p e n c h a n t

P A R T -O N E

IT WAS THE DEVIL WHO DID IT—old Scratch. Long ago, when he had more idleness because fewer people lived in the world, he made an amazing mirror, a mirror so clever that anything good it reflected looked sleazy and crude, and whatever was bad looked good. In this mirror, bright skies turned black, lush landscapes shriveled, and kind hearts turned to stone. Women looking into it saw withered wrecks, wise men became fools, and children worked like push-button toys. Criminals and clods turned respectable.

Scratch and his gang showed the mirror far and wide—from the humblest home to the highest citadel—stirring up mischief, causing pain. But were they satisfied? Goodness no. “Heaven must see it too!” they said.

So into the clouds they flew, hoisting the evil thing. But the closer they came to heaven, the more the glass trembled. Higher and higher, the more it shook. Until, at last, springing from their hands, it burst in a shower of shards.

The fragments fell—here, there, across the earth, through the ages. A few were the size of windows, but most were slivers and motes, floating unseen. They could lodge in one’s eye or heart. Woe came to those who were struck by them—a thousand woes.

Watch now—beware! Some of the shards are drifting still.

-

Snow is falling over Copenhagen.

High among the rooftops, where furnace smoke and pigeons flutter in the cold, peering from a frost-covered window, is an eye. The boy, Kai, is peering out. Across the way from a facing window, the neighbor girl, Gerda, peers back. Between the windows and straddling the roofs is a garden box—though in winter it’s more grave plot than garden. Here, two rose trees shiver like skeletons. They come alive in the spring, blossoming into clouds of color to make a garden of delights for Kai and Gerda. But in winter—

In winter the children can’t climb out their windows to be together in a moment; they must climb mountains of stairs. In winter, when the windows are frosted, they each scrape a spy-hole on the glass.

Kai winks at Gerda and Gerda winks back. This tells him he may come to visit.

He takes the stairs two at a time—all the way down, all the way up—to join her and her grandmother in their garret apartment. Grandmother is a storyteller, and says the snowflakes are winter’s bees.

Kai asks, “Don’t bees have a queen?”

“Oh, yes,” says Grandmother. “Some nights she sweeps through the streets and looks in the windows. One glance of hers leaves frozen pictures on the glass.”

The children nod to each other: It must be true—they have seen her icy designs.

“Can the Snow Queen come in here?” asks Gerda.

Kai interrupts. “Let her come! I’ll toss her into the stove!”

Late that night, when he is back in his room, Kai peers outside, where large snowflakes are swirling down. They collect in the garden box and grow and grow, flake on flake, forming the shape of a woman. She sparkles like diamonds, and dazzles Kai.

“The Snow Queen!” he whispers.

As if in response, she sets her eyes on his. What eyes she has—blazing with stars! But beyond the stars, brooding like black ice, is deep, deep doom. It pulls Kai in …

Gasping, he hides beneath his blankets. There he stays the long night through, dreaming dark dreams.

-

WHEN MORNING COMES the sun is warm, and in the weeks that follow, winter melts into spring. Windows are flung open, flowers unfold. Once again Kai and Gerda, under a cobalt sky and canopy of roses, enjoy their rooftop garden. Gerda makes up a song: Roses bloom from nothing. Joy follows suffering. They hope summer never ends.

But it does. The sun shrinks, shadows begin to stretch, fall is in the air.

One gray day, as the city clock strikes two, Kai shrieks. “My eye! My heart!”

Gerda hugs him to her, saying, “Blink, Kai!” He blinks, but nothing comes out. She lays her head on his chest and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” says Kai, composed again. “I’m OK.”

But he is not. Two mirror shards have found a tender place and begin their secret work. The pain leaves him, but the shards remain.

Kai scowls at Gerda. “Wipe your weepy eyes! They make you ugly!” With dismay she stares at him, her eyes filling more. He frowns at the flowers. “Look at these! They’re bug-ridden! They’re worthless!” And to Gerda’s horror, he pulls the petals apart.

“Kai! What are you doing?”

“Everything’s wrong!” he says, kicking the flower box. Then, grinning a crooked grin, he darts through his window and is gone.

