Moominland Midwinter

by Tove Jansson

  Moomintroll was darning the family’s bathing trunks with red cotton yarn.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you that the Great Cold’s on her way,’ Too-ticky said.

  ‘A still greater one?’ asked Moomintroll. ‘How big do they grow?’

  ‘This is the most dangerous of them all,’ said Too-ticky. ‘And she’ll come in the afternoon, when the sky changes to green, straight in from the sea.’

  ‘It’s a she then?’ asked Moomintroll.

  ‘Yes, and very beautiful,’ said Too-ticky. ‘But if you look her in the face you’ll be frozen to ice. You’ll be hard like a biscuit and not even crumble. That’s why you’d better keep at home tonight.’

  Too-ticky crawled back out on the roof. Moomintroll went down in the cellar and filled more peat into the central-heating stove. He also spread some carpets over the sleeping family.

  Then he wound the clocks and went out. He felt like having some company when the Lady of the Cold would make her visit.

  *

  As Moomintroll reached the bathing-house, the sky was already paler and greener than before. The wind had gone to sleep, and the dead reeds sprouted stiff and immobile from the ice by the shore.

  He listened, and he thought that he could hear a very low, deep and softly humming tone in the silence itself. Perhaps it came from the ice that was freezing itself deeper and deeper down in the sea.

  The bathing-house felt well warmed, and on the table stood Moominmamma’s blue teapot.

  He sat down in the garden chair and asked: ‘When is she coming?’

  ‘Quite soon now,’ said Too-ticky. ‘But don’t worry.’

  ‘Well, the Lady of the Cold doesn’t worry me any,’ said Moomintroll. ‘I’m worried by the others. Those that I don’t know anything about. Like the Dweller Under the Sink. And that one in the cupboard. Or the Groke that only looks at you and never says a word.’

  Too-ticky rubbed her nose and thought.’Well, it’s like this,’ she said. There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep – then they appear.’

  ‘Do you know them?’ asked Moomintroll.

  ‘Some of them,’ replied Too-ticky. ‘The Dweller Under the Sink, for instance, quite well. But I believe that he wants to lead a secret life, so I can’t introduce you to each other.’

  Moomintroll kicked at the table leg and sighed. ‘I see, I see,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t want to lead a secret life. Here one comes stumbling into something altogether new and strange, and not a soul even asking one in what kind of a world one has lived before. Not even Little My wants to talk about the real world.’

  ‘And how does one tell which one is the real one?’ said Too-ticky with her nose pressed against a pane. ‘Here she is.’

  The door was pushed open, and Little My sent the silver tray clattering in along the floor.

  ‘The sail’s not bad,’ she said. ‘But what I really need now is a muff. Your Mamma’s eggwarmer’ll never do, no matter where I cut the holes. Already it looked like something one wouldn’t even have the cheek to give away to a displaced hedgehog.’*

  ‘I can see that,’ replied Moomintroll with a bleak look at the eggwarmer.

  Little My threw it on the floor, and it was immediately tidied off into the stove by an invisible shrew.

  ‘Well, is she coming?’ said Little My.

  ‘I think so,’ said Too-ticky quietly. ‘Let’s take a look outside.’

  They went out on to the landing-stage and sniffed towards the sea. The evening sky was green all over, and all the world seemed to be made of thin glass. All was silent, nothing stirred, and slender stars were shining everywhere and twinkling in the ice. It was terribly cold.

  ‘Yes, she’s on her way,’ said Too-ticky. ‘We’d better go inside.’

  The shrew stopped playing under the table.

  Far out on the ice came the Lady of the Cold. She was pure white, like the candles, but if one looked at her through the right pane she became red, and seen through the left one she was pale green.

  Suddenly Moomintroll felt the pane become so cold that it hurt, and he drew back his snout in rather a fright.

  They sat down by the stove and waited.

  ‘Don’t look,’ said Too-ticky.

  ‘Hello, here’s someone crawling into my lap,’ cried Little My surprisedly and looked down at her empty skirt.

  ‘It’s my shrews,’ said Too-ticky. ‘They’re scared. Sit still, and they’ll go away soon.’

