Snow

Announcement of the Royal Birth
 
Let it be known in every corner of the great
and noble Kingdom of Mistmir—
from the tallest highland peaks
to the lowest riverbanks,
from the bustling city
to the fertile farmlands—
that today, on the first day of winter,
our esteemed and beloved King and Queen
have welcomed a healthy baby girl,
Karina.
 
May the Mists protect our new Princess always!
May her every wish come true!
 
 
Part ONE
The Princess and the Snow
 
1
A Very Odd Foot
You’ve likely heard a million things about the Princess, all bad, most true, and the fact that she’s a liar is just one. But it’s the King’s honest truth that she is simply digging one last shovelful of Snow for the evening when out of nowhere appears a giant foot. To be precise, there is a leg attached to the foot, and it comes through the Boundary Mists, which is possibly not nowhere.
   The Princess blinks. She squints. She rubs her eyes, certain that the Snow or the loneliness or the endless digging has finally led her to start seeing things. But the foot is still there. It drops in the Snow, then lifts back up, leaving a large print. For a split second, the Princess holds completely still. She wills the Snow to do the same. As always, it ignores her. With a hiss and a whine, it fills the footprint back up, erasing it. But it was there. Just because the Snow covered it up doesn’t mean it wasn’t. Enough Snow can conceal anything.
   The Princess blinks again, and the foot reappears, sinking in just a finger’s-width from where it first stepped. On second glance, she realizes the foot itself is a normal size, but it’s encased in some sort of garishly colored contraption with a metal frame that makes its print very large. It moves carefully, like whoever the foot belongs to doesn’t trust the Snow. Which means they might be smarter than you’d guess from their ridiculous footwear.
   The Princess stares into the thick Mists, waiting for the whole person to come through, forcing her eyes to focus and her stomach to settle. She knows it can’t be one of her subjects. First, she’s not naive enough to think that any of the people who fled the Snow—or, really, her—would return on a whim. And second, no self-respecting citizen of Mistmir would wear a shoe that silly in public. But the idea of having anyone visit, anyone to talk to, makes the Princess a little giddy.
   To be clear, she would rather have all her subjects return, her kingdom restored to what it once was. That is what she truly wants—to be a real princess again. Of course it is. It’s what she was born to do, it’s what she’s been trained to do, it’s what she’s been working for, tirelessly and endlessly. It’s her duty and her prize, as the King likes to tell her. (True, he’s also her father, but you’d call him the King too, even if he were your flesh and blood.) But the idea that she might not be alone while she works . . . She knows she’s not supposed to make wishes anymore, but she may have secretly wished for that.
   She waits for the visitor. No one comes. Instead, the foot disappears again, and the Princess is struck by the fact that she may never see its owner—or anyone else—ever again.
   She sprints after them. The Snow behind her wails, and the Mists get closer and closer until they’re swirling instead of solid, and she realizes she might actually make it through the passing point. It doesn’t matter that it’s supposed to be impossible; she’s going to leave, she’s going to see this person, and she—
   —lands squarely on her backside. The Mists repel her like she’s some sort of pest.
   She sits in the Snow for a moment to let her head clear. The Snow buzzes against her coat and gloves, sending her small reminders of where she is—her kingdom. Of who she is—the Princess. Of what she almost did—abandon the Kingdom of Mistmir to chase a very odd foot. Put it that way, she has to laugh. A foot! Even a princess can be silly, see?
   She stands up, dusts off, and plasters her royal smile on her face, just as she’s been taught to do. It’s muscle memory. She bends down to pick up her shovel. It’s then she realizes that the odd foot has been replaced by a hand in a fat mitten rummaging through the Snow. The person it belongs to can’t be more than an arm’s-length away. If it weren’t for the solid fog, she could look them in the eye or squeeze their shoulder or beg them to stay. Even if she has been taught better than to beg.
   “Please come in,” she says.
   The hand freezes in midair. The Princess holds her breath the way she sometimes does the moment after she digs a hole, before it can fill, and thinks: This is the moment the Snow will change back to ordinary snow. This is the moment when winter ends. This is the moment when our kingdom goes back to what it once was. This is the moment when I’ll be forgiven.
   But, sure as the Snow, the hand draws back as if it’s been burned. The Princess doesn’t have a chance to say another word, not “wait” or “stay” or even one more “please,” before the holes in the Snow and the holes in the Mists close up and she’s left alone against the edge of her kingdom. She stands in the moonlight, surveying the endless, relentless, perfect Snow. Not a flake out of place. Just what she wished for.
   Her gift to herself, right?
 
2
The Color of Snow
The first rays of sun shine silver through the ice-bricks of the Gardener’s Cottage. It’s still called that even though the gardener was one of the first to leave Mistmir. It didn’t take him long to figure out that endless snow was probably not advantageous to his long-term job prospects. But the Princess can’t bear to call it the Princess’s Cottage, even if in reality that is what it is. Admitting that out loud would be like admitting that her kingdom is permanently lost. It’s hard enough to dig every day without that thought.
   The Princess untangles herself from her blankets and blinks away the last of her dreams. She stretches her arms and hits an out-of-place shovel. It falls to the floor with a clatter. She sits up with a start. And then she remembers. The odd foot, the fat mitten—those weren’t dreams. Last night, for the first time in a long time, something happened. Someone—or, more precisely, part of someone—came to Mistmir.
   And if they did it once, they might do it again.

❆ ❄ ❅

The Princess splashes water on her face, brushes her teeth with mint-grass powder, and runs a boar-cupine-bristle brush through her hair. Though the handle is broken, it works well enough. She leaves on her gold key necklace and ties her hair back with a red ribbon. She learned early on that she couldn’t stop being the Princess just because everyone had left, even if she is the reason they’re gone. When other people are here, you do these things so they don’t forget who you are. When you’re all alone, you do them so you don’t. Besides, if her subjects ever return—or, rather, when they do—she will need to look presentable every day. Best not to get too out of practice.
   She gulps down a couple of hard ginger-spice biscuits and a cup of cold water. Her strap-sack is a tangled mess, but she makes quick work of the knots, and soon she’s packed a shovel, a rake, and some smaller trowels. It may be more than she needs, but she’s not about to lose her chance to find any clues this Stranger may have left.
   Strap-sack on and coat buttoned, the Princess heads into the morning. As always, Snow blankets the ground, but the sky is cloudless. The Princess studied her science lessons well enough to know why, in this Snow-filled land, it doesn’t even snow anymore. She remembers the diagram her tutor, Madame Vidya, drew about the role moisture plays in generating wind, and the role wind plays in generating weather. Without water droplets evaporating or melting, the weather can’t change. Every day becomes the same.
   Even so, the Snow seems different today, glowing pink in the new-morning light. Soon it will turn orange, then gold, then a white so bright it will sparkle, except in the shadows. There it will be a frigid blue. The King once called the Snow monotonous, but looking out at the Snowfields, the Princess disagrees. “Mono” means one and “tone” means color, and the words combined mean boring. This Snow is neither single colored nor boring. Not when there’s a spark of hope to light it.