The Snow Queen
In the original story she’s a cold, heartless fairy drawn to the cold intelligence of a boy named Kai and the evil mirror shards in his eyes and heart. She lures him away from his home town, and once he’s hopelessly lost in the snowy forest, she kisses him to wipe away his memories and whisks him away to her fortress in the far north. The legend says the Snow Queen kidnapped Kai to turn him into her pet in a wasteland where humans have no hope of long-term survival. Talk about cruel.
The young princess
She was a Sentient of the 4th Age, a being whose soul was an open conduit for the emotions, sensations, and feelings of others. Born empathic beyond endurance, her body was overwhelmed by human proximity; others’ pain became her own, magnified. Joy unmoored her; grief left her fevered for days. To be near others was agony. To touch was torment.
She tried to live among humans in the early settlements of the far north, but they misunderstood her suffering. When she wept at their joy or collapsed in their sorrow, they whispered she was cursed. Some called her a witch. Others accused her of stealing their warmth. She fled, walking north until she found the edge of the world, and remained there in isolation. There, she did something both sorrowful and wry: she crowned herself queen of a kingdom of one.
A kingdom of one
Then, one day, a traveler named Kai was lost in the snows. She found him unconscious near the river, skin pale and lips blue. She might have passed him by; she had done so before with others. But something stirred in her. Perhaps he was just quiet enough for her to bear. Perhaps his pain, like hers, was too deep to speak aloud.
She took him into her palace and warmed him with fire and contact. She spoke to him in dreams. He awoke, not healed, but still breathing and asked where he was. She told him only: “Nowhere. And that is why it does not hurt.”
A sorceress eventually arrived, stealing Kai back from her. She let him go, as she had always known she would. She remained, but something had shifted. Her empathy, once unbearable, was now only a flicker. The threads that once tied her to all living souls had unraveled.
A lonely end
It was in such a state that the Snow Queen carved a prophetic poem into granite and buried it to the movement of time in the depths of river ice. Thousands of years later, the glacier carried the tablet south, where it was discovered by the All-Father, Odin.
It read:
When silence breaks and breath grows thin,
The changeling child shall draw the night.
With hollow soul and frost-bound skin,
She comes to end the world of light.
She feels the grief of every name,
Each joy and sorrow ever known.
She bears the weight, but none the blame.
The ice shall rise, the seed is sown.
Half living girl, half deathless void,
No god may touch, no blade may bind.
Where she has passed, the stars grow void,
And warmth is left to burn behind.
Her army rises from below,
The broken souls, the cold, the wronged.
Their weeping turns to winds and snow,
Their silence swells in death’s own song.
The Wheel shall crack, the sky shall pale,
And none shall halt the child unseen.
The changeling walks the final trail.
The end shall wear a crown of green.
The Wheel of Time
1st Age – Daphne Du Cadeau de Volthström
2nd Age – Odette Dravahl
3rd Age – Raqual Vasudevna, Aes Sedai of the White Ajah
4th Age – The Snow Queen
5th Age – Yuki-onna
0 Comments