Winter's Tales (5 page)

It was Christmas Eve, and the children were cleaning the house for Santa.

“But he comes down the
chimney
!” said the smallest girl. “He'll be covered in soot. He won't care if our house is dusty or not. He won't even notice.”

“Yes he will,” said their mother. “I want our house to be the cleanest, tidiest, shiniest house in the whole village. So pick up those socks!”

The children tidied, dusted, polished and mopped all day.

“I don't want to see any dust or dirt, any cobwebs or fluff,” said their mother cheerfully.

“Christmas is hard work,” the smallest boy muttered.

“Cobwebs!” called out their mother. “I see cobwebs on the ceiling.”

So the biggest girl climbed the ladder and the biggest boy held it steady. She flicked with a feather duster until the cobwebs vanished.

A family of spiders were hiding in the darkest corner of the ceiling. As the dust and cobwebs were swept out of the house, the littlest spider whispered, “Where will we live now? If those huge people flick all our webs away, where will we live?”

The mother spider said, “Don't worry. This big clean only lasts one day and we can weave more webs once their winter festival is over. But watch what happens next.”

The little spiders watched as the children's father arrived with a tall green sharp-needled
tree. The smell of the outdoors followed the tree into the house.

The children clapped and cheered and got in the way, while their father put the tree in a bucket and jammed stones round the trunk to keep it upright.

Then the biggest boy held the ladder again, and the little spiders crept deeper into the corner. “It's fine,” said their mother. “They're not coming up here again. Look.”

The children were hanging glass globes, gingerbread men and little metal drums from the branches of the great green tree. They put a bright star, gleaming like the rest of the house, on the very top of the tree.

Then the whole family stood in a circle around the tree and sang lots of happy songs. Finally, they all went upstairs to bed.

“Hurry up,” said the children's mother, “you want to be asleep before Santa comes down the chimney.”

The spiders gazed at the tree.

“It's magic,” said the littlest spider. “It's like we have a forest in our house!”

“Go to sleep,” said the mother spider. “We'll need lots of energy to weave more webs.”

But while she fell asleep, the little spiders stayed awake, looking at the tree.

“Let's go closer,” said the biggest baby spider.

They swung down on their spider silk, from the rafters to the top of the tree.

Then the little spiders played on the tree.

They waved at their reflections in the glass globes, played marching tunes on the tiny drums with all their feet, and danced round the gingerbread men. They leapt from branch to branch, singing the songs they had heard the family sing, and played hide and seek behind the dark green needles. They climbed up to the shiny star, daring each other to perch on the highest point. Then they challenged each other to an abseiling race from the star to the bucket.

As they dared and danced and raced and played, the little
spiders left a maze of delicate spider silk all over the tree. Long lines of white, zigzagging round the tree, winding round the branches.

Then, suddenly, they heard a thump and a creak.

A big man in a red suit landed in front of the fireplace.

The baby spiders hid deep in the shadows of the tree, right up against the trunk.

Santa Claus walked up to the tree and looked at the pale threads chasing round it.

And he laughed.

He looked around the clean, gleaming, shining house and said, “Let's make it
all
shine!”

He touched the nearest thread of spider silk, and it glowed silver. Santa nodded, then ran his gloved finger down another strand, and all the spider silk round the tree gleamed like silver. The whole tree shone.

Then Santa bent down, peered between the branches and winked at the little spiders.

Once he had filled all the stockings on the mantelpiece, he clambered back up the
chimney. The little spiders scampered back to the ceiling, to snuggle up beside their mother.

The next morning, when the family came downstairs, they found their presents and they also found their tree covered in the very first tinsel.

Ever since that day, children in the Ukraine and Germany have decorated Christmas trees with strings of shining tinsel, but they also hide a little toy spider, deep inside the branches.

Maori myth

The Maoris tell of their arrival in Aotearoa more than six hundred years ago, in a Great Fleet of canoes.

Skilled Polynesian navigators had known about the long cloudy southern islands, which we also call New Zealand, for many generations. But it was not until food shortages and arguments made the tropical island Hawaiki uncomfortable that they built a Great Fleet of eight huge canoes to
journey to colder southern waters and settle Aotearoa.

Those who were staying on Hawaiki came to the beach to wave the Great Fleet off, and the young priest Ngatoro and his sister Kuiwai were at the front of the crowd. The captain of one of the canoes called Ngatoro over, and asked him to come aboard for a moment to bless the boat with his powerful magic.

So Ngatoro climbed aboard and started to call down blessings on the canoe and its voyage.

