The Snow Queen (26 page)

“Just don’t stay too long in those smaller forms,” Elena cautioned. “Shift to the Bear or something else big enough to have a real brain once in a while, even if you can’t cover as much territory that way.”

Aleksia did not say what she was, with some wry amusement, thinking. That she knew, probably better than Elena, about the dangers of being shifted into something that couldn’t actually sustain human thought for long. That was the great danger of shape-shifting. You could easily find yourself losing bits of yourself, going more and more into the mind of the animal and thinking less and less like a human, until one day you realized—though dimly—that you couldn’t remember how to shift yourself back. And you might not care. Altogether too aware of that, Godmother Veroushka had actually insisted on having Aleksia experience that firsthand—having her shift into a house cat, and doing it during the Winter when no feline in her right mind would venture out into the snow.

The experience had been, from the perspective of the human apprentice, terrifying. From the perspective of the cat, it had been Tuesday. The human had been in horror at how close she had been to losing her “self.” The cat had been relieved, for all those human thoughts and compunctions had interfered dreadfully with doing what she had wanted to do. The cat had not
wanted
to be a human again, despite the dim ghost of the human in the back of her mind screaming to be restored again. That was why Veroushka had insisted on doing the shift in company, for she was able to force the change on the cat.

There was no such difficulty when the animal form had a large enough brain to fit all of the humanness into it.

“I intend to rest as a Bear,” Aleksia assured her. “I had considered a dragon, but that is rather too obvious a creature. A Bear can defend itself, forage if it must, and I have been a Bear before.”

“Good.” Elena looked profoundly relieved. “Well then, which first?”

“I need to get ahead of the women, so a Swan for swiftness and endurance.” Swans migrated hundreds of leagues without needing to touch down for rest. They ate grass and waterweeds, so they did not have to hunt. For as long as she could find things for a Swan to eat, she could stay in that fairly unobtrusive form. “I know where the men were last, and tonight is a full moon, so I can fly all night. Once I have discovered some trace of them—and I hope that will not take long—I can see if I can find where this false Godmother is. After that, I will know better what to do, though it will probably involve joining forces with the Sammi.”

“Well, what is sauce for the goose serves the gander, as they say,” Elena replied thoughtfully. “As much magic as she must be using will surely blaze out in that wilderness. Just as you wish to avoid using magic as much as possible to avoid being detected, she will be easy to find once you are in the general area—”

“Exactly.” Aleksia nodded. She turned to Rosemary. “Have you anything to add, my friend?”

The Brownies put their heads together for a moment. “Yes,” Rosemary replied after the conference. “We don’t like any of this, but it’s not our business to meddle in the matters of Godmothers. You think you need to enter the story, well, then you probably do. We will do whatever we can to make it easy for you to do that.” She turned to the mirror, and faced Elena. “But we want you, Godmother Elena, to find Godmother Veroushka and get her back here as quick as ever you can. For one thing, once you find and get her here, there will be another experienced Godmother with everything that the Palace can supply, if Godmother Aleksia gets into trouble. This Palace is nearer to where she is going than any of you are. For another, begging your pardon, but this is a big territory for any Godmother to cover, and it shouldn’t be left unattended for long. No disrespect meant. But we know our business, as we have been tending to Godmothers and the Palace since Palace and Godmothers were here, and there’s plenty of pots that could boil over if they’re not watched.”

Aleksia looked at the Brownie in astonishment that turned into admiration. It was nice to see one that thought for herself and stood up for what she thought was right and proper.

And she had been rather nervous about leaving all those “unwatched pots” behind her, but could not think of any way she could be in two places at once.

“All right, Rosemary, we will make that our priority,” Elena replied. “And while I am at it, I shall make a search among the Sorceresses to see if I can find one suitable to hold the Palace if we cannot find Veroushka. Will that suit you?”

“I had druther a real Godmother,” the Brownie grumbled. “I’ve never been much impressed by all those airy-fairy magicking types as think that a big enough whallop will solve any problem. But a Sorceress would be better than no one. And maybe someone who knows how to fight with magic might be good if Godmother Elena gets into trouble.”

