Archive of Our Own ^beta

Once upon a time, there was a cursed mirror that corrupted everything it touched. All it reflected was ugly and hateful. It belonged to a careless demon, and one day when that demon was playing, they dropped it, and the cursed mirror shattered. Pieces of it scattered everywhere, all across the land: falling in gutters like rain, in fields, in the hearts of men.¹

He took them and transformed into a prince, and he went to the city and danced before all the lords and ladies and even the king, who was good and kind. But eventually the enchantment wore off as enchantment always does, and the farmer’s son had no choice but to return to the village, where his cruel father (who, of course, had always been a witch) cursed him to exile in a faraway land, where he had no choice to take up a plow and become a farmer himself and forget the sights and wonders of the city, as if it had never happened as all.²

Then one night, they wandered off alone, got in an ice-colored sleigh that left no tracks in the snow, and vanished.

Heartbroken but determined, their spouse grabbed a shotgun and a sturdy pair of work boots and went out to look for them.

“Er,” said the farmer’s son, who was—it must be said—a little bit in love with her. “Val, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“What else am I supposed to do, go barefoot?” the woodcutter’s spouse said, hefting the shotgun. “Don’t let anyone from the village get in my secret vodka stash while I’m gone, Jan, or I will be very disappointed in you.”

“Still no sign of Val?” January asked, taking his usual seat in the corner.

“Nope,” the bartender said.

“Right, then, I’m going after her.”

“I thought your story was already over,” the bartender said. “Didn’t you say something about just wanting to make a living?”

“Yeah,” January said, “but no one else is going to, so.”

“Fair enough.”

He didn’t bring a shotgun, but he did bring his mother’s shoes, which turned out to be a better idea in the end.

It was fitting, then, that the cursed mirror was their inheritance.

“You look like a marshmallow someone accidentally set on fire,” January said.

“Ha! True. Where are you going, anyway?”

“I’m looking for my friend,” he said, and told the entire story.

“The Frost Prince is almost certainly holding her captive,” the raven said. “Watch out. They’re rich and shiny, which means they’re definitely a bastard.”

“Will do. Could you point me in the right direction?”

“Just keep heading north. Although, I don’t think anyone will blame you if you give up. She wouldn’t do the same for you,” the raven said. “She doesn’t love you, you know.”

“I’m not doing this because I love her,” January said, but as soon as he said it, he realized with a pang of sadness that it was at least a little bit of a lie. “Do you know if the next village over has electricity?”

“It doesn’t,” the raven said.

“It’s almost the coldest part of winter,” January said.

It shrugged, an odd gesture on a raven. “People will just have to buy coal.”

“Coal’s expensive,” January said.

“You can always steal it,” the raven said, which was a raven’s solution to everything.

January thanked it for the directions and the riveting political conversation and went on his way.

“Are you a princess?” the child said, sniffling.

“I’m—close enough,” said the Frost Prince. Their eyes ticked over the child, once, twice, three times. “Come with me, or you’ll die from the cold.”

The child hesitated. “I don’t think I’m supposed to.”

“What’s your favorite game?” the Frost Prince said gently.

“Marbles.”

“Come with me, and you can teach me how to play.”

And that was how the wicked Frost Prince lured a human child into the world of demons, into their palace of ice and glass, and how that child never saw his human family again.⁴

As bandits do, they emerged from gaps in the trees and quickly formed a ring around him, pointing their crossbows at his chest. He slowly raised his hands.

“I don’t have any money,” he said.

“Oh, what?” said the bandit leader, hopping down from their reindeer. They were older than he was, grey and leonine. “We’re not robbing you, why would you think that? No, you’re going to go talk to the Frost Prince, aren’t you? I’ve an interest in what happens to the Frost Prince. Let’s have a little talk.”

And so January followed the bandit leader back to his their lair, because he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Make yourself at home,” the bandit leader said. “Chocolate?”

January looked at the cup of hot chocolate being offered and shook his head. “My mother told me to never accept food from strange beings in the woods.”

“Oh, but that’s not about us, surely?” said the bandit leader, genuinely shocked. “We’re human.”

