she had never seen before, plush and rich, blue quilt stretched over the top. The walls were of fine make, straight and high, covered with a design of repeating flowers, clover and lípa. The little table, stout and brown, covered with lace finer than Viviane had ever seen in the shops, a little bowl of polished clay resting empty atop.

Unfamiliar, unfamiliar, unfamiliar. She stalked to the door at the end of the room, redwood varnished nearly to a shine, swinging it open so strongly she almost took it off its hinges.

And then she screeched, unbidden, at the sight of the old woman standing before her.

The woman clucked her tongue. “No need for that, dearest Viviane.”

Viviane stared for a moment, forgetting herself.

The woman held out a cup of tea, dark and bitter-smelling. Viviane took it, hands feeling weak and powerless, shocked that it did not drop from her hands to shatter upon the floor.

“You are of age to my daughter, did you know that?” the woman asked. “She looked just like you.”

Viviane, very slowly, moved back to sit on the edge of the bed, sipping her cup. Fear beat against the cage of her ribs, but she did not know why.

She was safe, clearly, she was safe. And warm, and in a finer bed than she’d seen in the whole of her life.

Or was it? Viviane tried to remember what she had slept on the night before. The ground, yes, that was it, a clump of moss that looked inviting, that she had desperately hoped belonged to no creature of talons or teeth.

Although she could not remember why. Viviane raked her mind: not for - who?

The tea really was very good. She took another sip. It was sweet, strange and sweet, like nothing she��d tasted before.

Viviane frowned. Like nothing she could remember tasting before.

“You’ve come a long way, dear Viviane,” the old woman crooned.

“I’m sorry,” Viviane managed, around the odd fog sweeping through her mind. “I don’t recall how we met. My boat…”

She trailed off. Her boat was, was, was…

“Don’t worry, dearest Viviane,” the woman proclaimed. “Let Stryná brush your lovely hair. So blonde, the sun in the sky.”

That sounds nice, Viviane thought, suddenly so, so tired.

“And then sleep, yes?” Stryná clucked her tongue again; Viviane smiled because it was so very familiar. “Sleep, I think. And then a meal, of course.”

She collected a brush and went on, settling behind Viviane to pull it through the tangles of her hair. Occasionally she muttered something foul under her breath, at particular knots or spots of mud and dirt.

“I’m sorry,” Viviane apologized. “I don’t know what I did to get so…”

She searched for a word, finding none.

Stryná pulled the brush through her hair a little harsher, catching against her scalp. Viviane did not cry out; perhaps she had been expected to, for Stryná hummed lightly, almost approvingly after the knot was out of her hair.

“I’ll get some meat on you,” Stryná promised, as if Viviane had not spoken. “Something to warn those bones. Clothing, too; what you have are little better than rags.”

Viviane opened her mouth to respond, and closed it when nothing came. Her dress was practically rags, yes, but…

But.

But what?

She was still trying to remember when she let Stryná pull off her clothing and cover her in a nightdress, a new, soft, pristine nightdress, so white it almost glowed. And she was still thinking about it, turning it over in her mind, slow and muddy, when she slipped back into bed and fell asleep.

______________________________________________________________

In the morning she was at the table, the lovely dining table in the lovely dining room, staring down at more silverware than Viviane had ever seen in one place in her entire life.

“It doesn’t matter which one you use, child,” Stryná chided. “It is just me.”

Viviane picked up a spoon at random and took a bit of her porridge. It tasted familiar, or…

It did not taste familiar. The texture was of something she had never before had in her mouth, honey-sweet, flecked with cinnamon and spotted with little bits of apple.

It was, unquestionably, the nicest thing she’d ever had. Viviane had seconds; Stryná did not chide her for eating too much. She gave her clothing - insisted on it, really; a white blouse, a dark apron, a skirt blue like the sky. And a scarf for her hair, brown and soft - flowers, too, Stryná promised, but only for festivals.

Viviane didn’t mind the lack of flowers. The fabric of each item was soft, almost warm, certainly warmer than anything she’d felt against her skin before. And beautiful, so beautiful; Stryná had no mirror and forbade her from going to the river to see her reflection, but Viviane knew in the clothes she was beautiful.

