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THE SNOW QUEEN
- a winter tale
Snow fell on the woods. The first few snowflakes of winter that would gradually turn into a thick white blanket of sparkling cold. They say that no two snowflakes are the same, but with so many, how can anyone be sure?
The reign of the winter princess had begun. Faeries danced amongst the bare tree branches extending skywards like a spiderweb of brittle brown.
The winter princess walked through the snow. She left no footprints. The unearthly etheral beauty of the winter princess appeared to be composed entirely of the snowflakes she made with each exhaling breath.
A hunter staggered through the woods. Starving, desperate, he was the only soul daring and foolish enough to enter the wolf-infested woods on the freezing cold winter's day.
Lost, frightened, exhausted and tormented by the flashes of silvery grey fur that manifested themselves in the trees surrounding him, he had given up all hope. He collapsed into the snow, welcoming death.
The hunter was young. A boy. Seventeen but in possesion of a curious niavete that made him seem much younger. His face was well defined, his features graceful. The long, pitch-black, silken hair framing his face enhanced his feminine beauty. His hands lay in the snow like fallen doves.
She found him in the snow. Merely a princess, innocent and uncrowned, she fell in love with him. She did not touch him. Her touch was the icy crystals from the depths of the frozen lake. He would freeze to death from her touch. Her faeries carried him to her unicorn-drawn carriage. They headed for her palace of ice.
In her palace, the faeries could not wake him. The winter princess could not provide him with the warmth he needed to live. She was ruler to no one but the cold.
The hunter with the dove-like hands lay in the ice-palace unconscious. The winter princess was powerless to stop the slow death of her love.
In a sudden fit of passion, the winter princess kissed him. The brief flare of love made the hunter's eyelids flutter open revealing vivid green eyes. But the moment expired and the cold returned. His last breath passed into her.
He died with his eyes open, frozen into emeralds forever. Grief-stricken, she wept and her tears froze into tiny icicles before shattering into a million fragments on the glassy floor of her palace.
But death is slave to none. So in death, they were wed and by death she was crowned. For it was to death that she truly belonged.
- Shazanah Hassan