The Ice Palace

The pine needles stretch their tongues and sing an unfamiliar nocturnal song. Each tongue is so small that it cannot be heard; together the sound is so deep and powerful that it could level the hills if it wished.

The darkness at the sides of the road. It possesses neither form nor name, but whoever passes here knows when it comes out and follows after and sends shudders like rippling streams down his back.

Four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking-glass. Questions shooting out and then hiding again. I don't know: Gleams and radiance, gleaming from you to me, from me to you, and from me to you alone—into the mirror and out again, and never an answer about what this is, never an explanation.

They were floating, almost at one with the darkness, reflecting no light. Their footsteps could not be heard. But their breathing could, and perhaps the heart. They mingled with other almost inaudible nocturnal stirrings, like a small vibration in long wires.

Fear can resemble a crackling sound in a frozen ditch.

It was this the palace and the river had been waiting for. She had known it all along. Now it would crash. They would stand out on top, she had drawn them all with her into this horror. Gaping cracks would open beneath their feet, the palace would totter and fall forward under the pressure of the water with all of them on top of it, down into the seething channel, and that would be the end. She had known it all along, ever since the moment the men stood there with their sombre song of sorrow.

They themselves have lent it life; light and life to the dead block of ice, and to the silent time that follows midnight. Before they came the waterfall had been roaring, despondent and unconcerned, and the colossus of ice had been merely death, completed and mute. They did not know what they had brought with them before they were ensnared by the play between what has been and what is to come.

She was ready for sleep; she was even warm as well. It was not cold in here at any rate. The pattern in the ice wall danced in the room, the light shone more strongly. Everything that should have been upright was upside-down—everything was piercingly bright. Not once did she think this was strange; it was just as it should be. She wanted to sleep; she was languid and limp and ready.

The promise was a strong tie, hard, but I knew where I stood. If it's gone, I don't know where I am. When there's a strong scent in the spring twilight, I know least of all.

Her words seemed like fences alongside the road to school; it was difficult to climb over them, and they led straight to school.

Unn was strong in her lonely position in the schoolyard, not lost and pathetic. Siss used her power to win over the group and was successful; all the same she had the feeling that Unn over there was the stronger, even though she did nothing and had no support. She was losing to Unn, and perhaps the group saw it this way, too?

The strong March sun was shining directly on her, so that she was wreathed in glinting brightness, all kinds of shining streaks and beams, curious roses, ice roses and ice ornaments, decked as if for some great festivity.

There were things here too that could not be described as either the one or the other - but they belonged to such a place and one had to accept everything as it came