All the same, January shook his head.

“Your loss,” the bandit leader said. “Anyway—the Frost Prince. I take it you’re on your way to rescue someone you love?”

“Something like that,” January said.

“Excellent. What you really need to know is that the Frost Prince—they’re not a person. They look like one, and they’re beautiful in the way snow is beautiful: sparkling and cold and deadly. Sometimes they even look kind from a distance. But what they really are is a monster. You need to know the difference.”

Do you think I don’t? January thought, but he said nothing.

When the bandit leader was done with their hot chocolate, they bid him a warm farewell and sent him on his way.

He stopped to cough, and to struggle to wrap his sleeves further around his cracked knuckles. Somewhere in the tree-crackling and the whisper of wind against bare branches, silver bells rang. A sleigh slid out from a thin shadow between trees, pulled by—of all things—a small woolly mammoth.

The person in the sleigh was, as the bandit leader had said, beautiful, with knife-straight black hair. When they spoke, they had a gorgeous voice, low and full of smoke, or the curls of sugar dissolved in whiskey.

“Do you know what I am?”

“Your highness the Frost Prince,” January said, shivering.

“Are you warm?”

“Quite warm, your highness.”

“Are you certain? ”

“I’m fine,” January said.⁵

The Frost Prince patted the mammoth to stop it. “Does that mean you’re really fine, or are you saying that because the people from your original kingdom prize politeness above all things, so now you’d rather die of hypothermia than be an imposition?”

“The… second one, I think, your highness,” January said.

“I thought so. Here.”

The Frost Prince extended a hand to lift him up into the sleigh. January hesitated—the cold was making it hard to think—and took it. It was instantly much warmer, so much so it hurt. His fingertips were turning bright red.

They reached behind him and came up with a rich fur-and-velvet blanket, which they draped over his shoulders. Then, as an afterthought, they gave him a handkerchief.

“Thank you,” January said, and wiped his nose. “Wait, how did you know about my original kingdom?”

“The raven you spoke with stole your accent,” the Frost Prince said. “Now all of them are using it. I asked around.”

He blinked, unexpectedly charmed. Curiosity was charming, always—a desire to know the world. He had forgotten it existed, in the village, but he still felt the lack.

“I assume you’ve come to rescue someone you love,” they said briskly.

“I—yes,” he said.

“Whom?”

“A woman called Val who came for her spouse.”

“I have them both, yes.”

“Can you give them back, then?”

“No,” the Frost Prince said.

He scrunched up his face at them. “Why not?”

“That’s not how it works,” they said. “You can save them, if you come back to the castle with me, but you’ll need to give up your strength.”

“What do you mean, give up my strength?”

“Like this,” the Frost Prince said.

They put their hand flat against his chest and slowly drew it away. A dim golden light came away in their palm, and January felt—slightly weaker at first, and then much, much weaker, to the point where it was hard to move his fingertips. They put it back, and he pushed his hand over his mouth, gasping.

“Why?” he choked out.

With both hands, they wrapped his fingers around the center of their palm. Their fingers were cool and curiously calloused, as if used to holding a pen. “Squeeze as hard as you can.” 

He did. Their skin stopped being pleasantly cool and became painfully freezing, like holding snow, and then it melted: skin, flesh, and bones, until there were sickening gaps in their hand in the shape of his fingers.

They flexed their fingers delicately. Their flesh filled back in like the air was freezing over: bones first, tendons, muscles, skin. 

“We’re made of ice and snow,” the Frost Prince said. “As you can see.”

“Does that hurt?”

“Yes,” they said, in their beautiful dry voice, like they were speaking about the weather. “Terribly. The youngest and oldest among us, or someone who is ill, wouldn’t be able to grow back.”

“Giving up your strength—is it forever?”

“It is. Consider it the price of entry.”

He would never dance again.

Not, said the voice in the back of his head that sounded like his father’s, that he would have anyway. 

