Perhaps regretting her own mistakes in marriage, the queen asked the fairies to give her unborn daughter three very specific gifts.
"A woman's tongue," said the queen, "is her greatest weapon. Make her witty, dazzling, brilliant."
"Sparkling," sighed the fairies, imagining stars and showers of glitter.
"Honesty," said the queen, "is a mother's greatest ally. I must know where she's going, who she's meeting. Make her motives transparent."
"See-through," the fairies squealed, imagining cut glass and negligees.
"Thought," said the queen, "is the best defense against a bad decision. Make her clear-headed, cool."
"Cold," the fairies whispered, imagining ocean waves and the flesh of the dead.
Ω
The baby almost froze the queen's womb. She lay clutching her abdomen, screaming for hot water bottles, cinnamon tea, chili peppers.
The king paced outside and lit cigars.
The physicians thought the baby was born dead until she coughed and spat up ice water.
Ω
As the princess grew, her beauty increased, but her temperature did not. She sat still and cold on her throne, eating ice cream and sculpting snow, breathing frost onto stained-glass windows.
The king and queen blamed it on a curse, a vengeful fairy who hated happiness
(forgetting that there are no evil fairies, only good ones who don't listen.)
Curses are lifted by kisses, and so when the princess turned sixteen, the castle was full of suitors eager to taste clear water become salty flesh under their lips.
Some barely touched mouths, pulling away and exclaiming that their tongues had become frostbitten.
Some clasped the princess in their arms, rubbing smooth icicle fingers until she screamed she would melt under the heat of their lust.
Ω
The sun set, and the princess, still ice, slipped out of the palace (she only roamed the grounds under cover of stars, for fear the sun would melt her.)
Stole away to the darkest corner of the woods where snow takes months to melt. Tonight, she was not alone; there was a wolf, curled up on a pile of dead leaves.
It cringed like a dog. "Don't touch me," it said. "I'm sick. I'll bite you."
"I can't be bitten," the princess said. "You'll freeze your teeth." She laid a cut-glass hand on its fur. "You don't shiver at my touch."
"My coat," the wolf told her. "Still thick from winter's winds."
The princess wrapped her arms around the wolf, stroking his fur, touching his ear, letting his rough red tongue lap at her dripping skin.
At sunrise, the wolf loped off into the underbrush; the princess understood, and hurried home before the sun's rays turned her to a puddle.
Ω
It was barely past noon when the doors to the palace burst open.
A single knight in wolf-grey rainment waited.
"I saw you when the moon was full," he says, "and fell in love. Today, I am no dog, but man, and I can free you from your icy skin."
The princess leans forward, anticipating warm flesh on flesh, mouth on mouth, tongue on tongue.
The minutes pass, and the knight lets her go. "You're still cold."
"You're still human," the princess says.
The knight bows his head. "I could not love you enough."
The princess whispers in his ear, small crystals forming on his skin. "There is more to love than kisses. There is ice and fur, and the moon shining on snow."
That night, and every night, a few grey hairs are left clinging to a princess's skin, and a wolf's coat is covered in frost.