“Do you hear the drum? Bam! Bam! It has only two beats, always Bam! Bam! Listen to the women’s mournful song. Listen to the shouts of the priests. In her long red gown the Hindu woman stands on the pyre. The flames leap up around her and her dead husband. But the Hindu woman is thinking of the man who is alive here in the crowd, the man whose eyes burn hotter than flames, the man whose fiery eyes reach deeper into her heart than the blaze that will soon burn her body to ashes. Can the flame of the heart die in the flames of the pyre?”

—

The Fire Lily

An excerpt from The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen