The Snow Queen (17 page)

“Is this the third test?”

The Snow Queen's servants had set down an unpainted pinewood chest on the marble tiles of the anteroom. Its sides and curving top were carved with runes.

“I want an embroidered cover for my jewel chest,” the Snow Queen said.

“I can do that,” said Gerda. “I can do crewel-work, and cross-stitch. And I'm clever at inventing patterns. Give me some silks, and I'll begin at once.”

“And where would I find embroidery silks?” asked the Woman of the North. “A good needlewoman supplies her own. No, these are the things you must stitch into your work — the purple of the lichen that grows on the stones beside the River of the Dead; a white swan's feather floating on that river; and the blood-red of the berries that grow at the entrance to the Dead Land. With these colours you must dye your yarns; your spindle and distaff and needle you must fashion for yourself.”

Beyond the Snow Queen's palace lay the hidden path to the Dead Land: a path that twisted and coiled its tortuous way downward through sunless gorges, wreathed in mist.

As the road steadily descended, the air grew milder and more humid. Now patches of grey earth, dead grass and broken stone showed through the snow. Still further, the snow had all but disappeared, leaving hummocks of sodden, spongy ground rising out of black meltwater pools. The clean, biting cold of the snowfields gave way to a damp grey chill that crept into the bones.

Jagged black boulders, their fissures and crevices rimed with hoarfrost, guarded the shores of the river that circled the Dead Land. A thick grey mist hid the farther bank. Everything was lifeless, colourless: black oily water, dull black stone, grey earth under a pewter sky. The only sound was the hungry suck and slap of the river as it washed upon the rocks.

“This is a terrible place,” Gerda whispered. There was a heavy, dragging feeling around her heart. Every emotion seemed to have been drained out of her; she was beyond terror, or horror, or despair. Nothing mattered, now. Why had she imagined she could rescue Kai? Why had she imagined Kai would want to be rescued? She would lie down on the black stones of the river shore, and let sleep overtake her.

She felt Ritva shaking her, so hard that her head rocked back on her shoulders. Pain lanced through her tongue as a tooth bit into it. She spat blood.

She leaned against Ritva, looking sadly at the bright splatter of crimson — the only patch of colour in this dreary place.

“Don't give up on me now,” snarled Ritva. “You started all this — now help me finish it.”

The pain in her mouth made Gerda angry, and the anger cleared her head a little. Irritably, she pushed Ritva away. “The lichen,” she said. “Where is the lichen? Help me look among the rocks.”

They searched for a long time, finding only rotting snow and stone rubble. “Let Ba smell it out,” Ritva said, untying the old beast's rope. Freed from his tether, the reindeer thrust a curious nose into the shadowy crevice between two tall pillars of rock. Crouching on her heels, Gerda dug her fingers cautiously into the crack, and pried loose a brittle, crumbling handful of grey-green moss.

She held it out to Ritva, who sniffed it, and tasted a bit of it on the end of her tongue, and finally put it away in her pack.

“Now for the white swan's feather,” Ritva said, and she sat down on a flat rock with her harp.

Ritva's hands flew over the strings and notes tumbled forth like bright beads of water. “Come to me,” she whispered, her fingers dancing. The music swelled, cascaded. And presently, gliding out of the grey mist that hid the entrance to the underworld, came three white swans.

Nearer and nearer they drifted, pale, glimmering shapes in the grey half-light. Ritva began to sing, a deep-throated wordless summoning. And then she reached out— slowly, gently — and plucked a single feather from the first swan's breast.

She turned, and smiled, and laid the feather in Gerda's outretched hand as gallantly as a soldier presenting a trophy to his queen.

But one more task remained. Across the cold grey river, at the gates of the Dead Kingdom, grew the berries whose blood-red colour Gerda must stitch into her pattern. And those berries seemed to Gerda as hopelessly out of reach as if they were growing a world away in her mother's kitchen-garden.

“The last task is always the hardest,” Ritva said, with gloomy resignation, and she began to unfasten her heavy wolfskin coat. Slowly she peeled off her cap, her boots, her leather tunic, a ragged sweater or two, her reindeer-skin breeches and the tattered woollen undervest she had stolen from a seaman.

“No, Ritva, you must not,” cried Gerda, when she realized what the robber-maid meant to do. “The water is too cold, too deep. Look out there in the middle, how fast the current runs.”

“I've swum in colder rivers than this,” said Ritva. “Stop chattering, and I'll fetch these accursed berries for you.” She took a length of cord from Ba's saddle-pack and and tied a drawstring pouch around her waist. “Take care of my harp,” she said, putting the awkward instrument into Gerda's hands. “And Ba.”

Shivering in the damp, raw air, she scrambled down the bank to the river's edge, and waded straight out into the current, as calmly as if she were stepping into a warm bath.

The water foamed and boiled around her — thigh, waist, shoulder high. For a moment or two her head bobbed upon the surface; then, as Gerda watched in horror, the river swept her up and she was gone.