From that day forward he argues with everyone, and no one is free from his mockery. It is Gerda who suffers most: she loves him with all her heart, and he is breaking it. Unless he can tease her, he pays her no mind. When winter comes, snowflakes fascinate him. Studying them through a magnifying glass, he declares, “They’re superior to roses.”

One snowy evening he comes down the stairs carrying his sled and shouting all the way, “I’m sledding with the boys!” As a dare the boys try hitching their sleds to delivery trucks for a wild ride through the streets, now busy with traffic and holiday shoppers. Kai waits for a chance at this danger.

But here comes a large sleigh, stately and silent, its driver dressed in dazzling white. The sleigh seems to slow just for him. Thrilled with this glorious prospect, he secures his sled, and away they go, leaving the boys behind. Cabs and curbs and crowds streak by, and the sleigh picks up speed. Faster and faster they fly, until Kai’s thrill turns to panic. He tries to untie his sled, but they go faster still. The city lights dim, the river draws near, the sleigh leaps high into the air. Kai lies frozen with fright, blinded by the streaming snow. He shouts, but the wind whips his voice away. On and on they go, the world a wet blur; then they slow, and suddenly stop. The driver stands up, regal and proud.

It is the Snow Queen.

She looks at him with star-glistened eyes and says, “What a ride we’ve had! But why do you shake? Come—cozy into my furs.” She pulls him in and wraps her furs around him; but he feels no warmth—he’s sinking in a snowdrift. “Still cold, dove?” she coos, and kisses his forehead. Her kiss is as raw as death, and trickles down into his heart, which is becoming ice-crusted. She kisses his lips, and the memory of Gerda and Grandmother and home vanish.

“My sled,” he mumbles. “Remember my—” He gazes at the Snow Queen, who is more beautiful than anything he has ever seen; she is perfect, and he wants no other companion.

-

Beware: this new telling (from Hans Christian Andersen’s old one) is copyrighted.
Steal it, and your heart turns to stone.

-

P A R T -T W O

ALL WINTER LONG Gerda wanders in clouds of despair. Kai is nowhere to be found. She thinks he is dead, drowned in the river nearby. But when the skies start to clear and the first thaw comes, her hopes are renewed.

“He isn’t dead?” she asks the sun, and it comforts her with light. “He hasn’t  drowned?” she asks the swallows, and they cheer her with song.

“I’ll wear my best shoes,” she says early one morning, “and go down to the river to ask.”

She kisses her grandmother, who’s still asleep, and slips out the door. At the river she calls, “Have you seen him? Have you seen Kai?”

The river says nothing.

Gerda takes off her shoes. “I’ll give you these if you tell me!” She pitches her shoes in.

Little waves start to lap, saying, “Ah…ah…ah…!”

But the shoes have landed in the shallows, and soon wash ashore. So she tries again, this time from a boat that lies in the reeds. She throws them with all her might, but the boat, which isn’t moored, shoots into the current.

Gerda holds on, wide-eyed with fear. There’s no one in sight to help.

As the boat gathers speed, sparrows fly by, twittering excitedly. Her shoes bob past, just out of reach. Trees stride along the bank, flowers bow to her, sheep graze on distant hills. She calms herself by thinking, “The river will carry me to Kai.”

By late afternoon she sees a cherry orchard and an odd little house with stained glass windows. On either side of the door stands a wooden soldier. Gerda calls to them, but they have wooden tongues, and do not respond.

Then, as Gerda floats past, out of the door creeps an old woman, as bent as the crutch she clutches. On her head is a hat full of flowers.

“You poor child!” she cackles. “How ever did you come this way?” Stretching her crutch like a claw she pulls the boat in. “Tell me your name, sweet pea.”

Relieved to be on land again, Gerda greets the strange woman and tells her all about Kai and the roses and home. “Have you seen him?” she asks.

“Not yet,” says the woman. “But I’m sure he’ll come. Don’t fret. Stay with me a while, eat my bright cherries, and visit my pretty garden.”

She beckons Gerda in and bolts the door.

Inside, the woman brings out a big bowl of cherries, and Gerda eats every one, for she hasn’t eaten since daybreak. Then the woman brings out a big red comb and combs Gerda’s hair, sighing, “How I have longed for a girl like you.” The more she combs the more Gerda forgets, until, as the comb runs through her hair one last time, she forgets Kai completely.

