From time to time, Finn and the others feel an intense chill. Finn connects it to Maleficent, whose ice-cold touch freezes things. The chill symbolizes the coldness and shivering unease spread by pure evil. It acts as a motif that heralds the witch’s presence. To feel her chill and not see her is to be spied upon yet unable to respond; in that sense, the chill confers a sense of foreboding and helplessness.

In Walt Disney’s story of the Stonecutter’s Quill, a stonecutter progressively wishes for, and becomes, the sun, a cloud, the wind, and a mountain. These four things are akin to the four elements that several ancient cultures, including the classical Greeks, Romans, and East Indians, believed made up the world: fire, water, air, and earth. Those cultures also believed in magic. Faith in the four elements and magic have, in the modern world, been replaced by atoms and technology, but the human mind responds strongly to the old images.

A premise of the novel is that magic still interacts with the world, perhaps through the four elements. This serves as a literary conceit, or arbitrary assumption, that makes possible the plot and its many marvels.