“But it’s—important,” he said, aware of how much he would sound like a petulant child and the Frost Prince’s eyes on him, cool, patient, impossibly older. “Isn’t there some other way? If you put me in a cage where I couldn’t hurt anyone—”

“You want to be kept in a cage?” the Frost Prince said curiously.

“Not forever, just so that you can let me out again and I can go home, as if nothing had ever happened at all.”

As if nothing had ever happened at all— with a jolt, he realized it was the exact wording of his father’s curse. But he wanted to go back to the village, to his ordinary honest hard labor and the grimy bar and the quick flickers of sadness when he remembered Val was married. Didn’t he?

“It’s not a permanent solution,” the Frost Prince said dubiously, “but we’ll see what we can do.”

“Right.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to thank them. “Do you have a name, by the way, your highness?”

“Me?” the Frost Prince said, caught strangely off guard for the first time in the conversation.

“Yeah,” January said.

“It’s River,” they said, still surprised, looking at him like he was a puzzle they couldn’t quite solve. “And you?”

One day, they were walking in the woods looking for mirror shards when they came across a lone monster, a fearsome thing that could kill with just a touch. The monster asked to be taken back to the sorcerer’s home, saying that he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Taming monsters is a sorcerer’s job. The easy way is to turn them into something that isn’t a monster anymore. The hard way is to marry them, like the lady and the lindworm or the girl who journeyed east of the sun and west of the moon. This can only be done once, unless your kingdom has really solid divorce laws.⁶ Sometimes a kiss will suffice, although that usually also requires love, so it’s the hardest way of all.

But this monster wanted to remain himself, which meant remaining a monster. So the sorcerer took him into the city—their city of ice demons owed them fealty, and it was famous for its artisans, for glass and steel—and they had an inventor create a full-body cage that the monster could walk around in, with a key so that it could be unlocked when it was time for the monster to return to the woods. No transformation necessary at all.

Unexpectedly, the monster stopped the sorcerer as they were leaving the inventor’s shop and placed the key in their hand.

“For when it disturbs no unquiet thoughts,” he said.

There must be something wrong with this story. That wasn’t a very monstrous thing to say at all.

River watched him all the while, saying nothing.

The Frost Prince’s castle was huge and sprawling, made of packed ice and glass and steel clockwork, walls ranging from perfectly clear to faintly translucent pearl. As soon as the doors swung open, River made a tiny gesture, and blue fire blossomed from the wall sconces. It was immediately much warmer.

“I keep most of the house warm for Yuan, but let me know if you’re ever too cold,” they said.

“I don’t want to—”

“Ah,” River said. “If I find you frozen to death in a corner, or even if you spend too long being faintly uncomfortable, I will have violated the ancient laws of hospitality, and who knows what that will bring. Curses. Lawsuits. Angry gods.⁷”

“Right,” January said, feeling better. “Who’s Yuan?”

“You’ll see.”

More importantly, maybe: “Where’s Val?”

“I’ll show you,” River said.

“If they manage to spell eternity, the mirror shards hidden in her spouse’s heart and eye will come out,” River said. “Those are the last two. I can’t let them go until I have them.”

“What can I do?” January said.

“You can help them solve the puzzle, if you like.”

In the mornings, the man helped his old friends with their puzzle and played marbles with the beast’s stolen child, who seemed to prefer being stolen over the alternative.

He had heard in an earlier story that the beast was cruel and immune to beauty, but—one day, they noticed the old shoes from a previous story in among his luggage and asked him to dance, and they heated up the old ballroom for it, and watched the entire time with stars in their eyes.

This wasn’t the story where the ordinary person married the beast in the end and lived in the strange glass castle forever. Those stories were beloved precisely because they were so rare. And yet, and yet…⁸

Their spouse bowed their head, focused only on the ice. They hadn’t looked up once in the entire time January had been there.

“That wasn’t technically a puzzle,” January said. “That was just you throwing darts at people.”

“I don’t think this is even possible,” she said, touching one of the jagged-sharp pieces and then sucking away the bright drop of blood that beaded on her palm.

“There has to be another way,” January said.

River, who was carrying around hot chocolate in an ornate glass tea set, glanced over, like they didn’t think he could come up with anything but they were still interested in what he had to say.

