Бесплатный фрагмент - The Snow Queen

STORY THE FIRST

Which tells of the looking-glass and the bits of it

Attention, please, we’re going to begin. When we’ve got to the end of the story we shall know more than we do now. There was a wicked troll. He was one of the very worst sort — he was the devil. One day he was in a very temper, for he had made a looking-glass which had this property: that everything good and pretty that was reflected in it shrivelled away in it to almost nothing, but everything that was no good and looked ugly came out plain and showed even worse than it was. The most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach in the glass, and the best of men grew hideous, or else stood on their heads and had no stomachs. Their faces were so distorted that they couldn’t be recognized, and if anyone had a freckle, you could be sure it would spread all over his nose and mouth. It was extra-ordinarily funny, the devil said. If a kind pious thought passed through a man’s mind, there came such a grimace in the glass that the troll-devil couldn’t but laugh at his clever invention. Everyone who attended the troll school (for he kept a troll school) spread the news all about that a miracle had come to pass: you could now see, they said, what the world and mankind really looked like. They ran about everywhere with the glass, and at last there wasn’t a country or a person left who hadn’t been distorted in it. After that they decided to fly up to heaven itself and make fun of the angels and of God. The higher they flew with the glass, the more it grimaced, till they could scarcely keep hold of it. Up and up they flew, nearer to God and His angels, and then the glass quivered so fearfully with grimacing that it fell out of their hands and was dashed on the ground below, where it broke into hundreds of millions, billions, and even more pieces; and that very thing made matters worse than before, for some of the bits were hardly as big as a grain of sand, and these flew all about in the wide world, and when they got into peoples’ eyes, they stuck there, and the people either saw everything crooked or else had only eyes for what was wrong in anything; for every little splinter of the glass had kept the same power that the whole glass had. Some people even got a little bit of the glass into their hearts, and that was horrible, for the heart became just like a lump of ice. Some of the pieces were so big that they were used for window glass, but it didn’t pay to look at your friends through those window-panes. Other pieces were made into spectacles, and that was a bad business, if people put on those spectacles in order to see correctly and judge rightly. The evil one laughed till he split, it tickled him so. But out in the world little bits of glass were still flying about in the air.

Now we are to hear all about it.

STORY THE SECOND

A Little Boy and a Little Girl

In the big town, where there are so many houses and people that there isn’t room enough for everybody to have a little garden, and where in consequence most people have to content themselves with flowers in pots, there were two poor children who had a garden somewhat bigger than a flower-pot. They weren’t brother and sister, but they were as fond of each other as if they had been. Their parents were near neighbours, living in two attics, where the roof of the one house touched the other, and the gutter ran along the eaves: a small window in each house faced the other; you had only to step across the gutter and you could get from one window to the other.

The parents had, each of them, a large wooden box outside the window, and in it grew kitchen herbs which they used, and also a little rose tree; there was one in each box, and they flourished wonderfully. Then the parents thought of putting the boxes across the gutter in such a way that they reached almost from the one window to the other and really looked like two bunches of flowers. The pea plants hung down over the boxes, and the rose trees put out long branches and twined about the windows and bent over to meet each other, and made almost a triumphal arch of leaves and blossoms. The boxes were very high up, and the children knew they must not climb up into them, but they were often allowed to get out to meet each other and sit on their little stools beneath the roses, and there they used to play very happily.

In winter, of course, that pleasure was gone. The windows were often quite frozen over; but then they would heat copper pennies on the stove, and then put the hot pennies on the frosty pane, and there came a beautiful peep-hole, as round as round, behind which peeped out a blessed little kind eye, one out of each window; the little boy’s and the little girl’s. He was called Kay and she Gerda. In summer they could get to each other with a single jump, in winter they had first to go down a lot of stairs and then up a lot of stairs, while the snow came drifting down outside.

«Those are the white bees swarming,» said the old grandmother.

