Still Life

Life as a tapestry was not as glamorous as one might imagine. Hanging off a wall, dangling, crying softly so that the tears were soaked up by the strands that make up everything. Prince Charming had not always been a tapestry, even if he did make a very good one, but had been woven inside of one thanks to the darkest and coldest of magicks from his stepmother, the Snow Queen.

She had no love for him or his father. The former King had fallen for her while the Snow Queen had worked to cure the Prince of his Curse. A curse that instead of curing, she had turned into a cudgel with which she would beat the land into submission.

The prince had a mania inside him. A madness in his soul that seeped out like a miasma and tormented those around him. To love him was to be driven mad by him. His father and his mother both took their own lives, and the clever Snow Queen took his kingdom and trapped him in a tapestry.

It was a very pretty tapestry. Most tapestries woven from dark magic did tend to be quite beautiful. The depiction of the prince struggling helplessly against infinite bonds of a snowy landscape, ice stretching from him in sheet after sheet of glistening bonds, was enough to bring many to tears who looked upon it. Most of them did not know what the tapestry was really for.

The prince knew, as every time the Snow Queen used his curse, she would tell him. “Ah, it’s the mother of your childhood friend, Snow White. So lovely, not nearly as pretty as her daughter. So much more color. Your curse will boil her brain as if a toad, and she will die by her own hand within a fortnight. How does it feel to kill, little prince?”

If the prince could answer, he probably would have insisted that he was not little and certainly wasn’t a killer. Yet he had to watch as the Snow Queen invited royalty after royalty to her chambers, where the tapestry hung. How she’d talk endlessly with them, showing off her magic with glistening forks and spoons that looked like silverware, but upon closer inspection were frosted ice. How she’d lie, with every frozen breath she took, and claim whatever she needed to claim to keep them there, sitting in front of the tapestry.

He did not know what was worse. Having to watch as family and friends sat down and his curse was used to drive them to a stark, desperate madness they could not even understand, or the long loneliness of collecting dust on the wall.

It was itchy. The dust was quite itchy in a way that made him feel like he might be the one to go mad. Though, as time passed, that seemed less and less likely, as noble after noble was driven mad by his curse, somehow his own mind stayed intact. Yet of course, the Snow Queen would come late at night, with a cup of tea just for him. He couldn’t drink it, she’d just set it down in front of him and let the steam flow up over his form. “Mathilda of Monte Blanc has killed themselves. Tragedy. We were just talking the other day over scones.” She was always smiling a deep yawning smile that held no bliss or light in it. “We’ll have to help their people, of course. They can’t go on without proper leadership. My sister and her own forces will be going there shortly. Isn’t it wonderful to see the world finally becoming so orderly?”

The prince could not disagree more, which the Snow Queen obviously knew, he could see her smile become one of true joy whenever his heart ached in its twisted strands of his chest. “Next time, I think we’ll have the Summertons over…”

So it went for a time, but of course, even nobility is not endless in its carelessness. It did not take long for the kingdoms to realize that the Snow Queen was driving people to stark raving mania and then stealing their kingdoms. “Perhaps, then, your time is at an end, my fair prince. They have finally seen through the ruse, but it is too late. A rebellion builds, dwarves, witches, goblins, fae, and other useless riff raff think they can march against me and my sister. They call us the Briar Matreons. They call us evil. Oh, they have no idea, do they, little prince?”

The prince felt some hope upon hearing of the rebellion. Even as he was rolled up and put away in the highest, darkest tower. Even as he no longer saw anything but darkness. Even as the dust continued to coat him, heavier and heavier. Any day now he was sure to hear about how the Briar Maidens had been overthrown.

He would hear about how the Snow Queen had been shattered and tossed from the same balcony his mother had thrown herself from. He would hear the great marching victory parades even from up in the tower, and one day, someone would find him, and he would be free along with his people…

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He held this hope for a week.

He held it for a month.

He held it for a year.

When he lost track of time, he realized he’d lost track of his hope as well. The prince did the only thing he had ever been able to do as a tapestry, he cried.

Tear stains slowly darkened the image, like rust staining under his eyes, leaving it stretched and weathered. The prince never heard the sounds of any triumphant victorious armies freeing his kingdom from the Snow Queen’s rule, no desperate attempts to rescue him, none of his fantasies ever came to pass.

The dust collected heavier and heavier, and the prince sat forgotten in the corner of the tower, his tapestry folded under the weight of his sorrow, and cried.