Time passed slowly, Viviane was sure it passed slowly, hours creeping by as she sat with Stryná and chatted over the gossip the older woman brought in from the village, weddings and funerals of people Viviane had never so much as laid eyes upon. Styrnà said she shouldn’t, said she was still confused from her journey, said she should not leave until she was herself again.

Viviane did not remember any journey, and she was sure she would, but Styrnà was too kind to question, so Viviane did not. She did the washing-up after every meal, and swept the floors, and darned holes in Stryná’s socks for her keep, everything but the laundry. For that she would have to go to the river.

The sun was kind on her skin, Viviane thought often. It was warmer, she was sure, than it was supposed to be, for it was barely the beginning of summer. The lípa were just blooming. But the sun clung to her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, until Stryná chided her one evening and made her stay inside for - for a while.

A while. A day? Viviane tried to remember how long Stryná had said she had to wait before she went outside again, scrubbing at the dishes after another breakfast of porridge. Just her second, really, Viviane was sure. She hadn’t been there long. She knew she hadn’t been there long.

She hadn’t!

In her dreams, dreams that Viviane did not, could not, tell Stryná, the river flowed beneath her, rocking along a surface of water as clear as the sky at daybreak, blue and shining.

It was only her second breakfast - Viviane was sure it was only her second breakfast, really, she would remember having porridge that good more than twice - when Stryná cleared her throat, and so of course Viviane put down her spoon like any good, well-mannered individual. No matter how much she wanted to lick the residue of apples and cinnamon off it.

“I have something for you, my Viviane,” Stryná said. She reached behind her chair - Viviane could not see where, transfixed by the glare of light off of the shining beads, red coral like blood on the other woman’s neck.

Blood in her hands, too, until Viviane blinked, and then it was just a ring of poppies.

Red poppies. “For your lovely hair,” Stryná explained, smiling. “And beads, too, three strands of beads for my beautiful daughter.”

Viviane did not hear her as she went on, did not hear the woman smile at her stare, did not hear her laugh at her country girl, transfixed by the smallest of earthly beauties.

Viviane did not hear, and she did not see, because all that was in her was there, in her classroom, so many years ago. She could feel it - felt it, felt the wisps of rage start to coil in her chest at the sight of the neatly-tied bunch of red poppies. Could feel the shame, too, as she looked at them smashed against the floor, as Kallias -

As Kallias -

Viviane looked up, and Stryná was gone, and she did not know why, nor did she bother to ask. She untied her kerchief and started to throw rolls into it, still warm from the oven for later, later when she would not be there, when she would be far away and moving.

Go, go, go, the wind sang within her, the river, the blossoms drifting in the breeze. Go!

Viviane tied the edges of her kerchief into a hasty knot around her rolls and bolted for the door, down the hall of Stryná’s ridiculous house, nothing in her head but haste, haste, haste.

She flung open the door and rushed through, only to stop at the edge of the doorway, momentum carrying her down into the dirt. Viviane landed harshly, skinning her knees; she did not care.

The world outside was orange. Orange and yellow and red in falling leaves, in dying grasses, in the wind that promised colder times again, and it was supposed to be summer.

No, she thought, wooden. No, no. No.

Stryná sighed, behind her.

“So you’ll leave me,” she said, forlorn. “For him.”

“I never wanted to stay,” Viviane cried.

Stryná frowned at the lie. “It won’t be easy, you know.”

Viviane did not bother responding, stared instead at a leaf, falling gently through the sky, brown and dead.

“She took him north,” Stryná said.

Viviane whirled around. “You know? Where - where is he? Please, I -”

She hesitated. “I’ll stay. Longer. As long as you want. Where is he?”

Stryná smiled at her, old and sad, and sighed.

“Dear Viviane, if only I knew. He is north, or he was, so long ago.”

Viviane stared, and Stryná told her all of it: how she could hear the sleigh as it came, frost crackling against the earth, the soft laughter of the woman Stryná only called her, and the man riding with her, frozen like a statue in his seat.

A tall man, blond, broad of shoulder, according to Stryná. Viviane did not need the description; she was certain, absolutely certain, it was Kallias.

