The Snow Queen: Story the Third: The Enchanted Flower Garden

In part three we learn that everyone has given Kai up for dead since he rode off with the Snow Queen. Gerda, mourning her lost friend, shares her sorrows with the sun, with the sparrows. But they don’t believe her. They don’t think Kai is dead, and Gerda starts to have doubts, too.

Months have passed by now, and spring has come. Since everyone thinks that Kai’s drowned, Gerda goes to the river to ask for him back, offering her new red shoes in exchange. The waves keep bringing the shoes back to her, so she decides she needs to get farther into the water to drop them in.

Conveniently, someone’s left a boat on the shore, but Gerda doesn’t really know how to operate a boat, and once she’s deposited the shoes in the river, she can’t get back to shore. She continues downstream for quite some time, until a woman with a flowered hat fishes her out.

This woman is an enchantress, and wants to keep Gerda as her own child. She steals her memories, and hides all her rosebushes under the ground, so they won’t remind Gerda of home, and the rosebush she shared with Kai.

(This is one point where my story deviates significantly from the source material—I wanted my Gerda to set off in search of Kai immediately, rather than waiting until spring, so she spends a winter with the enchantress instead of a summer.)

Gerda stays with the enchantress for several months, through the spring and summer, and into the fall. She doesn’t remember Kai. She knows something is missing from the garden, but she doesn’t know what. At last, she spots the one rose the enchantress has forgotten to hide—the one painted on her hat—and all of her memories have returned.

She weeps for Kai, and her tears bring forth the roses the enchantress sent under the ground. They assure her that Kai isn't dead—if he was dead and buried, they would have seen him underground. Which doesn’t totally make since, as he’s supposed to have drowned, but whatever.

The flowers don’t know anything else about Kai.

Realizing that she’s lost months of time to the enchantress, and it’s now autumn, Gerda, now barefoot, sets off again in search of Kai.

THIRD STORY: THE ENCHANTED FLOWER GARDEN

 *edit: I have realized that this translation has excluded the section where the flowers tell their stories; I will post their piece later.*

(Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be posting both the text of the Snow Queen, and my thoughts on it. This is the text of the third section. All text comes from the public domain translation of Andersen’s works edited by J. H. Stickney and published in 1886. The illustrations, by Edna Hart, are from this edition as well.)

But how fared little Gerda in Kai's absence?

What had become of him no one knew, nor could any one give the slightest information, excepting the boys, who said that he had tied his sledge to another very large one, which had driven through the street and out at the town gate. No one knew where it went. Many tears were shed for him, and little Gerda wept bitterly for a long time. She said she knew he must be dead, that he was drowned in the river which flowed close by the school. The long winter days were very dreary. But at last spring came with warm sunshine.

"Kai is dead and gone," said little Gerda.

"I don't believe it," said the sunshine.

"He is dead and gone," she said to the sparrows.

"We don't believe it," they replied, and at last little Gerda began to doubt it herself.

"I will put on my new red shoes," she said one morning, "those that Kay has never seen, and then I will go down to the river and ask for him."

It was quite early when she kissed her old grandmother, who was still asleep; then she put on her red shoes and went, quite alone, out of the town gate, toward the river.

"Is it true that you have taken my little playmate away from me?" she said to the river. "I will give you my red shoes if you will give him back to me."

And it seemed as if the waves nodded to her in a strange manner. Then she took off her red shoes, which she liked better than anything else, and threw them both into the river, but they fell near the bank, and the little waves carried them back to land just as if the river would not take from her what she loved best, because it could not give her back little Kai.

But she thought the shoes had not been thrown out far enough. Then she crept into a boat that lay among the reeds, and threw the shoes again from the farther end of the boat into the water; but it was not fastened, and her movement sent it gliding away from the land. When she saw this she hastened to reach the end of the boat, but before she could do so it was more than a yard from the bank and drifting away faster than ever.