When Gerda falls asleep the woman hobbles into the garden, points her stick at all the roses, and commands, “Be gone below—be quick!” They sink into the earth. “There,” she says. “No more roses to remind her of home.”

The next day Gerda wanders there, where every flower in the world seems to grow. Day after day she visits the garden, and night after night the woman tucks her into a lilac-scented bed. So the days pass.

On a still afternoon while the woman sits snoring at the table, Gerda studies the flowers on her hat. Among them is one that looks loveliest of all, and a memory tugs at her mind like a thorn. Then she remembers, and runs into the garden, crying, “The roses! The roses!”

She searches everywhere, but there are none. She is weeping now, for her all memories come flooding back—visions of roses and home, and most of all, Kai. Down into the dirt her tears go, where the roses lie buried. Her tears are like spring rains, and up shoot the roses, blooming fresh.

Gerda claps her hands and laughs.

“But, how long have I been here?” She suddenly wails. “Where is Kai?”

“We have been underground among the dead,” say the roses. “He is not there.”

“Oh!” Gerda cries. “I’ve got to find him!” She runs to the end of the path, breaks the gate free, and flees the spellbound place.

-

Beware: this new telling (from Hans Christian Andersen’s old one) is copyrighted.
Steal it, and your memory will fade.

-

P A R T -T H R E E

WHEN SHE STOPS to catch her breath, Gerda sees that summer has gone. It is now late autumn: leaves are falling, clouds hang low, the earth is no longer warm. As she rubs her bare feet, a crow hops into view, cocks his head, and says, “Hello! Where do you come from, and where are you going?” Glad to have his company, she tells him her story and asks if he has seen Kai.

“I may have,” he says.

“Oh!” She gives him a hug. “Where?”

“Hold on!” he wheezes. “Let go!” She does, and he says while preening his feathers, “It may be him, but because of the princess, he may have forgotten you.”

“He wouldn’t! I know he wouldn’t! But—what about a princess?”

“She lives in the palace and recently married.”

Gerda frowns in disbelief. “Kai? She married Kai?”

“If he is Kai,” says the crow. “This princess is smart. She watches all the game shows and evening news. Almost as smart as my lovebird, who nests in the palace eaves and sees everything.” He winks. “One day the princess said, ‘Marriage cannot be so bad.’ So she announced that the first fellow who amused her would be her husband. All the eligible bachelors and not-so-eligible and far-from-eligible went crazy with that. But when they entered the gates and passed through security, and went up the stairs and saw all the wealth, and met the princess, what do you think they did? They lost their voices along with their senses, and lost their chance in the bargain!”

“But what about Kai!” pleads Gerda. “What about him?”

“He showed up the third day. Striding along, not a care in the cosmos, eyes bright, hair shining. But his clothes were in rags.”

“Yes, that was Kai!”

“He went right in, rags and all, up to the princess, and told her he had come to enjoy her wit.”

“Kai is clever,” sighs Gerda. “Please, dear crow, take me to him!”

The crow rasps his beak on a stone. “We’ll have to arrange it,” he says. “No one’s allowed uninvited. Wait here. I’ll do what I can.” And away he flies.

It is twilight when he returns. “Here’s a saltine cracker for you from my sugar-fluff. Now, there’s a hidden passage where she will meet us….”

The night deepens as the crow takes her through mysterious gardens and along starlit walls. They come to a back entrance where a female crow is waiting.

“The story of your quest is impressive,” she says to Gerda. “Missing person seeks missing person. Think of it.” She eyes her respectfully. “Let’s hope for the best. Follow me.”

They climb a steep stairway that leads to a misty hall hung with floral tapestries. Gerda imagines Kai’s face smiling from among the flowers of long ago, and her hopes soar. At last she will see him! She has traveled so far! Surely he’ll want to see her again!

They have come to the door. The female crow gives it a tap, and receiving no answer, nudges it open. This room is filled with flowers—real flowers—and has two beds resembling lilies. From one peers the princess; in the other lies a youth with hair as fair as Kai’s. When Gerda comes close he turns his sleepy head to her.

He is not Kai.

