Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Hans Christian Andersen

  The robbers grabbed little Helga around her white arm, but just then the sun set. The last ray of sunshine disappeared, and she was changed to a hideous frog. The whitish green mouth stretched across half her face. The arms became thin and slimy, and a wide hand with webbing stretched out like a fan. The robbers dropped her terrified. She stood as a hideous monster in their midst and in the manner of a frog, she jumped into the air, higher than her own height, and disappeared in the thicket. The robbers thought that this must be Loki’s evil trick,7 or secret black magic, and they hurried from that place terrified.

  The full moon was already risen. It gave radiance and light, and out from the thicket crept little Helga, in the pitiful shape of the frog. She stopped by the corpse of the Christian priest and by her murdered steed. She looked at them with eyes that seemed to cry. The frog head gave a start as when a child bursts into tears. She threw herself over first one and then the other. She took water in those hands that grew larger and more hollow with the webbing and poured it over them. They were dead, and dead they would remain! She understood that. Soon the wild animals would come and eat their bodies. No! That must not happen! So she dug in the ground as deeply as she could. She would dig a grave for them, but she had only a hard tree branch and both her hands to dig with, and between her fingers the webbing soon ripped and blood flowed. She realized that she would not be able to do it. So she took water and washed the dead man’s face, and covered it with fresh, green leaves. She brought big branches and laid them over him, shook leaves in between them, and took the largest stones she was able to lift and laid them over the dead limbs. Then she stuffed moss into any openings, and thought that the burial mound was strong and safe, but during this hard work the night passed. The sun came up and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, with bleeding hands and with tears on the rosy youthful cheeks for the first time.

  During the transformation it was as if the two natures were fighting within her. She trembled and looked around as if she were waking from a troubling dream. She ran to a slender beech tree and held onto it for support, and then suddenly she climbed up like a cat to the tree top and clung to it. She sat there like an uneasy squirrel, sat there the entire long day in the deep forest loneliness, where everything is still and dead, as they say—dead? Well, there were a couple of butterflies fluttering around each other, in play or dismay. There were some ant hills close by, each with several hundred little creatures scurrying back and forth. Countless mosquitoes were dancing in the air, swarm after swarm. They chased past crowds of buzzing flies, ladybugs, dragon flies, and other little flying creatures. The earthworms crept out of the damp ground. The moles pushed up earth. Yes, as a matter of fact it was quiet, dead all around, as it’s said and understood. No one paid any attention to little Helga except the jays that flew shrieking around the tree top where she sat. They hopped on the branches towards her with bold curiosity. A blink of her eyes was enough to chase them off again, but they didn’t get any wiser to her, nor she to herself.

  When evening was near, and the sun started to sink, the transformation summoned her to new action. She let herself slide down the tree, and as the last ray of light disappeared she stood there in the frog’s crouched shape with her hands’ torn webbed membranes, but the eyes now shone with a beauty that they didn’t have before when she was in beauty’s form. They were the mildest, gentlest eyes of a young girl that shone out from the frog’s mask. They witnessed to the deep spirit and the human heart. The beautiful eyes burst into tears and cried the heart’s heavy tears of release and relief.

  The cross of branches, tied together with the fiber cord, and the last work of the priest who was now dead and gone, was lying beside the raised grave. Little Helga picked it up, and the thought came by itself—she planted it among the stones that covered him and the murdered horse. With the sad memory tears burst forth, and in this frame of mind she scratched the same sign into the earth around the grave, fenced around it so neatly—and as she formed the sign of the cross with both hands, the webbing fell off like a torn glove, and when she washed herself in the water of the spring, and wondered at her fine, white hands, she again made the sign of the cross in the air between herself and the dead man. Then her lips moved, and her tongue moved and that name that she most often had heard sung and spoken on the ride through the forest came audibly from her mouth. She said it: “Jesus Christ!”

  Then the frog skin fell. She was the beautiful young girl, although her head bowed in fatigue. Her limbs needed rest, and she slept.

  But her sleep was short. She was awakened at midnight. In front of her stood the dead horse, so radiant and full of life. Its eyes were shining, and radiance shone out from its wounded neck. Right beside him was the murdered Christian priest. “More handsome than Balder!” the Viking woman would have said, but yet he appeared luminous.

  Then the frog skin fell. She was the beautiful young girl.

  There was a seriousness in the big, gentle eyes; a righteous judgment, such a penetrating glance that it seemed to illuminate into every corner of her heart. Little Helga trembled from it, and her memory was awakened with a power as if on the Day of Judgment. Every good done for her, every loving word spoken to her became as if living in her again. She understood that it was love that had sustained her in these days of trial, in which the offspring of soul and clay was fermenting and striving. She acknowledged that she had only followed feelings and impulses and not done anything for herself. Everything had been given to her. Everything had been guided somehow. She bowed her head, humble and humiliated, shameful in front of him who could read each fold of her heart, and in this moment she perceived the blaze of the Holy Spirit in a flash of purification’s flame.

