Archive of Our Own

First Part: About a Mirror

You all know the story of the cherub Caliborn and how the gods locked him in a doll until the end of time, so I won't bore you by telling it again. But what you might not know is that while he was still free, he fancied himself an artist.

Now, being wicked doesn't mean a person is bad in every way, but Caliborn was a truly terrible artist. Whenever he drew something beautiful, it came out looking like a meaningless scribble, and when he drew something ugly, it seemed to take up the whole picture. You would think this might have discouraged him, but no, it turns out that was actually how he saw the world! And when he realized other people didn't see the same way and said his art didn't look anything like what it was supposed to be, he decided to prove them wrong.

First he made a paintbrush that would only paint in his style, but artists refused to use it and buried the canvasses they'd painted. Then he made a camera that took horribly distorted pictures, but photographers refused to use that and burned all the film they'd shot. So finally he made a mirror that showed all of the bad and none of the good in whatever it reflected, and carried it up into the air to catch the whole world at once in its surface.

I'm sure you see the problem with this: once Caliborn had flown high enough to reflect the whole world, he was too high for anyone to see that reflection, which rather defeated the purpose. In a rage, he smashed the mirror into a million shards and a billion grains of glittering dust, which fell to the earth like rain.

You might think that would be the end of the tale, but you'd be wrong. Because the mirror broken was immeasurably worse than the mirror whole. The glass dust blew all around the world and got into people's eyes, where it made them see the world exactly like Caliborn did: all of the bad and none of the good. The shards stuck in people's hearts and cut all good feelings to shreds. And they're still flying around today!

Now some say this is what Caliborn intended all along while others say he worked his evils by mischance more than design, but I'll leave that argument for the philosophers and instead move on to the real story, which is about the problems caused by two particular fragments of that wicked mirror.

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Second Part: In the Fallen City's Shadow

Back in the days when meteors still fell from the sky in dozens at a time, a girl and a boy grew up next door to each other in the shadow of a fallen city. They were as close as sister and brother (And maybe they were! It's hard to say, since so many people lost their families back then and were taken in by strangers), and in three seasons of the year they played together every day in the garden around the girl's house, where nothing grew but roses and even they were mostly thorns. Of course in the winter it was too cold and dark to stay out for long, so they would shine flashlights from one house to the other and gossip in firefly code until somebody came to tuck them in to bed.

The girl's name was Jade, and the boy's name was John.

One winter they were playing out in the garden, building a fort in the snow drifts for a flock of crows to use as a shelter, when a new storm blew up and Jade's grandfather called them in. "You had better stay the night, John. The white bees are swarming," he said.

"Do they sting?" asked John.

"Yes, indeed. They are ferocious and cruel, and when they touch your face they leave little blots of ice beneath the skin," said the grandfather. And this is still true today, which is why you should never go out when the snowflakes begin to swarm instead of fall... and for one more reason besides.

"Do the white bees have a queen?" asked Jade, who had learned about real bees and how they and the roses she loved kept each other alive.

"Yes to that as well," said her grandfather. "She flies where the swarm is thickest and never remains on the ground. Some nights she flies through the streets and peers in people's windows to see how we live, and then ice freezes into strange and terrible patterns."

"Can the Snow Queen come in here?" asked John.

"Let her try! I'll put her on the stove to melt," said Jade. You see, she didn't believe the Snow Queen was real. Her grandfather laughed and told the children not to worry. He would shoot the Snow Queen if she dared to open their windows.

That night John crept out of Jade's bed, careful not to wake his best friend, and opened the curtains to stare out at the storm. The snow whipped by so thick and fast it seemed like the whole world was blotted out, leaving only a blank white wall. Then one flake separated from the others and slipped out of the keening wind, drifting in toward the glass. It grew bigger and bigger until it turned into the figure of a woman dressed in glittering gauze, with eyes like two hard white stars. She was beautiful, but there was no rest or peace in her face.

This was the Snow Queen, as I'm sure you've guessed. She stretched forth her hand and placed it against the glass. Her smile was as cold and terrible as the winter sea.

John shut the curtains and hurried back to bed.

