La Reine des Neiges
Légende traditionelle scandinave - réecriture Adrienette
Marinette, the heroine of this story, loves deeply her friend Adrien. Her love for him fills her with courage and determination to carry on her quest without giving up in front of the difficulties that cross her path for every step she takes.
I. L'éclat de miroir
Marinette and Adrien were two great friends who loved one another very much. Since both of them lived in the same village, so close to one another that from their bedroom windows they could almost join hands, and since both of them were the same age, and moreover since both of them were only children, it came as no surprise. They sat next to one another at class; they usually took strolls together through the woods, played together in the village square after school, and they both loved to read beautiful illustrated books.
But one day misfortune took them by surprise. One day in late springtime, they were both reading fairytales in the garden at Adrien's place, sitting down in a lovely shrubbery covered in roses and narcissi, and the young girl was watering those flowers, when suddenly Adrien winced and shouted, clutching the left side of his chest in response to a stabbing pain:
"Owww! I feel like something stabbed me in the heart...! And the breeze has blown dust into my eyes," he kept on wincing, rubbing his peridot orbs.
Marinette, looking into his eyes, could not see anything, as he blinked and both of them took for granted that it had been an eyelash, but the truth was something far more sinister.
What the boy had got inside his eyes, and furthermore inside his heart (having just breathed it in), was powdered crystal glass from an enchanted mirror, made by the Snow Queen herself, that distorted everything that was beautiful, and true, and good; and made it appear as hideous, and false, and wicked, in its reflection; while wicked things seemed to grow and acquired a wonderful appearance. One day, this mirror fell to the ground and shattered into thousands of shards, that scattered all over the Earth's atmosphere. Those unfortunate people who received a shard in one of their eyes began to see everything good as evil, and those who breathed one in and had it sink down into their hearts became real scoundrels.
The pain went away quite quickly, but the mirror shards were there, and it did not take much time for the lad's heart to gradually turn to ice. Now, the splinters in his eyes spoiled everthing he saw, and the splinter in his heart turned it icy cold.
"This is a stupid pastime," he said crossly, kicking over the watering can.
"Let's go tell one another stories," Marinette suggested.
"That's boring," replied Adrien listlessly. "I don't want even to talk to you anymore. I'm going to play in the market square with the big boys and with Alix..."
Marinette was so upset she couldn't think what to say. She just stood still and watched Adrien leave without even waving her goodbye. This wasn't the boy she knew.
Ever since, Adrien began to behave himself in a very strange manner, finding only the flaws and faults in everyone and everything, even in dear Marinette who still loved him with all her heart, without anyone being able to understand what had happened to him. He mocked the villagers by imitating their quirks, and never lost a chance to laugh even at Marinette herself. No longer did he want to read fairytales with her, and he felt only drawn towards the cold, towards frost and snow. Adrien's heart seemed to harden more the colder the air turned, throughout the bleak autumn, and he became the harshest and the most ironic when, after autumn, a white winter descended upon the lands. Gradually the power of the shards had grown and grown. Nothing pleased Adrien the way it used to. He was restless and listless, detached and deeply unhappy.
One day, he showed Marinette a snowflake under a magnifying lens: it looked like a six-pointed star or a six-petalled crystal flower:
"Just look at the perfection of these fractals! This is so much lovelier than a flower. I wish it never would liquify...!"
Shortly afterwards, he took French leave of her and went forth to cross the snowy hills on his little sled.
II. Qui était la dame de la grande troïka blanche
One winter afternoon, the boy was sledding on his own in the snowy slopes. The local bad boys (and the local bad girl Alix, by the way) had a custom to tie their sleds to passing-by carriages and troikas, to let themselves be drawn through the snow at breakneck speed. But that day, Adrien suddenly saw that forth came an enormous icy blue troika, drawn by four oversized white peacocks and driven by a dignified lady, clad in an icy blue fur overcoat and shapka. Without thinking twice, he lassoed his little sled to the back of the magnificent, majestic vehicle.
The troika took off as if shot from a cannon, driving out of the village in a whirl of snowflakes; the other young people on the slope carried on with their games. It was as if they had hardly noticed the strange troika at all.
In the meantime, Adrien was catapulted through the snow. At first, he felt thrilled indeed, but the further from home they came, the thicker and thicker the snow turned, and he was frightened. Though the boy screamed, in the middle of the countryside in midwinter, no one could hear his pleas for help. Suddenly, the great troika drove to a halt. When the lady within rose up, Adrien found out that her white cloak and shapka were made of snow instead of fox fur. It was the Snow Queen! She could not be anyone else, for she was tall and slender, and her skin was perfect and dazzlingly white, though her steel-coloured eyes, that shone like the brightest of first-magnitude stars, did not betray the slightest emotion.
"Climb in, my boy, my winter prince," she told Adrien. "I am coming to take you far from here, to a far better place... So take in the warmth under my pelisse..." She smiled at the young boy, and her eyes glittered like ice. Adrien was utterly enchanted.
