“I think it must have been, don’t you?” my grandmother responded. “I’ve always thought that, when the queen looked in the mirror for that last time, she saw that she was just as beautiful as she had always been. Her face had not changed at all. Her beauty had not diminished, but still the king’s love had fled.
“In that instant, the queen realized what she had done. She had brought the very woe she dreaded upon herself by giving in to her fear and closing off her heart. And her heart, grown smaller by staying so tightly wrapped, could not expand again. It could not contain this bitter knowledge and her fear all at once. Her heart shattered, just as she had shattered the mirror.”
“And she perished in that same instant,” I murmured, as I remembered what came next.
“She did.” My grandmother nodded. “But she left behind her child and countless others, all with a sliver of ice in their hearts. So the wrong the Winter Child must right also was decided in the instant of her mother’s death.
“To travel the world in search of all those wounded hearts and to mend them, one by one.”
“But that could take forever,” Kai protested.
“It will take as long as it must,” my grandmother replied. “When the Winter Child turned sixteen,” she went on, in a tone of voice that signaled she was returning to her storytelling and would tolerate no more interruptions, “the age when many young heroes begin their quests, the very day she turned sixteen, Deirdre, the Winter Child, set out on her journey.
“She put on a dress of linen, fine as gossamer. Over it she tied a woolen cloak as white as snow. She laced her feet into a pair of crystal boots as sturdy as the stars. She took a staff of pale ash wood into her hand, and she kissed her father the king good-bye. Then she turned and walked away from the palace made of ice, and she left the land of ice and snow behind.
“She did not look back, not even once. Though she must have wanted to, I think, don’t you?”
I sat for a moment, my hands resting on the sewing in my lap, trying to imagine what it must be like to leave your home. Not because you wanted to, but because you must. Because you must right a wrong not your own.
Oh yes, I thought. She must have wanted to look back very, very much.
“She has been traveling the world ever since, seeking out and mending those damaged hearts, one by one. As long as Deirdre is on her journey, the magic of her quest embraces her, just as the arms of the North Wind did, so very long ago. She will never grow a day older, for she cannot continue her own life until her task is done. For most of us, the Winter Child is invisible, for she is not made to be seen by ordinary eyes.
“Even so,” my oma continued in a hushed and reverent tone, “in the silence after a winter storm has ceased to howl, in the soft whisper of a morning snowfall, in the way the moonlight sparkles over new-fallen snow, you can feel when she has been nearby, ever searching. You can sense the presence of the Winter Child.”
“But ...,” Kai said yet again, and with that single word, he broke the storytelling spell.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I cried. “Why must you always take everything apart to see how it works? Can’t you just close your eyes and enjoy the story?”
“Grace,” my grandmother said softly.
I immediately fell silent, for I knew that tone. All of us have heard some version of it at one time or another from those who love us most: the sound that says, I am disappointed in you. That was badly done.
“I’m sorry, Oma,” I mumbled.
My grandmother fixed her dark eyes on me, but she said nothing. I gave an inward sigh. I love my oma with all my heart, but there’s no denying her will of iron. She says I am like her in this, but I’m not so sure. For when my will comes up against hers, mine is always the one that bends.
“I’m sorry, Kai,” I said, for my grandmother’s point, of course, was that she was not the one who truly deserved my apology. “Please, go on.”
“I just want to know one more thing,” Kai said, and I could hear him struggling to keep the surliness out of his voice.
“And what is that?” my grandmother asked.
“What about the heart of the Winter Child? Who will mend that?”
At this, Kai’s mother, Frue Holmgren, who had been silent for so long I’d almost forgotten that she was there, made a small sound. She performed a strange gesture, as if trying to snatch Kai’s words right out of the air.
“Ah,” my grandmother said with a sigh. “Now you have come to the heart of the Winter Child’s tale, Kai.
“Even if Deirdre finds all the other wounded hearts and mends them, one by one, dissolving all the slivers of ice, driving out fear so that the hearts may know true love, there is still the matter of who will mend the Winter Child’s own heart.
“Does the task fall to her or to someone else? No telling of the story I have ever heard has answered this question.”
“Then perhaps,” I said, determined not to let Kai outdo me when it came to observation, “the solution lies not in her tale at all, but in someone else’s.”
“Perhaps,” agreed my oma.
There was a moment’s silence. Kai stared down at his sewing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my oma reach out and take Frue Holmgren by the hand. And suddenly, I realized how late it was. The room was close and warm, and I was tired.
“I still think the king gave his daughter the wrong name,” Kai said. “He should not have named her Sorrow.”
Oma squeezed Frue Holmgren’s fingers, and then let them go. “What name would you have chosen?” she inquired.
Kai looked up, his eyes fierce as they stared at my grandmother’s face. “Hope,” he said. “That’s really what she brings, isn’t it? So that’s what her father should have named her.”
My grandmother’s expression softened. But as she leaned to place the palm of one hand against Kai’s cheek, I was astonished to see that tears had risen in her eyes.
“Your true love will be fortunate in your heart, I think,” she said. “For it is strong and whole. So will your love be, when you choose to give it.”
