The Snow Queen (4 page)
Awake at midnight in the silent house, Gerda stared out at the full moon riding high above the beechwoods. Was Kai watching that same moon through the branches of the pines in some northern forest?
Sweden
, she thought.
Kai is in Sweden.
How impossibly far away that seemed â yet those were Swedish lights that twinkled just across the narrow waters of the Sound.
In spite of all obstacles, all objections, Gerda knew what she must do.
“Katrine, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. If you will do this one thing, I will never ask for a favour again.”
“Gladly, if I can,” said Katrine, unsuspecting. “Shall I buy you a French bonnet in Copenhagen?”
“No, nothing like that. I want you to write me a letter.”
“Don't be silly, of course I shall write you a letter. We're not all like Kai, you know.”
Gerda shook her head. “No, listen to me. I want you to write me a letter, inviting me to stay with you for a fortnight in Copenhagen.”
Katrine's blonde eyebrows drew together. Her wide, pale brow wrinkled. “But Gerda, how can I do that? I am a guest myself, I could not be so presumptuous â ”
Gerda seized Katrine's two hands. “Hear me out, dearest Kat. I don't really mean to stay with you. But I must show my mother the invitation.”
“Gerda!” cried Katrine, her eyes widening. Half in horror, half in delight, she exclaimed, “You can't mean it! You wouldn't dare!”
“Why not? You know the Sorensens can't go to look for Kai, though they're half out of their minds with worry. You know how they are, they're embarrassed to make a fuss, so they've convinced themselves Kai can come to no harm. But who is this woman, this Baroness Aurore? Is she really a Baroness? Is she even a relation? Do you know what I think, Kat? I think she has placed a spell on Kai, and will not let him come home.”
“But how will you find him?”
“I told Kai's mother I wished to write to him, and she has given me his address.”
“But to set off alone, on such a journey â Gerda, it is unthinkable!”
“Why do you say so? By all accounts, Sweden is a civilized country. Are you not travelling alone, to visit your cousins?”
“But I am only going to Copenhagen, not off into the wilderness, and my cousins will send their carriage for me. Besides, my parents will know where I am!”
“I have a little egg money saved up â I too will hire a carriage. And my parents will know where
I
am â or at least, they will think they know. All you must do, dear Kat, is to write the letter. Is it so much to ask? I will say my prayers, never fear â God will watch out for me. And as soon as I have found Kai, I will send word.”
R
itva fought her way slowly out of sleep. Dream images clung to the edges of her mind like scraps of mist.
Her stomach felt queasy, her clenched neck and shoulder muscles ached, and there was a dull throbbing behind her eyes. Even her bones hurt. As she struggled to sit up, a pain between her ribs, sharp and unexpected as a knife thrust, made her cry out.
“It's about time you woke up.”
Ritva rubbed sleep out of her eyes. Her mother was standing at the end of her bed, holding a skinning knife.
“Go away,” said Ritva, lying back and covering her eyes with her forearm. “I'm sick.”
“Ah,” said her mother, sounding pleased. “Another dream?”
Ritva grunted.
“They're coming closer,” her mother observed, with evident satisfaction. “And what happened this time?”
None of your business, old woman, Ritva was tempted to say. Instead, she rolled over and turned her face to the wall.
“Oh, we're sulking today, are we?” Ritva felt a foot poke her sharply in the middle of her back.
She sat up, cursing, and met her mother's dark, impassive stare.
“You know well enough what happens,” Ritva said. “You dreamed the same dreams, once. Why must I live through it all again?”
“No dream is the same as any other dream,” her mother said. “And how am I to guide you, unless I know what paths you walk?”
“Listen, then, old woman,” said Ritva, “for I'll not tell it twice.” She drew a shallow, painful breath and began.
“In my dream I had been travelling for many days over marsh and tundra, and through forests of birch and pine. At last I came to the edge of an icebound sea. On the shore stood a great grey stone, which spoke to me out of a mouth filled with bear's teeth. âI am the earth's holding stone,' it said. âI hold down the fields, so that they will not blow away in the wind.' Then a creature like an ermine came to me, and said that he was my guide. He led me to a cave in the side of a mountain. All over the walls and roof and floor of the cave were mirrors, and in the middle of the cave a fire burned, so that it was like standing inside the sun.”
“Was there more?” her mother asked impatiently.
Ritva nodded.
“Well?”
