Moominland Midwinter (9 page)

Moomintroll went out on the roof to calm himself.

'Well, how d'you like Grandfather!' Little My shouted from her sledge-slide.

'An excellent person,' Moomintroll remarked with dignity. 'In an old family like ours people know how to behave,'

Suddenly he felt very proud of having an ancestor. And it cheered him no little to think that Little My had no pedigree at all, but rather had come into the world by chance.

*

That night Moomintroll's ancestor rearranged the house, quietly enough, but with surprising strength.

In the morning he had turned the sofa towards the porcelain stove and hung all the pictures anew. Those

that he liked least he had hung upside-down. (Or perhaps they were those that he thought best of, who knows?)

Not a single piece of furniture stood in its old place, and the alarm clock lay in the slop-pail. Indeed he had carried down a heap of old junk from the attic and piled it high around the stove.

Too-ticky came over to look. 'I believe he's done that to feel more at home,' she said and rubbed her nose. 'He's tried to build himself a nice thicket around his house. So that he can be left alone.'

'But what'll Mother say?' said Moomintroll.

Too-ticky shrugged her shoulders. 'Well, why did you have to let him out?' she said. 'In any case this troll never eats anything. Very practical for him, and for you. You'll have to think the whole matter's fun, I suppose.'

Moomintroll nodded.

He thought for a while. Then he crawled inside the thicket of broken chairs, empty boxes, fishing nets, cardboard tubes, old baskets and gardening tools. Very soon he discovered that it was a cosy kind of place.

He decided to sleep the night in a basket of wool that stood under a useless rocking-chair.

As a matter of fact he had never felt really secure in the dim-lit drawing-room with its empty windows. And to look at the sleeping family made him melancholy.

But here, in the small space between a packing case, the rocking-chair and the back of the sofa, he felt at ease and not at all lonely.

He could see a little of the blackness inside the stove, but he was careful not to disturb his ancestor and built walls around his nest as quietly as he could.

In the evening he took the lamp there with him and lay for a while listening to the ancestor's rustling in the chimney.

'Perhaps I lived like this a thousand years ago,' Moomintroll thought happily.

He half thought of shouting something up the chimney. Just a word of secret concord. But then he thought better of it, blew out his lamp and curled up deep in the wool.

CHAPTER 5
The new guests

EACH
day the sun rose a little higher in the sky. Finally it had reached high enough to throw a few cautious rays into the valley. That was a most important day. It was remarkable also because a stranger arrived in the valley shortly after noon.

He was a thin little dog with a tattered woollen cap pulled deep over his ears. He said that his name was Sorry-oo, and that there was no food left in the valleys to the north. Since the Lady of the Cold had passed people had had next to nothing to eat. A desperate Hemulen was even rumoured to have bolted down his own beetle collection, but this was probably untrue. Possibly he had eaten some other Hemulen's collection, however. Anyway, lots of people were now on their way towards the Moomin valley.

Somebody had told everybody that rowan-berries and a whole cellar of jam were to be found here. But probably the jam-cellar was just a rumour too...

Sorry-oo sat down in the snow on his thin tail, and all his face wrinkled up at his worries.

'We live on fish-soup here,' Too-ticky said. 'I've never heard about any jam-cellar.'

Moomintroll threw a sudden look at the round snowdrift behind the woodshed.

'There it is!' said Little My. 'There are such lots of jam in it that it makes you sick just to think of it, and all the jars are dated and tied with red string.'

'I'm kind of keeping an eye on the family's things while they sleep,' Moomintroll said, and blushed a little.

'Of course you are,' mumbled Sorry-oo resignedly.

Moomintroll looked at the verandah and then at Sorry-oo's wrinkled face.

'Do you like jam?' he asked gruffly.

'I don't know,' Sorry-oo replied humbly.

Moomintroll sighed and said: 'Well. Just mind that you start with the oldest jars.'

*

A few hours later a flock of small Creep came plodding over the bridge, and a confused and complaining Filly-jonk was seen to be running to and fro in the garden. Her potted plants were frozen, she said. Somebody had eaten all her winter food. And on her way to the Moomin valley she had met an insolent Gaffsie who had told her that winter was no laughing matter, and why hadn't she prepared herself better.

At dusk there were a lot of people treading paths to the jam-cellar. Those that had a little more strength left in their legs went down to the shore and settled down in the bathing-house.

But no one was allowed in the cave. Little My said that the Mymble couldn't be disturbed.

Before the Moominhouse some of the most miserable ones were sitting and lamenting their fate, when Moomintroll appeared on the roof with his oil-lamp. 'You'd better come inside for the night,' he said. 'You never know, what with Grokes and such around.'

'I never was one for rope-ladders,' declared an old Whomper.

Moomintroll descended and started to dig a hole to the entrance door. He shovelled and scratched and worked away. Soon the hole was a long and narrow tunnel extending through the snow, but when he finally reached the wall there was no door to be found. Only a window, frozen fast like the others.

'I must have dug wrong,' Moomintroll said to himself. 'And if I dig a new tunnel perhaps I'll miss the house altogether.' So he broke the window-pane as nicely as possible, and the guests soon came crawling in after him.

'Please don't awaken the family,' said Moomintroll. 'This is Mother, and that's Father, and over there's the Snork Maiden. My ancestor sleeps in the stove. You'll have to roll yourself up in the carpets because most of the other things have been borrowed.'

The guests bowed to the sleeping family. Then they obligingly rolled themselves up in carpets and tablecloths, and the smallest ones went to sleep in caps, slippers and the like.

Many of them had a cold, and some of them were homesick. 'This is terrible,' Moomintroll thought. 'Very soon the jam-cellar'll be empty. And what shall I say when the family awakes in the spring, and all the pictures

are hanging wrong and the house is thronged with people?'

He crawled back through the tunnel to see if anybody had been left outside.

The moonlight was blue. Sorry-oo sat alone in the snow, howling. He put his muzzle straight up in the air and howled a long and melancholy song.

'Why don't you go to bed?' asked Moomintroll.

Sorry-oo looked at him with eyes that shone green in the moonlight. One ear was pointing straight up while

the other listened to one side. His whole face was listening.

Very faintly they could hear the howl of hunting wolves. Sorry-oo nodded bleakly and pulled his woollen cap on again.

'My great, strong brethren,' he whispered. 'How I long to be with them.'

'Aren't you afraid of them?' asked Moomintroll.

'Yes, I am,' said Sorry-oo. 'That's the sad part.' He slunk off along the path to the bathing-house.

Moomintroll crept back into the drawing-room.

A Little Creep had been frightened by the mirror and sat sobbing in the meerschaum tram.

Otherwise everything was silent.

'What troubles people have,' Moomintroll thought. 'Perhaps the jam isn't such an awful matter, after all. And I could always put the Sunday jar aside. The strawberry one. For the time being.'

*

At dawn the following day the valley was awakened by clear and piercing bugle notes. My sat up at once in her cave, and her feet started to beat time. Too-ticky pricked her ears, and Sorry-oo rushed under one of the benches, with his tail between his legs.

Moomintroll's ancestor annoyedly rattled the damper, and most of the guests woke up.

Moomintroll rushed to the window and crawled out through the snow-tunnel.