He didn't tell Jade what he'd seen.

The next day was clear and bright, and soon after came the thaw, and then it was spring and Jade and John could play in the garden again for as long as they liked, and make friends with the crows that came to scavenge in the nearby ruins. And it was very good, but sometimes they wished for another friend who might bring new games and new stories, because it was lonely in the shadow of the fallen city, where nobody else lived and nothing grew but black and purple roses.

Then one day as they were studying an old book of extinct and terrible beasts, John leapt up and said, "Ouch! There's something in my eye."

"Let me help!" said Jade, and pulled out a handkerchief.

"Don't push me!" said John. "It feels like you're stabbing my heart."

"Don't be silly, just let me take a look," said Jade. She pulled off John's glasses and looked very carefully into the eye he'd been rubbing, but she couldn't see a thing. "Whatever it was, I think it's gone," she said.

But you know and I know that of course it wasn't gone, because then there would be no story. A grain of mirror dust had stuck in John's eye, and a shard had sunk deep in his heart. He couldn't feel them anymore, but they were still there.

"Of course it's gone," he said. "Why are you making that face? It makes you look stupid. This whole garden looks stupid -- all the plants are cracked and twisted, and the flowers are dark and ugly. Roses aren't even useful! Why don't you try growing something like vegetables that we could use in the winter?"

John pulled up Jade's favorite rosebush by its roots and threw the vines onto the ground. "Your book is stupid too!" he added, and kicked dirt onto its pages. Then he turned and ran back home before Jade could ask what had happened.

From that day on, John had nothing to do with Jade, unless it was to mock her when she tried to reach out to her best friend. He claimed he'd forgotten all their old games and stories, and he kicked and chased the crows he used to befriend. He was only interested in leaving the shadow of the fallen city for somewhere more interesting. "I want to go somewhere that people will appreciate me," he said, "somewhere that people know how to show a man respect for his strength."

And no matter how much Jade tried to figure out what had gone wrong, and make him see that cruelty wasn't strength, she couldn't change his mind.

When winter came, John took his sled and went down to the road that skirted the city's edge. He and Jade used to wait for travelers to pass by, and tie their sleds to the carts or sleighs for a ride as far as the river, but this time he meant to go as far away as he could. And sure enough, along came a big sleigh all painted white, pulled by two reindeer, and with a driver wrapped in white furs, who waved at John as if to say, "Yes, tie yourself to the back rail, it's all right."

Then off they went, faster and faster, along the newly frozen road: down to the river, across the bridge, and off into fields and forests John had only ever seen from a great distance. They turned north instead of south at the first crossing, away from the nearest village, but every time John though of untying his sled and finding shelter for the night, the driver turned around and nodded, as if to say, "Trust me; hold on." Then new snow began to fall, and darkness crept across the hard, gray sky, and they went faster and faster until John felt they had left the ground and were flying over hedges and even the tops of trees. And all the while the snow fell thicker and harder, until the flakes began to swarm like bees and stung John's face until his skin was half ice.

The sleigh stopped. The driver stepped out, and came back to pull John to his feet. She was a tall woman whose skin shone as white as her fur coat and hat, and he recognized her at once: the Snow Queen, the lady of the white bees, in the middle of her swarm. She was sharp and shining as the blade of a knife, and John shivered in mingled fear and cold.

"We've come a long way," she said, "but we have twice as far yet to go, and it's cold enough to kill a mortal child. Come sit with me and take my bearskin coat."

She took John into her sleigh and wrapped him in her furs, which felt like he was sinking into a snowdrift.

"Are you still cold?" she asked, and when he nodded, she kissed him on the forehead.

It went straight to his heart and turned the flesh to ice, and then he no longer felt the cold. She kissed him again, and he forgot Jade and the garden and everything he'd left at home. But she didn't kiss him a third time, or he surely would have died.

Now John looked up at the Snow Queen and thought her smile wasn't cold or terrible at all. In fact, he thought she was quite perfect, and he couldn't imagine why he had ever been afraid. And as the sleigh rose back into the air, higher and higher until its runners caught on the Northern Lights, as they flew on the wings of the storm over forests and oceans and beyond the edge of the world, he never looked away from her face.

