The next week I paid a visit to Grandmother Fælyn. Her home was situated across the store a few houses to the right. I found the path leading from the cobblestone road into her garden, which was surprisingly uneventful, containing a maple tree of all things and a few bushes. I wondered if she didn't have the time to garden. I pushed open the picket gate and made my way up to her door. Her house was an old grey stone house with a round door of lovely dark wood and a silvery looking door handle. It was rustic looking, but almost arcane at the same time, the sort of house you looked at from the street and wondered who lived there and why. Except I knew who lived there and why.

It was amazing how knowing could kill imagination.

I knocked on the door a few times. I had worn an iris-blue dress with bits of white lacing on it. It didn't do much for my features, but it was pretty enough to draw attention to itself regardless. Veda had also insisted I bring a basket with some fresh bread, jam, and a few nice bath salts in it – for extra incentive if the old woman didn't feel up to giving her books. I had been uncomfortable with it, but ultimately had decided not to cause a fight and go against Veda. That was just the way she was, I supposed: businesslike, calculating, and opportunistic. Perhaps that's really the only reason she married Papa? If so, what an awful misstep that was.

The crisp air was beginning to nip ever so slightly at my ears when the old woman finally came. "Oh, my, if it isn't dear Gerda, come to see me!" She smiled pleasantly to reveal crooked teeth.

She looked even more old and helpless today than she had even last week. A dark red shawl was wrapped around her neck, and her hair hung down her back in a loose braid. Her clothes were somewhat frayed and layered in oranges and yellows, much like the maple tree that was starting to turn.

I shuffled in my position. "I, I'm sorry if I've come at a bad time, but I thought I would pay you a visit and see… um, see if…"

"Why, do come in, dearie." The old woman smiled and beckoned me inwards. Her house smelled sweet and cinnamon-y. "I've just finished my maple-apple upside down cake; would you like to try a piece?"

I breathed in again and absorbed the marvelous fragrance. It had been a while since I had smelled something wonderful. I felt my mouth begin to salivate. "Oh, no, thank you, ma'am. Really, I shouldn't." But I sure wanted to.

"Nonsense," Grandmother Fælyn said with a queer sense of amusement as if it really had been nonsense. She walked into the kitchen, and I followed her. The old woman seemed to draw inspiration from nature and her doors and the walls of her house all seemed to have beautiful woodworking with leaf and vine designs as well as the charming accents of brown, orange, gold, and red everywhere.

"Your house is lovely," I said, breathlessly.

"Why thank you, dear. I love the autumn season. My son says I've got so much autumn colors and themes in here I'd make the Autumn Witch jealous, herself." She chuckled at this.

"The Autumn Witch?" I asked, shyly.

Grandmother Fælyn turned and smiled slowly. "Don't you know the Autumn Witch? She's the sister of the Snow Queen."

"Who's the Snow Queen, ma'am?" I blurted out, before remembering I should have just smiled and nodded.

Grandmother Fælyn laughed. "My, what a funny child you are! I thought every child grew up with that story!" She cut a slice of the cake, set it on a plate, and pushed it towards me. "Here, try this. Just to humor an old woman."

I acquiesced tentatively and took the fork she offered before placing a piece in my mouth. It was delicious, of course. The maple syrup had soaked into the apple cake, which had been spiced with cinnamon, creating a rich, moist flavor perfect for a fall day. I glanced up to see the thoroughly satisfied expressed on Grandmother Fælyn's face. "This is delicious," I said, taking another piece.

"I'm guessing it's a lot better than anything you've bought out at the town restaurants."

"Yes, ma'am, it certainly is!"

I finished the rest of a cake with a glass of the milk she kept cooled in the icebox. "Where is your son, ma'am?"

"Oh, at work I'm sure." She sighed, rinsing the plate off with some of the water she kept near the raised basin in the center of her cabinetry. Her cabinets were all cherry and gave off a warm, sentimental glow. The table I sat at had a white vase with a bouquet of chrysanthemums in a variety of colors. Everywhere I looked things seemed to carry a sweet, nurturing air.

"Will he be home soon?" I grimaced, angry at the awkwardness of my own impulsive questioning.

She pulled out a towel from the drawer and wiped the towel clean before laying the dish in a basket. "No, I'm afraid he always gets home rather late. His wife always works late, too. Poor pretty thing."

I wanted to ask more, about whether or not they had children or what did they, but I felt too afraid that my curiosity would become offensive, so I stayed silent.

