Banished

He slinked as though he were a leopard shadowing its prey. Precision in his steps as he tried to balance. He looked at the ice blanket below his feet, his heart sinking as his life perched on a thin veil between verglas and water. His breath was visible in the atmosphere and his sweat cascading down his face despite the sharp frost running through his veins. His eyes darted towards the distance with desperation and longing and promptly fell again to the ground when he saw nothing but more ice. Since the snow queen banished him from the kingdom, he hadn’t felt the warmth of another, he hadn’t heard the hearty snort of his father or felt the lumpy coziness of his mother’s stew running down his throat. The memories of his beloved family were no distraction from imagining the piercing fangs of deepwater wrapped around his body. The snow queen's reign of icy massacre and frost-covered force had been unrelenting since the disappearance of the opposing merfolk.

The clock in his head ticked loudly as he felt his body running out of time. In his hopelessness he sauntered on, it was all he could do.

He remembered his little sister and how he harboured a hatred when she was born. The green-eyed monster loomed over him as she was showered with their mother's unyielding embraces. He remembered slaying his monster and a seed of everlasting love being planted. As it began to grow, his protectiveness over her stretched with it like a beanstalk. He meant well but his need to shield his sister from the glacial world full of hate and war caused a distance between them. That was one of his greatest regrets. He wished so strongly that he could get to see her again, see her grow into a fine young woman but alas he knew it could never be. It was his solicitous tie to his sister which caused the slow blackening of his toes in the present.

Each blood moon the snow queen appoints a mantel woman. Once appointed you must live your life in solitude, sitting as if porcelain above the queens thrown like a trophy. On this moon, the queen extended her serrated skeletal fingers and pointed them towards his sister. She accepted her dismal fate bravely as she was placed on the mantel. He would visit her daily to see nothing but a shell with a permanently despondent expression glued to her. Each time he glanced up at her he felt a dagger of pain plunging deeper into his chest. This pain lingered on and on until eventually, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He approached the queen and offered his own life in return for his sister’s fate. The queen's blood lust washed over her as she agreed on one condition, he must be banished and one day encounter the infinite expanse of the frozen pond. Her superciliousness was clear as winter's day on her face. Holding back the contempt pumping in his heart for the queen and the foreboding feeling creeping up his spine, he agreed to her terms.

He shook his head trying to thwart the agonizing recollection. As the hours passed, he grew weaker. His purple lips trembled as he tried to release his trapped breath. His whole body convulsing with a deathly shiver and his vision nebulous as he tried to stay upright. An abrupt wave of drowsiness overcame his senses as his legs gave in. He dropped gently, his body limp.

His lifeforce slowing slipping away, he looked to the ice, his eyes suddenly filling with promise. There, frozen in the ice, was a mermaid. An incandescent glow rose from the ice around her, her jade scales glistening and her skin still a warm olive. She was still alive. He mustered up all the strength he could and started to pummel the ice with his bare fists. Scarlet drops fell from his fists onto the splitting ice until finally, he fell into the mouth of the water.

As he dissented into the deep, sentience filled the mermaid’s tail as it began to flutter. She was the future; she could give a better life to millions, including his family. His smile stretched from ear to ear as blood surrounded him like red smoke.

He closed his eyes as the pond's gentle grip pulled him down.