Snow White Series Part 17
New to the blog? Read from the beginning here.
Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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At this point, I shall skip ahead for some time in my tale. The rest of the time until the wedding comprised of sending out invitations to various foreign dignitaries and gathering up the supplies needed to feast hundreds of people. A good amount of time was spent on my dress, too, much to my dismay, but my younger cousins insisted. As grand duchesses, they, too would one day get a dress almost as fine as mine, especially if we managed to marry them off as we had Ekaterina and as Daimon would be – to royal heirs – but this was the here-and-now of some silly girls.
It was, of course, in finest silks from the far-off Kingdom of Heaven beyond the Sea of Grass. It was strange, to think that such thin cloth, woven – it was whispered – from butterflies was so sturdy. It certainly looked like their multicoloured wings, a pale spring green with emerald threads woven through. Eira and Bronwen took it upon themselves to embroider a veil for me, carefully placing the leaves and apples so that it would look perfect while not covering my face. As royal heir and Queen-to-be marrying a Consort, not a King, I would not cover my face in obedience to anyone but the gods.
Even though Talia was Queen, and by all accounts acknowledged as my mother, the fact that she had tried to kill me – and the fact that she was still barren, and touchy about it – meant that I would need to find someone else to play the role of crone for me. Luckily, my eldest aunt graciously stepped in. I didn’t want Talia to be a part of my wedding anyways, but I would have to invite her. She was, after all, my Queen, my father’s wife, and my stepmother. Ekaterina sent a note saying that of course she, as my nearest female relative of the right age, would play the role of mother, carrying her child for even more luck. Bronwen and Eira fought like wet cats in a sack – albeit very polite ones – until I put my foot down and declared that one of Daimon’s cousins would be the maiden. It balanced out nicely – one relative of mine, one of his, and one that was both of ours.
We would, of course, be married at my father’s castle, the beating heart of Sphira. It had worked once already, for his and Jetalia’s wedding, and would be sure to hold all that we expected. By tradition, royal weddings were open to every citizen of Sphira that could travel there. Everyone in town would certainly attend, and any relatives of theirs, as well as those that could secure a room in the inn or in the camp that was sure to spring up. My aunts and uncles and cousins would, of course, be in attendance, as well as all of Daimon’s immediate family and the majority of his aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thuvian relatives of Jetalia’s were invited, since we were now kin, but we didn’t expect any of them to show. Lyall, the king, disliked me, Cosmas disliked Jetalia, and Jetalia was only going to show because she lived in the castle. Then there would be representatives from the Oceanic States – all seven of them – and the Khan of the horse tribes in the Sea of Grass. There would also be various dignitaries of some sort from Albion and Aquitaine to the west. Sphira was in the middle of the Occidental map, geographically and politically. Of course, this could all change in the next war, but we had held our borders more or less at the same place for the past seven generations and I was not going to be the Queen that lost the country.
The day finally came, stuffed with people in their finest, from plain cottons and wool to finer linens and silks. I was glad we could not fit in the temple, and instead had elected to hold the ceremony in a field, full of summer flowers. I would have had it in the apple clearing, if I could, but it wouldn’t fit our two families, let alone the people that needed to be there for politicking.
The priest came, a priest of the Lady of Desires, to preside over it all. He wore robes of grey, simple ones, and spoke at length about love and desires, our desire for peace, for friendship. It was rather pretty, the words much the same as those spoken at Jetalia and Ekaterina’s weddings. When he finished speaking and declared us bonded in the eyes of the gods, calling all present to act as witnesses, I was allowed to kiss my Consort and we were walked back to the castle to eat with the selected few deemed important enough: our families, anyone royal, and high-ranking diplomats sent in place of royals who could not leave their countries. Inside, we dined on fowl and fish and all manner of delicacies, fine wines, good beer and the like, but outside all we could feed the multitudes that had come to see their princess marry was bread. It was good bread, baked well, but nothing else. I felt a little guilty, but I could not bankrupt our coffers nor call forth more wheat from the ground simply because I was having a wedding.
At my table – our table, really, since Daimon and I were married now, odd as that seemed – sat my father and Jetalia, icier than ever, and his eldest brother and Ekaterina, then further along the table all our aunts, uncles, and cousins that had attended. It was a little hard, and I kept having flashbacks to that terrible May Day banquet. Things loosened up some when the presents were brought out – as I was the one getting married, I had to have some token to present everyone as a thank-you for attending my wedding. For most of them, it was various fine fabrics in my signature greens and reds or ciders pressed in Sphiran presses, but a few received personalized gifts. These were also Daimon’s responsibility, and it was with his advice that I gave his brother a hunting horn, all his aunts handkerchiefs of that strange, light butterfly fabric, and sent a barrel of the finest cider pressed from the apples of my own clearing to his parents. He had insisted on getting the presents for my family himself, and presented them each with gifts that were surprisingly well-matched to their recipients for one who had refused any advice. Ekaterina received a dress for her child, Bertram some war paint of the Albion style, and Eira a beautifully-made bow. My father he presented with a blank book, bound in leather and filled with thin, cream-coloured paper. Jetalia he nailed perfectly with a pair of dancing slippers just her size in the softest leather dyed a perfect red. The heels has a thin bit of iron so that she clicked on the floor, making people notice her. She gasped with delight upon seeing them, and immediately put them on. She thanked him effusively, but he just smiled tightly. Trying to kill one’s wife does put one rather at odds with a person.
