"I have no patience for weaving," the princess sighed enviously. Her eyes followed Siofra's hands at the loom.

At first, Siofra thought the princess's rapt attention would irritate her after the many days working. Faolan always found a chore, but his princess only found curiosity. Questions upon questions, words upon words. Why does sunshine have to be in that weave? Why are you leaving spaces? Why happy thoughts?

Siofra had spent so many years avoiding speaking and refusing to smile; the pain of cracking the tough bark of her face deterred happiness. She had only pulled the simplest threads with the easiest patterns. Strangely enough, the more she spoke and smiled and wove, the easier the movements became. It still pained her, but the pain was less and less.

"You seem to have patience for very little," Siofra replied wryly, her mouth twitching. "Hand me the next spindle."

The princess laughed her bell-like laughter, setting the crowd of pixies perched on the window into an excited flutter. Even more than Faolan, the princess attracted the fae to her presence. She was winsome and wild, waves on the cliff, wind through the trees. Like a human sun, the fae flocked to bathe in her warmth.

"My father would agree with you," she answered cheerfully, handing Siofra a spindle from the basket.

Turning to take it, Siofra frowned. It held the sunshine she had collected, dim as dust next to the golden joy of the princess' spindles.

"Not that one," she rasped.

"Why not?"

How can I explain misery to someone who has never felt it?

Shrugging, Siofra fingered one of the bright lines of happiness tied into her weaving. She tried to explain. "I have little to be happy for. I don't want to sully the weaving with my memories."

The princess frowned, examining at the weak glow. That pinch in her eyebrows, the look in her indigo eyes warned Siofra that there was another brewing storm of questions.

"What memory is this, Siofra?"

She asked so plainly, with such a matter-of-fact tone, Siofra replied despite the reluctance.

"It's my last memory of the Dreamweaver." She would have liked to leave the answer at that; but she knew a simple answer was not enough to satisfy this princess.

The full story, I suppose, she thought. Beginning from the beginning, Siofra breathed a shaky sigh and said, "he left to convince the queen to lift my curse. He blamed himself for it.

"His mate, Caorthann, was sick. So sick that there was no cure or herb or magic to save him. But when fae are gravely ill, sometimes they glamor themselves as children to be cared for by humans.

"But Caorthann refused to leave. He said, 'I would rather die here with you, than live alone in the human world.'

"So the Dreamweaver waited until Caorthann was too sick to protest. He glamored his mate to look like a baby he had seen in a human village. He left Caorthann as a changeling in her place, in my place.

"The Dreamweaver kept me. Children are very rare and coveted in the faerie world. But I think he was afraid to be alone."

Siofra paused, realizing that Faolan had returned from cutting firewood. The princess had leaned forward. The pixies on the windowsill, on her lap and shoulders, were still with paralyzed interest.

"And the curse?" Faolan asked, his eyes warm with encouragement.

"He didn't ask for permission to keep me. He used to say he was 'more heart than head.' But he knew the queen would take me, and so he hid me every time she visited the cottage.

"The queen commissioned many weavings from him. He spun lightning and rainsong, mountain wind and the breath of spring. As I grew older and helped weave these lovely things, I wanted to see the beautiful queen that wore them. I begged and begged, but the Dreamweaver always locked me away.

"But I grew too bold and clever for my own good."

Siofra rubbed at her chest absently.

"She's as unkind as she is cunning, the fae queen. She knew that cursing me would hurt the Dreamweaver most."

The story trailed into silence. Her face, her mottled hand, near shouted the sorry ending. The princess contemplated the spindle in her fingers and asked, "Which part is the happy part?"

An image of the Dreamweaver's cheerful face shimmered in Siofra's mind. The broad, feathered eyebrows. His sharp nose. The laugh lines around his brass-colored eyes. With a breath, she continued, "I remember the day he left. I can't actually remember what he said, but I believed–just for that moment–that he might make everything right."

Looking up, Siofra found stormy eyes burning with passion. The princess handed her the spindle firmly.

"I would be honored to have your memories woven with mine, Siofra."

The weaver stretched out her long fingers to take the spindle, a touch of wonder in those bottomless black eyes.

"This queen sounds horrid," the princess added, freeing one of the bright little pixies that tangled its way into her hair. "Can anything be done?"