As if he already knew that they would be coming for him, and feeling her command impossible to resist, the blond boy climbed by the Queen's side without doubting for a single instant. She wrapped him in her long, soft cloak, and it was like sinking into a snowdrift; his skin turned icy cold, and he went numb all over. The lady in icy blue then kissed him on the lips, breathing her air into every pipe of his lungs; and at first the lad, as the air seared the inside of his chest, felt the cold seep into his bones and the blood freeze in his veins... but this near-death only lasted for an instant, and, as soon as he awakened fully recovered, the boy had forgotten Marinette and home and village and all remembrance of the past.
Furthermore, that icy kiss had quenched every spark of feeling that lingered within his nearly-fully frozen heart. The two of them departed, crossing icy wastelands. The troika took to the skies, drawn by the peacocks, and disappeared up into the dark beyond the storm clouds. Thinking of how lovely and perfect his queen was, Adrien forgot his fears. After having flown over woods, peaks, meadows, rivers, lakes, and a frozen ocean, they reached the distant, uncharted region of eternal twilight, where they finally descended. By then, Adrien, exhausted, lay fast asleep at the feet of the Snow Queen.
III. Le verger du printemps éternel
In the meantime, poor Marinette shed bitter tears for the absence of her darling friend, whom she loved most tenderly despite his change of heart, and sought him all over the place.
When Adrien didn't come home, Marinette asked the bad boys and the bad girl if they had seen him. They shrugged their shoulders and couldn't remember. "Oh dear..." said Marinette to herself. "He often played with his sleigh on the frozen river. I hope he didn't fall into the water..."
In the weeks that followed, Marinette could not even dare to shed tears for poor lost Adrien. In the evening, she often looked out of her bedroom window at his empty one and missed him terribly.
Everyone believed that Adrien must have fallen through the ice on the river and frozen to death before he could drown. But somehow, in her heart of hearts, Marinette didn't really believe he was dead.
And thus, when springtime came, she walked down to the river, and asked its stream:
"Is it true that you took Adrien away from me? If you bring him back to me, I will give you the loveliest pair of red shoes that I own... You may keep them, if you tell me where my friend is!"
In her hand, she carried the brand new footwear she had received for Christmas and Adrien had never seen.
But the stream kept on its course, flowing towards the ocean, without taking the pair of scarlet Mary Janes that the girl had left among the riverbank reeds, and the shoes returned floating through her little hands.
Perhaps it was because she had not given the stream the thing that she loved best, she thought. And so, in response, she tossed her dearest Christmas gift, the first one Adrien had given it for a lucky charm, among the reeds: a wooden scarlet yo-yo, which Adrien had painted by hand, decorated with a quincunx of black spots.
"Is it true that you took Adrien away from me? If you bring him back to me, I will give you my lucky charm, which I will no longer have a need for... You may keep this, if you tell me where my friend is!"
But the stream kept on its course, flowing towards the ocean, while the yo-yo bobbed like a buoy among the riverbank reeds, and back towards the bank and Marinette's hands. Seeing how the river would not even take the first token of his affection, she crouched and picked the yo-yo up, putting it in her pocket, promising herself to always keep it at hand for good luck, as she made a vow, the sun being her witness, to seek out Adrien across the wide world until the soles of her Mary Janes were completely worn.
And thus, another day later on in spring, Marinette decided to go forth in pursuit of his friend, drifting downstream in a little rowboat. The girl was very frightened, because she saw that she was drifting further and further away from home, far, far downstream, through grassy meadows, along wooded banks, and further than she had ever been before. After many days, when she was nearly exhausted, the current took her into the pier of a fruit orchard in full bloom, in a strange region inhabited by an old lady, who, in spite of her advanced age, was still youthful when it came to health and high spirits.
Upon beholding a thatched cottage with a pretty garden full of flowers, upon the riverbank, Marinette screamed, at the top of her lungs:
"Hey! He-e-ey!"
Right then, the old lady, who wore a black doublet with a prism embroidered on it and kept her silver hair short, heard the screams from the river was surprised to see an adolescent girl drifting alone in such a desolate place.
"Please tell me who you are, and tell me what brings you here," she asked Marinette, as she held out a broomstick for the maiden to take hold of and land safely on the pier. "Poverina! So far from home, you must be exhausted! How come you have made it this far in the wide world?"
After landing, Marinette told her story and asked the old lady for help. Nonna Gina, who lived very alone ever since her husband and son had left her, and who had always dreamt to have a young girl of her own, told her, smiling sweetly at Marinette:
"Follow me home, be my guest, cara mia. Maybe I can do something to help you find your friend... Come inside, stay for the night, refresh yourself, and tell me what has happened to you!"
Every imaginable flower was growing in the garden outside the cottage: there were sunflowers, daisies, honeysuckle and marygolds, foxgloves, freesias, lavender, rosemary, thyme... and, of course, rosebushes and narcissi.
