Moominland Midwinter (12 page)

'Believe me,' implored Moomintroll. 'Please, won't you stay with us instead? Besides, I've thought about learning to ski...'

'Well, in that case,' said the Hemulen. 'If you really want me to stay.'

After his conversation with the Hemulen, Moomintroll was far too upset to go home. Instead he wandered down to the shore and strolled along it. He made a large detour around the bathing-house.

He felt more and more unburdened as he walked along. In the end he was nearly exhilarated. He started to whistle and kicked a lump of ice with great skill along his path. And then it slowly started to snow.

It was the first snow-fall since before New Year, and Moomintroll was greatly surprised.

One flake after the other landed on his warm snout and melted away. He caught several in his paw to admire them for a fleeting moment, he looked towards the sky and saw them sinking down straight at him, more and more, softer and lighter than bird's down.

'Oh, it's like this,' thought Moomintroll. 'I believed it simply formed on the ground somehow.'

The air was milder. There was nothing in sight except falling snow, and Moomintroll was caught by the same

kind of excitement he used to feel at times when he was wading out for a swim. He threw off his bath-gown, and himself headlong in to a snowdrift.

'So that's winter too!' he thought. 'You can even like it!'

*

At dusk Salome the Little Creep awoke with an anxious feeling of being late for something. Then she remembered the Hemulen.

She jumped down from the chest of drawers, first to a chair and then to the floor. The drawing-room was empty. Everybody had gone down to the bathing-house for supper. Salome the Little Creep climbed up to the window and with a lump in her throat crawled through the tunnel.

No moon was up, and no northern lights were showing. There was nothing but densely falling snow that stuck to her face and dress and hindered her steps. She groped her way to the Hemulen's igloo and looked inside. It was dark and forlorn.

At this Salome the Little Creep was seized with a panic, and instead of waiting at the igloo she set out into the whirling snow.

She cried for her beloved Hemulen, but it was like trying to cry through eider-down quilts. Her tracks were next to invisible and very soon hid by the falling snow.

*

Later in the evening the snow-fall stopped.

It was as if a light curtain had been drawn away, and there was a clear view again over the ice. Far out a dark-blue wall of clouds was still hiding the place where the sun had set.

Moomintroll watched the new and threatening weather rolling nearer. The sky darkened suddenly again. Moomintroll who had never seen a blizzard expected a thunderstorm and braced himself against the first claps of thunder that he thought would soon ring out.

But no thunder came, and no lightning either.

Instead a small whirl of snow rose from the white cap of one of the boulders by the shore.

Worried gusts of wind were rushing to and fro over the ice and whispering in the wood by the shore. The dark-blue wall rose higher, and the gusts became stronger.

Suddenly it was as if a great door had blown wide open, the darkness yawned, and everything was filled with wet, flying snow.

This time it didn't come from above, it darted along the ground. It was howling and shoving like a living thing.

Moomintroll lost his balance and turned a somersault. In a trice his ears were full of snow, and he became frightened.

Time and all the world were lost. Everything he could feel and look at had blown away, only a bewitched whirl of damp and dancing darkness was left.

Any sensible person could have told him that this was the very moment when the long spring was born.

But there didn't happen to be any sensible person on the shore, but only a confused Moomin crawling on all fours against the wind, in a totally wrong direction.

He crawled and crawled, and the snow bunged up his eyes and formed a little drift on his snout. Moomintroll became more and more convinced that this was a trick the winter had decided to play him, with the intention of showing him simply that he couldn't stand it.

First it had taken him in by its beautiful curtain of slowly falling flakes, and then it threw all the beautiful snow in his face at the very moment he believed that he had started to like winter.

By and by Moomintroll became angry.

He straightened up and tried to shout at the gale. He hit out against the snow and also whimpered a little, as there was nobody to hear him.

Then he tired.

He turned his back to the blizzard and stopped fighting it.

Not until then did Moomintroll notice that the wind felt warm. It carried him along into the whirling snow, it made him feel light and almost like flying.