Little Gerda was very much frightened. She began to cry, but no one heard her except the sparrows, and they could not carry her to land, but they flew along by the shore and sang as if to comfort her: "Here we are! Here we are!"

The boat floated with the stream, and little Gerda sat quite still with only her stockings on her feet; the red shoes floated after her, but she could not reach them because the boat kept so much in advance.

The banks on either side of the river were very pretty. There were beautiful flowers, old trees, sloping fields in which cows and sheep were grazing, but not a human being to be seen.

"Perhaps the river will carry me to little Kai," thought Gerda, and then she became more cheerful, and raised her head and looked at the beautiful green banks; and so the boat sailed on for hours. At length she came to a large cherry orchard, in which stood a small house with strange red and blue windows. It had also a thatched roof, and outside were two wooden soldiers that presented arms to her as she sailed past. Gerda called out to them, for she thought they were alive; but of course they did not answer, and as the boat drifted nearer to the shore she saw what they really were.

Then Gerda called still louder, and there came a very old woman out of the house, leaning on a crutch. She wore a large hat to shade her from the sun, and on it were painted all sorts of pretty flowers.

"You poor little child," said the old woman, "how did you manage to come this long, long distance into the wide world on such a rapid, rolling stream?" And then the old woman walked into the water, seized the boat with her crutch, drew it to land, and lifted little Gerda out. And Gerda was glad to feel herself again on dry ground, although she was rather afraid of the strange old woman.

"Come and tell me who you are," said she, "and how you came here."

Then Gerda told her everything, while the old woman shook her head and said, "Hem-hem"; and when Gerda had finished she asked the old woman if she had not seen little Kai. She told her he had not passed that way, but he very likely would come. She told Gerda not to be sorrowful, but to taste the cherries and look at the flowers; they were better than any picture book, for each of them could tell a story. Then she took Gerda by the hand, and led her into the little house, and closed the door. The windows were very high, and as the panes were red, blue, and yellow, the daylight shone through them in all sorts of singular colors. On the table stood some beautiful cherries, and Gerda had permission to eat as many as she would. While she was eating them the old woman combed out her long flaxen ringlets with a golden comb, and the glossy curls hung down on each side of the little round, pleasant face, which looked fresh and blooming as a rose.

"I have long been wishing for a dear little maiden like you," said the old woman, "and now you must stay with me and see how happily we shall live together." And while she went on combing little Gerda's hair the child thought less and less about her adopted brother Kai, for the old woman was an enchantress, although she was not a wicked witch; she conjured only a little for her own amusement, and, now, because she wanted to keep Gerda. Therefore she went into the garden and stretched out her crutch toward all the rose trees, beautiful though they were, and they immediately sank into the dark earth, so that no one could tell where they had once stood. The old woman was afraid that if little Gerda saw roses, she would think of those at home and then remember little Kai and run away.

Then she took Gerda into the flower garden. How fragrant and beautiful it was! Every flower that could be thought of, for every season of the year, was here in full bloom; no picture book could have more beautiful colors. Gerda jumped for joy, and played till the sun went down behind the tall cherry trees; then she slept in an elegant bed, with red silk pillows embroidered with colored violets, and she dreamed as pleasantly as a queen on her wedding day.

The next day, and for many days after, Gerda played with the flowers in the warm sunshine. She knew every flower, and yet, although there were so many of them, it seemed as if one were missing, but what it was she could not tell. One day, however, as she sat looking at the old woman's hat with the painted flowers on it, she saw that the prettiest of them all was a rose. The old woman had forgotten to take it from her hat when she made all the roses sink into the earth. But it is difficult to keep the thoughts together in everything, and one little mistake upsets all our arrangements.

"What! are there no roses here?" cried Gerda, and she ran out into the garden and examined all the beds, and searched and searched. There was not one to be found. Then she sat down and wept, and her tears fell just on the place where one of the rose trees had sunk down. The warm tears moistened the earth, and the rose tree sprouted up at once, as blooming as when it had sunk; and Gerda embraced it, and kissed the roses, and thought of the beautiful roses at home, and, with them, of little Kai.