-

AFTER A NIGHT OF FITFUL DREAMS in a private suite, Gerda wakes, determined to continue her search. The royal couple have heard her tale but are too much in love to think of notifying authorities. Out of kindness they give her fine clothes, fur boots and gloves, and call for a gold limousine. Complete with driver and food and drink, it rolls up on the drive.

With a grateful heart Gerda bids them farewell, but as the car pulls away she gazes out the glass, wondering what tomorrow will bring.

-

Beware: this new telling (from Hans Christian Andersen’s old one) is copyrighted.
Steal it, and lose your voice along with your senses.

-

P A R T -F O U R

Night is falling as they enter a forest, where the limousine gleams like a jewel in dark velvet. It gleams in the eyes of robbers, who prowl the woods for prey.

“It’s gold!” they cry. “Gold!”

They block the road, attack the chauffeur, and drag Gerda out. Among them is a bearded old woman whose eyebrows are as shaggy as her whiskers.

“Oooo,” she purrs, pawing at Gerda. “How plump and precious! How ripe for picking! Come here little lamb—” she draws out a knife “—chops!” The blade flashes— But a girl leaps on the hag from behind and bites her ear. It’s the woman’s own daughter. “Yow!” the hag yells. “You worthless—”

“She is mine!” declares the girl, and bites her mother again to be sure she understands.

The robbers roar with laughter, saying, “Watch the old goat dance!”

“I shall have her clothes and gloves,” the girl tells them, “and she shall stay with me. Now, take us in the long gold car.” And they do, for she always has her way.

Gerda trembles with dread as they drive deeper into the forest. The robber girl, who is about Gerda’s age, trades her own shabby clothes for Gerda’s fine ones, and slips her arm around her, saying, “Do not be afraid. They shall not kill you unless I wish it.” Her black eyes are somber. “You are a dream! You must be a princess.”

Gerda shakes her head, stammering, “Those clothes and this car were given to me by a princess. I am really quite poor.” In her distress she tells all that has happened and how she longs to find Kai.

“Then you shall not die,” says the girl, dabbing Gerda’s eyes with the gloves.

The ride ends at the ruins of a castle, where ravens fly in and out and two big dogs bound back and forth, snarling and baring their teeth. Within a huge hall smoke sneaks along the passageways and over a fire a pot is boiling. After the company eats, the girl leads Gerda to an alcove strewn with rugs and ruffling with pigeons.

“Tonight you shall sleep with me and all my little pets,” she says. Grabbing a pigeon by the feet while it frantically flaps its wings, she shoves it toward Gerda and commands, “Kiss it!” Gerda quickly obeys. The girl points to a cage above. “Those are wild wood doves, locked up. They would never come back if I set them free. And here—” she hauls out a reluctant reindeer tied to a leash “—here is my sweetheart, Beau. He would leave us too—wouldn’t you, Beau—if he had no restraint. I tease him with old Hew to keep him humble.” She draws out a jagged knife and glides it across his nose. Wincing, the reindeer pulls away and the girl drops to the rugs with a laugh.

Shrinking back, Gerda asks, “Do you sleep with that knife?”

“Always,” says the girl. “You never know when you must stab someone. Now, tell me your story again.”

While the doves cry softly in their cage, Gerda repeats her tale. When she is done the robber girl is asleep, though she grips Gerda with one hand, and with the other, the knife. In the hall the fire quivers under a robber’s gaze and the old woman staggers about. Gerda spends the night with her eyes wide open, not knowing whether she will see daylight again.

Late in the night the woeful doves sing:

Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo! We have seen Kai! Though he’s as good as dead.
The Snow Queen had the boy with her—they passed above our heads.
Our little ones no longer live: she slew them with her breath!
We two alone are left to mourn the terror of their death.

Gerda sits up. “What? The Snow Queen! Where was this?”

“North,” say the doves. “In the winter lands. The reindeer knows.”

“Yes,” says the reindeer. “It’s true. The Snow Queen has her stronghold there, on the rim of the world, where the ice never melts.”

“Oh, Kai!” cries Gerda.

This wakes the robber girl, who says, “Hush! Or old Hew shall do it.”

-

WHEN MORNING COMES Gerda explains to the girl what the doves revealed in the night. The girl listens closely, glances toward the hall, where the hag sits poking at the coals, and asks the reindeer, “Do you know the winter lands?”