"The books you're looking for are upstairs in the attic. Would you like to see them now?"

"Yes, ma'am – um, that is, if you don't mind." I felt so bad for coming for the books now, especially with how lonely the old woman must have been.

"Gerda, really. All this 'yes, ma'am,' 'no ma'am,' 'oh, thank you, ma'am' is starting to get a bit ridiculous. Do call me Grandmother Fælyn or even Grandmother if that's too much of a mouthful." The old woman's smile was gentler now and suddenly younger, the cackle and rasp of her voice suddenly replaced with warm milk.

"Yes, Grandmother Fælyn," I said, to which she smiled approvingly. We walked into the small parlor where a few wooden chairs rested. The walls had a design of green and gold leaves etching laced around the middle like a garland.

"Who painted that? It's lovely," I said, momentarily forgetting my resolve not to ask more questions.

"Oh, that pretty little etching on the wall? My son did that. He likes to paint on occasion."

She led me up the dark wood stairs that spiraled into the attic. A wall cut through half of it, accompanied by a door, while the other half of it remained open. A small bed lay up against the wall, a few feet by the window. An old bookshelf stood at the opposing wall, and in the middle were two chairs and a beautiful, hand carved spinning wheel.

"Oh, what a pretty spinning wheel!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, I used it to make yarn out of it and turn that into cloth. I never could get past that. But I did manage to save all the best clothes in case I ever did learn how to make some pretty out of them, not just some silly scarf or hat. This is where I sleep. My son and his wife sleep in the room there closed off by a wall."

"Isn't it cold," I asked, "sleeping by the window?"

Grandmother Fælyn laughed mildly, "Oh, I don't mind. Just sleep with extra blankets is all." She turned to pick a few books then dusted them off crudely with her hand. "Let's see here… 'The Child's Book of Baking,' 'What My Mother Never Told Me' – if you skip all the vehement passages about picking a good husband and birth fathers it's really got some nice beginning recipes. And here's "The Artist and the Dressmaker" for you. It's about this dressmaker who marries an artist and how he helps her to make more artistic and elegant designs. She gives some wonderful design ideas."

I looked at the book and skimmed through the pages, noting the heavy reliance on words and not pictures. I would have to get someone else to read it for me.

"I know your stepmother is the one who's asking to borrow books, but is there anything you'd like to read perchance? I'd be more than willing to lend you something."

I was about to refuse when she gasped and turned around abruptly to snatch a book. "Ah! I have just the thing! I got a book of fairy stories, as they call them, a number of years ago. The one about the Snow Queen is in there. Would you like to read it?"

She handed me a book lovelier than anything she had shown me in her house previously. The binding was trimmed in gleaming gold and the cover was a mixture of beautiful gold ink on a deep blue background where delicate swirls of pink, red, and white were embroidered, looking something like flowers, but no flowers I had ever seen. A man and a woman were featured, though they both wore beautiful green clothes and had butterfly wings of many different colors. I felt my eyes bulge out of my socket. She turned some of the pages and every so often there were wonderful illustrations of men and women dancing, a glass coffin with a woman inside, a floating castle in the sky, and many other wonderful things.

The problem was with all those words.

I smiled sadly at it and shook my head. "Thank you, Grandmother Fælyn, but I really can't accept it."

She stopped smiling and looked at me sternly for a minute. "Why ever not?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again: "you see… I never learned to read."

Her eyes widened slightly, and she nodded. "Oh. I see."

We both stood there together in a moment of silence.

"How are you going to read the other book I gave you, then?" She finally asked.

I blushed and looked down. "Well, I was hoping my stepmother would help me with it."

She nodded, and we both continued to stand there quietly.

"You know, Gerda, why don't you just come back here, and I'll read it to you? I mean, if you're not too uncomfortable with the idea."

"Really?" I said, feeling my face light up.

"Yes, really. I could always use some company, and you could use some help reading. Why not do it together? I'm sure your stepmother wouldn't mind; she's got lots of other things she's got to worry about."

I stood quietly for a few minutes, feeling like a windowsill quivering with sunlight. "Oh… that would be… that would be very lovely. Oh, if you're quite certain that you wouldn't mind; I don't mean to be a bother.

She smiled again, slowly, though her eyes twinkled with sadness. "No, of course not. I've always wanted a grandchild of my own to read to. Perhaps you could play the part for me for a little bit?" Desolation seemed to surface on her face fleetingly, then was swallowed suddenly in the sea of her other expressions.

