Chapter Text
Part I: A Land of Ice and Hoar
Hermione inherits Tal from her father – as she does a great deal of other things; but looking back on all of it, Tal is probably the best one of her father’s bequests. He is idle as far as bears go, and usually lazes around on the rugs, the chaise lounge built especially for him, or the window seat; but he accompanied her father on all of his expeditions, and every so often, she lets him out to hunt snow hares in the early morning. He does not seem to be as fond of her as he had been of her father, but he does not mind her either, which is not the worst one could ask from a wild beast’s fealty. He stands at her side at the funeral, his warmth solid and reassuring, and late that evening, alone in their rooms, she buries her face in his fur and cries.
Hermione inherits her father’s council position as well; but not the respect he commanded with it. She does not allow it to concern her unduly. Her father has prepared her well; she has studied for this moment since she was old enough to read. Tutors have long used words such as willful, and overzealous, and insolent, within her hearing. It has yet to deter her. It is not long on the winter council before she gains a reputation for a fastidious, unforgiving memory – pity the minister who has misquoted an ordinance or cited an incorrect year before her, say the whispers. She has not inherited her father’s commanding silence, either, but then, she has never preferred reticence over argument. When she disagrees with something, it is never part-ways, but always vehemently, and with determined purpose. Several months in, she has already decided she outranks the other council members in both intellect and knowledge, if not in experience; and she wears this certainty so assuredly, that a few of them even start to wonder if she is right.
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There is not yet a respect, then, but a begrudging tolerance of her; an acceptance of sorts; and so at first, she mistakes it as a conferral of faith when she is chosen for that year’s envoy to Seabane. She is carrying on her father’s diplomatic legacy – already, she has shown the council her value, been deemed quick-witted and tactful enough to carry forward the peace.
It is not until later that she is made to understand – a dinner when the minister Snape cuts her off as she is speaking of the envoy – “Quit your boasting, you stupid girl,” he murmurs to her lowly beneath the music. “You think anyone else wishes to go to with the bastard to Seabane?”
She is used to resentment; she is used to envy. She has already opened her mouth to argue, but he raises his hand, says coldly, “Enough.” His dark eyes are a warning of obsidian in the candlelight. “Think, Granger,” he says, with venomous softness. “Years and years are spent in learning proper Faie manners, and now they are to send a fledgling like you? They hope you will be struck down by Faie hand and save them the bother of slipping poison into your wine glass.”
That evening, Hermione sits in her chamber, staring into the silhouettes of the fire, recounting all her mistakes aloud to herself. She has confused the council’s silence for approval, let her pride blind her to the obvious; for all her cleverness, she has been so very foolish; and what recourse is open to her now, but to go on to Seabane after all?
“What am I to do?” she asks Tal, who blinks at her sleepily from his bed.
For a moment she thinks he has already fallen asleep; but then he says, in a drowsy rumble, “Well, stop taking wine with your dinner, to start.”
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She is offered training on Faie etiquette, but she declines. To know very little is still better than to know that which is slightly wrong – just wrong enough to promise her death or punishment.
Instead, Hermione reads, with a franticness with which she has never read before. She seeks out anything remotely to do with Faie and their customs but there is not enough, not enough; she searches her father’s notes feverishly and finds nothing, leaving his belongings scattered in spates of frustration across his study. She is so desperate she even reads the children’s stories – ‘The Farmgirl and the Snow Hare,’ ‘The Hoar Princess,’ ‘The Stolen Cloak’ – she learns that the humans never win in these stories. It is always a warning – never barter, never steal from, never try to trick the Faie.
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The prince has been sulking; childish behavior for a prince, in Hermione’s opinion, but there it is. She herself is surprised when she learns she is to share his troika for the whole journey. Being a bastard prince only allows you so much privilege, it seems.
His name means ‘dragon.’ It was given in the family tradition; his brothers are all named after beasts as well – Hydra and Typhon and Cerberus – and his sisters after wonders of nature. But the Faie have given him a different name; it is the name emblazoned on his gleaming-green finery, his sharply cut muffs, his gilt-embroidered scarf – Silverheart. It is a name of power that the Faie gave him, a name to send a little thrill of fear into one’s throat, a warrior’s name…
But now, the prince only sits across from her and sulks. There was a time she felt pity for him – for his otherness; but there is still a bright memory that sits in the corner of her thoughts, from when they were both still children at the O’erwinter festival, when he taunted a one-legged bird with bread, held always just out of its reach; the cruel, childish peals of his laughter; and since then, a bitter taste enters her mouth whenever she sees him across a room; metallic and cold and rimy.