"Oh, how I have been detained!" said the little maiden. "I wanted to seek for little Kay. Do you know where he is?" she asked the roses; "do you think he is dead?"

And the roses answered: "No, he is not dead. We have been in the ground, where all the dead lie, but Kai is not there."

"Thank you," said little Gerda, and then she went to the other flowers and looked into their little cups and asked, "Do you know where little Kai is?" But each flower as it stood in the sunshine dreamed only of its own little fairy tale or history. Not one knew anything of Kai. Gerda heard many stories from the flowers, as she asked them one after another about him.

And then she ran to the other end of the garden. The door was fastened, but she pressed against the rusty latch, and it gave way. The door sprang open, and little Gerda ran out with bare feet into the wide world. She looked back three times, but no one seemed to be following her. At last she could run no longer, so she sat down to rest on a great stone, and when she looked around she saw that the summer was over and autumn very far advanced. She had known nothing of this in the beautiful garden where the sun shone and the flowers grew all the year round.

"Oh, how I have wasted my time!" said little Gerda. "It is autumn; I must not rest any longer," and she rose to go on. But her little feet were wounded and sore, and everything around her looked cold and bleak. The long willow leaves were quite yellow, the dewdrops fell like water, leaf after leaf dropped from the trees; the sloe thorn alone still bore fruit, but the sloes were sour and set the teeth on edge. Oh, how dark and weary the whole world appeared!

Shards of Glass: Meet the Character: The Ice Fisher Fairy

 

“When she turned her back to us, I saw she had a tail like a donkey’s or a cow’s, the main part of it just the same color as her skin, and the little tuft at the end matching her hair.”

“I am going to tell you a story older than fairy land itself, just as soon as I’ve caught this fish.”

The ice fisher fairy is a huldra who lives far in the north so that she can go ice fishing all year round. She lives in her fish house, which is bigger on the inside, and communicates with her neighbor by messages sent through sporadic quest-goers. Her mother told her a story, long, long ago, of an enchanted mirror that cursed humanity.

See jennyprater.com for more information on Shards of Glass.

The Snow Queen: Story the Second: A Little Boy and a Little Girl

 So part two is where things really get going. It’s where we meet Kai, Gerda, the grandmother, and the Snow Queen. This is the only section that really focuses on Kai, before he spends the next four sections missing.

I did take a lot of inspiration from this section for my book—the snow bees, the shared garden with the rose bush, the houses right close together. The emphasis, moving forward, on roses or bees. Kai’s skill for mimicry and mathematics.

This section opens by introducing us to Kai and Gerda. Then it introduces us to the idea of the Snow Queen, in a story that comes from Kai’s grandmother. She’s telling the children about snowflakes, describing them as snow bees, and Kai asks if they have a queen, like real bees. Grandma tells him that they do—the Snow Queen.

It’s important to note the grandmother doesn’t describe the Snow Queen as a villain or a threat—just the queen of the snow bees.

It’s unclear why Kai threatens to melt her on the stove—he doesn’t have the mirror shard to make him cruel yet, and she isn't described as someone who needs to be done away with. Maybe it’s just him being a little boy; they can be jerks sometimes.

Kai sees the Snow Queen in his window that night, and the next day, spring comes. In the spring, the shards of our evil, enchanted mirror from part one fly into Kai—one in his eye, one in his heart. These instantly distort the way Kai sees the world, and make him cruel. They also, oddly, instill in him a love for snowflakes.

When the winter comes again, Kai is taken by the Snow Queen. For a given value of “taken.”

She rides through the town square on her sleigh, and Kai hooks his sled (Gerda’s, actually—he borrowed it) onto the back. He doesn’t ask for permission to do this. He doesn’t interact with her at all until she’s ridden back out of town, pulling him along. At this point he considers unhooking himself, but she signals that he should stay, so he does.

