Snow ✓

There's No One like Family

Back at the cottage, Snow went to bed sopping wet under the pretense of a cold. There she huddled under the covers, feeling the wonder at having visited Elis' shop spoiling inside her, until the next morning. Body heavy with troubled sleep, she rolled over and felt the bulge of Fantastic Folklore trapped beneath her mattress, the reality of it a swift prick to her psyche. It hadn't all been a dream. The old fears she had known her first moons in this house came creeping back like a persistent mold, and for that, she hated the tinker.

Snow climbed out of bed and wiggled the book out from under the mattress with the intent to chuck it but settled back onto the bed before she knew what she was doing, arrested by the velvety cover and silver lettering. What was more escapist than a good story?

No sooner had she cracked the book open and Mat knocked. Snow thought about hiding the book away but decided against it.

"You should burn that thing," he said sternly on sight while she marveled at a pastel portrait of mustard-colored pygmy unicorns with tiny ears and languid eyes. The bed sagged as he sat down beside her. "There anything about you in there?"

"No, but there's an empty page in the back; I'm thinking of inking me in."

It infuriated her how he had a habit of lingering, letting niceties pile on what he came to say.

She slammed the book shut, determined to do what he could not--slice open the wound: "Myst wasn't the first town I ever saw. Eliwood took me to one once to meet a captain of a ship in the sky," she said, accentuating her brother's words with mock wonder. "I never saw it, but I heard it without ever learning what it was, until I saw it fly over the cottage."

"He took you to see her," he said derisively.

She nodded. "But he changed his mind." No matter Eli's initial intentions, he had ultimately changed his mind.

Mat looked away, his knuckles white as he gripped his knees. "But he got on—"

"Yes," she said, standing up.

"He met her—"

"Yes," she said, tossing the book onto the bed.

"And told her about you."

"He paid for that," she said, wheeling around, her expression sharper than a broken eggshell.

"Did you know who she was, what she was doing--why your brother signed on?"

"No."

"He boasted about the things he did to you."

Her eyebrow cocked.

"That he made you into what you are."

"What am I?" she asked, genuinely curious to hear the answer.

He sat a little straighter and looked away, visibly uncomfortable, then said, as if it were a curse: "A chimera."

The word was familiar but didn't bring her eyebrow any lower.

"Part human, part.... That he manipulated your genetic makeup!" he said, gesturing in a wide arc toward her impatiently. "He bragged that he had already achieved what Elsie never could—" his mouth kept moving, but the words died as he struggled to reduce her to a simple explanation and came up short.