Marinette entered the little whitewashed and thatched farmhouse, elated, thinking that the old lady would help her for sure. Inside the cottage, there was a pitcher of lemonade on the table, next to a little tin of sweets. "Help yourself," the old lady encouraged the little maiden. While she drank deeply of some cool lemonade and ate some rounded sweets from that little tin, and her host combed her long raven hair, Marinette told her what had happened to Adrien, and of her search for him, in more detail.
"What a lovely ragazzina, and what glad company she will be!" the old lady tittered to herself.
When she had finished to comb those lovely tresses, black with a blue sheen like a real raven's wings, Marinette had forgotten Adrien and home and village and even, obviously, her quest. The more lemonade the girl drank, and the more the old lady brushed her hair, the more distant Adrien seemed to become, and in the end, in fact, she forgot why she was there at all.
For Nonna Gina, who knew a little magic, had laced the lemonade in the maiden's cup, and thus made the memories of her best beloved classmate fade from her mind. She didn't mean any harm. She was lonely, and just wanted the pretty little girl to stay and keep her company, before showing her into a guest bedroom with warm, soft, lavender-scented bedclothes. And so, Marinette slept a deep, tranquil sleep all night long, as happy as any young queen on the eve of her coronation, without a thought in the world for Adrien.
And, while the girl slept, Nonna Gina thought that if Marinette saw any roses or narcissi, she would remember her quest and resume her pursuit of Adrien, and make her want to leave her; and thus, the old lady made those flowers in her garden disappear under the dark soil, tapping them the edge of her magical broomstick, which made narcissi and rosebushes sink beneath the ground.
But, as the dawn broke up the skies the next day, Marinette awoke with a gasp, all startled, remembering Adrien once more, for her feelings towards him were far stronger than any enchantment. That morning, she had seen a golden star-shaped brooch which reminded her of a narcissus, and suddenly all her memories surged back. Then, all at once, everything flooded back to her - she remembered her home, the roses and the narcissi, and her dear Adrien. "What am I doing here when I should be looking for Adrien?" she gasped. It was then that she understood the old lady's intentions, and decided to flee.
IV. Prince et princesse
The springtime and summer had gone, and a cold wind blew the leaves from the trees. Marinette hurried along, wondering where to look for Adrien. On the way she met a young guard, a non-commissioned officer of dark features, dressed in a silver and blue grenadier's uniform.
"Good day to you, Ser," she addressed him with a bow.
"Where are you going, so alone in the wide world?" quoth he.
So Marinette told him her whole story, her search for Adrien, what had happened at the old lady's and how she'd dawdled for too long in her garden, and must hurry and find him. She described Adrien in detail to the guard, and asked him if he had not seen Adrien in those lands.
"I have seen a young man who looks quite a lot like the one you seek. It may be that I know him, as sure as my rank is sergeant and my name is Nino... I might have seen your friend... and furthermore it happens to be the young man who has just been betrothed to the Crown Princess..." he cocked his head.
The young girl stifled a gasp of surprise, not finding the right words.
"Oui, now he is a prince, and he lives at the royal palace with the Crown Princess herself!" Nino pointed towards a château of rosy-red granite surrounded by a well-kept French garden.
The grenadier told Marinette that this lad had won the heart and hand of the princess through his lively and earnest conversation, and furthermore, because he had not come to woo her, but simply to listen to her and speak to her in exchange. The princess there wanted a husband. All the princes she met were handsome but empty-headed. But then a thin, pretty boy came from far away. He had green eyes and he was clever and bright, and the princess was very pleased with him. He asked her something in a foreign language and she replied, delighted, in the same language, both of them taken with one another! "Now he lives at the palace with her."
"Oui!" Marinette exclaimed. "That is surely my Adrien! His eyes are green and he is clever and bright. Please can you show me the palace?"
"Right," Nino replied. "We should better head towards the castle and check it for ourselves, taking advantage of the fact that the sun has not risen yet and they are still fast asleep. My own fiancée, who has been an eyewitness to the courtship, lives in the palace. And she works there as a chambermaid. Maybe she can help us."
And off he set towards the landscaped grounds of the royal château. When he returned, he led Marinette to a fine palace, whose well-kept French gardens were surrounded by high walls; then he showed her through a gap in the garden wall, and they hid among the perfumed flowers. It was evening already, and the palace windows were full of golden lights. They waited in the dark until eventually the lights went out one by one. Then they heard a female voice say, "Follow me."
Led by Nino, Marinette traced the voice to a little tunnel concealed behind an artificial waterfall, where a dark-skinned ginger in a French maid's uniform had been waiting for them.
"Alya!" called the grenadier, and the maid sauntered from behind the waterfall in the palace garden to greet them. The two servants talked together first to one another, and then turned to Marinette.
"My fiancé has told me your story," the palace maid told Marinette with a curtsy. "I hope that we can do something for your sake at the end of the day. I can take you to see this boy."
They crept into the palace through the hidden door behind the waterfall.
Following the clever maidservant Alya, who kept a kerosene lamp in hand to light the way, Marinette and Nino passed through a narrow tunnel under ground, then padded up a dark, ornate spiral staircase, and out onto a corridor covered in deep rugs, which were warm and soft, and decked with portraits of late royalty on walls of rose-pink satin with embroidered bouquets of lace flowers, until Alya showed them the carved wooden door to the suite of the royal fiancés.
