Mortance: Summer's Snow

Aurora Ⅰ

It was the twenty-third day of the sixth month, the two-hundred and third day of the year, and my sixteenth birthday, when I took my first steps since the fall. The steps hardly counted for anything, given that I used a cane, but at least I didn't need to be carried.

Most girls would've been happy. At sixteen, I was a woman grown, and it had been too long since I'd walked. If only I could be like most girls. If only Vanessa was still here. Vanessa hadn't deserved to die, especially not like that. Just thinking about it made me want to throw myself from the window again.

"This should not be possible," I heard Fil say. He was the one in charge of my healing. "Any other patient wouldn't even have woken yet." He was speaking with a group of healers-in-training, come to learn how to fix broken princesses.

"Perhaps it was witchcraft," one man suggested.

Perhaps it was, I threw him a glance, nearly falling in the process. The clumsy idiot Princess Aurora knew the truth of that accusation.

"Perhaps, but such is a grave thing to accuse of the princess."

"I hardly think King William would much care what is said of his accursed queenslayer."

"I myself wouldn't much care to find out. Keep your thoughts silent, Theed."

I let their arguments fade into the background as I hobbled over to my mirror. The girl staring back at me was weak and stupid. Even Vanessa wouldn't have loved me like this. Three quarters of my weight was leaned unsteadily on the cane they'd given me. My limbs were swollen in places, and misshapen in others. Everything hurt. The fall had not made me more beautiful, but for maybe my eyes. They'd turned silver. I liked that, even if part of me believed it was just an illusion by the Wolf Witch to make me believe in her prophecy.

It wasn't fair. Why did I have to survive? I didn't want to survive. Why couldn't they have just let me die? Vanessa was gone from this world, and now the Wolf Witch wanted me to save it. There wasn't even any good left to save. That's a lie, I knew, but that didn't stop me from believing it.

"You must keep walking," Fil's sudden harsh words startled me, and I almost fell. "Attend to your vanities at a later date."

I shot him a small glare, but obeyed. Obedience was all I was now. Each step I forced brought a small wave of pain. My eyes watered from it, though I kept my expression mute.

"How do your legs feel?" one of the healers-in-training asked.

I shrugged in response.

"Yes, how do they feel, princess?" Fil repeated the question, clearly unsatisfied with my response.

"Fine," I mumbled. In truth, it was a pain to move, but voicing that fact would only leave me confined to bed once again. I didn't want that.

Fil turned away and began explaining all of his miraculous healing methods to the trainees. He preferred to flaunt his work rather than complete it, not that it was him who healed me. You survived because of who you are, the Wolf Witch had told me. You're healing because you're the Silver Girl.

Or maybe I'm just "lucky," I retorted to the imaginary vir in my head. Maybe I just happened to have healing magic. That doesn't make me a savior. There was nothing to save anyway; the world didn't need to be saved, it needed to be made anew. Nobody deserved to live in a world where Vanessa was a criminal.

I limped back over to my bed and sat. Traditionally, princes and princesses would have tourneys on their sixteenth birthday, to celebrate their reaching adulthood. I might've even enjoyed one, but Sacreon was at war now, and my father would never celebrate me now. Angus had a tourney, I remembered. His birthday was in the fall, and that year's winter was to be a bad one, so half the participants were children the lords wouldn't have been able to feed. That was a bloody tourney, but my brother had enjoyed it, as had I, for the most part.