I'm nothing but air and wind, I'm part of the blizzard,' Moomintroll thought and let himself go. 'It's almost like last summer. You first fight the waves, then you turn around and ride the surf, sailing along like a cork among the little rainbows of the foam, and land laughing and just a little frightened in the sand.'

Moomintroll spread out his arms and flew.

'Frighten me if you can,' he thought happily. 'I'm wise to you now. You're no worse than anything else when one gets to know you. Now you won't be able to pull my leg any more.'

And the winter danced him all along the snowy shore, until he stumbled across the snowed-in landing-stage and ploughed his snout through a snowdrift. When he looked up he saw a faint, warm light. It was the window of the bathing-house.

'Oh, I'm saved,' Moomintroll said to himself, a little crestfallen. 'It's a pity that exciting things always stop happening when you're not afraid of them any more and would like to have a little fun.'

When he opened the door, a wisp of steaming, warm air rushed out in the blizzard, and Moomintroll saw fuzzily that the bathing-house was chock-full of people.

'There's one of them!' someone cried.

'Who else?' asked Moomintroll, drying his face.

'Salome the Little Creep's lost in the blizzard,' said Too-ticky gravely.

A glass of hot syrup came gliding through the air. 'Thanks,' said Moomintroll to the invisible shrew. Then he continued: 'But I've never heard about Salome the Little Creep going out of doors.'

'We don't understand it either,' said the oldest of the Whompers. 'And it's no use hunting for her until the blizzard ceases. She might be anywhere, and very probably she's snowed in.'

'Where's the Hemulen?' asked Moomintroll.

'He's gone out to make a search anyhow,' replied Too-ticky. She added with a slight grin: 'You seem to have had a talk about the Lonely Mountains.'

'Well, what of it?' Moomintroll asked vehemently.

Too-ticky's grin spread out. 'You've got a great gift of persuasion,' she said. 'The Hemulen told us that the skiing grounds in the Lonely Mountains are simply wretched. And he was very happy because we all like him so much.'

'I only meant to tell him...' Moomintroll began. Take it easy,' said Too-ticky. 'It's even possible that we're beginning to like the Hemulen.'

*

The Hemulen perhaps had not very delicate perceptions, and perhaps he didn't always feel what people around him thought about things. But his scent was even keener than Sorry-oo's. (Besides Sorry-oo's scent was spoiled for the time being by emotional thinking.)

The Hemulen had found a couple of old tennis rackets in the attic and had made himself a pair of snow-shoes. Now he was calmly plodding along through the blizzard, keeping his snout close to the ground and trying to catch a whiff of the faint scent of the smallest Creep he had ever seen.

On his way he looked into his igloo and caught the scent there.

'Why, the little squeak's been looking for me here,' the Hemulen thought, good-naturedly. 'I wonder...' And suddenly the Hemulen had a fuzzy memory of Salome the Little Creep trying to tell him something some time but being too shy to do it properly.

While he plodded along through the blizzard he saw one picture after the other with his inner vision: The Creep waiting for him beneath the hill... The Creep running in his ski-tracks... The Creep nosing at the horn... And the Hemulen thought, flabbergasted: 'I say, I've been unkind to her!' He didn't feel any prick in his conscience, because Hemulens seldom do. But he became a little more interested in finding Salome the Little Creep.

He now laid himself down on his knees so as not to lose her track. The scent went zigzagging and looping along, exactly as little beasts use to scuttle about when they are muddleheaded from fear. The Creep had even been down on the bridge once and gone dangerously near the edge. Then the scent returned, climbed the hill a bit and suddenly disappeared.

The Hemulen stood thinking for a while, which was no mean effort.

Then he started to dig. He dug for quite a time. And finally he came upon something very small and warm.

'Don't be afraid,' said the Hemulen. 'It's only me.'

He tucked the Creep between shirt and flannel vest, rose and started to plod back to the bathing-house.