What made her pause, though, was the rest: the sleigh of ice, the spread of frost, the laughter of a woman pale as snow itself.

“You do not believe me,” Stryná said, with a sigh. “You should, dear one. You really should.”

Viviane just laughed, in the dirt, knees bleeding, laughed like the deranged. Stryná sighed, again, and strung the beads around her throat. She eyed Viviane’s parcel of rolls, but did not protest.

“Go north,” Stryná advised. “Follow the river. Do not attempt to travel with it again, girl; you have seen as well as any that it takes you only where it wills.”

“Thank you,” Viviane said, gathering herself. “For everything.”

She did not bother to recite the list they both knew, not even to say the very last of it: thank you for letting me go. Stryná nodded, and Viviane gathered her courage, and began the long journey north.

______________________________________________________________

Four days later - four days of walking and walking and walking and wishing only to the stars, the stars that could not hear her, or were at least nice enough to pretend they could not hear her wish fervently to be back home, or with Stryná and her warmth - Viviane stumbled into a town.

She fumbled her way to the nearest tavern, letting herself forget about little things like the general expectation that a person bought something when then entered a business. Viviane needed to be warm. And it was blessedly, blessedly warm inside; even more so by the fireplace, so Viviane slid into a seat right next to it and tried to look like she belonged.

A barmaid walked by, ale in hand. She looked at Viviane, quizzical; Vivianer smiled and looked away, holding her breath, praying she would keep walking.

The barmaid did, and Viviane exhaled.

She did not relax, not in the general sense; more so Viviane melted into the sound and warmth and flow of the building, more and more each minute. Conversations floated by her: and Yolande’s getting married, finally, it’ll be so nice to have her settled…

The harvest was good this year, praise the Mother. Do you think they’ll raise the taxes? Probably…

I wish I knew where you got that fabric, it’s divine. Oh, from…

And with the Princess married, finally! Oh, do you think it was that man, the one who came years ago?

Viviane perked up, listening a little sharper.

I don’t know, but he was headed that way. He seemed a good fellow. Nice head on his shoulders, confident walk. All the things the ladies…

She strained, but could not hear more.

“Miss?” a voice asked in front of her, and Viviane jerked back to her own body.

The barmaid was staring at her, almost wry.

“You’ve been traveling a while, miss?” The woman swept her gaze up and down Viviane’s body, catching at all the dirt. Viviane felt her accursed blush rise again.

“Yes,” she answered, finding her tongue. “Days.”

“Where to?” the woman asked, casual, leaning forward across the bar.

“The, um,” she sputtered. “I’m going to see the princess.”

It just flew out of her mouth. Viviane gaped at the words for a moment, at herself.

The barmaid raised an eyebrow. “If you’re sure. The northern road is difficult, miss. Especially for…”

Her eyes swooped up and down again. “Lonely travellers.”

Viviane smiled, forced. “Thank you very much for the warning.”

The barmaid scoffed, but then a man on the other side of the room yelled for beer, and she turned away.

Viviane took her chance and ran out of the tavern as quickly as her legs could carry her.

The northern road.

It was a start.

______________________________________________________________

She came upon her next town in a week, after eating the very last of her rolls and passing through a range of mountains she had never heard spoken of before. They were not so high as some, the ones Mama had called Tatry, once; those she passed on the river, though she did not know it.

All Viviane knew was they were different: not hers.

She kept walking anyway. Twice, at the bottom of long plains stretching so far Viviane caught herself wondering if she was even in the same lands anymore, if she had walked so far she had come upon a different world, she had to beg for passage against long stretches of water. Her beads worked well enough as payment; though the men captaining ships on foreign docks eyed her in other ways at first sight, they did not complain when she took a strand of red coral from her pocket, shining like pearl, and offered it in outstretched hands.

The castle was the first thing she saw, wide and stout upon the earth. It boasted none of the spires of the stories, none of the dark stone walls, but it was unquestionably beautiful, beautiful enough for a princess. Even as it was, half-buried in winter snow.

Viviane, dust-covered and cold and tired, stood before its gates and steeled her nerves. Just this, she promised herself. Just this. He will be married to her, and alive, and safe. Just this, and I will go home.

Her stomach rumbled and she flushed, even though no one could see.

