There are many tales of the Winter Queen, but only one of them is true.
It is true when they say her hair is white as snow, her eyes dark as coals; her face pale as Death. It is true that she is as old as the mountains; that she has as many names as the stars have, and how a cloak of white rabbits falls over her shoulder.
It is also true what they speak of her serpent mirror, Ouroboros, the never-ending silver chain. Mirrors never lie, but neither can they be trusted, for mirrors are the trickiest of all magical objects. There are children in Her mirror; those who strayed too far from the forest path and found the white haired Queen with her empty eyes sitting lonely beside the glass; those who stepped through the mirror chasing dreams and flickering lights, dancing all the way. And behind the glass they remain, their hearts and names, and souls stolen away in a jar for the Winter Queen and her mirror to consume, for that is how she survives the tick-tick-ticking of the clock, for a child's soul is much stronger than a grown-up's.
So when you look in a mirror, dear children, remember the poor ones forgotten behind the glass, belonging to none but the dark and the Winter Queen in her cloak of white rabbits. And when you go deep into the heart of the woods in winter, you will find what became of those children. Where their blood once soaked into the earth, tall above the grass they now stand; flowers with the faces of sleeping children.
For the woods feel the loss of a child.
But the Winter Queen does not.
- Sir Hector Oddness, alias Beedle the Bard
