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Once upon a time, in a palace of ice, there lived a queen. She had hair as white as snow,

and a dress made of moonlight. Her eyelashes were rimmed with frost, and everywhere she went,

a flurry of snowflakes swallled about her. Few had ever seen her palace, which was tucked

away in the northern lands, at the edge of a frigid glacier, but they had all heard the

stories of how to find it. In hushed voices, they told the tale of the snow queen around

campfires late at night. Just follow the northern lights they said. Watch them crackle above

your head as they shift from green to purple to blue. The most brilliant blue lights

always shimmer in the sky above her palace. That is how you will find it, they would say.

But many of the things people said about the snow queen were not true. She did not turn

people's hearts to ice, nor freeze them where they stood. However, what they said about

the lights was true. The most wondrous, auroras shone above her castle like sapphire waves crashing

against a wintry shore. At night, she liked to walk outside in her courtyard and look into the sky.

Great cartons of colour moved and shifted, sending ripples of electric blue across the horizon.

They reflected in her icy eyes as snowflakes flurried around her.

Most of the time, the snow queen was content to stay in her palace,

nestled in its arctic landscape. Just as the tropical beaches were warm, the north was cold.

Her presence there did not shift the balance, but every year at the end of autumn,

just as the leaves were falling from the trees. The snow queen made her journey around the earth

...