Cordelia's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Cordelia stood in her garden with the wand low at her side. The lantern light stopped at the gate. A woman held it. She wore a black gown stitched with red stones, and a crown of dark iron. Her skin was pale as the inside of an apple. Cordelia knew the face from tales, but the tales had never shown those red eyes. "You built the bridge," the woman said. Short words. Flat. "I felt the magic from three ridges out." Cordelia kept her wand hidden in her skirts. One flick could turn the crumbs of this stranger to ash, as she had done inside her stove. But she did not know what the woman was. Attack the wrong thing, and the whole forest would learn a witch lived here again. She had burned once. She would not hand them a second fire. "I'm a baker," Cordelia said. "I bake. Nothing more." The woman lifted the lantern higher. The light crossed Cordelia's face, then slid past her left ear. Cordelia felt it like a cold finger. The woman had looked for the mark. The three black lines. The raven's foot. "You lie the way I used to," the woman said. "I am Snow White. I am not here for you." She stepped closer. The straw pig in Cordelia's memory, the boy's little toy on the table inside, felt suddenly loud through the door. "I am here for whoever broke a mirror. Old glass. Cracked now. If it shatters, things walk out of it that should not exist." Cordelia held still. "I broke no mirror." "No." Snow White studied her. The certainty left her voice. She went quieter. "The glass used to tell me who lied. It stopped. Now I read faces alone, and I am bad at it." She almost smiled. "You are bad at hiding. But you did not do this." Relief moved through Cordelia's chest. She let her grip on the wand loosen. Then Snow White's eyes went to the cottage window, where a small candle burned. "You have a child inside," Snow White said. Cordelia's mouth went dry. "I have bread proofing." "Children are what I trade in," Snow White said. "Apples. Curses. I know the smell of a hidden one." She turned the lantern down. "Keep him. I don't want him. But others in this forest do, and they will follow the same bridge I did." She stepped back toward the dark. "Your bridge is a road, witch. It runs both ways." Then she was gone, lantern swinging, into the trees. Cordelia stood alone at her gate. She had not been burned. She had not been named. But the queen was right. The bridge she built to pull children in had shown a stranger the way to her door. Inside, Hansel was still stacking sugar into a crooked hut. Cordelia turned back to him, and began to think about how to hide a road.