The Glass Maiden
Story and illustrations by Aven Harper
It was snowing when they found her.
She was lying on the hill at the edge of the village; to all appearances quite dead.
For a long time they stared at her, because she looked so strange.
Her hair was white and wild and long, her eyebrows were white, her lashes were white, and her lips were blue. She was only a child; eleven, maybe twelve winters old. She wore a faded coat that had large holes in it, and her feet were bare and blistered, as though she had been wandering across the entire world in them.
The oldest sibling, Atalie, said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’
‘I can see her breath frosting,’ said her brother, Jonni. ‘Maybe she’s a frost fairy.’
The youngest, Hanna, said nothing. She stepped forward, and shook the strange white figure, hard.
Nothing happened.
Crows wheeled above them cawing, black exclamations against the snowy sky. A stiff breeze stirred, and Atalie came to a decision.
‘She can’t stay here, or she will die for sure. We must take her home to Mama. She will know what to do.’
So they put the strange, half-dead child onto their sled, and wrapped her tightly with blankets, and together they dragged the sled through the park and they took her home.
‘Look, Mama!’ shouted Jonni. ‘Look what the snow gave us!’
Mama took one look at their quarry, and made a noise halfway between surprise and shock.
‘Can we keep her, Mama?’ Hanna pleaded. ‘Can we?’
‘Never mind that,’ said their mother. ‘First we must get her warm. Quick! Help me bring her inside!’
Between them they picked up the child in the blankets and hurried inside. Hanna quickly put more logs on the fire and Jonni warmed some hot milk and cinnamon on the woodstove. Atalie helped her mother put the child on the sagging sofa by the fireplace and strip her of the wet garments. They wrapped her in furs that a trapper had given them the previous winter in exchange for shelter when the bad weather caught him out.
Mama tutted and murmured and stroked the child’s face with warm and gentle fingers, and spooned tiny spoonfuls of warm milk between her blue lips, and watched as the icicles on her lashes melted, but there was no response.
Yet the child lived.
After two days had passed, she finally woke from her slumber.
She woke to the sounds of children shrieking with laughter outside the window, to the sounds of snowballs thudding against the adobe walls of the dwelling.
She saw a woman bent over something on her lap, peering in the light from a cheerful blaze in the fireplace as she drew a needle in and out, in and out.
The warmth of the cottage wrapped her up tightly and shadows danced on the low ceiling. As she tried to sit up, the woman dropped her needle and said, ‘Suns and moons! You’re awake!’
Before long, the child was drinking spiced milk from a goat, sitting wrapped in a blanket, dressed in a nightgown she did not recognise, her feet snug in the warmest of goatskin slippers, furs wrapped around her shoulders. The children had been called inside, and now they all gathered round her, the whole family, staring and staring in delight at her.
‘Look how blue her eyes are! Look, Mama. They are the colour of the summer lake!’
‘Never mind that,’ said Mama. ‘Here, child. Get this drink inside you.’ She held a cup and tilted it for the girl to drink, and the smell of cinnamon and cloves and apples rose in the warm air. When the drink was finished, the woman spoke again, her voice full of concern. ‘What is your name, child? Where are you from? Where is your family?’
The girl opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out.
‘Never mind.’ Mama laid her soft hand on her head. ‘Never mind.’
She couldn’t tell them that she was from nowhere, that she belonged to no one.
She couldn’t tell them that she had lost her family, or that her family had lost her. That they had looked at her strange white hair and her long, sad face, and concluded she could not possibly be one of them.
She tried to answer, but instead she coughed, and out of her mouth spilled tiny pieces of glass like broken teeth, skittering across the wooden floorboards, glittering in the firelight.
‘Upon my grandmother’s soul!’ cried their Mama. ‘What is this? What is this?’
The boy gathered the pieces, turning them over and over in his hand. ‘Glass!’ he announced at last. ‘It’s glass. Mama, why is there glass coming out of her?’
She couldn’t tell them that she was broken, beyond repair. That her insides were turning to glass, which was cracking and splitting inside her. That gradually, over the years, the glass had cut her throat, cut her breath, cut her soul, and prevented her from uttering a single word.
She couldn’t tell them about the sadness that weighed so heavy upon her, that never lifted even for the briefest breath.
That she was slowly falling apart and before long there would be nothing left of her but a pile of broken, shattered pieces.
That she had wanted to die, had wanted the beasts to take her, had wanted the wilderness – not the glass - to have the final word.
But then they had rescued her.
And she wasn’t glad.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mama. ‘I don’t know, but it’s clear she cannot speak, poor love. She will have to stay here until we find out where she comes from and who she belongs to.’
A tiny flame of hope flickered inside the child’s heart.