“I know them by heart and by hoof,” he says. “I was born there, and ran free.”

The girl turns to Gerda. “Well, then! He shall take you there!” She rummages in the rugs, skips across the hall and yanks her mother’s beard, saying, “Good morning, old goat!” When the woman raises her fist the girl shoves her a brown bottle. “Oh, bless you!” cries the hag, and snatches it away to curl up like a suckling.

“That takes care of her!” the girl tells Gerda. To the reindeer she says, “I liked our little knife game! But, so what! I shall let you go on one condition: Carry Gerda until she finds her friend. Take her to the Snow Queen.”

The reindeer tugs on his rope with joy and Gerda cries with relief.

“No, no,” says the girl. “No whimpering. Up you go! Here are your boots. I shall keep the gloves—they are so soft. Here are my mother’s mitts. Ha! They swallow your arms! But they shall keep you warm. And here is a bundle of food.” She cuts the reindeer’s rope and leads them outside. “Run, Beau!” she says. “Take care of my little friend!”

Gerda waves her mitted arms, calling, “Goodbye!”

Through the forest they go, over marshlands and steppes and rivers and streams, racing by day and night, until the northern lights burn in the distance. They burn in the reindeer’s breast, and he runs like the wind.

-

BY THE TIME they reach the winter lands the food is gone. In all the vast whiteness floats a nut-brown speck. They head toward this and discover a Finn woman’s hut. Opening her door she welcomes them in. Gerda is speechless from cold, so the reindeer tells her tale.

“You poor dear!” says the woman. “The Snow Queen’s fortress is far from here!”

When Gerda recovers, and she and the reindeer have eaten, the woman says, “I know a Lapp woman who can help you; she’s an old New Ager, and works magic. I’ll send her a message on this dried cod, for I have nothing to write on.” She scratches marks on the cod and hands it to Gerda, who tucks it into a mitt. With words of thanks, Gerda and the reindeer depart.

-

THEIR JOURNEY CONTINUES like a long dreary dream, into a land of pale shadow. When they see smoke rising from a chimney in the snow, they know underneath lies the Lapp woman’s hut. Gerda removes her mitt to smite the chimney with her frozen fist, and a withered woman, brown from fire and smoke, pokes her head out of the snow. She takes them inside, where the air is as hot as the tropics. Gerda tells her story and delivers the cod, which the woman reads before plopping into a pan, murmuring, “From  life to death to life again: this will be our supper.”

Then she rolls out a great bear hide and wraps herself in it. Her eyes close, her lips move, and beads of sweat glaze her face. Finally she whispers to the reindeer, “Kai is the Snow Queen’s slave, and he’s content with that. He sits alone in her fortress, but that’s not his worst fate. He has a sliver of glass in his eye, and one in his heart. They must be removed, or he cannot be free.”

The reindeer says, “I’ve heard you can do great things, like binding the winds with string. Give her that strength so she can defeat the Snow Queen.”

“Friend,” says the woman, “don’t you see where her energy lies? She has pressed her way forward to this day without losing heart. She’s been aided by man and beast, nurtured by small and great. She has the purity of innocence and power of love. There is no greater strength than that. If she cannot deliver Kai from captivity, no one can.”

The reindeer scuffs his hoof on the floor in shame.

After they have eaten, the woman tells the reindeer, “Not far away lie the borders of the Snow Queen’s realm. A berry bush marks it. Take Gerda that far, but no farther. Hurry!—and return to me. For only she can release him!”

-

Beware: this new telling (from Hans Christian Andersen’s old one) is copyrighted.
Steal it, and old Hew will flash.

-

P A R T -F I V E

ONCE AGAIN the reindeer runs. His hooves pound as hard as his pounding heart, while Gerda clings to his back.

“Oh!” she cries out. “My boots! My mitts! I’ve left them!”

Though the winds gnaw at them both, he dare not stop. He comes to the berry bush and, stooping low, lets Gerda down. Kissing him with frigid lips she sees her face in his bleary eye—then he is gone.

She wanders now alone. She wanders across a solid sea of ice. It may be miles that she walks, it may be days and weeks and years—ten, or even twenty—until the flaming flags unfurl above her, and there it looms: the Snow Queen’s citadel.

