Never has there lived so wicked a woman in all the time of telling tales. Or is the truth more deeply hidden?
Her sleigh skipped across the frozen waves that covered the country paths. The pace was quick. Snow slipped across the mare’s sweat-slicked flanks. Yet nothing stirred Queen Elia’s humour.
She saw nothing, blinkered by the silence that travelled with her down from her empty mountain palace. The hedgerows of hibernating birds were silent, the blanketed pastures were fast asleep and the crunch of snow was just a buzz in her ear.
Only when the lights of the city appeared in the dying dusk did Elia’s eyes focus. A smile curled her lip as the sleigh raced through the granite gateway and up the quiet cobble road. The houses glowed with candlelight, letting loose happy snorts of grown ups and the delicious smells of roast dinners. Voices sang loud from the bars and the town cryer bellowed from outside the City Hall. The world inside these walls was always awake.
Teenage boys were sledging in the Square, weaving between the shuttered stalls, all laughing and screaming at speed. Elia whipped up the horse to join in the race. Faster, faster, she was faster than them. They watched, they chased, they all gave up … except one.
“I’ll catch you!” He shouted to her.
Finally, heart racing, her voice trilled out loud. At first she didn’t recognise the gentle, melodic laugh as her own, but it was. She was laughing and so was the boy. He cut across the square, inside the sleigh’s massive turning circle, and swung the reigns of his sled over the sleigh’s tow hook. Elia felt the sleigh jolt as the horse took up the extra weight.
The other boys cheered and whooped as their friend clung to his hurtling sled. He screamed along with them and Elia wanted to go faster, to share with him the rush of countryside speeds. She turned the horse out of the Square, past the glowing houses and towards the mountains. Then the horse finally slowed to ascend.
The thrill ebbed. Elia turned to look for the boy’s smiling face, but saw his shivering frame curled tight against strengthening snow.
“Oh no, poor thing.” She said, jumping from the sleigh. “Come sit with me. The furs there will warm you.”
The boy was too cold to object. They’d travelled far into the country over the choppy peaks of wind blown snow.
Kissing his forehead, Elia wrapped him in polar bear hide, concealing him from the world as she often hid herself. He jerked and moaned from the cold in his bones, but she dared not turn back to the city in the close snowy surrounds. Her horse knew the road back to the palace. The boy could wait out the winter with her… and keep the silence away.
Submitted by: Vicky Powell