Snow ✓

A Good Girl

All morning they kept to the corners, whispering about her, peering over their shoulders at her. At least the one named Mat threw the occasional, polite smile her way; the old woman, whom he called Gran, looked like she might unravel if the girl scurried too quickly from any spot to another. Built like a stack of frumpy pancakes shoved into a potato sack with thick grey cords tied tight in a bun and a wizened face worn by habitual frowns, she was the oldest woman the girl had ever seen. Mat looked younger than her brother but older than her—too young to be a man, too old to be a child. Muscly and sun-kissed, it was clear he spent more time outside than in. He had mussed, golden curls infused with sunlight that went every which way and kind eyes the color of mud under a cloudy sky.

Gran brooded over the way he kept posing questions to the girl in a soothing lilt and blustered when the girl stared dead ahead, quiet as a mercenary without a tongue.

It wasn't that she couldn't speak so much as that she refused. Fear had settled into the hallows of her body like lizards eager to wait out the rain. After being hidden away her entire life and told that she was to be seen and not heard, that discovery by outsiders meant the end of everything as she knew it, keeping quiet seemed like the best policy; it was the familiar in an unfamiliar place. Surely, her brother would show up anytime now and whisk her back home where she could go back to being unseen, something she never thought she would miss once gone.

"Maybe she's simple," Gran said, not for the first time.

"Maybe she's scared," Mat said, the eyeroll in his voice.

Gran sighed as if being crushed by the weight of the world. "It's damn near high sun, someone's got to dig us out of here before we all have to claim corners to make puddles."

"Are you volunteering?"

"Boy, you watch your mouth," she spat, then mumbled something about weak knees and traitorous hips.

Mat laced up his boots at the door, glancing skeptically between her and the old woman who looked as if he was threatening to leave her alone with a murderous bear.

"She could help you prepare lunch," he offered.

"I'm not turning my back when she's within arm's length of the cutlery—"

"A nice book, then," Mat interrupted, loudly.

He stepped toward another door, kitty-corner to the exit, swung it open wide and gestured for the girl to go inside. Fiddling with the hem of her cloak, she obeyed, making quick time of the short distance. Small, the room felt cramped with a bed and side table on one side and a bookcase on the other. The only window that she knew must look out onto the Burnt Forest was boarded up.

"Right, let's get a little light in here."

As he removed the boards, the girl latched onto the wall to avoid the woman's scrutiny as she hovered in the doorway.

"Can you read?" he asked once finished, the boards tucked under his arm.

She glanced at the bookcase. His brow rose, and she knew he must be thinking that she did indeed understand him.

"Look, pretend okay," he said, lowering his voice, "just to stay out of her way for awhile." He yanked a bound hide off the shelf and handed it to her. "Here. This one has pictures."

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

With an encouraging nod from Mat, she sat on the floor and cracked it open, then ignored him when he lingered as one might when they see a creature out in the wild for which they have no name.