And When She Shatters

And When She Shatters by Kerry C. Byrne

3300 words, ~16 minutes reading time
Issue 4 (Spring 2024)

Here in this crystal palace, I kneel before my princess.

Cold pierces my knees. It’s started; crystal creeping up her fingernails, dust shimmering over her eyelids. The argument circles in my mind: princes save princesses, don’t they? And I am nothing if not a prince.

Ha.

That’s the problem, isn’t it.

My love, my love, my love. I could save you. The witch told me how, in words that break souls in exchange for futures. My knuckles drift beneath your chin; turn it up. I remember the times I kissed you. How you tasted like the home I never knew.

Just a kiss, she’d said, her witch’s voice quiet in my ear. And it all goes back.

But I can’t. Instead, I sob.

A wound; it echoes.

“I’m a prince,” I declared one day, apparently.

My mother told me about it as she fixed my cravat. At thirteen years old, I’d forgotten how I ended up a prince, and my skin was still tight from an encounter with a dukeling who called me princess. My tongue raw with vomit.

“And you believed me?” I asked.

She paused, but only because the necktie was frustrating. Bit her lip. Brows furrowed.

“Who would I believe, if not you?”

This seemed reasonable. Although, sometimes I had my doubts. Her sureness was unsettling—almost like a trap. But that was unkind. My mother didn’t set traps.

She was just married to one.

My father had his own doubts. I was his darling g—, an unfinished, misplaced endearment that caught in his throat. He was two watchful eyes waiting to be right, uncomfortable with change.

“I dunno,” I said, because it was a good question. Because it seemed odd to believe your child, rather than an entire court. Because the only reason I’d gotten away with it this long was because my brother was crown prince, and I’d make sure he lived long enough to always be a buffer between me and the crown.

See, I’m a prince. Not a king.

My mother, though, was not one to miss a cue.

“Darling?” She asked, her voice nutmeg and molasses. Her eyes on mine, as the cravat was finished.

“Mhmm?”

“Do you believe you?”

They say you know there’s a witch about when you come across the smell of honey and nutmeg. Bakers, the lot of them, so they always have something to offer prospective wishers. After all, what’s a spot of flour, a dash of spice, in exchange for a bit of someone’s soul?

I always wondered at that, though. Seemed to me, if a person was ready to offer up a bit of soul, surely a scone wouldn’t make the difference in the bargain. Why should a witch spend time on a small comfort, when they held the power to change a life?

What if, rather than a bargaining chip, it was a balm?

Three corridors down from our loveliest ballroom, there is a grand mirror. When I was young, I would sit by it, transfixed—bring candles at dusk and watch the light draw along the creases of the old stone walls.

This is where I met my princess.

I retreated, that night, from a ball. I wasn’t very good at dancing, to my tutors’ chagrin: my hands sweat through my gloves and my feet stepped out of line. Normally, it was a hall I went to be alone. Do breathing exercises, and all that. But that night, she was already there, drawing circles on the mirror with her finger—some infinite loop.

“What are you doing?” I asked, maybe too bluntly.

She turned laughing eyes up to me.

“What are you doing?” she asked me back.

Then, without another word, she strode past me.

I didn’t see her again until nearly the end of the night. It was a particularly beautiful waltz, and I caught her whirling around the ballroom—

Astonishing, by herself.

Did you know that crystal sings?

I close my eyes, and it’s her voice. A hum. A childhood lullaby I loved. She is so still, frigid as the stone takes her whole. Some unfinished coffin, creeping slowly.

But even now, it feels as though she is trying to comfort me.

The one who is killing her. 

I remember the first time my princess fell asleep on my shoulder. How her lips pursed and relaxed, hands tucked under her cheek like a fairytale.

I thought about marrying her, that night. But she would not tell me where she was from. Who she was. How she came to every palace ball, but slipped into nothing when I looked away.

You cannot marry a ghost.

“What do you think makes a prince a prince?”

We were by the lake that day, my brother and I. I held a dandelion in my fingers; plucked out its petals and rubbed them between my yellow-stained fingertips. I was happy, wearing a new tunicI felt made me look rather handsome. Unused to feeling handsome, I was certain the thing was magic.

