Snow ✓

Hide-and-Seek

Snow thought Mat had likely intended for her to hide in the cavern he had shown her, but in her panic, she couldn't remember precisely where it was, and if she couldn't go down, it only made sense to go up. So, she climbed, the bark breaking off on her skin and turning her fingers and toes into sappy stubs, and the guilt at having run again while others braved a violent onslaught meant for her churning like a rotten egg in her gut. It wasn't lost on her that she must look blistering white against the sooty backdrop, but she had outpaced the man with the melted face. Before she bolted for the forest, she had gotten a quick look at his smooth, pink splotches, wrinkled at the edges.

Sometimes monsters look the part.

When she dashed past him, he had held up his hands looking more afraid than eager to grab her. His hesitation had given her a head start, and she was a quick sprinter, even in a dress. The best she could hope for now was to hide in the crook of a tree. If she made herself as small as possible, he might pass her by. She had done it countless times, outplaying her brother at hide-and-seek in these very woods, a game he had often insisted they play. He had also often insisted on being the seeker with a persistence that had annoyed her then but felt ominous now.

Snow swung her leg up onto a branch that felt a safe distance from the ground and crouched with her back against the tree trunk, facing the opposite direction in which they had entered the forest, hope pulling on a feeble string in her chest. She imagined what it might have felt like to have made it to Mat's hideaway, hunkered down in the hole, awaiting salvation or damnation like a sitting hen, not knowing who was coming down the stairs until he stood before her. Suddenly she didn't feel so sorry about its being out of reach.

A twig snapped opposite her side of the tree, still a ways off, but he was headed in the right direction. The sounds of his bumbling and cursing every time he tripped were getting closer until he slowed to a stop maybe a few trees away from hers. She was sure she had been had. Unable to see him from her angle, she listened as he groused about the smell and started coughing, which escalated into a hacking, and then--her lip curled—upchucking.

To hell with this.

Without giving it much thought, Snow took advantage of the distraction and scampered back down, quick as a spider, ignoring the new wounds opening on her arms and legs as she went. The soot cushioned the crunch of her footsteps as she darted over roots and circled back toward the tree line.

Keeping to the shadows, she scanned the yard as she wracked her brain for some semblance of a plan, but all ghosts of a strategy dissipated as she caught sight of Gran making a mad dash for the other two men with Mat nowhere in sight. It was then that the end game seemed easy; the ship wasn't leaving without her, so she would give them what they had come for.

Snow ran out into the light as the man whose forehead was smeared with red screamed at his companion to kill the old woman. No. His comrade didn't move fast enough for his liking. "No!" she screamed at the glint of metal, a thread between the man and the sun. A yowl fit for a wounded animal burst out of her as he swung the sword.