Amira shrugs. “Three, I think. How many winters have you spent in those shoes?”
“This is their first,” says Tabitha, pausing. “But there were three pairs before this one.”
“Ah. Is this the last?”
Tabitha chuckles. “No. Seven in all. And I’m only halfway through this one.”
Amira nods. “Perhaps, come spring, you’ll have finished it.”
“Perhaps,” says Tabitha, before beginning her circuit again.
Winter thaws, and everything smells of snowmelt and wet wood. Tabitha ventures down the glass hill and brings Amira snowdrops, twining them into her dark hair. “They look like stars,” murmurs Tabitha, and something in Amira creaks and snaps like ice on a bough.
“Tabitha,” she says, “it’s almost spring.”
“Mm,” says Tabitha, intent on a tricky braid.
“I’d like—” Amira draws a deep, quiet breath. “I’d like to tell you a story.”
Tabitha pauses—then, resuming her braiding, says, “I’d like to hear one.”
“I don’t know if I’m any good at telling stories,” Amira adds, turning a golden apple over and over in her hands, “but that’s no reason not to try.”
Once upon a time there was a rich king who had no sons, and whose only daughter was too beautiful. She was so beautiful that men could not stop themselves from reaching out to touch her in corridors or following her to her rooms, so beautiful that words of desire tumbled from men’s lips like diamonds and toads, irresistible and unstoppable. The king took pity on these men and drew his daughter aside, saying, Daughter, only a husband can break the spell over these men; only a husband can prevent them from behaving so gallantly toward you.
When the king’s daughter suggested a ball, that these men might find husbands for themselves and so be civilized, the king was not amused. You must be wed, said the king, before some guard cannot but help himself to your virtue.
The king’s daughter was afraid, and said, Suppose you sent me away?
No, said the king, for how should I keep an eye on you then?
The king’s daughter, who did not want a husband, said, Suppose you chose a neighboring prince for me?
Impossible, said the king, for you are my only daughter, and I cannot favor one neighbor over another; the balance of power is precarious and complicated.
The king’s daughter read an unspeakable conclusion in her father’s eye, and in a rush to keep it from reaching his mouth, said, Suppose you placed me atop a glass hill where none could reach me, and say that only the man who can ride up the hill in full armor may claim me as his bride?
But that is an impossible task, said the king, looking thoughtful.
Then you may keep your kingdom whole, and your eye on me, and men safe from me, said his daughter.
It was done just as she said, and by her will. And if she’s not gone, she lives there still.
When Amira stops speaking, she is taken aback to feel Tabitha scowling at her.
“That,” growls Tabitha, “is absurd.”
Amira blinks. She had expected, she realizes, some sympathy, some understanding. “Oh?”
“What father seeks to protect men from their pursuit of his daughter? As well seek to protect the wolf from the rabbit!”
“I am not a rabbit,” says Amira, though Tabitha, who has dropped her hair and is pacing, incensed, continues.
“How could it be your fault that men are loutish and ill mannered? Amira, I promise you, if your hair were straw and your face dull as dishwater, men—bad men—would still behave this way. Do you think the suitors around the hill can see what you look like, all the way up here?”
Amira keeps quiet, unsure what to say—she wonders why she wants to apologize with one side of her mouth and defend herself with the other.
“You said you chose this,” Tabitha spits. “What manner of choice was that? A wolf’s maw or a glass hill.”
“On the hill,” says Amira, lips tight, “I want for nothing. I do not need food or drink or shelter. No one can touch me. That’s all I ever wanted—for no one to be able to touch me. So long as I sit here, and eat apples, and do not move, I have everything I want.”
Tabitha is silent for a moment. Then, more gently than before, she says, “I thought you wanted to see a river full of geese.”
Amira says nothing.
Tabitha says, still more gently, “Mine are not the only iron shoes in the world.”
Still nothing. Amira’s heart grinds within her, until Tabitha sighs.
“Let me tell you a story about iron shoes.”
Once upon a time, a woman fell in love with a bear. She didn’t mean to; it was only that he was both fearsome and kind to her, that he was dangerous and clever and could teach her about hunting salmon and harvesting wild honey, and she had been lonely for a long time. She felt special with his eyes on her, for what other woman could say she was loved by a bear without being torn between his teeth? She loved him for loving her as he loved no one else.
They were wed, and at night the bear put on a man’s shape to share her bed in the dark. At first he was gentle and kind, and the woman was happy; but in time the bear began to change—not his shape, which she knew as well as her own, but his manner. He grew bitter and jealous, accused her of longing for a bear who was a man day and night. He said she was a terrible wife who knew nothing of how to please bears. By day he spoke to her in a language of thorns and claws, and by night he hurt her with his body. It was hard for the woman to endure, but how can one love a bear entirely without pain? She only worked harder to please him.
In the seventh year of their marriage, the woman begged her husband to allow her to go visit her family. He consented to her departure on the condition that she not be alone with her mother, for surely her mother would poison her against him. She promised—but the woman’s mother saw the marks on her, the bruises and scratches, and hurried her into a room alone. In a moment of weakness, the woman listened to her mother’s words against her husband, calling him a monster, a demon. Her mother insisted that she leave him—but how could she? He was still her own dear husband in spite of it all—she only wished him to be as he had been when she first married him. Perhaps he was under a curse, after all, and only she could lift it?
Burn his bear skin, said her mother. Perhaps that is his curse. Perhaps he longs to be a man day and night but is forbidden to say so.
When she returned to her husband, he seemed to have missed her, and was kind and sweet with her. In the night while he slept next to her in his man’s shape, she gathered up his bear skin as quietly as she could, built up the fire, and threw it in.
The skin did not burn. But it began to scream.
It woke her husband, who flew into a great rage, saying she had broken her promise to him. When the woman wept that she had only wanted to free him from his curse, he picked up the skin, tossed it over her shoulders, and threw a bag of iron shoes at her feet. He said that the only way to make him a man day and night was to wear his bear’s skin while wearing out seven pairs of iron shoes, one for each year of their marriage.
So she set out to do so.
Amira’s eyes are wide and rimmed in red, and Tabitha flushes, picks at a burr caught in her husband’s fur.
“I knew marriage was monstrous,” says Amira, “but I never imagined—”
Tabitha shrugs. “It wasn’t all bad. And I broke my promise—if I hadn’t seen my mother, I would never have thought to try and burn the skin. Promises are important to bears. This, here”—she gestures at the glass hill—“this is monstrous: to keep you prisoner, to prevent you from moving or speaking—”