Gerda's stomach clenched; panic, sour and choking, flooded her chest. Ritva is drowned for sure, she thought. I have let her do this for my sake, and now I will never see her again. Sick with fear — for Ritva, for herself — she prayed aloud, to the indifferent sky, and the silent, watchful stones:
Only let her
reach the other side, and return safe, and I will never lead her into
danger again
. She was not sure, at that moment, if she prayed to her own Christian God, or to the strange wild deities that haunted Ritva's world.

Endless moments passed. The river churned and eddied; mist-wraiths swirled above the other, hidden shore.

And then a dark head, wet and sleek as an otter's, broke though the surface.

Ritva swam to shore, breasting the current with powerful, steady strokes. Scowling and spitting out water, she clambered up onto the bank. The deerskin pouch hung sodden and heavy against her hip.

She tried to untie the cord, but was shivering so violently that her fingers would not obey her. “Take it,” she told Gerda through chattering teeth.

Gerda undid the knot, retrieved the bulging pouch and loosened its string. She peered inside. “You brought back the berries!”

“Well, didn't I say I would?” Ritva's jaw was clattering so hard that she could scarcely speak. “Now hand me my clothes, before I finish freezing to death.”

“How shall I stitch a fanciwork cover, with no needle, and without any silks?” sighed Gerda. “And as to the rest . . . ” She gathered up the reindeer moss, the red berries, the white swan's feather, and held them out to Ritva. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

“We boil them,” said Ritva, and she set off to the Snow Queen's kitchen in search of a kettle.

The Snow Queen's kitchen was a bleak, unwelcoming place. The floor was made of milky-white marble, the walls of glazed white tiles. Even the oven bricks were made of some glittery white stone. Gerda thought wistfully of her mother's bright kitchen with its cheerful curtains and embroidered chair covers, its painted crockery and enticing smells of spice and coffee and fresh-baked bread. Still, this was the warmest spot in the Snow Queen's palace, and Gerda huddled gratefully by the tall white porcelain-tiled stove, in which a low fire burned. Ritva, meanwhile, had dumped the handful of lichen into a pot, and retreated with it into the pantry. When she returned, she set the pot on the warm hob. Before long a sharp smell of ammonia filled the room.

“What stinks?” asked Gerda, with her hand over her nose.

“Never mind that,” said Ritva. “I'm making dye for your embroidery thread.”

“And what do we do now?”

“Now we leave it to ferment.”

She dumped the red berries into another pot, added water from the hearth-kettle, poked up the cooking fire, and set the pot to boil.

Then she opened the kitchen door and whistled to the great white wolf-dog who slept in a kennel just outside. He came to her at once, wriggling like a pup on his belly, tail thumping, tongue lolling, rubbing his huge white muzzle against her sleeve. “Nice dog, good dog,” muttered Ritva absently, as she combed her fingers through his long, thick hair.

“There's your embroidery silk,” she said, holding up handfuls of soft white undercoat.

“And how shall I turn it into yarn, without a spinning wheel?”

“What, should poor old Ba have carried a spinning wheel across the ice on his back?” asked Ritva. “My mother's people have no spinning wheels. Watch, and I'll show you how it's done.”

She picked up a loose clump of dog hair, drew it out and flattened it and wound it round her right hand. Tucking her tunic tightly under her thighs, she held the end of the hank in her left hand, while her right hand, moving adroitly up and down, rolled the hairs into a single thread across her knee. She wound the finished strand slowly around three fingers, holding it taut with thumb and forefinger, and eventually held up for Gerda's inspection a length of coarse, lumpy white yarn.

Gerda looked dubiously at it. “It's awfully thick,” she said. “And I still need a piece of canvas and a needle.”

“You must make do with reindeer skin,” Ritva told her. “And I'll carve you a needle out of bone. But you must draw the pattern.”

Gerda sat pondering this with her back pressed up against the stove. “Roses,” she said finally. “I'll make a pattern of roses, like the ones on our rooftop garden. And when Kai sees it, maybe it will remind him of home.”

The lichen had fermented into a violet-coloured soup; the stewed berries sat in a dark crimson juice. Ritva dipped one length of yarn into the lichen dye, and the other into the berry juice. The colours, when she held them up to admire them, were deep and rich.

“They're lovely,” said Gerda, and resolutely set to work.

The cold made her fingers so stiff and clumsy she could scarcely grip her needle. Every stitch through the tough reindeer hide was a painful effort, and before long tears of frustration were rolling down her cheeks. After a while her hands grew so numb that they no longer seemed attached to her wrists. She got up, flapped her arms and stamped her feet to keep the blood flowing, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and took up her stitchery again.

Over and over, with fierce determination, she forced the blunt bone needle through the hide. For my sake, she told herself, Ritva risked her life in the icy currents of the river. Though my fingers freeze, though my blood turns to ice in my veins, I will not complain about this simple seamstress's task.