Snow (8 page)

"You know what happens if you eat them?" Alec said.

David shook his head.

"Me either," Alec said. "But I don't want to find out. And neither do you."

David curled the hand hovering over the fruit back against his side. The cart hitched over a bump and the piece of fruit fell away. He saw it split open as it hit the ground. Inside it was white, the deep endless color of snow.

It cleared the moment they left his mother's forest. David could feel it, the air no longer rushing thick and bitter around him. He could see it too. Dawn had broken in the pale but outside it was day, bright and full. The sun lit the world, casting shadows and calling forth colors David had never seen. He stared at everything, enchanted. The trees weren't as green but there were different kinds of them, leaves shaped long and pointed or short and round, the wind rustling gently through them. Under them were flowers, not like the diamond and gem-colored ones he'd seen women in the castle wear but delicate ones with petals that blew when the wind crossed them and green stems trailing down into the ground. And the ground--the ground wasn't white from ice, from snow. It was green, dark in some spots, worn and faded brown in others, speckled with pebbles and the marks of other carts, of feet.

They crossed a river mid-morning, wide and almost crystal smooth, and David trailed a hand through it as Alec spoke soothingly to the horse and crossly told David to "try lifting your feet up" when he told Alec there was water rushing into the cart, pooling around his ankles.

On the other side they stopped, Alec doing something with the horse, unhitching him from the cart and walking him over to a patch of tall grass. David realized the horse was eating after a minute and watched for a while, fascinated--he knew horses ate but had never actually seen them do so--before realizing he was hungry too.

"Can I have something to eat?" he asked.

"Sure," Alec said. "Drink all the water you want. River's right behind you."

"I’m not really thirsty," David said and Alec looked at him.

"Oh," David said. "You don't have any food?"

"I was planning on eating in town. But then--" he shrugged.

"Oh," David said again. Alec looked away. The horse twitched his tail and started eating flowers.

***

David knelt by the riverbank after Alec hitched the horse back up to the cart, looking down into the water.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"There," David said, and pointed at a figure rippling up at him.

There was silence for a moment before Alec said, "That's you."

"Me?"

"Yep. Let me guess, you've never seen yourself before."

"Not really," David said. "In ice, sort of, sometimes."

"Uh huh. And you've, what, never heard of a mirror?"

"I've heard of them. My father didn't like them." He touched his face tentatively, watched his fingers trace across his cheekbones. He stood up and the man in the water rose too. He smiled and the man looking at him smiled back.

"Well, at least you don't have any ego problems," Alec muttered.

David smiled more, seeing Alec's face next to his. "You're a lot shorter than I am."

"And to think I didn't comment on your nose," Alec said sharply. "Are you just about done?"

"I'm looking at you," David said and watched, fascinated, as the watery Alec's eyes grew wide, surprised. "When we were in town that woman--" he paused for a moment. "She said you were ugly. Why did she say that?"

"Because I'm a miner," Alec said tightly. "Or maybe because she'd just finished looking at you.

Who knows? Now shut up and get back in the cart."

David sat in silence for the rest of the day. Mostly he was looking out at what they passed but sometimes he thought. He thought about Alec's face, the shape of his eyes, of his nose, the way the hair at the nape of his neck curled.

"Oh for god's sake," Alec finally said as the sun was setting, exasperation in his voice. "I'm sorry I said something about your nose. There. Can you stop sulking now?"

"Sulking?"

"The whole staring at nothing and not talking routine."

"But you said--"

"I know what I said."

"Can I ask you something?"

Alec sighed. "What?"

"Why did that woman call you ugly?"

"I already told you why," Alec said tightly.

"But I don't understand. It's the wrong word to use for you."

Alec's face flushed dark red. "You're not funny."

"I'm not trying to be," David said, bewildered. "You look--"

"Go back to not talking," Alec snapped, and urged the horse to move faster, stared straight ahead as if David was no longer there.

