Fairy Tale Friday: The Snow Queen, Or Don't Piss a B**** Off

            Once upon a time, there was a girl, Lila, and a boy, Mark, who lived across a garden from each other in a quaint little village in the North. While they were good most of the time, if there was trouble to be had, they would often be found in it together. It was hard to know who had instigate it or whose idea it was, but there they'd be, head-to-toe in mud or soot or, on one occasion feathers, sometimes in tow by another neighbor with wide innocent eyes and all their parents could do was shake their heads.

 

They were warned -- most of the time, sure, it's innocent fun, but just beware. There are people you don't want to piss off in this world. The least of all was the original Snow Queen.

 

When they were small, they were warned about a white car that drove through town once a year on the first day of winter. The windows were heavily tinted and the car itself was worth more than most of the villagers made in a decade. And when the car was spotted on the road leading to town, everyone was warned to be off the streets. The woman in the car did not take dealing with "peasants" lightly. She'd mow an old man down if he crossed in front of her car and sue his family for the damages. And while grown folks were like grass before a gardener, what she really loved was to take young men home with her, never to be seen again.

 

Imagine this, in white.

 

 

It was really for everyone's safety, then, to be buttoned up tight behind closed doors on the first day of winter.

 

On the first day of winter when they turned sixteen, Mark got it into his head that this year, they were going to actually see the car and he was pretty sure he'd found the best place to watch it covertly from. Lila tried her best to talk him out of it, but all to no luck. The best she could do was go with him and make sure he didn't do something stupid, like the time he set up the ding-dong-ditch, just to see who really lived in the old, creepy house at the edge of town and accidentally burned the place down.

 

Ooops....

 

 

Yes, he thought he had a magnificent plan this time to get the car to stop and see who it was that had been terrorising the town for so long: mud balloons to the windshield from two places along the route. With two of them, while the driver was distracted, he'd be able to finally see who was in the car that drove through town.

 

"It's fool proof," he told her.

 

She wasn't convinced. He wasn't exactly the brains of their little operation.

 

Still, she crouched across the street on the roof of an unoccupied shop while he hid down a small alley not far off, both of them with balloons full of dirt and water and while the cry went up that the car was coming, they stayed, waiting where they were hidden.

 

(Maybe this would have worked better?)

 

The car was not long in coming.

 

The big, sleek luxury model growled it's way along the road and with timing borne of years of cooperative warfare against the other kids in town, they struck. The white car was pelted with balloons. Some bounced off only to be broken by the tires or splatter across the pavement, but there were a few that hit and hard. Mud coated the windshield, the rear window and the side windows. And when the car pulled to a stop, it was with nervous, hysterical giggles that both of them ducked back behind their respective barricades.

 

The door opened and sharp heeled shoes clicked on the pavement. "What the... Ugh! Who the-- who did this?! Of all the infantile.... " She waited a beat or two before shouting, "Show yourselves NOW."

 

It was a strange compulsion that pulled the boy out from his hiding place: a mixture of curiosity about the woman behind the voice and the command she wielded with it. He peered out and sensing in the silence that followed something else had happened, his hidden companion did likewise. What she saw terrified her.

 

He stood there like a deer-in-headlights in front of a cool blonde, dressed in a white sheath dress, white stilettos, and white pearls and a long white-fox fur.

 

“You,” she said, pointing one crystal-studded talon at Mark. “You did this?”

 

He was struck dumb looking at her. She was so lovely that in that moment there was no room for anything else in his young, hormone addled head. He nodded.

 

“You’re coming with me. And you’re cleaning this up. You won’t go home until I’m satisfied.” She approached him with a controlled saunter, appraising. “Aren’t you a lovely looking thing,” she purred, tapping a different nail on his cheek. Do a good job and I think we can both make out of this satisfied.” She grabbed hold of him and lead him back to the car.



Maybe this was what she was thinking? Probably not....

 

“No! Wait. Don’t take him. I’m responsible!” Lila shouted from her hiding place. 

 

But it was to no avail. The minute the Snow Queen’s hands were on him, he was done for. Neither of them seemed to hear her as the Queen ushered him into the passenger seat.

 

Lila scrambled down from the roof in time to see the white car kick up a little splash of the mud they’d thrown.

 

The Queen didn’t wait for him to buckle up before she revved the engine and took off.

To Be Continued...
Part 2