If she was not allowed to die, then this is where she would want to stay, in this dark and cosy cottage, with these strangers who had already shown her more kindness than anyone she could remember. And since she came from nowhere and belonged to nobody, perhaps they would let her stay, perhaps they would take her into their kind hearts?
‘What shall we call her?’ asked Hanna. ‘We have to call her something!’
They considered this for a little while.
‘The Glass Girl,’ said Jonni.
Mama shook her head. ‘No, we can’t call her that. We shall call her Maya, after my dear mother, if she will accept it.’
The child gave a slight nod. They could call her anything they liked, and she would have welcomed it. Welcomed it all.
Over the happy days that followed, Maya’s strength began to return. When she had recovered enough and her blue lips had turned pink again and clever Mama had saved her toes and fingers from frostbite, the children were allowed to take her outside with them. They were used to exploring together every day, when they were not milking the goat, scrubbing the cottage, or chopping logs.
What a magical world it was!
At first, they transported Maya on their sled, but soon she was running with them, dressed in the spare snow boots and knitted jumpers and warm leggings they had long since grown out of, her white head wrapped in a woollen hat, her tiny hands hidden in huge mittens. They grew used to her lack of words, but they loved to make her laugh – a laugh like the chink-chink sound of icicles melting in the thaw. And every time she laughed, she spat out glass – handfuls! – which scattered across the snow and sparkled and gleamed brighter than the snow crystals themselves. And inside the cottage, Mama quietly swept up the glass and put it all in an old enamel cup, and then in a bowl, and then in a saucepan, and finally in a bucket, wondering all the while what she would do with it. It seemed a pity to do nothing with it. Perhaps the glassblower in the village could melt it down and use it to make something useful?
They had very little, the fatherless family, but they had logs for the fire, and milk from the goat and Mama made ends meet by sewing and mending garments for the villagers and exchanging her work for grain and spices and logs and sometimes if they were lucky, fabric for their own clothes too. They loved each other with the fiercest kind of love, and it kept them warm and it filled their bellies and made the tiny dark dwelling seem like the kindest place in the world. And if sometimes they could do with more food and new boots and warmer clothes, well, they never said so. They filled jars with preserves from warmer days, and they lit tallow candles to light the dark evenings, and sometimes they were cold, but not from lack of companionship.
The children played hide and seek amongst the snowy bushes that crouched like misshapen dwarves and giants on the far side of the lane. They climbed trees twisted into outlandish shapes, trees whose tortuous branches were piled high with snow which fell with a whoosh! as they were shaken. Voices high, talking all at once, laughter ringing like bells through the woods – and all the while the crows watched them, croaking to each other in crow-language as if they knew exactly who this strange white child was and were sharing a very important secret amongst themselves.
As for Maya, she had never known happiness like it. She thought she would burst with it.
And at the same time, there was a shadow within her. A shadow of doubt. Of disbelief.
Happiness had never been hers. Why should it be hers now? It would leave her, sure as sure, just as everything hopeful had always left her. It would be all the harder because she had tasted it, like the lingering sweetness of honey melting on the tongue.
She pushed the shadow down, and she brought the glass up, and in this uneasy fashion she was able to live amongst them. In the evenings they danced and sang by the fire, and Mama sang lullabies to lull them all to sleep.
As the weeks became months, Mama spoke to everyone she could think of: the baker, the butcher, the ironmonger, the apothecary, the grocer. None of them knew of a glass maiden, none of them knew of a white-haired waif, none of them knew of a missing child from a heartbroken family.
‘Can we keep her, mama?’ asked Jonni.
‘Oh, can we? Can we?’ cried his sisters.
Mama looked long and hard at Maya. She said, ‘I have asked everywhere, and nobody knows where you have come from. Nobody knows where your family might be. I am sorry for this, lass. But I want you to know this: you are welcome to live here with us, as long as you wish. You will be my daughter, and my daughters will be your sisters and my son will be your brother. And I will be your Mama.’
Atalie smiled, Jonni punched the air and Hanna jumped up and down.
Maya gazed back at them all and felt the glass rising inside her, filling her throat, making it hard to breathe. This time, she could taste blood.
‘Look, Mama!’ cried Jonni. ‘Maya’s crying glass!’
It was true. It wasn’t salt tears that fell from Maya’s eyes, it was glass - like crushed ice, slipping down her cheeks, catching in her lashes, falling onto her woollen scarf, and bouncing against her boots.
‘Oh, my child,’ said Mama, shaking her head. ‘What is this? Are you in pain?’
Maya shook her head furiously, and glass flew in all directions.
She was in deep pain, but not from the glass.
‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ said Mama, gently touching the girl’s head. She glanced at the four buckets in the corner of the cottage, all full to the brim with the glass. It was the strangest thing. It was almost as if the happier Maya seemed to be, the more broken glass she produced.
Mama then made up her mind and told them she would take the buckets of glass to the village glassblower right that very moment, to see what he made of it. ‘Perhaps he can make something beautiful from it, as well as useful,’ she said.
So Mama and Jonni set off down the lane carrying four heavy buckets of glass between them, and the girls remained behind to shovel the fresh snow away from the front door and the path to the lane.
But Maya continued to cry glass tears, unnoticed by her sisters, and the snow swallowed each drop as it fell.
She was broken, beyond repair. Her insides were crumbling, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of her disintegrated, too. And then what would become of her?
Maya knew the pain of loss. She knew it well.
She knew that she was turning to glass and that eventually, she would shatter altogether.
She knew that the loss of her life would bring pain to this family. She knew the pain would bring the shadow into their lives and would bring darkness into their bright days. Their smiles would vanish, their light spirits would be weighed down.
She knew she could not do this to them. Not to the ones she loved. The longer she lived with them, the worse their suffering would surely be.
As she swept up the shovelled snow, she knew what she had to do.
Her tears stopped falling and her heartfelt old again, as its familiar heaviness and chill returned.
It had resumed snowing, the flakes fat and round, as the girls finished with the path and went inside to begin making soup on the woodstove. Maya removed her hat and her boots along with her sisters, and placed them on the table.
‘I wonder what he will make from the glass?’ mused Hanna, chopping up carrots and onions.
‘Perhaps a beautiful vase, and we can put flowers in it,’ said Atalie, placing the soup pot full of water onto the lit stove. She tipped some salt into the water, and some broth from the soaked vegetables they had dried the previous summer.
‘Or maybe a mirror! A glass mirror, so we can see ourselves every day!’
‘What do you want to be looking at yourself every day for?’ scolded Atalie, but she was smiling. ‘Maya, what do you think he will make from your glass?’
There was no reply.
The sisters turned, to find an empty room.
‘Maya?’
They eyed the hat and the boots.
There was nowhere else Maya could be, but outside.
Hanna dropped her cutting knife and Atalie let go of the pot handle. They ran to the door and flung it open.
Snow fell silently, fast and thick, so thick that they could hardly see the path.
Footprints already covered over.
‘Maya!’
But she was gone.
When Mama and Jonni returned, they saw the sisters’ faces and knew immediately something was amiss.
Hanna was crying, Atalie was pale. ‘We’ve looked everywhere! We don’t know where she’s gone - and Mama, we don’t know why!’
Mama’s lips tightened. ‘We must find her,’ she said, with great determination. ‘She may not wish to be part of our family – stars alive, she could not even tell us what she thought of the idea! Of course, that choice should be hers, and hers alone. But never mind all that. There’s another reason we must find her.’
Jonni pulled out of his pockets handfuls of gold coins, and Mama pointed to the two buckets they had carried back with them, still full of the glass. Her cheeks were burning with a fire that was not just from the cold.
The sisters stared. Gold coins? Two buckets still full of glass? They asked what was what.
‘What is what,’ said Mama, ‘is this,’ and she scooped up a handful of the glass, letting the snowy light dance its mysterious dance across the jagged pieces.
‘Not glass!’ said Jonni in hushed tones. ‘Not glass, but diamonds!’
The sisters’ mouths fell open. They did not know what to say.
‘The glassblower, he - well, that clever man, he suspected straight away. As quick as you like, he took us to the gemstone trader. And the gemstone trader, he confirmed it. The poor child, bless her soul - the poor lass thought there was broken glass coming out of her,’ said Mama. ‘When all the while, it was diamonds. Suns and moons! Diamonds. She is not broken at all!’
Jonni threw a handful into the air, and rainbow colours fractured into a million prisms in their amazed eyes as the gemstones fell to the earth.
‘We have to find her,’ said Atalie.
‘And tell her!’ cried Hanna.
‘And remind her that she still has a home here, with us,’ said Mama, ‘if she wishes it. But how will we find her? How will we know where she’s gone? It’s snowing so heavily we will never find her tracks….’ She gestured to the dizzying flakes, and they knew she was right.
But then Jonni, who was examining the ground where the path met the lane, silently pointed. There, catching the late afternoon light, was a single diamond, cradled by the fresh-fallen snow.
And beyond it, another.
And another.
The children whooped, their Mama laughed, and they began to run, and run, following the sparkling trail, each of them wanting to be the first to find the Glass Maiden and tell her what she really was. Who she really was.
Not broken at all, but full of treasure.