Once there was a wicked mirror, fashioned by a fiend, which made all that was good and beautiful appear mean and ugly. When the mirror was shattered, its splinters flew across the world; and if one entered a man’s eye, he saw only what was cold and cruel, while a shard in the heart might turn it to ice.

In a little town there lived two children, Kai and Gerda, who loved one another dearly. But one winter’s day, a splinter of the enchanted mirror entered Kai’s eye and another his heart. From that hour he grew harsh and distant. Soon the Snow Queen herself appeared, dazzling and terrible in her beauty, and carried him away in her sleigh to her palace in the frozen North.

Gerda, refusing to believe him lost, set forth alone to find him. Her long journey led her through gardens and forests, past princes and robbers, and among strange beasts and kindly strangers. Though often frightened, she never abandoned hope, for love gave her courage where wisdom and strength might have failed.

At last she reached the Snow Queen’s palace, where Kai sat pale and numb upon the ice, trying to arrange frozen fragments into a perfect word. He scarcely knew Gerda when she came to him. Yet she wept, and her warm tears melted the ice within his heart; then Kai himself began to weep, and the splinter was washed from his eye.

Freed from the Queen’s enchantment, the children fled together from the frozen realm. After many hardships they returned home, where the roses bloomed once more beneath their window. And though they had grown older, they found that their hearts had remained as true and innocent as before.