At one point, he becomes afraid, and tries to pray, but he can’t remember how. He can only remember math.

Eventually, the Snow Queen brings him up into her sleigh. She kisses him, which completes the process, already started by the mirror, of freezing his heart. Then she stops kissing him, saying any more would kill him--apparently your heart can only freeze so much before it’s unsafe.

I don’t think this is, like, creepy. The kisses aren’t…inappropriate. We aren’t meant to read anything into them. Especially taking into account the equally non-romantic kisses we’ll see in part seven. These kisses are just the method by which the ice is spread.

Kai’s gotten over his gear by this point, and he no longer feels cold. We close out part two on him bragging to the Snow Queen about all the math he can do, as they ride off into the winter together.

SECOND STORY: A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL

(Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be posting both the text of the Snow Queen, and my thoughts on it. This is the text of the second section. All text comes from the public domain translation of Andersen’s works edited by J. H. Stickney and published in 1886. The illustrations, by Edna Hart, are from this edition as well.)

In a large town full of houses and people there is not room for everybody to have even a little garden. Most people are obliged to content themselves with a few flowers in flowerpots.

In one of these large towns lived two poor children who had a garden somewhat larger and better than a few flowerpots. They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other almost as much as if they had been. Their parents lived opposite each other in two garrets where the roofs of neighboring houses nearly joined each other, and the water pipe ran between them. In each roof was a little window, so that any one could step across the gutter from one window to the other.

The parents of each of these children had a large wooden box in which they cultivated kitchen vegetables for their own use, and in each box was a little rosebush which grew luxuriantly.

After a while the parents decided to place these two boxes across the water pipe, so that they reached from one window to the other and looked like two banks of flowers. Sweet peas drooped over the boxes, and the rosebushes shot forth long branches, which were trained about the windows and clustered together almost like a triumphal arch of leaves and flowers.

The boxes were very high, and the children knew they must not climb upon them without permission; but they often had leave to step out and sit upon their little stools under the rosebushes or play quietly together.

In winter all this pleasure came to an end, for the windows were sometimes quite frozen over. But they would warm copper pennies on the stove and hold the warm pennies against the frozen pane; then there would soon be a little round hole through which they could peep, and the soft, bright eyes of the little boy and girl would sparkle through the hole at each window as they looked at each other. Their names were Kai and Gerda. In summer they could be together with one jump from the window, but in winter they had to go up and down the long staircase and out through the snow before they could meet.

"See! there are the white bees swarming," said Kai's old grandmother one day when it was snowing.

"Have they a queen bee?" asked the little boy, for he knew that the real bees always had a queen.

"To be sure they have," said the grandmother. "She is flying there where the swarm is thickest. She is the largest of them all and never remains on the earth, but flies up to the dark clouds. Often at midnight she flies through the streets of the town and breathes with her frosty breath upon the windows; then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful forms that look like flowers and castles."

"Yes, I have seen them," said both the children; and they knew it must be true.

"Can the Snow Queen come in here?" asked the little girl.

"Only let her come," said the boy. "I'll put her on the warm stove, and then she'll melt."

The grandmother smoothed his hair and told him more stories.

That same evening when little Kai was at home, half undressed, he climbed upon a chair by the window and peeped out through the little round hole. A few flakes of snow were falling, and one of them, rather larger than the rest, alighted on the edge of one of the flower boxes. Strange to say, this snowflake grew larger and larger till at last it took the form of a woman dressed in garments of white gauze, which looked like millions of starry snowflakes linked together. She was fair and beautiful, but made of ice—glittering, dazzling ice. Still, she was alive, and her eyes sparkled like bright stars, though there was neither peace nor rest in them. She nodded toward the window and waved her hand. The little boy was frightened and sprang from the chair, and at the same moment it seemed as if a large bird flew by the window.

On the following day there was a clear frost, and very soon came the spring. The sun shone; the young green leaves burst forth; the swallows built their nests; windows were opened, and the children sat once more in the garden on the roof, high above all the other rooms.

