The Snow Queen and the Raven
(What is below is very rough. I may or may not expand on it in the future. Written at the Fir Acres Workshop for Writing and Thinking at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon)
Once upon a time, far away in the highest peaks and deepest depths of the Great Mountains existed a country that was continually covered in snow. It was ruled over by a single queen, powerful but just, and deadly if you crossed her path. No one knew what she looked like, for she never left her icy palace, but rumors circulated that she was the most beautiful creature on earth. All laws, proclimations, and decisions were passed to the lords, who then gave them to the people, via notes she gave to a raven, the single living creature that saw her. Or so it was said.
Now, you musn't think that the queen's isolation made her any less fit a monarch. The decisions she reached were both fair and sympathetic. She was no more afraid to give to those who needed than she was to punish those who deserved, and her subjects were content.
At least most of the were. There was a snall group of men: intellectuals, landowners, propritors of sucessfull businesses who did not like how this system was set up. They distrusted this seclusive queen. Who was she really, they whispered amongst themselves. Why did she hide herself? Was she really more than one person? A council of some sort, perhaps? Did she partake in ungodly experiments, like the pagan alchemy? Was she, worst yet, a peasant of no true royal descent, conspiring against the authority that their capital obviously implied? They set themselves to finding out the truth.
The men met in dark, secret rooms hidden in the back corners of their prestigious mansions and there slowly hatched a scheme. They would steal the raven. Without it, the queen would be helpless. She would be forced to either give up her power or come out of hiding (both which suited the group quite well).
The "comittee", as the group of men began to call themselves, were ready for action the next time the queen sent out a message. It was delivered sucessfully to the first lord, and to the next, but the third caught the poor creature in a net as it flew down to drop the piece of parchment holding the queen's newest announcement. There was a slight struggle, but the man easily overcame the bird and shoved him into a cage.
When nothing occured for the first few days, the comittee did not worry. It would take the queen some time to realize what had happend, after all. But a week passed, and then a month. The conspiritors began to wonder. And then, exactly fifty days after the raven-napping, a proclimation by the queen appeared in the homes of each lord. The comittee was astounded. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Obviously, a more direct approach to demasking (and subsequently dethroning) the mysterious monarch would be needed.
The group of men bickered for hours and hours on what to do, but finally a decision was reached. They would send the raven, as with a message, back to the queen's tower. Instead of a simple parchment, though, they would send the bird with a poison knife, a knife so sharp that a single touch would break the queen's skin, therfor killing her. The queen would never suspect a thing, and without her they would be able to take over.
The lord holding the bird released it with the small knife tied to its leg, and the raven flew the path it always had without thinking, just as the comitte had known it would.
The queen, on the other hand, was more clever than some of her subjects obviously thought. When she saw the bird flying toward her, she did not immidiatly recognize it, but she did recognize the glint of metal as the knife caught the light of the sun for a moment. A deadly plan, such as had been concieved, manifested in her mind.
Those watching from below, for the comittee had come to see their dirty work, are said to have observed some strands of silver hair and a pale arm holding an archer's bow taunt appear out of a window in the tower of the castle. A moment later, a zing could be heard as an arrow was released. The bird was hit and it dropped toward the earth directly under the window.
Suddenly, a scream pierced the silence. As the raven fell, the queen had recognized it and had been filled with horror at killing her single companion and communication with her subjects. Out of disgust and grief she dove from her window after the descending bird.
The shocked comittee still did not get a chance to see who their now-former ruler was, though, for the moment she touched the snow she disappeared as if she had melted into the whiteness below her. A moment later, the raven glided lifelessly onto the spot the queen had fallen, darkening the place below it with its blood.
But where the raven's blood fell, tiny, deep red grew through the snow, a tribute to the mysterious and great queen that lay below them.