When night fell they stopped. Alec took care of the horse and lit a fire. Then he rigged a contraption up over it, a mass of sticks and wires with a pot in middle that hung suspended over the flames. He put water in the pot, whistling a little, and then walked off into the dark. When he returned he dumped two handfuls of dirt in the pot and sat down. David looked at him. Alec looked back, one eyebrow raised and a small smile on his face, and that's when David knew they wouldn't be eating dirt for dinner.

They ate potatoes. Alec stuck a stick in the pot after the moon had risen and pulled out two of them, wrinkled gray with steam billowing from their skins.

"I like potatoes," David said and tossed his from hand-to-hand, trying not to burn himself. Alec watched him for a moment before shaking his head and picking up another stick, spearing David's potato with it.

"I wouldn't think a...you would eat potatoes."

"All the time." David had figured out how to eat his potato now. Copying Alec he carefully blew on the skin, peeling it and bits of flesh away and popping them into his mouth. "Boiled and baked and," he closed his eyes, "fried with drippings and made into cakes and sliced with egg.

The best ones are the little ones, the ones as long as your fingers. My nurse used to--" he broke off. It was the first time he'd spoken about her to anyone. "She grew up in a village," he finished softly. "She said they grew everywhere."

Alec nodded. "Except in mines," he said and something in his voice, in the way his eyes almost met David's but didn't, let David know that Alec understood what it was like to have memory rise, that it was sweet and hurtful all at once.

"I could fry up some," David said shyly. "I know how. You can slice them into rings and then shape them like a flower and-"

"You do realize all I have is the pot, right?"

"Oh," David said. "Right."

"But since you apparently know what that is," Alec said with a smile, "you can wash it."

David washed it, drank some water, and then went back by the cart by way of the horse, stopping to carefully pet it. It looked at him placidly, tail twitching a little when he scratched its ears.

"What's his name?" he asked when he walked back to the fire.

"What?" Alec said. He was staring into the flames, a distracted look on his face.

"The horse. What's his name?"

"Her," Alec said with a small smile. "And she doesn't have one. I'll be selling her once I'm off the road."

"Oh," David sat down next to Alec and passed him the pot. "What does that matter?"

Alec took it, tossed it into the cart. The horse snorted, then quieted. "It doesn't. That's the point.

It's a horse. It doesn't need a name."

"Sure she does. She has a white mark on her ear that looks like a star. You could call her--"

"What was your nurse's name?"

"What?"

"Her name," Alec said slowly. "What was it?"

"I don't--I don't know."

"Then maybe you should shut up about the damn horse."

David put his hands on his knees, miserable. He stared into the fire and thought about his nurse.

He didn't even know her name. He'd never even thought about it. But she'd had one. He wondered what it was. Next to him Alec sat tapping the fingers of one hand against his leg over and over again, a rapid drumming.

"I called her Star for a while," he said abruptly, and his voice was so soft David could barely hear it. "Back when I first bought her. But when I realized I was going to have to sell her I didn't--I didn't want her to have a name anymore."

"You'll miss her less that way?"

Alec shrugged.

"I still miss my nurse," David said. "I always will. And I-I never even knew her name."

"It'll get easier," Alec said, and his voice was mild now, so carefully even David knew the tone was forced. "You can forget anything or anyone if enough time passes."

"I don't believe that."

Alec laughed a little, a harsh bite of sound. "Yeah, well, I have to."

David was almost asleep when the singing started. It took him a moment to recognize the song but when he did he smiled. It was an old song, one about three birds and a little bear and his nurse had sung it to him. The voice singing was nicer than his nurse's, not shaky at all but high and rounded and strong. Alec's voice. It was beautiful. David hummed along at first, softly, until his favorite part, where the bear asked each of the birds a question, and then he started to sing along.

Alec stopped singing.

"Why did you stop?" David asked.

"I don't--I don't sing anymore," Alec said. "I forgot--I forgot you were here."

"Oh," David said. "But I'm right next to you."

"I didn't really forget," Alec said sharply. "I just--I thought you were asleep and I was trying not to think about the damn horse. Thanks for that, by the way."

