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“There. All better. We can clean you up when we get you inside.” Snow pouted. “I hate roses! They hurt!” Her mother smiled, her image softening along with the sound of her voice. She seemed so far away. “They can, yes, when you get nicked by a thorn.” She plucked a single red rose off the bush. It was petrified from the snow and frozen, but still perfectly preserved and almost crimson in color. Snow peered at it closely. “But you shouldn’t be afraid to hold on to something beautiful, even if there are thorns in your path. If you want something, sometimes you have to take risks. And when you
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What a beautiful conversation between a mother and daughter.
Her mother’s sister and lady-in-waiting, her aunt Ingrid,
Interesting twist here that Snow and the Evil Queen are blood related.
With an oval silhouette, the mirror took up almost an entire wall. Its frame—made of ebony and intricately gilded—was magnificent enough, but it was the snakelike gold rope wrapped around the frame that had first drawn her eye when she’d found the mirror hidden in her master’s shop. The rope lay smooth on the lower half of the mirror, but became more erratic and vine-like near the mirror’s top, where it seemed to breathe out of two serpents’ mouths like tongues. The jewels that adorned the mirror, too, were worth more than any of the diamonds in the kingdom’s mines. If she didn’t keep the
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“Small acts of kindness are so important,” she remembered her mother telling her as they had pulled away. “I once stood in the same spot she is now. I came from nothing.” “I don’t know what I’d do if I had nothing,” Snow recalled saying. Her mother had lifted Snow’s chin and looked her straight in the eye. “If that day ever comes, are you going to give up? No. You will carry on just as I did. I didn’t give up, and someone took a chance on me.”
Your tears won’t change your fate!
She always pictured the two of them sitting in the aviary or on a garden bench, talking as if they had all the time in the world. Snow was grown in these visions, but her mother looked exactly as she had when she’d left this earth. They would talk till the sun was setting.
She held one out that was a mix of reds and greens with a hint of gold. “These are Red Fire apples.” Henri took a bite. “That’s heaven. What did you call it? A Red Fire? I’ve never had anything like it.” “They’re only grown in our kingdom. My mother was the one who created the hybrid,” Snow said proudly. She used to beg her parents to tell her the story of their courtship over and over. She could picture her mother laughing. Snow, there must be something else you want to talk about!
“It’s what you get when you cross red apple seeds with some pears and green apple seeds,” Snow told Henry now. “She came up with it at the apple orchard she helped tend when she was my age. My father loved them and had them planted all over the countryside.”
“So it was love at first bite?”
“My older brother Kristopher taught me,” Henri said, his smile fading. “He loved apples, too. This was his pocketknife.” He held up the silver blade with the leather handle. His brother’s initials were etched into the metal. “He died a few years ago during a battle and I was given his blade. He was my father’s most trusted knight.”
“Losing someone so soon . . .” “Changes your life,” Henri finished, and they looked at one another. “Yes,” Snow agreed. “I imagine my life has been different from the one my parents envisioned for me, but I’ve never lost hope,
“It is our best chance at stopping her. If I were to get ahold of that mirror and hold it hostage in exchange for her undoing her spell on you, she might agree to leave the kingdom and never return. . . .” “No,” her father said flatly. “She cannot be allowed to just leave! She’s too dangerous. Too reckless! She’s done too much harm and destroyed our kingdom’s resources.” His voice weakened. “It has to be an eye for an eye. We must avenge your mother, and to do so, the queen must be killed.”
“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Snow said. “Didn’t you and Mother teach me that?”
Georg looked furious. “She killed your mother! She tried to kill you! The...
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Die? Snow wasn’t sure she could kill someone in cold blood,
I have never understood the world's view that "good guys" can't kill, not even in defense. I cannot argue that others in the world are too quick to find a reason to call for a need for defensive killing, but far too many cannot see the need to stop giving additional chances here instead of letting a far more perfect person have full reign over the wayward person.
“She will never go quietly,” her father said sadly. “This I know.” He looked at Snow. “If you won’t stay here, I can’t even help you fight her, my snowflower. Not while I’m prisoner.” Snow grabbed his hands again. “You won’t be a prisoner for much longer. I will break this spell. I will rid the kingdom of the Evil Queen and save our people. I will not let her continue to hurt the ones I love. I promise you that.” He held her face in his hands and she saw his eyes well with tears. “Be careful what you promise, my Snow White. Be careful.”
“Don’t you let her off the hook,” Grumpy warned. “She did this all herself!” “True, but she’s had help,” Snow said. “Maybe the reason she’s so attached to the mirror is because she cannot function without it. She gains her power from it and it gains power from her as well,” she guessed. “If that’s true, then one cannot survive without the other.”
For some reason, in this cold dark room where so much evil reigned, she could feel her mother’s presence guiding her. And she could also feel a strong, building self-assurance that she had never experienced before. Despite the danger. Despite the loss, she did not feel afraid.
