- Ice Girl
Main Piece: Ice Girl (Tale)
“In the summertime, a young boy and girl become very good friends and they are neighbors. They hang out everyday and the boy sees her as his one companion. One day, he finds a single red rose in his garden, and thinks that that would be a wonderful gift to show her his love for her. When he presents the rose, she blushes and with a big smile throws her arms around him. Autumn passes, and their friendship remains strong. Come winter, the boy goes over to the girl’s house, and knocks on the door to no answer. He waits for a few minutes, and she still never shows up. He sadly goes back home. Weeks pass with no word from her. He sits alone in his bedroom, watching the cold Russian tundra turn icy and snow flurries float by his window. Finally he cannot wait any longer. He sets out into the cold to find her. After hours of trekking through the snow, he finds a small castle of ice–the only shelter in sight. Seeking to warm up, he knocks on the door. It creaks open, and his girl is standing there, a menacing look on her face. “What are you doing here?” she says. He takes a step back in surprise. No hug? No smile from his long lost dear friend? “Go away.” She says. “I need to be alone here. I don’t need your disgusting happiness in my sight.” He doesn’t understand this sudden change in behavior, but he will not give up trying to bring his friend back home. “Are you hungry?” He asks. “We can walk back to my home and I will prepare you a fresh pot of Borsch.” Reluctantly, she takes his hand, still with a frown on her face and they begin the long hike home. As they are walking, he notices a shard of ice stuck in her eye. “What happened to your eye? There is a piece of ice in it.”
“I broke a vase made out of ice when the winter started, and since then the ice has been stuck in my eye.”
They walk and they walk, and as they walk the winter begins to melt away, with sprouts of flowers from the ground indicating the start of Spring. As the snow melts and the blizzard dies out, he notices the shard of ice in her eye grow smaller and smaller as it melts into tears dripping down her face. Suddenly, she turns to him, with the once familiar smile that he had grown to love. “I’m sorry, Vanya.” She says. “The ice had made me coldhearted and angry, but now I feel that it has gone. Let’s go back home and make the Borsch together.”
Background Information:
This was told to MD as a child by her mother. Not much is known about the origin of this story because neither MD nor I could find this story on the internet. We believe that it would not be a very difficult story to find being sold in a bookstore in Russia. However, since the winters are not nearly as frigid, for the most part, in the United States, the story does not hold as true as it does in Russia.
Context of the Performance:
This is mainly told to children during storytime in Russia. It familiarizes them with the harsh realities of the Russian winter weather.
My Thoughts:
The Russian winter makes everybody cold hearted and angry and once it passes everybody returns to normalcy. It also provides a lesson that people may feel something or act in a particular way due to something that is not noticeable at first, but can change once the issue has been resolved. It tells about situations that are not fully understood when taken at only face value.