Queen Icilia's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Queen Icilia meant to trap the last spark of spring inside her Mirror and freeze the forest forever. But the Mirror lay broken. Cracks split its glass from corner to corner. Through those cracks, dark shapes wriggled loose and slipped into the snow. Each one she failed to catch. She could bind nothing until the glass was whole. She pressed her palm to the largest crack. Frost spread from her hand, but the seam would not close. The glass drank her cold and stayed split. Something small and toothed pushed against the surface from inside, then squeezed out through a gap and vanished into the trees. Icilia watched it go. She had made this Mirror to show creatures their true selves. Now it spat them into her forest, wearing whatever shape they pleased. A voice spoke behind her. "You're bleeding out entities. I can smell them from the bridge." Cordelia stood at the edge of the clearing. She was the witch from the candy cottage, the one children had once burned to the ground. She leaned on a gnarled staff tipped with green light. Her star-dotted robe was dusted with sugar. She looked at the Mirror the way a baker looks at a cracked oven. "Leave," Icilia said. "Your leaks are crossing my bridge into my woods. So no." Cordelia stepped closer. "Ice won't seal ice. You need something that binds warm things and cold things together." Icilia said nothing. The witch was right, and she hated it. Cordelia drew a line in the air. A trail of gumdrops and frost-dusted breadcrumbs appeared, winding across the snow to the Mirror's base. "Candy sets hard when it cools," she said. "Your frost cools it faster than any fire. My sugar holds the glass. Your cold holds my sugar. We seal it once." "And your price?" "Later." Cordelia did not blink. "A debt named when I choose it." Icilia weighed the trap in those words. She had refused help her whole long life. She had shown her own sister the Mirror and never once thanked her. But a broken Mirror bound nothing, and spring drew nearer with each melting hour. She nodded. Cordelia crushed a gumdrop against the largest crack. Hot syrup ran into the seam. Icilia laid her hand over it and breathed frost. The syrup snapped hard, clear as ice, welding glass to glass. They worked down the Mirror crack by crack, sugar and cold, until the surface shone whole again. The last shape trapped inside stopped struggling. The glass held it fast. Icilia stared at her own face, sharp and complete in the mended Mirror. She could bind spring now. But the seams glowed faintly with Cordelia's magic, woven into her weapon's heart. She owed the witch a debt with no name and no shape. Somewhere past the bridge, the escaped entities were still loose in her forest, hunting.