"I… I haven't really had a Grandmother before, so I'm not quite sure I would be able to play a very convincing granddaughter."

She laughed, less of a cackle and more naturally now. "I'm sure you'll do fine. Now, run along dearie. Your stepmother is expecting you. Shall we meet next week at this same time?"

I nodded and turned down the stairs to leave.

We met a week later, in the late morning. I arrived in less pretentious wear, while her attire seemed less raggedy and tired looking. We sat together upstairs in the chair with a blanket to embroider into, as Grandmother Fælyn read over the instructions, and we both made attempts to interpret them.

"I suppose one reason I've never had much patience for embroidering is because I've had even less patience for people who try to tell you how to do it." Her mouth soured as she undid her stitching to start over again.

I laughed. "Thank you for doing this with me, Grandmother. It's nice to have someone faltering along with you to make you feel less foolish."

"It's nice to have somebody with you in general," she replied.

We both smiled and continued stitching.

After a while, I finally started getting the hang of some of the basic stitches. "Look Grandmother! I think I'm starting to understand!"

Grandmother Fælyn looked over at my work and then to the book and nodded approvingly. "I think you have, indeed. Perhaps you won't mind if I took a break then? My poor old fingers are starting to get cross with me from poking them too much."

"No, not at all, that's fine."

Grandmother Fælyn set down her needlework and stretched and stood up from her chair. "I'll make us some tea and cookies for a snack."

"Oh, Grandmother, you needn't go through all that work on my account." I stopped sewing and looked up at her with a frown.

"Nonsense, child. Cooking is one of my favorite past-times. You ought to learn how to bake, too."

I shrugged the idea off. "That's Laurel and my stepfamily's domain, I guess."

"And how is that going for them?"

I laughed. "Oh, not very well. Penta's creations are hardly flavorful and Laurel has about burnt down the store twice." I immediately regretted saying that.

"Oh, my," Grandmother Fælyn replied slowly. "I hope she does not succeed. That certainly is a lovely store. I do miss it."

"I'm sure Veda and Penta would never let it get to that point," I replied hastily.

"One can only hope." Then, after a pause: "I'll be back in just a minute after I put the cookies in the oven."

I nodded and continued sewing until she returned a half an hour later, still wiping her hands on her apron from the mixture. "Now, that will take about an hour to bake, so remind me to look at the clock at about… fourteen forty-five."

"Yes, Grandmother."

"In the meantime, I thought you might like to listen to a story from the fairy book. That is, if you're not too busy trying to concentrate on your sewing."

I drew my breath in giddily. "Oh, no, I'm sure I could pay attention to both!"

"My, my," she said, smiling, "I hardly know which one to begin."

The sunlight began to stream through the window, making little gold waves on the floor.

"I know," she said, watching the patterns swim and shimmer together. "I'll tell the story about the girl who could spin hay into gold."

"She could do what?" I said, then winced in pain as I stabbed myself accidentally with the needle.

"Well, you see. Once upon a time, a miller fell in love with a beautiful fairy. You see, one day he was out in the woods chopping wood because before he was a miller, he was a woodsman…"

She proceeded to tell me, at length, the story of how this man and his fairy bride met and fell in love. The fairy then gave birth to a beautiful child who had hair the color of spun gold and the unusual power to spin gold herself.

"Arielle was intent not to exploit her daughter's gift or to let others find out about it, lest they lead her down the road of destruction. But unfortunately, Arielle had spent too much time out of the fairy woods – that's where they lived you know – and she began to get weaker and weaker, until one day she died. Her husband and daughter were devastated of course"

I nodded, and thought of my own mother? Should I miss her right now? The fact of the matter was that I didn't.

"The husband had to become a miller instead of being a woodsman, even though he really liked chopping down trees."

I laughed at the absurdity. It was a silly tale after all.

"One day the daughter wanted to make a shawl to keep her shoulders warm in the coming winter, but she had no more wool left to do so. Instead, she decided that she would take some of the animals' straw, but as she began to spin in through the spinning wheel it turned into spun gold!"

I smiled to myself. What could a miller's daughter possibly do with spun gold?