"She's been queen for a long time."

"And what does that matter?"

"She's been a feared queen for a long time," Siofra amended.

The answer sent a burst of righteous anger through the slight princess. It filled her so completely, she sprang to her feet, shaking with the fury of it.

"Then someone should stand against her! A queen has a responsibility to her people. Title and power shouldn't give her the right to bully those she should protect."

There was something in the fierceness of her words and the strength of her empathy that adorned her loveliness. Flustered into flight from the raw emotion, the pixies buzzed around her head like a chaotic crown. In that one moment, she was more than a winsome princess. She was a queen in her own right.

Siofra caught Faolan staring, too. He was not watching with the dreamy eyes of a besotted lover, but with a strange curiosity. It was as if he realized that he did not know this princess at all.

"Who could ever stand against her? Humans and low fae would not stand a chance," the weaver answered as the flustered pixies darted about the rafters.

Just as the princess opened her mouth to continue the argument, the sound of silver chimes rang through the window. Siofra knew their voices well: they tolled just as distinctly as their owner's lovely laughter. The laughter that haunted her memories. Pixies screeched with terror, flurrying out of sight. The fae queen approached as if called.

It spurred her from the loom.

"You must go!" she hissed, pushing the princess toward the mirror. She gestured to Faolan. "Both of you! Go!"

"Siofra, what–"

She did not let him finish the question and gave the princess a mighty heave into the portal. There was a flash of the bronze-haired princess in an old stable before it melted back to Siofra's wild, horrified expression.

"I'll send a message when it's safe. Go!"

"Come with us," Faolan insisted. He pulled at her petrifying hand with gentle encouragement.

The sound of Siofra's raspy breaths smothered the rising crescendo of the whispering chimes.

"Fine! I'll be right behind you."

For a moment, Siofra thought he might argue. She thought he might pull her with him.

Though there was no way to bully him, Siofra pushed at Faolan with all her strength. With one look back at her, he stepped into the mirror. Safe.

But the weaver did not follow. There was no danger for someone as cursed as she. What more could she do to me? Siofra asked herself with a trembling bravado.

She dipped her hand into the silvery surface to tear away the wisp-charm, to close the portal, to seal away the new buds of companionship. Siofra forced her wooden grasp closed around the ball of light, hiding its glow in her bark-covered fingers.

And just in time. An icy breath of winter touched the cottage so quickly that frost formed at the windowsill. The autumn flowers the princess had gathered crystalized in moments, their petals drifting to the floor like new snowflakes. Siofra's breath misted, the only warmth in the room apart from the brilliant swathe of gold growing on the loom.

"A new dreamweaver?"

The voice was running a hand across velvet, the first bite of a decadent dessert. Rich and bright, it whispered like music in the frozen cottage. The Winter Queen, ice and mist and loveliness, stood in the doorway.

The perfect stillness held until Siofra turned to face her. It broke with the symphony of the fae queen's laughter.

"Ah! The little changeling! Is it you who has been spinning sunlight?"

Siofra nodded. Her heart hammered so fiercely in her chest, she wondered if the queen also heard it pounding. It was as if she were a child again, the Dreamweaver crumbling into grief as the glimmering queen coaxed her closer with a smile. A delicate white spider dressed in the last golds of autumn.

Though her legs itched to run, she was the insect in its silvery web.

"Have you been weaving for mortals, little changeling? The kingdom is buzzing with rumors of it."

Even if she could find her voice, Siofra knew that no lie would fool the Winter Queen. This faerie was too ancient and cunning to accept anything other than the steel edge of truth.

Silent and shamed, Siofra nodded again.

"My sweet pet! Of course you would not lie to me," the queen crooned, moving to take Siofra's hands, the cursed wooden fingers clenched tight around the wisp-charm.

Another trill of perfect laughter echoed as the queen examined Siofra's left hand, the ever-growing blight across her face, the bottomless pitch of her eyes. Despite the stiff ache, Siofra kept her cursed fingers closed tight. She cannot hurt me, but she can hurt Faolan and his princess.

The queen's ivory hand continued their path, tracing the edge of the ragged curse. Her silver eyes followed in crinkled amusement. A breath of frost followed her whisper-soft touch.

"Was I too cruel, my darling one?"