Sitting across from him now as they race across the snowlands, she learns that you do not see the half-Faie in him when you examine him directly; only when you catch him in the corner of your eye – the faint, unnatural shimmer to him, the tinkle of icy sleigh bells, the white coldness of his hair, a blankness deep as snow. She expected his eyes to be silver, but they are only grey…the drear, lifeless pall of twilight.
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Several times, she tries to break the silence, but each time, he ignores her; does not even look at her, staring only out the troika’s window. With each hour that passes, her frustration steadily grows, for in her mind, she has already made him into her savior; surely, she decided, they are not both sent on a death sentence; surely, if he has gone since birth, he knows all there is to know already. There must be some purpose to this visit. He needs her as his advisor, and she needs him as hers; together, they would traverse the dangers, the delicate webs, as he has done every year before. She has planned all this, and yet – here, he sits in front of her, sulking; apathetic; dull; and she is not so certain, anymore; neither that he is clever enough to help her; nor that the winter council does not mean to be rid of him as well.
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“Strange creature, your bear.”
Hermione has drifted off a moment, but she jolts awake, blinking the sleep away quickly.
These are the first words he has spoken the whole day. His voice is soft and precise, a lilt of scorn to his tone.
“Tal,” she says instinctively. “He was my father’s.” The snow can be seen falling into darkness as she peers through the window, bright sparks of white against a stormy sky; and with it, the form of Tal, lumbering steadily through the drifts.
“He’s walked beside our carriage all this time,” the prince says. “Every so often, he turns his head to look at us.”
“Well, he knows I am inside.”
The prince turns away from the window, finally, to meet her gaze. His eyes are keener than she expected them to be; there is a piercing, considering gleam to them. “And yet, it is always me he is looking at.”
Hermione tilts her chin upwards, presses her palms to the books in her lap, familiar and firm. “Perhaps you are just as strange a creature to him, as he is to you.”
He studies her then, as if he suspects her of mocking him. She is not certain herself whether or not she is, in truth, but the intentness of his stare unsettles, all the same. At last, his lips purse in disdain at her. “You are very young, for a minister,” he says coolly.
It is that moment that her fate balances; it is the moment she can throw herself to his feet in supplication, to plead for his guidance and help and protection; but she can still hear the peals of his childish laughter, the cold flash of his rings, the bird hopping ever-closer, beak raised hopefully. Her tongue does not seek out the needed words; instead, it sits in her mouth, swollen with her pride; and the familiar flush of defensiveness creeping to her cheeks; and she does not answer; only turns her gaze to the window, where Tal is still a shadowed silhouette of snow, keeping aside their carriage.
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It is three weeks that they travel; she dares to ask once, one of the horsewomen, how long they have left to go, but she only blinks at Hermione flatly. The envoy’s retinue is small – they total only eight; a far paltrier provision than she had expected.
The mood is almost always sullen. The evening fires are quiet, the people in the towns they pass do not come out to welcome them. They only stare suspiciously from their houses; and the whispers, when they reach Hermione’s ears, are always, ‘There goes the hoar bastard,’ and mothers hushing their children - ‘Do not look at him, Anka; or his ice will reach out towards your soul.’ The nights they stay in the houses of the town squires, their hosts are aloof and unwelcoming; the beds they are given are coarse, the fires never rekindled.
It is Hermione’s first time without an attendant; she is embarrassed to find she struggles. She struggles with the washing, she fights with her unruly hair, strands always flying from her grasp, and the braid skews always one way or the other. She is often hungry. She has always the feeling of cold that has slipped into her limbs and stayed there, even when she is sitting directly by a fire, even on the nights when she has curled herself, shivering, into Tal’s side. She wishes she could speak to him, if only to hear a familiar voice, but she is always too afraid they might be overheard, even when she is in a room to herself.
The prince rarely speaks to her. He is reading always from a black-bound tome, but its spine and covers are wordless, no hint to what lies in its pages. Most times, he is dour; when he is not, he is restless, and calls for the carriage to stop, and climbs out to stomp his feet in the snow. Once, he tosses some snow at Tal, and the bear gives such a rumbling growl that the prince does not try it again.
Once, they are stopped by a fierce storm, and seek shelter in a nearby farm. Hermione is shaking so much she can barely speak, but the prince stands in the middle of the swirling snow, and it seems to encircle him, dance around him in fluttering reverence. If he notices this strangeness, he makes no sign of it; his cloak gleams green and azure as he strides ahead of them, with his attendant, flat-eyed and grim, following always in his step.
Inside the farmer’s home, they sit at a roughly-hewn table and are offered fresh bread; Hermione thinks its hearty warmth tastes more precious than any of the fine, chilled stews and meats and wines they have been offered at the squires’ dinners, but the prince only stares at it with distaste. The farmer’s wife shoots him fearful glances every so often, and at last excuses herself from the kitchen with a low murmur.