“Like what?” Val said.

“True love’s kiss usually works, doesn’t it?” he said.

She hesitated.

“Give it a go,” he said gently.

She took her spouse’s face in her hands and slowly turned it away from the puzzle. They closed their eyes rather than look at her. She kissed them, gently and hopelessly.

January waited for the inevitable pang of loneliness that came whenever Val even mentioned their spouse. Like missing a step on the stairs, it never came. He was worried about them, but not jealous or unhappy. It had been completely eclipsed by a bright, shining desire to see what River would think if it worked. If they would be glad. If they would be proud of him.

Val’s spouse opened their eyes, suddenly full of hope, and a tear coursed down their cheek. River reached out lightning-quick and caught it in a teacup saucer, then showed January. It was as bright and reflective as mercury, and when they dipped their fingers in and picked it up, it hardened into two small shards of broken mirror.

Val and their spouse set off for the village, Val riding in a modified chair with sleigh runners. He waved at them as they went, trying to think of an excuse not to go with them. He was the wrong shape for his ordinary life now, just like after living in the capital. It would stop eventually—River would be a faint bright memory of interesting words and yearning, which would eventually cease to matter so much—but he didn’t want it to.

River provided the excuse by coming up behind him, lightly touching his elbow, and saying, “At least stay to see the generator restart.”

“Right, of course,” January said.

Slowly, in the streets of the demon city, lanterns lit up bright electric gold. It spread outward—the theaters, museums, restaurants, people’s homes—and then further, to the constellations of distant villages, including—half-seen—January’s own. The entire world was glowing. It started to snow, lazy fat snowflakes that meandered like butterflies.

When January looked at River, they weren’t watching the snow or the lights at all. They were watching him, smiling very faintly. Slowly, carefully, terrified that it wasn’t that kind of story at all, January stepped in and kissed them.

They kissed back just as carefully, like they were frightened of breaking him. When they pulled back, they said softly, “It’s no use, I’m afraid.”

“What?"

“There is no curse to break, it’s just how I am. I try, I don’t like being the sort of person who either demolishes someone or bores them in every conversation, but I can’t change the way I work. I can’t always tell when I’m hurting someone, the only way I can tell is if someone fights me and changes my mind. Kissing me won’t change anything.”

January looked up at them. The snow was landing in their bare hair and not melting, and their eyes were very dark and earnest and concerned. 

“But if you kissed me only to kiss me,” they said, very seriously and without much hope, “then you may. Kiss me again, that is.”

They truly didn’t think he would. He wondered how anyone could be so clever and still not understand.

That, at least, could and should be fixed. He kissed them again, and again, and again: on the mouth, on the cheek, on the bridge of their nose, until they laughed quietly and put their hands on his shoulders to steady themselves.

“You can’t go back to that ghastly village,” they said slowly, testing the waters.

“No,” he agreed. “But I’m not sure what to do instead.”

“Ice demons like ballet,” River said. “They could use someone to teach them. And—“

“A wedding!” January’s raven said, fluttering down onto the balcony railing. “I love a wedding—all those grains of rice. Also, openly displayed valuables.”

“Did I say that?” River said.

“I wish you would,” January said.

Their eyes widened.

“Well, it is traditional,” he said, smiling up at them.

“A good way to end a story,” they agreed.

“Or to begin one,” he said, and took their hand.

1. c.f. “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen. return to text

2. c.f. Cinderella and its variants. return to text

3. c.f. "The Snow-child" in—among other places—the Cambridge Songs, and Kaguya-hime, author unknown. return to text

4. c.f. "The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats. return to text

5. c.f. "Morozko" in Russian Fairy Tales by Alexander Afanasyev. return to text

6. A kingdom to the south with a no-fault divorce policy had an enterprising young woman who had cured not just one or two but six cursed princes and then cheerfully retired on the alimony. return to text

7. One of these (River explained) would be manageable with some mix of holy water, prayer, or lawyers. It was all three at once that you really had to worry about. return to text

8. c.f. Beauty and the Beast and its variants. return to text