She walked up the palace drive, though she never would have thought to call it such, walked right up to the front door, stepping and stepping and stepping through the snow, forcing her path and she had forced her path for so many miles.

Oh, her feet were so cold.

A snowball hit her, right as she neared the door. Viviane squawked and fell over, shocked and frozen.

A child laughed, behind her, and for a moment all Viviane could think of was Nora, laughing in her perunika on the mountainside. Oh, oh, oh.

I should never have come, she thought, but then she remembered how Kallias had bowed to her that night, and she regretted the words even in her mind. I will not regret, Viviane told herself. I will not fail him as he did not fail me.

Another snowball landed on the back of her head, and then a weight was on her back, just about right for a child, heavy as a stone and sinking with all the force of one.

And laughing like a child, too, which was the only reason Viviane did not scream.

Someone else did a moment later, and Viviane found herself facing the opposite end of at least three spears.

______________________________________________________________

It took Viviane less than a minute to realize her greatest problem, when a woman who was unquestionably the princess stood before her, raised on a dais like a goddess seeing a supplicant.

They did not speak the same language.

Eventually a servant was found, someone from home - Slovak, the princess said, find me a person who speaks Slovak. It did not erase the shame from her spine, her stomach, the feeling of being an ant underneath another person’s boot.

She still cried when the man they brought out started speaking, though. His accent was right, like he had grown up in their village, in the house next to hers. He spoke, and in his voice was home.

Viviane told him everything, warbling through tears. He watched her all the while, steady as stone.

The princess waited, solemn on her dais.

She had no good way to finish the story, not yet, so it drew to a close with the ever-lyrical and so here I am. The man did not so much as flinch, just turned to the princess and started to say something completely unintelligible.

Viviane forced herself to stand still and calm and wait, wait even longer than she already had. Each breath took a hundred years to draw and pass, in those long moments he theoretically recited her tale.

And she was still so hungry.

She expected the princess to say something, after all that, to say something and then for the man to say something she could understand. Viviane did not expect the woman to rush forward and fold her into her arms, murmuring something Viviane could not understand and perhaps never would.

Viviane felt the woman run along her back, comforting circles feather-light, like the very tips of her fingers were all that contacted the fabric of her dress.

Her dress. Her once-fine, now dirt-encrusted, snow-wet dress. Her apron, no better, her once-white blouse, the kerchief she’d had to slide into her pocket days ago so it was not whipped off of her head by the wind.

Tears clung beneath her eyes; she let them fall.

Later, much later, the man led her to a room with a bed that looked amazing, a thousand times better than anything she could’ve bought with coins she did not have in the nearby town, and even better: a bath, a bath, an actual bath!

Oh, she was probably crying again. Viviane didn’t care. A bath, and a mirror - a mirror! - and a stack of what looked like impossibly comfortable clothing nearby.

A bath!

The Mother, Viviane decided, looking down at water that after three runs finally floated clean around her, free of her own dust, is kind, and also exists.

After she had soaked for an eternity, a wonderful eternity in which Nora was in another room, and Grandmother was watching her, and Kallias was alive and safe and probably reading to Nora or something, Viviane stood and forced herself out of the bath.

The water ran off her, rivulets dripping down to her feet, sloughing out of her hair. She delighted in it, absolutely delighted in it, and then - she looked in the mirror.

Really looked in the mirror. Not just a passing glance: she stood, tall as she could, and took true stock of herself for the first time in years.

The first thing she noticed was her own ribs, countable enough to wince. The dark lines around her hips, her thighs, the bruises on her shins. The hair that was too long but she couldn’t bear to cut, the sun-streaked blush atop her cheeks, the ridge of her nose.

Viviane closed her eyes, and breathed deep, and looked again.

Her eyes were nice, she decided. Nice and blue. I have nice eyes.

Her legs were tired but long, long enough for her purposes, and they had carried her how far? Across how many miles, how many days, how many lands she should never have even thought to see?

I like my legs, Viviane decided. She twisted on her ankles, just to see the sides, the backs.

Her hair was nice, nice and pretty, and it floated across her shoulders when dry. Her nose was right for her face, her eyes were sunken but beautiful in their way. The sunburn gave her color, and it sat well against the wind-whipped skin beneath.