“On the fire was a cauldron that seemed as big as half the earth, and beside it stood a giant working a bellows. I knew at once that I was going to die.” She shuddered, remembering what came next. “And then the man cut off my head, and chopped my body to pieces, and dropped everything into the cauldron. Afterwards he threw my fleshless bones into a river, and when they floated to the surface, he pulled them out, and flesh grew on them again. It was horrible,” she cried out. “ I felt every stroke of the axe. I felt the scalding heat of the cauldron, the icy cold of the river-bottom. I knew what it was to die by iron, and fire, and water.”
“Yes,” said Ritva's mother. “I remember that dream. There will be worse to come.”
O
n the morning of her departure, Gerda came down to breakfast in her plainest grey wool gown, her soberest bonnet, her sturdiest buttoned boots. The small wooden crucifix her grandmother had given her hung from a ribbon at her throat.
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Jensen, looking askance at her daughter's costume, “you're as drab as a churchmouse today. What a dull family Katrine's cousins will think us!”
“The roads will be dusty,” said Gerda, helping herself to bacon omelette. “Don't worry, I've packed my best dress in my portmanteau.”
She had assured her mother that Katrine's uncle would meet the stagecoach when she arrived in Copenhagen; but that, like so much else she had told her family this past week, was pure invention. When she reached Copenhagen she meant, instead, to take a room for the night at a respectable hostelry, rising before dawn to catch an early morning coach to Elsinore. If anyone should inquire why a young unmarried girl was travelling unaccompanied, she had her answer ready. “I am a governess,” she would explain, “on my way to take up my duties in a Swedish household.” Perhaps if she kept her distance, and discouraged conversation, no one would ask.
The carriage rattled northward from Copenhagen along the rough coast road, past red-tiled wayside inns and fishermen's huts. The sea wind, blowing in through the open windows, smelled of brine, and kelp, and rotting fish.
In the harbour at Elsinore Gerda boarded a ferry and crossed the narrow Sound to Sweden. The sea was quiet that day, the crossing uneventful. She stepped onto the pier at Helsingborg with a sense of relief at the miles she had already put behind her. She tried not to think of the distances that lay ahead.
She was excited, and astonished, and appalled, at what she had done. But now, standing in the cold grey daylight on the wharf at Helsingborg, in the shadow of the Keep, sudden panic seized her. She was in a strange town, in a country whose language and customs she barely understood. She had come too far, there was no possibility of turning back; and now she must find her own way, uninvited, unexpected, on unknown roads to a stranger's house. Her excitement faded, leaving behind a sick anxiety.
In one of the streets running back from the harbour she came upon a tavern, but it was filled with seamen shouting in a dozen foreign tongues, and she was afraid to go in. Finally a woman of the town noticed her hovering uncertainly in the courtyard.
“Lost, dearie?” the woman called out.
Gathering up her skirts and her portmanteau, Gerda picked her way across the cobbles. The woman, who was tall and very blonde, looked down at her with amusement.
“Can you tell me where I can find lodgings, and a carriage for hire? I must leave in the morning for Gothenburg.”
“There's an inn next street over,” said the woman. “And as to the stables, just follow your nose. Ask for Nels, the ostler, and tell him Annie sent you.”
Exhausted after the rough, dusty journey from Helsingborg, Gerda spent that night under yet another strange roof, in yet another unfamiliar city. In the morning she set out by canal boat along the great waterway that crosses Sweden, winding through rivers and lakes and series of locks like flights of stairs. Holiday-makers, business travellers, and dozens of chattering small children thronged the deck. Gerda mingled with the crowd in comfortable anonymity. Through the long sunlit days and evenings they glided through green corridors of birch and elm, past tidy stone-walled farmhouses, ancient castles, Viking burial mounds. Once Gerda would have delighted in the journey; now all she felt was a desperate impatience to reach the east coast, and Kai.
Beyond Stockholm, beyond Uppsala, Gerda's hired carriage jounced along a narrow forest track. Now and again it emerged from between black walls of pines into open meadowland, strewn with lichen-speckled boulders. The day was warm and damp, the sky overcast, and by late afternoon a thin rain had begun to drizzle through the trees.
The coachman reined up before the tall iron gates that marked the entrance to the Baroness Aurore's estate. On either side crouched improbable stone beasts, fanged jaws wide and roaring, talons clutching their stone pedestals, wings uplifted as though they were about to take flight. A chill wind had come up as the light faded, and now the rain was sweeping down in wide grey sheets.