False Starts

The following was a potential beginning to my fairy tale. Though I am not entirely sure of this decision yet, I think I will scrap it, because it strays too far from the important plot points of the story. This is mostly back story which is more or less superfluous in a fairy tale. Ah well, maybe it will show up elsewhere.


Once upon a time, in the winter of the world, there lived a young Prince who had lost his heart in a drift of snow. Many a time he had gone out of door to gaze up into the heavens, looking for the yellow face (new name other than sun), that thing which turns all in its sight to gold. The boy prince loved it dearly, adored the spectrum of golden hues, and the warmth of its gaze, and so he was always going. Each time he went, his queenly mother stopped and warned him to be careful of the biting venomous cold with its sharp, nipping teeth, all the while winding him into furs and woolen blankets.
“Yes, mother,” he would return and leave her once again for the tender warmth of sunlight.
His mother, lost behind, would watch his small form trundle into the blinding white, the furs of the coats near black surrounded by the seeming innocence of cold, shining crystals. It was in sadness that she watched him shrink to a particle of dust, and then disappear. So alone he seemed, and so she worried.
One day, as he walked, glorying in the yellow face, an old crow came winging beside him, landing in his path eyes directed upwards to the young boy. This irked the Prince to no end. Not only his mother had noticed his isolation. He too noted how quiet the world seemed – only himself, the sunlight, and his father’s castle shared the snowed waste. This pleased him. None other should have claim to this beauty. He was Prince and it belonged to him. The boy glared imperiously down.
“What right have you, bird, to cast your shadow on the snow of my land?” he demanded.
Cocking its head, the crow regarded him a moment with a mirrored eye. “Need I any, Lord Prince? I am a bird, as any other. I fly through all lands and you have (hold?) no power over me.”
“Haven’t I?” cried the boy, lunging forward, swiping a child’s cat hand through the air. No authority had he in truth but the force of his own small strength. His fingers found no resistance though – the bird had gone.
A swirl of wind by his ear murmured, “It would do you good to treat nicely the small folk of the world, young Prince. Perhaps tomorrow will find you lighter.”
He cast about himself for its shape, but it had disappeared completely. When he leaned in to look, the boy found that no print had been left in the snow by the crow’s small weight. Bewildered and not a little frightened by the mysterious shadow, the Prince stumbled through catching layers of snow all the way home to his mother whose arms still held more comfort than the cold and the sun.
His fear though was nothing that could not be remedied by warmth and the clouded thought of dreams. The next morning, his mother again found herself watching him wade back through the desert of white.
For much of the day, the Prince wandered under the sun, unchallenged by man or beast. Unconsciously wary, he found himself glancing more than once at each shadow or dark form. This caution was baseless though; when the dark wanted him, he would note it and in the meantime he needn’t seek for it in dreams. At last his doubts left him, and the Prince applied himself to creating shadows in ice and snow that he could laugh at his lesser self’s fear. When he turned though, the laughter died on his lips like a flower, wilted by the shadow of blackest night that lay in his path. For there waited the crow, as it had waited for minutes, perhaps, hours. Watching, it had seen.
“What think you of me today?” it asked. “Have you learned to be kinder to old birds?”
The Prince had not, though, for again he tossed himself forward in anger. And again, the bird had gone. Born from the blackness in the child’s heart, it was as insubstantial as smoke, but many times more significant. Perhaps it sank back into him when his body came sprawling into the snow, or maybe it flew to a place on the eaves to observe what passed. For as the Prince flew forward on wings of hatred, the furs bunched so carefully into themselves by a loving mother, came undone – he met the snow with a thin linen shirt, closed save for one button opening to the cold a thin sliver of skin. Small it was, but more than enough for the cold to consume.
Even as he fell, the cold sank hungering teeth into his sweet, milky flesh, biting down into his soul, laying there a shard of ice. The sun was burned from his heart by chill, and along with it every artless virtue that he retained.

This hasn't been edited, so I am sorry if it doesn't read well.