The Snow Queen Read Free

skirt Madame Aurore’s waist was slender as a girl’s, her shoulders, bared by her low-cut bodice, marble-white. The glittery threads woven into the blue damask sparkled like ice-crystals under the chandeliers. Her hair, the pale white-gold of winter sunlight, swooped modishly over her ears and was caught up at the back with a diamond clasp.
    And now the musicians had struck up a waltz and Kai was leading this woman out onto the dance floor while Gerda lurked morosely behind a potted palm: hating her new gown, which — she now decided — made her look twelve years old, and fat, hating her straw-coloured corkscrew ringlets, her round cheeks and rosy complexion. I’m too short, she thought despairingly; too healthy-looking; and worst of all, too young.
    Gerda’s throat felt tight; there was a prickling behind her eyes. She slipped quietly into the cloakroom, where she stood among the fur overcoats and boots, dabbing at her cheeks with her pocket handkerchief. Through the cloakroom window she could see fresh snow falling.

C HAPTER T HREE
    R itva rode into the pinewoods that girdled her father’s camp. Ba’s reins hung slack; the old reindeer knew the way to Ritva’s secret place as well as she knew it herself.
    In the crotch of a tree, at the edge of a shadowy clearing, someone had long ago wedged a bear skull. The skull faced the sunrise. Its weatherworn surfaces made a glimmering white patch against the dark wall of pines.
    Ritva dismounted, laid a handful of dried cranberries at the foot of the tree as an offering. Then she stood with Ba’s reins gathered into one hand and remarked to the bear skull, “I hate this place.”
    â€œThis place?” the skull asked, sounding a little aggrieved.
    â€œNo, not this place. I mean my father’s hall. I am sick of stepping in spilled beer and vomit. I am sick of always having to sleep with a knife under my head. And most of all I am sick of my mother.”
    â€œAnd what has your mother done to offend you now?” asked the skull, in its sombre, deliberating way.
    â€œThe same as always. She spits, and slobbers, and has fits, and falls on the ground in a trance. She is a horrible old woman, and I hate her.”
    â€œShe is a shaman,” the skull reminded her. “She is not responsible for what she does when the spirits possess her.”
    â€œAnd this is what I will become? A foul-tempered, drooling old hag?”
    â€œYou are her daughter. Her power is in you also.”
    â€œWhen did I ask to inherit her power? I don’t want it. I want to live by myself in a hut by the river. I want to ride south, to where it’s always summer.”
    The skull said, “Child, you may not turn your back on the gift the great god Aijo has given you. Nor on the obligations birth has placed upon you.”
    â€œI didn’t ask for his gift. Come to that, I didn’t ask to be born.”
    â€œNo,” the skull agreed sadly. “Nobody asks to be born. Nor do most of us ask to die. Those are things the gods decide. And their gifts are not easy to refuse.”

C HAPTER F OUR
    O n sunny mornings the roofs and chimney pots seemed wrapped in spangled cotton batting. The meadows beyond the town were covered with a glittering white crust, as hard as pavement. Even the Sound was frozen over, so that if you wished you could walk all the way to Sweden. The river was crowded with skaters, scarved, capped and mittened, their breath smoking on the crystal air.
    Gerda had been to church that morning in her new fur-trimmed bonnet and her garnet-coloured mantle with the velvet collar. Still dressed in her Sunday finery, she asked leave to go skating; her mother, preoccupied with luncheon preparations, nodded absent-minded permission. Minutes later Gerda and her friend Katrine — hands tucked in quilted muffs, shawls and mantles billowing — were gliding sedately over the ice.
    â€œWhat has become of Kai?”