Winter covered the kingdom of Tek like a coffin lid, sealing its citizens behind shuttered windows and burying them in piles of wool sweaters and mittens. The light of the sun was blocked out by the ever-present blanket of brooding clouds, but there was a silver lining to the overcast firmament – the castle on the hill was no longer visible to the town that cowered beneath it. On clearer days the cruel spires of the castle could just be made out through the mist, reminding the sharp-eyed of the dungeons, torture chambers, and execution block the Queen had in
her basement and front yard. The Queen had rather unusual taste in interior design and landscaping; she preferred the impaled heads of uppity peasants over the conventional garden gnomes, and on special occasions she even strung colored lights between the bloodied stakes. Her subjects appreciated the gloomy weather for the false feeling of safety the clouds offered. It was a little easier to forget about their unpopular monarch when they couldn't see the turrets and towers of her home looming above them, never mind the hidden cameras and thuggish tax collectors.
But winter doesn't last forever, though it may seem to when in the middle of a snow drift. All too soon the warm winds of spring chased the storm clouds away, and the bright sunlight reflected off the stained glass windows of the castle on the hill. The Huntsman's family was enjoying the first clear week of spring, although they avoided looking up and to the north. The Huntsman himself had been growing more and more jumpy each day the weather improved, and every time his beat up cell phone vibrated or made a sound he jumped two feet in the air. The call he was dreading eventually came, a text from the Queen herself: “My niece will be ready tomorrow at 11 AM.”
He let loose a heavy sigh and put the phone back in his pocket, but only shook his head when his wife asked what was wrong. She believed he had given up professional murder when he settled down with her, well, he had thought so too until the Queen ordered him to kill the princess.
And so the next day the Huntsman climbed the steep path to the castle and found the Princess and her attendant waiting in the courtyard. The attendant, a severe, matronly woman, eyed the Huntsman suspiciously but made no objections to his taking the princess for “a pleasant stroll in the woods.” The Queen had arranged everything. The little girl blithely placed her hand in his, the castle guards looked the other way, and the Huntsman reluctantly led her into the forest.
The Princess was perhaps four or five years old, hardly a danger to anyone, but with royalty… well, politics are always complicated, the Huntsman reasoned. There was no reason to feel that this particular assassination was any worse than the jobs from years before, right?
However, try as he might, the Huntsman couldn't shake the heavy weight of guilt pressing down on him. The little girl reminded him of his own daughters when they were small. The way she burbled with laughter, hopped over puddles, chased butterflies... No. It was too late to get soft now. Just a little farther, deeper into shadows of the forest, and it would be time to get it over with. There, she had found a patch of wildflowers, the first of the year. She was on her knees, gathering up handfuls of the blossoms, chattering about how much her nanny would love them. Now, while her back was turned, she wouldn't even have time to scream...
The Huntsman raised his dagger, ready to plunge it into her back, but he hesitated. He steeled himself once more, but the child turned in time to see the keen edge of the blade poised above her. Her eyes widened and she shrieked, but there was no one to hear. A wave of wretchedness crashed into the Huntsman and the dagger fell from his trembling hands. He dropped to his knees in front of the Princess and covered his face with his hands, begging for forgiveness. The girl was too shocked to speak, she clenched the bouquet of flowers tightly in one fist and scrambled away from her would-be-murderer. The Huntsman started to run after her, but chasing her immediately after attempting to kill her didn't strike him as the best way to reassure the Princess that he now had no intention to harm her. He stopped in his tracks and called out, “No! Wait! It was the Queen, she wants you dead!”
She paused in her flight and turned around to face him. “Auntie?” the Princess squeaked.
“Yes, she hired me... hired me to kill you. She's evil. You go back to that castle and she'll kill you some other way, understand?” The Princess didn't seem very surprised by this revelation of her aunt's wickedness, but she was still wary of the Huntsman. She stepped backwards when he tried to slowly approach her, looking ready to bolt in an instant. The Huntsman knelt in front of her once more, to get down on her level. “Listen to me Princess,” he pleaded, “it is very important that the Queen never finds you. If she learns you're not dead... well, it will be bad news for both of us. You can't go back there.”
“Where shall I go?”
He pointed into the darkest part of the forest, “That way. You must get far away from here, run as fast as you can and don't stop for anything. As long as you're in Tek you're in terrible danger.
The Princess nodded and wiped a tear away with her fist. She let go of the bunch of flowers, sniffed once, and took off running. The Huntsman watched her fleeing form until she disappeared behind the trees and he could no longer hear her crashing through the underbrush. He then pulled out his phone and searched google for “child heart size” and “animal heart sizes” (The Kingdom of Tek has excellent cell phone coverage up to the borders). Once he had been sufficiently educated on the anatomy of woodland mammals, the Huntsman set out in search of a small deer. He knew those woods like the back of his hand, and in a few hours he had a bloody lump of muscle to offer to the Queen. He'd received a stream of angry texts from his wife inquiring why he was late for dinner, but the Huntsman figured it was a small price to pay for the preserved life of an innocent.
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