Snow
By Laura Schiller
Series: The Faerie Path
Copyright: Frewin Jones and HarperCollins Publishing
Snow falls outside the windows of Princess Eden's tower. Millions of cold little flakes of white, falling, falling in thick heavy drifts as if they meant to bury the entire kingdom under a blanket eternal of ice-white sleep.
Oh, for such a blanket of oblivion to cover the darkness of Eden's heart.
She drifts in a universe of darkness, contrasting sharply with the whiteness of her hair, the snow, the grayness of her rooms in the forgotten tower. Darkness in the form of centuries of sorrow, pain and shame, which cling to her like strangling, thorny vines and do not let go.
She lied to her family. She told them the Queen had drowned, when in reality, it was Eden who sent her to her death.
Mother, I am sorry.
The Oriole Glass is the only bit of color left now in this lonely grayscale world she had built. It follows her like a malevolent eye wherever she goes, its images from another world mocking her, haunting her, taunting her with the illusory hope that one day her mother and sister will return.
Eden is a prisoner in her own mind.
Seasons come, seasons go. The snow outside the windows lets up from time to time, but leaves its ghostly traces on her black hair and lovely face, turning her into an old woman before her time.
Five hundred years of twilight.
Nobody comes. Nobody goes. Except for the trays of food which appear in front of her door, Eden might as well be the only living creature in the world.
Until suddenly a change sweeps over the land. An unheard-of change, a glimmer of light which grows into a glorious conflagration of joy across the land, making itself felt even within the cold confines of Eden's two prisons.
A ray of sunlight.
Eden stands by the window, throws back her cloak and lets her pure white hair glisten in the golden warmth, something she last felt o long ago she can barely remember. She peers out through the dust of the window, catching only the slightest glimpse.
But that one look is enough.
Flame-red hair, a heart-shaped face glowing with health, a shimmering lavender gown. A splash of color finally arriving in Eden's wintery, icy, colorless world.
Tania.
Slowly, carefully, with muscles long disused, Eden smiles.