“You won’t be bringing your bear inside, then?” the prince says at last, stretching his feet lazily towards the hearth. He laughs coldly. “Which do you think frightens these country-folk more, your pet beast or the hoar prince?”
The unending, seeping cold has left Hermione fractious; without thinking, she replies, “My bear, at least, has better manners.”
There is a glittering in the prince’s eyes as he gazes at her. She feels suddenly a strange, new chill, skirting her skin; as if it is searching out her body, trying to find a way into her veins. She remembers, then, suddenly, that he is one of them, the Faie; or, at least, part of him is; somehow, it is difficult to remember it most of the time, when he seems always so human, so petulant.
But the chill recedes as quickly as it came; he is staring into the fire now. “And your bear, at least, has lived more years than you, and seen more places,” he says darkly. She feels a scolded child, which warms her with anger, and feelingly, she says, “My father has trained me for service since I was old enough to walk; I am as capable as any other minister.”
He sneers at the hearth. “And we shall see how your training serves you soon enough,” he replies bitterly; but when he looks at her, it is not contempt she sees in his eyes, but almost a disappointment; and somehow, this stings her more, snakes further in, than any of the strange tendrils of chill.
Days later, she wanders the halls of their nightly lodgings with Tal one evening, in search of something to warm her; and she passes the prince’s room, and spies him through the door’s crack, sitting low in a chair beside a dying fire, staring at nothingness, unaware of her; and in his face, there is the brittle shadow of fear; and the glass of frost-rye in his right hand trembles. In that moment, also, it is difficult to remember that he is one of them; that really, he is only returning home.
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And all this time, Hermione is still reading and rereading the few books she was allowed to bring with her, hoping some new idea will unfurl itself to her. There is pitifully little she has managed to learn, but she has learned these: that Faie like to barter with humans, because the humans always undo themselves; that to refuse food at a Faie table will anger them, but to eat only, never drink; that manners are unimportant to them, but every word spoken holds vast weight; and that they are fascinated by a human’s tears, that a small sea can be held inside a mortal’s eye.
She spends each night recounting the little information she has to herself, until it is branded gleaming-red into her memory; and each night, she tries to decide also, if she fears the prince, or fears for him.
There is now some terrible apprehension hanging before them every day as they ride forward, misting the air; and then one day, suddenly, it crystallizes – one moment, Hermione is staring out the window, into nothing whiteness, and then at once before her eyes there emerges a gate, and pearlescent walls; and the sound of frigid waves which break upon a desolate shore, shattering and reforming and shattering again –
Their troika stops, only it is no longer a troika; it is a gilt sleigh, open to an empty sky and sparking harshly with stark, pale light, and her dark woolen dress, austere and well-worn, is now a slippery satin which slides against her skin, and the coldness she thought she had known these weeks was not a coldness at all – this was coldness, swirling between her limbs, eating into her blood, finding her heart, her last bit of warmth, where it still beats solemnly against the bones of her chest.
“Here at last,” the prince says, staring upward grimly.
“Where is Tal?” Hermione says, and her voice is shrill from panic, pinging strangely against the crystal silence – only the bleak call of the waves echoing, unnatural in their groans and hissing. Not only Tal – everyone is gone – the horses, the riders, their driver. “What have they done with Tal?” and she hates the smallness of her words, the pleading notes in them, but Tal’s presence has been her only comfort; to have him wrested from her so unexpectedly, so suddenly, feels a cruel, unbearable loss.
But the prince is not listening to her anyhow; he is still staring up at the gates, and then he stands in the sleigh, and there is no doubt anymore what he is, it is a wonder how she looked at him and saw only a man before; he is ethereal, he glimmers like the glassiness of ice, he is tall and willowy and desolate as a mountain-top; but his eyes… his eyes are still only grey; dim, muted grey. His eyes are what she holds onto as he looks down on her.
Do not be afraid, she suddenly wants him to say to her. Stay by my side, and they will not harm you.
But he only looks down at her, and then he turns away, and is climbing from the sleigh, down onto the sleek ice of the ground.
There is no choice but to follow; there are little bells on the slippers which now adorn her feet, and they tinkle like distant stars with each step, and as they approach the gate, Hermione feels laughably foolish as she finally understands; all along, they have not been traveling somewhere at all. They have only been waiting for the Faie to welcome them.
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She feels the cold, but she does not shiver anymore; it is as if her body knows that shivering will not help with this inescapable frost. Her skin is numb to the touch, and yet aches acutely, yearning for even the slightest brush of warmth.
She expects to see them any moment, but they pass through the gate, and they are still alone; a winding path stretches before them, glittering and smooth, and to either side the path drops into nothingness, and when she peers down she sees a foaming sea, translucent-white, which churns and roils far, far below them, and breaks itself against the cliffs of ice.
