Just outside a village far to the north, on the day before St. Hrestol's feast day, the village priest hired a wandering wizard to give the children a demonstration of magic. This wizard, whose name was Lekni, gave a very poor demonstration of magic that day in the little church with a triangular roof: The Holdfast he cast didn't Hold, his Damage Resisting eggs broke, and the children were very disappointed. Even the appearance of Lekni's familiar, a snowshoe hare named Thisiz, could not impress them. Lekni was deeply embarrassed at his performance and the reception it caused him to have, and he vented his frustration on his fine felt wizard's hat, which he threw onto the rubbish heap.
The children, meanwhile, ran out of the church and began to build an effigy of a terrifying ice demon, the Hollri, which live in the frozen land of ice to the north of their homes. These effigies they believed to ward off attacks from real Hollri, but the priests teach that these effigies are pagan, and condemn them. The village priest had, consistently with the teachings of the church, condemned the practice, yet the children defied his ban, thus compounding the sin of paganism with the sin of disobedience. They named their effigy The Frozen One.
An evil wind blew Lekni's discarded hat to the feet of the children as they completed the ice effigy. Unknown to all, the hat was actually enchanted with a spirit, and when the children's leader, a girl named Nerak, put the hat on the ice effigy's head, the spirit animated the effigy and caused it to move about. Rather than screaming in alarm, however, the children merely gaped in wonder because the spirit used a charm on them to banish their fear and win their trust.
Lekni saw what happened and rushed to save the children. However, the Frozen One glared in his direction and, taking Nerak by the hand, ran to the top of the nearest hill. There a great wind picked him and Nerak up and carried them off toward the frozen land of ice. Brave Lekni, however, used his wizardry to get caught up in the same wind. Though he could not catch up with the effigy or Nerak, and he was sorely buffeted by ice pellets in the wind, he never lost sight of the little girl. "By St. Hrestol," he swore, "I will save this girl or die in the attempt."
To try to escape the pursuit of the brave wizard Lekni, the Frozen One used a magic to force Lekni to fall out of the wind. Lekni fell and was dazed, but survived when St. Hrestol let him fall into soft snow. Meanwhile, however, the Frozen One discovered that Nerak was growing colder and the life was seeping out of her. Needing her alive for his own nefarious purposes, he too dropped out of the wind and proceeded across the frozen ground on foot.
The Frozen One used his charms on a group of forest animals, forcing them into the unnatural act of making a fire to warm Nerak up. That is how Lekni came upon her, and he would have rescued her at that point if the Frozen One had not been watching and used his sorcery to extinguish the fire. In the sudden darkness, the Frozen One seized Nerak again and slid like a sleigh down a nearby hill.
Lekni pursued them on foot, but fell far behind. At the bottom of the hill was a warm spring in a cave, where the Frozen One realized he could place Nerak to warm her again. Lekni perceived them with his magical sight, however, and used his magic to form a barrier of stone barring the Frozen One's escape from the cave. There the Frozen One melted in the warm and humid air, and by the time Lekni arrived, he was but a puddle. The horrified and exhausted Nerak, now released from the Frozen One's charm, sobbed in relief and shock on the floor of the cave. Lekni retrieved his hat from the puddle, and when he and Nerak were warm and rested enough to travel they returned to her village, where Lekni was honored and feted for the rest of the winter. Two years later, when Nerak was thirteen and old enough for the marriage ceremony, Lekni returned and married her, and she went off with him on his travels.
The villagers know never to be complacent, despite Lekni's victory. They know that the Frozen One, as prophesied, "will be back again next year."
The trolls tell a different version, in which the Frozen One killed the pursuing wizard and ate his familiar and his heart. In that version, the Hollri brings the captured girl to a band of uzhim and drains her blood on the floor of their ice cave even as she freezes to death. When the girl's body is sufficiently cold, the uzhim devour her body and the Hollri devours her soul. Curiously, this version ends the same way, with the prophecy "he'll be back again next year."
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