by Rachel
Adapted from the story by Hans Christian Andersen.
Wow, I can't believe it's been more than a year since I started writing this story. (I finished it--don't worry.) I think this might be my first fusion. ("The Prince-less Bride" doesn't really count since all I really did was plunk the GW characters down in the PB roles.) This story is also kind of a sequel to "The Lady in the Tower", even though I wrote it first. Oh, I do so like the way Wufei and Meilan came out in this story. I'm really a 5+D fan, but I like Meilan.
In the old days of the world there lived a demon of the truly worst and wickedest order. One day, when he was in a particularly merry mood, he constructed a looking glass-a magic mirror. All good things shrank to nothingness when reflected in this mirror, while every fault, every ugly thing appeared to grow and seem worse than ever. Verdant forests shriveled to barren wasteland; proud ivory towers crumbled to ruin; good, honest people became twisted and corrupt in the mirror's shining surface. When a kind thought passed through the mind of anyone it was misrepresented in the glass. The demon laughed and boasted to his cronies, declaring that now, for the first time, people could see what the world and mankind were truly like.
The demon carried his mirror all over the world, lecturing to his fellow demons about his discoveries and observations. Before long, there was not a land or a people that had not been looked at through this distorted mirror.
His clever invention brought him all manner of accolades which so stoked his ego that one day he decided to carry his mirror up to Heaven, so he could look upon the angels and see how they were reflected in the glass. The higher he climbed, though, the more slippery the glass became, until finally he lost his grip on it and it plummeted to the earth, where it shattered into millions and millions of tiny pieces.
The demon was not disappointed. Broken, his mirror did more harm than ever before. The wind blew the shards in every direction, scattering them all over the world. When a sliver landed in a person's eye, it worked the same way the mirror had, distorting everything the person saw and making all the nice things appear insignificant, and ugly, and making the bad things appear worse than they really were. Some of the larger shards were made into eyeglasses or even windows. You can imagine how terrible that was. The worst, however, was when a shard landed on a person's heart. When this happened the heart became a lump of ice and the unfortunate person froze from the inside out.
The demon laughed at all of this; it amused him so to see the mischief he had created.
Time passed, and most of the shards descended to earth, but there were still a few floating about in the air. This is the story of what happened to one of them.
Once there was a kingdom far to the north. In this kingdom were many small villages, and in one of them there lived two boys who grew up as the best of friends, though their circumstances could not have been more different.
Quatre, who had hair the color of newly churned butter, a complexion like milk and roses, and the widest, wisest, aquamarine eyes imaginable, was the only son of the wealthiest merchant in the village. He lived in a big, beautiful old house in the fashionable part of town, and had servants to dress him and clean his room, tutors to instruct him in any subject that should strike his interest, and cooks to prepare for him any food he should desire. He had his own library, which was filled with books of every description, and his shelves overflowed with toys from every country his father had ever visited. The only thing Quatre lacked was love. His mother had died bearing him, and his father was frequently away on business. He had several sisters, but they were grown and married and lived in other villages with their families.
Trowa, as the other boy was called, whose hair was the color of the last leaves of autumn and eyes the color of the first leaves of spring, was an orphan, or at least that was what everyone in the village assumed. As a baby he had been found, one wintry night, in a basket in the middle of the town square. The snow had piled high that night, and the wind had been fierce, but Mother Blomst [1] who discovered him claimed that the snow had fallen everywhere except on the spot where he lay, and even the wind had seemed to move around him, so that his little body was warm as toast when she lifted him in her arms. People were questioned, but no one stepped forward to claim the boy. His olive complexion suggested gypsy blood, and the villagers made inquiries whenever a caravan passed through, but again no one claimed him. The villagers were glad, because although Trowa was quiet and solitary, he was a good boy. Mother Blomst, who had lost all her children but one to an illness that had swept the kingdom some years back, took him in and raised him as her own. So the mystery was never solved, and all except perhaps Trowa, were quite content with that.
They met by accident or destiny, Quatre and Trowa, one day when they were both about five. They met in summer, in the large, beautiful garden behind Quatre's house. Quatre was sitting there because he had grown bored with all his books and toys, and the servants did not know what else to do with him. As he sat watching the fat, furry bees bobbing among the roses, he became aware that two of the rose leaves were not leaves at all, but a pair of very green eyes, staring back at him from behind the bushes.
