Lilly's Stories

The Little Match Girl retold

The girl’s worn, makeshift shawl nearly blew off her shoulders when the trolley screeched past. It had been wrapped around a puppy in a box, already quite used. Another girl had taken the puppy. This girl took the blanket.

Now it held something even more valuable.

Matches.

In the corner, squeezed tightly in her hand, was a box. A box of twelve matches. Twelve matches to sell. In what the adults were calling the “Depression”, matches were precious things. Anything was precious when no one could afford it. Especially this New Year’s Eve.

The girl’s shoes were missing. Her stockings had so many holes on the ends that they might as well have been non-existent. Her frost-nipped toes were showing.

“Fyrstikker!” she tried to shout down the street, but her high voice was only drowned out by the other city sounds. And with no English, her predicament seemed hopeless.

But the girl didn’t know. She only knew her frozen toes and fingers.

“Bare fem øre! Fyrstikker! Kjøp fyrstikkene dine!” Her voice cracked with the last word, leaving her throat tingling.

No one so much as glanced at the girl.

By now her stomach was rumbling with hunger and her fingers were bright red from the cold. She wrapped them in the blanket and hoped they would warm soon.

Warm light burst from a gap between curtains in the window of the house next to where the girl was. She stood on tiptoes and rested her chin on the window ledge. There was a rich family all around the table, dishing out large plates of food. She could see a roast goose on a plate in the table’s center, and potatoes, and cranberries, and boiled cabbage, and plums, and pie. She could almost taste them all. And, oh! how the people were dressed! Splendid, elegant dresses with bows and frilly sleeves. Navy suits and sleek gray and black ties, and shiny black shoes. And the children had dolls and—

A woman from the table noticed the girl peeking and walked briskly to the window. She pulled the curtains tight, blocking out the glorious view. The city grew cold again.

Finding her little toes a blue-ish color, she knew she could not walk much farther. If only she could sell her matches.

In between the house and another smaller one, she squeezed between the four-foot space and squatted in the corner. It was dark, and there were wet newspapers on the sooty ground. The girl thought she heard a mouse. She could not sell her matches.

The blanket was slipping from her tired grip, and the girl realized how her fingers were becoming numb. If no one else would buy a match, surely she could use just one.

Striking and dragging one against a brick, the girl watched the flame as it grew a mesmerizing white and orange color. She held her other hand up to the light, relishing the small amount of heat—although to her it seemed like a bonfire amidst a blizzard. Her numb fingertips tingled. She imagined she was sitting cross-legged in front of a warm stove, with brass feet like lion paws, and a shining brass handle, and kjøttsuppe cooking in a silver pot, with a wooden spoon stuck out the top. The girl stood up and reached for the spoon for a taste. It smelled divine, and she was beyond starving.

But when she pulled the spoon out of the pot, all she found in her hand was a snuffed-out match.

Frustrated, the girl pulled another match from the box. She was so hungry. And so very cold. A snowflake landed on her eyelash, and she blinked it away.

She struck the match against the wall, and there came that beloved warmth. She nearly touched the flame, it was so inviting.

She looked up from the match, hoping to see the stove again. Instead she saw the wall, but nearly transparent. As if there were a veil covering the scene behind it.

What a glorious scene it was! The room was cozy and enticing, quite largely due to the enormous table in the middle, with an embroidered white cloth spread across it, and a beetroot-red table runner on top. There were detailed China plates meticulously painted with flowers and woodland things, and they held the most delicious foods the girl had ever laid her eyes on. There was a roast goose, with all the dressings and vegetables arranged around the bottom, and dried apples and plums. There was a stack of buttery biscuits, a dish of mushrooms, green beans, and leeks, and a cinnamon apple cake on a carved porcelain stand.

The girl took a step forward to stuff herself with it all, but her toe touched the wall before the rug, and the sight disappeared. She dropped the burnt-out match and laid her head on the damp brick wall, disheartened.

A thought told her she would never sell a match, so she pulled out another and lit it with a shaky hand. They were all hers now. No one could take them.

The light of the match became one of hundreds as a spectacular Christmas tree appeared. Sparkling silver and gold tinsel draped from branch to branch and candles perched on pine needles, displaying the light the girl had only been able to enjoy in small doses.

The match went out, but the lights of the tree remained. They rose higher and higher until it seemed as though they were brilliant stars in the sky. The girl spun in circles beneath them, trying to have a good look at them all.

There was one star that was particularly bright. And it only grew brighter. Soon the girl realized it was falling. She remembered what her late grandmother, whom she missed dearly, had told her only three years before. That when a star falls, a soul takes its place and rises into the heavens.

“Noen har nettopp dødd,” she whispered to herself.

She lit another match against the wall, sad for whoever had just died. She looked up to find her grandmother standing before her, with all the love and compassion as the little girl remembered. She seemed to be glowing. She was beautiful.

“Ikke gå bort, bestemor! Du må ta meg med deg! Jeg kan ikke la deg gå som ovnen og gåsen og treet,” the little girl cried.

Determined to stay with her grandmother whom she had missed so much, she clutched all the last of her matches and whipped them against the wall vehemently. They burned far brighter than a single match, and the girl was mesmerized. It seemed even brighter than the sun in the afternoon. And her grandmother rose to be even more lovely than before.

She took the little girl by the hand and led her through the wall, to the roast goose and the Christmas tree and the warm stove. Toward the stars. The girl’s hunger and cold vanished, and she had so much joy.

Whilst her star was dancing, a little girl lay slumped against the wall, a burnt match in her limp, cold hand. Snowflakes fell on her lashes, and a wet newspaper blew on her bare foot. Though it would not appear so, the girl’s New Year was spent in a far happier place than anyone else’s, for she danced with her grandmother in the stars.