By the Light of the Full Moon — A Fantasy Flash Fiction Short Story

The prince only knew three things for certain: that he would someday inherit his father’s throne, that his princess would be beside him when he did, and he was going to kill the witch.

It was warm the night the prince found the witch’s house. A great mausoleum of weathered red brick and columns that had once been white but had yellowed against time and the elements. The cracked windows dared him to come forward. Dared him to face the witch. Dared him to save his bride.

His horse would not move past the tree line. It whined and reared back when he tried to urge it forward, an act of cowardice the prince had never seen in his faithful companion. The prince patted its white neck, smooth the white of its mane, and climbed down.

“I’ll be back,” he muttered as he gave the horse one last pat on the nose. “You wait here, and I’ll be back soon.”

He crossed over onto the clearing, but his horse remained hidden in the shadows of the trees. The prince drew his sword. The metal made a silver ring as it flashed in the white moonlight.

She came to him from a kingdom across the sea, the girl that would be his bride.

A tiny thing. Though they were of an age together, she barely reached his shoulders even in her heeled shoes. It took only one look from those ocean-colored eyes for him to know he’d fallen irrecoverably in love. That the prince who spent his days hunting and courting and drinking had drowned in those eyes. He knew he would never be free again. He would, for the rest of their lives, be bound to her by the unshakable will of his heart.

The witch took her in the night a month ago, days before the wedding was to take place. The prince abandoned the palace to find her. He hunted rumors and tales of the witch until he came at last to the threshold of her domain. The air grew heavy. The wood creaked beneath his weight as he climbed the steps and entered the house.

The princess sat on an old, hard chair in the parlor. A monstrous chain tethered her ankle to the leg of the chair. Her eyes—the eyes of the sea—grew wide when she saw him. She breathed something he thought was his name. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

She stood and stumbled to him on unsteady feet. She outstretched her arms to him, arms that held him when the weight of his future weighed heavy on him. Arms that consoled. Arms that loved him when he needed it the most.

A scream lodged in his throat when she stepped into the moonlight. He dropped his sword to the floor, the clang silent.

The princess stepped into the moonlight and in it her flesh disappeared, leaving behind only naked bones tethered to a chair by a heavy black chain.