She found strange satisfaction in watching the silver gaps between the trees at night. It was just past the midnight hour when she would take her lonely perch at the tower window, settle her eyes on some distant branch or cloud, and wait.
And she had told herself, not many moons. Not many moons before her intended beloved. He would arrive at the tower steps before her fourteenth year; she would be a child bride, perfectly loved.
And then she thought... no, it would be as a young lady, and then as a woman, full of moonlight. And each night, she watched. And never did anyone approach.
And as the years passed, she forgot that she was waiting, and took to sitting in her room, creating art from sounds and symbols, pressing love upon them, sewing her heart into a warm cloak that she wore tightly around her shoulders, because the nights were colder now, and a thick winter underway. It felt as though it had snowed longer than the season; days shortened and lengthened, and yet ever there was snow on the windowsill. Birds migrated overhead, one direction and then eventually another. She forgot how many times she noticed them pass. She felt as though time had grown as cold as her fingers.
And slowly, slowly she became ice, and then stone, and then part of the very tower walls.
* * *
When he first saw the castle, it was as a fortress of ice and thorns.
He looked upon the wild gardens with no small wonderment. Abandoned, perhaps? It was impossible to tell, and yet night was closing in, and he had followed the road as far as it would go -- it had ended here, at the wrought iron gates, strange, spiraling beasts arching above him, sentinels to the silent dwelling.
The windows on the lower story were broken. He could easily climb the gate, slip in.... It would be sure suicide to stay outside on a night like this. The winter of this forest was dense and permanent; some said a god had died here, hundreds of years ago, and now no warmth would visit its tomb. Others said it was the eternal chill of a woman's heart... but he couldn't imagine anyone ever living in this forsaken castle. The gray scone was blackened by what may have been centuries of weather and wear. Even the vines that climbed its spiraling tower were brown, hardened by frost.
But night was closing in. "A roof, a bed," he murmured, and gripped the iron gate with two hard, strong fists. He pulled himself easily upward. "And with any luck -- a match."
* * *
All of the doors were either locked or barred, but he grabbed the hinges of the kitchen door and pried it from its frame. The wood gave easily, soft as a sponge.
He stepped into what may have once been a kitchen, but was now a room of dead leaves and branches. He followed the obvious path into a hallway, long and worn, dusty, shadows elongating into spiraling drapes. It lead him into a cavernous room with a mahogany table stretching from one end to another. A massive fireplace took up the entirety of the northern wall, large enough to have cooked an entire stag. There were the remnants of expensive carpets across the ground, rusted dishes and empty, faded picture frames, all of it covered with a thick layer of dust. From the inside, it was impossible to see outside the windows, which were thickly coated by frost. Webbed patterns reached from the floor to the ceiling, traveling up the glass like lines on map.
He could have stopped in that room, made a place on the floor and set a fire in the hearth, ate from the fragile roots he had gathered and what was left of his travel bread... and yet curiosity stirred in him. Who had lived here, so many countless years ago? He had passed through a town not far from the forest, which had told him that there was an abandoned house, a palace of ice, in the heart of this cursed winter. He could only assume that this was the place, the land where the curse had been born. What had happened here? It seemed that something had been forgotten.
He left the cavernous room and sought the stairs.
* * *
A stranger entered her walls.
She watched through windows, through mirrors and picture frames. His shadow was tall and lean as a willow tree; his clothing dark and tattered as the earth. He left soft marks on her carpet, indentations of wide boots.
He crossed the foyer to an abandoned fireplace, but did not stay there. Rather, he sought the stairs.
* * *