Aleksia had to turn away from the Brownie to keep her from seeing the smile. The hand, for a moment in front of Elena’s mouth, told her that the other Godmother had the same reaction, despite how serious the situation was.

Not that Aleksia was unhappy about getting Veroushka or a Sorceress here in her absence. Very much the contrary. It was a relief to know that someone would be here to handle trouble to her or a Godmotherly crisis.

“I believe we have come to the best plan that can be made, under the circumstances,” Elena said, gravely, after taking her hand away from her mouth. “Aleksia, good fortune. There is no one else I would rather see dealing with this, and now I will leave you to get on with it.”

Aleksia nodded gravely, and she and Elena dismissed their mirror-spells simultaneously.

Then she turned to Rosemary. “Can you think of anything else that might serve to help?” she asked. “And thank you for demanding that someone replace me here. I think that the request came better from you than from me.”

Rosemary sniffed with self-deprecation. “’Tis your job to be the Godmother. ’Tis ours to think of this place, this Palace and the needs of the territory, regardless of who is Godmother here.”

Aleksia nodded soberly. That summed things up pretty well, actually.

“As for what I think might help, I’d look to that great hulk of a Bear that’s down in the kitchen, eating enough for twelve,” the Brownie said promptly. “We can be putting a pack on him and sending him after you. He won’t be as swift as you, but I’ve seen those Bears on the move, and they can do a fair pace when they’re minded to it. Then once you come to earth, he can track you by scent. More to the point, he belongs there, so he won’t be drawing any attention to himself. It might be he’ll get to you about the time it’s too hard or dangerous to hunt for yourself. And it wouldn’t hurt to have him on your side.”

Privately, Aleksia thought that the Bear was going to be of less use that way than help that Elena could send, but she kept that thought to herself. “Then that’s what we’ll do,” she said.

Rosemary looked as satisfied as she was likely to. “Best get yourself going then, Godmother,” was all she said, as the others turned to leave. “If things are chancy as you think, no point wasting time.”

Aleksia had no intention of wasting time. “All right then. I’ll want the white bird harness and the smallest pack on it. In the pack I’ll want my lightest hand-mirror, a fire-starter and a flute, in case I need to use Sammi magic. And a little blank book linked to the library; I’m rather sure Citrine has something of the sort about.”

“Nothing else?” Rosemary looked as if she, too, was thinking.

“The Swan can’t carry more than that even though the Bear form can, and I’ll have to cache it all somewhere if I become a bird of prey.” It was not the best solution, but at least shape-shifted she would not need to worry much about shelter or food, and the one thing she felt she absolutely had to have was a mirror.

“I’ll get it ready. Where do you want it?” the Brownie asked.

“The North Tower. And make sure my commonplace book is where any replacement can find it. That will tell her what I am watching, besides this situation.” Aleksia was already heading in that direction before the Brownie finished speaking. Now that the decision was made, she felt a sense of urgency, and a Godmother swiftly learned to trust her instincts once she had settled into the job. Whatever this was all about, the tale needed her. Needed her now.

The North Tower hadn’t been used for a very long time; not since Veroushka had been in residence, in fact. Aleksia’s mentor had liked to shape-shift into a bird once every few days at the least; it had been her way of coping with the isolation of this place, Aleksia suspected, and her way of escaping the sense of being trapped in the Palace. Perhaps Aleksia had her own form of escape through her mirrors, and that was why she had not felt it so urgent to keep in practice shifting. The North Tower itself was nothing more than walls surrounding a spiral staircase that led to an enclosed and roofed platform with two enormous doors that opened up into thin air. When there was a guest here, the North Tower was kept locked; the last thing Aleksia wanted was for someone unwary to go exploring and fall from the top of it. Or jump…there had been guests who had been so despondent before the end of their tales that they might have done just that. No one in her right mind would go up there even to survey the countryside. The mirrors gave you a better view; there were mirrors set into the outside Palace walls facing every direction, and it was so cold and windy up here that unprotected flesh would freeze far too easily.

