Frozen Heart: The Prophecy of Janis the Snow Queen

The Snow Queen

In the Valley of the Trolls, the primitive denizens were throwing a festival. Families of trolls gathered around a bonfire and danced as musicians banged on skin drums and played melodies on bone flutes. Snowflakes fell from the dark sky around them, but they ate, drank, and laughed without worry. Squat little troll children wrestled in the dirt and shrieked at each other.

From the shadows few spotted a dark figure begin to approach the crowd around the bonfire. A mother's smile fades away from her face as she felt a chill and saw a woman in a white fur cape emerge from the night. A gust of wind brought a flurry of snow down from the sky, and the songs quickly came to a sudden end as they all turned towards the stranger. She had long dark blue hair tied back in a bun, wore a sparkling tiara of ice, and held a long silver staff. A baby troll started to cry.

"It's the Snow Queen! Run for your lives!" A troll shouted, and then they panicked. The trolls ran away in all directions, most screaming in terror. Troll mothers and fathers yelled out the names of their children and searched in the chaos for them. Janis walked through the crowd as a wicked grin stretched across her face. She came to the bonfire and raised her staff over it. Another gust came from above, this time carrying with it so much hail and frost that the bonfire went out immediately and the wood froze into ice. Shadows covered the troll valley. Then, the night was lit only by flashes of blue as the Queen with a frozen heart made icy statues out of one troll after another.

"Be afraid, you fools! You knew I was coming!" Janis shouted in her madness as the screams faded into whimpers. Soon, she was left in the dark. The snow blew around her, and she could only see the frozen trolls standing around her, their arms up in expressions of terror.

"Halt!" Boomed a deep voice from the shadows. Janis whirled around to see the ancient Troll King leaning on his gnarled wooden staff. "You are not welcome here."

The young Queen seemed to glide over the snow towards the old King. She was smiling again. "You must be the one that saw the future in your visions, and started that dreadful prophecy about me. Did you not see that I would come here after freezing Castle Misthaven?"

"Yes," the wizened troll sighed, "you are the chosen one, Janis of House Chairn." She nodded and her smile turned into a frown. He continued gruffly, "You enter my valley and freeze my people? They did nothing to you! What's more, my own daughter raised Helen, who was your caregiver since the day you were born. You owe it to her memory to leave us in peace." He walked up to a nearby troll woman with a wrinkle-covered face who had been frozen into a crying statue, and stroked her cheek.

Janis scowled. "Do not worry, your Majesty. Your people will be left in peace. As for you, I'm not sure I can say the same." Her words grew more bitter and loud as she stepped even closer to the king, "If only you hadn't told a soul about your visions, my life would have been very different. Idonea would never have sent her guards to find me and... ERIC WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN KILLED! We would have married and lived a long happy life together in the woods! Why should your trolls have that when I never could?"

"My prophecy did more than that, Snow Queen." The elder troll slumped against his staff, "Before you were born, the Queen of Flames came to my cave looking for power and knowledge. I told her of the prophecy, and the part that she would play in it. I showed her my magic mirror and said that if she helped me bring to pass your destiny, it could be hers for the rest of her life, and teach her many things."

"What do you mean? Is that why she kidnapped me?" Janis yelled, raising her staff.

"No, sweet child. She convinced King Peter to join the other human kingdoms in their war against the giant rats of the Dark Isles. It was the only way that your father and brother could be sent to die and leave you without a family."