Her arms lacked the muscle they should have had but they were alright. Her hands were beautiful, calloused and worn and scarred from fish-knives and oh, how Viviane loved her hands.

I will do this, Viviane thought, looking at all of herself in the mirror. I can do this. I will find him, and I will bring him home, or if I do not I will bring myself peace.

I will do this. I will do this.

Then, she fell into bed and slept for what felt like a week.

______________________________________________________________

In the end, the princess gave her a ship.

Well, not gave, no one had the resources for that. But there was a ship, a trading barge heading north along the sea, and the princess bought her passage to its northernmost stop.

Viviane tried to thank her, tried her very best, repeated it first steadily and then through choking tears, but the man was not there and the princess seemed to get the message anyway. They parted as friends, Viviane thought, or at least hoped.

Likely enough they would never meet again, but that was alright. It had to be, it had to be. Viviane had left too much behind for it not to be alright.

It was attacked by pirates (a new word for Viviane, marodör; only later would she learn the translation, and only later would someone manage to teach her what that meant. Landlocked children; pity their souls) within four days.

Naturally, she was asleep: Viviane only woke to the thump of fighting, above her, but only a little at that. Businessmen were not swordsmen, as a rule, and though the princess had been kind beyond measure she had not been that kind beyond measure.

She could not help her scream at the sight of them, tall and dark and bleeding into the night as if it cloaked them. The two men smiled, though, smiled at the sound of her fear, and said something in a language she did not know.

Whatever it was, it made the once-captain of their ship pale. Viviane rejected her fear; I will not cower in the face of what I do not know.

She thought of her hands, again, the lovely, perfect, aged and cracked skin on her hands. They forced her forward, hands on her waist, her gifted dress. They pulled off her apron, untied its rippons, pulled the kerchief from her hair.

It was the one that had been Nora’s, before, still edged in lípa blossoms, forever in bloom. She screeched and jumped for it, boots landing on the unfamiliar wood of an unfamiliar ship.

A woman’s voice sounded, and the man who had held it high above her head let it drop, fluttering to the deck. She dived for it, desperate, unsteady until it was once again safely tied about her head.

“Slovak?” the woman asked.

Viviane’s head shot up.

“Yes,” she said, to the creature in front of her. Long, golden hair, not blonde but wheat-gold and then some. Tall, taller than Viviane by hands, in the shirt and trousers of men, sword belted around her own waist.

“Thank you,” she managed, when her shock abated. “For my kerchief. It is -” I should not be saying this to a maradör, I think - “dear. To me.”

“I guessed,” the woman said, languid and loose but so heavily wrong Viviane knew it was not possibly her mother tongue, “by the lípa.”

Her finger, long, fine as porcelain, smoothed against an embroidered blossom. Viviane swallowed.

“You’re a long way from home,” the woman said, conversational.

“Where am I?” Viviane asked, brave as she could muster. “I have not known for… a long time.”

At that, the woman laughed, and it rang out against the water like the chime of a bell.

“You stand,” she announced, pride hanging like honey on every word, “on the ship of the Morrigan, traveler. Tell me: what do you offer?”

Offer, Viviane thought. I do not have very much to offer.

The sea below them was dark and cold, she knew. Very, very cold.

“A story,” she said, finally. “I cannot offer more than that. Unless you would like my clothes. Please, let me at least keep the kerchief, and perhaps my boots.”

The Morrigan lifted an eyebrow, glorious, impassive.

“Tell it to me first,” she demanded, not without humor. “Then I will decide on your boots.”

She was a good listener, Viviane decided, though the ship rocked forward around them, thankfully in the direction she had been going before. Luck, luck, oh, Viviane was lucky.

If nothing else, she promised herself while relaying her stay with Stryná, I can swim.

At the end, the Morrigan looked as if she was about to cry, and for all the world Viviane could not have guessed what did it.

(In truth, it was this: the Morrigan’s cousin, a man who had once promised to keep her safe, disappeared years ago, marrying a much older woman to keep safe the lands they both called home. The woman died, not too long later, and yet nothing had ever been heard of the man many called whore and Morrigan called brother, or else Rhysand.

