Prologue

A little girl skipped happily in the fresh snow, her long mahogany hair tied in a loose braid down her back. She held two dark flowers in her small fist, having found them overtly sprouting from ice. Her mother taught her that flowers were not to grow in winter, but apparently these were very special. No one would believe her when she brought back such marvelous flowers! The stems were a vivd green, greener than most plants in the springtime. The petals were round but delicate, a rather peculiar shade of violet. At the base of the petals were a ring of thorns, and the girl had been careful not to touch them.

The girl's animal skin boots were beginning to freeze over as she walked through snow that came up to her waist. She could feel the frozen droplets begin to touch her little toes, sending small shivers about her. Maybe it is best to get back to the village, she thought, thinking of her mother sitting alone by the fire in their little cottage, waiting for the return of her nearly-grown son and young daughter. Like a tiny sprite, the little girl darted off in the direction of her village, grasping the flowers excitedly. She could see the smoky tops of the cottages on the horizon, a beacon beyond the vast expanse of snowy forest. The girl reached the clearing at the little path down to the village when she tripped.

With a yelp of protest, the little girl fell on her stomach, sliding down a portion of the hill on the snow-covered ice. She rolled over to stop herself, but the cloudless sky exposed her eyes to the white, cold sun. She shut her eyelids quickly, a dull red light radiating into her eye sockets, and that is when she saw it. The red gleam diminished into complete darkness, then back to white, like a blank and untouched portion of snow. Fascinated, she kept her eyes shut, wondering what would appear before her next. Instead, she heard a woman's voice. It was soft, low, and it sounded like the tune of one of her mother's lullabies. The little girl heard a loud heartbeat pound in her ears. Upon the whiteness that she could see with closed eyes came a drop of red liquid. Another. And another. Soon a steady stream appeared, staining the white. The girl felt her body being compressed from the inside out, her bones protesting, and the lullaby she heard grew into a faint scream. More pressure and then silence and black.

The little girl jerked her eyes open, breathing hard, and she struggled to get up from the ice she fell on. Once her eyes adjusted to their normal vision, she stood up, cheeks flushed, lips dry. She saw her two flowers lying in the snow, completely wilted. The stems looked charred, the petals worn and utterly dead.

Feeling a sharp pain in her fingers, the girl looked down at her hands. A single thorn from the flower had left its mark, and tiny droplets of blood fell into the snow. In the back of the girl's mind, she could hear a distant whistling noise, the same tune to her mother's lullaby, but it quickly diminished as a gust of wind blew snow off of the bare tree branches.