Snowchild: Eternal Youth

The Count

I work at a brothel. Snowchild is not my real name, just the curse that I carry.

My body remains frozen, incapable of aging, calcified in the same state since my eighth birthday. But I am not complaining. All the powerful men in the country leave their luxurious mansions and well-fed children to pass through my fissured threshold and hallway, stained in a variety of bodily fluids.

See, men swear they love their wives, and they only treat them like whores for procreation purposes. The church allows it. But the rest of the time, they don’t mind supporting small local businesses. And what a blessing that they receive such services from someone who resembles the ones they cherish most: their dear children!

Someone soft and slim with milk still in their breath and simultaneously dressed in sky blue silk and sprayed with notes of vanilla, jasmine and lavender.

Ashes

“Every powerful man’s dream girl is an eight-year-old boy!” the count often says and smokes his wooden pipe, until he starts coughing his eyes out.

Then he usually passes me the pipe. Smoke never makes me cough, probably because I don’t really enjoy it. But inhaling death makes me feel older, so I do it. That’s why I like these grotesque men. I may be young, but they aged me cruelly, and I am older than they will ever be.

I keep them young. Every time we fuck, I take a year away from them, like an ashtray collecting the ashes of burned down cigarettes.

Blood

Last night, the count came back again.

“Listen, you need to leave the town by tomorrow.” he said.

“That depends. Are you coming with me, your lordship?” I replied, trying to remain playful even though his words really scared me.

He stayed silent, looking at me, his eyebrows pressed together.

“My wife” he finally spluttered “I think she knows! She suspects!”

His enormous green eyes got even handsomer as tears covered them. But at this point, I was genuinely confused.

“Just tell her I am an orphan you have under your wing. What is suspicious about that?” I said, unable to control my laughter for the hysteria that was dominating him. Right away he violently grabbed me and stuck my face on the mirror on top of my vanity table.

“Look at your face!” he screamed, “Your green eyes, dark hair and red lips. Who do you look like, if not like her? The only woman in the kingdom dark as night and white as snow. The one who cursed you! And she cursed me too, it seems—I cannot protect you anymore. You need to abandon the -shire by tomorrow!”

His grip was becoming stronger. I understood him. After all the same blood runs through our veins. And the desire for me to taste this blood grew stronger by the moment. I wanted to feel the flow and warmth that once brought me to life.

“Tomorrow then” I whispered, “But today let me give you what you want one last time.”

Exile

The next day, all my belongings were fitted in a small velvety carriage by two servants I had never seen before. They seemed astoundingly alike with their uniforms, feathery hats and neck-length haircuts. Throughout our whole encounter they remained silent. After fifteen minutes we were ready to leave, and the count was nowhere to be seen.

I sunk my nose in my clothes from last night and the smell of tobacco filled my lungs, not reeking like death anymore, but a promise of love that vanished. Tears ran down my cheeks. The carriage melted into an expensive blotch of gold and royal blue. After all these years, I thought the ability to cry had abandoned me, but sadness is like water; the deeper you are in it, it rises and drowns you.

Beyond The Frontier

When we had just passed the -shires frontiers the carriage stopped. I thought it was just for a moment, so the horses could rest and the driver to dine at the cheap inn nearby. And indeed, the coachman opened the door of the chariot but didn’t wait for me to come down. Instead, he sat beside me beneath a brown knitted hood.

I was scared. For a good while, he didn’t say anything, but I could feel his eyes observing me. I didn’t dare to move for the dagger on his belt wasn’t hidden. He moved closer to me, and he put his arms around me, an attempt for attack or an embrace. I flinched, shoving him away, my heart pounding. Suddenly, he started to cry bitterly, covering his mouth with his hands and staring at me intensely.

She took her hood off slowly, as if unmasking something sacred, something long lost. The firelight caught the curve of her jaw, the gleam of her green eyes—eyes that mirrored my own.

“I have walked through lifetimes to find you.” she said with the most beautiful voice I had ever heard, like a river flowing in the middle of a field on a sunny spring day.

Thaw

My breath caught in my throat. A tingling sensation spread across my body, like ice thawing after a long winter. My shoulders ached as they stretched, my fingers trembling as they traced the sudden roughness on my chin. Something inside me shifted, a long-buried truth clawing its way to the surface. For the first time in forever, I was aware of my numbness as my senses started to awaken me. Maturity revived me, like cold water, and even though death approached ominously, I wasn’t scared. There are many loving memories to be made. My skin tingled, alive—so alive that it burned.

I stared at the woman. Grief still pressed against my throat. But even so, I managed to find in me the words, I always longed for:

“Mother!”