-----

Third Part: The Witch's Daughter

So that's what happened to John. But what about Jade? How did she get on through the winter when her best friend was gone?

Her grandfather tracked the big sleigh and John's little sled to the river, but the wind and snow had blown away any marks from the bridge and the road on the far side. Perhaps John had fallen through the ice and drowned, the grandfather said, and both he and John's father cried at the loss.

Jade cried too, but in the spring when the river thawed, she went down to the water's edge to find out for sure what had become of her friend. She looked all around through the mud and the reeds, but of course John wasn't there and neither was his sled.

Jade sat down on a flat stone and tried very hard not to cry again.

Just then a river troll poked her head up through the water and said, "Hello! Who are you and why are you leaking salt into my stream?"

"My friend John fell through the ice and drowned last winter," said Jade, "and I miss him. I was looking for his body, so I could bring him home for a proper funeral."

"Whelk, there aren't any human bodies here now," said the troll. "I'd know! But maybe he got washed aweigh toward the ocean. Would you like me to take you downstream to sea?"

"Yes, please!" said Jade, and she hopped into the water and let the troll carry her swiftly down the river. The sun was bright, the water was cool, and the troll was friendly, so it was a pleasant journey until they reached a patch of rapids and another river troll swam out to meet them.

"Water you doing here?" the second troll said, showing all her sharp teeth. "This is my toll station. Go back upstream to your silly bridge or I'll make you shorey!"

She stabbed a trident toward the first troll, who let go of Jade in the confusion. Jade tried to swim to the high, green banks of the river, but the current pulled her toward the rocks and rapids and she thought she would drown and join John in the dream bubbles that carry dead souls through the void after life.

But just then a rope flew down from the bank and a voice called, "Grab hold!" Jade clutched tight to the cord, and in a minute she was safe on dry land.

The person who threw the rope was a tall woman with snow-white hair and a broad smile. "That was close!" she said. "I try to keep an eye on the river, to stop the troll from setting her tolls too high, but I nearly missed you since you came without a boat. Where are you from and where are you going?"

So Jade told the woman all about John, about the roses and crows they used to play with near the fallen city, and about the snowswarm and the river. But when she asked if the woman had seen John pass this way in the winter or in the thaw, the woman shook her head very sadly and said she hadn't seen anything. Still, that didn't mean Jade should give up hope! In any case evening was drawing near, so Jade should come home with her to eat dinner and sleep for the night.

She led Jade away from the rapids to a big white house that sat beside a canal. "You'll have to be very quiet because my daughter is studying and I don't want to make her lose her place in her books," she said. Jade nodded, and they tiptoed through the door, past the stairs, and into the kitchen where a pair of three-eyed cats were sunning themselves by the western windows.

The woman gave Jade a bowl of cherries to eat and a glass of something sweet and fizzy to drink, and began to comb out her hair, which was very wet and tangled from the river. She hummed as she worked and by the time Jade's hair was clean and shining in the last of the evening sun, she had forgotten all about John, just like magic -- and in fact, it was magic.

You see, the woman was a witch. She wasn't a good witch, but she wasn't a bad witch either. She only cast spells over people for their own good, or for a little amusement, and she wanted Jade to stay and be a friend for her own daughter, who she thought must be lonely living so far from any town with only her mother and the angry river troll for company.

The witch tucked Jade into bed and went to find her daughter, who was reading a book of magic in her dark room. "Darling sweetheart," she said, "I found a girl in the river and I've spelled her to stay and be your friend, but there's one rule you need to follow or she'll remember her quest and leave. You can't ever tell her your name."

For the daughter's name was Rose.

When Jade woke the next morning, she found the witch's daughter sitting on the end of her bed and studying her like a strange and alarming insect. "Hello," Jade said. "I'm sorry if I bothered you last night. Your mother said you were studying. What are you learning?"

The witch's daughter was silent for a long moment, and Jade felt the echo of a strange hurt whose source she couldn't remember. But then the girl smiled. "I'm learning magic, and I'll teach you too if you'd like."