“Hmmmmm.” My brother reclined where he sat, uncareful of mussing his white shirt in the grass.

“Do you ever think about it?” I asked. “I think about it all the time.”

“I think there’s two answers there,” he said.

“Okay.”

“First, there’s the simple answer. We are our father and mother’s sons. The legitimate heirs—princes.”

A grin caught the corner of my lips. He made it so easy; sons.

“Mhmmmmm. And second?”

“Second…there’s princeliness. What you imagine yourself being. How you imagine yourself living.”

“And what does that look like?”

“Well,” he said, and turned that damned charming grin on me. “You’re a prince. You tell me.”

The witch came when I was sixteen.

They lived deep in the forest, in the old hatter’s cabin. It was said that there was always a fire running, and if you got close enough, you could climb a sky-tall tree and see the plume of smoke.

Once, the abandoned cabin had been used by young lords and ladies to steal away from prying eyes. The way was well-trod, pretty little flowers planted by the path so the more dapper of the couple could snatch one up and offer it to their love. After the witch, though, the way was lost. Now, it’s secret.—so secret my father ordered entire squads of knights to search the forest’s many winding paths for those who’d lost their way to ask their heart’s desire.

Funny, though.

When I went to see them, the way unfurled before me, simple as a children’s tale.

My princess and I used to go for walks in the palace garden, lost in lush green hedges and ever-blooming roses. Side by side, our hands brushing, I would sneak glances at her. Make sure she was real.

She would smile at me, then. Teeth bared with a warrior’s delight.

“What is it?” she laughed, and pulled at the end of my sleeve.

“Hm?” My eyebrows rose, eyes going wide in innocence. “What’s what?”

“That look—“ She poked my side, and I danced away, snorting. “It feels…specific.”

“How wonderfully vague.”

“You can tell me, you know.”

“Tell you what?”

Then, she grabbed my hand properly. Stopped us in our tracks. Leaned forward, secretively.

“Anything.”

I didn’t become brave enough to take her hand until after she started to disappear.

When I was eleven, my mother fainted by the side of the palace pond, watching my brother paddle me around on my command. After that, she was sewn together by doctors’ visits, dark rooms, and magic potions.

When I think of her, I remember:

Her fingers in my hair.

Her promise that she loved me.

Her breathing as she slept.

By the time I was fourteen, I stopped being allowed to see her so often. Later, not at all. Visitors were too fatiguing, they said. She needed to conserve her strength.

“What is she conserving her strength for?” I shouted at my father one night. “You’ve taken away everything she loves!”

It did little but turn him to stone.

Sometimes, I would sit outside her door, tracing lines in the wooden panelling that lined the halls. I wasn’t bold enough to press my ear to the door. But her voice would come, now and then.

A whisper so brittle it sounded like it would break.

The crystal palace shivers. I curl so my head rests on her shoulder the way hers once rested on mine. Around us, towers groan. Cracks spread, frostline, through every surface. A chandelier above us swings. Falls.

Shatters.

It is one of her fingers, first. Translucent, encased in crystal, it ruptures under my hand. Turns to dust—and so does the breath in my throat.

I turn my head up. Squint through the too-bright light.

What is one kiss?

When I went to the witch, they waited for me, their curious eyes peering out the window. The cabin’s facade was tangled in weeds and ivy, a water wheel creaking in the river.

I approached, and the pretty mahogany door shuddered open.

Inside, the single large room was full of candles. On tables, on bookshelves, and hanging through the air. Everything tasted of fire and nutmeg and smoke, bathed in a golden cast. Shelves nearly toppled from every wall, overfull with pots and plants and vials and books. One good whisper would send the whole place to the ground. Where there weren’t shelves, there were pictures—paintings of worlds unknown—and rugs nailed to the wall in colourful tapestries.

The witch sat me on their settee. They served me tea at the exact right temperature, and we watched one another over the rim as I sipped.

