Winter Garden

Three hulking green trolls in black capes get out of the carriage and come together on the sidewalk, talking for a moment before they go to the front door. “What are they doing?” she whispers as they go inside the building. “What do they want?”

The minutes tick by slowly until the door opens again.

Vera sees it all in some kind of slow motion. The trolls have her father. He is not fighting, not arguing, not even talking.

Her mama stumbles down the steps behind them, sobbing, pleading. Windows in the building above her are slamming shut.

“Papa!” Vera cries out.

Across the street, her father looks up and sees her. It is as if he alone heard her cry out.

He shakes his head and holds out his hand as if to say, Stay there, and then he is shoved into the carriage and he is gone.

She elbows Sasha one last time and he lets her go. Without a backward glance, she runs across the street. “Mama, where have they taken him?”

Her mother looks up slowly. For a second, she seems not to recognize her own daughter. “You should be in bed, Vera. ”

“The trolls. Where are they taking Papa?”

When her mother doesn’t answer, she hears Sasha’s voice behind her. “It’s the Black Knight, Vera. They do what they want. ”

“I do not understand,” Vera cries. “You are a prince—”

“My family has no power anymore. The Black Knight has imprisoned my father and my uncles. You must know that. It is dangerous to be a royal in the Snow Kingdom these days. No one can help you,” he says. “I am sorry. ”

She starts to cry, and this time her tears are not starlight; they are tiny black stones that hurt when they form.

“Veronika,” her mother says. “We need to get inside. Now. ” She grabs Vera’s hand and pulls her away from Sasha, who just stands there watching her. “She is fifteen years old,” Mama says to him, putting an arm around Vera, holding her close as they climb the steps to the door.

When Vera looks back out to the street, her prince is gone.

From then on, Vera’s family is changed. No one smiles anymore, no one laughs. She and her mother and her sister try to pretend that it will get better, but none believes it.

The kingdom is still beautiful, still a white, walled city filled with bridges and spires and magical rivers, but Vera sees it differently now. She sees shadows where there had been light, fear where there had been love. Before, the sound of students laughing on a warm white night could make her cry with longing. Now she knows what is worth crying over.

Days melt into weeks and Vera begins to lose all hope that her father will return. She turns sixteen without a celebration.

“I hear they are looking for workers at the castle,” her mother says one day while they are eating supper. “In the library and in the bakery. ”

“Yes,” Vera says.

“I know you wanted to go to university,” her mother says.

Already that dream is losing substance. It is something her father had dreamed for her, that one day she, too, would be a poet. Finally, she is the grown-up she’d longed to be, and she has no choices now. Not a peasant girl like her. She understands this at last.

Her future has been changed by this arrest; fixed. There will be no schooling for her, no handsome boys carrying her school-books or kissing her under streetlamps. No Sasha. “I do not want to smell like bread all day. ”

She feels her mother’s nod. They are connected like that now, the three of them. When one moves, they all feel it. Ripples in a pond.

“I will go to the royal library tomorrow,” Vera says.

She is sixteen. How can she possibly understand the mistake she has just made? Who could have known that people she loved would die because of it?

Twelve

What do you mean, people will die? What’s her mistake?” Nina said when her mother fell silent. “We’ve never heard that part of the story before. ”

“Yes, you have. It scared Meredith, so I sometimes skipped it. ”