"I would!" said Jade, and she leapt out of bed and followed the witch's daughter downstairs to the kitchen.

They spent all spring and summer playing together in the witch's shadowy garden, trading cookies for trinkets from the boats that passed through the canal around the rapids, and studying heavy books of magic. Some days the witch herself would give them lessons, but more often she was out all day and night on her own business, so the girls had only each other. Jade didn't mind -- it felt familiar -- and of course the witch's daughter now had more company than ever before. Soon they were the best of friends.

Every night when they went to bed, the witch's daughter paused in the doorway of Jade's room, bit her lip, and then said only, "Goodnight, Jade," instead of telling her friend her name.

That's the thing about being lonely, you see: sometimes you don't realize you've been sad until you aren't anymore, and then you'd do almost anything to keep from being sad again.

Time passed, as it tends to do, and soon autumn came sneaking in on the back of the damp, wet wind. One afternoon Jade ran indoors to fetch lemonade and cookies for herself and her friend and found the witch back from her travels, sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle and glass and feeling very sorry for herself. Jade offered her a cookie to cheer her up, but instead the witch began to cry. "You're a good girl," she said. "Such a very good girl, just like my little Rose. I'm so glad you get along. I wish I didn't have to use a spell to keep you, but I'd do anything for my Rose." And she laid her head down on the table and cried some more.

Jade went out into the shadowy garden, her mind filled with unfamiliar flowers and thorns, and the sudden realization that she couldn't remember where she'd lived before she came to the witch's house. "What's your name?" she asked her friend.

The witch's daughter bit her lip and looked upset. "It's not important," she said. "Come sit here beside me on the bench and we'll experiment with ways to tell the future."

"I don't care about that!" said Jade. "I want you to tell me your name."

The witch's daughter looked like she might cry, but she closed her book of magic and took Jade's hands between her own, because sometimes you have to face your fears. "My name is Rose," she said.

The witch's spell broke and Jade remembered everything. She cried because she'd forgotten John for so long, and Rose cried because she knew her friend would leave, and they sat together on the bench and held each other while they wept.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," Rose said after a long time. "I never had a friend, but I know you never asked to come here and it would be unethical to make you stay. Go find what happened to your real friend. I can tell you he's still alive, because I asked my mother's cats to search for him in the void between worlds where the dead dream in timeless aeons, and they said he isn't there."

"I can't stay," Jade agreed, "but John isn't my only friend anymore. You're my real friend too, and I don't want to leave you all alone when your mother goes traveling again. Why don't you come with me?"

And they left that place together.

-----

Fourth Part: The Boy Who Spoke with Crows

Jade and Rose wandered a long way through the autumn fields and hills, past old craters and new towns, asking everyone they met if they had seen or heard anything about John. No one knew a thing, and they grew hungry and footsore, and Jade began to think perhaps she should go home to her thorny garden in the shadow of the fallen city, where her grandfather must be missing her.

But Rose told her not to give up, that their luck would change, and soon enough she was proved right.

On the first day of winter as frost glittered on the rims of fallen leaves, a woods troll with bones in her hair and a crow on her shoulder stepped out from behind a tree and smiled at the two girls. "Hello!" she said. "I hear you're looking for a boy."

"We are!" said Jade. "My friend John went out in a snowswarm last winter and never came home, but Rose's cats said he isn't dead so we're looking for him together. Have you seen him?"

"I don't know if the boy I saw is your friend, but he might be," said the woods troll. "A group of robbers are holding him captive in the old fallout shelter a mile to the north. I can't get him out on my own -- he's locked in a cell of cold iron -- but I can show you a secret passage underground that leads to a crack the walls, and you can find the key."

Jade and Rose agreed that even if the boy wasn't John, they couldn't leave anyone locked in a cage among robbers. That night they crept through the narrow tunnel the woods troll showed them and into the fallout shelter. The robbers were lying around all over the main room, drunk and snoring, and the two girls tiptoed from one to the next, looking for a key.