The path winds and winds; no matter how far they walk, there is still just as much that winds before them; and the only sounds are the frigid sea, and her bells, chiming with silver bleakness; and she keeps her eyes fixed only on the green flow of the prince’s cloak ahead of her; little as she knows him, he is now the only thing familiar to her, the only thing which may remind her of the human world. She wonders if it will be like it was with the city, and the end of the path will appear only when the Faie decide they have walked far enough.
The end of the path never does appear; again, one moment they are walking, and then the next there are walls around them, and a vast, empty floor of ice stretching forward, with the finest lines of frost weaving across it, forming drawings and writing, so fine and delicate that it is as if an entire library might be contained in its breadth, books and books on the floor of this room. But still there are no Faie to greet them; the vastness glitters peculiarly in its emptiness; and Hermione feels suddenly, with strange conviction, that there ought to be dancing here; filling the room, ivory gossamer skirts turning and sweeping in unison, and beautifully lonely music, wintry and meandering, ringing through the blue-white arches high above them.
She almost stops at the thought of it, the longing for it, but the prince turns back to her suddenly, his gaze harsh in its sharpness, and the spell is broken. Again, she fixes her eyes on his cloak, and they continue on.
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Hermione cannot say how many rooms they traverse; she has lost count, or perhaps she was never counting to begin with; it is difficult to say. Her thoughts have begun to turn more slowly, more aimlessly; there are times she forgets where they are, who is wearing the emerald cloak in front of her.
But she shakes herself from it each time, and finally she decides to recite to herself. She will tell herself stories, she will recount them to herself, word by word, as she has been doing every night – ‘There lived, there was, a magician; and the magician was clever, but greedy of heart’ - ‘There lived, there was, a farmer’s daughter; and one day, in the woods, she trapped a sun-white snow hare, who offered three wishes – ’ ‘There lived, there was, a mortal princess, whose beauty transcended all magics, all kingdoms; and the Hoar-folk wished her for themselves -’
Hermione blinks, and there is no longer any green in her vision; she almost cries out in the instinctive terror of it – she has lost her way! but how? she was always at his heel – but then she sees the prince is still there; he is standing at her side, and now, in front of her –
In front of her there is a queen; but she stretches far above them, with the supple slenderness of an evergreen; almost translucent in her pale blueness; and a light shines from within her, stark and unyielding. Her eyes are the breaking of the sea, the icy foam and distant wails of the polar winds, the death-frost of winter morning.
And then she is bending down, down, and Hermione is certain a simple touch from her would be death, instant ice; but the queen has only bent to press her lips to the prince’s forehead.
“My child,” she murmurs to his temple. “Tonight, we celebrate your naming day.”
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They are seated now at a table, laden with ice-jeweled plums and frozen elderberries and preserved spring-beauties which glitter oddly waxen; and cups of foaming, misted drink. Hermione takes a berry and places it in her mouth; and it is the most peculiar mix of tart, bursting flavors with the harsh prick of an icicle’s point against her tongue.
At moments, Hermione imagines she can hear notes of music; at others she imagines she hears a whispery gust of words; when she turns to the prince, she can see he is staring into the empty room, as if his eyes are tracing invisible movement. She understands, suddenly, that they are not, perhaps have never been, alone.
She bows her head to him; she barely moves her lips as she murmurs, no longer a question, “You can see them.” There is still a pale blush of blue on the prince’s forehead, where the queen’s lips touched it, and at some point, a crown appeared over his hair, twined branches, glowing in the frost of dusk-light. He does not look at her, only inclines his head in affirmation; and then, so quietly she might have imagined it, a ghost of an answer - “Be glad you cannot.”
She has another elderberry, and another. The evening seems to splay out in iridescent colors before her, fractal glints of stars and sea-waves and tundra; her head grows heavy. Her glass is refilled, but she is certain she has not drunk from it…she must not drink from it; she catches her hand reaching for it once, but something startles her out of the trance; she thinks perhaps it was the prince brushing against her arm.
The queen comes in and out of Hermione’s notice; at times she is sitting behind them, at times in a looming throne in front, at times she is floating wraith-like along the floor; until finally the whispers, the promises of music seem to quieten, and the queen is kneeling before the prince, and says, “My child;” and she tilts his chin upwards with a finger. “At last, you are returned to us.”
“I return every year, my queen,” the prince says, lowering his gaze, “and always will.”
There is the sound of brittle leaves as they crackle in the bitter wind, beneath the hunter’s boot; and Hermione realizes it is only the queen’s soft laughter.
“No, my son,” she says, “you will not. Now that you are of age, you are returned to us for good.”