Snow Eva

A Story by Elizabeth Yon

A strange, reclusive woman takes in an orphaned babe found in the woods...

The girl was born of the forest, cradled among the gnarled nooks of wild apple roots. She was silent and old looking, with eyes as glossily unyielding as apple seeds. Her little lips were fat and greedy, stained bloody as apple rind. Her skin was pale as apple flesh. A huntsman brought her to me in his pouch, dusted with the first snow of that portentous season. He might have kept or abandoned his strange find, but he knew his duty. I am the warden of this place, with a thousand eyes and ears.

“Place her on the board,” I said, indicating the kitchen trestle. I was reluctant to touch her.

The huntsman gazed down at her. “My wife and I could care for her, my lady. She’s only a wee bit. She’ll need nursing.”

“Do I not know how the young are raised? She will stay with me, she is my charge. Your wife may come here to nurse the child if her own brood can spare her.”

His mouth trembled, but he did not dare defy me. “Aye, if that’s the way of it,” he said. He clutched the infant closer and added in a sulky voice, “The babe’s not a foundling rabbit or fawn, you know.”

He had formed an attachment to the child. It was as obvious as it was ridiculous, and I had no more patience for his intrusion on my solitude.

“Do not be impertinent. Put the child on the board and fetch your wife.”

What a grim face he presented to me! He laid the baby on the trestle, tucking and fussing at the goatskin pouch. When he was satisfied with the infant’s comfort, he fished in one of his many pockets and drew forth several wizened knobs of rueful red. He rolled them across the smooth waxed planks in distaste, as though they could infect him with some dire disease.

“Them’s apples from the tree where I found her. I thought you might be wanting them for your studies.”

The fruits were hard little scowls of tartness, the spiteful yield of a hoary forest hag long past bearing anything sweet. Their leathery skins rattled on the board. I touched one with the tip of my finger, and it was cold as death.

“You’ve done well,” I told the huntsman. I pressed a coin into his hard palm, and sent him home.

***

The huntsman’s wife was called Ilsa. She materialized out of that first unseasonable snow to scratch at the kitchen door, a lumpish assemblage of bosom and hips with a basket of bread and cheese over her arm. She smelled of milk and woman’s blood, a warm fog of biological odor, over which lay a pungent top note of garlic and wood smoke.

“I’m come to nurse the babe, my lady,” she said, staring at her feet.

“You’ll find her just there. You may build up the fire.”

I waved toward the wriggling bundle still on the kitchen board. I had not yet examined the child, but I had sliced and gutted the apples. Their petite, sour bodies housed seeds as black as grief. My reflection curved around them in a slippery puddle as I bent over them, trying to read their meaning in the grey November light.

The room was dim and cold, I suppose. I don’t take notice of such things. Ilsa clucked and bustled, gathering the hungry infant to her breast while she worked. Soon, a great rush of flame ascended the chimney and the kettle swung to service. From under the loaves in the basket came herbs tied up in a rough muslin bundle: mint, chamomile, and lemony melissa. A tisane brewed and sent its sharp sweetness into the room on a heated cloud. I watched this industry from the opposite end of the board. Already, I felt overly warm.

Ilsa glanced up at me from under her lashes. “Please, my lady, what will you name the child?”

“Must she have a name? She is a wild creature. We do not name the deer or the fox.” I could not recall my own name. Perhaps I hadn’t one.

“But, my lady, the child is not an animal,” cried the impudent woman.

“She is a product of the forest. What meaning she has, I do not know.”

The forest has its ways, crooked as crow tracks. Its spiraling embroideries collapse upon and regenerate themselves, the spirit board of the gods who never tire of trying to be heard. I was uneasy over the interpretation of the child, such a strange and ill-omened babe, and over the interpretation of the ancient apple’s final fruiting �" for I was certain that it was final. The early November snow had fallen on both like a finger of light, pointing to their significance.

I took down from a shelf my mortar and pestle and regarded the apple seeds. The trees of the village orchards are pampered grafts of cultivated hybrids upon the accommodating rootstock of the wild apple. One cannot grow these chimeras from the seeds of their fruit, for they will only revert to their wild origin. Their deeper truth will out. I ruminated on the answers inherent in the seeds before me. I planted one ebon pip in the kitchen herb pot. Five more I crushed, and bottled the bitter powder.

