Kay looked at her.  She was so beautiful, he could not imagine a more sensible or lovely face; she did not appear to him to be made of ice now, as she did when she sat at the window and beckoned to him.  In his eyes she was perfect; he did not feel at all afraid.  He told her that he could do mental arithmetic as far as fractions; that he knew the number of square miles and the number of inhabitants in the country.  And she always smiled, and then it seemed to him that what he knew was not enough.  And he looked up into the wide sky, and she flew with him high up upon the black cloud, and the storm blew and whistled; it seemed as though the wind sang old songs.  They flew over woods and lakes, over sea and land; below them the cold wind roared, the wolves howled, the snow crackled; over them flew the black, screaming crows; but above all the moon shone bright and clear, and Kay looked at the long, long winter night; by day he slept at the feet of the Queen.

THE THIRD STORY

THE FLOWER GARDEN OF THE WOMAN WHO COULD CONJURE

But how did it fare with little Gerda when Kay did not return?  What could have become of him?  No one knew, no one could give information.  The boys only told that they had seen him bind his sledge to another very large one, which had driven along the street and out at the town gate.  Nobody knew what had become of him; many tears were shed, and little Gerda especially wept long and bitterly.  Then she said he was dead—­he had been drowned in the river which flowed close by their school.  Oh, those were very dark, long winter days!  But now spring came, with warmer sunshine.

“Kay is dead and gone,” said little Gerda.

“I don’t believe it,” said the Sunshine.

“He is dead and gone,” said she to the Sparrows.  “We don’t believe it,” they replied; and at last little Gerda did not believe it herself.

“I will put on my new red shoes,” she said one morning—­“those that Kay has never seen; and then I will go down to the river, and ask for him.”

It was still very early; she kissed the old grandmother, who was still asleep, put on her red shoes, and went quite alone out of the town gate toward the river.

“Is it true that you have taken my little playmate from me?  I will give you my red shoes if you will give him back to me.”

And it seemed to her as if the waves nodded quite strangely; and then she took her red shoes, which she liked best of anything she possessed, and threw them both into the river; but they fell close to the shore, and the little wavelets carried them back to her, to the land.  It seemed as if the river would not take from her the dearest things she possessed because he had not her little Kay.  But she thought she had not thrown the shoes far enough out, so she crept into a boat that lay among the reeds, went to the other end of the boat, and threw the shoes from thence into the water; but the boat was not bound fast, and at the movement she made it glided away from the shore.  She noticed it, and hurried to get back; but before she reached the other end, the boat was a yard from the bank, and it drifted away faster than before.