The Snow Queen

Once upon a time, a wicked troll made a very strange mirror. Everything good and lovely shrank in it to the size of a pea, while everything bad puffed up like a frog after the rain. The troll laughed so hard at his invention that the mirror slipped out of his paws — crash! — and shattered into millions of tiny splinters.

The wind caught the splinters and scattered them all over the world. If one of those specks got into someone’s eye, that person saw only the bad in everything. And if it got into someone’s heart, the heart turned cold and became a little lump of ice.

In a big city, right up under the rooftops, lived two children — a boy named Kai and a girl named Gerda. Their little windows looked at each other across a narrow lane. Between the windows, their parents had set wooden boxes full of soil and planted roses in them. In summer the children sat on little benches among the flowers, swinging their legs and singing:

“Roses are blooming by our window bright — together we’re like the sun and its light!”

In winter the windowpanes were covered in frosty patterns. The children pressed their warm palms to the glass, thawed a little round peephole, and waved to each other. And in the evenings Kai’s grandmother told them stories.

“See the snow flying out there?” she would say. “Those are white bees swarming. And the swarm has its own queen — the Snow Queen. At night she flies over the city and peeks in at the windows, and wherever she looks, the glass blooms with flowers of ice.”

“Can she come in and visit us?” squeaked Gerda.

“Just let her try!” laughed Kai. “I’ll sit her on the hot stove, and she’ll melt right away!”

That very evening Kai peeped out through the round peephole. One big snowflake landed on the edge of the flower box and began to grow and grow — until it became a tall lady in a white gown woven from countless tiny stars. Her face was beautiful but icy, and her eyes shone like two cold stars. The lady nodded to Kai and beckoned to him. The boy jumped back from the window, and something fluttered past the glass — like a great white bird.

Summer came. One day Kai and Gerda were looking through a picture book when suddenly the clock on the city tower struck — bong!

“Ow!” cried Kai. “Something pricked my heart! And something got in my eye!”

Gerda hugged him and looked into his eyes, but she couldn’t see a thing.

“It’s gone now,” Kai grumbled.

But it wasn’t gone. Splinters of the magic mirror had flown straight into his eye and his heart. Suddenly Kai pulled a face:

“What are you sniveling for? You look so ugly when you cry! And these roses — yuck! This one’s got worms, and that one’s all crooked.”

He kicked the box and yanked out two flowers. From then on Kai was a completely different boy. He mimicked his grandmother and made fun of Gerda, and in winter he took a magnifying glass outside to study the snowflakes.

“Look how neat they are!” he’d say. “Not a single blot. Not like your flowers.”

One frosty day Kai ran to the square with his sled. The boys there liked to hitch their sleds to the farmers' carts and ride along behind. Then — jingle-jangle! — a great white sleigh swept into the square. Someone in a shaggy white fur coat was driving it. Kai quickly tied his little sled to the sleigh — and off he flew.

The sleigh raced out of the city. The snow fell so thickly that Kai couldn’t see his own hands. He tried to untie the rope, but his sled seemed stuck fast. The boy shouted, but no one heard. He tried hard to remember his grandmother’s song, but all that went round in his head was his times tables.

At last the sleigh stopped. The driver stood up — and it was her, the Snow Queen.

“Are you cold?” she asked. “Come and snuggle under my fur coat.”

She kissed Kai on the forehead. The cold went right through him, all the way to his heart — but only for a moment. Then Kai felt light, and he couldn’t feel the frost anymore. The Queen kissed him once more, and he forgot Gerda, and his grandmother, and the roses at the window.

“I won’t kiss you again,” said the Queen. “Now you are mine.”

And the sleigh rose into the sky, over dark forests and seas, to where the winds howled and a cold moon shone.

Gerda waited a long time for Kai. People whispered that perhaps the boy had fallen into the river. Gerda cried all winter long. But in spring she stepped out onto the doorstep and asked the sun:

“Is Kai never coming back?”

“We don’t believe he’s lost!” answered the sun.

“We don’t believe it!” chirped the swallows.

And soon Gerda stopped believing it too. At dawn she put on her new red shoes and went down to the river.

“River, did you take Kai? You can have my shoes, only give him back!”

She threw the shoes into the water, but the waves carried them back. So Gerda climbed into a little boat to throw them farther out. But the boat slipped away from the bank and drifted off downstream.

“Maybe the river is taking me to Kai,” Gerda thought, and she felt calmer.

