CHAPTER I

It was a long winter.

The skies were often grey, and in the night they were black. There were few stars: it was though the constellations themselves were suffering. The cold was bitter and the snow was plentiful, blanketing the kingdom in a white that would soon be turned to grey under the wheels of carriages and the feet of the townspeople. The town was white, and white turned to grey, and this repeated itself daily as the snow fell, white and grey, white and grey. There were not many jobs to be had for the people of the village, and despite the kindness of their Queen, who gave often to the poor, it was a luxury to keep even a candle burning once daylight had fallen. Daylight fell very early, and there were no candles. The village was black. There were not many stars.

Crops, cattle, and children all grew sick and died. The villagers drank melted snow, because it was too arduous a task to travel through the snow to draw water from the well. There was nothing to eat; they went hungry. For breakfast, lunch, and supper there was melted snow and occasionally there was bread: just enough to live. But not enough for everyone to live. There was much death. The ground was too hard for burial, and no one was strong enough to dig. Bodies were burned.

The Queen watched all of this happen with a heavy heart. She gave what he could to the people of the village, but the winter was hard for her family as well. The Queen was very ill. She was dying. The King sent for the best medicine, the best doctors, but the journey was too difficult for any of them to make quickly. Time was not in their favour. The castle was cold in the winter, when the cruel wind came in through the stone walls. There was not much wood. The King had always relied on wood from the village to heat his castle, but the villagers were too weak to cut down the trees. There was no hope of collecting wood from the ground. All was buried in snow: hearts and souls as well as the trees and the chopping blocks.

People questioned if the winter would ever end. The snow fell harder. The queen grew weaker. In the village, there was no more bread, no more wood. People warmed themselves at the funeral pyre, holding their hands out to the flaming corpses of a thousand dead, praying the fire would warm them enough to keep them alive one more night. Praying that tommorow it would not be the bodies of their children burned to warm those who were left.

And yet in this darkness, there was one spot of light: one star that was left. It was a child, the second son of the King and Queen, the little Prince of the castle. He was only a boy, and although he was a Prince, he too felt often the cold. But he did not cry, he did not fear. The child was happy, a bright, inquisitive boy with a sharp laugh and quick spirit, and the villagers smiled when they saw him. He was a beautiful child with wild dark curls, black as night. His skin was fair and smooth: so pale that it put even the whitest of the snow to shame. His small lips were deep red, his eyes very blue. He was a delicate slip of a boy, more resembling the birds that he loved to feed than a human being. His mother was dying, and the snow was very cold. His father was often cruel, and it would be his brother who inherited the throne. But he was happy.

His name was Sherlock, this little boy who was still smiling. It seemed to the villagers who saw him that he would smile forever. They had no candles: he was their light. There were no stars, so for the villagers he became their star. As he raced across the white snow, delighting in the birds who sang in the trees, holding out palmfuls of breadcrumbs to feed them, he brought them renewed spirits and renewed hope. Surely, they thought, he will make it through the winter, this little boy who smiles. And they were glad.

The winter became colder, and still Sherlock smiled. There was no more bread to feed the birds, so he watched them instead, still happy. Even when the illness finally took his mother, the Queen, the birds could still make him happy. The castle and the village fell into deepest mourning, and yet still the little boy would come, often with tears freezing on his cheeks in the cold, and in his mourning clothes he would feed the blackbirds food from his own plate. And this would make him smile. Those villagers that still lived would watch him and they would find joy in it. It was the only joy they had left.

That was when he came. Moriarty.

It was his armies, rather, who came first: a thousand faceless figures, clad in black, pouring through the village and into the castle like a swarm of flies. The King had his own armies, but the winter had been hard. He had lost many. The defences were weak., and Moriarty's armies fought their way through, swords flashing in the air, cutting, killing. And in this way they moved through the kingdom and one by one every single knight was slain. The grey snow was red.

They knew nothing of the attacker except the name of the man who had sent his armies to them. Moriarty. A whisper, a ghost. He was not among them. But if the men he had sent would pause in their massacre to speak to you before killing you, they would say it proudly. Moriarty. They were Moriarty's, the blades that flashed and killed were Moriarty's, the red in the snow was Moriarty's. But the man himself did not appear. Perhaps he truly was a ghost.

Mycroft, the oldest son, had taken Sherlock into the boy's little bedchamber. "Stay here." he had said to his little brother. "You must get under the bed, quickly, and you musn't make a sound." Sherlock was terrified. He did not smile. He cried. "Don't go." he begged his brother. Tears stain his ivory cheeks. "Please do not leave me."

"I will come back for you." promised Mycroft, and he kissed little Sherlock on the head, in the tangle of his raven curls, and then he helped his little brother under the bed and he drew his sword and left the room. Sherlock was left behind. He lay still, flat on his stomach on the stone floor. There were many noises outside, and more beneath him, under the floor, and he trembled. He took care to stay very still and quiet, as he had promised his brother. He cried silently. He made no sound.

Sherlock's bedroom had one window, and it was open so that the bitter cold of the winter blew in. Sherlock was shaking on the cold stone, but he did not dare move to close it. Through the window he could hear very clearly the sounds from outside: the people slain and dying, and the relentless march of the faceless army.

And then the door of his chamber flies open with a heavy bang, and Sherlock goes very still and very scared under the bed. He sees the boots of the men who enter, sees them storm into the room, three pairs of boots all the same. He is crying, but he makes no sound.

