She wipes her hand across the mirror, which is spotted and blackened with age. The dust coating it comes off on her hand.
If anyone finds out just how far her family fell from grace, they'd say things that shouldn't be said by heretics and heathens. She has to keep this quiet. She has to silence anyone who dares to speak ill against her family. She has to change the story, no matter what the cost.
Snow tilts her head to the side, gazing at her reflection with her last good eye. Trading sight for sight. Eye for an eye. It's an old saying, but the meaning remains the same. Squaring her shoulders, she observes as the last blue color in her iris fades into a milky fog. On one side of her vision, she sees everything. Through the fog, it becomes shapes without definition or color, a world seemingly devoid of meaning.
Her father had traded the witch for what exactly? These powers? For her?
She stands, flattens her hands against her skirts, and marches to the window. Pushing open the wooden frame, she gazes out into the darkened sky. One eye sees the bright illumination of colors, blues ranging from turquoise to midnight, stars as far as she can see. Her other side shows dark splotches along the horizon.
"Come," she says, keeping her voice low.
"With this," her father had told her, "we will be able to rule the world."
"We already rule, Papa."
"No, Snow. No one believes a woman able to lead. You, you are the key to changing all of that. I have given my sight for you, and soon, you will give yours too."
She had been too young to understand then, but now in her blossoming years, with her breasts just starting to peek along her skin, her father had made the fourth trade—her first eye.
From the shadowing darkness ahead of her, a single crow soars in gracefully. When it gets close to the window frame, it flaps its wings, causing her newly whitened hair to shift in the breeze. It caws at her, a cackling sound that she had never heard up close before. It's piercing, and there's something devastatingly beautiful about it.
She gained emotional fortitude for her father's eyes, wolves for her hair, crows for one eye. When the witch comes for the other, she'll have unimaginable powers.
Snow had asked, "Why crows for an eye? Aren't wolves more dangerous? Shouldn't they be worth more than hair?"
Her father touched the tip of her nose. "Wolves are dangerous, but crows have sight. And with sight, comes power. We are trading for power, Snow."
Reaching out her delicate fingers, Snow strokes the crow down its back. The outline of it resembles a cat in her bad vision, and she's not sure if she'll ever be ready to give up her other eye. Sight is power, after all.
The crow caws again.
"I want to see what you see," she whispers, sorrow filling her voice as she realized she would never see the same again.
The crow launches itself into the air. Snow blinks and rubs her eyes, but still, there's another side to her vision. Out of the milky fog, she is soaring alongside the crow. No, that's not right. She is the crow, seeing the world below. All the thick outlines of buildings, the trees cropped out of the forest, and she realizes that she has sight without sight. She's given up one experience for another.
She waves the vision away and sits in front of the mirror, looking at her reflection for a long time. What will they say when they see her? What will they think and say? Everyone will know what happened with the witch. They'll know.
As if answering her sorrow, a howl sounds in the distance. Snow clenches her fits and sits up straight. No, they won't know how she became. She will not allow it. She simply is and always will be the Queen.
- - - - -
This is a spin off from the Blue Moon series (In a Blue Moon already released, Bolt from the Blue coming soon, Greener on the Other Side coming sooner). All titles will be based on color idioms, and I do plan on giving Snow her own story one of these days.
Story prompt from the Wording Wednesday group on MeWe. Based on the art in the link below:
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/prayer-amanda-clark.html
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