Moominland Midwinter Read online

  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.

  ‘I don’t belong here any more,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Nor there. I don’t even know what’s waking and what’s a dream.’ And then in an instant he was asleep, and summer lilacs covered him in their friendly green shadow.

  *

  Little My lay in her frayed sleeping-bag, feeling very vexed. A wind had sprung up in the evening and blew straight into the cave. The wet cardboard box had burst in three different places, and most of the stuffing was confusedly blowing about from corner to corner in the cave.

  ‘Hello, old sister,’ Little My shouted, and knocked the Mymble in the back. But the Mymble slept. She didn’t even move.

  ‘I’m growing angry,’ said Little My. ‘When, for once, one could’ve had some use for a sister.’

  She kicked herself free from the sleeping-bag. Then she crawled to the opening and looked out in the cold night with some delight.

  ‘I’ll show you all,’ Little My muttered grimly and coasted down the slope.

  The shore was lonelier than the end of the world (if indeed anybody has been there). With low whispers the snow was sweeping its large fans over the ice. Everything was dark, because the moon had set.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Little My and spread her skirts in the evil northern wind. She started to slide along between the snow-spots, swerving left and right, spacing her legs with the secure poise you usually have if you are a My.

  The candle in the bathing-house had burned down long ago when Little My passed. She could only see the pointed roof outlined against the night sky. But she didn’t think for a moment: There’s our old bathing-house.’ She sniffed the sharp and dangerous smells of winter and stopped by the shore to listen. The wolves were howling, far, far away in the Lonely Mountains.

  ‘Makes the blood curdle,’ Little My murmured, grinning to herself in the dark. Her n
ose told her that there was a path here that led to the Moomin valley and to the house where one could find some warm quilts and possibly even a new sleeping-bag. She dashed over the shore and straight in among the trees.

  She was so small that her feet made no tracks at all in the snow.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Great Cold

  ALL the clocks were running again. Moomintroll felt less lonely after he had wound them up. As time was lost anyway, he set them at different hours. Perhaps one of them would be right, he thought.

  Every so often they struck, and now and then the alarm clock went off. It comforted him. But he could never forget the one terrible thing – that the sun didn’t rise any longer. Yes, it’s true; morning after morning broke in a kind of grey twilight and melted back again into the long winter night – but the sun never showed himself. He was lost, simply lost, perhaps he had rolled out into space. At first Moomintroll refused to believe it. He waited a long time.

  Every day he went down to the shore and sat there to wait, with his snout to the south-east. But nothing happened. Then he went home again and closed the hatch in the roof and lit a row of candles on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

  The Dweller Under the Sink had still not come out to eat but was probably living a secret and important life by himself.

  The Groke sauntered about on the ice, deep in her own thoughts that no one would ever learn, and in the cupboard of the bathing-house something dangerous was lurking among the gowns. Whatever can one do about such things?

  Such things just are, but one never knows why, and one feels hopelessly apart.

  Moomintroll found a large box of paper transfers in the attic and lapsed into longing admiration of their summerish beauty. They were pictures of flowers and sunrises and little carts with gaudy wheels, glossy and peaceful pictures that reminded him of the world he had lost.

  First he spread them out on the drawing-room floor. Then he hit upon pasting them on the walls. He pasted slowly and carefully to make the job last, and the brightest pictures he pasted above his sleeping Mamma.

  Moomintroll had pasted along all the way to the looking-glass before he noticed that the silver tray had disappeared. It had always hung to the right of the looking-glass in a red, cross-stitched tray hanger, and now there was only the hanger, and a dark oval on the wallpaper.

  He felt very upset because he knew that Moomin-mamma loved the tray. It was a family treasure that no one was allowed to use, and it used to be the only thing that was polished for Midsummer.

  Distractedly, Moomintroll hunted everywhere. He found no tray. But he discovered that several other

  things were missing also, such as pillows and quilts, flour and sugar, and a kettle. Even the egg-cosy with the rose embroidery.

  Moomintroll felt deeply offended, as he regarded himself as responsible on behalf of the sleeping family. At first he suspected the Dweller Under the Sink. He also thought of the Groke and of the mystery of the bathing-house cupboard. But the guilty one could indeed be anybody. The winter probably was peopled with strange creatures who acted mysteriously and freakishly.

  ‘I must ask Too-ticky,’ thought Moomintroll. ‘True, I intended to punish the sun by staying at home until he comes back. But this is important.’

  *

  When Moomintroll stepped out in the grey twilight, a strange white horse was standing by the verandah, staring at him with luminous eyes. He cautiously approached and greeted it, but the horse didn’t move.

  Moomintroll now saw that it was made of snow. Its

  tail was the broom from the woodshed, and its eyes were small mirrors. He could see his own picture in the mirror eyes, and this frightened him a little. So he made a detour by the bare jasmine bushes.

  ‘If there only were a single soul here that I knew of old,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Somebody who wouldn’t be mysterious, just quite ordinary. Somebody who had also awakened and didn’t feel at home. Then one could say: “Hello! Terribly cold, isn’t it? Snow’s a silly thing, what? Have you seen the jasmine bushes? Remember last summer, when…?”

  ‘Or things like that.’