He was happily married to an artist in their hometown, but Morrigan had been at sea for much too long to know that. She’d find out in a few years, when she went home and her nephew greeted her and Cassian and Azriel at the door.)

Instead, the Morrigan promised to bring her to the end of the sea - they were going there, anyway, something about a man named Kier. Viviane had stopped paying quite as much attention by then, still tired for all the excitement of the night.

Morrigan offered her a bed, or what she called a bed. Really it was a collection of ropes strung between two poles, but Viviane was too tired to care. It was better than the ground, anyway.

It should have been hard to fall asleep, between the rocking of the ship and the strangeness of the ropes and the pirates, but Viviane managed.

She was really quite good at that.

______________________________________________________________

Morrigan left her on the northernmost shore of the sea with only two words: go north.

Her friend - yes, friend, the journey had been long enough for that - knew little of the woman she called the snow queen. Viviane would not say that, only describe her as she had been described: a pale creature, of ice or near it, glowing as the moon. Viviane, frankly, did not dare to call her anything she knew to be true.

Don’t waste your worry, she could hear Mama chiding. There is too much else for that.

Go north, Morrigan said, so Viviane did. She climbed the shoulders of mountains just to slide down the other side, letting her feet slip further and further downwards with every step, not daring to lean forward and shoot down on her stomach as she might have, once. I cannot find Kallias if I am dead.

Through great plains, wide and blanketed in white snow just starting to fade into the earth, the sky. Through forests stretching to the very edges of the horizon, spindly pines just starting to show the faintest green of new growth. She walked, and she walked, and she walked.

As she walked, she talked. Not to anyone, not to any imagined companion, just the trees and the grasses and the snow and the air: I am Viviane, and I am searching for Kallias. I will find him; I will not fail him as he did not fail me. I will go home, I will go home. I will bring him home, I will bring whatever peace I may find with him home, I will go home.

“I will go back to Nora,” she said, aloud, and of course there was no response, not from the hills sloping ahead of her. There had never been, not from the trees, not from the snow. She expected none now.

“Noarsa?” a voice asked behind her, and Viviane screamed.

It came from a woman - Viviane felt safer, but not much - in furs, dark and brown and probably beautifully warm.

The woman said something else; Viviane, wide-eyed, again could not understand. She shook her head, again and again.

The woman pointed to Viviane’s cloak, and she unhooked it as quickly as possible. Viviane could not help but shiver, without it; the woman felt her cloak and tied it back around Viviane’s shoulders, kind and fast.

She motioned to move, then, and Viviane watched as she took steps through what little remained of the snow, before turning around to look at her, eyes wide.

Viviane, without anything else to do, followed.

She had a cabin, apparently, or something that looked conic but otherwise similar; a building of wood so warm that Viviane nearly cried to enter. The woman gave her a meal, too, a fish entirely unidentifiable but delicious, or it would’ve been, if she’d bothered to taste it. Viviane threw it down her throat like the woman would snatch it away, determined that she would not have the chance.

The aftertaste, fish-juice lingering on the lining of her throat, was really good.

Eventually the woman sat down next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, and shifted a blanket onto her lap. Thick and furred and soft, so lovely and soft.

Viviane did not intend to fall asleep, not at all. She intended to thank the woman as best she could and continue north, always north. North until she found him.

But warm in the woman’s home, warm under the blanket, full for the first time in weeks, Viviane fell asleep.

It rose before her, piercing the sky in a spire as thin and spindly as the tip of a finger. A wind whistled against her ears, through her clothing, slipping through the weave of the threat and the weave of her skin and the stream of blood beating against her heart.

She moved, or rather she did not move, but Viviane shifted as the world shifted, and then she was inside. It closed around her like water did the drowned, stealing breath from throat and lung until there was nothing else to steal but life.

She kept her air, though. When she tried to breathe it out it held in her mouth, going nowhere, trapped in - in - in something, something cold and hard and smooth, so smooth.

Viviane would not say it, would not think it. It could not be. It was not, it was not.

Panic creased against her spine.

She held there, trapped, a fly in amber but not amber, definitely not amber. She’d be sick, if she could, if she could move her stomach enough for it to convulse, if her throat could shift enough to retch.

