beautiful landscapes looked like cooked spinach in it, and the best people became nasty looking or stood on their heads without stomachs. Faces became so contorted that they were unrecognizable, and if you had a freckle, you could be sure that it would cover your nose and mouth. The devil said that it was great fun. If a person had a good, pious thought, a sneer would appear in the mirror, and the troll devil would laugh in glee at his clever invention. All those who attended the troll-school—you see, he conducted a troll-school-spread the word that a miracle had occurred. It was now possible to see, they said, what the world and people really looked like. They ran around with the mirror, and finally there wasn’t a country or a person who hadn’t been distorted in it. Then they wanted to fly up to heaven itself to make fun of the angels and the Lord. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more it sneered. They could hardly hold on to it. Higher and higher they flew, closer to God and the angels. Then the mirror shook so violently from sneering that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth where it broke in hundreds of millions, billions, and even more pieces, bringing about even more unhappiness than before. This was because some of the pieces were no bigger than a grain of sand, and these flew about in the world, and when they got into people’s eyes, they stayed there and people saw everything wrong, or only had an eye for what was wrong with a thing since every little piece of mirror retained the power of the whole. Some people also got a little piece of the mirror in their hearts, and it was quite dreadful. The heart became like a clump of ice. Some of the mirror pieces were so big that they were used for window panes, but you wouldn’t want to look at your friends through those. Other pieces were used for glasses, and then it went badly when people put them on just to see and to see justly. The devil laughed so his sides split, and he was tickled pink! But in the air some pieces of mirror were still flying around. Now listen to what happened!
SECOND STORY
A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL
In the big city, where there are so many houses and people that there isn’t enough space for all people to have a little garden, and where most people have to be contented with flowers in pots, there lived two poor children who had a garden slightly larger than a flowerpot. They weren’t brother and sister, but they loved each other as if they were. Their parents lived right next to each other in two garret rooms, where the roof from one house leaned right up against its neighbor, and the gutters ran along the edges of the roof. From each house a little garret window opened, and you just had to stride over the gutters to get from one window to the next.
The parents each had a large wooden box outside their windows, and here they grew kitchen herbs that they used for cooking, and a little rose tree. There was one in each box, and they grew very nicely. Then the parents decided to place the boxes crosswise over the gutters so they almost reached from one window to the next, and it looked almost exactly like two flower beds. The peas hung down over the boxes, and the rose trees shot out long shoots that wound around the windows and turned towards each other so that it became almost a kind of arbor of greenery and flowers. Since the boxes were very high, the children knew that they couldn’t climb on them, but they were often allowed to climb out to each other and sit on their small footstools under the roses. And they played there very nicely.
Of course in the winter, that pleasure was over. The windows were often covered with frost, but then they warmed copper pennies on the stove, laid them against the frosty panes, and made delightful peepholes that were perfectly round. Behind each peered a gentle and friendly eye, one from each window; it was the little boy and the little girl. His name was Kai and hers was Gerda. In the summer they could easily see each other with just a leap, but in the winter they had to go down many, many steps and then up many more steps, and outside the snow drifted around.
“The white bees are swarming,” said the old grandmother.
“Do they have a queen bee too?” asked the little boy because he knew that the real bees had one.
“They do!” said grandmother. “She is flying where they are closest together. She is the biggest of them all, and she never rests on this earth. She flies up into the black clouds. Many winter nights she flies through the city’s streets and peeks in the windows, and then they freeze so strangely, like flowers.”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen that!” said both children, and then they knew it was true.
“Can the Snow Queen come inside here?” asked the little girl.
“Just let her come,” said the boy, “and I’ll set her on the warm stove so she’ll melt.”
But the grandmother smoothed his hair and told other stories.
That evening when little Kai was home and partly undressed, he crept up on his chair by the window and peered out of his little peephole. A couple of snowflakes fell outside, and one of these, the biggest, remained lying on the edge of one of the flower boxes. The snowflake grew and grew, finally it became a woman, dressed in the finest whitest gauze, as though she were made of millions of star-like specks. She was very beautiful and fine, but made of ice, the dazzling, gleaming ice—still she was alive. Her eyes stared like two clear stars, but there was no calm or quiet in them. She nodded at the window and waved her hand. The little boy became frightened and leaped down from the chair, and then it was as if a big bird flew by the window.
The next day there was clear frost—and then came spring. The sun shone, greenery sprouted, the swallows built nests, windows were opened, and the little children once again sat in their little garden high up in the gutters above all the stories of the house.
The roses bloomed so exceptionally that summer; the little girl had learned a hymn, and there were roses in it, and when she heard it, she thought of her own and sang it for the little boy, and he sang along:
And the little ones held hands, kissed the roses, and looked at God’s clear sunshine and talked to it, as if the Christ child were there. What beautiful summer days they were! How blessed it was to be out by the fresh rose trees that never seemed to stop blooming!
Kai and Gerda sat looking at a picture book of animals and birds, it was then—the clock struck five on the big church tower—that Kai cried, “Ouch! Something stuck my heart! And I have something in my eye!”
The little girl took hold of his neck to look. He blinked his eyes—no, there was nothing to be seen.
“I think it’s gone,” he said, but it wasn’t gone. It was one of those splinters that had come from the mirror, the troll mirror, the one that we surely remember: the nasty glass which made everything good and great reflected in it seem small and ugly, while the evil and worthless qualities stood out, so that every flaw in a thing was immediately noticed. Poor Kai had also gotten a piece right into his heart. It would soon become like a clump of ice. After a while it didn’t hurt anymore, but it was there.
“Why are you crying?” he asked. “It makes you look ugly! There’s nothing wrong with me! Yuck!” he cried out.