"You're welcome," David said and Alec rolled his eyes, shook his head. "You have a nice voice."

"Yeah," Alec said. "I do. But not nice enough for people to forget--"he gestured at himself.

"Forget what?"

"Me. I look like--" he looked at David. "A miner. People don't want to see that. They want to see--well, someone like you."

"Me?"

Alec sighed. "The next town, you go into the square and sing and you--you'll do fine."

"Have you done that?"

"Done what?" Alec said, and then smiled a smile that wasn't one at all. "I tried. But...it didn't work. Not like I thought it would. You though--you'd make a fortune."

"I don't know if I could do anything like that." David paused. "If I should." He held his breath for a second before saying, softly, "I'm not like other people."

"No shit," Alec said, and the smile on his face was real now. A moment later he said, carefully looking at the fire, "You're running from something. Someone."

David hesitated. Alec's eyes in the firelight were dark, impossible to read.

"Yes," he said quietly, hesitantly.

"I've been told stories, stories about a King and his first Queen--"

"I--"

"Haven't heard them, right," Alec said. "But you know, they say there was a child."

David bit his lip, waited for Alec to speak again. When he didn't he took a deep breath, heart hammering in his chest. "What if there was?" he said. "What if there is?"

Alec gestured up at the sky. "Then everything they say, all the talk about the snow, it would be true." He looked at David. "And it would mean that you--you're--"

"Yes," David said, and bowed his head. It started to snow.

Alec was silent for a moment. "We can leave at first light," he finally said. "There's a city over the mountains, the capital of another land. I--I know it, and you'd be safe there."

"But you know," David said wonderingly. "You know what I can do. Why aren't you--?"

"Asleep yet? Because you keep talking." Alec lay down, wrapping the blanket around him. "Try not to make it snow so much that I've got to dig us out again in the morning, okay? Because I'm more than willing to teach you how to use the shovel."

"But--"

"I know what it's like to be trapped by who--and what--everyone thinks you are," Alec said. "I know it all too well."

David looked at what he could see of Alec--the top of his head, shining darkly in the dying firelight, the curve of his shoulders under the blanket, his boots with the red fabric stuffed back in them. He lay back down and looked up the sky. He could see stars. It had stopped snowing.

"Thank you," he whispered softly and smiled up at the stars. He didn't want to float up toward them now, but he was still happy to see them.

"Sleeping," Alec muttered, but his voice was soft, warm.

It was cold in the mountains, so cold even David felt it, the air thin and stinging in his lungs, stealing his breath before it could form. The air became fuller as they crossed down, sweeter and warmer as the land around them shaded from gray to vibrant green again. As they reached the bottom they passed a long curving path carved into the rock, a path that disappeared back inside the mountains. David could see a group of figures standing at the end of it. One of them looked over and moved toward them, raising a hand stained dark and shining in greeting. "Knew you'd come back," he called. "Don't know that the foreman will be so welcoming, though. Everyone remembers what you said to him."

"I should hope so," Alec said lightly, but his hands were tight on the reins, the cart merely slowing, not stopping.

David looked over at the man who was talking to Alec. "Hello," he said politely.

The man's eyes widened and he leered at Alec. "Haven't done so bad for yourself after all then, have you?"

"Don't suppose that's any of your concern," Alec said tightly.

"Oh ho," the man said. "So then I guess there's no need to tell you they've moved the digging?"

Alec stopped the cart. "Moved it?"

The man nodded. He coughed, fingers moving away from his mouth to drop a pile of shining dark dust on the ground. "We're down on the fourteenth level now. The eleventh collapsed--you remember that vein we found--well, that was all that was holding it up--and the two they dug after that didn't yield anything."

"And now?"

The man shrugged. "Well enough. Some of us," he shot a pointed glance at Alec, "are content with things as they are. Don't go dreaming stupid dreams, dreams that lead to trouble and--"

"I'd say I'd hope to see you soon," Alec said, his voice a snarl, "but you know I hate to lie." He flicked the reins, the horse moving forward.