Snow

She didn't smile at him. When she was gone he sat watching his nurse, feeling his eyes prickle hot wet.

"Did I fall asleep, love?" his nurse asked when she woke.

"Just for a minute."

"You look so sad," she said. "Are you unwell? I could make you some tea or--"

"I'm fine," David said, voice cracking, and ice bloomed across the wall behind his head. It took two weeks to melt.

***

The year he turned fifteen the new mother he'd never met died. She threw herself off the far tower, right down into the frozen river. Her body broke through the ice and came back up encased in it. It took four days in a room full of candles for all the water surrounding her to melt.

David saw the funeral from a hallway looking out over the courtyard, stood next to his nurse while far down below his father lit a funeral pyre and then turned to hold his children's hands. He waited while his wife burned, nobles passing by and pressing ornate twisting folds of paper into his hands. "Sorrow notes," his nurse whispered when he asked what they were. David wished he was down there with paper resting in his hands. He wished his father was waiting to touch his hand. He would like to write out words for him, dozens of them, but he didn't know how to. He made gingerbread instead, later, but his nurse ate it all before he could think of a way to find his father.

"You're a love to make this for me," she said, and her eyes were sparkling. David could see the swollen joints in her hands pressing hard against her skin.

"We need to get more onions tomorrow," he said, and passed her the last piece of gingerbread.

***

Two years later the second chamberlain's wife died of a wracking cough. She said the cough was nothing until the end, until she couldn't hide the red-brown drenched handkerchiefs any longer and blood streamed out of her mouth with every breath she took. In the days before she slipped into a sleep she never woke from David's nurse never left her side. David learned how to cook eggs and brew tea and tried to wash the sheets. The chamberlain's wife said it was fine that they ended up with holes in them. He heard her say, "The King never asks about him?" in a whisper-cracked voice to his nurse toward the end of her last day.

"No," his nurse said. "The poor little love. Almost grown and what will happen to him then?”

"Does he ever ask? About anything?"

"He used to ask about his father. But never about anything else."

"Odd," the chamberlain's wife said, and her voice was a wheeze now, a creaky wind whisper.

"He asked me what a curse was once but then never brought it up again. Never asked another question. He's a strange one, you know. Just drifts along like he's asleep."

"Who does he have to wake up for?" his nurse said, and her voice was sad.

David rested his head against the window and watched the cup of tea he was holding freeze in his hands. He hugged his nurse when the chamberlain's wife breathed her last breath. Her tears rolled down her face in freezing cold rivulets, fell as tiny pieces of ice that shattered as soon as they hit the floor.

Chapter Two

Joseph met them in the forest. Night was falling and he was walking home, a stag slung over his shoulders and dripping blood down over his coat. He was whistling. He stopped when he saw them, two well-dressed figures appearing out of the woods right in front of him, mounted on horses that hadn't ever known hunger.

"You've been hunting," one of the figures said, he dropped to his knees, looking at the ground.

There was nothing to see but white, nothing to feel but cold.

"Look at my sister when she's addressing you," another voice said, deeper but a twin to the first one, and he looked up.

He knew who she was as soon as he saw her. His mother's sister had journeyed to the cathedral to pray for the safe return of her daughter, who'd decided to follow a prophet who'd decreed that the world would end unless the faithful journeyed West and visited a sacred spring. His cousin never returned and all his aunt had were stories of her own travels, of the great glass windows in the cathedral, of the priests' soft hands and the oil they used for anointing. Of the Princess and the Prince, who she'd seen at an afternoon service, sitting together with their heads bowed throughout. "So beautiful," his aunt had said. "The Princess--it's like the very stars of heaven shine through her. And the Prince! Oh my," and here her voice had gone fluttery and she'd paused, pressed one hand over her heart and shared a knowing smile with his mother. He hadn't said anything but thought that his cousin's certain death had loosened his aunt's mind. No one shone like the stars.