They were different from what I expected. Loose brown curls fell over their surprisingly young face, and they were eerily familiar. Like a friend from a half-forgotten dream.

The witch began to hum, looking into their own cup—I startled, and they looked up.

Our eyes met. I was struck with a sudden sense of being known—

“I need you to do something for me,” I blurted out.

They smiled, gentle. But their eyes tightened in a way I’d seen before.

They said nothing.

I cleared my throat and pressed on: “A prince. I want to be a real prince.”

“Is that not what you are?” They said, their voice made of bells and bullrushes.

I frowned.

“You wish for a transformation,” they said, with a quiet louder than my hurried words. “I can do it, if you wish it.”

I grinned and wiped my hands on my pants, drying them of sweat.

“Then—”

“You must consider what this means to you. I can give you the magic to make it happen, but only you can decide its shape. And I cannot change it, or the things in this that may hurt.”

“Yes,” I promised. “Of course.”

“Take me home with you,” I whispered to my princess, again and again.

She only smiled and kissed me. Until, one day, she tucked my hair behind my ear, and said: “Alright, my prince.”

We left at dawn on my favourite horse. She guided me deep in the forest and far beyond the witch’s cottage. The trees grew tall, willowy phantoms guarding the way like half-forgotten memories. As we got closer, goose pimples spread down my arms, prickling like unfinished wishes.

It was long past dark when we arrived. My princess went first, holding a fairy’s lantern before us. We walked my horse down the curved path, hills on either side of us like sleeping giants.

“Just here,” she said, gesturing with the lamp. The light shattered in the forest, sharp patterns between ghosts.

I expected a great city. Dancing candles in windows, the sound of industry. A warmhearted mother and father to welcome us. I expected confessions—that she was some lower Lady’s daughter, and not a princess at all. That she waited to bring me, because she didn’t want me to know.

I had prepared a grand speech. I would tell her there was nothing to forgive. I would tell her love mattered more than that.

But there was no city. No industry. No mournful apologies.

No mother, no father.

Only a small palace, tucked away in a clearing, made entirely of crystal.

I returned to the witch on the night of a new moon; the forest’s limbs crooked phantoms against an endless dark. When I arrived, they led me behind their house, the yard tented in white fabric. It rippled in the breeze, shaking the small lanterns that floated through the air. On the far side of the space, there was a simple standing mirror.

“Step before it,” the witch instructed, and I obeyed.

Their hands were small when they hit my back. Hard like ice, they chilled my ribs as I stumbled into the mirror.

I fell into languid silver. My body moved slowly, fighting time itself. I panicked, reaching wildly, breath shallow, until—

A crash.

I felt the mirror break in my sinew and bones. My outstretched arm snapped, crystal dust pouring from the break. My toes followed, my legs, my hips. I worked my fingers, broken away, uselessly in the aura. Light poured from every wound, and I was all wounds, torn asunder, floating endlessly—

“It’s okay,” they whispered.

Nutmeg.

Something gripped the back of my shirt and pulled, and I stumbled into the witch’s arms and wept.

Later, they laid me in their sitting room and wiped my tired face with a damp cloth, bathing me in chamomile and lavender.

“I see so much of myself in you,” they whispered.

The words gurgled up—

"Could I be a witch?” I asked, fever-hot.

“If you wanted,” they said, gently nodding.

“How did you become a witch?”

The witch smiled. Brushed the fabric over my eyebrows when I noticed, breaking the connection.

“In time,” they said. “Perhaps, my dear, in time.”

One day, my princess woke, and spoke to me in a whisper so brittle it might break. We walked in the garden, but it was too much, and she fainted into my arms.

I offered her doctors, hedge witches, mages, and amulets. A trip to the Witch, even—although, somewhere, a voice in my mind told me they would only say what I did not want to hear.

But she refused. So I cared for her myself.

Until—

“The new moon is coming,” she whispered, icicle-thin, as she danced the pads of her fingers over my cheeks. “That will be my last.”

“What can I do?” I asked again, the words long useless.

“Into the forest. Between the giants. I must be in the palace for the spell to be complete.”

My lips parted—I looked away. Clenched my eyes shut.