  Now the Lady of the Cold was walking past the bathing-house. Perhaps she did cast an eye through the window, because an icy draught suddenly swept through the room and darkened the red-hot stove for a moment. Then it was over. Feeling a little embarrassed, the invisible shrews jumped down from Little My’s lap, and everybody rushed to the window and looked out.

  The Lady of the Cold was standing by the reeds. Her back was turned, and she was bending down over the snow.

  ‘It’s the squirrel,’ said Too-ticky. ‘He’s forgotten to keep at home.’

  The Lady of the Cold turned her beautiful face towards the squirrel and distractedly scratched him behind one ear. Bewitched, he stared back at her, straight into her cold blue eyes. The Lady of the Cold smiled and continued on her way.

  But she left the foolish little squirrel lying stiff and numb with all his paws in the air.

  ‘Too bad,’ said Too-ticky grimly and pulled her cap over her ears. She opened the door, and a cloud of white snow-fog came whirling in. She darted out, and in a moment she slipped back in again and laid the squirrel on the table.

  The invisible shrews came running with hot water and rolled the squirrel in a warmed towel. But his little legs sprouted just as sadly and stiffly in the air, and he did not move a whisker.

  ‘He’s quite dead,’ said Little My matter-of-factly.

  ‘At least he saw something beautiful before he died,’ said Moomintroll in a trembling voice.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Little My. ‘In any case he’s forgotten it by now. And I’m going to make myself a sweet little muff out of his tail.’

  ‘But you can’t!’ Moomintroll cried, very upset. ‘He must have his tail with him in the grave. Because he has to be buried, hasn’t he, Too-ticky?’

  ‘Mphm,’ replied Too-ticky. ‘It’s very hard to tell if people take any pleasure in their tails when they’re dead.’

  ‘Please,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Don’t talk about him being dead all the time. It’s so sad.’*

  ‘When one’s dead, then one’s dead,’ said Too-ticky kindly. ‘This squirrel will become earth all in his time. And still later on there’ll grow trees from him, with new squirrels skipping about in them. Do you think that’s so very sad?’*

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Moomintroll, and blew his snout. ‘But in any case he’s going to be buried tomorrow, and his tail too, and we’ll have a nice and very proper funeral,’

  *

  The following day it was very cold in the bathing-house. The fire was lighted in the stove, but evidently the invisible shrews were tired. The coffee pot that Moomintroll had brought from home had a thin layer of ice under the lid.

  Moomintroll wouldn’t take any coffee, out of consideration for the dead squirrel. ‘You’ll have to give me my bath-gown,’ he said solemnly. ‘Mother’s told me that funerals are always cold.’

  ‘Turn your back and count ten,’ said Too-ticky.

  Moomintroll turned towards the window and counted. At eight Too-ticky shut the cupboard door and gave him his blue gown.

  ‘Oh, you remembered that mine was the blue one,’ Moomintroll said happily. He stuck his paws in the pockets at once but found no sun-glasses there, only a little sand and a perfectly round and smooth, white pebble.


  He closed his paw around the pebble. Its roundness held all the security of summer. He could even imagine that it was still a little warm from lying in the sun.

  ‘You look as if you were at the wrong party,’ said Little My.

  Moomintroll didn’t look at her.

  ‘Are you coming to the funeral or not?’ he asked in a dignified manner.

  ‘Of course we’re coming,’ said Too-ticky. ‘He was a nice squirrel in his way.’

  ‘Especially the tail,’ Little My said.

  They wrapped the squirrel in an old bathing-cap and stepped out into the bitter cold.

  The snow crunched under their paws, and their breaths became clouds of white smoke. Moomintroll soon felt his snout stiffen so that it was impossible to wrinkle it.

  ‘Tough going, this,’ Little My said happily and skipped along over the frozen shore.

  ‘Can’t you slow up a bit,’ asked Moomintroll. ‘This is a funeral.’

  He was able to draw only very short breaths of the icy air.

  ‘I never knew you had any eyebrows at all,’ said Little My interestedly. ‘Now they’re all white and you look more confused than ever.’

