ADRIEN, MARINETTE ET LA REINE DES NEIGES

II. Qui était la dame de la grande troïka blanche

One winter afternoon, the boy was sledding on his own in the snowy slopes. The local bad boys (and the local bad girl Alix, by the way) had a custom to tie their sleds to passing-by carriages and troikas, to let themselves be drawn through the snow at breakneck speed. But that day, Adrien suddenly saw that forth came an enormous icy blue troika, drawn by four oversized white peacocks and driven by a dignified lady, clad in an icy blue fur overcoat and shapka. Without thinking twice, he lassoed his little sled to the back of the magnificent, majestic vehicle.
The troika took off as if shot from a cannon, driving out of the village in a whirl of snowflakes; the other young people on the slope carried on with their games. It was as if they had hardly noticed the strange troika at all.
In the meantime, Adrien was catapulted through the snow. At first, he felt thrilled indeed, but the further from home they came, the thicker and thicker the snow turned, and he was frightened. Though the boy screamed, in the middle of the countryside in midwinter, no one could hear his pleas for help. Suddenly, the great troika drove to a halt. When the lady within rose up, Adrien found out that her white cloak was made of snow instead of fox fur. It was the Snow Queen! She could not be anyone else, for she was tall and slender, and her skin was perfect and dazzlingly white, though her steel-coloured eyes, that shone like the brightest of first-magnitude stars, did not betray the slightest emotion.
"Climb in, my boy, my winter prince," she told Adrien. "I am coming to take you far from here, to a far better place... So take in the warmth under my pelisse..." She smiled at the young boy, and her eyes glittered like ice. Adrien was utterly enchanted.
As if he already knew that they would be coming for him, and feeling her command impossible to resist, the blond boy climbed by the Queen's side without doubting for a single instant. She wrapped him in her long, soft cloak, and it was like sinking into a snowdrift; his skin turned icy cold, and he went numb all over. The lady in icy blue then kissed him on the lips, breathing her air into every pipe of his lungs; and at first the lad, as the air seared the inside of his chest, felt the cold seep into his bones and the blood freeze in his veins... but this near-death only lasted for an instant, and, as soon as he awakened fully recovered, the boy had forgotten Marinette and home and village and all remembrance of the past.
Furthermore, that icy kiss had quenched every spark of feeling that lingered within his nearly-fully frozen heart. The two of them departed, crossing icy wastelands. The troika took to the skies, drawn by the peacocks, and disappeared up into the dark beyond the storm clouds. Thinking of how lovely and perfect his queen was, Adrien forgot his fears. After having flown over woods, peaks, meadows, rivers, lakes, and a frozen ocean, they reached the distant, uncharted region of eternal twilight, where they finally descended. By then, Adrien, exhausted, lay fast asleep at the feet of the Snow Queen.