"Peek in; this door is the one to their bedchamber suite. So let's watch them now while they sleep," the redhead softly whispered.
Marinette, the grenadier, and the maid stepped, through an estrade covered in tapestries of classical myths, into the luxurious bedchamber, whose roof was a dome shaped like a lotus bud of costly glass; and where there were two beds shaped like large half-open roses. In the pink rose-bed lay a sleeping princess, as fair and small-boned as a porcelain doll, and in the white one lay her prince, a slender boy with his face hidden in his arms, both of them breathing steadily.
And Alya dimmed the lights, so that the three intruders could not be discovered.
For a moment, the young quester thought that it was indeed her friend, and she could not restrain her excitement to see him, but, upon thinking that he had forgotten her for a princess as kind-hearted and bright as she was lovely and charming, Marinette's azure eyes clouded with tears.
Quite carefully, she unwrapped the covers of the prince's white rose-bed. His back was turned towards her, but, upon seeing her friend's rumpled hair, quite dark in the twilight, Marinette choked back a sob:
"Adrien! Wake up. It's me..." she whispered.
The sound startled the prince, who, feeling watched, suddenly sat up in bed as he awoke, and stared at the raven-haired stranger in surprise. As the lights went on and she saw his face, Marinette burst into tears, for she suddenly understood that this lad, fortunately, was not her darling Adrien after all: the prince's hair was actually dark, while Adrien's was golden blond; and the one she sought had a complexion like peaches and cream, not like bronze such as that of the princess's fiancé. Nevertheless, he was a good-looking young fellow as well.
Even the princess herself, a blue-eyed blonde as fair and small-boned as a porcelain doll, sat down in bed, and both of them inquired to know what Marinette was doing in their bedchamber.
"I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else", she said miserably.
And thus, once more, the stranger girl told them the story of her quest. So she told them everything, her search for Adrien, and how the two servants had tried to help her.
Their hearts warmed by the tale, and full of kind understanding, Prince Ali and Princess Rose promised to give her new winter clothes and a carriage for her to carry on her quest. And they did not neglect to reward her companions either: Nino was promoted to lieutenant, while Alya became head lady-in-waiting at court; both of them looking very pleased.
The princess turned to Marinette. "Tomorrow in the morn we will send you on your way with a carriage and six horses, and a coachman à la Daumont to drive them. That should make your search easier."
Marinette couldn't thank her, or her fiancé, enough; especially after the prince had showed her to a spare bedroom for guests that had been prepared in advance, for Marinette to spend the night there.
So on the next day, after a filling breakfast, the prince and the princess, drying up their tears, waved goodbye as took their leave of Marinette, who, swaddled in scarlet silks from crown to toe, with a warm scarlet cloak wrapped around, was sent on her way in a golden carriage. For a while, Alya and Nino followed her, until they said a fond farewell at the edge of the kingdom, when they reached a port town at the north coast, and Marinette boarded the royal yacht, which had been awaiting her orders, none of their eyes being dry.
And thus, without ever losing hope, Marinette set sail in order to to carry on her quest.
V. Les enfants de la capitaine pirate
The royal couple had filled the carriage with macarons and croquignoles. And the cabin where she travelled on board their yacht, to which Marinette had also received a ticket, and which she had boarded in the northern port, was full of grandeur. On the outside, the sailboat, which was decked with gilt sculptures and a mermaid figurehead, glittered and glimmered in the blue waves, as intensely as a flame, so that it attracted, and nearly blinded, the pirates who waited in ambush behind the rocks of the ocean.
"It cannot be possible," a sinister contralto voice was heard. "This is a royal yacht..."
In the meantime, Marinette was resuming once more to narrate the story of her quest to the captain of the yacht when the lookout suddenly shouted from the crow's nest above:
"Pirates! To starboard, heading towards us!!"
Then everything changed as brusquely and quickly as it could.
"It's gold leaf... Gold leaf!!" the pirates roared, as they swung from the ropes of their gallion onto the deck of the yacht to claim it. Without the slightest of qualms, they shot the captain of the yacht dead, slit the throats of the sailors, threatening them with their weapons... and tore the helpless passenger from her precious cabin.
"What a cutesy and well-fed little lassie," said the pirate captain, a silver-haired bear-like virago of a woman, while she pinched Marinette on the chin. "I wonder how high the ransom that would be paid for her... Now you come with us, my bonnie, and, if we get cross, your days are done, for we want no trouble with someone who might betray us..."
And, without the least delay, with death in her icy blue eyes, she drew a cutlass whose blade dazzled in the light of the sun, tickling Marinette's throat, as the arteries within throbbed, and letting a scarlet rill trickle on her lilywhite skin. By now, the poor captive was convinced that this was her journey's end, when suddenly the old pirate captain let out a scream, and she let Marinette go. Behind her assailant's back, the captain's son, a tall and strapping young scoundrel whose hair shifted in black and bright blue, seemed to be tearing off his mother's plaited ponytail:
"Let her go!" he exclaimed. "I will not let anyone hurt her... This girl will be my friend from now on!"
