Free The Snow Queen by Eileen Kernaghan Page A

lower lip trembled.
    â€œThen why are you not eating?”
    â€œHow can I eat when I’m so miserable?”
    â€œMiserable? You have a warm bed to sleep in. You have plenty of food to eat, and no work to do. Why should you be miserable?”
    â€œBecause,” said Gerda, with weary patience, “I am not one of your pets, to be tied up with a rope and tormented for your amusement. I came here to find Kai. At night I dream that he is calling to me, pleading for my help. And you’ve kept me here, month after month, locked up like a rabbit in a cage.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, locked up?” Ritva was enraged by the injustice of this. “The door is open. If you hate it here so much, why don’t you leave?”
    Now it was Gerda’s turn to be indignant. She snatched up a petticoat and yanked it angrily over her head. “Well, for one thing, you promised to cut my throat if I tried to run away.”
    â€œYes, well,” said Ritva. “Maybe I said that. I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

    â€œThe little one is sick,” said Ritva’s mother. She spoke with interest, but without much concern. “Her spirit has wandered halfway to the Land of the Dead.”
    â€œDo you think I cannot see for myself?” snapped Ritva. “Old woman, you must go and fetch it back.”
    â€œHuh!” said her mother, showing wide gaps in her bottom teeth. “You ask that of me, you who never speaks a word of kindness to me? Can’t you see I am a tired old woman, who is hanging on to her soul by a thread? Such a journey would be the finish of me, for certain.”
    â€œThen I will go myself,” said Ritva.
    Shrewd black eyes peered out from their nests of wrinkles. “You? You think yourself a shaman, girl? You have much to suffer, before you can wear these robes, or ride this drum.”
    â€œThe power is in me,” Ritva said. “I have seen visions. My guardian animal has come to me in the night.”
    â€œEasy enough, to let your soul go free,” said her mother. “But have you the power to call it back? I have seen others, who banged on a drum and thought they were ready for the journey. They are wandering yet, on the road to the Dead Lands, and their bodies have withered away to a bundle of hair and bones.”
    â€œI want to heal her,” Ritva said.
    â€œThen let her go. It’s her heart that is sick, not her body. She pines like a wild thing kept on a chain.”
    â€œThat’s what she said,” Ritva muttered.
    â€œThen listen, for once. What use is she here, to anybody? Not even Henrik will want such a sad, skinny stick of a thing. Let her go now, before another winter sets in. Before she dies in this house, and her wandering spirit haunts our doorsill.”

    Ritva woke in some nameless hour of the night. Even the pigeons slept; there was no sound in the great hall but the faint snap of embers on the hearth. Her forehead felt sticky with sweat; her bones ached and it was hard to draw her breath. The thick stagnant air of the hall was like a blanket against her face. At last she got up, pulled on her boots and crept out into the luminous summer night.
    She walked for a long time, wandering aimlessly along forest paths, filling her lungs with clean, pine-scented air, letting the night wind cool the fever that burned inside her. She felt dazed and disoriented, scarcely aware of her surroundings; she had no idea how far she might have strayed from the castle. Something was drawing her deeper and deeper into the trees, something that would not let her rest or turn back.
    Near morning, she found herself in a small mossy clearing in a birch wood. The sun cast long blue shadows under the trees, where snow still lay in rotting patches. Never had she felt such bone-deep exhaustion. She sighed, and sat down on the damp ground, resting her head on her knees.
    It could have been minutes, or days, that she huddled