How beautifully the roses blossomed this summer! The little girl had learned a hymn in which roses were spoken of. She thought of their own roses, and she sang the hymn to the little boy, and he sang, too:

"Roses bloom and fade away;

The Christ-child shall abide alway.

Blessed are we his face to see

And ever little children be."

Then the little ones held each other by the hand, and kissed the roses, and looked at the bright sunshine, and spoke to it as if the Christ-child were really there. Those were glorious summer days. How beautiful and fresh it was out among the rosebushes, which seemed as if they would never leave off blooming.

One day Kai and Gerda sat looking at a book of pictures of animals and birds. Just then, as the clock in the church tower struck twelve, Kai said, "Oh, something has struck my heart!" and soon after, "There is certainly something in my eye."

The little girl put her arm round his neck and looked into his eye, but she could see nothing.

"I believe it is gone," he said. But it was not gone; it was one of those bits of the looking-glass,—that magic mirror of which we have spoken,—the ugly glass which made everything great and good appear small and ugly, while all that was wicked and bad became more visible, and every little fault could be plainly seen. Poor little Kai had also received a small splinter in his heart, which very quickly turned to a lump of ice. He felt no more pain, but the glass was there still. "Why do you cry?" said he at last. "It makes you look ugly. There is nothing the matter with me now. Oh, fie!" he cried suddenly; "that rose is worm-eaten, and this one is quite crooked. After all, they are ugly roses, just like the box in which they stand." And then he kicked the boxes with his foot and pulled off the two roses.

"Why, Kai, what are you doing?" cried the little girl; and then when he saw how grieved she was he tore off another rose and jumped through his own window, away from sweet little Gerda.

When afterward she brought out the picture book he said, "It is only fit for babies in long clothes," and when grandmother told stories he would interrupt her with "but"; or sometimes when he could manage it he would get behind her chair, put on a pair of spectacles, and imitate her very cleverly to make the people laugh. By and by he began to mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street. All that was peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, and people said, "That boy will be very clever; he has a remarkable genius." But it was the piece of glass in his eye and the coldness in his heart that made him act like this. He would even tease little Gerda, who loved him with all her heart.

His games too were quite different; they were not so childlike. One winter's day, when it snowed, he brought out a burning glass, then, holding out the skirt of his blue coat, let the snowflakes fall upon it.

"Look in this glass, Gerda," said he, and she saw how every flake of snow was magnified and looked like a beautiful flower or a glittering star.

"Is it not clever," said Kai, "and much more interesting than looking at real flowers? There is not a single fault in it. The snowflakes are quite perfect till they begin to melt."

Soon after, Kai made his appearance in large, thick gloves and with his sledge at his back. He called upstairs to Gerda, "I've got leave to go into the great square, where the other boys play and ride." And away he went.

In the great square the boldest among the boys would often tie their sledges to the wagons of the country people and so get a ride. This was capital. But while they were all amusing themselves, and Kai with them, a great sledge came by; it was painted white, and in it sat some one wrapped in a rough white fur and wearing a white cap. The sledge drove twice round the square, and Kai fastened his own little sledge to it, so that when it went away he went with it. It went faster and faster right through the next street, and the person who drove turned round and nodded pleasantly to Kay as if they were well acquainted with each other; but whenever Kai wished to loosen his little sledge the driver turned and nodded as if to signify that he was to stay, so Kai sat still, and they drove out through the town gate.

Then the snow began to fall so heavily that the little boy could not see a hand's breadth before him, but still they drove on. He suddenly loosened the cord so that the large sledge might go on without him, but it was of no use; his little carriage held fast, and away they went like the wind. Then he called out loudly, but nobody heard him, while the snow beat upon him, and the sledge flew onward. Every now and then it gave a jump, as if they were going over hedges and ditches. The boy was frightened and tried to say a prayer, but he could remember nothing but the multiplication table.

