THE SNOW QUEEN - EASY RETELLING

The Snow Queen

From The Book of Wizard Parties - Winter Solstice, Storytime
Translated from the Swedish by Sandra Dermark

There once was a wicked goblin who created a magic mirror. Good things looked evil in their reflections within it, and evil things looked good. Freshly-blooming flowers appeared to be wilting, and kindly people became hideous and cruel. The goblins took to the sky with the mirror, and when they had reached quite a high altitude, they let it go. The tiny mirror shards spread over the whole Earth's atmosphere, and with them, evil spread as well in their wake.
Right as some of these shards reached the ground, Kai and his best friend Gerda were outdoors and playing in the snow. Kai was suddenly seized with a stabbing pain in the heart and in one of his eyes. The pain faded away, but the shards had entered into him, and he began to despise everything that he had once been fond of. Beautiful things were ugly before his eyes, and everything that was wicked suddenly appeared to be all right. He began to chase cats on the street, he teased smaller children until they cried, and he started up fights. He was even cruel towards Gerda. Soon, everyone began to shun him. One day that winter, he stole a bicycle and cycled away, far out into the open countryside. It was dark and cold and dreary. Kai remembered how reassured, how warm he had felt at home, and, losing hope, he curled up in the shade of a pine tree.
As if summoned by a wave of a magic wand, there suddenly appeared a glittering troika pulled by huge snow-white direwolves. A pale lady stepped out. She was completely dressed in what appeared to be white furs, with a crown of icicles and "glass" slippers of ice. She fell down on her knees and embraced Kai, and he thought that she was the loveliest female in the whole wide world (remember that he perceived everything as the opposite of what it was!). Kai had met the Snow Queen. She spirited away helpless children who had to live with her in her ice palace at the North Pole. But she was so cold that her love gradually froze those children into ice statues. Kai did not even realise that his heart was turning cold as she touched him. She beckoned Kai into the troika, and off they set forth.
In the meantime, Gerda had become worried. She went to Kai's place to find out what had occurred. When she got there, she got to know that he had disappeared, and, since he had been so cruel, not even his own parents knew if they really wanted him to get back home!
When Gerda, having left the village, trudged forth through the snow, she met a little boy who was crying because his bicycle was gone. She understood that Kai had stolen it, and she began to follow the tyre tracks. "What are you doing here, all alone in the wide world?" asked a deep voice that seemed to come out of the blue. Gerda was startled, but then she realised that it was a raven, who was addressing her from a treetop. The friendly raven told Gerda that he had seen the Snow Queen spirit a lad away.
But how would Gerda make it all the way to the North Pole? Oui, she hitch-hiked with passing-by husky-drawn sleds, and then with a reindeer that took her all the way up to the Snow Queen's palace of ice. The redoubtable keep was icy cold and austere and dreary, and only lit by the stars in the night sky. There inside, in the throne room, she found Kai, cold and senseless. His skin was a deep shade of purple, and little icicles hung from the ends of his hair and from his fingertips. Was he already dead?
Gerda rushed forth towards him, embraced him, and burst into tears. Her warm tears fell on Kai's chest and thawed his frozen heart, so that the shards from the evil mirror dissolved into his blood. The colour returned to Kai's face, and he awoke. Due to the pain from the heart-thawing and to regret for all the evil things he had done, he shed so many bitter tears that the liquid remains of the mirror shards left his system for good! Now he was free. Now he could once more tell the difference between good and evil. Kai and Gerda returned back home, and they remained friends for evermore.