"Hello," he said politely.
The eyes blinked. "H'lo," was the reply, so soft Quatre barely heard it.
"Who are you? What are you doing there?" Quatre started forward, then stopped, as though he knew that if he moved too quickly, a spell would be broken and the eyes would go back to being leaves, and he would be all alone again.
There was a silence, as though the apparition was considering whether or not he should trust this boy. Finally, after Quatre had stood completely still, hardly daring to breathe for nearly a minute, the other said, "I'm Trowa." Then, in a low, conspiratorial manner, "I'm hiding from Kat-rin. She's my older sister. Well, she's not really my sister. Mother Blomst only adopted me. I don't know who my real parents are. They might be dead. Anyway, I don't want to go back home, yet."
That was a great deal of information from someone who had been part of a rosebush only a moment ago. Rather than try to process all of it immediately, Quatre said, imperiously, but not pompously, "Let me see you."
Again a moment of hesitation. Then, slowly, the other boy emerged. "What are you staring at?" he demanded defensively, when Quatre's eyes widened. He thought the other boy was about to laugh at his shirt and trousers, which had been torn in his scramble over the hedge and under the rosebushes.
Quatre gushed, breathlessly, "You-you look like someone in my book!"
The other boy, taken aback, made a face. "Huh?"
"You do!" Quatre went on, amazed and delighted. "I have this book. My father sent it to me from Italy. It has lots of beautiful pictures. Anyway, there's a prince in it. His skin is kind of like yours. And he has green eyes. It's such a great book. It has sea monsters and pirates, and this dragon with green and gold scales that breathes fire all over the whole kingdom. Would you like to come and see?"
Trowa looked over the other boy's shoulder at the gorgeous house, then down at his torn clothes. He started to back away.
"Please?" said Quatre, not sounding imperious anymore, just desperately lonely and eager to be friends.
Trowa looked into the wide, appealing aquamarine eyes, and could not look away. "All right," he said slowly, shyly. "If no one inside will mind…"
Quatre had already seized his hand and was pulling him toward the house.
When twelve-year-old Katerina Blomst finally plucked up the courage to inquire at the big, beautiful house, as to the whereabouts of her brother, whom she was supposed to be watching, a few hours had passed, and Quatre and Trowa were still seated side by side on one overstuffed chair in the library, their heads bowed together over a book.
They were very nearly inseparable from that day forward. Quatre and Trowa spent the rest of the summer playing in the wildflower- dotted fields outside the village. They flew kites, sailed handmade boats on the little stream that trickled down from the mountains, and watched the stars at night. On rainy days they read books in the library at Quatre's house, or played cards and sipped hot cocoa with Katerina while Mother Blomst knitted and told ghost stories from the north. When Quatre's father returned in the autumn, Mother Blomst went to speak with him and by the time she left it was decided that Quatre should attend regular school with Trowa and the rest of the village children. Quatre blossomed in his new environment and under his gentle tutelage, Trowa slowly emerged from his shy, solitary shell. The years passed happily for all concerned, and Trowa thought more and more of the village as his home.
Quatre and Trowa's story actually begins eight years after their first meeting. It was particularly cold and snowy that winter and Quatre spent many nights at the house of Mother Blomst because it was simply too dangerous for him to walk all the way back from the schoolhouse. Neither the boys nor Mother Blomst minded. She had begun to look upon Quatre as another of her lost children come back to her.
One evening, Mother Blomst sat rocking in her chair by the crackling fire; Katerina was knitting a scarf for her boyfriend in the neighboring village; and Trowa and Quatre were seated at the table, a chess set untouched before them, mugs of hot cider sprinkled with cinnamon in their hands, staring out the window at the falling snow.
Quatre cupped his cheek in his hand. "The snowflakes look like a bunch of big, fat, white bees," he observed. He missed the summer and the flowers.
"They do!" Trowa exclaimed, leaning forward on his elbows and laughing. "But they have no queen bee."
