A Midsummer Night's Snow Read online

  A Midsummer Night's Snow is a prequel to

  Rebecca Hammond Yager's Beauty & the Beast,

  available on Amazon.com!

  Inspired by characters created by

  Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and Hans Christian Andersen

  ISBN-13: 978-1977979520

  ISBN-10: 1977979521

  A Poisoned Plume Publication

  Text Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Hammond Yager

  Cover Art Copyright © 2017 Rebecca Hammond Yager

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the author.

  CONTENTS

  Title

  A Midsummer Night's Snow

  The Sound of Snow

  A Storm of Snow and Magic

  Lady of the North

  Sight

  Masks

  Farewell

  A Gesture

  Reflections

  Sunrise

  Of Prequels and Sequels

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Life is all or life is nothing.

  There is no in between.

  A Midsummer Night's Snow

  She rode through the swirling snow, her white horse cantering beneath her with fluid, quiet steps to carefully measured beats, unconcerned with hunger or rest.

  It felt as though she had been searching forever. She did not despair though; she wasn’t made that way. She pushed back the hood of her white fur cloak, lifted her face to the glistening sky and closed her eyes, her mare’s floating step nearly as smooth as flying, and listened to the gentle sound of snowflakes drifting down, down, down, piling upon each other until the snowbanks were as deep as clouds. It was her favorite sound in all the living world. She opened her eyes, her gaze sweeping the forest of evergreen and oak, their branches frosted white and heavy-laden with their glorious burden.

  She was lost, of course, but being lost never bothered her.

  And then the gates appeared, shrouded in ivy and white roses unwithered by winter’s touch, open and welcoming, and an avenue of blossoming orange trees led through the snow into glittering darkness.

  It began with the snow.

  Yuletide was upon us, and it was snowing beyond the boundaries of the kingdom.

  It was quiet—as it always was during the weeks leading up to Yuletide when the wild magic that lived in the heart of the mountain went still, gathering itself for the one bright spot of our year.

  The kingdom gates stood open, as they always did…just in case…in case the one meant to save us came at last. The snowy scene beyond them of white drifts and frosted tree boughs was like a painting framed by the rose-veiled gates guarding the starlit summer world that was our prison.

  I could feel the magic stirring, like a cat awakening from slumber, could feel it stretching, reaching, and I let myself drift along with it. I thought of the magic as a friend, caring for us as it did, and it was perhaps the only living thing in the kingdom that knew I was there. It was hard to be sure with living magic, of course, for it could not answer questions, could not speak, could not make itself heard any more than I could.

  We could both bang pots and pans around if necessary—and we both had—but that was still a tragically far cry from holding a conversation with the other residents of the kingdom. Not that they could converse much either.

  But at least they had voices.

  At least they had bodies.

  At least they knew who they were.

  The earth magic curled through the castle and then out through the wide doors and into the moonlit fields. We did not take the avenue, overgrown and mossy now, that ran from the kingdom gates to the castle, tunneling through a fragrant corridor of orange trees. I felt the magic surging beneath the earth and followed it through the waving grass, silver-green in the evening light. It would have come almost to my knees if I still had knees.

  We approached the gates, and I paused, staring hungrily into the winter world that blazed in vivid contrast to our summer one. It had been long, so long since I had wandered this far from the castle.

  In the beginning, I had walked to the gates every day. Or rather every night. Our kingdom had not known daylight for many years. We all used to walk to the gates together and gaze out to whatever lay beyond. But in time, the exquisite pain of looking into a world you could not enter became unbearable, and I stopped going. I think eventually they all did. All but one.

  He was there now.

  A magnificent white lion, his creamy coat and luxurious mane starkly white against the summer grass, sat still as a statue by the gates, gazing out at the falling white with rapt intensity and curious wonder. No matter that he had done so every winter since memory began. It was always new for him. Always wondrous. He glanced around as we approached as if he sensed our presence. He sniffed the air. But his blue eyes, an extraordinary hue as pale as an early morning awaiting sunrise, looked right through me. I felt a strange pull in my stomach—or where my stomach ought to be—as I always did around them. The great cats. None of the other creatures affected me that way. Not the wolves. Not the deer. Not the ravens or the rabbits or the foxes or the hawks. I felt connected to the cats somehow, though I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t reason it, couldn’t… couldn’t…

  My vision and my mind clouded together, and a vagueness threatened to overtake me. I tried to focus on the connection—I knew it was something real—but the vagueness grew, and I knew I would lose myself entirely if I wasn’t careful. I released the idea. Turned my gaze from the white lion. Stared blankly at the falling snow beyond the gate.

  The vagueness passed.

  I felt the earth magic pause at the boundary, slowly reach to the gates… and then beyond, inching tentatively at first, as if setting a toe out to test the waters, and then whirling forward with triumphant vigor. I wondered if it had grown since the building of the walls. Could magic grow? It was living magic after all. As alive as the white lion before me. As alive as the grass beneath my unseen feet. As alive as the green and ancient forest encircling the kingdom. More alive than I would ever be.

