Gerda Sets Out by Boat to Find Kay

Gerda Sets Out by Boat to Find Kay is the first physical step in her search after Kay disappears: grief gives way to uncertain hope, and a gift meant to bargain with the river carries her away from home instead. The journey begins as a deliberate act of love but quickly turns into an involuntary passage into the wider world.

Circumstances

After Kay vanished, nobody knew where the large sledge had taken him. The boys had seen him tie his own sledge to it as it drove through the town and out of the gate, but they could offer no further news. Gerda believed Kay had drowned in the river near the school, and mourned him through the long winter. When spring arrived, she still said he was dead; the sunshine and the sparrows answered her disbelief. Their replies gradually made her doubt her own certainty.

That doubt becomes a reason to act. One morning Gerda puts on her new Red Shoes, which Kay has never seen, and decides to ask the river whether it has taken her playmate. She kisses Grandmother, who is asleep, and goes alone beyond the town gates. Her destination is not a known place where Kay might be found: she is following the possibility that the river can answer her, or carry her to him.

The Offering to the River

At the river, Gerda addresses it as if it could return Kay. She offers the Red Shoes in exchange for him, and the waves seem to nod strangely. The shoes are among the things she loves most, so throwing both into the water makes her appeal a costly one rather than a casual gesture. Yet they fall close to the bank, and the small waves carry them back onto land. The river will not accept what she offers, and cannot give Kay back.

Gerda interprets the returned shoes as evidence that she has not thrown them far enough. She climbs into a boat lying among the reeds and throws them again, this time from farther out. But the boat is not fastened. Her movement sends it gliding away from shore; before she can reach the end, it has drifted more than a yard from the bank and is moving faster. In trying to make her offering reach the river, Gerda loses the security of the shore.

The Downstream Journey

Gerda is frightened and cries, but no person hears her. The sparrows fly alongside the bank, singing to comfort her, though they cannot bring her back to land. She sits still in the boat with only her stockings on her feet, while the Red Shoes float behind it, out of reach because the boat moves ahead of them. The objects that began as a chosen gift now mark the distance opening between Gerda and home.

The river carries her for hours past flowers, old trees, sloping fields, and grazing cows and sheep. No people appear along either bank. At first, the current seems to offer a hopeful direction: Gerda thinks it may take her to Kay, and looking at the green banks makes her more cheerful. Her journey therefore shifts between danger and expectation. She has no control over the boat’s course, but she continues to imagine that the river may lead toward the person she seeks.

Arrival at the Orchard

Eventually the boat reaches a large cherry orchard and passes a small red house with red and blue windows and a thatched roof. Two wooden soldiers stand outside, presenting arms. Gerda calls to them as if they were alive, then sees that they are wooden as the boat nears shore. Her calls draw out the Conjuring woman, an old woman leaning on a crutch and wearing a broad hat decorated with flowers.

The Conjuring woman catches the boat with her crutch, draws it to land, and lifts Gerda out. On dry ground again, Gerda is glad to be safe but remains afraid of the stranger. She tells the woman what has happened and asks whether she has seen Kay. The Conjuring woman says he has not passed that way but may come, then urges Gerda not to grieve and offers her cherries and flowers to look at. Inside the house, colored windowpanes cast red, blue, and yellow light across the room. As Gerda eats, the woman combs her long flaxen hair with a golden comb. The river journey thus ends not with Kay’s recovery but with Gerda in a stranger’s house, her search interrupted at the moment she reaches land.