Moominland Midwinter (3 page)

Just then the wood opened out, and before him stretched another valley. On the other side of it he saw the Lonely Mountains. They rolled away southwards in wave upon wave, and never had they looked more lonely.

Only now Moomintroll began to feel the cold. The evening darkness came crawling out of the clefts and climbed slowly up towards the frozen ridges. Up there the snow was gleaming like bared fangs against the black mountain; white and black, and loneliness everywhere.

'Somewhere on the other side of it all is Snufkin,' Moomintroll said to himself. 'He's sitting somewhere in the sun, peeling an orange. If I only knew that he knew that I'm climbing these mountains for his sake, then I could do it. But all alone I'll never manage it.'

And Moomintroll turned around and slowly plodded back in his own tracks.

'I'll wind all the clocks,' he thought. 'Perhaps that makes the spring come a tiny bit earlier. And someone might wake up if I happen to break some big thing.'

But he knew in his heart that no one would wake up.

Then something happened. A small track went scuttling across Moomintroll's own track. He stopped and stood looking at it for a long time. Something alive had padded through the wood, perhaps no more than half an hour ago. It couldn't have gone far. It had gone towards the valley and must have been smaller than he himself. Its paws had hardly sunk into the snow at all.

Moomintroll felt all hot inside, from the tip of his tail to the tops of his ears.

'Wait!' he shouted. 'Don't leave me alone!' He whimpered a little as he went stumbling along again through the snow, and all of a sudden he felt a great terror of the darkness and the loneliness. His fright must have hidden itself somewhere all the time since he awoke in the sleeping house, but this was the first time he dared to feel really afraid.

Now he didn't shout any more, because he thought how horrible it would be if nobody answered him. He didn't even dare to lift his snout from the track that was hardly visible in the dark. He just crawled and stumbled along, and whimpered softly to himself.

And then he caught sight of the light.

It was quite small, and yet it filled all the wood with a mild, red glow.

Moomintroll calmed down. He forgot the track and continued slowly on his way, looking towards the light. Until at last he saw that it was an ordinary candle, thrust steadily upright in the snow. Around it stood a small sugar-loaf of a house, built of round snowballs. They looked transparent and slightly orange-yellow, like the shade of the night-lamp at home.

On the other side of the lamp someone had dug herself a cosy hole, someone who lay looking up at the serene winter sky and whistling very softly to herself.

'What song is that?' asked Moomintroll.

'It's a song of myself,' someone answered from the pit.

'A song of Too-ticky who built a snow lantern, but the refrain is about wholly other things.'

'I see,' Moomintroll said and seated himself in the snow.

'No, you don't,' replied Too-ticky genially and rose up enough to show her red and white sweater. 'Because the refrain is about the things one can't understand. I'm thinking about the aurora borealis. You can't tell if it really does exist or if it just looks like existing. All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured.'

She lay down in the snow again and continued looking up at the sky. It was quite black by now.

Moomintroll also put up his snout and looked at the sparkling northern lights that probably no Moomin had ever seen before him. They were white and blue and a little green, and they draped the sky in long, fluttering curtains.

'I think it exists,' he said.

Too-ticky did not reply. She crawled up to the snow lantern and lifted out her candle.

'We'll take this home,' she said. 'Before the Groke comes and sits down on it.'

Moomintroll nodded gravely. He had seen the Groke once. An August night long ago. Cold and grey like a lump of ice she had squatted in the shadows of the lilac bushes and just looked at him. But what a look! And when she slunk away the ground was frosted white where she had sat.

For a moment Moomintroll wondered whether winter itself wasn't something that ten thousand Grokes had made by squatting on the ground. But he decided to take

up this matter later on when he knew Too-ticky a little better.

While they found their way back the valley seemed lighter, and Moomintroll saw that the moon was up.

The Moominhouse stood by itself, asleep, on the other side of the bridge. But here Too-ticky turned westward and made a short cut through the bare fruit orchard.

'There were a lot of apples here last fall,' Moomintroll remarked sociably.

'But now here's a lot of snow,' replied Too-ticky distantly, without stopping.

They came down to the shore. The sea was one single, vast darkness. They walked cautiously out on the narrow landing stage that led to the Moomin family's bathing-house.

'I used to dive from here,' Moomintroll whispered very softly and looked at the yellowed and broken reeds that stuck out of the ice. 'The sea was so warm, and I swam nine strokes under water.'