“My lady?”

I looked up from my work, surprised to find the huntsman’s wife still seated by the fire with the babe at one great white teat, awaiting an answer to her absurd question.

“Hmm? Ilsa, you irritate me. Be silent. Call the creature whatever you like.”

And so the girl came to be known as Snow Eva.

***

I have no children of my own, nor do I recall my parents or siblings. Yet mine is surely an ancient family. The proof of it is all about me in the mossy stones and towers of this house, much broken and tumbled now, and in the forest that creeps for miles away from the heavy walls. I remember the forest from long before my birth, and my place in it that is my true inheritance. It is my only book, and though it is a great hardship to read it, the answers to every question are there writ. The laws of the forest are the laws of all existence, and the first of these is patience.

Snow Eva was a chapter of more than ordinary complexity. The babe thrived, as I knew she would, for she was a message of terrible import. For five years I watched her grow, and as she grew so grew the apple seedling in its rough clay pot until the tree had to be set in the ruin of the garden, to spread its blind greedy roots in the feral soil. The child was solemn, pale of face, with hair like moonless night. The tree was equally pale, its slender stalk like a naked bone, and its leaves were blackest green. I looked upon the girl with dread, feeling the weight of time passing, and with a painful longing. Love was like a stone in my heart, and I longed to tear it out.

Finally, I took her into the forest and showed her the ragged remains of the ancient apple that had birthed her. The tree stood near a deep black pool, the white and twisted trunk cracked and fallen away. I thought it looked uncannily like one of the long-broken towers of my house. No life resided in the beetle-eaten corpse of the old apple, but I saw that a seedling had sprung up from among its sheltering roots and had grown tall and strong, thrusting its progenitor aside and even supping on its decay.

I grasped Snow Eva by her meager arm and dragged her to the tree. The girl was slow and stumbling from our long walk, and I lightly slapped her face to command her attention.

“Never eat of this fruit, for it is your kin,” I said. I gave her a little shake. “To offend the tree in such a way means death. Repeat what I have told you.”

If nothing else, she had learned attentiveness in my care. She repeated her lesson in a grave, lisping voice, and I was satisfied.

“You may have your supper,” I told her, and handed her the pack from my back.

The day had grown late, so laborious had been my progress with the child dragging at my heels. I watched her take a cold meat pie from the pack and squat in the lank grass with it, nibbling like a mouse. She was not strong, but rather tenacious. Again, I thought of my ruined towers, and the slender vines that had pried at the stones until they toppled.

***

Another year traversed the great circle of the seasons, and then another. Between my studies and my duties, I was often gone into the forest for days at a time. When I returned, Snow Eva would run to me and comb the brambles and snarls from my hair.

“Auntie, why do you go away into the woods,” she asked one day as she performed this charming act of grooming.

The question discomfited me. I have never been ashamed of my ways, for they are what make it possible for me to ward this place and, in any case, I cannot change my nature. Still, I would not discuss such things with a child. I offered only a brusque explanation.

“I must run across the miles and see that all is well in the forest. It is my charge, as it has been that of my family for long ages.”

I looked into the big liquid eyes and saw tears welling up. The girl wept more often than I would have thought possible, and certainly more than was practical, though her tears were always quietly shed.

To forestall them, I said, “If you are lonely in my absence I cannot help it. You are safe here, as you well know.”

She sniffled. “Am I of your family?”

Well, was she? I did not know, and though my traitorous heart gave a leap at the thought, my brain had a colder response. All my long life, I have been the only warden. I was silent as Snow Eva brought the basin for me to wash my blackened feet. I thought to shift the conversation to safer ground.

“Look outside the kitchen door, my girl. The huntsman has brought us a small doe for our larder. What do you think of venison stew?”

“Oh, that wasn’t the huntsman brought the doe,” said the cheeky girl. “I saw you put it there yourself. Did you kill it?”

“Yes,” I huffed, put out at being discovered in a lie. It is an evil habit.

“Auntie, how is it you are able to run so far and so fast? How is it you can see all that happens in the forest?”

I started up with growl. Snow Eva stepped back, but thrust out her chin in a defiant attitude. Tick, tick, tick went the red clock in my brain, and I shrugged inside my skin that felt new and tight. The moment passed.

“Go and do your chores,” I said.