The night went on and the feast ended. Apples were brought out, of course, as a slap in the face to Jetalia and my symbol, and the wines continued to flow. People began dancing, and Talia smiled and danced with my father in her new shoes. However, within the hour she began to complain of breathlessness. Sitting only seemed to worsen it, so she got up again to dance. When she sat down again, this time for the ache in her feet, the breathlessness worsened. She had to keep dancing, vain creature that she was, spinning and twirling and showing off, trying to outshine me even at my own wedding, or the lack of air would overwhelm her.
When I mentioned to Daimon my displeasure at her actions, he smiled at me curiously.
“She can’t help it, she has to.”
“I know she does! She’s always trying to prove she’s better than me, prettier than me, and she hates me, but really! It’s my wedding! Can’t she accept that with grace?”
His smile tightened, the same one he’d used when I noticed the snowflake marked on a page in his translation of the ancient book. “If she stops moving, she won’t be able to breathe at all. Her shoes are – special.”
I stared at him. “You didn’t.”
“I did. She did try to kill my friend, and now, my bride. If I am to be your consort, I must protect you, no?”
I continued staring, mouth open in a most uncouth manner. Then an idea occurred to me.
“But eventually she’s going to have to stop, I mean, she can’t dance forever. She needs to sleep and eat and the like.”
“She won’t be able to. If she stops moving for even a moment, her blood will cease to flow and her breathing become even more laboured. Already every time she sits it worsens. If she does it enough, the lack of movement will cause her lungs to seize up and she’ll asphyxiate.”
“You’re going to make her dance to her death.” I said it quietly, hoping none of the now wine-addled or sleepy guests wouldn’t hear me over the music. Jetalia’s heels kept clicking on the floor, evidence that she was moving still, still alive.
“I did not force her. Those shoes – had she talked to me and let me get a word in edgewise around her false thanks – have a specialized poison that can only enter the skin when one has been exercising. They were meant as a curiosity from one scholar to another, as I am a scholar of books that happened upon something a scholar of plants might appreciate. It is not my fault her greedy ways and rude manner made me unable to explain.”
I looked over at Talia. She seemed to be having the time of her life, heels clicking at the stone floor as she flirted with every man in the room right in front of my father. He just smiled indulgently, still bound by my wish so many years before to be happy for her sake.
I looked at my uncles – they still had the scars from some twenty years ago now when those bloodthirsty Thuvians had thought to attack us.
I looked at the Thuvian ambassador, who was eying me like a hawk, like he was watching to see if a poison was working on me or as if calculating how hard it would be to stab me.
I looked at my hands, still paler and more bloodless than they had ever been before. Jetalia’s poison had made me far more ill than I liked to admit. I was almost completely recovered, but I still looked pale as death rather than snow.
I looked at Daimon, my friend and now husband, who had come to my aid when I and my country needed it most.
I looked back at Talia, biting my lip. Daimon took my hand. She seemed to still be enjoying herself, whirling about quickly, skirts flaring, but I could see a sheen of sweat on her face, and she looked faintly green – or was that just my imagination?
“Come,” said Daimon, standing up and drawing me towards him. “Let us go up to your – our – room before everyone gets too drunk, so they can all serenade us with those bawdy songs everyone loves to sing to embarrass newlyweds.
Still shocked that my gentle Daimon – who had hated even the thought of war, the chance that people might die in that battle that never was, the scholar – had poisoned my stepmother out of love for me, I stood up and followed him. As we crossed the room fingers still entwined with his, I realized that his hand wasn’t as soft as a scholar’s was supposed to be, and remembered that he had led troops into skirmishes with bandits and the Northern tribesmen when they thought to make easy pickings of farmers, that he had to hunt in the winter to help feed his people and stave off wolves. People began to notice us walking away, and we were deluged in flowers and fistfuls of grain – which I had made sure would be carefully swept up and saved to be planted come spring – as wells as people.
They tied our wrists together with a bit of ribbon – an Oren custom I had not seen when Ekaterina was married, having been too tired after the festivities – and led us up to our rooms. Jetalia came with them, a bit drunk on wine and flattery, still dancing. The guests seemed to think she was dancing by choice, as did she, though she was visibly tired – and they all danced around us until we came to the closed door. Someone threw it open to cheers, and inside I could see soft candlelight and late apple blossoms. We were pushed inside and the door shut behind us, and the last memory I’ll share with you before I learned of Talia’s death the next morning was the surprisingly ardour he kissed me with, and the fact that his freckled lips were just as soft as they had been when he accepted my proposal.
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FIN