  ‘That’s rime,’ said Too-ticky sternly. ‘And keep quiet now, because neither you nor I know anything about funerals.’

  Moomintroll cheered up. He carried the squirrel up to the house and laid it down before the snow-horse.

  Then he went up the rope-ladder and down into the warm, peaceful drawing-room where everybody lay asleep.

  He searched all the drawers. He ransacked every place, but he didn’t find what he needed.

  He went to his Mother’s bed and whispered a question in her ear. She sighed and turned around. Moomintroll repeated his whisper.

  Then Moominmamma answered, from the depths of her womanly understanding of all that preserves tradition: ‘Black bands… they’re in my cupboard… top shelf… to the right…’ And she sank back into her winter sleep again.

  But Moomintroll took out the ladder from under the staircase and climbed up to the top shelf of the cupboard.

  There he found the box with all those superfluous things that can sometimes be absolutely necessary: black bands for mourning, golden bands for great celebrations, and the key to the house, and the champagne whisk, and the tube of porcelain glue, and spare brass knobs for the bedposts among other things.

  When Moomintroll came out again he had a black bow on his tail. He also made fast a little black bow on Too-ticky’s cap.

  But Little My refused blankly to be decorated. ‘If I feel sorry I needn’t show it with a bow,’ she said.

  ‘If you feel sorry, that is,’ said Moomintroll. ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘No,’ said Little My. ‘I can’t. I’m always either glad or angry. Would it help the squirrel if I were sorry? No. But if I’m angry at the Lady of the Cold, I might bite her leg some time. And then perhaps she’ll take care not to scratch other little squirrels behind their ears just because they’re sweet and fluffy.’

  ‘There’s something in that,’ said Too-ticky. ‘But Moomintroll’s also right, however that’s possible. And what do we do now?’

  ‘Now I’m going to dig a hole in the ground,’ said Moomintroll. ‘This is a nice spot, there are a lot of marguerites here in summer.’

  ‘But dearest,’ said Too-ticky sadly. ‘The ground’s frozen stone hard. You couldn’t bury even a grasshopper in it.’

  Moomintroll looked helplessly at her without replying. No one said a word. And at that moment the snow-horse lowered its head and cautiously sniffed at the squirrel. It looked questioningly at Moomintroll with its mirror eyes, and its broom-tail moved slightly.

  At the same time the invisible shrew struck up a sad tune on his flute. Moomintroll nodded gratefully.

  Then the snow-horse lifted the squirrel on his back, tail and bathing-cap and all, and everybody started to walk back to the shore.

  And Too-ticky sang this about the squirrel:

  There was a little squirrel,

  A very small squirrel.

  He wasn’t very clever

  But his fur was nice and warm.

  Now he is cold, quite cold.

  And all his legs are numb.

  But still he is the squirrel

  With the marvellous tail.

  When the horse felt hard ice under his hooves, he tossed his head and his eyes lighted up; and suddenly he cut a caper and galloped off.

  The invisible shrew changed to a fast and lively tune. Farther and farther away galloped the snow-horse with the squirrel on his back. Finally he was just a speck on the horizon.

  ‘I wonder if this went off right?’ said Moomintroll worriedly.

  ‘It couldn’t have been better,’ said Too-ticky. ‘Well, it could,’ said Little My. ‘If only I had got the nice tail for a muff.’

  CHAPTER 4

  The lonely and the rum

  A FEW days after the squirrel’s funeral Moomintroll noticed that somebody had stolen peat from the woodshed.

  There were broad tracks in the snow outside, just as if heavy sacks had been lugged off.

  ‘If can’t be My,’ thought Moomintroll. ‘She’s much too small. And Too-ticky only takes what she needs. It must be the Groke.’

  He followed the trail with bristling neck fluff. There was no one else to keep watch over the family’s fuel, and this was a matter of honour.

  The trail ended on the top of the hill behind the cave.

  There lay the peat sacks. They were piled up to make part of a bonfire, and on top of them rested the family’s garden sofa that had lost one of its legs in August.