Finally they came to a little room with a broken door that might have been a pantry long ago, and saw a girl their own age lying on a heap of treasure and furs, snoring just as loud as everyone else. Behind her was an iron door with a barred window, and behind that was a person wrapped up in a thin blanket so only his bare feet were visible. A crow perched on his ankle and muttered suspiciously at the sight of Jade's face in the window.

"John and I used to play with crows!" Jade said. "They were the only birds that came near the fallen city. Maybe John tamed a crow to remind him of home."

"Perhaps he did. And look, there's the key," said Rose, pointing at the sleeping robber girl. Sure enough, a big iron key was stuck through her belt, just visible through her long, tangled hair.

Jade knelt down and eased it free, but the robber girl had only been pretending to sleep. Now she sat up and grabbed Jade's hand so hard she dropped the key to the concrete floor.

"Aha!" she said. "I bet you think you're heroes, come to rescue my pet. Well, think again!"

Rose threw her book of magic, but she missed and hit the iron door, which rang like a gong and woke everyone else in the shelter. In a trice, Jade and Rose were captured, tied up, and stuck in a corner while the robbers argued over what to do with them. Some suggested ransom, others suggested death, but the robber girl shouted them all down and said that if Jade and Rose had come to save her pet, it was only fair that they share his fate. And so they found themselves shoved through the iron door and into the tiny cell beyond.

The boy under the blanket was sitting up waiting for them, talking to the crow in its own language.

He wasn't John.

"Not that I'm ungrateful for the attempted rescue," he said, "but that was pretty stupid. Who are you and why are you here?"

"I'm Jade, and this is my friend Rose," Jade said, and she explained that they were looking for John, who had gone missing in a snowswarm last winter but somehow wasn't dead.

"The only way he could survive a snowswarm is if the Snow Queen took him," said the boy who spoke with crows.

"The Snow Queen!" said Jade, greatly astonished, for she had thought her grandfather's stories were nonsense.

"Yes. And if she has your friend, he's never coming back."

Only a short time ago, Jade had been ready to give up, but now that someone else suggested it, she discovered she disliked that idea. "I don't care who stole him away," she said. "I won't give up until I see him myself."

"Good luck with that," said the boy who spoke with crows. "The Snow Queen lives beyond the edge of the world, in the distant north where even the air is frozen. I know. I've seen her sleigh fly past on the Northern Lights, crossing the borders as she follows the storms. Nobody can live in her country unless they're under her spell, and even if you have a way around that, we're still stuck in this room without a key."

"No we're not," said Rose, and she held up the key with a smile.

"Okay, but I think you're forgetting the crazy girl waiting outside to make our lives hell," said the boy who spoke with crows.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Jade. "For now, let's wait until the robbers fall back to sleep."

They stayed awake for an hour, and then another, telling stories to pass the time. Jade talked about the fallen city, how its broken towers cast shadows across the poisoned ground and her grandfather hunted relics and monsters in the ruins. Rose talked about magic and the people from foreign lands who passed through the canal her mother and the river troll guarded. And the boy who spoke with crows talked about his home in the frozen land where nothing ever grows, and how he'd come south because he was lonely.

"I was lonely too, until I met Jade," said Rose.

"And I was lonely without John," said Jade. "We can be your friends if you'd like."

The boy who spoke with crows looked away and blinked very hard, because sometimes it's hard to admit how happy you feel when you find good fortune. "Thanks," he said. "My name is Dave. And when we get out of here, I'll take you to the edge of the world."

Alas, getting out proved more tricky than they'd hoped. The robbers kept watch all the rest of that night, and in the morning the robber girl and two others stayed behind to count their treasure and guard the prisoners. Who could say how long it would take before they got careless again? And surely the robber girl would discover she'd lost her key.

There was no help for it; they'd have to run now. So Rose unlocked the iron door and the three prisoners crept out into the little room that might have been a pantry.

They had scarcely moved one step before the robber girl spotted them and drew a handful of knives.

They ran through the crack in the wall and the narrow tunnel, toward the weak winter sunlight that filtered through the frozen woods. The robber girl ran after them, hurling knives with every step. But just as she was about to catch them, a girl wearing a blindfold over her eyes leapt down from the trees and held her sword to the robber girl's throat.

