That Risen Snow: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Zombies (Wattys 2014 Award Winner)

Chapter Forty-Five

 Queen Adara

THE RAFT DRIFTS DOWNSTREAM. In contrast to the river’s leisurely pace, Adara’s heart pounds a jagged rhythm. She sits with two strapping soldiers and two stinky dwarfs, bound for a village named Abundance. Well-trained at hiding her emotions from her life as a princess and then a queen, she conceals her fear of the watery depths. She can’t swim and has feared the water since her youth.

The boy soldier Battson keeps talking to her. She tries to focus on his words, but the bear’s memory of the boy nudges her mind. Once she almost claws him across the face. Still, the handsome boy could prove useful.

Other animalistic urges linger in Adara’s mind, echoes of her recent victims. She longs to swallow the plentiful bugs swarming the water—to swoop down like a bat and skim a drop of water from the water’s surface. Indeed, the river’s trickling rhythm stirs in her the need to construct a damn. Her teeth ache to gnaw on wood. She laughs at herself, and Battson seems pleased. He must have just said something he thought to be witty.

She can’t believe that no one recognizes her. Granted, she isn’t wearing her royal attire. Her face is unpainted and tanned by the sun. Her hair is wild, unbrushed. She’s not herself and she hasn’t been for quite a while.

Not since she transformed herself into that old hag last summer, gave that damned apple to Snow, and fell off the cliff.

***

SHE KNEW SOMETHING HAD gone wrong as soon as Snow bit the apple. Adara’s vision wobbled, and pain stabbed into her brain. Panic needled at her heart. It didn’t make sense. The apple’s curse was only supposed to affect Snow. Before she could ponder this further, those miserable stumps arrived and chased her through the woods. She led them up a steep cliff, where she stood over them in triumph.

Except a bolt of lightning ruined what should have been her moment of victory. She tumbled below into the unforgiving river’s embrace.

She woke a changed woman. The fall broke her body but the apple had somehow crippled her magical powers. She couldn’t even cast a simple flame enchantment to cook her dinners. Thankfully, she could still command the lesser creatures of the forest. She also found a new use for them.

Inexplicably, she could now absorb the life force from animals. By simply placing her palms upon the creatures, she could drain their life – and their memories – into herself.

She used this new power to heal herself over the course of many moons. In the process, she forged a connection with the forest. Aside from some choice furs, she stopped wearing clothing, preferring instead the freedom of nakedness. There amongst the creatures and trees, she was free of gossip, betrayal, politics, etiquette, and all the blankets of humanity that smothered her in her former life. Alas, that freedom was not meant to last.

Yestermorn, shortly after sunrise, agony pierced her skull. In the same instant, all the birds in the forest took flight into the darkening sky. She commanded them to return, but they ignored her.

They. Ignored. Her.

Since that moment, a fracture has festered in her mind. She spent all of yesterday preparing, at last, to leave the forest. She tore down her primitive shelter and cleaned her simple white dress. Her heart throbbed with dread.

Last night was the first time she really missed her spells. It was also the first time she felt truly afraid.

She couldn’t sleep. It was as if whatever path inside her skull led from wakefulness to dreaming had been destroyed. Whenever she tried to sleep, she saw only bright red flashes of anger, black bruises of pain, and white patches of thirst. Snow. These visions kept her stuck awake like a bug trapped in a web.