First Frost Page 4

  “Yeah,” Bianca whispered.

  The awkward moment passed, and they turned their attention back to Bianca’s training. She thought of her father once more. She remembered the time they had all gone to the aquarium together. She had been six years old, and at that time she’d wanted to be a marine biologist. She loved the water and stingrays. She thought they were odd and graceful. All she could see was his handsome face as he’d pointed to a stingray.

  “Did you know that stingrays are usually docile and curious? They sometimes brush their fins past any new object they come across,” David said.

  “Really?” Bianca replied.

  “Yep.” He nodded.

  “Cool.” She pressed her tiny hands on the cool glass.

  Bianca opened her eyes and watched in awe as both her hands glowed bright white.

  “Okay. Now direct it somewhere. Anywhere,” Rose instructed gently.

  Bianca looked around and threw her fireball towards a box of old papers. She honestly didn’t think that the box would catch fire. She didn’t think her magic was powerful enough to make something burst into flames. But that was exactly what happened.

  “Oh, crap,” Rose shouted. She ran upstairs, grabbed the fire extinguisher that was in the kitchen, then ran back to the basement, and put the fire out.

  “I’m so sorry,” Bianca said, rooted to the spot. She was shocked. She stared at her hands as though seeing them for the first time in her life.

  “No, no. That’s okay. You were great.” Rose wiped the sweat off her pale forehead.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you asked me what I was thinking about earlier and I said nothing…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking about Daddy,” she admitted.

  “Oh.” Rose spoke so softly. Bianca wondered if she really heard her speak or if she had imagined it. Oh was such a small word, yet it filled the room.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’re not forbidden to think about him.”

  “But you always cry and get so sad when I mention him.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry for that. It’s just…it’s hard living without him. God…it’s been ten years, and I still can’t get used to it. He is the love of my life.”

  Bianca almost corrected her and said was. It was as though Rose were implying that David was still alive. But if he were alive, Bianca knew that her father would do everything in his power to come home to his family.

  Where is he? Why hasn’t he found a way to come back to us?

  She had been seven years old when her father had disappeared. The first year he was gone she’d cried nearly every day. With time she’d cried less and less until she had got used to not having her father around. She had become accustomed to having that huge gaping hole in her heart.

  “We were trying for another baby when he disappeared,” Rose said.

  “Really?”

  Rose wiped away a runaway tear with her fingertips and nodded.

  Wow. We’re actually talking about Dad without Mom running away from me.

  There was a question she wanted to ask. It was burning in the back of her throat, begging to be released. She almost didn’t ask for fear of her mother reverting back to her old ways and shutting her out once more, but Bianca decided to take a chance. It was now or never.

  “Does Lenore have anything to do with Daddy’s disappearance?”

  Rose nodded once more.

  “What happened?”

  Rose got a faraway look in her eyes, as though she were someplace else, in another time altogether. “Lenore turned your father into a bear right before my very eyes,” she whispered.

  Bianca’s jaw literally dropped. She couldn’t believe what she heard. “When did this happen?”

  “You don’t remember?” Rose asked in surprise.

  “I remember coming home from school, and you sat me down on the couch and told me that Daddy was missing. But what I meant to ask was when, as in was it during the day? At night? Was it here at home or at the museum? Details, Mom. You’ve never given me the details behind Daddy’s disappearance.”

  Rose ran her fingers through her hair and looked around the room, desperate for an answer. “How could I possibly tell you? How on earth was I supposed to explain to a seven-year-old that a witch turned her father into a bear? I couldn’t tell you then, sweetheart. And I’m sorry I kept so much from you.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Bianca replied as she nibbled on her thumbnail.

  “Anyway David was working late at the museum. He had some paperwork he wanted to take care of, some tax forms or something like that. At that time we were sharing the car, so I told him to stay and wait for me to come pick him up. I needed to come home to take care of you and get dinner started. I knew he would be safe as long as he stayed inside the museum because of the wards I placed on the building.

  “I left you at Ming’s house because you were spending the weekend. Then I drove up to the museum to get your dad. David came out of the museum, locked the doors behind him, and walked toward me. He smiled and winked at me like he always did every time I picked him up. That was when Lenore stepped out of the shadows and cast her spell on him, right before my very eyes. I froze. Before I could mutter a single spell, he was gone. I can still hear her laughter as she took him from me…from us.”

  There was a sudden hush that fell between them. Bianca was at a loss for words.

  “What a horrible thing to do to a person,” Bianca said finally.

  “She said she wanted to help turn my life into a real-life fairy tale.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would she want to do that?”

  “You know my full name is Rose Red Frost,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. Still not getting it, Mom.” Bianca tapped on the side of her head.

  “Haven’t you ever read the story of Snow White and Rose Red?”

  Bianca frowned as she searched her memory for the story and vaguely remembered having read a fairy tale with those names at some point in her life. It made sense because most of the women in the family were named after a fairy tale character. “Did Grandma name you after the story?”