The boat floated up to a cherry orchard. Out came an old woman with a hooked stick, wearing a big hat painted all over with flowers. She pulled the boat to the shore with her stick.

“Oh, you poor little thing!” the old woman cried, throwing up her hands. “Come along with me, and I’ll give you something to eat.”

Now, this old woman knew a little magic. She wasn’t wicked. She just wished very much to have such a sweet girl beside her. While Gerda ate cherries, the old woman combed her hair with a golden comb, and little by little Gerda forgot about Kai. And the old woman hid all the roses in the garden under the ground, so they wouldn’t remind the girl of her friend.

All day long Gerda played among the flowers. Tulips and bluebells bloomed there, fiery orange lilies and tiny forget-me-nots, and they all smelled so sweet it made your head spin. Yet Gerda kept feeling that some flower was missing.

One day she glanced at the old woman’s hat — and there was a rose painted on it! The old woman had forgotten to rub it out. Gerda remembered the window, the benches and the song, and she began to cry. Her tears fell on the ground right where the rosebush lay hidden. It sprang up, burst into bloom, and whispered:

“We have been under the ground. Kai isn’t there. Run!”

Gerda ran out of the garden barefoot. Outside it was already autumn. In the magic garden it was always summer, so the girl hadn’t noticed the months slipping by.

Gerda walked for a long, long time, until at last she sat down to rest. Then — hop, hop across the snow — a raven came bouncing up to her.

“Caw-w! Where are you going, little girl, all on your own?”

Gerda told him everything.

“Caw-w! Maybe I have seen your Kai,” said the raven, nodding. “In the palace here lives a princess so clever that she has read every book in the world. She decided to marry, but only someone who could really talk, not someone who just stood there puffing himself up. Lots of young men came, and every one of them got tongue-tied. Then one came along — eyes shining, boots going squeak-squeak across the polished floor! And he wasn’t the least bit afraid.”

“That’s Kai!” Gerda cried happily. “He’d just got new boots!”

That night the raven led Gerda up a secret staircase to the bedroom. Gerda raised her lamp and peeked in. No, it wasn’t Kai. The young man woke up, and Gerda burst into such tears that the prince and princess fussed all around her. They listened to her story, fed her, and tucked her into bed. And in the morning they gave her a warm little fur coat, a muff, a pair of boots and a golden carriage.

“Good luck!” they called from the porch. And the raven flew alongside as far as he could, waving his wing.

The carriage rolled into a dark forest and gleamed among the trees like a torch. The robbers spotted it at once.

“Gold! Gold!” they roared, leaping out of the bushes and grabbing the horses.

An old robber woman, as round as a barrel and with a mustache, was already dragging Gerda by the sleeve when suddenly — chomp! — her own little daughter bit her on the ear.

“Ow, ow! What are you doing?”

“She’s going to play with me!” said the little robber girl, stamping her foot. “Her muff will be mine, and she’ll sleep in my room!”

The robber girl was as tall as Gerda, only stronger, with black eyes and tangled hair. She dragged Gerda off to an old castle where pigeons cooed up under the ceiling and a reindeer stood tied up by the wall.

“He has to be kept on a rope, or he’ll run away,” the robber girl explained. “Now tell me: are you a princess?”

Gerda told her about Kai. Then the wood pigeons called down from their perch:

“Coo-coo! We saw Kai! He was sitting in the Snow Queen’s sleigh. They flew over the forest, heading north.”

“North?” asked Gerda. “Reindeer, do you know where that is?”

“Who would know better than me!” said the reindeer, his eyes lighting up. “Up there in Lapland it’s all snow and ice, so wide and free. And the Snow Queen’s palace stands on an island at the very edge of the world.”

In the morning, while the robbers were snoring, the little robber girl untied the reindeer.

“You’ll take her to the Snow Queen’s palace,” she ordered. “Do you hear me? And you, Gerda, here you are: these are your boots. But the muff is mine, it’s far too pretty. And here are my mother’s mittens, great big ones, right up to your elbows. Now off you go, before I change my mind!”

Gerda cried for joy, and the little robber girl got cross:

“Stop bawling! You’re supposed to be happy now!”

The reindeer raced through forests and marshes, day and night. And across the sky the northern lights flared — green, pink and violet, as if someone were hanging up magic ribbons.

First they stopped at the tiny hut of a Lapland woman. She fed Gerda, then scratched a few words on a dried codfish.

