The Prince of Threads

The child,

Stood knee deep in the frigid water where her mother beat their clothes against the rocks. Mother's long brown hair swung with every labored movement, this morning's braid vanished long ago in the thick forest which sat back over the lush, grassy flood plain which traced along the river's bank like a terrier chasing a rabbit.
The woman's nonsence humming, wove in and out of the slap of fabric on rock, fabric on water, the sun beating down over her freckled shoulders. In the child's eyes, she was beautiful, her long limbs swaying with an odd, unintentional grace with every swing, her deep, brown eyes filled with the senseless joy of one who'd never know sadness. Beautiful, with her ever loving hands and her gentle lips which never ran out of kisses.

"Mamma?" the child asked, scuffing up a cloud of silt which sent the little fish fighting the current running off for their own mothers. "Where's it th' dead g'to?"

The woman, paused and lifted herself back, calused hands pressed over an aching back. "Many places," She groaned, grinning at the sun, high over head in the clear, blue sky. "Some'r boren anew 'an some linger, their life threads all tangled up," A shirt drifted by and the child caught it. The woman, laughed, that careless, wild laugh the villagers said sounded like a donkey braying. "Why's th' soul got a thread?" She asked, plucking at a stray, white thread. "Because, tha's what binds us all," The child, frowned at the string, and gently pulled, and pulled, and pulled, untill the shirt was nothing but a wet bundle of thread in her hands, cold, clammy and strange. She dropped it with a wrinkeling of her nose. "Oh child," Mother said, frowning as she never frowned. "No' ye'll have t'follow it,"

The thread, stretched down the river, untangeling in the swirling currents as she watched. "But Mamma, I dun' want't follow it," Mother, only grinned like a jack'o'lantren. "Th' thread's tangled Osanna, broke off before it's time 'an can't find th' end, it'll find a new end, if it canna' find it's own, whatever it takes, yeh've murderd it, 'an innocent," She looked down, and saw the delicate, white, tendril wrapped around her leg, watched as it wrapped around, and around and around her body. It gatherd strength, squeeseing, untill it turned red. Red, then the color of flesh, then iron, searing into her, burning into her bones. She couldn't even scream as the thread ripped her flesh from her bones and then, stood back, a titan of a man in a heavy riding mantle. His eyes were hard, his armor dented, his cloak tatterd and he still carried the smell of the funeral pyres. He stood over her like a mountain, his face twisting in a mask of sheer madness, as he plunged his hand into her chest, and pulled fourth a crumpled, bloodied peice of cloth which struggled in his massive hand like a tiny, red bird. He took it between his teeth, and pulled fourth a delicate, red, thread......and pulled. He pulled until there was nothing left but a sad, wet, bundle of thread which he carelessly, dropped into the river, where it desolved, turning the white linnens, pink.