Free Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige Page A

nowhere to be found.
    I half remembered the boy saying that I should have been left in the River. But I wasn’t sure if he’d said it or I’d dreamed it.
    The River Witch turned and looked at me.
    “What is wrong with you? How could you take a drowned girl on a boat?” I demanded.
    She laughed. “It’s the only way, my dear. Unless you prefer another swim in the River.”
    “What are you?”
    “Oh, my dear, there are things above and below that no one has imagined or known about. I am one of those things for many people.”
    I sat up too quickly. My head screamed. I rested back on the rough pillow.
    “You have more spunk than she did. That will serve you well,” the River Witch said and laughed. “You will be on your way. All in due time. But not before I tell you a story.”
    “I don’t need a story. I need to find my friend and go home,” I said, feeling desperately close to whining.
    “But that’s the thing. You already are home. I have to say, you look so much like Ora. It’s uncanny.”
    “You know my mother?”
    “Know her? We are sisters.”
    I squinted hard at the River Witch.
    Sisters? I had never met any other family outside my momand dad. And the entity standing in front of me had more in common with the water puddling on the floor around her than my very perfect, very human mother. “You think… You’re my aunt?”
    The River Witch laughed. “No, Snow. Ora and I belonged to the same coven.”
    Coven? The word thumped in my head. I’d recently discovered a lot about my mother. First and foremost, she was a liar. And now she was a person from another land. But somehow the idea of her being magical, of being the same as this mermaid-witch thing from the River, seemed inconceivable.
    “You’re saying my mother was … is a witch. Like you?”
    “There are all kinds of witches, my dear.”
    “And what kind of witch is she?” I asked reflexively.
    “Not the same kind,” the River Witch answered cryptically. “But there is so much that you do not know. Shame on Ora.”
    I didn’t like her insulting my mother even though I was mad at her myself. But I didn’t have the energy to defend her. I could barely sit up.
    The witch’s cheek gills opened and closed with a sigh of annoyance. “Ora has not protected you and has kept you ignorant. If she really believes that is the best way to keep you safe, then she learned nothing from her time in Algid. You have missed years of preparing, years of training…”
    “Preparing and training for what?” I asked, more confused by the moment.
    The River Witch sighed, and a few drops of water splattered onto the floor as a result.
    “Oh, dear. The first thing you should know is whoever you believe is your father is not.”
    “You’re lying …,” I said. But some part of me stopped short. Some part of me wanted to hear her out. I barely knew my father. His visits were sporadic and always at the urging of my mother. I would have been sad about it if I hadn’t been drugged up all the time.
    “You don’t believe me, but in time you will. Let’s start from the beginning, then … with your real father, King Lazar.”
    As she spoke, I wanted to resist, but I leaned into her words like a five-year-old listening to a bedtime story.
    “Algid wasn’t always covered in snow,” the River Witch said. “It used to have seasons. And then Prince Lazar was born, which would change the course of our world. Lazar was the first of the royal line to carry strong magic within him. Magic is usually reserved only for witches, so it created quite the stir. Some say his mother had an affair with a god. Others say she dabbled in dark magic herself. No one knows the truth, and we never will because when Lazar was born, he came into the world and froze his own mother to death. Not an auspicious start.
    “Lazar’s father feared for his own life and came to the coven for help. My sisters cast a protective spell on the boy, restraining his magic and putting a