“A crucial component of any relationship is the capacity to surprise the one you love. I read that somewhere. A magazine. You’re going to love women’s magazines. Oh, and the Internet. Well, parts of it anyway. I won’t let you go,” Miranda says. The dress is a snug fit for two people. She can feel every breath he takes. “If you go, then I’ll go, too. Wherever it is that you go.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “There are rules.”
“There are always ways to get around the rules,” Miranda says. “That was in another magazine.” She knows that she’s babbling. A coping mechanism. There are articles about that, too. Why can’t she stop thinking about women’s magazines? Some byproduct of realizing that you’re in love? “Fifteen Ways to Know He Loves You Back.” Number eight. He doesn’t object when you chain yourself to him after using fake snow in a magic spell to lure him into your arms.
The fake snow is colder and wetter and heavier than she’d thought it would be. Much more like real snow. Fenny has been muttering something against her neck. Either I love you or else What the hell were you thinking, Miranda?
It’s both. He’s saying both. It’s fake snow and real. Real snow mingling with the fake. Her fake magic and real magic. Coming down heavier and heavier until all the world is white. The air, colder and colder and colder still.
“Something’s happening, Fenny,” she says. “It’s snowing. Really snowing.”
It’s as if he’s turned to stone in her arms. She can feel him stop breathing. But his heart is racing. “Let me go,” he says. “Please let me go.”
“I can’t,” Miranda says. “I don’t have the key.”
“You can.” A voice like a bell, clear and sweet.
And here is the one Miranda has been waiting for. Fenny’s she. The one who catches foxes in traps. Never lets them go. The one who makes the rules.
It’s silly, perhaps, to be reminded in this moment of Elspeth, but that’s who Miranda thinks of when she looks up and sees the Lady who approaches, more Honeywell than any Honeywell Miranda has ever met. The presence, the puissance that Elspeth commands, just for a little while when Elspeth takes the stage, is a game. Elspeth plays at the thing. Here is the substance. Power is something granted willingly to Elspeth by her audience. Fenny’s Lady has it always. What a burden. Never to be able to put it down.
Can the Lady see what Miranda is thinking? Her gaze takes in all. Fenny keeps his head bowed. But his hands are in Miranda’s hands. He is in her keeping, and she will not let him go.
“I have no key,” Miranda says. “And he does not want to go with you.”
“He did once,” the Lady says. She wears armor, too, all made of ice. What a thing it would be, to dress this Lady. To serve her. She could go with Fenny, if the Lady let her.
Down inside the dress where the Lady cannot see, Fenny pinches the soft web between Miranda’s thumb and first finger. The pain brings her back to herself. She sees that he is watching her. He says nothing, only looks until Miranda finds herself again in his eyes.
“I went with you willingly,” Fenny agrees. But he doesn’t look at the Lady. He only looks at Miranda.
“But you would leave me now? Only speak it and I will let you go at once.”
Fenny says nothing. A rule, Miranda thinks. There is a rule here.
“He can’t say it,” she says. “Because you won’t let him. So let me say it for him. He will stay here. Haven’t you kept him from his home for long enough?”
“His home is with me. Let him go,” the Lady says. “Or you will be sorry.” She reaches out a long hand and touches the chain around Miranda’s dress. It splinters beneath her featherlight touch. Miranda feels it give.
“Let him go and I will give you your heart’s desire,” the Lady says. She is so close that Miranda can feel the Lady’s breath frosting her cheek. And then Miranda isn’t holding Fenny. She’s holding Daniel. Miranda and Daniel are married. They love each other so much. Honeywell Hall is her home. It always has been. Their children under the tree, Elspeth white-haired and lovely at the head of the table, wearing a dress from Miranda’s couture label.
Only it isn’t Elspeth at all, is it? It’s the Lady. Miranda almost lets go of Daniel. Fenny! But he holds her hands and she wraps her hands around his waist, tighter than before.
“Be careful, girl,” the Lady says. “He bites.”
Miranda is holding a fox. Scrabbling, snapping, carrion breath at her face. Miranda holds fast.
Then: Fenny again. Trembling against her.
“It’s okay,” Miranda says. “I’ve got you.”
But it isn’t Fenny after all. It’s her mother. They’re together in a small, dirty cell. Joannie says, “It’s okay, Miranda. I’m here. It’s okay. You can let go. I’m here. Let go and we can go home.”
“No,” Miranda says, suddenly boiling with rage. “No, you’re not here. And I can’t do anything about that. But I can do something about this.” And she holds on to her mother until her mother is Fenny again, and the Lady is looking at Miranda and Fenny as if they are a speck of filth beneath her slippered foot.
“Very well then,” the Lady says. She smiles, the way you would smile at a speck of filth. “Keep him then. For a while. But know that he will never again know the joy that I taught him. With me he could not be but happy. I made him so. You will bring him grief and death. You have dragged him into a world where he knows nothing. Has nothing. He will look at you and think of what he lost.”
“We all lose,” says an acerbic voice. “We all love and we all lose and we go on loving just the same.”
“Elspeth?” Miranda says. But she thinks, it’s a trap. Just another trap. She squeezes Fenny so hard around his middle that he gasps.
Elspeth looks at Fenny. She says, “I saw you once, I think. Outside the window. I thought you were a shadow or a ghost.”
Fenny says, “I remember. Though you had hardly come into your beauty then.”
“Such talk! You are going to be wasted on my Miranda, I’m afraid,” Elspeth says. “As for you, my lady, I think you’ll find you’ve been bested. Go and find another toy. We here are not your meat.”
The Lady curtseys. Looks one last time at Elspeth, Miranda. Fenny. This time he looks back. What does he see? Does any part of him move to follow her? His hand finds Miranda’s hand again.
Then the Lady is gone and the snow thins and blows away to nothing at all.
Elspeth blows out a breath. “Well,” she says. “You’re a stubborn girl, a good-hearted girl, Miranda, and brighter than your poor mother. But if I’d known what you were about, we would have had a word or two. Stage magic is well and good, but better to steer clear of the real kind.”
“Better for Miranda,” Fenny says. “But she has won me free with her brave trick.”
“And now I suppose we’ll have to figure out what to do with you,” Elspeth says. “You’ll be needing something more practical than that coat.”
“Come on,” Miranda says. She is still holding on to Fenny’s hand. Perhaps she’s holding on too tightly, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s holding on just as tightly.
So she says, “Let’s go in.”