One morning, Amira wakes to surprising warmth, and finds Tabitha’s fur draped around her. She is so startled she almost rises from her seat to find her — has she left? Is she gone? — but Tabitha walks briskly back into her line of sight before Amira can do anything drastic, rubbing her thin arms, blowing on her fingers. Amira is aghast.
“Why did you give me your cloak? Take it back!”
“Your lips were turning blue in your sleep, and you can’t move—”
“It’s all right, Tabitha, please—” The desperation in Amira’s voice stops Tabitha’s circling, pins her in place. Reluctantly, she takes her fur back, draws it over her own shoulders again. “The apples — or the hill itself, I’m not sure — keep me warm enough. Here, have another.”
Tabitha looks unconvinced. “But you looked so cold—”
“Perhaps it’s like your feet,” says Amira, before she can stop herself. “They look broken, but you can still walk on them.”
Tabitha stares at her for a long moment, before accepting the apple. “They feel broken too. Although”—shifting her gaze to the apple, lowering her voice—“less and less, lately.”
She takes a bite. While she eats, Amira ventures, quietly, “I thought you’d left.”
Tabitha raises an eyebrow, swallows, and chuckles. “Without my cloak, in winter? I like you, Amira, but—” Not that much dies on her tongue, as she tastes the lie in it. She coughs. “That would be silly. Anyway, I wouldn’t leave you without saying good — bye.” An uncertain pause then. “Though, if you tire of company—”
“No,” says Amira, swiftly, surely. “No.”
Snow falls, and the last of the suitors abandon their camps, grumbling home. Tabitha walks her circles around Amira’s throne by day now as well as night, unafraid of being seen.
“They won’t be back until spring,” says Amira, smiling. “Though then they keep their efforts up well into the night as the days get longer. Perhaps to make up for lost time.”
Tabitha frowns, and something in the circle of their talk tightens enough for her to ask, as she walks, “How many winters have you spent up here?”
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.