She knew that cry.
Snow lifted her head from the forest floor. There was a chill in the air — not the damp dark she had sludged through, its tricks of light, its fingers of moss and branches. Shadows whittling the night into teeth.
This was… odorless. Frigid.
A shiver ran across her shoulders, just above the lip of her silk cape. How pretty she had felt when she fastened the clasp at her breastbone the day before, the way it shimmered down past her waist. She had almost forgotten her appointment with the Huntsman that afternoon, lost in the reflection of the well and the rosy-cheeked girl who swam in its watery depths.
But here, in these woods, winter cut through the wine-colored cloth like a dagger. The ground beneath her was carpeted in a thick, white film, like the sky had been slit open and a whole cloud spilled out. Snow touched her finger to a single crystal and marveled as it melted on her palm, leaving its small, bright bite against her skin.
There it was again. Faint, but there.
A wail so thin and plaintive it sounded more echo than noise, more passing wind than animal. Snow felt the cry reverberate in her chest.
Mother, it cried. Mother, mother.
She stumbled between the trees, her neat little shoes sinking into the powder. The woods were different here, even beyond their icy dress. She exhaled and watched a perfect breath of steam swim, dense as a morning fog, against a hazy sky. It was impossible to tell whether the day was beginning or ending, the only light coming down fractured and soft around her.
Every few yards, she stopped to listen again. The noise grew fainter, then louder. Frequent, then fading. Snow measured her footprints, careful not to retrace her tracks and find herself going round and round in the same clearing. The pines, in their great state and silence, occasionally dropped a clump of snow from a branch, a scattershot of crows rearranging themselves on alternating branches.
All at once, a new cry broke through so near, so tender and pained she almost collapsed from the weight of it. In every direction, there was snow… the stones, the bushes and shrubs, even the little flowers absolutely drenched in white. And not a movement anywhere, except a small, white flag trembling on a branch.
Or —
Snow took a step toward the branch. "Hello, there."
The flag quivered.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," Snow said. She let her shoes sink into the cold. Another chill scraped its icy fingers down her back.
The flag squeaked. With a shudder, it waved back and forth furiously, growing larger & larger until —
"Oh my."
The fawn blinked up at her, the little white flag of its tail shivering under the snowfall. Snow's heart ached. She extended her palm toward the creature, waiting for it to press its warm, wet nose into her fingers before she drew her cape around them both.
"Where's your mother?" She stroked the soft fur between its ears and placed a kiss on its head. The deer whimpered in her arms.
It was like so many creatures back home: the velvet-backed doves around her well, the scatter of chipmunks and squirrels that pillaged the trees of their seeds, the quail in their best navy suits hurrying from one burrow to the next. But this one was alone, and scared, and fragile, and… not unlike her.
A gasp flew from her lips. "Maybe you have no mother."
She squeezed its small body closer then, their twin hearts drawn into the same sorrowful beat. Mo-ther. Mo-ther. Mo-ther.
The snow fell around them like a song.