"I'm stealing your prisoners!" she said. "Forfeit or lose all your treasure."

The robber girl sulked viciously, but she threw her knives to the ground and surrendered. Meanwhile the woods troll stepped out from behind the trees and smiled at Jade and her friends. "Look! I found some more help!" she said, as the crow flew from her shoulder to perch beside its mate and scold Dave in its own language.

-----

Fifth Part: The Land Where Nothing Ever Grows

The woods troll and the girl in the blindfold led everyone through the trees, across a stream, and over a steep hill until they reached an old hunting cabin where a warm fire and a kettle of hot soup stood ready and waiting. Everyone fell to and ate with a will. Then the girl in the blindfold set the tip of her sword between her feet and said, "I saved you from my friend because that's the game we play, but she belongs in these woods and you don't. Tell me who you are and why I shouldn't kill you for trespassing."

So Jade told her story once again, about how John had gone missing, how Rose had learned he wasn't dead, and how Dave had explained that he must be in the Snow Queen's country.

"You're very loyal and brave to have come so far to help your friend," said the girl with the blindfold. "I like that. I like that about all of you. So I'll lend you a dragon I hatched from an egg, to take you out of the forest too fast for my friend to chase and catch you. After that you're on your own."

Jade thanked her very much, and in the morning she and Rose and Dave climbed onto the back of a white dragon and flew north over the forest, with the crows cawing irritably beside them. First the trees changed all to pines, then they shrank, and finally they stopped altogether and only rocks were visible above the endless snow. The dragon shook them all off into a snowbank and vanished into the south, leaving them shivering and lost.

"Is this the land where nothing ever grows?" Jade asked.

"Not yet," said Dave. "Spring still comes to these plains, and if you dig under the snow you'll find life. We have a long way to go before we reach the edge of the world."

"In that case, we'd best get started," said Rose, and they set out over the snowy plains together.

That night they stopped in the lee of a low hill. Rose made a magic fire that burned snow instead of wood, Jade wove dry and brittle grass into makeshift blankets, and Dave asked his crows to catch a handful of mice for them all to eat.

Then he stroked his hand along one crow's wings and said, "Fly away home and tell the ash-woman I'm coming, with friends. Ask her to send help." The crow bobbed its head and spiraled into the air, its dark feathers vanishing into the dark sky.

The next morning, a brown reindeer stood stamping at the top of the hill, with both crows perched on its antlers.

Jade and Rose and Dave said goodbye to the crows and climbed onto the reindeer's back. In a flash it turned and ran northward, across the snowy plains, past the icy mountains, and into the land where nothing ever grows. None of them had hats or gloves or coats, and though the reindeer ran nearly as fast as the hurrying wind, they were all half-frozen by the time they reached the house of an old woman Dave knew, who could read secrets in bones and ashes and might help them pass beyond the edge of the world.

The ash-woman smiled and laughed and offered them cookies, but she shook her head when they asked about the Snow Queen's country. "Her power is different from human magic," she said. "I've studied her spells for years but I still don't understand them. You should go find my sister, who lives right up against the border where the Northern Lights leap from the ground. She studies the magic of the winter skies and can predict meteors in their flight. Maybe she can help you." She pulled a shoulder-bone from her fire and wrote a message to the sky-woman in blue-gray ash. Then she sent them on their way.

The reindeer ran a night and a day, through the howling wind and snow, until they reached a queer tower built right up against the edge of the world, with an arm sticking across the border through the curtain of the Northern Lights. They were now frozen almost all the way through, and the old woman who lived there hurried them inside to thaw while she read her sister's letter.

"I can tell you there's a living boy in the Snow Queen's palace," the sky-woman said as she tossed the bone into her own fire. "I've seen him through my telescope. And I can tell you the Snow Queen isn't home right now -- she's flown south to feed the glaciers and cover the oceans with storms. But I don't know any spells to keep you alive in her country, nor to break the spell on your friend."