  Too-ticky sat on the bridge parapet, singing.

  ‘I’m Too-ticky, and I’ve made a horse,’ she sang.

  A wild, white horse that goes a-gallop

  Stamping o’er the ice into the night,

  A white and solemn horse that goes a-gallop

  Carrying the Great Cold upon his back.

  Then followed the refrain.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Moomintroll.

  ‘I mean that we’ll spill river water over him tonight,’ Too-ticky said. ‘Then he’ll freeze during the night and become all ice. And when the Great Cold comes he’ll gallop off and never return any more.’

  Moomintroll was silent.

  Then he said: ‘Somebody’s carrying off things from Daddy’s house.’

  ‘That’s nice, isn’t it,’ replied Too-ticky cheerfully. ‘You’ve got too many things about you. As well as things you remember, and things you’re dreaming about.’

  And she started the second stanza.

  Moomintroll turned about and went away. ‘She doesn’t understand me,’ he thought. Behind him the exultant chant went on.

  ‘Sing all you want,’ Moomintroll muttered, angry to the point of crying. ‘Sing about your horrible winter with

  black ice and unfriendly snow-horses, and people who never appear but only hide and are queer!’

  He tramped up the slope, he kicked at the snow, his tears froze on his snout, and suddenly he started to sing his own song.

  He sang it at the top of his voice, so that Too-ticky would hear it and be put out.

  This was Moomintroll’s angry summer song:

  Listen, winter creatures, who have sneaked the sun away,

  Who are hiding in the dark and making all the valley grey:

  I am utterly alone, and I’m tired to the bone. And I’m sick enough of snowdrifts just to lay me down and groan.

  I want my blue verandah and the glitter of the sea And I tell you one and all that your winter’s not for me!

  ‘Just you wait until my sun’s coming back to look at you, and then you’ll look silly, all of you,’ Moomintroll shouted and didn’t even care about his rhymes any more.

  Because then I’ll dance on a sunflower disk

  And lie on my stomach in the warm sand

  And keep my window open all the day

  On the garden and bumblebees

  And on the sky-blue sky

  And my own great

  Orange-yellow

  SUN!

  The silence was oppressive when Moomintroll finished his song of defiance.

  He stood listening for a while, but nobody opposed him.

  ‘Something’s bound to happen,’ he thought with a tremble. And something did happen.

  High up, from near the top of the hill, something came coasting along. It shot downwards in a plume of glittering snow, and it shouted: ‘Stand aside! Keep clear!’

  Moomintroll could only stare.

  Straight towards him rushed the silver tray, and on it sat the missing egg-cosy. ‘Too-ticky must have poured river-water on them,’ Moomintroll had time to reflect. ‘And now they’re alive and galloping away and won’t ever return any more…’

  The collision came. Moomintroll was thrown deep into the snow, and even under the surface he could hear Too-ticky’s laughter.

  There was also another laugh, a laugh that could belong only to one person in the whole world.

  ‘Little My!’ shouted Moomintroll with his mouth full of snow. He clambered to his feet, beside himself with happiness and expectation.

  Yes, there she was sitting in the snow. She had cut holes for her head and arms in the tea-cosy, and an embroidered rose adorned the middle of her stomach.

  ‘Little My!’ cried Moomintroll once again. ‘Oh, you can’t even guess… It’s been so strange, so lonely… Remember last summer when…?’

  ‘Bu
t now it’s winter,’ said Little My and fished for the silver tray in the snow. ‘We took a good jump, didn’t we?’

  ‘I woke up and couldn’t go to sleep again,’ Moomintroll told her. ‘The door had stuck, and the sun was lost, and not even the Dweller Under the Sink would…’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ Little My said cheerfully. ‘So then you started pasting transfers on the walls. You’re the same old Moomintroll. Now I wonder if it would speed up this tray a bit to rub it with candle-grease?’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ said Too-ticky.

  ‘I suppose I’ll get quite a kick out of it on the ice,’ said Little My. ‘If one can find something for a sail in the Moominhouse.’

  Moomintroll looked at them and thought a while.

  Then he said quietly: ‘You can always borrow my sun tent.’

  *

  The same afternoon Too-ticky felt in her nose that the Great Cold was on its way. She poured river water over the horse and carried armfuls of wood to the bathing-house.

  ‘Keep inside today, because she’ll be coming,’ Too-ticky said.

  The invisible shrews nodded, and an agreeing rustle was heard from the cupboard. Too-ticky went out to warn the others.

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Little My. ‘I’ll be coming in all right when I feel the pinch in my toes. And I can always throw some straw over the Mymble.’ My steered her silver tray out on the ice.

  Too-ticky continued her way towards the valley. On the path she met the squirrel with the marvellous tail. ‘Keep at home tonight, because the Great Cold is coming,’said Too-ticky.

  ‘Yes,’ said the squirrel. ‘You haven’t seen a spruce cone I left here somewhere?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Too-ticky. ‘But promise that you

  won’t forget what I told you. Stay at home after twilight. It’s important.’

  The squirrel nodded absentmindedly.

  Too-ticky went on to the Moominhouse and climbed the rope ladder that Moomintroll had hung out. She opened the hatch and called to him.