  “You child of the bog,” the Christian priest said. “From earth, from the soil you were taken—from the earth you will again be resurrected! The sunlight that is incarnate in you will return to its creator—not a ray from the sun, but from God! No soul will be lost, but temporal time is long. It is life’s flight into eternity. I come from the land of the dead. One day you too will travel through the deep valley into the luminous mountainous country where mercy and perfection live. I can’t lead you to Hedeby for a Christian baptism. First you must shatter the shield of water over the deep bog bottom and drag up the living root of your conception and cradle. You must fulfill this deed before you can be consecrated.”

  And he lifted her up on the horse and handed her a gilded censer like the one she had seen in the Viking house. There was a fragrance so sweet and strong coming from it. The open wound in his forehead shone like a radiant diadem. He took the cross from the grave and lifted it high in the air, and they flew away through the air, over the whispering forest, over the mounds where Viking kings were buried sitting on their horses. And the powerful figures rose up, rode out, and stopped on their mounds. The wide golden bands with gold clasps shone on their foreheads in the moonlight. Their capes whipped in the wind. The great snake—the lind-snake—that broods over treasure, lifted its head and looked after them. The dwarves peered out from mounds and furrows. They swarmed with red, blue and green lights. It looked like sparks in the ashes of burning paper.

  Over the woods and heath, rivers and ponds they flew, up towards the great wild bog. They floated over it in a vast circle. The Christian priest lifted the cross high. It shone like gold, and from his lips came the chanting of the mass. Little Helga sang along as a child follows its mother’s song. She swung the censer, and there was a fragrance of the altar so strong and miraculous that the reeds and rushes of the bog bloomed because of it. All sprouts shot up from the deep bottom. Everything living arose. A profusion of water lilies spread out as if it were a woven carpet of flowers, and lying on it was a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. Little Helga thought she was looking at herself, her mirror image in the still water, but it was her mother she saw, the bog king’s wife, the princess from the land of the Nile.

  The dead Christian priest commanded that the sleeping woman be
lifted onto the horse, but it sank under the weight as if its body was only a shroud flying in the wind. But the sign of the cross strengthened the mirage, and all three rode to firm ground.

  Then the rooster crowed in the Viking house, and the visions dissolved in fog and were carried away in the wind, but standing there facing each other were the mother and daughter.

  “Is it myself I see in the deep water?” asked the mother.

  “Is it myself I see in the shiny shield?” exclaimed the daughter and they moved closer to each other. Breast to breast, they embraced. The mother’s heart beat strongest, and she understood why.

  “My child! My own heart’s flower! My lotus from the deep waters!”

  And she clasped her child in her arms and cried. The tears were a new life and baptism of love for little Helga.

  “In the shape of a swan I came here and then threw it off,” said the mother. “I sank down through the swirling marsh mud, deep down in the morass of the bog where it was like a wall closing around me. But I soon perceived a fresher current, and I was drawn deeper and ever deeper by some power. I felt sleep pressing on my eyelids, and I fell asleep. I dreamed. It seemed that I was once again in Egypt’s pyramid, but in front of me was the rocking alder stump that had startled me on the surface of the bog. I observed the cracks in the bark, and they lit up in colors and became hieroglyphics. I was looking at a mummy case. It burst, and from it stepped the thousand year old king, the mummy figure. He was black as pitch, glistening black like the forest snails or the greasy black mud. The bog king or the mummy of the pyramid? I didn’t know which. He threw his arms around me, and I felt I had to die. I didn’t perceive life again until I felt a warmth on my breast. There was a little bird sitting there flapping his wings, chirping and singing. It flew from my breast high up towards the heavy darkness above, but it was still tied to me by a long green ribbon. I heard and understood its notes of longing: Freedom! Sunshine! To the Father! Then I thought about my father in the sunlit land of home, my life and my love! And I loosened the ribbon and let it flutter away—home to father. Since that time I haven’t dreamed. I slept a deep and heavy sleep, until this hour when the sounds and scents lifted and released me!”

  The green ribbon tied from the mother’s heart to the wings of the bird—where was it fluttering now? Where was it left lying? Only the stork had seen it. The ribbon was the green stalk, the bow the shining flower, cradle for the child who now had grown so beautiful, and who once again rested by her mother’s heart.

  And as they stood there with their arms around each other, stork father flew in circles above them and then flew to his nest, fetched the swan-skins that had been hidden there for years, and threw one to each of them. The skins folded around them, and they lifted from the earth as two white swans.

  “Let’s talk!” said stork father. “Now we understand each other’s language, even if the beak of one is different from that of the other! It is the luckiest thing imaginable that you came tonight because tomorrow we would be off, mother, the children, and I. We’re flying south. Well, look at me! I’m an old friend from Egypt, you know, and so is mother. But it’s in her heart rather than her neb. She always thought that the princess would take care of herself. The children and I carried the swan-skins up here. Oh, how happy I am! And how fortunate it is that I’m still here. We’ll be off at daybreak. A big flock of storks. We’ll fly in front, you can follow us. Then you won’t get lost. The children and I will also keep an eye on you!”

