Snow, Blood, Silver

Snow, Blood, Silver
by Sara Cleto

The window frame gleamed silver in the wintery light, not black as ebony at all. But the snow beyond it shone white: pristine, unmarked, expectant. When the Queen pricked her finger on a needle and a drop of blood fell to sparkle wetly on the sill, the momentum of the story overtook her.

A child, with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as silver as a coin, a storm—

The ancestral mirror-on-the-wall glimmered, drawing her eye, the clouded surface parting like waves. In the glass, the Queen’s hair glowed like starlight, and for a moment, the room flooded with silver.

Nine months passed, and there was a child. She was snowy and crimson and black as the pupil of a cat’s eye. The Queen remembered the silver of the windowpane, the mirror, the light, but then the story did say black, and besides, the Princess was perfect. Silver fled from her mind even as it tumbled past her shoulders to brush the baby’s face with starlight.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall,
Make her fairest of them all.

The Queen clothed the Princess in velvets and lace and denim and plaid, and the child ruined them all. She romped through the trees and dirt and rain, her snow and blood and ebony glowing irrepressibly through her tattered gowns.

The Queen sighed and resigned herself to more laundry.

The Princess was precocious, and in due time, she went away to school. The letters she sent home burst with half-formed musings, roses dreaming themselves into bloom. The Queen gazed in the mirror, saw her child waver in the glass like a fish darting through water.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall
Make her fairest of them all.

One blindingly bright summer day, the Queen heard a light, unmistakable footstep on the stair.

She ran to meet the Princess, but it wasn’t quite her. Her skin was too white, her cheeks hectic red to match her lips. And her hair, her beautiful ebony hair, was thin and bare on her head.

The Queen put the Princess to bed, brought her infusions with ginger and sunflowers and honey. The Princess sipped reluctantly and retreated under the quilt that the Queen had sewn.

At dawn, the bed was empty but for three drops of blood.

And so the Queen cast off her velvets and lace and dressed herself in leather and denim, winding a length of plaid around her forehead to keep the silver from her face. She dragged on her heaviest boots and pair of hunting gloves, and she stole into the forest.

The forest opens itself to no one, not even Queens. The roots tangle, the branches rip. The mist curls and chokes, and the animals howl for blood. The Queen pulled a hunting knife from her belt and her mirror from her pocket.

Mirror, Mirror, Off-The-Wall
Where is my fairest one of all?

The mirror flashed, revealing a coffin made of glass and, beneath it, the Princess’s dead face. The Queen cursed, threw the glass against a tree, and it shattered into pieces. For a moment, the forest filled with silver light, and the Queen dove through it like a star falling from the sky.

She found the Princess in a cave whose darkness was as black as the ebony that should have been her windowpane. The king of the wolves crouched over her. His fangs gleamed like falling snow.

The Queen lifted her knife, but she knew the wolf would not bleed for her.

Mirror, Mirror, shattered glass
Make my Princess a bad ass.

She placed the knife in her daughter’s hand, closed her own fingers around her fist, and in the darkness, silver gleamed in the Princess’s eyes.

The wolf king’s death was redder than blood.

The Queen wrapped the Princess’s bald head in velvet and lace and put her to bed. When the Princess came down to the breakfast table in the morning, a thick mane of pure silver—like a coin, a storm, a victory—poured down her back like liquid metal.

* * *
Sara Cleto received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her MA in Folklore and Literature at George Mason University. She is currently pursuing her PhD in English at the Ohio State University. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia but has lived in England, Ireland, and Peru in addition to many locations in the US.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

I’m particularly inspired by fairy tales and folklore, the stories that you hear over and over and sometimes take for granted. I love taking those familiar shapes and warping them to create something unexpected and empowering. I wonder about the silence or marginalized characters in the stories, what they might like to say or do, and that’s when a new story creeps up on me.

Breakfast with the Charmings

Breakfast with the Charmings
by Sara Cleto

“I want to see other people,” Prince Charming said as he shook out and refolded his paper.

Cinderella dropped the platter of pancakes she’d made for him—fluffy, six inches across, spiced lightly with pumpkin. Porcelain shards broke the pattern in the tiled kitchen floor, obscuring the geometric repeat they had selected, after much consideration, when they refinished the house directly after their marriage. Syrup spilled across the floor like blood.

“You ruined my shoes,” he chided gently. He removed his loafers and carried them to the sink where he carefully mopped the excess syrup with a paper towel.

“I don’t understand,” she quavered.

Prince Charming sighed and threw the soiled towel in the trash. “This isn’t what I wanted. I thought it was, but it isn’t.”

She knelt, tried to gather the bits of broken porcelain, just to have a task around which to orient herself—old habits die hard.

“I wanted to travel after university. I was going to join the Peace Corps! I’d applied and everything, and they’d assigned me to Mongolia. Mongolia, can you imagine?”