Too-ticky opened the door to the bathing-house. She

went in first and set the candle on the round table that Moominpappa had found floating in the sea long ago.

Everything was quite the same as usual in the old octagonal bathing-house. The knot-holes in the yellowed board walls, the small green and red window-panes, the narrow benches, and the cupboard that held the bath-gowns and the slightly air-leaking rubber Hemulen.

Everything was exactly as in summer. But still the room had changed in some mysterious way.

Too-ticky took off her cap, and it climbed straight up the wall and hung itself on a peg.

'I'd like to have a cap like that,' said Moomintroll.

'You don't need any,' said Too-ticky. 'You can always wiggle your ears and keep warm that way. But you've got cold paws.'

And over the floor two woollen socks came waddling and laid themselves down before Moomintroll.

At the same time a fire was kindled in the three-legged iron stove in the far corner, and someone started cautiously to play the flute under the table.

'He's shy,' Too-ticky explained. 'That's why he plays under the table.'

'But why doesn't he even show himself?' asked Moomintroll.

'They're all so shy that they've gone invisible,' Too-ticky replied. 'They're eight very small shrews who share this house with me.'

'This is Daddy's bathing-house,' Moomintroll said.

Too-ticky gave him a serious look. 'You may be right, and you may be wrong,' she said. 'In the summer it belonged to a daddy. In winter it belongs to Too-ticky.'

A pot started to boil on the stove. The lid was lifted off, and a spoon stirred the soup. Another spoon put in a pinch of salt and tidily returned it to the window-sill.

Outside the cold sharpened towards the night, and the moonlight was reflected in all the green and red panes.

'Tell me about the snow,' Moomintroll said and seated himself in Moominpappa's sun-bleached garden chair. 'I don't understand it.'

'I don't either,' said Too-ticky. 'You believe it's cold, but if you build yourself a snowhouse it's warm. You think it's white, but at times it looks pink, and another time it's blue. It can be softer than anything, and then again harder than stone. Nothing is certain.'

A plate of fish-soup came carefully gliding through the air and put itself on the table before Moomintroll.

'Where have your shrews learned to fly?' he asked.

'Well,' said Too-ticky. 'Better not ask people about everything. They might like to keep their secrets to themselves. Don't you worry about the shrews, nor about the snow.'

Moomintroll drank his soup.

He looked at the cupboard in the corner and thought of how nice it was to know that his own old bath-gown

was hanging inside it. That something certain and cosy still remained in the middle of all the new and worrying things. He knew that his bath-gown was blue, and that its hanger was missing and there was probably a pair of sun-glasses in the left pocket.

After a while he said: 'That's where we used to keep our bath-gowns. Mother's is hanging farthest in from the door.'

Too-ticky reached out her paw and caught a sandwich. 'Thanks,' she said. 'You must never open that cupboard. You'll have to promise me.'

'I won't promise anything,' Moomintroll said surlily, looking down into his soup-plate.

All of a sudden he found that it was the most important thing in the world to open that door and to see for himself whether the bath-gown was still there.

The fire was going nicely. It roared in the stove-pipe. The bathing-house was warm and pleasant, and under the table the flute took up its lonely tune.

Invisible paws carried the empty plates away. The candle burned down, and the wick drowned in a lake of grease. Now the only light came from the red eye of the stove and the pattern of red and green moonshine squares on the floor.

'I'm sleeping at home tonight,' Moomintroll said sternly.

'Fine,' replied Too-ticky. 'Moon hasn't gone down yet, so you'll find your way easily.'

The door glided open of itself, and Moomintroll stepped out on the snowy planks.

'Never mind,' he said. 'Anyway my blue bath-gown's in the cupboard. Thanks for the soup.'

The door glided shut, and all around him was nothing but silence and moonlight.

He looked quickly out over the ice and thought he could see the big, clumsy Groke shuffling along somewhere near the horizon.

He imagined her waiting behind the boulders on the shore. And as he passed through the wood her shadow was silently creeping behind every tree-trunk. The Groke who sat down on every light and bleached every colour.

Finally Moomintroll came home to his sleeping house. Slowly he climbed the enormous snowdrift on the northern side and crawled up to the hatch in the roof.

The air inside was warm and Moomin-smelling, and the chandelier jingled in recognition when he padded over the floor. Moomintroll lifted the mattress from his bed and laid it on Moominmamma's bed-mat. She sighed a little in her sleep and mumbled something he couldn't understand. Then she laughed to herself and rolled a little nearer to the wall.