She offered them coats and food to keep them warm and fed on their journey, and a bed to stay the night before they turned around for home. They agreed, and stepped outside to bring the reindeer food and drink and thank it for carrying them so fast and far. As they stood beside the sky-woman's tower, there at the edge of the world, Jade began to cry. It seemed impossible that she had come all this way, through so many adventures, only to fail at the very end.

Rose took one of her hands and Dave took the other, trying to comfort their friend.

And then a curious thing happened: the winds that howled around the edge of the world, that carried ice and cut like knives, began to slow. The Northern Lights parted like a curtain drawn aside from a windowpane. The snow that swarmed like white bees fell silently to the ground and left a clear path forward.

Jade looked from one friend to the other. "You don't have to come," she said. "It's dangerous and this may be a trap."

But Rose said, "You're my friend," and Dave said, "Nobody should face danger alone," and so they walked hand in hand, all three of them together, across the edge of the world.

-----

Sixth Part: Beyond the Edge of the World

All this time that Jade had been searching for John, he had spent in the Snow Queen's palace. It was a cold place, and not just because of the wind and snow. All the vast halls made of snowdrifts, with their windows of howling wind, were barren and empty. Nothing lived in that country, not even the birds and bears and reindeer that wander the lands where nothing ever grows.

At first John had explored the palace, admiring the icy beauty of each room in turn and thinking they were much nicer without anyone else to spoil their silence. But despite the Snow Queen's kiss, he had grown colder and stiffer with each day and night until now he scarcely moved at all. He sat at the foot of her throne, which stood at the heart of a frozen lake that reflected nothing but darkness, and he played with shards of ice.

Before she grew bored and left him, the Snow Queen had told him if he could shape the ice into the word "eternity," he would be his own master and she would give him the whole world. This sounded very grand to him, and he passed the time dreaming of the power he would surely soon have -- for you may remember, he had that glass shard in his heart and the glass dust in his eye. But no matter how he tried and how many patterns he made, he could not make the ice spell that one word.

And now, into that silent, frozen room walked Jade and her new friends.

Jade gasped when she saw him, and let go of the others' hands. "John, John, I found you!" she shouted, and flung her arms around him and began telling him of everything that had happened on her way to find him. But he sat still, rigid and cold, and didn't seem to hear.

Rose and Dave added their voices, telling how long Jade had looked, how much she had missed him, how she'd never given up, but John only slid his pieces of ice back and forth, back and forth, and never turned around.

Finally Jade's voice ran hoarse, and she tucked her face against John's neck to cry. Rose and Dave knelt beside her and wrapped their arms around her shoulders. And when they touched both her and John at the same time, some hidden strength went into Jade's tears. Perhaps it was the gods. Perhaps it was an unknown magic. Perhaps it was simply friendship and love, which everyone knows are the opposite of Caliborn's power.

But whatever the deeper reason, those tears seeped through John's skin and into his heart, and when they touched the piece of the wicked mirror, it dissolved away to nothing. John blinked, and turned around, and saw his dear friend who had come beyond the edge of the world to find him, and he burst into tears at the memory of how cruel he had been before the Snow Queen carried him away. And the grain of dust in his eye dissolved in turn.

"Jade," he said, and he shoved the shards of ice away across the frozen floor and flung his arms around her in an answering hug.

Of course, hugs can't last forever, even when magic is involved, and soon enough John noticed there were other people in the vast and silent room. But he wasn't jealous. "I've been gone a long time, haven't I?" he said. "I'm glad you found new friends."

"Rose and Dave can be your friends too," said Jade, "but first we need to leave this place before the Snow Queen returns."

John looked down and bit his lip. "I don't think I can, not until I solve the spell the Snow Queen set for me." And he explained about the shards of ice and the shape she had set him to make.

"Well, four heads are better than one!" said Jade, and they all stood to look for the shards John had cast aside. It took some time to find them, since they blended so well with the frozen floor, but when they did, they all laughed in joy, for the same power that had freed John from the mirror's curse had also freed him from the Snow Queen's kiss.

He could go home.

And as for what Jade and John and Rose and Dave did after that, and what adventures they had on their way home, why that's another story. But I will tell you that whatever they did from that day on, they did it all four together.

The End