  “Yeah.” Rose smiled. “It was her favorite story.”

  “Is that why you named me Bianca?” she asked, wondering about the story behind her name, Bianca Silver Frost. Sure, it took some twisting and turning, but it was almost like being named Snow White.

  “Yes. I didn’t want to go so far as to name you Snow White, I thought people might make fun of you, and I didn’t want you to go through that,” she admitted. “Anyway, Lenore thought that since our names were so similar to the ones in the fairy tale, she wanted to make it come true. She has a thing for torturing people. She wants to see what they’re capable of and how much they can withstand before finally breaking down. That’s the part she loves the most: watching someone break. I guess she wanted to see how far she could push me. I don’t know…maybe she wanted me to kill myself since she failed so many times in the past.”

  Bianca shuddered at the thought of losing her mother. That was one scenario she didn’t want to imagine.

  Bianca took a deep breath. “Where is he? Where is Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve looked everywhere for him. He isn’t in the forest or in a zoo. I’ve tried scrying for him. I even asked the magic mirror in the museum if it knows where he is.”

  “What did the mirror say?” Bianca asked.

  “Across the world,

  The man you seek,

  In another realm

  His language you cannot speak.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure. It could mean he’s in another world altogether, or he’s now part of the animal kingdom, which technically is a different realm because animals abide from different rules than humans do. I just don’t know.”

  “Why is the mirror so cryptic? Why can’t it just say what it mea
ns? Why can’t it say ‘Hey, your father is in Yellow Stone Park next to the maple tree’ or something like that?” Bianca asked angrily.

  “Trust me, sweetheart, I’ve been asking that mirror questions my whole life, and it’s never given me a straight answer.”

  “Well, it sucks.” Bianca pouted as she crossed her arms across her chest.

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  Bianca wondered how she would feel if the love of her life had been transformed into a bear and then, on top of that, vanished.

  Devastated. That was the only word that came to mind.

  Bianca lifted her gaze to ask Rose another question and saw that her mother was in tears.

  “Oh, Mom.” Bianca walked up to her and hugged her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Rose sobbed and covered her mouth as though wanting to take back the sound that escaped her lips.

  “Mom, don’t cry. Please stop crying.”

  Rose shook her head and dried her tears from her bloodshot eyes. “I think about that night every single day.”

  “We’ll find him, Mom. Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” Bianca said, trying to comfort her.

  “It’s been ten years. For all I know, he’s probably dead,” Rose whispered.

  “We’ll find him,” Bianca repeated the words in a louder voice. She was fiercely determined to make this statement come true—no matter what. She had no idea how she was going to find her father, but she would do everything she could.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Rose said between tears.

  “Yeah…me too.”

  Rose wiped her cheeks and tried pull herself together. She took a deep breath and said, “Come on, let’s practice a little more, and then I’ll make us some lunch.”

  “Okay,” Bianca said with a nod.

  They stayed down in the basement for several hours, practicing magic spells, creating fireballs and other defensive spells. Bianca learned how to shield herself from another witch’s magic. Even though Bianca wasn’t running or doing any type of obvious physical labor, she was drenched with sweat by the time they were done for the day.

  Chapter Five

  At eight o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, mother and daughter opened the doors at the museum. Bianca’s life had been altered in one day. She was glad she had all day Monday to sit and let everything sink in. It was hard for her to look at the items in the museum the same way. Would putting on Cinderella’s glass slipper make her want to dance? Would pricking her finger on the spinning wheel cause her to go to sleep for one hundred years? What about Snow White’s apple? Was it even real? If so…was it really poisoned?

  All this stuff is real. She went from not believing in magic to being completely surrounded by every magical item known (or unknown) in the fairy tale world.

  Then she thought about the things in the Wicked Wing. Her ice blue eyes widened in horror as she went through the list of the items in that particular room.

  The oven from Hansel and Gretel.

  The spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty.

  The Red Dancing Shoes.

  Another spinning wheel from Rumplestiltskin, the one he used to turn the straw into gold.

  A golden cage with a fake nightingale inside; it was the one from the story Jorinde and Joringel.

  The evil queen’s magic mirror. What is that thing even doing on display? Bianca wondered as she walked past it.

  Oh, my God! Those things are real! Bianca tried not to freak out in the middle of the museum while there were people roaming around. She plastered a big fake smile on her face as she walked around the museum in search for her mother. She checked the gift shop—not there. She went upstairs, hoping Rose would be in her office.

  “Not here,” she muttered as she opened the door and found the chair behind her desk empty. Her face hurt from smiling so much. She rubbed her cheeks as she walked down the stairs. She let out a sigh of relief when she found her mother in the art gallery. She was struggling with a twenty-four by thirty-six frame with a painting of a mermaid lovingly gazing at an unconscious sailor. It was all done in pencil and a series of blue and green markers. Bianca was always blown away with the art that had been collected in this room. A lot of the paintings in the gallery were done by local artists. And some of the artwork was reprints of famous illustrations from popular artists like Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson, and John Tenniel.

