Princess Snow and the Empress

7: Bones & Shadow Flowers

The burrow was surprisingly spacious. It was high enough for Snow to sit leaning forward, roots tendrils brushing the top of her head, and wide enough for her to lie down in a fetal position.

She patted the dried grass around her and recoiled when her hand landed on something smooth like a stone but with jagged little teeth. A bolt of lightning lit up the burrow, revealing a neat pile of thin bones and small animal skulls.

Thunder followed, rumbling her earthen sanctuary. Snow rubbed her arms and blew on her fingers. If only she knew how to start a fire or find water. She contemplated holding her hands out the burrow to collect rainwater but decided against it.

What's the point of my education when I don't even know how to keep myself alive! I don't even know what berries to pick. Even if I managed to catch anything, I don't have a fire to cook it. She hoped she did not have to resort to eating worms or insects.

Her mind raced, trying to think of all the reasons the Empress wanted to kill her but she drew a blank. Did she have a grudge against my mother? But she's long dead. Come to think of it, many of the other women and girls from my past are long dead.

In her younger years, Snow had only seen Empress Hu at banquets and functions. She did not pay much attention to her then; the Empress was merely a lower-level concubine, one of many. That changed one evening, when Hu sashayed into the banquet hall, swathed in lychee red robes and dripping with gold jewelry.

Every head had turned as she shimmered her way to her table, the embroidered chrysanthemums on her sleeves catching in the light. She seated herself to the Emperor's right hand side, directly across Empress Lana.

Killing chi crackled in the air as Empress Lana and the rest of the concubines cast hard stares in Hu's direction, their tight-lipped smiles frozen on their faces. Some had looked downright upset – the jade butterflies and velvet flowers in their headdresses were no match for Hu's rubies and golden hairpins. From their expressions, they seemed to have the same question in mind: How did she get promoted over all of them to become Imperial Noble Consort, second only to the Empress?

Hu, in turn, graced them with a coquettish smile as she sipped from her porcelain tea cup.

Snow had found the whole spectacle amusing, a part of her savoring the sight of the women swallowing their jealousy. However, when the Emperor, her father, sat down at his dais and conversed only with Hu the whole evening, her mirth evaporated. It was as if Snow, and everyone else in the hall were invisible.

What is it about this woman? She pushed aside the bones and bits of fur with her foot. Something the Empress said niggled at her.

"If the outbreak had not carried away the Crown Princess, Consort Mei's and Concubine Yue's daughters all those years ago, perhaps you could have learnt from them. They were such well-behaved princesses."

Outbreak. She had been too young to remember much, but in the darkness of the burrow, her mind started tossing up long forgotten memories, like a child throwing books from a shelf.

The doors of her chambers slammed shut. A wooden bar grated as it slid across the panels from the outside.

"Let us out, let us out!" The other princesses banged on the doors while Snow stood aside with her pet dog in her arms, too stunned to react.

From her window, she spied royal doctors and servants hurrying across the courtyard with cloth masks over their faces.

A blank in her recollections. Then...

Her nanny bent over with racking coughs.

The princess whose visage reminded Snow of a steamed meat bun with beady eyes, lying in her bed with damp cloths on her head and exposed arms, her normally pallid face the color of puce.