She couldn’t. He required freshly brewed coffee, the beans ground moments before they were placed in the filter, poured into a heated mug and set beside his plate. He preferred the dishware matched, the blue-rimmed mug with the blue-rimmed plate, or the Japanese-inspired floral wears placed side by side. All of this had been explained, meticulously, by his housekeeper when Cinderella entered his home for the first time.

“But my father swore I’d never be the CEO after him if I did something so impetuous.”

That she could imagine.

“He said he’d bar me from the company, and cut me off to boot! So I said I’d stay, and he threw me a party, and there you were.” He looked at her for the first time that morning. “You had such tiny feet.”

Cinderella reached for another shard, a long and sickle-shaped, but her shaking hand slipped. The point of the porcelain shard pricked her finger, and a single drop of blood welled up.

A curious sensation began to build in Cinderella’s chest. She was conscious, for the first time in years, of her heartbeat. It swelled and echoed through her body like a rising tide. Her face felt hot, and her hands still shook but with a different emotion than fear or loss, one she hadn’t felt since she’d slid those exquisite glass pumps on her feet all those years ago.

Cinderella felt… awake.

And she felt angry.

“You married me for my feet?” she howled.

A week later, using the proceeds from the sale of her glass slippers, she moved into a bright, tiny apartment in Brooklyn and sent Parson’s a portfolio of her best shoe designs. Her neighbor, a graduate student in sociology, complimented her smile and invited her out for drinks. She slipped on a pair of flats and raced him down the stairs.

* * *

Image by Margaret Evans Price.

* * *

Sara Cleto received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania
where she majored in English Literature, and she is currently pursuing
her Master's degree in Folklore and Literature at George Mason
University. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia but has lived in England,
Ireland, and Peru in addition to many locations in the US.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

I'm particularly inspired by fairy tales and folklore, the stories
that you hear over and over and sometimes take for granted. I love
taking those familiar shapes and warping them to create something
unexpected and empowering. I wonder about the silenced or marginalized
characters in the stories, what they might like to say or do, and
that's when a new story creeps up on me.

The Tower and the Door

The Tower and the Door
by Sara Cleto

They lie when they say I was unhappy.

It is true that the tower was narrow, containing only a slim fraction of the world’s possibilities. It is true that those walls bound my world, that I did not go down the spiral stairs and through the door—and, yes, of course there was a door, how could I ever possibly have pulled a hundred pounds of flesh and more with only the aid of my hair?

But they never thought to ask me if I wanted to go.

The tower was no dark prison, as they like to say. The windows spanned from the high ceiling to the floor, and no glass parted me from the songbird-laced air. Pollen and dry leaves drifted inside, tinting my world with golden light, and floated out once more, freely, at the speed that they desired. No faster.

Why should it have been different for me?

I would not have stayed forever. But I was in no hurry to leave. I had my spinning wheel and an endless supply of fibers—I had to use my hair for something, even if it was not for a purpose so titillating as enabling late night trysts with unsuitable men. I had my books, brimming with stories that grew and grew, spilling from one volume to another in an unending torrent of poetry. I had my paints, tinted with the sheens of marigold, rose, and peacock. I had my voice and the wind to carry it away so that I would not tire of it.

I had my mother. My witch. They call her a witch, and, for once, they are right, for she could weave and talk and spin and paint as only one well versed in magic ever could.

She never told me I could not leave the tower, only cautioned me to take my time, like the light and leaves and pollen. She did not tell me that men were monsters, although she warned me that they were human and not to be confused with angels or demons. She taught me to pedal my wheel, to weave the threads, to paint them with vibrant, unlikely colors. She told me to sing as loudly as I cared to, with whatever words I chose, and urged me not to lose the knack when I went down the stairs and out the door.

How do they always forget about the door?

One day, I opened it and went outside. Before I left, I told my mother-witch, and she kissed my cheek and packed a lunch in a wicker basket. In the woods, I met beasts and sisters and brothers and men who were not angels or demons. Most days, I laughed, and sometimes I cried. I wore a cloak that I had spun and sewn myself, and sometimes I pretended that it was magical armor. Maybe it was.

There was not one prince but many, and some, I learned, were not princes at all. There were many sisters, and I slowly learned that they are the angels, even when they have fallen.

But there was only one witch, and, after days or months, minutes or years, I would return to the tower. And we would spin and laugh and cry, and then I would go out into the woods once more.
* * *

Sara Cleto received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania where she majored in English Literature, and she is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Folklore and Literature at George Mason University. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia but has lived in England, Ireland, and Peru in addition to many locations in the US.

Her inspiration for her stories stems largely from her travels, and also from the people that she encounters. "The Tower and the Door" was written for her mother, Cheryl.