But I did not forget the challenge. No. Sadly, I could not.

***

I dressed the doe myself and set a portion of it to roast. Snow Eva chopped vegetables, standing at the board on an upturned crate. We did not speak, each lost in her own thoughts, though we cast sidelong glances at one another. For my own part, I saw that I was at fault. For too long I had neglected the question of the girl’s meaning. I went to the kitchen window and looked out on the apple tree. The moon rose behind it, round and smooth, and stared through the black leaves at me with blank indifference. It is a cruel mistress and knows only the language of blood and small cries in the night. Its cold, white face filled me suddenly with a desire to see my own.

It had been long since I had seen my reflection with any clarity, though I had often read my bones with my fingertips. The strong line of jaw, the hollows and curves of cheek and forehead, were both familiar and cryptic. The forest knows nothing of the art of glass gazing, nor cares for the alluring reversal of the mirrored world. Thus, I owned but one looking-glass - a darkened relic that stood beneath a moth-eaten drapery in a moldering bedchamber in a ruined section of the house. I turned to the girl, who was scraping the chopped onions and parsnips into the stew pot.

“I am going along the east corridor,” I said. “I will be back shortly, see to the supper.”

Snow Eva regarded me with ill-concealed curiosity. “May I go, too?”

She had never been through the dark warren of ancient corridors; we lived quite comfortably in the two rooms that adjoined the kitchen. The house was treacherous in its decrepitude, and easy to become lost in.

“No,” I said. I pointed across the garden, which forms a sort of courtyard at the center of the house. “See that window, just behind the apple tree, the one with the broken panes in the upper half? I will be there.”

“I will fetch you a lamp.” She went to the sideboard and trimmed the wick.

I took it from her, and went to the heavy oaken door that led to the east corridor. It groaned like a dying man when I pulled it by its iron ring, and thick shrouds of cobweb came loose from the wall with a sound like ripping silk. I closed it behind me, and set off into the musty darkness. My lamp was soon snuffed out by the dank gusts of air that fluttered along the echoing halls. I set it on a heap of tumbled stone and went on without it. I hadn’t needed it to see, anyway.

The house had slumped further into rot than I had realized. It had been many long years since I had troubled to walk this way. The dust had been thick upon the floors even then, and the prints of my earlier passage were preserved as in a tomb. They, too, led to the bedchamber with the mirror in it, and I recalled my last sight of my reflected face and form. I had returned from my patrol of the forest and gone straight to the looking-glass. I had gone swiftly, with my brain already shifting back to thoughts of my studies and with my skin itching and shrinking. I had time for only a glimpse of my other self - the strong, lean form of the warden. I will never forget its beauty.

Now, I stepped to the mirror and stripped off the drapery. It fell to dust in my hand. The glass was much spotted with black blooms where the silver had worn from its back, and the ornate frame was cracked and blistered. With my sleeve, I wiped away the film left by the rotting drapery. The fat moon glided into the window frame and poured its stark light upon me. I let drop my gown. I was thin and ropy with muscle, my ribs embossed upon my skin. My face was narrow, long jawed and hollow. My eyes were the silvery-grey of river ice, and I saw that they now gleamed forth from a starburst of fine lines. I was surprised to see threads of silver in the shadow color of my hair.

In the glass with me, intruding upon and almost pushing aside my reflection, was the image of the wild apple tree I had grown in my garden. It was lithe and vigorous, reaching upward with young white arms. It shook down its lush dark foliage like hair in the night breeze. Its sinewy claws grasped at the moon, defiant and curious. Seeing this, I finally understood the answer to a seven-year-old riddle. My way was clear. Before I left the bedchamber, I smashed the mirror that had helped me to see it.

***

When I was younger than Snow Eva, the forest taught me this lesson: transformation is the abnegation of death. And so the forest transforms itself season to season and renounces its right to oblivion, as do its denizens who desire only life. It produces many possibilities in its shape shifting zeal, many possibilities.

I meditated on this as I mixed the long-saved powdered apple seeds into the supper stew. It is the forest law that the strong should prevail over the weak, that threat should be met with savage force, and that there should be one warden over it all.

The girl busied herself with sweeping the hearth as I filled our bowls.

“Come and eat,” I said, and if my heart cried out or if my hand trembled as I set the stew before her, my brain only repeated the law of the forest.