The Snow Queen gives Gerda a magic power as a sign of gratitude that Gerda saved her.Bernard Malamud’s short story, “The Magic Barrel,” was first published in the Partisan Review in 1954, and reprinted in 1958 in Malamud’s first volume of short fiction. Gerda realizes that it's much more important to be a good person and make friends than have magic powers. Gerda opens the portal, so all the magicians, Gerda's family, the king's son and the Snow Queen leave the Mirror Land. Harald asks Gerda to bring back all the magicians. Harald is in danger: his initial reason to clear the country from magic was to protect his son from danger, but now his son is actually in the Mirror World with the Snow Queen. In protest at his father's actions, he enters the portal to the Mirror World himself. Suddenly the king's son Anders makes a revelation: he is also a magician. There's a final fight in which the friends lose to Harald. Harald tries to stop friends from helping the magicians. Gerda and Rollan use the ancient artifact to restore the portal that Harald previously used to exile the magicians. The king's son Anders helps her to escape from prison. At the moment when all the hope is lost, Gerda's talent to make friends helps her out. The Snow Queen's phantom goes back to the Mirror World and can't help Gerda in any way anymore all Gerda's friends are also imprisoned.
At the moment when they are about to open the portal and set the magicians free, King Harald catches all of them red-handed, sends them to an escape-proof prison and throws the last remaining sacred water of Gao into a gutter. Helped by the pirates, the friends manage to enter the castle. On their way, they save Gerda's acquaintance Rollan from death, and he joins their team. The friends go for a desperate act and venture to sneak into the king's castle. As Harald is also a scientist, he takes a small amount of the lake water to his palace to examine its qualities. Harald drains the sacred lake and thus prevents Gerda's plan to open the portal and set her family free. Gerda nearly manages to form a portal when King Harald's powerful air fleet suddenly attacks the Troll Lands. The artifact can transform water from the sacred lake Gao into a portal to the Mirror World. For that, they head for the Troll Lands, where Troll King Arrog gives them an ancient artifact. Following the same goal, Gerda and the Snow Queen's phantom overcome many obstacles as well as differences in their views - but in the end, they find a way to open the portal to the Mirror World. In the Mirror World, the magicians find the only way out they make an alliance with the Snow Queen and send her phantom to meet Gerda and ask her for help. As Gerda's family are all magicians, they end up in the Mirror World as well - and Gerda gets to prison for trying to prevent that. The portal doesn't work the other way, so none of the magicians can leave the Mirror World and get back. He tricks and forces them into his castle and then drives them through the portal into the Mirror World where the Snow Queen lives. Meanwhile, King Harald - who is the king of this country as well as a brilliant scientist - decides to get rid of all the magicians. That's why Gerda thinks she is useless and good for nothing. Everyone in Gerda's family is a magician, whereas Gerda herself has no magic powers at all. A girl named Gerda helps her parents and brother to run their family magic shop.The synopsis below may give away important plot points.