«Have they got a queen too?» asked the little boy — for he knew that the real bees have one. «Indeed, they have,» said grandmother, «she flies where they swarm thickest; she is the biggest of them all, and she never stays still on the ground, but flies up again into the black cloud. Many a winter night she flies through the streets of the town and peeps in at the windows, and then they freeze into wonderful patterns like flowers.»

«Yes, I’ve seen that,» said both the children; and they knew it was true. «Can the Snow Queen get in here?» asked the little girl.

«Let her come!» said the boy, «and I’ll put her on the hot stove and she’ll melt.» But grandmother stroked his hair and told them stories about other things.

In the evening, when little Kay was at home, and half undressed, he climbed up on the stool by the window and peeped through the little hole. A few snowflakes were falling outside, and one of them, the biggest of them all, remained lying in a corner of one of the flower-boxes. This flake grew larger and larger, and at last turned into the complete shape of a lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, which seemed to be made out of millions of star-shaped flakes. She was very pretty and delicate, but she was of ice, blinding, dazzling ice; yet she was alive. Her eyes gazed out like two bright stars, but there was no rest or quietness in them. She nodded towards the window and beckoned with her hand. The little boy was frightened and jumped down off the stool; and then it seemed as if a large bird flew past the window.

Next day was clear and frosty, and then came a thaw, and after that came spring-time, and the sun shone and the green buds peeped forth; the swallows built their nests, the windows were open, and the children sat once more in their little garden high up in the gutter in the topmost story.

That summer the roses blossomed as never before. The little girl had learnt a hymn in which there was something about roses, and at the mention of them she thought of her own, and she sang the hymn to the little boy and he sang it too.

The roses grow in the valley, Where we meet the Jesus Child.

The little ones held each other by the hand and kissed the roses and gazed into God’s bright sunshine and spoke to it as if the child Jesus were there. What lovely summer days were those, and how blessed it was to be out among the fresh rose bushes, which seemed as if they would never leave off blossoming!

Kay and Gerda were sitting looking at a picture book with beasts and birds in it, and then — just as the clock in the great church tower was striking five — Kay said, «Oh! Something pricked my heart, and I’ve just got something in my eye!»

The little girl put her arm round his neck, and he winked his eye, but no, there was nothing to be seen. «I think it’s gone,» he said, but it wasn’t. It was one of those tiny bits that were broken off the glass, the troll-glass — you remember about that — that horrid glass which made everything great and good that was reflected in it become mean and ugly, while the evil nasty things came out, and every blemish was plain to be seen. Poor Kay! He had got a piece of it right into his heart, which would soon be like a lump of ice. For the moment it wasn’t doing any harm; still, there it was.

«What are you crying for?» he asked. «It makes you look horrid! There’s nothing the matter with me. Ugh!» he called out suddenly. «That rose there’s worm-eaten! And look at that other, it’s all crooked. Rotten roses they are, after all, like the boxes they’re in.» With that he gave the box a hard kick and pulled off the two roses. «What are you doing, Kay?» cried the little girl; and when he saw she was frightened, he pulled off a third rose, and ran in at his own window, leaving dear little Gerda. Later, when she brought him the picture book, he said, «it was only fit for babies», and when grandmother told them stories, he was always breaking in with a «But». And if he could he would follow her about with spectacles on and imitate her talking; it was exactly like, and made people laugh. Very soon he could imitate the walk and talk of everybody in their street. Everything that was odd or not nice about them Kay could mimic, and people said, «That boy’s got an uncommon wit, to be sure». But it was the bit of glass he had got in his eye and the bit he had in his heart; and so it came about that he would tease even little Gerda, who loved him with all her heart. The games he played were quite different now: they were very clever. One winter day, when the snow-flakes were drifting down, he brought a big magnifying glass and held out the corner of his blue jacket and let the flakes fall on it.

«Now look through the glass, Gerda,» he said; and there was every flake made much bigger, and looking like a beautiful flower or a ten-pointed star: lovely it was to see. «Look how clever it is,» said Kay, «it’s much more interesting than the real flowers are; and there’s not a single thing wrong with them, they’re perfectly accurate — if only they didn’t melt.»