It could not happen, Viviane knew, and yet. And yet she tried to rail against it, because she had to, she had to, Nora and Grandmother and Kallias were waiting and she had to.

She tensed her muscles, but they would not tighten, would not move. She blinked, but her eyelid would not close. She screamed, but her mouth would not open, the sound would not bellow out of her chest.

So she hung, trapped in her body, trapped in it. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

He appeared before her, then, and Viviane wanted to gasp, felt the urge to gasp, did everything but actually gasp, because she could not. She wanted to laugh, too; four years, and he looked the same.

Four years, a disappearance, and a funeral. Kallias looked the same.

She tried to reach for him, but she could not, was stuck in it, cold and hard and burning. She tried, and she tried, and she tried.

And then - then. He laughed. Laughed, and laughed, and then Viviane was fifteen again, begging to borrow a scarf, and he was laughing.

She woke with a gasp, shooting upwards from the blanket, pushing it down her shoulders. The woman looked to her from the other side of her home, concerned, or at least looking concerned, but Viviane could not stay. It was under her skin, thrumming in her blood - leave, leave now, get out get out get out.

Viviane ran for the faraway hills, and the woman did not follow.

______________________________________________________________

It started as just a spark, faraway, nearly indistinguishable from the glow of the horizon.

Viviane, hungry and tired and cold, so, so cold, saw it. For a moment she was a girl again, raising her thumb to squash the vision of it, whatever it was.

And then she stumbled onward.

______________________________________________________________

Her toes were so numb she was thinking about pulling off her boot to check that they were still there when she looked up and saw it again. The dying light of day reflected against it, whatever it was, a torch shining off water.

Viviane pulled off her boot and started to desperately rub against her colorless toes, praying she could keep them.

______________________________________________________________

In the morning - the cloudless, beautiful morning - it held the light of the sun, as bright as a star itself.

But the wind had picked up, so Viviane, forcing herself forward, did not notice.

______________________________________________________________

By the third day, Viviane figured she was going to die.

I am lost, she thought, not bearing to open her mouth, to expose her throat to the cold that cracked her skin, that stuck against every hair of her body. I am lost, and there is nothing to eat, and I am so cold. So very cold.

This was a mistake, Viviane thought, pressing against the relentless wind. She pursed her lips, tasting blood when the motion tore apart her flesh.

I am going to die, she thought. And then she looked up, and before her, unmistakable, unbelievable: the palace of the Snow Queen.

______________________________________________________________

Viviane pushed through the door, and it made a sound like the booming of ice upon a lake, cracking beneath your feet. It is like a drum, the noise, fear lighting through your spine.

Viviane closed the door, and fell into the deep.

______________________________________________________________

“Mama,” Nora said, reaching for her, pudgy little arms stretching past the wooden bars of her makeshift cradle.

“Sister,” Viviane corrected against the pang of her heart. Nora clung to her hair, heavy in her hands.

“Mama,” Nora said, again. This time quieter, a sigh against Viviane’s blouse. She stretched her arms around Viviane, too small to make it any further than her shoulders, holding against her like - well, like a baby. Her baby.

“Sister,” Viviane corrected, again, but with a little sigh Nora closed her eyes and fell asleep. And Viviane should’ve put her down, there was so much to do - Milo would be by in an hour, at least, and she needed to get ready - but she didn’t.

She leaned down to brush a kiss against the soft down of her sister’s hair. Nora cuddled closer, if possible, clutching wider in her sleep.

Viviane smiled, and when the tears came she did not fight them, slipping down her cheeks.

______________________________________________________________

“Daughter,” Stryná called.

“Stryná,” Viviane responded, wiping soap suds from the dishes onto her apron. “Is there something -”

She broke off at the sight of the other woman, holding out a skirt edged in a pattern of perunika, pretty purple blossoms.

“A beautiful gift,” Stryná said, smiling. “A beautiful gift for my beautiful daughter.”

Viviane took it. Held the fabric between her fingers, fingered the perunika locked in eternal bloom.

Only later, when she was alone, did Viviane cry. She didn’t know why, not even a little, but she could not look at it without her throat tightening, without tears pricking at the bottom of her eyelids.