The snowflakes became larger and larger, till they appeared like great white birds. All at once they sprang on one side, the great sledge stopped, and the person who had driven it rose up. The fur and the cap, which were made entirely of snow, fell off, and he saw a lady, tall and white; it was the Snow Queen.

"We have driven well," said she; "but why do you tremble so? Here, creep into my warm fur." Then she seated him beside her in the sledge, and as she wrapped the fur about him, he felt as if he were sinking into a snowdrift.

"Are you still cold?" she asked, as she kissed him on the forehead. The kiss was colder than ice; it went quite through to his heart, which was almost a lump of ice already. He felt as if he were going to die, but only for a moment—he soon seemed quite well and did not notice the cold all around him.

"My sledge! Don't forget my sledge," was his first thought, and then he looked and saw that it was bound fast to one of the white birds which flew behind him. The Snow Queen kissed little Kai again, and by this time he had forgotten little Gerda, his grandmother, and all at home.

"Now you must have no more kisses," she said, "or I should kiss you to death."

Kai looked at her. She was so beautiful, he could not imagine a more lovely face; she did not now seem to be made of ice as when he had seen her through his window and she had nodded to him.

In his eyes she was perfect, and he did not feel at all afraid. He told her he could do mental arithmetic as far as fractions, and that he knew the number of square miles and the number of inhabitants in the country. She smiled, and it occurred to him that she thought he did not yet know so very much.

He looked around the vast expanse as she flew higher and higher with him upon a black cloud, while the storm blew and howled as if it were singing songs of olden time. They flew over woods and lakes, over sea and land; below them roared the wild wind; wolves howled, and the snow crackled; over them flew the black, screaming crows, and above all shone the moon, clear and bright—and so Kai passed through the long, long winter's night, and by day he slept at the feet of the Snow Queen.

Shards of Glass: Meet the Characters: Gerda

 

“You don’t stop loving people just because they become unlovable.”

“I’ve spent my whole life one wall away from Kai.”

Gerda is a 17 year old girl living in Minnesota with her adopted parents, who are her bio uncle and aunt. She is Taiwanese-American. They live in a duplex/townhouse, with Kai and his grandmother in the other unit.

It’s been a long time since they were close, but Kai is still an important part of Gerda’s life, and she’s not ready to give up on him.

She struggles to connect with others, and often feels like an outsider. She likes stories, and roses, and baking with Kai’s grandma.

See jennyprater.com for more information on Shards of Glass.

The Snow Queen: Story the First: Which Describes a Looking-Glass and its Broken Fragments

 

(Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be posting both the text of the Snow Queen, and my thoughts on it. This is the text of the first section. All text comes from the public domain translation of Andersen’s works edited by J. H. Stickney and published in 1886. I have changed the spelling of Kai's name from Kay to Kai in this text, as it is the spelling I prefer. The illustrations, by Edna Hart, are from this edition as well.)

YOU must attend to the beginning of this story, for when we get to the end we shall know more than we now do about a very wicked hobgoblin; he was one of the most mischievous of all sprites, for he was a real demon.

One day when he was in a merry mood he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it shrink almost to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad was magnified so as to look ten times worse than it really was.

The most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and all the people became hideous and looked as if they stood on their heads and had no bodies. Their countenances were so distorted that no one could recognize them, and even one freckle on the face appeared to spread over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very amusing. When a good or holy thought passed through the mind of any one a wrinkle was seen in the mirror, and then how the demon laughed at his cunning invention.

All who went to the demon's school—for he kept a school—talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and its inhabitants were really like. They carried the glass about everywhere, till at last there was not a land nor a people who had not been looked at through this distorted mirror.

They wanted even to fly with it up to heaven to see the angels, but the higher they flew the more slippery the glass became, and they could scarcely hold it. At last it slipped from their hands, fell to the earth, and was broken into millions of pieces.