"Luka is right, Mum," a dark-haired, pale pirate girl in black replied in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "And besides, I would like to wear red for a change," she asked Marinette to give her the boots and gloves of scarlet silk.
Both siblings insisted so much and so seriously, that in the end their mother surrendered, and they finally got it their way. Though a redoubtable pirate queen, Captain Anarka was also a mother, and the wishes her children made for any of the spoils had always been her soft spot.
The prisoner could not believe her luck: her life was saved because the captain's children had taken a liking to her! Soon, the siblings escorted her on a gangplank across to the pirate gallion.
"Don't worry," Luka told Marinette. "We will not let anyone kill or torture you... Unless, of course, if you make Juleka feel cross..." he motioned to his younger sister, who narrowed her eyes and stared at Marinette with a fixed expression. Juleka looked darkly at the prisoner and pulled out a glinting cutlass from her belt, then drew it across her own throat in a cut-throat gesture as she coldly said: "Don't ya try to run away, or..."
When the whole crew finally boarded the gallion, having tied the yacht to its stern, the captain's children led Marinette into the cabin where they slept. A guitar was hanging on the wooden wall, and soon the young man took it down and put it upon his lap, in front of his sister and prisoner.
"Juleka and I share this one," the pirate prince said as he strummed the strings, without concealing the slightest hint of his pride. And, every night, I gently stroke the strings with my little dagger, to remember that, here on board, it is me who is in charge!" he pointed at the middle of his own chest.
"And now, tell us your story," Juleka said in her matter-of-fact tone, as Luka grinned and Marinette looked at her with a shudder running down her spine.
A teary-eyed Marinette thus braced herself to tell, for the umpteenth time, the same old story:
"Well, I'm not sure if this is a good story... but it's certainly a true one." Then she told the pirates her own story, her search for Adrien, and how the princess and her fiancé had tried to help her. She also recalled that both of them were only children and saw one another as siblings, as she told the story this time to Luka and Juleka. After a while spent in songs, the strings of a guitar, and the stories of their lives, the three of them became great friends. In conversation, they told each other of their joys and sorrows. Fortunately, the siblings were rather nice people for being pirates, Marinette thought. They had not taken her new cloak to wear themselves.
Later on, in the middle of the night, as Luka slumped down to sleep with his guitar in hand, his sister began to speak at last some words relevant to the quest, but still with that fixed expression and in that monotone:
"You have sought this Adrien of yours all over the realm, but you have not found him," the captain's daughter told Marinette. By now, both of them were wide awake. "But I have seen your Adrien..."
"Oh, please, tell me where he is!" Marinette exclaimed.
"I have seen him pass, when I had the lookout watch on the crow's nest, flying overhead in the troika of the Snow Queen. I was lucky to have a warm plaid to wrap myself in, for she breathed upon the tops of our masts, and it all frosted over! It is most likely that the Snow Queen has spirited him away; she has the custom to whisk away young people who once were nice and happy. She lives a few leagues from here, in the Arctic. Surely they were heading towards her ice palace."
Marinette could do nothing but utter a gasp and wring the edge of the plaid for reassurance.
"But you need not fret, shan't you? We have been pirates since childhood, if we ever have been children anytime in our lives spent slitting throats left and right," Juleka wrapped an arm around Marinette's waist. "We know how to manage the sails of a little yacht, in storm or calm or rain, and how to guide ourselves by the stars in the open ocean. If you please, Marinette, we will carry you there..."
In the meantime, Luka snoozed and snored so loudly that even the watch on deck and in the crows' nests could hear him from afar.
"I will go wherever I have to go to find my beloved Adrien. No matter how many shores and seas I have to cross. No matter how many perils we will have to brave."
Early in the morning, over a hefty breakfast of eggs and ham with hardtack, the two girls enlisted the help of Luka for their mission. Of course he was not only glad to help, but even excited to embark on an adventure of their own.
And, all day long, whenever they had spare time from the chores, the three young people began to conspire. In the evening of that day, the siblings accorded, they had to make their captain and mother dead drunk, as well as the watchmen; it was not an easy task, given how well those warlike, muscular people could hold their liquor, but a shot of laudanum from the surgeon's cabinet in their drinks would surely do wonders! And then, once the coast was clear, the three young ones would have to fetch what was needed, make their way down to the yacht and cut the rope that tethered it to the pirate gallion.
It was such a waterproof plan that, to quote Luka himself, it did not even need a brushful of tar.
Thus the hours dragged anxiously by, until, in the end, the sun disappeared beneath the waves in a bloody western horizon. Red sky at night, sailor's delight, they had told Marinette. It was then that, after drinking their evening liquor, all the adults on board, from Captain Anarka to the lookout and the watchmen, felt suddenly worn-out and fell unconscious where they were.