She threw the skirt, Stryná’s gift, in the dresser, buried it behind the threadbare clothing from - when?

Before, came in her mind, certain, sure.

Before what?

Viviane didn’t know, but she couldn’t look at the flowers anymore. She couldn’t look at anything, tears clouding her vision.

Why, she begged, why?

______________________________________________________________

The Snow Queen looked at her, and Viviane looked back.

She did not fall to her knees, did not beg, did not plead.

If I get on my knees, Viviane thought, I will never get up again.

The Snow Queen did not say anything, not a word. Viviane breathed in the frigid air and wondered, again, if she was going to die.

She brushed her hands against her skirt, her apron. Nerves or energy or something, Viviane did not know. It was like she could not think, could not breathe.

Her hand brushed against her hair, and a clump of ice flicked off. She stared at it, landing quietly on the floor, too small to make even the smallest sound.

The Snow Queen watched her, unblinking.

Viviane swallowed her fear, all of it, letting it sink down to the pit of her stomach.

In her pocket, something went clink!

And the Snow Queen lifted a brow.

Viviane, nervous still, slid her hand down against the fabric, slipping into her pocket to pull out her last, precious string of red coral beads.

“It is not much,” she said, small, trying to be brave. “But it is all I have left.”

The Snow Queen laughed, high and bright, sweeping off of her throne, her dais, to snatch the beads from her hand. They clinked, tinny, sharp.

“If you want him,” she said, sly. “By all means.”

A door that had not been, before, slid open across the room, and Viviane ran through it like bears were clawing at her feet.

______________________________________________________________

She did not breathe, not once.

It could not be real. It could not. Viviane knew very, very well that it could not.

Kallias sat before a table, frowning down at small shards of ice. Some had been arranged into an E - a small, meticulous E.

“Kal?” she called, still breathless, and he jumped, and his hand moved and ruined the letter.

He cursed. He did not look back.

“Kallias?” she asked, again. He frowned at the shards.

“Kallias,” Viviane said, louder, insistent.

He huffed, frowning further when his breath moved the shards around.

“Kal,” she shouted, tapping his shoulder. With a - with a snarl, he whirled to his feet, throwing her hand off his shoulder like it repulsed him.

“Stop,” he snapped. “Go away. Leave me alone to finish this.”

Viviane recoiled, mostly in shock. “I - Kal, Kal -”

“Go away,” he snarled. “I hate you.”

She gasped, she could not help it. And then - and then -

“I hope you die,” Kallias muttered. “Eternity, aeternitas, I hope you freeze.”

Involuntarily, Viviane let out a sob, loud and sharp.

Eternity, aeternitas, I hope you freeze. Gods, gods, great and holy - gods. Gods.

And suddenly all she could see was Nora, gurgling in her cradle, reaching upwards, perfectly trusting.

Her knees gave out, and she fell, crashing into the floor. Kallias swore and leaned down to pick her up, muttering under his breath, but she did not see him or feel him or know him and she sagged against him like a falling tree.

And she was crying, desperately crying, and as he tried to maneuver her back to her feet the tears landed against his skin, his cheek.

One stuck to his eyelid, strangely enough. And as he cursed and muttered, swinging her to unsteady feet, as she crashed back down, pulling him with her - it slid. Slid down the curve of his socket, around his eye, melding against the membrane, the whites of his eye. And he blinked, because it was against his eye, and it worked its way in, warmer than any tear should have been, or was he the one that was cold?

And, and, and.

Deep inside him, something tiny, miniscule, unimportant to all others, all else - it melted away, the last vestige of snow under the heat of the summer sun.

“Viviane,” he gasped. “Viviane.”

______________________________________________________________

A year, a whole year later they were home, finally home. Or Viviane was home, and Kallias was with her; he did not seem to care about the difference.

Neither did she.

But the perunika bloomed, and Nora laughed as she ran through them, Kallias chasing her, laughing louder than he had in a lifetime.

Viviane wore flowers in her hair, because she could, because she wanted to. The lìpa bloomed, bright and holy against the cloudless sky.

(A world away, the Snow Queen ran her fingers against the beads at her throat, red and smooth. And she smiled.)