With that, Oma leaned back and took up her sewing, and none of us said anything more.
THREE
My grandmother told us many stories, but somehow, it was always the tale of the Winter Child that Kai and I loved best of all. Awakening in the morning, we imagined we saw the flare of her gossamer skirts in the patterns the ice formed outside our windows overnight. We heard the sound of her crystal boots in the noise the ice made as it scoured the walls and roof through the long, dark winter nights. Somehow, these flights of fancy helped to make our own winters more bearable.
Winter is not just a passing fancy in the land of my birth. It comes early and stays late. It can be beautiful, but it is also fierce and cunning, not to be ignored. Looking for traces of the Winter Child, wondering how many hearts she would mend that year, kept Kai and me busy until spring returned and we could be outdoors.
Even then, however, Kai always seemed to take the story more seriously than I did. It was as if, in his own heart, he didn’t think of it as a made-up tale at all. Even as he used his sharp eyes to look closely at the world and so discover how it worked, Kai kept this one flight of fancy: He believed in the Winter Child.
As time went on, of course, we had less and less time for stories. We were both growing up. All too soon, our next birthdays would bring us to sixteen, the same age as the Winter Child herself. Kai had long since grown too old for staying at home. At twelve, he’d been apprenticed to Herre Lindstrom, who made and repaired clocks and watches.
Spending hour after hour hunched over all of those intricate pieces—springs so small and fine that if you dropped one it would disappear into the carpet and never be seen again, cogs with teeth and gaps between them designed to fit together in just one way and no other, even holding the tiny tools for such delicate work in my hands would have made me want to run screaming from the room. But Kai loved his hours in the watchmaker’s shop.
/> “Everything makes sense, Grace,” he said one afternoon, as we were walking together. Most days, when my sewing was done, I would leave home a little early to meet Kai, and we would walk home from Herre Lindstrom’s shop. It was one of the few times when we were alone. There were not as many opportunities for Kai and me to spend time together, now that we were growing up.
“A clock, a watch, can only work one way. If you can see what that way is, you can fix anything if it breaks.”
“I’m glad you like it so much,” I said in perfect honesty. “It would make my head hurt and my eyes water.”
Kai smiled. He turned his head to look at me, and then his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as if I was blurry and he was trying to bring me into focus. Lately, I had caught him doing this more and more. There was always an expression in his eyes I couldn’t quite decipher.
“I thought you said the sewing already did that,” he said at last.
I gave a snort. “You’re right. It does.”
Over the years, my oma’s eyesight had begun to fade. As a result, the fine handiwork that used to fall to her eyes and fingers now fell to mine. The curious thing was that the more I disliked the work, the tinier and more even my stitches had become, until at last I became somewhat famous as a seamstress. Even the ladies in the finest part of town desired my sewing.
Slowly, I had begun to earn enough money so that Oma and I could have moved into a nicer flat, or at least to one on a lower floor. But, by mutual consent, neither Oma nor I ever spoke of such a thing. She did not want to leave her rooftop garden, and I did not want to leave Kai.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” Kai said quietly.
Because we knew each other so well, he understood how, as my hands grew more proficient, my spirit struggled. As if the stitches I placed in other people’s garments somehow all conspired together to bind me to a life that wasn’t what I wanted. Not that I knew what I did want, mind you. It’s often easier to see what you don’t want than what you do. This is a fact of life that I’m hardly the first to have noticed.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I answered as we rounded a corner, leaving the shop district behind. We were entering the poorer quarter now, the place where we lived.
“It’s not as if it’s your fault,” I went on. “I’m happy that you like your work, Kai. Honestly, I am.”
“I know you are,” Kai said. “It’s just—”
“I know,” I said, cutting him off.
The fact that Kai spent his days doing something that matched his temperament so well, while I did something that matched mine so little, genuinely distressed him. I told myself that this was why he watched me in that close and quiet way of his.
“You could try something else,” he suggested now.
“Oh yes?” I answered, my tone short in spite of my best effort. We crossed the street, careful to avoid the horses.
“And just what did you have in mind, taking in laundry or scrubbing floors? Girls don’t get apprenticed like boys do, Kai, in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s not as if I have a lot of options.”
I could read and write, which was unusual for a girl from a poor family, but I did not possess any of the other skills that might have made me eligible to work as a governess or a teacher, even if that had been what I’d wanted.
Perhaps if I had seen a clearer vision for my handiwork, I might have dreamed of opening up a shop, of paying others to stitch clothes that I had designed. But I did not. I didn’t know quite what I wanted. I just knew I was tired of sitting still. There were days when it felt as if my whole body itched to be in motion.
So I headed to the rooftop as often as possible. Even in the dead of winter when I had to bundle up in so many layers that I looked like one of the snowmen the children dressed in cast-off clothes, I went. First thing in the morning, last thing before I went to bed at night, I climbed the stairs from the rooms I shared with my grandmother and clambered out onto the roof.