At around the same time, all three adolescents were sliding down the rope that tied the yacht to the stern of the galleon, Luka first leading the way. Marinette's knees buckled with vertigo, but, a vigorous pat from Juleka on the back and a downfall while screaming at the top of her lungs later, the blue-eyed maiden landed in Luka's arms, like a bride carried across the threshold, as he stood on the deck of the yacht, looking rather flustered before he set her down.
Then, Juleka slided down the last, producing from the pack on her back three pairs of sturdy Wellington boots, three sou'wester hats with matching raincoats, and a ham, hardtack, and chocolate, as well as a little keg full of lemonade. All three of them were delighted with their new-found liberty, and the young pirates had even had the kindness to share their provisions and their rain clothing with Marinette as they helped her escape from the pirate gallion. Then, deftly severing the rope with his cutlass, Luka told both girls:
"Allons-y donc! Juleka, unfurl the sails! We shan't make much of a racket, or Mum will wake up and find out our desertion! And of course we shall care quite well for our friend Marinette..."
And that was how, after sailing through storms and fair weather, at breakneck speed over foam-crested ridges of waves and plunging down in between them, they finally landed on the coast of the Far North. In the distance, they saw spectacular lights in all bright colours, accompanied by impressive cracklings and whistlings.
"The Northern Lights..." Marinette gasped in awe.
"Ain't they impressive?" Luka asked her.
"Mais oui, Captain," replied Marinette, astonished; while Juleka said nothing.
VI. Les sages du Grand Nord
A slender red-headed woman who seemed to be a healer, seeing all three shivering with cold on the outskirts of the port village in the Far North, welcomed them into her warm and humble home. After landing and asking for directions, they had reached the herbalist's tiny cabin. There, the pirate siblings told her the story of their quest, and she listened to them with eager ears; while an exhausted Marinette, who had staggered into the cabin with Luka and Juleka for crutches, slumped down into a bed of deer-furs and dried lichen in the corner.
"Poor little friends of mine! First you three have to eat and drink something warm, and put on more warm layers. There is still a long way to go!" Mademoiselle Bustier told them after listening to their story. "There are about one hundred leagues left to reach the Snow Queen's palace! But near its esplanade lives a friend of mine, a wise old sage who will surely explain what you three have to do far better than I. So I will write Master Fu a message, and send it with you as messengers, right? Give this letter to Master Fu, for he surely knows how to give you good advice."
For living in such a quaint place, the healer was rather fond of literature, and thus she had a well-stocked library and blank paper to spare. Tearing the last blank page from Book the Fifth by Rabelais, she wrote the message with brush and ink and with utmost care in strange characters, paying heed to the stroke order.
Once Marinette had fully recovered from the exhaustion of the journey, and after some warm bowls of soup and mulled wine for everyone, she and the two young pirates got on Mademoiselle Bustier's reindeer-pulled sled, donning the shapka hats and coats of white fur she had given them, as, wishing bon voyage, the healer said a fond farewell.
Once more, they got their show on the road, as Luka said, whipping the reins to urge the deer forwards. Wolves howled and snowy owls hooted, and the air hissed with cold. Strange emerald and blue lights flashed across the sky above them. The air grew so cold it felt as if it might crack, and soon all they could see around them was sparking snow. They shared the loaf, and carried on and on through the snow, until their whole bodies were numb with cold. The three young people travelled for hours across the frozen tundra, well-wrapped in the deer furs that Mademoiselle Bustier had put on their sleigh seat, before they spotted the column of smoke from the wise master's dwelling; until at last they reached a hut that looked like a little Shinto shrine half-buried in the snow, and tapped at the door. Marinette handed over the message, which she had kept safe from the sleet inside her raincoat, to the owner of the cozy place, a short old man with a thin moustache and Asian features, as he let them inside. Within the shrine, it was burning hot with the sacred fireplace on which a dark pot was hanging; and thus, the first thing that Master Fu did was to help Marinette and the siblings out of their winter clothing. Then she handed the message written on the blank page to the old master and told her all of her story.
Thrice he read the message, until he had learned it all by heart; and, after reading it carefully for the third time, Master Fu tucked the writing into the flame, for he never let good kindling go to waste, and put some algae in the cast-iron pot above, for boiling soup stock.
Then he gave the three youngsters some warm algae soup, and, while they were drinking it, he unfurled an ancient scroll which he kept in a lacquered octogonal box, and studied the strange characters, as similar as they were different to those Mademoiselle Bustier had written, that had been written with brush and ink on the yellowed fibre-paper.
"If you are as wise as Mademoiselle Bustier says," Juleka tried not to flatter the wise old sage, "please help Marinette save her Adrien."
"How would I help her?" said the master, his almond eyes bright but telling nothing.
"You could make her swallow a draught that turned her as strong as ten tigers," Luka suggested, "so that she can defeat the Snow Queen."