  The rose vines adorning the ivy-clad gates began to swarm like serpents along the ground and then in the air, searching with venom for the one daring to attempt escape.

  Nothing living had ever crossed the boundary and stepped beyond our world. Creatures could enter; the rules were different for those who lived on the outside. But we, the cursed, could not leave. Not since night had fallen that last time. I remembered that much. I remembered the far-off sun, banished from shining into our dark kingdom.

  The roses thrashed, but there was no body to grab, no form to entrap. I had once thought that might mean that I could venture out beyond the gates. I was mistaken. I had felt each lash of the thorned vipers as if I still had skin. I had struggled against their strangling hold as if I still had form. I had felt blood trickling from wounds I couldn’t see.

  But the earth magic was something different, something Other, unpredictable and wild and an equal to the curse on its own footing, but just as tethered to the kingdom as the rest of us for all that because, I recalled in a flash of memory, the kingdom had been built around it. Had grown from it. The kingdom’s walls and gates had been built at the very edge of the earth magic’s reach to guard it, to cherish it; the castle, carved from the mountain rock that housed the magic, had been built to give body to its beating heart. And the magic had indeed taken hold of the castle, infusing an element of life into its stones.

  The earth magic erupted from the ground on the far side of the gates in an explosion of color, as if all the colors
of the snow were being pulled apart and scattered. It whipped up the snowstorm into a blizzard, whipped the blizzard into a maelstrom, and then, so strong from its Yuletide sleep, it yanked the storm across the boundary and into the kingdom.

  A windstorm of white came pounding through the gates, and over the gates, and over the trees to either side of the gates, sweeping into our summer world with a wanton disregard for the order of things. The earth magic whirled along with it as though it were playing. I felt the cold seep into me, and I shivered. The winds buffeted me about, and for a moment I wondered if they would sweep me up and away, if they would take me flying. But they didn’t. I remained firmly on the ground. The long grass became more silver than green as the blizzard took the kingdom by force, leaving a wake of glittering white as effervescent as the sea.

  The white lion reared back on his hind legs and batted at the blizzard, lunging and pawing and clawing at the air as if trying to tackle the storm, his mane whipping in the whirling wind, his eyes bright.

  I shivered again and turned back toward the castle, thoroughly chilled. It seemed unfair that I should still feel cold and hunger and fear. I should be past all that now.

  I don’t remember dying.

  I don’t remember what came before either—there’s only a vague sense of…. something. Something fantastic. Something tragic. Something unspeakable. Something more.

  I can still feel my body as if it’s really there. As if I’m still bound to arms and legs, hands and heart. Phantom limbs for a phantom…what was I? I’m a ghost, of course… I must be. But what had I been? Who had I been? There were times when it almost came to me, but the shreds of my own identity were as elusive as they were fleeting. I knew every single inch of the castle, knew it intimately, every stone, as if I were connected to it like the magic was, and I wondered if perhaps I had been a servant here. Back when there had been servants. My entire desire was for the well-being of the great cats and for their prince, their king, the greatest of all of them. He had no name. None of us did. Not anymore. And if we had, none of us could speak them save perhaps him.

  I struggled through the airy avalanche, the white lion careening past me every few minutes, scampering after snowflake swirls like a cub, appearing and disappearing in the glittering gale.

  The castle rose up before me in a bewitching vision, frothy as it was in the embrace of rampant white roses and white-ruffled waterfalls, now gleaming in a confection of billowing silver snowflakes as numerous as the stars. The moon peeked her face through the foreign snow clouds, and a ray of her light dazzled the crystal sphere crowning the largest tower, unleashing a shimmering tide of darkly silver rainbows.

  The earth magic spun away from the storm and, in a pirouette of color, sank back down below the ground.

  I could not be certain, but I thought the magic was quite pleased with itself.

  I wondered how powerful it would be a thousand years from now.

  The white lion bounded past, and I skittered out of his way. I had often wondered if I stood still, if the others could pass through me. But after a few failed attempts to pass through walls, I had decided I didn’t wish to try it with the great cats lest I fail in that as well and end up trampled by lion claws. It seemed a rather undignified thing to happen to a ghost.

  As I approached the castle entrance in the crowned tower, a pair of wolves appeared in the open doorway, a black wolf and a white one, each as striking as the other. They paused for a moment, gazing out quietly at the snow, wonderstruck. More wolves appeared behind them, pressing closer and closer as they watched the white come down in sighing sheets. And then the white lion barreled past with a happy grunt, and the wolves, unleashed from their spell of wonder, charged after him with howls of delight. Tawny lions prowled after them barely a moment later, showing their interest in lazy feline fashion.

  I skirted their ranks, but before I could make the tower entrance, the door was blocked by a massive black Fae lion. A true king of beasts, he bested the others in size and strength. A rich mane of sable fur and onyx feathers framed his face, and his eyes, vivid and dark as night emeralds, brimmed with thought and memory as he surveyed the earth magic’s Yuletide gift.