Again, the urge to flee met the stony inertia of unwilling limbs. The uneasy conflict set Siofra vibrating with discomfort. Her heart thudded in her throat where her voice should have been. The image of the impassioned princess, demanding courage, surfaced in her mind's eye. Another wave of shame preceded, but Siofra shook her head. She convinced herself that the Winter Queen could have concocted a worse fate.

As she swept her sheet of creamy hair over her shoulder, the fae queen shared a conspiratorial smile with the frozen Siofra. That fine alabaster hand gently straightened a wild tangle of her leaf-like hair.

"Perhaps I am too soft, sweet rowan-child, but I cannot stand to see you suffer so. I offer a trade. Bring me your mortal patron and I will lift this curse. Send me her human soul for my immortal court and I will end the pain and suffering, I will end the sorrow and fear."

Her gentle touch returned to the edge of the rough, mottled curse, a long bronze tipped nail scratching lightly at the bark. The queen's thin finger fell to Siofra's chest, to the spot right above her heart. The place where the curse first blossomed.

A strange unfrozen corner of Siofra's mind wondered who had dressed the Winter Queen in the last vestiges of autumn, a gown of falling leaves and lips stained berry. The Dreamweaver could have woven her a fabric that sang with copper leaves caught in the wind. He would have created a piece that shamed this poor replica.

"You have until the Solstice, little weaver," the queen said, drawing Siofra back to the cottage. A creeping dread coiled into Siofra's heart, for the hauntingly beautiful face of the fae queen shifted into a calculated pensiveness. The deep crimson of her smile reminded Siofra more of blood than it did of harvest berries. The fae queen added, "but some extra incentive, I think."

And she tapped Siofra's chest. The icy shard that had been placed there, that had lived there for over a decade, shuddered near her heart. Chest tight, Siofra drew two shaky breaths. A third.

The Dreamweaver's daughter had tasted happiness these past days, so she forgave herself for the glimmer of hope that bloomed. For in the heartbeat she met the cold, silver eyes of the Winter Queen, the wooden edges of her curse crept another inch.

Each year it had slowly grown across her face, into her joints. Never had it surged like this, hot with a searing edge of pain. A fiery tongue swept across her skin–her eye, her mouth, her hand–and drowned out all thought.

"Bring her to me before the Solstice, dreamweaver. Bring her draped in the faerie garb she seeks to possess. Bring her to me or become what you so fear, faster than you ever imagined."

In the pain and terror of this new fate, Siofra hardly noticed the Queen's exit. The echo of chimes lingered until the frost melted in the fading warmth of an equinox sun. Siofra, rooted to the floor, trembled until the last trace of winter's breath disappeared.

Again, cursed and alone.

But maybe I don't have to be. The hope was desperate, wildfire. Her wooden left hand was foreign and strange. She could no longer feel the wisp in her grasp, nor could she unbend her stiff fingers. The charm's significance burned through her.

With a deep breath and teeth clenched, she used her other hand to pry open her fist. Finger by finger, joints aching and splintering with the brutal effort, Siofra forced her hand open. Fraught urgency spurred her clumsily to the mirror, to salvation.

She would open the portal, the princess might still be waiting on the other side. I could coax her back and–

The wisp-charm held tight in her unaffected hand, the weaver moved to place it into the glass. She had spent years covering any shining surface, avoiding any means of examining her curse. In her wild hurry, she caught the full onslaught of her face.

The throbbing memory of pain lingered at each new edge. It had petrified the left side of her mouth into a permanent frown. It had fused her left eye closed. Her left hand, splintered and motionless, would never work the loom.

Bring her back and this could all be over, a selfish voice hissed in her head. She wants to be free, doesn't see? Free to live a perfect, immortal life among the fae?

For a moment, Siofra imagined herself whole, uncursed, beautiful. She might have the life stolen from her. She would not have to hide away in a dusty cottage with only loneliness and despair as company.

It would be so easy.

Bathed in the blue glow of wisplight, Siofra considered the charm. She could let it dissolve into mist. She would never again be tempted, but she would face a solitary descent to her arboreal prison. Or she could open the portal.

At least enjoy your last days of happiness.

A heartbeat.

A rattling breath.

Without meeting her own gaze, Siofra let the charm send ripples over the silvery surface of the mirror. 

Wattpad word count : 17,442