And thus, hobbling on his cane, Master Fu led Marinette aside to a corner of the shrine and told her:
"Little Adrien is indeed at the Snow Queen's palace, and he considers it the best of all possible places. But that is only because there is crystal glass dust from the Mirror of Truth in his eyes, and, furthermore, he breathed some of it in and it lodged in his heart. It is necessary that these crystals should be taken out of him... Otherwise, he will never break free from the grasp of the Snow Queen, and he will remain frozenhearted for evermore."
"Please... cannot you give me anything that could break the enchantment?" the maiden herself pleaded. "You could make me as strong as ten tigers, so that I can defeat the Snow Queen..."
Master Fu sighed in response, and shook his head.
"Ten tigers could not defeat the Snow Queen as well as this little ladybug can, just as she is. Have you not realised that your greatest power lies within your own heart? Royalty obey your commands; even pirates help you. You have walked through fire and ice, making it so far across the wide world on your own two feet. You are the only one who can make it to the palace of the Snow Queen and set Adrien free. Now tell your pirate friends to take you two miles further north, to the edge of the Snow Queen's garden, but not one step beyond. The final stand is a battle you have to fight on your own. And remember, your power is in your goodness; not even the direst of winters can defeat that."
"I must try," she replied.
In eager haste, Marinette stormed out of the shrine towards the Snow Queen's fortelesque ice palace. Once more, she set off in the sleigh pulled by their faithful reindeer, while Luka whipped the reins the fastest he could. They had been given instructions to carry on for two miles further north, and to leave her there. "The rest she will have to do herself."
When they had already sledded for a good while, Marinette realised that she had left her shapka and her coat in Master Fu's shrine, but then Juleka gladly offered the maiden her own winter coat, and her brother hatted Marinette with his own fur hat.
And thus they led her to the edge of the palace gardens, where a single gnarled holly bush, its leaves all frosted, marked the boundary of the Snow Queen's lands. The edge of the Snow Queen's garden was marked with a wall of huge, jagged blocks of ice. Nothing but that single holly grew in it, but the snow fell so thickly that there was scarcely any air between the flakes.
Lots of sobs had to be choked back when the siblings took their leave of our heroine.
"I hope we will see one another again. But now I must hurry to save Adrien."
Marinette slid to the ground and began to walk, watching the sleigh return at full speed over the tundra, but then, as soon as she was left of her own, a terrible blizzard came down upon her.
The snowflakes, which, as they fell, formed monstrous icy blue butterflies with jagged wings, were actually the vanguards of the Snow Queen's army. They surrounded Marinette, who, in a fright, searched inside her pockets, while humming a nursery rhyme for reassurance... and found her lucky charm yo-yo. Her breath not only condensed, but even gasped, as she flicked the right wrist with the yo-yo held in her right hand, trying to hit her enemies and thinking anything would do as a weapon, but the lucky charm began to shine with a burning hot ruby light, lunging at the ice butterflies and dissolving them into liquid as it struck them.
And thus, Marinette, crossing the field of battle, was able to carry on her way without being attacked.
VII. Du château de la Reine des Neiges et de ce qui s’y passa, et de ce qui arriva ensuite
The girl did not know yet that her beloved friend, whose skin had turned blue in the earlobes, fingertips, and the tip of his nose with cold, was frightfully busy trying to assemble a curious puzzle of ice shards on the floor of the cavernous throne room, before the empty throne. If he wanted to recover his freedom, he had to form a sun with a heart glowing inside it, but, up to that moment, he had not been able to do it.
In the vast throne room, Adrien was sitting on the floor, which was a frozen lake, shattered into countless pieces; he sat before the empty throne, trying to solve the complicated challenge that the Snow Queen had given to him. If he ever contrived to make the shape of a sun, with a flaming heart in its centre, with those pieces of ice, he would recover his freedom; if not, the Queen would keep him as her winter prince, for both of them to coat the warm world together in a new ice age, and she would make him once more his own lord and master of himself, and give him half the frozen world, aside from a pair of brand new ice skates as a plus. But, no mattter how much he tried, Adrien could not succeed in reassembling his sun. He could barely think, let alone work out how to do it.
Luckily the throne was empty, for on that endless Arctic night, the Snow Queen had flown off in her icy blue troika towards the warm countries, in order to bring the winter down south once more, leaving Adrien alone in her throne room. Half dead with cold, the lad pondered and pondered all the time on how he could be able to complete the puzzle.
When Marinette entered the vast hall, after wandering through empty ballrooms and chilly corridors lined with countless ice mirrors, all of them perfectly austere and bereft of colour and feelings, she saw Adrien sitting before the throne in despair. Upon seeing her reflection on the throne room floor, he felt a sense of déjà-vu, and he looked at that reflection (not at the girl herself) with a fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say - he did not know her, it seemed.
The maiden burst into tears of joy when she saw him, and she could not resist the urge to embrace him. Shedding tears of elation, she ran across the frozen lake and affectionally clasped the lad in her arms:
"Oh, Adrien, my darling! At last I have found you!" she said, rushing over to him.
But he could barely hear her. He was so frozen into the Snow Queen's power that nothing else could move him. He stared at her blankly, the light quenched in his green eyes, with that fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say...
