A flashy exterior often hid a miserable core. You couldn't scrutinize the details of most beautiful fairy tales. Snow White still had to live after marrying the prince, and thirty years later, her fat would sag too; Sleeping Beauty hadn't moved for centuries, so shouldn't the prince rescuing her at least blow off the dust before putting his mouth on hers? The Frog Prince had been a frog for so many years—what exactly had he eaten before meeting his princess? The girl in the red dancing shoes couldn't stop dancing and could only dance herself to death, but if she needed to use the bathroom before dying of exhaustion, how did she deal with that? See? Our childhoods were actually fragile. I once asked the Grimm Brothers and Andersen about these questions in Avalon, and for quite a long time afterward, the three of them looked at me like I was a class enemy...
I felt fairy tales were a fitting example of our current situation. After all, nothing was more fairy-tale-like than a glittering magical castle built of ice and snow. There were usually three kinds of people living in such a castle: a cold, noble northern witch—who might also happen to be an evil hag—a pure and kind Ice Princess, and a mysterious, wise Winter Elf. I imagined that in proper fairy tales, none of those three tenants had to worry about their icy castle's front gate freezing shut after being left unoccupied for three days, much less smashing the door down just to get back inside. I now deeply understood that fairy tales were all lies. At least, this Ice and Snow Castle of ours was a lie. There was no kitchen or any other place to cook, so Viska could only light a huge bonfire in