The ice-fields start to shift. Shapes come crawling, charging, hissing, swarming. These are the Snow Queen’s forces—snow-ghosts, ice-demons, wind-devils. Some have blubbery bodies that wobble about, their expressions contorting in torment and mirth. Some slink around her feet, snickering and snipping. Some breathe burning ice down her back.

She gasps a prayer, and vapor plumes from her mouth. The plume grows and grows, and as she watches amazed, it grows into an angel that strides before her, fully armed. Another prayer blooms from her mouth, and another and another, until a whole army is leading the way. The angels thrust and parry and stave off the fiends, who scatter in confusion.

Gerda walks on with renewed courage, and shivers a little less.

The windows and walls and turrets and spires of the Snow Queen’s stronghold have been carved by millennia of winds. Like vain pursuits and tormented thoughts, tunnels run in all directions, emptying into vaulted rooms or squeezing down to nothing. The largest hall, as hollow as a thousand echoes, has a floor of ice that cracks and creaks. It’s a huge puzzle with the pieces out of place. Here the Snow Queen sits to contemplate the strivings of humanity. But at present she is gone. She’s gone to sugar Vesuvius with snow, cast a freeze on grapes, and run an iceberg into a pleasure ship.

She has no throne but the soul of the boy within.

Quietly he kneels on the crackled floor, gaunt and gray, his heart black ice. The Snow Queen has promised him the whole wide world and a hailstone if he can fit the frozen shapes to spell eternity. So here he sits, trying this one, trying that. But like his sense of reason, the riddle is beyond his reach.

Gerda bursts into the hall at that moment—the moment he takes a piece in his leaden hand. He looks at it, looks again, and forgets what he has done. The ice inside him has set at last, his heart has turned to stone.

“Kai!” Gerda cries, and throws her arms around him.

He sits unheeding, unmoved.

“Sweet Kai! At last I’ve I found you! Kai? Kai?”

He does not see her.

“Have I found you only to lose you?”

She sheds hot tears that fall on him. They work down deep within, warming and thawing and rekindling his soul, until his heart swells and the mirror-shard melts. He stirs. He feels someone winking at him from far, far away, invitingly, penetrating his white blindness. He hears a voice he once knew, singing, Roses bloom from nothing. Joy follows suffering. He gives a sob, and freely his tears flow; they sweep the glass mote away.

With eyes new as dawn he stares at her. “Gerda! Where have you been?”

In sudden bliss she clings to him, kissing his frosty cheeks until they blush, and his hands and feet until they tingle. When the two of them stand, the ice-fragments swirl and whirl and fall back to spell the word that grants his release.

And over the Baltic Sea the Snow Queen shakes like thunder and knows it is too late.

They leave the hall hand in hand. They talk of roses and Grandmother and most of all, home. They walk out of winter and into spring, while a sunburst shows them the way.

-

THE CLOCK OF COPENHAGEN is striking seven.

From the outskirts of the city rolls a gold limousine. It crosses the river, winds into the country, and slows as Kai and Gerda approach, strolling along the road.

The car pulls up and a voice from inside says, “Gerda! Is this your friend? What a tramp you are, boy, for running off. This girl spent her life on you!”

“She has,” agrees Kai. “We’ll tell you all about it.”

And they tell the robber girl—for it is she—of Kai’s captivity and Gerda’s rescue. They tell of the Finn and Lapp women who helped, and how the reindeer, Beau—with his mate who gave them her milk—met them and carried them back. “And here we are,” says Gerda, “coming home at last.”

“What a fairy-tale ending!” says the robber girl, and waving goodbye, drives off.

They walk on. The road before them runs to a familiar street that leads to a familiar door, and up the stairs they go, into the garret room. But they must stoop to enter, for now they are grown.

Sitting in the morning sun is Grandmother, with a book open on her lap. She reads aloud, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

They step out the window to the garden box, where the roses stand strong and beautiful, covered in blooms. As if in a dream they see two children there, and know they will hold to that dream all their days, no matter how uncertain the way, or how long.

But the Snow Queen has passed from their thoughts forever.

-

Beware: this new telling (from Hans Christian Andersen’s old one) is copyrighted.
Steal it, and be tormented.