  “Mom?” she whispered.

  “Yes?” Rose grunted as she balanced the heavy frame in her hands.

  “This stuff is real.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she replied as she looked behind the frame and tried to line up the wire hanger to the nail on the wall.

  “No…Mom. I mean…this is real,” Bianca repeated her words slowly.

  “Ah, I see where this is going.” Rose smiled. She carefully let go of the frame and stepped back to make sure it was straight. “Don’t worry, a lot of this stuff is harmless, but maybe I’ll give you the unofficial tour once we’re closed.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Does it look straight to you?” Rose asked.

  Bianca tilted her head left and right as she studied the newly framed piece of art. “It looks good to me,” she replied.

  “Works for me.”

  At six o’clock, they closed the doors of the museum. They went through their usual routine and made sure they didn’t have any stowaways in the building.

  “I’ll be right back. I gotta grab something from my office,” Rose said.

  “Okeydokey.”

  When Rose returned she had a large brown leather book in her hands. Together, they went into the Snow White Room. They stood in front of a portrait of Snow White. Bianca studied the painting. Snow White stared back at Bianca with indigo colored eyes and the ghost of a smile, as though she had just told the artist a dirty joke and was doing everything she could to remain composed.

  Rose took a deep breath and whispered, “This is harder than I thought.”

  “Are you okay?” Bianca asked.

  “Yeah…I’m okay. I just…I always expected your father to be here when the time came to tell you about your family history.”

  Bianca teared up at the mention of her father. She wasn’t sure she could get used to talking about her father as though it were perfectly normal to do so.

  She looked at her beautiful mother and noticed the white hairs scattered over her bright red hair. The fine lines on the corners of her emerald green eyes. Bianca realized for the first time how tired Rose looked.

  Has she always looked like that and I just failed to notice? Or is it that Mom is really good at hiding how she feels from everyone…even me.

  Rose pulled Bianca out of her thoughts when she said, “I really need you to pay attention to everything that I say to you from this moment forward. If Lenore attacks again, I want you to be ready. I need you to be ready, in case I’m not around. Your grandmother killed Lenore’s mother, Gertrude, but what no one suspected was that she would throw a death curse at my mother with her dying breath.” Rose looked into Bianca’s eyes and gently said, “The good guys don’t always win.”

  Bianca shuddered and took a deep breath.

  “Anyway…this is your great-great-great grandmother Snow White.”

  Rose and Bianca sat down on the floor in front of the portrait. Rose softly touched the edge of the book she had brought down from her office. On the cover, in Old English gold lettering, it said Our Family. The book also had gold edging; it was beautiful. Priceless.

  “Whoa,” Bianca whispered. “May I?”

  Rose handed the book to her daughter. Bianca carefully took the tome in her hands and placed it on her lap. She opened it ever so carefully. The very first page was a thick piece of tissue paper. She turned the page and hiding behind the tissue paper was Snow White. This time there wasn’t a professional portrait like the one hanging on the wall of the museum. This was a drawing done in pencil. The Snow White looking back at her was slightly olde
r but still strong, proud and confident. The look in Snow White’s eyes told Bianca that she could do anything if she just believed in herself.

  Underneath the drawing was information about her.

  Snow White von Waldeck

  Born January 14th, 1750 in Everafter.

  Snow White married Frederic von Waldeck on October 8th, 1770 in Brussels. She bore him four children: Mason, Leonard, Grace, and Katina.

  Died July 20th, 1830.

  “Everafter?” Bianca asked, the confusion evident on her face.

  “It’s where she’s from. Where a lot of the fairy tales you’ve read took place,” Rose explained.

  “But…how?”

  “Long ago people sometimes would wander into fairy rings and go to another world…almost like a portal. And sometimes fairies came into our world, steal human babies, and take them to their world to raise them as their own. Eventually there were enough humans in Everafter to populate that small world. The humans created their own kingdoms and villages, much to the fairies’ annoyance. They didn’t like the humans taking over their world, so they would often play tricks on the royals and local folk. Sometimes…with tragic endings.

  “The Brothers Grimm accidentally stepped into a fairy ring and it was during their stay in Everafter that they collected all of their stories. In fact, the whole ‘and they lived happily ever after’ is a typo. It’s supposed to be ‘and they lived happily in Everafter.’ Anyway, some of the people from Everafter followed the two brothers here to our world.”

  “Really? Like who?”

  “Snow White, obviously.” Rose pointed to the book. “Rapunzel, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, Briar Rose, and a few others.”

  “But…why?”

  “The fae aren’t necessarily known for their kindness, Bianca. Life in Everafter isn’t easy. The men and women who came here wanted normal and peaceful lives. Some got it…others weren’t so lucky.”

  “How so?”

  “Magic will follow you no matter where you are. Magic has no boundaries.”

  “Is that what happened to Snow White? Magic followed her here?” Bianca studied the artist’s depiction of her ancestor.