“I haven’t got any paper,” she explained. “Take this to the Finnish woman. She knows more than I do.”

The Finnish woman’s hut was so hot that she went about in nothing but a thin little shift. She read the fish three times and then tossed it into the cooking pot. Why waste a perfectly good fish?

“You are so wise,” the reindeer begged. “Give the girl the strength of twelve mighty heroes, so she can defeat the Snow Queen!”

The Finnish woman said nothing for a long time. Then she whispered into the reindeer’s ear:

“Kai really is there. He likes it in the palace, because there’s a splinter of the mirror in his heart. As long as it stays there, the boy will never thaw. But I can’t give her any power greater than the one she already has. Can’t you see how people and animals all help her? Her power is her warm heart. Not far from here, the Queen’s garden begins. Carry the girl there and leave her by the bush with the red berries.”

The reindeer galloped off. But in the rush, Gerda forgot both her boots and her mittens. By the bush the reindeer stopped and licked her cheek, and big tears rolled from his eyes. And Gerda ran on alone, barefoot, over the ice.

Snowflakes came rushing at her — huge, shaggy and fearsome, like hedgehogs or bears. They were the Snow Queen’s guards. Gerda shivered with cold. But each breath that left her lips turned into a little shining guardian. The farther she went, the more of them there were. They charged at the snow monsters — crack! — and the monsters crumbled to dust. And Gerda grew warmer and warmer.

The Snow Queen’s palace had walls made of blizzards, and windows and doors made of biting wind. Hundreds of halls glowed with the northern lights. In the middle of the biggest hall lay a frozen lake, cracked into thousands of identical pieces. Whenever the Queen was at home, she sat on it and called it the Mirror of Reason. But now she was away. She had flown off to the warm lands to sprinkle snow on the volcanoes.

Kai sat beside the lake, blue with cold. But he didn’t notice, because his heart had become a lump of ice. The boy was fitting flat pieces of ice together like a puzzle. The Queen had promised that if he could spell out the word “Eternity” with them, he would be his own master, and she would give him the whole world and a new pair of skates. But the word just wouldn’t come together.

Gerda saw Kai and threw her arms around his neck.

“Kai! My dear Kai! At last I’ve found you!”

Kai sat there, still and cold. Then Gerda began to cry. Her hot tears fell on his chest and seeped all the way into his heart, and they melted the ice and washed out the splinter. Kai looked at the girl, and she softly sang:

“Roses are blooming by our window bright — together we’re like the sun and its light!”

Kai gave a sob, and then he burst into tears. He cried so hard that the other splinter washed right out of his eye.

“Gerda! Dear Gerda! Where have you been all this time? And where am I?” He looked around. “How cold it is here! How empty!”

He held Gerda tight, and she laughed and cried at the same time. Everything around them became so joyful that even the pieces of ice began to dance. When they grew tired, they lay down all by themselves to spell the word “Eternity.” Now Kai didn’t need to ask the Queen for anything.

Gerda kissed Kai’s cheeks, and they turned rosy. She kissed his eyes, and they began to shine. Kai stood up, well and cheerful again. Hand in hand, the children walked out of the palace.

By the bush with the red berries, the reindeer was waiting for them, and beside him stood a young reindeer doe with warm milk. The reindeer carried the children to the Finnish woman, where they warmed up, and then to the Lapland woman, who sewed them new clothes and mended their sleigh. At the edge of the forest, where the first grass was turning green, the reindeer said goodbye.

And out of the forest, riding toward them on a fine horse, came the little robber girl, in a red cap and with the muff on her arm. She was off to see the world. The robber girl recognized Gerda and looked Kai up and down.

“Well, you’re quite the runaway!” she said. “Were you really worth chasing all the way to the end of the world?”

But Gerda only patted her cheek and asked about the prince and princess.

“They’re living happily,” answered the robber girl. “And the raven is their most honored guest now.”

The children walked on, and all around them spring was blossoming. Here was their home town, here were the familiar stairs, and here was Grandmother’s clock ticking away — tick-tock. Only the door somehow seemed lower. Kai and Gerda looked at each other and understood that they had grown up while they were away.

Roses were blooming at the windows. Grandmother sat in the sunshine, reading. Kai and Gerda sat down on their old benches and held hands, and the cold, empty splendor of the Snow Queen’s palace faded away like a bad dream. They were both grown up now, but in their hearts they were still children. And outside it was a warm, gentle summer.