  His gaze swept swiftly to the abundant white roses that swarmed the castle walls inside and out, but they seemed to be withstanding the sudden cold with no ill effect. I knew about the roses, and I hated them, their moon-colored petals as repugnant to me as their vicious thorns. But they were not to be harmed. Not ever. Not by anyone. And so they flourished.

  With a kingly grace, the black lion stepped from the tower and into the snow. His dignity was only slightly marred when the snow spotted his vibrant black fur like a speckled goat.

  The black wolf came racing up to him and playfully nipped at his shoulder, then danced out of reach, grinning broadly.

  I slipped through the tower entrance and nearly discovered whether or not I could be trampled in a collision when a golden cat little bigger than a dog raced by in a streak of reddish amber, the elaborate tassels on her ears streaming behind her. I had barely registered how unlike her that was when a pair of leopards came flying down the crystal staircase after her. I smiled. The leopards were a fiendish duo and held their own marvelously with the bigger cats, but they did enjoy having a smaller cat to pick on.

  I lingered in the doorway to watch them for a moment. The leopards, the smaller in particular, stirred my heart as strongly as the black lion did though I couldn’t say why.

  They barreled into the snow, the golden cat forgotten the second they saw the whitening of the world. Their wonder only lasted a moment before their mischievous sass returned, and the smaller leopard hurled himself at the black lion with jubilant force. The lion allowed himself to be knocked to the ground and tussled gently with the far less gentle smaller cat. The white lion reappeared, hurdling through the wolf pack and colliding with the lion and leopard with obvious intent, and the three went down in a tangle of flailing paws. The other lions were bounding back and forth and tackling each other, the fierce lioness besting her brothers with greater agility and speed.

  The wolves buried their noses in the snow, snuffling it, then rolling in it, and then racing through it as lightly as if the snow drifts were no more than clouds. They leapt and pranced and danced in the swirling eddies of frozen white, grinning as only wolves can grin, and I realized I couldn’t recall them ever smiling before. Not in all the years since the curse had fallen and my memory began.

  A shiver sent me back into the castle searching for warmth. I slipped through the glittering tower, its crystal crown far above gleaming pale in the cloud-covered moonlight, past the sweep of its blue crystal staircase, past the obsidian thrones now dusty and webbed with roses, to the garden beyond which bore the single fire we sometimes used.

  A fountain in the garden’s center splashed quietly, and beneath a chimney built into the living rock a fire was already roaring. Warmth and golden light scattered cheerily across the small garden, and I silently blessed the earth magic for its thoughtfulness.

  Cushions in desperate need of patching were piled near the hearth under a small, sheltering overhang, and I sank down into them. I couldn’t entirely feel their softness, but I could feel their warmth as I basked in the fiery glow.

  A shadow sauntered by and then another as the two smallest of the castle cats approached the fire. One, a half-grown kitten, delicate-limbed and velvet black, hissed softly at the air around me, but she didn’t leave. After industrious groomings, they curled up in the cushions beside me, not quite touching, and promptly fell asleep. I watched the rise and fall of their bellies and listened for their sleepy sighs. There were times I thought they could see me. Their gazes often followed me, especially the silver and black one, patterned like watered silk and wearing a silver and emerald pendant that looked even older than the castle. But they never made eye contact. Not once. Not even by accident.

  I felt something like sleepiness creep up on me, and then the vagueness began to tak
e me. I shuddered and fought against it. Sometimes it seemed as if even my mind disappeared completely for hours at a time. And when I came back to myself, I was often in a different place from that which I’d left, never certain how much time had passed. Those instances were alarming to be sure. But not nearly as frightening as when my mind vanished…and took me with it.

  I had thought at first they were simply nightmares. Now I’m not certain. I find myself in a place of darkness—far darker than this cursed kingdom. A place of fog and ash and dark creatures of fangs and claws that are hunting, always hunting. Not so different from where I am most of the time I used to think. But it is different. So different. Here there is still starlight and moonlight; here there is family and moments of subdued joy. There…wherever there is…there are no stars. The fires are cold. The beasts are not the beasts I love. They come after me with lethal intent, and I run and I run and I hide in the swirling smoke, and always they hunt me. I attempted to fight them once or twice, but I am as insubstantial and ineffective there as I am here, and the result was a primal exhaustion I could not shed for weeks, months, as if they’d drained the spark of existence from what little life I possessed.

  I used to wonder if it was hell. If I was trapped somehow between hell and purgatory, and the latter somehow always managed to pull me back. I wondered if there would come a time when it didn’t.

  I don’t wonder anymore. Understanding it won’t make it any less terrifying.

  The silk-patterned cat stirred, her golden eyes opening to slits. Her ears twitched, but after a moment her eyes closed again. She began purring softly.

  I listened to the soft rumble, focused on it, let my thoughts rise and fall with its cadence. I was still listening when the vagueness took me.

  Blackness.