Читать книгу Fairy Tales, Fables, And Legends - Beatrice Wilcken - Страница 6

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Far in the South is a mountain—a mountain of ice.

On the top of the mountain is a palace of ice, and in that palace reigns supreme the Ice Queen. Her eyes are like stars, brilliant and clear, her face snowy white. She is beautiful, but the poor Queen has no heart, she has a lump of ice in her breast and that never melts. She travels sometimes, then she puts on her head a silver crown, and a long flowing silver veil trimmed with fiery red. Human beings call it the Aurora Australis, but it is only the Ice Queen in all her beauty and glory who travels up to the sky to her only friend the polar star. The polar star once upon a time made love to the Ice Queen, but he soon found out she had no heart, so they got to be friends only, and every year she goes and visits him.

Once upon a time she was on her way to her friend, more beautiful looking than ever, when her eyes fell on the sea below. There, heaving up and down with the waves, was a ship, and tied to the mast a beautiful youth, the last survivor of the ship’s crew. Never had the Ice Queen seen so much beauty as in that upturned face.

She met his eyes, and the youth opened his arms towards her.

Then she folded her silver veil around him and carried him to her home.

She was so beautiful that the youth could do nothing else but look at her and wish he could love her, but you know she had no heart, and as human beings cannot exist without love the youth began to pine away and grow more sad every day.

The Ice Queen thought he wanted amusement, and she made him run over the ice with her, slide down the mountain and play at snowball, but it was of no use, he grew more and more silent, and more and more sad. Then she thought she would allow him to roam about sometimes, and she ordered her servant, the south wind, to take him on his wings when he went on her errands. But before the youth left on one of these excursions she told him he was bound to her for ever, unless he could find, when he was flying on the wings of her servant, some kind soul who would open the house door wide and let him in to step up to the homely fireside.

And the south wind sailed forth with him and blew over land and sea, shook the roof of the houses, rattled at the windows and doors, and every time the youth saw the fire on the hearth he called “Let me in, let me in, and save me,” but to all the people it only sounded like the sighing and wailing of the wind.

But there was one little cottage on the heath, lonely and solitary, where lived a mother and daughter.

Every time the wind came dancing round the cottage the sighing and thrilling grew louder, the girl’s eyes turned wistfully to the door, she rose from her seat to open it, but then the south wind carried the youth away, away back to the ice palace on the ice mountain, back to the beautiful Ice Queen.

And so time went on. The south wind carried the youth over land and sea, and back again many a time, and every time he saw the lonely cottage and the maiden with her wistful eyes, and every time his sighing grew louder, and one night when the south wind played around the cottage his cry was so loud that the girl rushed to the door and cried out “Come in, come in, whoever you are,” and in rushed the youth to the fireside. The south wind grew wild, shook the cottage to its foundation, knocked the chimney down, rattled mercilessly at the window, but, the youth and the maiden heard him not, they stood gazing at each other and all the world was forgotten.

The south wind had to go back to his Queen and tell the story of the rescued youth.

How wild with anger the Queen was. Down in the deepest cellars she ordered her servant, there to stop for years—and poor humanity rejoiced.

“The winters have been so mild,” they said.

The next evening the Queen bethought herself of her old friend the Polar Star. She put on her beauteous head her silver crown, wrapped herself in her magnificent silver veil with the fiery border, and rose high in the heavens.

And in the cottage door on the heath the youth and the maiden stood hand in hand gazing up at the wonderful—the glorious—beauty of the Ice Queen.