“My prince?”

“Yes?” My voice cracked.

“I know you love me.”

When I made my wish, I did not know what it would take. I did not know what I was ready to give. When I first saw my princess, I felt I knew her.

But I did not wish to be her.

I cannot be her.

Before I took my princess home, I stopped by the witch’s cottage.

“One moment,” I assured her, and she nodded weakly as I went to the door.

“Witch!” I called. “Witch, I need you!”

The door trembled open. That nutmeg honey smell. Those beautiful floating lights. Anger flamed inside me, that they dared have these comforts.

I found her in her seating area, holding a teacup.

“I command you to save her,” I said, though that wasn’t the way it worked.

They sipped their tea.

“I cannot,” they said simply, eyes soft.

“As your Prince, I insist,” I said. “She is dying.”

“I cannot,” they said again. “But you can.”

What?

“I cannot,” I choked. I could not tell them how I’d tried to cast spells and brew potions, despite not knowing how. How laughable my aspirations of witchery were, ending in foolish gestures and unchanged water.

“You can,” they said.

And then they made true the things I’d known all along:

“You must decide your shape. I told you that before.”

A kiss. That’s what I left the cottage with—a simple kiss.

“Are you alright, my love?” I asked my princess. I ran the backs of my fingertips over her forehead and winced. Where she’d once been feverish, she now ran ice cold.

“Take me home,” she said.

And I wondered if she was asking to be kissed.

Here in this palace, the crystal fragments her limbs, her body, her face.

I can no longer tell where she is, some nightmarish mosaic. Her features blur, a thought caught in motion.

I think of cracking away the crystal with my sword and pressing my lips to hers. I think of keeping her hidden in my chest again, a jagged thorn between my lungs.

But she would consume me. She would consume everything. I cannot survive with her.

But she cannot survive without me.

I sit back and stare up at the palace ceiling. A shard of crystal breaks and crashes to the floor. A shard slices my cheek open. It is wet.

All this time, one of us was always meant to sacrifice the other.

I wish she could hear me. I wish I could apologize to her. Explain. Make promises and compromises, regardless of whether we kept them or not.

I wish I had true love to offer her, and not just love.

I wish that was enough.

When my mother died, we held a funeral in the royal graveyard. We had a ceremony. We put up a headstone.

But once the crystal has finished with my princess, it begins to fill the room. I realize, like an image in a shattered mirror, there will be nothing left to bury.

I stay as long as I can. I rise with the crystal, climbing platforms and crawling through tunnels. Soon, I can’t see her at all. The palace fills, some translucent crypt, and pushes me out. Up and up and up, until I reach the broken rift in the ceiling. With bloody hands, I grab the sharp edges and hoist myself out.

I find myself standing atop a gemstone mountain. The slope is not so steep—although not so gentle. Sliding and skidding, I make my way down its side until I’m standing before it. From the ground, its enormity feels heavy: a monument to unchosen futures. Its surface gleams in reflected leaves and clouds and there—just there—the hollowed features of my own face.

And when she shatters, it is beautiful.

The CRACK whips through the forest. A million prisms cascade through the air, casting shards of every-coloured light through the clearing. They suspend at their greatest height before falling to the ground in shining chaos.

Except for one. One pierces my chest, right between my lungs.

I breathe in.

There is no pain.

Between the twin giant’s hills, I climb onto my horse. Together, we return. Through phantom-trees, along winding trails, past the witch’s cottage. Guided by some instinct that feels like a familial wound.

It isn’t long until I find it. Strange, I think, that I wouldn’t have before. That no one ever did. Then again, if a witch can hide their cottage, why couldn’t they hide their past?

It’s laid out by a pond, twinkling in the early morning sunlight. A landscape of crystal, so much larger than my own, and emanating a desperate power. I dismount and walk to its edge. I do not touch it; it is not mine to touch. But I breathe deeply, and am thankful for those who have come before me.

Beneath the woodsy smell of a forest morning, there is the faintest hint of nutmeg.

And I wonder, then, if I am not the son of a king, but the child of a witch.