"Indeed they do," said Mother Blomst, looking up from the sock she was mending, and smiling. "She is flying there where the swarm is thickest. She is the largest of them all, and never remains on the earth, but flies up to the dark clouds. Often at midnight she flies through the streets of the town, an looks in at the windows, then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful shapes, that look like flowers and castles." [2]
"I've seen them," the boys said together.
Katerina laughed. "That's just frost, you silly-heads." But they paid no attention to her.
"The Snow Queen can't come in here, can she, Mother Blomst?" Quatre asked worriedly.
"Let her try," said Trowa, his eyes sparkling with excitement and firelight, "I'll set her on the stove and she'll melt away!"
Mother Blomst reached over and mussed his hair lovingly, then told them other tales.
That night, though Quatre was asleep almost the instant his head touched the pillow of Katerina's old bed, Trowa lay awake for a long time, looking at the snow. It was getting thicker, he thought, as though someone was drawing a white, lacy curtain across the world. The Christmas lights that lined the neighboring houses were dim little pools of blue, red, green, and gold, almost lost in the whiteness.
Suddenly he started, for it seemed to him that two eyes were staring back at him, from the very thickest part of the snow. He scrambled to his feet and pushed open the window. In the darkness beside him Quatre mumbled in his sleep, moving instinctively away from the cold air. Trowa leaned over the windowsill.
The eyes were still there. They seemed dark as coal at first, but as the snowflakes began to coalesce around them in the shape of a face, he saw that they were flecked with the deepest, darkest green imaginable. It was a woman's face, he realized, and then all at once he wanted to cry, because she was so impossibly lovely, but so cold. Her skin was as white as the snow, her lips red as holly berries. Around her white, graceful shoulders, brown hair fell shining and silken as a river.
For a long time they looked at each other, neither moving. Trowa held his breath in anticipation. Then a strong gust of frozen air blew the window closed and the Snow Queen from his vision. When the wind passed he scanned the air and street below for her, but she had vanished.
Trembling with cold and excitement, he fell back against his pillow and drew the blanket up to his chin. He fell asleep shortly after that.
The snow stopped falling early the next morning, and after a breakfast of hot porridge and orange juice, Trowa and Quatre ran outside to play in the streets.
"Look!" Quatre cried, surveying the white-blanketed world around him. "It's like a completely different place!"
"You always say that," Trowa laughed as he lobbed a snowball at him.
Quatre, no athlete, tried to return to blow, but slipped and fell with a smack, flat on his back. "Trowa," he entreated, when he had recovered his breath, "help me up. My jacket's too thick; I can't get up on my own." He flailed helplessly.
Trowa started forward to raise him up. Suddenly he stopped and cried out sharply. "My heart…" he gasped, and touched one gloved hand to his chest. "No, it's my eye…" He blinked rapidly.
"Trowa?" Quatre inquired, frowning.
"Something's in my eye. No, it's out, now. How odd." But it was not out; it was one of those bits of the looking-glass-that magic mirror,-the ugly glass which made everything great and good appear small and ugly, while all that was wicked and bad became more visible, and every little fault could be plainly seen. Poor Trowa had also received a small grain in his heart, which very quickly turned to a lump of ice. He felt no pain, but the glass was still there. [3]
"Trowa?" Quatre said again, worriedly.
Trowa glanced down at him, and his face twisted with scorn. "Get up!" he snapped. "What are you, a big baby? What do you need my help for?" He kicked snow in his face and laughed when Quatre choked and spluttered. "Baby!" he jeered. "Gonna cry? Well, I don't have time to hang around with babies. I'm going to stream. Follow me if you like, but I'm not waiting around for you." And with that he ran off down the street.
Quatre stared after him, stunned and stricken. In the eight years since they had met, he and Trowa had had their quarrels. Quatre was not as athletic as his friend and often lagged behind when they went swimming together, or skiing, or boating. But Trowa had never yelled at him like that, and he had never seen such coldness in those usually gentle green eyes.