  “And the lotus blossom I was to bring,” said the Egyptian princess, “flies by my side in the shape of a swan. I have my heart’s flower with me, and that’s the solution! Homeward! Homeward!”

  But Helga said that she couldn’t leave Denmark before she saw her foster mother, the dear Viking woman, one more time. Helga thought of every good memory, every kind word, each tear, that her foster mother had cried. At that moment it was almost as if she loved that mother the best.

  “Yes, we must go to the Viking house,” said stork father. “Mother and the children are waiting there, you know. How their eyes will pop and how they will chatter! Well, mother doesn’t say so much. She speaks briefly and to the point, but she means it all the more. Now I’ll just rattle a bit with my beak so they’ll know we’re coming.”

  So stork father rattled with his beak, and he and the swans flew to the Viking hall.

  Everyone there was still sleeping soundly. The Viking woman hadn’t gone to sleep until late at night. She lay worrying about little Helga who had been missing for three days along with the Christian priest. She must have helped him escape. It was her horse that was missing from the stable, but by what power had this occurred? The Viking woman thought about all the miracles that were said to be connected to the white Christ, and with those who believed in him and followed him. Her shifting thoughts took form in a dream. It seemed to her that she still sat awake on her bed, thinking. Outside was a brooding darkness. A storm was coming. She heard the sea rolling in the west and east from the North Sea and the Kattegat. The monstrous serpent that encircled the world in the depths of the sea shook with spasms.8 The night of the gods, Ragnarok, as the pagans called it, was approaching. The end of time when everything would perish, even the gods. The Gjallarhorn sounded, and the gods rode over the rainbow, clad in armor, to fight their last battle. Ahead of them flew the winged valkyries, and the procession ended with the figures of the dead warriors. The whole sky was lit around them like the northern lights, but darkness conquered there. It was a terrible time.

  Next to the frightened Viking woman sat little Helga in her dreadful frog shape. She also was trembling and pressed herself up against her foster mother, who took her in her lap and held her tightly with love, no matter how dreadful the frog shape seemed. The air echoed with the sounds of clashing swords and clubs; whistling arrows like a storm of hail flew over them. The hour had come when earth and sky would break, the stars fall, and everything be destroyed in Surt’s fire. But she knew that a new earth and sky would come. Wheat would wave where the sea now rolled over the barren sands. The unmentionable God would rule, and Balder rise up to him, the gentle, dear one, released from the realm of the dead. He came—the Viking woman saw him. She knew his face. It was the captured, Christian priest. “White Christ!” she called aloud, and as she did so she pressed a kiss on the forehead of her hideous frog-child. Then the frog skin fell, and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, gentle as never before and with radiant eyes. She kissed her foster mother’s hands and blessed her for all the care and love she had granted her through the days of trials and troubles. She thanked her for the thoughts she had ingrained and awakened in her mind, thanked her for speaking the name she repeated: White Christ! And little Helga arose as a powerful swan, the wings spread wide with a whistling sound like a flock of birds flying away.

  With this the Viking woman awoke. Outside she could hear the same strong flapping of wings. She knew it was the time when the storks departed. That was what she was hearing. She wanted to see them again before they flew, and tell them good bye! She got up and went out on the balcony, and she saw stork upon stork on the side roof and around the farm. Over the tall trees flocks were flying in great circles, but straight ahead of her, on the edge of the well, where little Helga had so often sat and frightened her with her savagery, two swans were now sitting. They looked at her with wise eyes, and she remembered her dream, and it still consumed her completely, as if it were reality. She thought about little Helga in the shape of a swan. She thought about the Christian priest, and all at once felt a great joy in her heart.

  The swans flapped their wings and bowed their heads as if they also wanted to greet her, and the Viking woman stretched out her arms towards them, as if she understood that. She smiled through her tears and tumbling thoughts.

  Then all the storks arose chattering with flapping wings for their trip south.

  “We won’t wait for the swans,” said mother stork. “If they want to come along, they mu
st come. We can’t stay here until the plovers leave! There’s something really lovely about traveling as a family, not like the chaffinches and sandpipers where the males fly by themselves and the females too. It’s strictly speaking not decent! And what kind of formation are those swans making?”

  “Everyone flies in his own way,” said stork father. “The swans diagonally, the cranes triangularly and the plovers in curves like a snake.”

  “Don’t mention snakes when we’re flying,” said stork mother. “It just gives the children inclinations that can’t be satisfied!”

  “Are those mountains down there the ones I have heard about?” asked Helga in her swanskin.

  “Those are thunderclouds drifting below us!” said her mother.

  “What are those white clouds that are so high?” asked Helga.

  “Those are the always snowcapped mountains you see,” said her mother, and they flew over the Alps, and down towards the blue Mediterranean.

  “Africa’s land! Egypt’s strand!” the daughter of the Nile in her swan-skin shouted with joy, as she saw her native soil from high in the air. It appeared as a whitish-yellow wavy stripe.

  The birds saw it too and sped up their flight.