Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

The storeroom actually proved to be somewhat valuable. There were a lot of things in there that looked as if they must have belonged to the previous owner of the cottage, now broken and tossed aside. Some real bedding, for instance, which was moth-eaten and tattered, but was better than sleeping on the bare stone floor. She boiled it, too; heaven only knew what was living in it. And wedged on a shelf, there was a cookbook. She leafed through it, and figured she might be able to manage some of what was in it. By that time, the stuff she had spread in the garden to dry was ready to take in. She left all the clothing in one pile and the blankets in another; let them fight it out among themselves who belonged to what. Coward returned with some scrawny hares at that point. He tossed them on the kitchen table and dived for the piles, greedily picking through them before claiming what looked like the best of a bad lot of rubbish for himself, changed with no thought for modesty and demanded food.

She gave him leftover pease porridge. He didn't complain, gobbled down three enormous bowlfuls and went back out again, leaving her to gut and skin the game herself.

To make it go as far as possible, she made soup, managed unleavened griddle cakes without burning too many and spread the leftover pease porridge, which by now was a paste, onto them. She took her bedding in from the garden, but left it piled in a corner behind the broom and some buckets, because she had a good idea that if they saw it, they'd take it. She also ate first, at least of the griddle cakes, with some of the stewed rabbit meat. Coward turned up again with more game, squirrels this time; he looked with longing at the soup, but this time didn't demand any, though he did grab greedily for griddle cakes. She didn't stop him. He was still stuffing himself when the other six came stumping up the stairs. Bully had a very small bag at his belt. He smacked Coward with the back of his hand when he saw the smaller Dwarf was eating.

"Wha?" Coward sniveled. "I din touch yon soup!"

"See ye remember not ta, then," Bully sneered, and sat down at the table.

She brought bowls of the soup — the squirrel wasn't completely cooked, but they didn't seem to care — and the griddle cakes for as long as they lasted. They had no leavening, no milk, no eggs in them, being more like flat unleavened bread than cakes, but again, the Dwarves didn't seem to care. They ate everything she put in front of them.

Once again, they gobbled everything down and left a mess behind. By the time she was done and had set another kettle of pease porridge up to cook overnight, she was ready to weep with exhaustion. She dragged her bedding out onto the hearth, and made a more comfortable bed there than she had the night before.

And then she did weep. Because how would anyone ever find her out here? Who would come here, even if The Tradition led them? Who would see she was pretty beneath the layers of filth that were going to build up on her? Keeping clean was going to be impossible. And if they did, how would they get her free without cutting off her foot? There was nothing in the Snowskin Tradition about the princess being chained — or having to cut off her foot to get free!

No, this was a new twist, and a horrible one, and right now there seemed to be no Path, Traditional or otherwise, out of it.

"I've got her!"

Jimson's shout woke Lily from her fitful doze. She had fallen asleep in the chair while Jimson searched for the missing Princess, combing through every reflective surface in the general vicinity of the buildup of Traditional power that he and she could sense. Now she knuckled the fog out of her eyes and leaned forward. "Where?" she demanded.

"It's in the forest. I can place it on a map for you later. Not many reflective surfaces there, I'm using a knife and a water bucket." The image from the bucket wasn't very useful since it showed mostly ceiling. The one from the knife wasn't much better; it was fogged and distorted.

"Ah, I have some more options. Cups."

The glimpses Lily got of the Princess as she filled those cups made her wince. Bruised, hurt, poor child — her hands were a mass of scratches and cuts, the nails broken and torn. She was filthy, too. Her hair was full of twigs and bits of leaf.

Not as filthy as the creatures appropriating the cups, though. The glimpses she got of matted, fouled beards, yellowed teeth, snarled hair and filthy faces made her grimace. The reflection from the knife gave relative heights, proving that girl's captors were Dwarves. But...not the sort of Dwarves that Lily was used to dealing with.

Lily frowned. This was unexpected...perhaps. It looked as if more than one Traditional tale was getting tangled up here.

And the tales were warped and twisted. Those foul little creatures were not the kindly helpers of the proper Traditional Path; the Snowskin Path brought creatures that might be ugly but were always nurturing and kind.Brutish was the most charitable word to describe the things that were being reflected now. The way they were treating the Princess was entirely terrible. Rosa had spirit, and Lily could not imagine her staying there unless she was being held in some way.

Meanwhile Jimson was searching for every reflective surface he could find near her, trying one after another so they could get a better idea of what was going on there. It was beginning to look as if they were not going to find anything useful, until —

"Ha," Jimson said quietly, and suddenly a crystal clear — if somewhat warped, as if it was being viewed through a bubble — image of what was the filthiest kitchen Lily had ever seen appeared in the mirror she was holding. "Fly's eye," Jimson said. "Best we're going to get."

Well, the little brutes were definitely Dwarves, probably digging an illegal mine. The Tradition was definitely at work here, however badly twisted, for there were seven of them; seven was the right number for a Snowskin Princess. The fact that Rosa's looks didn't match the Snowskin Path didn't seem to matter this time — a Snowskin had "cheeks white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony," and Rosa was much more in the line of a Princess Dawn with her rosy cheeks and golden hair. Well they would have been rosy if they hadn't been smudged with dirt and tears, and it was getting hard to tell she had "locks of gold" what with all the bits of forest snarled in them. Lily's wince turned into a cringe; the poor child was definitely the worse for wear. A Princess, even one with Rosa's unorthodox schooling, was ill-suited to being a servant and cook. She was indeed bruised, dirty and looked exhausted. And behind her trailed a long chain, binding her to the hearth.

"Find me where that cottage is," Lily said grimly. "I want to get to her before the Huntsman tracks her down."

If this was the Snowskin Path there was a logical approach that would compel The Tradition to throw a lot of power on Lily's side to make this right again — what was more, when Lily broke her disguise, it could be as herself and not as the evil Queen Sable. That should make it possible for her to get the girl safely away before revealing that she was also the Evil Stepmother. It was pretty obvious now that The Tradition was moving in such force that Lily needed Rosa to understand the deception that she had been perpetrating as Queen Sable. She had only met Rosa a handful of times, all on formal occasions, in order to keep herself as the mysterious Rescuer just in case such a thing would be needed, and to make sure Rosa never felt she could depend on Lily to save her at any point, but a Fairy Godmother was the sort of person who made a lasting impression.

"Have you seen enough for now, Godmother?" Jimson asked.

She stood up. "I have," she said. The reflection disappeared, and one after another, more glimpses flashed across the mirror's surface. Jimson was tracing a path back to the Palace, from reflection to reflection. When he finished, he would have a clear way to the Dwarves' cottage that he would read to her. She in her turn could transfer it to a map.