  ‘That sofa’s going to look fine,’ said Too-ticky, stepping out from behind the bonfire. ‘It’s old and dry as dust.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Moomintroll. ‘It’s been a long time in the family. We could have repaired it.’

  ‘Or made anew one,’ said Too-ticky. ‘Would you like to hear the song about Too-ticky who made a great winter bonfire?’

  ‘By all means,’ replied Moomintroll, good-naturedly.

  And Too-ticky started at once to stamp around slowly in the snow, while she sang as follows:

  Here come the dumb,

  The lonely and the rum.

  The wild and the quiet.

  Thud goes the drum.

  Crackle goes the bonfire

  Glowing in the white snow,

  Swish go the tails,

  Swinging through the light snow.

  Thud goes the drumming

  In the black, black night.

  ‘I’ve got enough of your snow and night,’ cried the Moomintroll. ‘No, I won’t hear the refrain. I’m cold! I’m lonely! I want the sun back again!’

  ‘But that’s exactly why we burn up the great winter bonfire tonight,’aid Too-ticky. ‘You’ll get your sun back tomorrow.’

  ‘My sun,’ repeated Moomintroll in a trembling voice.

  Too-ticky nodded and rubbed her nose.

  Moomintroll was silent a long while.

  Then he cautiously asked: ‘Do you think she’d notice if the garden sofa were there or not?’

  ‘Now listen,’ replied Too-ticky sternly. ‘This bonfire is a thousand years older than your garden sofa. You ought to feel honoured by its being good enough to be laid on top.’

  And Moomintroll said no more. ‘I’ll have to explain that to the family,’ he thought. ‘And perhaps there’ll be new driftwood and a new sofa on the shore after the spring gales.’

  The pyre was growing. Dried-up tree-trunks were being lugged up the hillside, as well as rotten stubs, old casks and battens that people seemed to have found on the shore. But the people themselves never came into view. Moomintroll had a feeling that the hill was thronged with them, but he never caught sight of anybody.

  Little My came along, trailing her cardboard box in the snow. ‘I won’t need it now,’ she said. ‘The silver tray’s much better. And my sister seems to like sleeping in the drawing-room carpet. When are
we going to light the fire.’

  ‘At moonrise,’said Too-ticky.

  Moomintroll felt greatly excited all evening. He padded from one room to the next and lit more candles than usual. Now and again he stood still, listening to the even breathing of the sleepers and to the light snapping in the walls as the cold sharpened.

  He felt certain that all the mysterious people would come out of their holes and dens tonight, all the light-shy and unreal that Too-ticky had talked about. They’d come padding up to the great bonfire that all the small beasts had lighted to make the dark and the cold go away. And now he would see them.

  Moomintroll lit the oil-lamp and went up to the attic. He opened the hatch. The moon had not yet risen, but

  the valley was bleakly lighted by the aurora borealis. Down by the bridge a file of torches was moving along, surrounded by leaping shadows. They were on their way to the seashore and the hilltop.

  Moomintroll climbed cautiously down with the lighted lamp in his hand. The garden and the wood were filled with flickering lights and whispers, and all tracks were leading towards the hill.

  When he reached the shore the moon was already high over the ice, chalk-blue and terribly remote. Something moved beside Moomintroll, and he looked down into Little My’s ferociously gleaming eyes.

  ‘It’s going to be quite a fire,’ she laughed. ‘Make all the moonshine look silly.’

  They looked towards the hilltop at the same time and saw a yellow flame rising against the sky. Too-ticky had lit the bonfire.

  It wrapped itself in flames at once, from ground to top, it gave a roar like a lion and threw its reflection straight down on the black ice. A lonely little tune came running past Moomintroll: it was the invisible shrew who was a little late for the winter ritual.

  Small and great shadows were solemnly skipping round the fire on the hilltop. Tails were beginning to thud on drums.

  ‘Good-bye to your garden sofa,’ said Little My.

  ‘I’ve never needed it,’ Moomintroll replied, impatiently. He stumbled up the icy slope. It was glittering in the firelight. The snow was melting from the heat, and the warm water wet his paws.