PROLOGUEPAGE ONE OF TWO

The ebony window

Before the story, outside Snow Drop's view

Once, in the middle of winter, when the snow was falling from the sky like feathers, a queen sat sewing at a window whose frame was made of black ebony.

As she sewed she looked up at the snow, and pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell into the snow on the sill. The red looked so beautiful in the white that she thought: if only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of this frame.

Not long afterwards she had a daughter, as white as snow, as red as blood, and with hair as black as ebony, and the child was called Snow Drop.

In the first printing of the Grimms' tale, in 1812, the queen who wished for the child is her own mother. Later editions made her a stepmother; this game keeps the mother.

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A young queen in green and purple sits sewing at an open window with a black frame, snow falling outside and three drops of blood on the snowy sill.