The Sculpture And The Sculpted

Chapter 1

The snow crunched under Will's boots as he stepped through the bare forest around him. The white was blinding and the color of the ground flowed perfectly to the color of the sky, blanketing Will in nothing but a monotone world of white and brown.

His breath hung in the air as he breathed out heavily through his mouth. He should have brought an extra cloak with him when he left, but he couldn't have climbed over the castle wall with that much weight on brittle vines that were crumbling under winter's toll.

He pulled his cloak tighter around him and hunched up against the chill of the wind blowing and pushed on. He didn't know where he was going exactly, but he didn't find that he cared. He just wanted to get away. Castle life was stifling and if he had had enough of it in his few short years, he didn't want to see what the rest of his life held.

The studies were bad enough. He didn't want to think about how his father was constantly in meetings and dealing with paperwork and upkeeping the court. He didn't want to think about how that would be passed down to him someday. He had seen the way it had turned his father to drink and he knew that if his mother had a choice, she would have left long ago.

He had never wanted the crown. It had never been explained fully to him, but he knew the implications by association well enough to understand that he wanted nothing to do with it. His only solution was to run and hope that he made it through the winter. Find somewhere warm to stay and keep pushing on. If he could reach beyond the border before the guards caught him, then he was home free.

His toes had long gone numb and the tip of his nose was red. He was shivering and by now the snow had begun falling again. He knew there was a hunting cabin somewhere up ahead. Or he thought there was, he wasn't quite sure anymore with how similar everything looked. But he knew that there was a cabin his father kept and that was often lent out to other noble families who had permission to use it. He could stay there until the storm cleared up and he was able to get feeling back to his fingers and toes. He didn't know how to start a fire, but that wouldn't stop him. The cabin would at least keep out the chill of the wind if anything.

As the snow continued to fall, Will could feel his chest constrict with fear. Maybe he hadn't thought this through quite enough. Maybe he should have brought that second cloak. Maybe he should have waited until spring came and he wouldn't be caught outside.

The white was disheartening and Will was prepared to turn back, but when he looked back he found that any sort of trudging marks he had left in the snow had been swallowed up with fresh powder. He didn't have any idea where he was or which direction his home sat. The storm had eaten up the looming castle.

Before Will had the chance to feel the dread fully set in, a cry broke through the eerie silence of the storm. It was close by and a sound unlike anything Will had ever heard before. Something so utterly broken that Will thought it might be a fox stuck in a trap. It was tortured. Another followed and Will turned towards it. Even if it were a fox, he knew the layout of his father's traps. Maybe he could figure out where he was if he found one of them.

As he came to the top of the crest of a hill the white was broken up with steaming crimson. It covered the snow and the earth was bleeding with it. Will had never seen so much blood before. Not even when cleaning the deer his father caught. It was a blanket, fresh and bright.

Will inhaled deeply, his body wanting to run when his eyes landed on a body face down in the snow. It looked like a soldier of some sort. One of his father's guards, but the uniform was stained with red, turning it a deeper blue than will had even thought possible.

Another cry snapped Will from his stare and he finally spotted the source of it. A boy in the storm, huddled over something. He didn't look much older than Will, but he was all alone out here. He wasn't dressed anywhere near warm enough for the storm, missing a cloak, gloves, hat or anything of the respective sort. And his clothes were stained in the same blood that couldn't be buried by the falling snow.