Once upon a time in a winter land, a wife sat by the window of her cottage. She watched the barren forest for her husband returning. She wished for a daughter white as snow and black as the shadows between the pines. As she spun thread, she pricked her finger. A single red drop bloomed. She wished for a daughter red as blood.

Her husband never came back from his hunting trip. Six months later, she gave birth to a girl with white skin, midnight hair, and apple mouth. She named her Snowdrop and died. The midwife exclaimed over the child's beauty, and there were whispers that perhaps it was caused by her mother, who was thought by some to be not rightly Christian. However, Snowdrop was a baby, innocent as the sky, and the whispers soon silenced themselves, for after all, it was unlucky to speak ill of the dead.

Snowdrop was taken in by her father's sister. She was raised in the cold country where one must bolt the door against wolves and hang icons of the Savior for protection against the night's other horrors which one must not name. Witchcraft was feared and despised.

The years passed and Snowdrop grew to the age of sixteen, lovely and quiet. Her aunt, meanwhile, had five squalling, unhealthy children. Her cottage was so small that there was not enough room for everyone to eat at the same table and Snowdrop and the four oldest children slept in the loft as close as fir branches in the forest. The aunt was lean and sharp and when the winter pinched the family, Snowdrop was always pinched hardest. As Snowdrop's beauty increased by the year, so did the aunt's jealousy and rage.

One December, the snow fell harder than ever, then froze. The village was hungry and frigid. The aunt's children starved and refused to move from their beds. Meanwhile, the aunt could be seen at the healer's cottage or at church speaking to small groups of similar starving women. She murmured about Snowdrop's mother and how no one knew her origins, about Snowdrop's unnatural beauty and dislike for the aunt's children, and about the cold, so uncommon for this time of year. On the shortest day of the year, Snowdrop's aunt sent her to the healer for ragwort and barred the door when she returned. "Take to the sky with your demons, witch!" were the only words she said. No other house in the village would let her in. One crone brandished a dried garlic at her from the doorway. Snowdrop ran into the forest and disappeared into its unkind embrace.