On the rooftop I could breathe. I could stand in one place and turn in a circle, catching a glimpse of at least some portion of the horizon in whichever direction I sent my eyes. At night, when I could no longer see the shapes of the world around me, I could tilt my gaze upward toward the stars.
On the days when my world felt so small I feared that I would suffocate as Kai’s father had so long ago, crushed by the weight of the world itself falling on top of him, standing on the rooftop was the only thing that revived me. On the rooftop I felt free, if only for a few moments.
And then something happened that changed both my life and Kai’s forever. My grandmother and his mother died and Kai and I were left alone.
It was the diphtheria that took them. Regular as clockwork, it came with the thaw each year, as if to make a mockery of the hope that spring should bring. Wrapping bony fingers around unsuspecting throats, and then slowly squeezing the life out of them. Kai’s mother fell ill first, and Oma went to nurse her, though both Kai and I urged her to stay at home.
“Your mother has no one else on earth but the three of us, Kai,” my grandmother said sternly as we huddled outside the Holmgrens’ door. Oma’s scarf was tied in a determined bow at her chin. She’d set her hands on her hips and had planted her feet, sure signs that she meant to have her way.
“Neither of you can be spared from your work. That leaves me. There’s no sense arguing about it, so you might as well save your breath. Now go out and buy me a chicken so I can make Hannah a nourishing broth.”
Kai and I exchanged a glance, and then Kai stepped aside and my grandmother marched through the Holmgrens’ front door. Oma did her best to nurse Kai’s mother back to health. In addition to the broth, she made a poultice for Frue Holmgren’s chest. She kept the fire going day and night to keep her warm. Nothing made any difference. Kai’s mother was dead before the month was out. The day Frue Holmgren was buried, my oma took to her bed.
“Grace,” she murmured late one night. By now, we both knew that Oma, too, was dying. “I want you to promise me something.”
“I will promise anything you like,” I said. “Only don’t tire yourself.”
My oma smiled. She held out a hand, and I slipped mine into it.
Cold, I thought. She is so very, very cold. Yet the room around us was so warm that I didn’t need the shawl I wore indoors in all but the warmest weather. It will not be long now, I thought.
“Promise me that you will use your eyes,” my oma said. “Promise me that you will let your heart follow them.”
“I will, Oma,” I said.
My grandmother squeezed my fingers. “Do one thing more for me, will you?” she asked.
“Anything,” I said.
“Tell me a story.”
If she’d asked me to stand on my head I could not have been more surprised. Oma always had been the storyteller. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the bed, one hand still clasping my grandmother’s.
“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a brave girl named Grace. ...”
Oma smiled. All through the night I sat beside her, spinning a tale about a girl who bore my name. And that was how Kai found us the next morning. Sitting together, hands still clasped, but by then my voice had fallen silent and Oma breathed no more.
We buried her in the old graveyard on the hill outside of town, not far from Kai’s parents. Beside Oma’s headstone were the markers that stood in memory of my father and mother who had been buried far from home. Many in the neighborhood came to pay their respects, but it was the flower vendor, Herre Johannes, who stayed the longest.
“If you need anything, Grace,” he said as we stood beside the grave. Herre Johannes turned the soft cap he always wore over and over in his hands. “Your oma and I were always good friends to each other. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t, Herre Johannes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Herre Johannes settled the cap back onto his head. He nodded to Kai and to me, then made his way back down the hill. Kai and I stood together, not qui
te touching.
In the days since Oma’s death, a strange awkwardness had fallen between Kai and me. We were on our own now, our lives forever altered by the loss of those we loved. And we were both sixteen, old enough to be considered adults. We had been together, living side by side, for as long as we could remember.
“Let’s go home now, Grace,” Kai said quietly. “If you want to, you can come back tomorrow.”
Without a word, I nodded, turning away from my grandmother’s grave. Which home? I wondered. Yours or mine? Who were Kai and I, how did we fit together, now that those whom we loved were gone?
I had seen Kai watching me, in that quiet way of his, in the days since Oma had died. Several times, I thought he was about to speak, but each time, he held his tongue. But I had a feeling today was the day I would learn what was on his mind.
“Do you think about the future, Grace?” he asked as we walked along.
Spring had come in earnest during Oma’s illness. Crocuses bloomed on the hillside. Above our heads, the sky was a perfect arc of deep, rich blue.
“Of course I think about it,” I answered, my tone shorter than I intended. I thought about the future all the time. Worried about it was more like it, not that worrying did me any good. Kai stayed silent.
I pulled in a breath and held it, my eyes on the green grass of the hill, the bright, new green that only appears with the first flush of spring as the earth renews itself. I let my breath out slowly and tried again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap. It just seems like kind of a silly question, that’s all. Of course I think about the future. What else is there to think about? It scares me.”
To my horror, I heard that my voice had dropped to a whisper. I felt the sudden sting of tears at the back of my eyes. All through the days of Oma’s illness, through every moment that had followed, I had done my best to overcome this fact. Without success.
“The future terrifies me,” I confessed now, my voice rising. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t see my way, Kai.”
Once Upon A Time (8) Winter’s Child Page 3
