Getting Away with Murder

Part of the One Page Series

This was not the first time the Snow Queen asked me to kill someone. And I’ve never told her no. I only ask she always inform me of the target. “This monster was born with red hair,” she told me. “A child wreathed in flame will grow into a pyre.” Children, old men, eager suitors, anyone whom the queen thought would endanger her, she sent me to erase. I’ve been her imperial counselor for 30 years.

The child lived on a large farm, windmills stirring the air. She woke up when I slid the ice dagger in her throat, but she couldn’t breathe in to scream. Her blood poured out black in the night, the only color I could see was her fiery red hair. The temperature was below freezing so while riding horseback to the Crystal Castle I drank an entire bottle of wine. I reflected on 30 years of servitude. During my childhood I dreamed of being a noble knight.

Coming out of the cypress forest I saw the Crystal Castle before me. The Snow Queen expected me to enter through the drawbridge, but I went around to the side for the secret tunnel. I entered the throne room by a hidden panel, where the queen waited alone, as always on my missions. Superstition says killing a red headed child with an ice dagger gives the dagger the flames of Hell inside. The Snow Queen didn’t melt when I stabbed her, but it looked painful enough. No, not enough.

No flame had been lit in the Winter Kingdom for over two hundred years. I figured I had to make up for lost time. An old saying in the kingdom went, “Cypress burns hot.” With enough firewood in the throne room, I sparked my flint and left via the hidden panel. From the edge of the cypress forest I watched the Crystal Castle shatter and collapse from the pyre that consumed it. Snowflakes fell on my shoulders and I brushed them off. I turned my horse Matchstick into the woods and began the long journey to the Fire kingdom.