But as Ngatoro stood in the middle of the boat, the captain shouted the order to set sail. He wanted to keep the priest on board, to bless not just the boat and the journey, but the new homeland too.

Ngatoro could have leapt overboard or halted the boat with storms and curses. But when he felt the canoe move on the waves and he smelled the open sea, he smiled. He was curious to see this new cold land. So he waved goodbye to Kuiwai, and he allowed the captain to take him south.

When the Great Fleet landed after their long journey, Ngatoro was busy for days. Everyone wanted a priest's blessing: on their arrival, on their new home, on their source of fresh water, on their future.

When all the settlers were finally happy in their new homes, Ngatoro realised he had no home of his own. He had been so busy blessing everyone else's newly claimed land, he hadn't claimed his own land yet. Now it might be too late, because all the land near the coast was taken.

He looked inland and saw a mountain topped with a smooth white cap. Ngatoro thought that if he climbed the mountain, he would be able to see for miles, and any land he could see, he could name and claim for himself. So he began to climb the mountain.

As he climbed higher and higher, he gasped at the coldness of the air around him. Then he noticed that his sharp out-breaths were forming clouds in the air. It was a new magic, one he did not know, but it was a beautiful
dancing magic. He laughed, blowing out puffs and streams of pale cloud.

Then he reached the white cap on the upper slopes of the mountain. It wasn't solid pale rock as he'd expected, or even pure silver sand as he had seen on beaches. It was something more fragile: crisp and crunching under his feet, crushed into permanent footprints behind him, and very cold on his toes.

He bent down and touched the white crust on the ground. It burned his fingers like fire, but when he picked up a handful of white, it crumbled, then melted into cold clear water on his skin.

Ngatoro continued up the mountain, determined to get to the top and see as far as he could.

He was shaking now, shivering like a half-drowned sailor or a child with fever. His teeth were clacking together and he was rubbing his hands to keep them warm. His shoulders were hunched against the cold and wind. His legs were aching from the steep climb and the unfamiliar crunching surface.

But finally Ngatoro reached the top of the mountain and looked around.

The land below was glorious. He saw forests and rivers and meadows. He named and claimed as much land as he thought one man could love, which was not even one tenth of what he saw.

Then he started to climb down. It wasn't easy, because the cold white ground slipped away under his feet and he had to fight to keep his balance.

As he stumbled and slid down the mountain, he discovered where the white cold came from.

It came from the sky.

It started to fall in cold white flakes from the clouds in the sky and it fluttered down to land on the ground, and on his own head and shoulders.

Ngatoro laughed again. He was glad he had been tricked into coming on the canoe, to find this new white magic.

He stopped and raised his hands, to greet the flakes.

But then the wind grew stronger and the flakes fell faster. His shivering became more violent and the ground was harder to walk on. The wind grew even wilder and the flakes swirled round him so he couldn't see where he was going.

Ngatoro slipped and landed hard, his body flat on the ground. He was buried in the white cold, with the flakes landing on him and covering him. Suddenly he was so cold and so tired that he couldn't even shiver.

Ngatoro knew he was dying. He could feel the life start to leave his body.

So he called out for help. Not to the people on the coast below, they were too far away and had no power to help him.

He called to someone even further away, someone who had plenty of power.

He called to his sister Kuiwai, at home in Hawaiki.

And Kuiwai knew his pain. She felt his fear and sadness in her own heart. She felt
the burning cold on her own skin and she felt the deep cold in her own bones.

She knew she had to be quick if she was going to save her brother.

So Kuiwai grabbed a branch from the fire, a long sturdy branch with a blazing flame at the end. And she leapt into the sea.

Kuiwai used her power to keep the branch burning as she swam faster than lightning under the sea all the way to Aotearoa.

When she reached the north island, she didn't stop, and she didn't come ashore. She just kept swimming under the land, faster than an arrow, towards the mountain where her brother lay with his last breaths billowing round his face.

Kuiwai forced her way under the land until she reached the mountain. Then she burst upwards and out of the summit, ripping a hole in the mountain. She landed hard on the white ground, with the branch still burning in her hand.

She ran to her brother, so fast she didn't even leave footprints on the white land, she
wrapped her arms round him, and she used her warmth and the burning flame to coax the life back into his body.

And Ngatoro woke up.

Then brother and sister walked, arm in arm, down the mountain to make a home together in their new land.

And that is why Aotearoa is a land of both ice and fire. Because the path Kuiwai took under the land is now a line of hot springs, and the hole where she burst out of the summit with her flaming torch is now a volcano.

Aotearoa is a land of fire as well as ice, because a sister used all her power and speed to save her brother from his first ever blizzard.