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A land of ice as far as the eye could see. Cold, unchanging, frozen. It was the realm she had created, both sanctuary and prison at the same time.
No one was able to reach her here, to harm her, and she wasn’t able to harm the world outside. The people she had loved. The people she had feared. The people she had hated.
All of that belonged in the past. All of them were dead now, all buried beneath the snow of the centuries. But she hadn’t wanted to spoil the world they had lived for, the world they had believed in.
Sometimes she thought she could see it. When the clouds opened for once and the sun slipped a few careful rays over the frozen wasteland, she would stand on the highest merlon and gaze at the horizon, at the faint shimmer she thought she could see there.
She didn’t know whether it was real or just a product of her imagination, but she wanted to believe it was there. She wanted to believe there were humans out there who could still be happy, who could still smile. Unlike her.
Eventually the little gap in the sky would close again, blocked by thick clouds which promised another snowstorm, and she would descend the long staircase, slowly and without haste. There was no reason to hurry anyway. Time didn’t matter here.
She didn’t care where her feet would carry her, be it the long archways, enclosing yards with congealed fountains, the endless corridors with large windows, displaying a view which wasn’t worth being seen, or the gardens of ice which never grew. It was all the same. All without life.
She’d wander the walls which still waited for the first army that tried to take them. She’d dance through the halls which would provide space for the most expansive of balls, although none was there to use them.
Back then, after she had raised this refuge, she had heard voices from the past, frightened ones, reproachful ones, loving ones. At first she had tried to ignore them. Then she had tried to cast them away. All to no avail. Finally, when she had thought she was going crazy, when she had accepted them, they had ceased. And the sudden silence had been the most terrible thing she had experienced.
Since then she had wished they’d come back. She had wished she’d hear a voice apart from her own. Anything that would make her feel less alone. Anything that would tear the vast silence that dominated this palace.
As often her wishes went unheard.
Sometimes she’d lie down at the centre of the largest hall, staring up at the dim light that seeped through the icy dome after having filtered through thick layers of dark, heavy clouds already. It didn’t move her anymore. The sparkle and lustre had soon waned, the beauty she had dreamt of as a child was no longer able to enrapture her. Not with the price she had paid for it. Still, she’d look at it, because it was just as good as anything else.
She didn’t know why she still lived. Without a goal, without anything she could act for, there was no reason to live on, right?
She had already made a coffin for herself, but she hadn’t been able to lay herself in it yet. Maybe it was some kind of reluctance, some little rest of feeling that bound her to this timeless prison.
Feeling…
There was a room, beneath the rest of the palace. It was as large as the dome and its floor was covered over and over with sharp splinters of ice, all fragments of dozens of statues which had stood here a long time ago, frigid images of the people she had known and whose bodies were probably still there, somewhere beneath the endlessly drifting cover of snow.
She had created them when her memories had begun to fade. When the people inside her head had started to turn into faceless white ghosts. She had wanted something to bring back the memories. Something to preserve what was left of them. And then she had shattered them. One after another. The ones she had hated, the ones she had liked, the ones she hadn’t cared about. And with every one of them a part of her had died as well.
Now, only one was left.
For so many times she had tried to break him as well, to shatter the image of the young knight on his flying horse, the knight who had sworn to always protect her, back then, in another life.
But she couldn’t do it. Whenever she raised her hand, something stopped her. Maybe it was the look in his eyes, warm and moving. Maybe it was the softness of his features, the gentleness of his welcoming arms.
He was the only thing left in this world for her, the only thing which prevented her from passing into the sweetness of oblivion. And yet, she couldn’t do it. His arms felt too strong to ever break them, his frigid lips too warm to deny them the softness of her kiss. Though he was dead for a long time, she couldn’t let go of him. It appeared her heart was the only thing she couldn’t freeze.
And so she was forever stuck here in this palace, in this prison of her own volition, engulfed by the monotonous howl of the wind and the snow that fell on the icy roofs, in the middle of a white land of eternal winter, in a world that had stopped breathing ages ago.