They find him anyways. A pair of black boots stop near the bed, and little Sherlock, huddled underneath, can barely breathe through fear. And then the man bends, and Sherlock sees his horrible face leering from under the bedskirt, a face cast in shadow with horrible shining eyes and Sherlock screams at the top of his voice as a huge thick hand seizes his ankles and he is dragged out from under the bed.

The man holding him laughs, and Sherlock cries, trying to scramble away and hurting his knees on the rough stone floor. "Stand up." says the man, and Sherlock is made to stand. The man who had grabbed him has blonde hair and an ugly scar from his brow down to his chin. Sherlock trembles. But he tries to be brave.

"Release me!" he commands in his small voice. "My father is the king."

But the man with the scar only laughs. "The king is dead, little one." he says, and he laughs as he says it and shows his horrible ugly teeth. "Would you like to see?"

And Sherlock is grabbed again with rough hands and made to walk into the chamber opposite: the large chamber where the king sleeps, and there is Sherlock's father on the ground, his robes drenched in blood, his eyes unseeing. And there is Mycroft, injured but alive, on his knees beside his father's head.

"Mycroft!" screams Sherlock, and tries to go to him, but he is held back. The man with the scar smiles very broadly. "You see what your father has become?" he says. "You see what has happened to your king? And soon you will be the same." And he ordered the two men with him to each take one of the princes and to take them into their rooms and kill them.

Mycroft was led away by one man, and though Sherlock screamed and cried and fought, he was still very small, and the other man picked him up very roughly and carried him away. The man with the scar stayed behind in the largest chamber, leering at the dead body of the King.

It is worth knowing that even in the most cruel of men, compassion can be found in their hearts. Such was the case with the man who had been ordered to kill Sherlock. As he drew his sword and looked at the boy, at the ivory skin and the raven's wing curls and the bright blue eyes, he saw only a little child, trembling in fear. He was so small, Sherlock, so innocent and pure, and the man sheathed his sword and could not bear to kill him. "Run away." he says to the boy, opening the window. "I will let you run." This man knew that a child would not last long in the thick of the battle. But in letting him leave through the window, he would not have to slay the boy himself.

Sherlock did not go through the window, but instead ran to the door, calling for his brother. But the man grabbed him from behind. "Your brother is dead." he said. "Run while you have the chance, or I shall kill you after all." And Sherlock began to sob, because he knew that his brother had been killed. But he climbed out the window, and the man with the black boots shut it behind him and went back and told the others that he had killed the child.

It was horribly cold outside, and the snow on the ground was crimson with blood. There was no one left to fight. The castle was Moriarty's. No soul was left standing, save for one.

Little Sherlock was perched on a ledge, far above one of the doorways. From a distance, he looked like he might be a bird. But no one was looking at him. He had learned to climb very well, so that he might get closer to the birds he so loved to watch, and one could often find him perched precariously on the highest ledges of the castle walls. From there he could climb swiftly down to the ground when his mother called him in for dinner, but Sherlock did not want to climb down to the ground. His mother was gone, and the ground was wet with blood. Sherlock stayed on the ledge, curled up. He had no shoes and his little feet were blue with the cold, but still he did not come down. He was very frightened.

And that was when Moriarty came at last.

From the ledge, Sherlock watched him. The army stood at attention, stepping back to allow him passage. Moriarty wore a huge, long black cloak, and it dragged in the snow as he climbed the castle steps. The hair on the top of his head was shiny black. The courtyard was silent as Moriarty walked, his cloak slithering on the snow like a snake. Sherlock held his breath, terrified.

Moriarty walked into the castle.

Sherlock climbed nimbly up the side of the building, quick and agile. He climbed through a window and hurried along the corridors in his bare feet, praying that there was someone left alive, someone in the castle who could help him. He ran to the kitchen, where the cook had once given him breadcrumbs for the birds, and found the man dead on the floor, cut open. He ran to the chamber where the maids slept, the ones who played with him when his brother was busy, and found them all dead. He ran up the stairs faster than he had thought he could run, throwing open doors, but everywhere there were only lifeless bodies. They had been dragged into piles, heaped together in stacks of corpses. His bare feet got wet with the blood. No one left.

At last he came to the floor where his chamber was, and he ran into Mycroft's room. Mycroft was not there. But there was blood on the floor, lots of blood, smeared across the stones. Sherlock fell on his knees. Mycroft's blood. His own blood: for they shared a blood type. He cried and dipped his hands in the pool of blood. Against his ivory skin, it was very red.

Mycroft's body was not there. He must be in one of the piles, realized Sherlock. They had dragged him into a pile. It was not right. The crown prince of the kingdom should be laid to rest in his own bed. Sherlock crawled under the bed and curled up to cry.

That was where Moriarty found him.

To Be Continued.

Thank you for reading. I hope everyone enjoyed the story so far! Never fear, Lestrade will show up soon enough. (I can never keep him away for long, lovely guy.) I know that this is not 100% faithful to the original fairytale: I do not intend it to be! My inspiration is drawn from many different adaptations of the story, as well as some of my own ideas. It seems to be following a path closer to the Snow White and The Huntsman film than the original fable, but I have only seen that film once: do not expect the story to mirror that film either! :) Chris Hemsworth was very nice in that.

I realize this chapter was a bit short, but I hope the next few will be longer. It would be very lovely if you could tell me what you thought :) Many thanks for taking the time to read!