Archive of Our Own

He was one of the worst hobgoblins, because he thought he was not a hobgoblin at all, but a very misunderstood man. When a child saw this hobgoblin and started crying, the hobgoblin would tell himself that there must be something wrong with the child. And indeed, there must be something wrong with every child, for they all saw his hairy face and his angry eyes and started weeping on the spot.

This made the hobgoblin so enraged that he decided to make a mirror that would show the world what he believed he truly looked like. But when he tried to enchant a looking glass to make him look tall and handsome, he instead created a mirror that made all good qualities shrink away to nothing, while every flaw and imperfection seemed ten times worse. The most beautiful women reflected in this mirror seemed hideous, and the most impressive landscapes seemed dull and gray. It distorted everything beyond all recognition, and when the hobgoblin saw himself in it, he saw not a man, but a true demon.

And a demon is exactly what he became.

He was so worried that someone would find this mirror and see his reflection in it that he smashed the mirror to a hundred thousand pieces, and a strong wind came and took many of the pieces away. That is when this mirror did more harm than ever.

Some people found some of the large pieces and tried to fashion them into spectacles, but it was not advisable to look at others through these spectacles. Some people got the tiniest grains of glass stuck in their eye, and they became unable to see anything clearly. But the worst thing of all was when a shard of glass found its way to the heart, for it would turn the heart to ice.

And that is exactly what happened to the demon. 

In another part of the country, there lived a small girl named Jemma, and she lived with her parents in a small attic room, where her mother and father made herbal remedies and healed people who were hurt or sick. Jemma was especially good at this, for she could tell which plants were good for which ailments, and how much to apply to get a person back on their feet quickly.

One day, a boy named Fitz moved into the attic room opposite to hers, and she was very pleased to have someone to play with. Little Fitz and his mother had moved from a far away country after his father had died, and many of the other children laughed at him, for they thought his words sounded funny. Little Jemma, however, did not laugh at him, and the two became fast friends.

The roofs between her room and Fitz's room were so close together that they were joined by the rainwater gutter between them, and one only had to step over the gutter to get from one house to the other.

Little Jemma's parents grew all kinds of herbs to be used for medicines: turnips, clovers, and daisies. There were not many who could grow daisies, and little Jemma's parents could only manage to grow them in a little flower bed. After a time, they got the idea to put the flower bed in the rainwater gutter, and during the summer, the children could get to the other side in a single bound. In the winter, however, they had to go all the way down the stairs to the alley, which was often filled with drifts of snow, and all the way back up.

"I know what I'll do," said little Fitz, "I'll build a machine that can carry us over the flowerbeds in the summer. You get too tired going up and down the stairs all the time, and it is too cold out there in the snow."

And so he did. The contraption was a work of genius, for if Fitz could get his mother to turn a little crank, he could sit in a basket that would go up and over the flowerbeds. And Jemma's parents had a crank on their side that did much the same thing.

It was not long before little Fitz and little Jemma were hardly ever without each other. They were always at one house or the other, or they went out and played together, and they never ran out of games to play or things to say to each other.

Fitz was especially fond of the daisies that grew in their little garden (for it seemed as much his as it was hers, he was there so often). He liked to listen as Jemma told him all the ways they could be used. He loved to look at the daisies so much that Jemma's mother taught him a little hymn, and the two sat near the flower boxes and sang it often.

Daisy, my daisy, when winter has past

That is the time when I see you at last

You spring up in sunlight, and then I can see

The sunshine in you, in the world, and in me

On warm days, they liked to go out and play by the river, and one one of these days, Fitz slipped and fell in.

"Help!" cried little Fitz, and little Jemma was so distressed that she jumped into the river and pulled him out. But what she didn't know was that there were two shards from that evil mirror lying on the riverbank, and when Jemma pulled him out of the water and threw him on the bank, poor little Fitz got one shard of glass in his eye, and another one straight in his heart.

That was when everything started to change for Fitz, for when he looked around at their little town, he saw only a strange place where his father had never been. And when he looked at the other children, he saw only the way they mocked him.

But it seemed that the mirror did not have the power to distort Jemma in his eyes. So while everyone around her looked ugly and vile, she was pretty and kind. And the difference between Jemma and everything else was so great that to Fitz, it was like looking at an angel.

And that was when little Fitz started to fall in love with little Jemma.

But when he looked at his own reflection in the mirror, he was horrified, for he saw only a small, stupid little boy who had no friends at all. Why, he thought, would an angel ever bother with a silly creature like him? And the more he thought, the colder his heart became.

"I don't like it here," he said one day, "I think I will ask my mother to take us back."

"Back?" cried Jemma, "Why would you want to go there? We grew so many daisies this year, and there will be even more in the spring! You can't miss them!"

"You don't understand," said little Fitz. "You have always been at home, and I am only home when I'm with you."

"Then you should stay by my side, always," said little Jemma. And she was very pleased that she had solved the problem. Besides, she thought to herself, little Fitz should stay with her, for he was so very clever, and he could build contraptions that could bring her herbal remedies to many people. 

But little Fitz didn't think this fixed anything at all.

And that night, he looked at Jemma's home through his window and saw his own reflection in the window pane. A girl as perfect as Jemma, he thought, must want a man, and he could not grow into one, for he had no father to show him how.

So, the next day when Jemma asked him if he wanted to look at snowflakes through their magnifying glass, Fitz told her that he was going to go play with the older boys instead. And off he went, carrying his sledge as ice-cold tears fell down his cheeks.

"Ho there," said a stranger, "how dare you cry when you look at me!"

Little Fitz looked up, and found that the stranger was seated in the biggest sledge he had ever seen, pure white, and its occupant was dressed in white from head to toe.

"I wasn't looking at you," said Fitz, "I was crying because I want to grow up."

"Well," said the stranger, "you must come with me then, for I know everything there is to know about being a man."

And if you think this stranger was the demon, you are right.

But to Fitz, all creature looked like demons, Jemma being the only exception, and he so desperately wanted to win her affection that listened to what the demon had to say.

"You must come to my castle," said the demon, "and you will become master of yourself and the world and get a pair of new skates. For I am the Snow King, and every place covered in snow is my kingdom."

Of course, the demon was not a king, nor had he a kingdom, but Fitz looked at him with a shard of that terrible glass in his eye and thought he must be.

"Come, no man wants to be cold. Wrap yourself in this big fur coat."

But before the Snow King helped Fitz into the coat, he paced two hands on each of little Fitz's shoulders, and oh, it was cold! Colder than ice! And Fitz's heart was already half ice. And for a moment, Fitz thought he would die, but then he did not, and he stopped feeling so much. He forgot all about his mother, and his father, and the daisies. He began to forget everything, as if his mind and heart were freezing over. And by the time he was wrapped in the big, fur coat, he had almost forgotten about Jemma, too.

And little Fitz hopped in the sledge and let the Snow King take him far, far away.