Grandmother Fælyn continued to read in her rapt, soothing voice. There was something about the way she talked, the strange blend of honey, grain, wind, and sea salt in her voice – all at once brittle and raspy and warm and milky. It was like a fresh biscuit out of the oven, gently caressed with butter, steaming and soft. It was like a place you went to when the sky was dark and you wanted to be safe.

It was like home in the strangest, most foreign way.

Word finally got out, Grandmother Fælyn explained, about the girl and her unusual powers and a lonely king heard. He was very quiet and serious and had been a very sweet boy when he was born, but nobody had ever explained to him how to run a kingdom, let alone keep up with his financial affairs. Many of the treasurers of the court embezzled money from him, and he felt terribly betrayed. So when he came to the miller's house on a horse, he was desperate for a miracle.

"When King Leonis saw the girl, he became infatuated with her and thought that he could love her and she, him, but he was sacred. He decreed that she spin his giant storage room of hay into gold by morning or, if she was not who she said she was, he'd put her to death."

The old woman continued on, saying an imp-like man had helped her when she had gotten to nervous to continue spinning the hay into gold, but at the cost of her first born son. When he finally finished spinning all the hay in the room, he disappeared just as the king was opening the door. Seeing that she was indeed who she said she was, the king was overjoyed and they were married. However, when her first-born son was finally born, the time came at last for the imp to collect him. The queen was devastated, not to mention terrified at what the King would think, and begged and pleaded with the imp, who finally relented and told her that if she could guess his name he would not take the baby. She sent out a spy who discovered his name in secret and returned to tell her the news. When the imp returned and the queen finally guessed it, he grew so angry that he disappeared forever and was never heard of again.

"The story," Grandmother Fælyn explained, "is about trust. Are you willing to trust someone even if they hurt you?"

I thought pensively as I stitched the thread to and fro. "I don't know, Grandmother. I suppose I've never really needed to trust anyone."

She placed the book in her lap gently. "Trusting is very hard, and people break your trust."

"Why did the imp-man want the baby, Grandmother?" I asked. "Such an odd request."

She shrugged. "I suppose he was lonely. He was always out in the forest with no human interaction."

"Why was he so angry at the queen at the end? Was it because she cheated in learning his real name?"

Grandmother Fælyn shrugged again and got out of the chair to place the book on the shelf. "Who knows? It's only a story, besides. Perhaps the writers just needed a villain."

"Poor little imp-man," I said softly. "I bet he trusted the queen… even though he wanted her baby, he still tried to be honest in how he got it. He did all that work for her, just to be cheated out of what he really wanted… to feel loved and not alone, to have something to care for."

The old woman was suddenly very quiet. Then she moved to the door carefully. "The cookies should be done soon, Gerda. Why don't you take a few home with you for your family? You could finish your embroidery the next time you come."

I got out of my seat to follow her. "Grandmother, are you not feeling alright?"

She laughed softly with her back turned. "Oh, I'm afraid that old story has quite worn me out. But let's have another one the next time you come back here."

I smiled to myself. I would certainly look forward to it.

Some pronunciation tips for you. Several of the names are based on the Danish language, since it is a retelling of Andersen's The Snow Queen. The country they live in, Isdæll is pronounced EES-daytl, Gerda Væl is pronounced GEHR-da (not Gerr-da) VAYL, Kay is pronounced (KEYE – like, rhymes with eye), Fælyn is what it looks like (Fay-LIN) – a shout out to my friend Faylinn Norse :D. Speaking of Danish, I'm going to shamelessly advertise two of my friend's fanfics, Clar the Pirate's "Andersen Sanders" and Captain Fantastic's "The Piper" which are too particularly nice stories out there set in an AU Denmark.

Now, concerning the story:

Firstly a couple people mentioned that Gerda can read – I must have mislead you somewhere. It will be confirmed again in this chapter that she can't read, which is one of the reasons I was wondering if she shouldn't just be born into poverty from the get-go, since it'd be highly unlikely for girls Laurel and Gerda's age not to be educated by their parents – I knew this, but considered it her parents' form of neglect, although in that day in age the children's education reflected upon their parents. But I think it was mentioned that she got a book in the first chapter – I was going for a picture book, but obviously that wasn't expressed.

Secondly, my problems in general with this chapter: it's kind of gushy and over-sentimental, and I feel like the descriptions are flowery and not necessarily effective. The dialogue occasionally comes off as being hammy to me, too, though. Not too sure how I feel about the story-telling elements, either. Gerda seems to over-react a lot too with being über excited all the time.