Marinette wrapped her arms around his slender waist, and burst into tears. "I have walked through fire and ice, I have come across the wide world to take you home, Adrien..." she sobbed. "I love you more than anything."
Suddenly, a tiny light appeared in the boy's lightless eyes. Marinette held him tighter, and warmth seeped into his body. As she clasped Adrien, her hot teardrops fell upon his chest, and, seeping through cloth and skin and flesh and breastbone, sank down to his heart. Within an instant, the ice that shackled the inside of his chest, and was strongest where the shard had lodged within the heartstrings of the left ventricle, was thawed, expelling the shard of crystal, which a heartbeat tore away into the bloodstream.
Then Marinette began to sing a nursery rhyme, and roses bloomed in his pale cheeks, and Adrien... turning towards his friend... looking at her with green eyes that recovered more and more of their light, he burst into sobs, trying to remember the lyrics to the same tune, which both of them used to sing in happier days. He shed so many tears that the mirror dust, which had dissolved into the bloodstream, left his system through the eyes with that fiery flow, and fell upon the throne room floor.
Only then did he recognise his beloved, adorable girl-friend. All at once, he remembered everything. He looked up at Marinette and saw his best friend standing there.
"Marinette... my darling Marinette? What ever happened to me? And where are we? How vast and cold and lonely is this place! How could I have forgotten you...?" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. The warm love in his heart had melted the ice splinters that had lodged inside him. At last, Adrien was back to his old self.
He put his arms around Marinette and squeezed her tightly, lest she should leave him on his own. And Marinette squeezed him even more tightly and they both burst out laughing. Their innocent laughter rang out across the hall, making the icicles chime and the great shards of ice sing in harmony.
She told him everything and, together, with four hands, they assembled the puzzle. Then something very strange began to happen. The elation of both young people was such that, when they placed the last piece of ice on the frozen surface of the lake, they formed a sun in whose middle beamed a flaming heart. There was no need to worry anymore.
Now both of them were free, and the masters of their own destiny. Adrien was free to leave, for the Snow Queen would no longer retain any power over him.
"Marinette, I'm free..." said Adrien, too stunned to utter the words properly.
"Then, what are we waiting for?" Marinette replied, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, quickly. Let's go home!"
The two friends ran out of the hall. Hand in hand, Marinette and Adrien left the Snow Queen's palace. In the northeastern skies, the darkness was giving way to the warm, rosy light of the dawn; soon, all the good things that springtime brought would return to the Arctic. At the edge of the garden where the battle had taken place stood their sleigh, now with two reindeer pulling it and stamping on the snow with impatience, tethered to the holly bush, waiting for the passengers.
Marinette and Adrien hopped into the reindeer-pulled sleigh and returned home. During the journey, they dropped by to take their leave of all the friends who had helped them. Luka and Juleka met them on the pier before the port village of the Far North, and, after a joyful reunion, sailed them in the royal yacht, which now belonged to the siblings, back to the southern coast.
"We have decided to found our own crew, with Luka for a captain and Yours Truly as first officer, and travel the wide world and the seven seas," Juleka told them, as coldly as usual, during their first supper on deck. They told their story with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, over bowls of warming soup.
"You're quite the rambler indeed," Luka said, cupping Adrien's cheek, when they landed in the seaport from which Marinette had first set sail. "I wonder if you are really worth having a friend who would gladly head to the ends of the Earth in your pursuit..."
"So do I," his sister nodded in her matter-of-fact tone. But Marinette only nudged her side and laughed, and then Adrien chortled as well, in his old innocent way, before the two friends took their leave of the pirate siblings, watching their yacht sail away until it disappeared into the horizon.
Passing by the royal castle, Adrien and Marinette met Alya and Nino, who looked pretty smart in their brand-new uniforms post-promotion, and told them that the princess and her prince were travelling through foreign countries, on their honeymoon. They also promised to send the royal couple Marinette's and Adrien's regards.
"Someday you will meet them, Adrien; they were and are very kind royalty..."
As they advanced further down south, the two young friends saw springtime unfurl in their wake, the ribbit of frogs and the chirp of finches increasing as the crocuses of March gave way to the periwinkles of April, and then to the roses of May. When they finally reached their home, so many years had passed by that, though ostensibly nothing had changed in the village, it was not until they reached the pond for a drink to quench their thirst, and saw their reflections in the mirror of water, that they noticed that Adrien had become a dashing young man, and Marinette a beautiful young lady.
A lot of time had passed since they had been away, but the warm seasons had come again. They found that the roses and the narcissi were just coming into bloom.
As they stood there, holding one another's hands and locking eyes, they forgot the past and all their adventure as one forgets an unquiet dream upon awakening, and it seemed that they had never left home. Everything was exactly as they had left it, but they were now at least a little older and a little wiser.
There they stood, all grown up yet children at heart, and it was warm, lovely springtime. The Snow Queen's palace was nothing more than a distant dream, for before them there was spread, generously, all the springtime and summer of youth.
FINIS.
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