But now the looking-glass caused more unhappiness than ever, for some of the fragments were not so large as a grain of sand, and they flew about the world into every country. And when one of these tiny atoms flew into a person's eye it stuck there, unknown to himself, and from that moment he viewed everything the wrong way, and could see only the worst side of what he looked at, for even the smallest fragment retained the same power which had belonged to the whole mirror.

Some few persons even got a splinter of the looking-glass in their hearts, and this was terrible, for their hearts became cold and hard like a lump of ice. A few of the pieces were so large that they could be used as windowpanes; it would have been a sad thing indeed to look at our friends through them. Other pieces were made into spectacles, and this was dreadful, for those who wore them could see nothing either rightly or justly. At all this the wicked demon laughed till his sides shook, to see the mischief he had done. There are still a number of these little fragments of glass floating about in the air, and now you shall hear what happened with one of them.

The Snow Queen: Story the First: Which Describes a Looking Glass and Its Broken Fragments

 

This first part of the story is very different from the following six—it contains none of the same characters or settings, but it serves to explain the significance of everything that happens next. It’s vital to understanding Kai, to understanding the Snow Queen, and to understanding the themes of the rest of the story.

In this section, a demon makes a mirror that distorts every good thing it reflects, and amplifies everything bad. The demons rejoice that this mirror allows others to see the world as it truly is, and fly it to the heavens to see how it reflects the angels. But they drop it, and break it, at fragments of the enchanted glass fly all over the world. Some of these fragments land it people’s eyes or hearts, corrupting and changing them, and two of these, we’ll learn in the next section, land in Kai—one in his eye, and one in his heart.

Though he won’t be mentioned again, the devil who made the mirror is the true villain of the story—not the Snow Queen. The Snow Queen is…incidental. For Kai, this is a story about the world—represented by the enchanted mirror—corrupting a child. If there were no mirror shard, he would never go away with the Snow Queen. This broken mirror is the driving force behind the story.

The first part is vital, fundamental, and pretty straightforward, so I don’t have much to say about it today. Be sure to read the actual text, which I’ve posted here, and check back in next week for part two.

Shards of Glass: Meet the Characters: The Reindeer

 

“I am a magical creature, and here in my home I can feed on the cold, though in the city I must eat like you and everyone.”

“I’m sorry - I’m not a brave beast.”

The reindeer has been living in a walk-in closet for a long time. It’s not an ideal living situation, but it would be worse if the closet’s owners learned he could talk. He trusts Gerda with his story, and he’s happy to take her to the Snow Queen’s palace in exchange for his freedom, as long as he doesn’t have to face the Snow Queen himself.

See jennyprater.com for more information on Shards of Glass.

The Snow Queen

 

The Snow Queen is a story told in seven parts, which we’ll be breaking down over the next several weeks. But first, an introduction: 

The Snow Queen was written by Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1844. Andersen has produced many classic, beloved stories - The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Matchgirl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Some happy, some funny, some tragic. Of all his stories, The Snow Queen has always held a special place in my heart. It’s a story about faith. About friendship. About growing up. But mostly, it’s a story about love. 

It’s a beautiful story, and one we’ll be spending a lot of time with over the next few months. We will be coving one of the seven sections for each of the next seven weeks, and then moving on to other Snow Queen and Shards of Glass related content.

Shards of Glass

 

“When Gerda's neighbor and childhood friend disappears into the Mississippi, she refuses to believe he's dead. A spontaneous rescue mission leads her to a strange new land, full of fairies, trolls, and talking flowers. To find her friend, she must travel through this land, to a palace at the top of the world. But reaching the palace is only the beginning-she has to get him home again, too.”

My second novel, Shards of Glass, will be released on September 26, with preorders opening in early August. Shard of Glass is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Starting in not-quite-modern Minnesota, it follows seventeen-year-old Gerda as she chases after an old friend given up for dead by everyone else.

This is just a quick intro post - we’ll be talking more about both Shards of Glass and The Snow Queen over the course of the summer. Patrons will have access to most posts one week early.