Winter Queen

Chapter 1

You’ve undoubtedly seen her many times, only to tell yourself you’re just imagining it all.

She dances in the flames of the fire, or even the flickering of a lone candle.

You’re probably completely unaware that she has a name.

Very, very few people know this.

The very best of the metal smiths of long, long ago, however, made sure they knew her name. And paid her due reverence too.

They called on her as regularly as they might dare, when her skills were required to help them make a piece of work that was particularly special.

A sword that made its wielder invincible.

A shield that never bowed, no matter whatever ills beset it.

Necklaces that granted beauty, brooches that ensured love, and rings that made a wearer perfectly invisible.

Of course, we see even less of her these days than we ever did.

And that, naturally, is our loss.

The Winter Queen especially mourns her apparent retreat from the world.

Because the last time the queen had kept her imprisoned, winter had inescapably encased the earth for thousands of years…

*

Chapter 2

No matter how hard she tried, Ame never could make a piece of jewellery that seemed to satisfy her mistress’s exacting standards.

It was just a waste of what was otherwise perfectly good gold or silver.

Or, worse still, a disgrace reflecting badly on her mother and father.

‘I’d always hoped, Ame,’ the mistress of the workshop would remind her time and time again, ‘that you’d inherit your mother and father’s skills!’

But, Ame sadly realised, she hadn’t at all, had she?

Whereas her father had been renowned throughout the town for his deft working of every kind of metal, drawing it all out into a thread-like fineness, she wielded her own implements as if they were torturous instruments.

And while her mother’s adept cutting had made the poorest of stones sparkle with all the colours of the rarest gems, Ame somehow dulled the glories of the most prized crystals.

She wondered why the mistress kept her on – though, of course, she’d heard the rumours that her mother had paid a heavy price to persuade Mistress Orfan to give her board and lodging in the workshop.

And the mistress, naturally, didn’t seem to be in any rush to ensure Ame knew this.

What was the chance, after all, that Ame’s mother would ever return?

She’d probably vanished for ever, just as Ame’s father had.

*

Ame’s mother and father had been in love – once.

Once, they’d each revered the other’s remarkable skill in creating jewellery that everyone admired, coveted, paid richly for. They’d each envied the other’s skill a little too.

Once married, they’d forged an unbeatable team. Even Mistress Orfan’s extensive workshop couldn’t hope to replicate their best pieces.

Despite this, Ame’s father lamented what he called the unmistakable impoverishment of their work – for, at best, they were mere trinkets, of no importance at all to the wider world and its smooth and just running.

‘Why can’t we produce,’ he’d murmur dispiritedly as he bent over the latest work he was urging into being, ‘something of true substance?

‘We earn a good living,’ Ame’s mother would point out whenever he became morose, wondering as she did at times like these if they’d been right to call their works their ‘children’, and at the great expense, too, of denying themselves a real child to raise.

‘Perhaps,’ she instead answered hesitantly one day, ‘we’re now earning a good enough living to think once again of raising a real child…’

‘A living that could be taken from us, dear, on the misspoken word of some king who desires riches, or to conquer other lands – setting in train the unsettlingly chaos that simply sweeps up any poor people like us that lie in his path: as if we’re of no more importance than irritating insects. What sort of world is that to bring a child up in?’

Despite his disparaging words, he also thought often about the wonderful children they’d told themselves they’d raise when they were younger and first married – only to put all their efforts instead into creating what they hoped would be a more secure world for the child they never actually got around to having.

‘There’s nothing we can do about such things,’ his wife sagely replied, worrying no less than he did, but hoping that the rest of the world lying about them might leave them alone to simply get on with their lives.

Her husband picked up a ruby she’d been working upon that now glittered as brightly the purest diamond, the light it cast about the room illuminating even the darkest corners with a dawn-hued glow.

‘Surely, between us we could come up with something so remarkable in its perfection and purity that it would serve as a guide to any otherwise wayward king to emulate its qualities?’

‘Indeed we could: for here she is…’ Ame’s mother chuckled joyfully, holding up the designs she’d been working on now for well over a month.

It was an off-set cross, or, maybe, some would call it star: for even on the page it possessed an undeniable energy, seemingly ready at any moment to begin endlessly revolving, gaining speed and brightness at the passing of each second.

Her husband gaily laughed along with her.

‘You’re so sure it’s a girl!’ he exclaimed. ‘And if it’s a boy?’

As their works were now their only children to bring into being and raise into perfection, they’d often amuse themselves by granting each a gender, or even, sometimes, a name too.

Each was, of course, a child of the mind, offspring they effectively gave birth to as they brought them into the world through the mastery of their caring hands.

‘You know,’ her husband said wistfully, ‘I used to tell myself that, if we’d actually got around to having a child – a real one, I mean, naturally! – and he was a boy, well: I would have to spend a great deal of my time thinking of ways that, like those ancient smiths, I could provide him with a sword like no other that would ensure no threat could harm him?’

‘It would be a sure way to get him killed, I think, dear!’

‘No, no: not if it were created with magical abilities!’ her husband persisted a little too vehemently than normal, adding more circumspectly, as if recognising the limits of his skills, ‘Or, maybe, a jewelled dagger would suffice?’

His wife