There was an addition to the otherwise bare room since Veroushka’s departure: a full-length mirror. As might have been expected, Aleksia found it easier to do an initial shift from human to animal if she could see herself and use her own mirror-magic to help. Veroushka had shifted so often that her own body-memory made a mirror unnecessary.

She stood before the mirror still fully clothed. Unlike Veroushka, who expected to return to a warm Palace with everything she needed in it, and could thus drop her clothing and perform a simple shift without worrying about what she was wearing, Aleksia was going to have to do something a bit trickier, a combination of shape-shifting and transformation magic. Her gown was going to have to become her feathers—or her hair—or her fur. Since it was not actually a part of her, she would have less control over it than her own flesh.

So, as she stared into the mirror, it was her gown she concentrated primarily on first, with the briefest of nods to her own form. With her eyes narrowed in concentration, she carefully gathered some of the magic of the Palace itself. The gown shimmered, shivered, became misty and indistinct as she bent her will and the magic on it. Then, with a feeling as if a little whirlwind whipped her clothing around her before wafting away again, and a brief hum of power, the image that looked at her from the mirror changed.

The Aleksia that stood there was still recognizable as herself, but as a version of herself that was a strange hybrid of woman and bird. She nodded in satisfaction; she planned to become as big a Swan as could be credible. She had already lost her voice; the lengthened neck could not support it.

She beat the wings against the air experimentally; they felt strong and sturdy. They would serve as a weapon at need; anyone who had ever experienced the power in a goose or Swan’s wings knew very well that a blow from one could knock a man unconscious if aimed correctly. And she was about to become the biggest Swan that had ever graced the sky, correspondingly strong. She was not proof against an arrow or a spear, of course, but she rather doubted that the false Snow Queen was going to use either against her in this form.

Once again she gathered the magic of her Palace around her, and with it, her will.

She stared fixedly into the mirror, while in her mind she summoned every memory of what it had felt like, as well as what it had looked like, when last she was a Swan. How her chest had thrust forward, her hips behind, and yet she had not felt overbalanced. The odd clumsiness of the webbed feet and the relatively short, bowed legs. How her neck had a kind of life of its own, her vision had been spread to either side rather than being focused in front, the feeling of having her nose and mouth merged into one and made hard, her tongue shrunk, and her sense of taste and smell dulled to almost nothing. She concentrated on all of these things, on what she saw before her and what she wanted to see. She held herself, poised like a diver, winding it all tighter and tighter, until it felt as if she must let it all go or explode.

She let it go.

There was a soundless burst of light just as Rosemary entered from the staircase, bundled in a warm fur coat and hat, harness in one hand. The Brownie shielded her eyes with her hands and exclaimed with indignation.

When they could both see again, it was not Aleksia that looked back at herself from the mirror, but an enormous Swan.

“You might have warned me,” Rosemary said crossly, hands on her hips. “You really might have.” She strode forward with the harness in her hands, and with a few brisk motions had buckled it on over Aleksia’s feathers. Stretching her neck to limber it, Aleksia gave herself an enormous shake to settle the feathers and her harness. The white harness blended into the feathers—no one would see it unless they were closer than Aleksia would like. She swiveled her head on the long neck to check the lay of the equipment-pouch; it sat perfectly square.

Well that is one advantage of this form. I can see my own back.

She nodded at the doors. Rosemary walked toward them, unlatched them and flung them open. A wave of frigid air engulfed both of them. Insulated by some of the warmest feathers in the world, Aleksia scarcely noticed, but Rosemary shivered.

“Off you go then!” she exclaimed, then hesitated. Aleksia tilted her head to the side, waiting.

“Good luck and godspeed, Godmother,” the Brownie said softly.

Aleksia bowed her head in thanks for the wish. Then she went to the very edge of the opening, spread her wings to their fullest, stretched out her neck and called to the wind to fill her pinions. And when she felt the strength of the wind in them, felt as light as one of her own feathers, she pushed off the tiniest bit—and lifted to the sky.