The Snow Maiden

The Snow Maiden

In one village lived Ivan and Maria. Their cottage was warm, their garden well tended, there was enough flour in the pantry, and chickens wandered around the yard. But more than anything, the couple dreamed of having a child.

In the evenings, they often sat by the window and listened to children laughing in the neighboring yards.

“If only we could hear laughter like that in our home,” Maria would say softly.

Ivan would take her hand.

“Perhaps one day we will.”

One winter, a great deal of snow fell. Soft white drifts covered the roofs, the fences, and the branches of the apple trees. The frost was bright and clear, the sky was blue, and the sun shone on the snow until everything glittered like silver.

After lunch, Ivan and Maria went outside.

“Let’s make a girl out of snow,” Maria suggested. “Just to have a little fun.”

They rolled one large snowball, then a smaller one. They shaped slender arms, a tiny nose, and eyes from dark rowan berries. Maria made a long braid, and Ivan covered the snow girl’s head with an old woolen scarf.

“How beautiful she is,” Maria said. “She almost looks alive.”

And then a miracle happened.

The snow girl moved her fingers.

Ivan froze.

Maria stopped breathing.

The girl blinked, carefully stepped down from the mound of snow, and smiled.

“Mama? Papa?”

Maria embraced her, then immediately drew back in surprise. The girl was cool like the first snowflake on a palm, but she was not icy.

“What is your name?” Ivan asked.

The girl looked at the white yard.

“The Snow Maiden.”

And that was how a daughter came into their home.

The Snow Maiden grew not day by day, but almost together with the winter itself. At first she was very small, yet within a few weeks she was already running through the village with the other children, riding sledges, and leaving light footprints in the snow.

She loved frosty mornings most of all.

When the other children buried their noses in their scarves, the Snow Maiden ran outside laughing:

“Listen to the snow singing under our feet!”

She loved catching snowflakes, studying the patterns on the windows, and listening to the blizzard hum in the chimney.

Ivan made her a little wooden sledge. Maria knitted her a blue scarf. The neighboring girls taught her to braid ribbons into her hair and dance in circles with them.

At last, their home was as cheerful as Ivan and Maria had once dreamed it might be.

But winter does not last forever.

One day, the first drop fell from the roof.

Drip.

Then another.

Drip, drip.

The sun rose higher, dark strips of earth appeared on the road, and last year’s grass began to show beneath the snow.

Everyone in the village rejoiced at the coming of spring.

Everyone except the Snow Maiden.

She grew quieter. During the day she sat in the shade, and toward evening she went outside and gazed for a long time at the last white patches of snow beside the fences.

“Daughter, are you ill?” Maria asked.

“No, Mama. The sun is simply very warm.”

“Would you like a new dress?”

“No.”

“Perhaps some honey cakes?”

The Snow Maiden smiled so that her mother would not worry.

“Thank you. I’m only a little tired.”

Spring passed into summer. The orchards blossomed and shed their flowers, and tall grass rose in the meadows. The Snow Maiden now went walking early in the morning or in the evening. She especially loved cool rain.

Whenever large drops fell from the sky, she ran onto the porch and stretched out her hands.

One day, a brief summer shower brought a scatter of tiny hailstones. Little balls of ice bounced across the ground, and for the first time in many weeks, the Snow Maiden laughed as brightly as she had in winter.

Ivan and Maria looked at one another.

They understood now that their daughter belonged not only to them. Winter itself lived within her.

Then came a summer festival. The young people and children went to the meadow to gather flowers, weave wreaths, and sing songs. In the evening, they planned to light a small festival fire.

The Snow Maiden’s friends came for her.

“Come with us! We’ll make wreaths from cornflowers.”

The Snow Maiden shook her head.

“It will be hot there.”

“It will be cooler in the evening,” the girls persuaded her. “We’ll all stay together.”

Maria did not want to let her daughter go, but she saw the way the girl looked at her friends.

“Go if you want to. Just don’t force yourself to do anything that frightens you or makes you feel unwell.”

The Snow Maiden hugged her mother.

“All right.”

The meadow was beautiful. The girls wove wreaths, the boys carried dry branches, and fireflies floated above the grass. The Snow Maiden made herself a wreath of white daisies and blue cornflowers.

When darkness fell, they lit a small bonfire.

The flames crackled softly.

One by one, the children jumped across it where the fire was very low. They laughed and called to the Snow Maiden.

“Your turn!”

She came closer.

The heat made her cheeks turn pink. She stepped back.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” one of her friends said.

The Snow Maiden looked up at the sky. A young moon was already shining there.

Then she looked at the fire, at her friends, and at the wreath in her hands.

“I want to try,” she said quietly. “But in my own way.”

She waited until the flames had died down almost completely, took her friends by the hands, ran forward, and lightly leaped across the edge of the fire.

At that very moment, a strangely cool wind swept over the meadow.

The flame bent low.

The flowers in the girls’ hands trembled.

And suddenly the Snow Maiden became light and transparent, like morning mist.

“Don’t be afraid,” her friends heard her voice say.

Tiny silver sparks whirled around her. They were not ashes. They looked like snowflakes, even though it was summer.

A moment later, the girl dissolved into a cool white mist that rose above the grass and drifted toward the sky.

Only her wreath remained on the ground.

The children were frightened and ran to fetch Ivan and Maria.

The couple came to the meadow. Maria pressed her daughter’s wreath to her chest and wept.

Ivan gazed for a long time at the thin white cloud floating across the dark sky.

“We knew she came to us from the snow,” he said. “But we wanted so much for her to stay forever.”

Maria wiped her tears.

“Love does not become smaller just because it cannot keep someone beside us.”

Summer passed. Then autumn painted the leaves gold, and one morning Maria woke to find a delicate pattern of frost on the window.

It looked like a girl’s braid.

“Ivan, look.”

Ivan touched the glass.

Outside, the first snow was falling.

And then they both heard very soft laughter. It sounded as though somewhere beyond the garden, their Snow Maiden was running and catching snowflakes in her palms.

From then on, at the first snowfall of every winter, Ivan and Maria went out into the yard. They did not expect their daughter to become exactly as she had been before. But they knew that something of her always returned with the frost, the white sky, and the quiet whisper of snow.

And in spring, they no longer grieved over every drop falling from the roof.

They had understood something simple: everything in nature comes in its own season, and everything changes. Winter cannot stay forever, but neither does it disappear forever.

And whenever silver patterns blossomed across the windows, Maria smiled and said:

“Good night, Snow Maiden.”

Outside, the snow glowed softly in the moonlight.

Outside, the snow glowed softly in the moonlight.