Pale as Ashen Snow

A flash fiction fractured fairytale also submitted to the Fractured Lit competition.

 Pale as Ashen Snow

My tears blurred my needlework as I stitched another blanket for another new mother in the village. The snow and ice around me was gray and barren, and I felt the emptiness in my soul. Still I didn’t dare go inside, where my husband would mock me for my tears and any errors on the embroidery that might ensue. I wept, for my own desire to have a little one to wrap in a blanket such as this proved fruitless winter after winter.

I sucked in a cold breath as I pricked my finger. My tears, blinding me, had led to this mistake.

Foolish woman! I chided myself. 

A single drop of blood beaded on the crystal snow, and as I looked at the stark contrast of colors, I prayed for a baby with skin as white as snow and lips as red as ruby blood.

Little did I realize, you do not make prayers with curses on your breath.

For curse I did: cursing my mother and father for marrying me off late; cursing my husband for his unkindness; cursing my body for its infertility; cursing the Great Maker for things he had not made.

“You are eating too much,” said my husband roughly one morning some time later. “You greedy woman, you will put us out of a home. You are getting fat.”

I looked at him, at the absurd hypocrisy of his own spare chin.

“I'm pregnant,” I said simply. He gaped, then guffawed. 

“You are not.”

“I am,” I insisted, and I proved it to him by giving birth a few moons later to a small girl-child.

Her skin was white as velvety snow and her lips like little rubies. 

But something wasn’t right about her eyes, or the way she breathed.

“I ain't denying she's a beauty,” said her father, “but she's a demon child. Of course I'd get a demon child, and a girl at that, from you.”

I vowed then and there to protect this little girl from her father. I wrote to my seven brothers back in my home village and begged them to take Blanche – for that is what we named her – should anything happen to me. No matter my husband, no matter the impropriety. 

They wrote back their yes with encouraging promises, and Blanche grew. She grew and she thrived, in spite of her difficulty breathing. She was full of smiles and songs, and her hair came in thick and dark as a raven’s. 

But then the mighty snowstorms came, the never-ending winter that overtook the land, and no amount of prayers to the Great Maker could make our store of food last long enough. 

“We are down to only foods our daughter can’t eat,” I told my husband fearfully.

“We still have plenty of apples,” he shrugged.

“You know she can’t have apples.”

I glared at him, and then felt a bolt of ice shoot through my heart. I knew. Our little angel had already found the apples.

The sounds emitting from that room were ghastly, like someone was spluttering on fire. I fell towards her. Her face was pale, pale as death, and her lips were not red, but blue.

“Help! Help!” I screamed. “My baby!”

I tried to dislodge the apple from her throat, but it stuck fast, and the little thing couldn’t breathe. 

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.

Her father wouldn’t brave the sleigh ride to the funeral pyres in these storms, so Blanche and I traveled alone.

I passed through my home village to gather my brothers.

“It is you we’ll have to take care of now,” said Jojo, the eldest of the seven brothers. 

“Too little too late,” was my bitter reply. 

They joined me to sing the songs and light the fires, but I couldn’t sing along. Where was the Great Maker’s hand in all this? Did he delight in seeing our hearts shatter?

“Here lies Blanche, daughter of Ina and Gadon,” said Jojo, leaning over her tiny body and kissing it.

One by one, everyone approached to kiss my baby, and with each one my heart rose higher and higher into my throat. 

Could I do it? Could I kiss the little cold, white cheek? Did I dare to touch her, now that I had failed to save her? What kind of Mother was I, that I couldn’t keep my baby alive?

I was third to next. Second to next. Next. 

…My turn.

“I can’t do it,” I cried. “I can’t kiss her.”

“Do it,” someone hissed. “There’s no love like a mother’s needed for her journey.” I was roughly pushed against the cold glass coffin.

I looked down at my baby, sleeping so peacefully. Oh, she was only sleeping! She would wake if I roused her.

I leaned down over her, letting my hair drift over her face.

“Wake up, little one,” I crooned. I brought my lips to her cold cheek and gave one last kiss on her face, pale as ashen snow. A single tear beaded on her lip where it had escaped from my own cheek.

I was almost certain, in those last few seconds, she stirred beneath my touch.

But then they covered her with her embroidered baby blanket, and my tears blurred my vision as she was pushed away towards the pyres.