A little later Kay came in with big mittens on, and his sledge hung on his back; he shouted to Gerda, right in her ear, «I’ve got leave to drive in the big square where the others are playing,» and he was off.

Out there in the square the boldest of the boys often used to tie their sledges to a farmer’s cart and drive a good long way with it. It was excellent fun. At the height of their sport a large sledge came by; it was painted white all over, and in it was someone wrapped in a shaggy white fur and wearing a shaggy white cap. This sledge drove twice round the square, and little Kay made haste and tied his own little sledge to it, and drove off with it. Faster and faster it went, into the next street. The driver turned his head and nodded to Kay in a friendly way; it seemed as if they knew each other. Every time Kay thought of loosing his sledge the driver nodded again, so Kay stayed where he was: and they drove right out through the town gate. Then the snow began to fall so thick that the boy couldn’t see his hand before him as he drove on; and he hastily loosed the rope so as to let go of the big sledge. But it made no difference, his little trap held fast to it, and it went like the wind. He called out loudly, but no one heard, and the snow drifted down and the sledge flew onward. Sometimes it made a bound as if it were going over ditches or fences. He was in a dreadful fright; he tried to say the Lord’s Prayer, but he could only remember the multiplication table.

The snow-flakes grew bigger and bigger, till at last they looked like large white hens; suddenly they parted, the big sledge pulled up, and the person who was driving in it rose. The fur and the cap were all of snow: it was a lady, tall and slender, shining white — the Snow Queen.

«We have travelled well,» said she; «but you mustn’t freeze. Creep into my bearskin.» She put him beside her in the sledge, and he felt as if he were sinking into a snow-drift. «Are you still cold?» she asked, and kissed him on the forehead. Ugh! it was colder than ice, and struck straight to his heart — which itself was almost a lump of ice. He felt as if he was dying, but only for a moment: then all was right, he didn’t notice the cold about him any more.

«My sledge! Don’t leave my sledge behind!» that was the first thing he remembered: so it was tied on to one of the white hens, which flew after them with the sledge on its back. Once more the Snow Queen kissed Kay, and he had forgotten little Gerda and grandmother and everyone at home.

«No more kisses now,» said she, «or I should kiss you to death.» Kay looked at her; very pretty she was; a cleverer, fairer face he could not imagine. She didn’t seem now to be of ice, as she was when she sat outside the window and beckoned him. In his eyes she was perfect, and he felt no fear. He told how he knew mental arithmetic, and with fractions, too, and the area of the country, and how many inhabitants, and she smiled all the time, till he thought that what he knew didn’t come to much. He gazed up into the immense spaces of the air, and she flew on with him, flew high among the dark clouds, and the storm wind whistled and roared as if it were singing old ballads. Over forest and lake they flew, over sea and land: below them the cold blast whistled, the wolves howled, the snow sparkled; above them flew the black cawing crows, but over all shone the moon, large and bright; and by its light Kay watched through the long long winter night; by day he slumbered at the feet of the Snow Queen.

STORY THE THIRD

The Flower Garden of the Old Woman who knew Magic

But how fared little Gerda when Kay came back no more? Where could he be? Nobody knew, nobody could tell. The boys could only say they had seen him tie his little sledge to another fine large one which had driven down the street and out at the town gate. Nobody knew where he was. Many tears were shed; sore and long did little Gerda weep. Then they said he was dead, drowned in the river that ran past the town. Dark indeed and long were those winter days.

Then came spring with warmer sunshine.

«Kay is dead and gone,» said little Gerda.

«I don’t believe it,» said the Sunshine.

«He’s dead and gone,» said she to the swallows.

«I don’t believe it,» they answered, and at last little Gerda didn’t believe it either.

«I’ll put on my new red shoes,» she said one morning early, «the ones Kay has never seen, and I’ll go down to the river and ask about him.»

It was quite early. She kissed her old grandmother as she slept, put on the red shoes, and went out of the gate to the river, quite alone.

«Is it true that you have taken my little playfellow? I’ll give my red shoes if you’ll give him back to me.»