Too confused to cry, Quatre twisted and scrambled, and finally managed to pull himself to his feet. He began to walk slowly down the street, half-expecting Trowa to leap out behind him and yell "Boo!" and then tell him it had all been a joke and that he was sorry, and why not build a snowman with all this good snow? But he did not come, and when Quatre reached the gates of his house he realized that Trowa was not going to come. He trudged inside and went straight to his room. Once there, he cried his heart out.
It was two days before Quatre saw Trowa again. The green-eyed boy came to the big house and shouted under his window until, reluctantly, he appeared.
"Trowa," he murmured as he looked down at his friend, feeling as though his heart had been pricked with an icicle.
"See these roses?" Trowa yelled up at him, pointing at the gnarled, black rosebushes, bowing under the heavy snow. "They're so ugly! You're ugly, too, when you cry like that. Crybaby!"
Quatre swiped at his tears with the back of his hand.
"What's the point of growing roses?" Trowa demanded. "They're ugly, and anyway, they're never going to bloom because it's going to stay winter forever!" He tore at the bushes, heedless of the thorns, and before Quatre's horrified eyes, began to rip them out of the frozen ground.
"Trowa, please don't!"
Only cruel laughter met his pleas.
"Father!" Quatre shrieked. "Somebody! Please! Trowa, stop!"
Servants came running, and Trowa scampered off, laughing raucously, but it was too late. Quatre stared at the dead rosebushes, and thought his heart would break.
Katerina came to see him a few days later. She looked frazzled and weary. There were dark circles under her pretty lavender eyes, and her usually rosy cheeks were pale.
"I just don't know what's gotten into Trowa," she half-sobbed as she sat with Quatre in the parlor. Her slender hands shook as she lifted her teacup to her lips. "He's like a totally different person. He snaps at me and Mama. He won't do his chores. He makes fun of people in the street. Some of the other children told me he'd been bullying them. You're his best friend. Do you know what happened?"
Quatre shook his head. His own hurt was bad enough; he did not want to think about how Trowa's behavior was affecting Katerina and Mother Blomst.
"People are beginning to talk," Katerina said, not lifting her gaze from her teacup. "About his being a foundling and all. Oh, Quatre, he used to be such a good boy! Everyone loved him. I don't understand it, not at all."
Quatre had no words of comfort for her; he was desperately worried, too.
It was bitterly cold in the town square that night. Snow was falling again, and the wind moaned through the rain gutters and along the eves of houses and shops. Trowa stood alone in the very center of the square. He had lost his scarf and gloves, and his chin and hands were numb with cold, but he was not aware. He looked at the lighted windows, sadness, as faint and distant-seeming as a half-remembered dream, brushed his heart. He wondered what it would be like to be inside one of those cheerily lit houses, eating a nice, hot meal, talking with people.
But you don't belong with them, another voice in his heart told him. They're not your people. They yell at you and talk about you behind your back.
He turned away from the windows.
As he watched, two eyes appeared in the thickly falling snow, black as coal at first, then flecked with green as they drew closer, and the beautiful face appeared around them. The berry-red lips curved into a smile.
"Poor boy," a woman's voice, low and melodious, floated to him through the drifting snow. "You're freezing. Whatever are you doing alone in the cold? Come to me, now." She held out her arms to him. They were long and white. There was no warmth in her gaze, but she was offering him solace.
Slowly, Trowa walked to the Snow Queen. "I'm here," he said.
"So you are," she replied as she folded him in her arms. "You'll come away with me, now. My sledge is waiting. Come, now." She kissed his cheek with her cold lips.
Trowa smiled and leaned close against her. She was beautiful, so heartbreakingly beautiful, and she had come for him, come to take him away.
By then he had forgotten Mother Blomst, Katerina, and Quatre.
The Snow Queen led him to her sledge and they flew away together. They flew over woods and lakes, over sea and land; below them roared the wild wind; the wolves howled and the snow crackled; over them flew the black screaming crows, and above all shone the moon, bright and clear,--and so Trowa passed through the long winter's night, and by day he slept wrapped under the flowing mantle of the Snow Queen. [4]
[1] For yucks and as a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen, I Scandinavianized Catherine Bloom's name. "Blomst" is Danish for "flower".
[2] I took this passage directly from the original text, because I liked it so much.
[3] Ditto.
[4] Ditto.
To Part 3