[WP] The cold, frigid, and proud Ice Queen, unable to feel emotion, finds a little boy dying in her frozen wastelands. She decides to keep him.
She was on a mission to find peace. My proud queen didn’t admit it to me, of course, but I knew it in my heart. Peace was elusive for us both. Long had been the days of being content in her palace of crystalline beauty. She’d grown irritable, cold, and unfeeling. I remembered her differently. The Winter Palace used to be a haven of sparkling delight, but those memories were distant now. Now a bleak glaze clouded her glacial eyes and she hardly spoke.
The falling snow covered us both in a light layer as we ventured out of the stables. She nudged her silver dun forward and I dutifully followed. The steady muffled crunch of ice and slush under our horses’ hooves were the only sounds in the morning quiet. No birds or creatures heralded our trek into the snowfields, much as it was every dawn. An occasional towering tree rose like a bare dancer to mark our path but we hardly needed the reminders.
A frigid breeze pricked at my eyes and ears, cutting me to the core. I shivered and pulled my cloak closer to me and looked to Eirlys. Her cloak hung open, but she didn’t seem to notice the gooseflesh that had risen on her chest and neck. She looked as regal as ever. The circlet of diamonds nestled in her blonde waves glittered in the first rays of sunlight. She’d taken to wearing her royal diadem even in private, as if to remind all including herself that she was the queen. As if I could forget.
We rode in silence. This is the ritual we kept now– morning rides through the tundra, a fruitless search for peace. Early on I had suggested to her perhaps to visit her brother in the Summerlands, but the suggestion was not received well.
I would have liked to be warm by the fire, but I had to be with her… it was just as much to make sure she came home as it was to keep her safe. The Bleak haunted her as much as it did me. Maybe I hid it better. Eirlys’s lasting desire for children had plunged her into a deep depression as the desire became desperation and desperation became obsession, and obsession turned her sour to the world. The gods did not smile on us as they had for her brother, who had princelings and princesses to delight him ‘til the end of his days. We were not so fortunate.
We stopped at the edge of an ice sheet, surveying the barren frozen lake before us. Old granny tales would make one believe that this wintry expanse once had been the gem of the realm, with a lush forest and fanciful Summerland wonders, but I’d never believed it. To me all I’d ever seen was a landscape of white.
My Queen called this lake her Mirror of Reflection in an effort to re-find her peace. Her icy crystal wrought throne perched at its heart, though no one attended her court out here…. No one ever ventured. Just me, her faithful servant, her devoted man. Once I had been called the Duke of the Solstice but I fear now many in court see me as they do my queen- devoid of hope or joy.
I stayed on my mount as she started her solitary trudge to the throne.
“Magnus,” she called suddenly. Eirlys knelt to a mound in the snow and slowly began to brush off the layer of white that covered it. After a moment she looked back at me, her voice was near a whisper. “A boy.” She pulled the figure out of the mound, cradling a half-frozen child in her lap. I sank into the knee-deep snow to make slow progress past the invisible shoreline to her. My Winterland Queen huddled over her deerskin bundled find, rocking back and forth gently.
The barest of puffs of breath misted from him and she touched his face, pushing more snow off the boy. A mop of brown froze to his bright red cheeks. He couldn’t have been more than five.
“Magnus, he’s alive,” she murmured worriedly. Arctic air needled me in earnest as I tore off my cloak to wrap around them both. The little bundle in her arms groaned, and at the sound of her voice his eyes fluttered open. Dazed dark brown pools gazed up at Erilys.
“Little one,” my queen asked, “do you have a name?”
“I am called Aksel”. Aksel. Peace from the heavens.
With caution and reverence my queen touched the child’s face again. “Can it be?” She whispered. “How did you come here?”
The boy’s voice was stronger than it had any right to be after being abandoned in the Winterlands. “He brought me.” Aksel pointed, his little fingers directing us to the south, back to the shoreline.
I blinked. And blinked again and gaped. A grandfatherly figure stood in the morning rays, a kindly looking bearded man in a fine feastday robe with an elkskin satchel. His reindeer steed beside him bowed his great head and the soft chime of bells drifted to us. I turned back to look at Erilys but she had seen the same wonder as I.
“I am yours. Father Christmas promised.” Came the child’s voice again.
My Snow Queen smiled. The curve of her lips had not been seen for many turns of the moon, maybe even ages. What a beautiful sight! She kissed Aksel’s forehead and hugged him close. Her cheeks shone with frozen tears, outshining even the diamonds of her crown.
“Yes child, yes you are. My little prince”, she replied. The icy air stung my eyes as I fought back tears of my own and swallowed hard.
When I glanced back Father Christmas was gone.
Peace. I looked up, eyes searching for the crystal throne on the frozen lake, but could not find it. What had been so clearly solid only moments before as my beloved had trudged forward was gone. It didn’t matter.
She no longer needed it.