The Snow Child

Deep in the blackest of woods, encased in ice and of unknown origins, legend tells of a girl. Her heart was broken by a boy which time forgot, and she hunts for his own heart to take in revenge.

The snow falls, furious and fast. It coats everything, the ground, the wood, any wildlife unlucky enough to be caught out in it. Everything is swallowed eventually. But the storm doesn't stop, because it is no ordinary storm.

The little boy wraps his thin wool coat further around himself, cursing himself for not bringing out a lantern with him. The comforting warm glow would be a blessing to him now, when he was so far away from his home, but the storm was unexpected and before he can understand it the land is unrecognizable, an enormous plain of white, as far as the eye can see. The wind blows the settled snow up into his face in great flurries, until he is tasting, choking on the chill.

He isn't a stupid boy. He knows his life will be extinguished by the cold if he doesn't find somewhere to take shelter. So he powers through the snow with the tip of his nose having lost all feeling and the snow slowly climbing up to his knees, when in the distance he finds a black streak across the horizon; a shocking difference to the white of everything else. He soon recognises that it is, in fact, a wood, and being that it is the only kind of destination he can see, he cordially makes it his own destination, and his tracks become a concentrated straight line behind him, rather than a messy bee-line.

It's a slow crawl to get to the edge of the black woodland, but when he sees the snow is thinner inside the clusters of trees so closely packed together the entire wood looks like one solid form, apart from where the soft specks of fading light shines through the spaces between branches, he soon made the decision to enter it's realm. Soon that light would be gone, and he would be as good as blind, alone in the black forest with no one able to come and rescue him. For no one would venture into the storm which was rapidly spiraling into a blizzard, not for a poor farm boy who could barely do enough work to earn his keep. No, he would not be missed by his family.

He pushes through the thick tangle of black bracken and brambles that choke the trees and scratch at him with fearsome thorns, tearing his clothes. All too soon he is surrounded by repetitive dark scenes of black forest, the occasional snowflake fluttering down out of the nowhere. The air is still, the wind kept at bay by the fortress of plant life, and the boy doesn't feel the cold biting quite so hard anymore. In fact he almost feels... normal. Almost. Despite the lack of wind to whoosh against his ear drums there is silence all around him, no snapping of twigs nor any curious wildlife. He expects a few darting rabbits, if he was lucky maybe even a shy doe, but the wood is desolate of life, it seems, apart from himself.

He has never felt so utterly alone. He is aimless in his wanderings, allowing his soft young skin to be ravaged by the unrelenting thorns until the blood drips steadily down his arms, leaving a scarlet trail behind him. There is no one to follow it. His eyes glaze over, and he resigns himself to his fate, to be lost forever inside the black of the woods until it ate him alive, or he froze into nothingness.

A shrill, piercing scream tears through the woods nearby, and he goes stiff with fear. He doesn't move, barely breathes. The scream was unmistakeably female. Was a girl in a situation as dire as his own? Perhaps she had gotten lost in the storm herself. Spurred on by the comforting thought of not being alone, he picks up speed, pushing aside the thorny brambles rather than letting them cut into him.

"Booooooyyyyyyyy," A hiss seems to call him. It is closer than the scream.

"Hello?" He calls out uncertainly.   

"Whaat is your purposssssee?" Came the drawl again, closer all the time.

"I'm lost!" He calls out, his voice breaking with fear. Who on earth was speaking to him in a snake-like voice?

"Boooooooooyyyyy," The voice hisses, but it is quieter, fainter this time. The boy relaxes slightly.

He turns to try and run away lest the voice return, when he knocks into a girl standing directly behind him. He falls to the floor while the girl looks down on him mildly, not even slightly winded.

"I-I'm sorry!" He yelps, on his knees in front of her. He can't keep his eyes off her face.

She is as pale as a ghost. Her hair, long and shiny, falls to her waist in straight white locks, almost blending into her fair skin. Her eyes are the deepest of blacks, set deep into her sallow face. There is little emotion in them, but every now then there are flashes of sadness and pain. Her mouth is a straight line, tight-lipped she looks at him reproachfully. Her hands are behind her back. She looks displeased with him, as if he had personally wronged her. His breath catches in his throat at her shocking beauty. Despite her strange colours and cold face, she is unimaginably perfect, better than any lass in his home village. She had to have been a princess. Then she opens her mouth.

"Booooooooooyyyyyy," She says to him, her mouth opening wide and showing rows of sharp, shark-like teeth.

"Help me!" He throws himself at her feet, trembling all over his body.

"Are you hiiiiiimmmm?" She asks him insistently.

"I don't know who you mean," He says, cowering in the snow.

"Youu are aaaall like hiiiiimmm," She says as if to herself, and she nods as well. "Yeeeeeeees. You are like him. You have his eyessssssss."

"What are you talking about?"

"Youuu will dieeeee boooooooooyyyy," She says, before opening her mouth impossibly wide and leaping at him. He jumps out of the way of the first attack, but he is not so lucky the second.

She pins him to the cold ground, and he notices the glistening talons on her fingertips. That must have been why she hid them from me, he thinks to himself just before they force themselves into his chest, tearing screams of pain from him. Her smile is victorious, and she leans close to his ear, whispering words which have no meaning to him, because all he can think about is the sensation of his rapidly beating heart brushing against the sharp tips of her talons. She tickles him from the inside, and he grunts in pain. Her eyes seem to grow, swallowing her entire face lie two black gaping holes.

"Dooo you feeell paaaaaaaiiiiiiiiin, boy?" She asks him, licking her teeth hungrily. "You do not knooow what paaaaaaiiiiiin is,"

"Stop! Stop!" He calls out repeatedly, feeling the hot liquid he recognises as blood gurgling out of the corners of his mouth. The girl leans in close, flicking out her tongue out to taste it.

"Freeessshhh," She comments, before giving her hand a quick wrench, and suddenly his heart is outside of his body, and he's looking straight at it, dripping blood and still beating weakly. The high-pitched screaming sound is himself, he realises.

The very last thing he sees, before it all goes black and he is freed from his shackles of pain, is the look of psychotic glee upon the girl's face as she licks and nips at his heart, before taking a huge bite out of it.

Then he feels nothing, absolutely nothing. 

Author's Note

Okay, I didn't actually mean for this to turn into something so... gory. But it happened, so yeah. Don't read if you don't like the thought of bodily organs being outside of the body, blood, creepy girls who live in forests and prey on unsuspecting boys for their hearts. Yay!