The Paper Heart

Chapter 1 - Leaving

The Jill of Hearts pulled the plum-coloured velvet cloak around her shoulders and covered her head with the ermine-trimmed hood. she urged her horse forwards. Wisps of vapour escaped her lips as she spoke.

it was a crisp winter's night, the moon was high and a covering of deep, frost-glittering snow lay across the realm. Glancing back, the pale girl surveyed the high solid towers of Mooncaster. The white stonework glimmered like frozen milk and only a handful of windows burned with candle and torch light. How beautiful the castle appeared agaist the inky, star-bejewelled sky. She hoped she would return there soon, before she was missed, and before the effects of the sleeping potion that she had fed to the Gatekeeper wore off. She hoped her mother, ther Queen of Hearts, had brewed it good and strong. Shuddering, she drove all thoughts of that dread monster to teh back of her mind. That night she must ride.

Spurring her horse on, she rode throught the small village of Mooncot. The peasantry were abed, but threads of pleasant-smelling woodsmoke still climded from the squat chmneys of their pretty cottages. the pond in the village green was a clouded ice mirror and the disc of the moon burned like white fire over its surface. The coal eyes of a jolly snowman were the only things to wittness her passings. Sonn the village was left behind and the wintry countryside rolled by, past linen-like meadows and ice-locked streams, past frost-painted hedgerows sparking with winter diamonds.

The Jill of Hearts' face felt just as cold as that snowman, but when she saw the sprawling woodland of the Hunter's Chase in the distance, her cheeks burned with excitement.