by Poppy Harris
Sam scrambled out of Bethany’s bed.
‘I don’t know how you can sleep with that hamster wheel running,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I could sleep without it,’ said Bethany. She lay down and, lulled by the gentle whirring of Hamilton’s wheel, was soon asleep. Hamilton stayed wide awake, deep in thought, looking at the doors on the advent calendar as he ran. There weren’t many left. Where could he find all those snowflakes?
Hamilton wasn’t the only one who stayed awake that night. Tim Taverner lay in his bed and wondered how he could trap the Wonder Hamster. Was it at Bethany’s house, or Chloe’s? Could he sneak in pretending to be the postman or the gasman, or climb up the side of the house pretending to be Father Christmas? Could he pretend to be a hamster-sitter, looking after hamsters during the Christmas holidays? No, that wouldn’t do. All night in his dreams, he chased hamsters, carol-singing hamsters, hamsters with sacks full of toys and flying hamsters pulling a sleigh. But he couldn’t catch a single one.
‘Snow!’ cried Bethany. ‘Look, Hamilton! Snow!’
Hamilton woke up, sniffing the air. It smelt strangely different today. Bethany was swishing the curtains open.
‘Snow!’ she said again, and leant her elbows on the sill as she watched. ‘Real snow too! Look, Hamilton! It’ll settle – that means it won’t melt straight away, it’ll last all day at least, even if we’re not going to have a lovely snowy Christmas.’
Hamilton opened his cage and ran out to sit on her hand. As soon as he saw the snow, he understood exactly why Bethany loved it so much.
White flakes twirled and danced. They settled on trees, grass and rooftops. As he watched, they covered the garden with a thin white veil.
‘Isn’t it magical!’ whispered Bethany as she lifted down the advent calendar so Hamilton could open it. Inside was a picture of a red front door with a holly wreath hanging up and snow on the ledges. ‘It looks like our front door.’
From Sam’s bedroom came a cry of ‘Snow, snow, snow!’. Dad hurried along the landing, saying something about having to leave for work early because the snow would slow the traffic down. Bethany washed and dressed quickly.
By the time Chloe called to walk to school the snow was falling heavily, and with every minute the outside world turned whiter. Bethany pulled on her wellies and wriggled her hands into fluffy mittens.
‘Now, hurry home after school,’ said Mum. ‘There’ll only just be time to eat your tea and get back to school for the concert. Chloe, how’s your throat?’
‘It’s better, thank you,’ said Chloe, but her voice was croaky.
‘There’s barely any point in going in,’ said Bethany. ‘It’s snowing. The concert’s tonight, and it’s nearly the end of term. We won’t do any work.’
Chloe sneezed.
‘Bless you!’ said everyone. Now that she looked properly, Bethany saw that Chloe’s eyes looked pink and tired.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ said Chloe. ‘The snow makes my eyes water.’
As soon as the children had gone to school and Mum had shut herself in the sewing room, Hamilton climbed very carefully down the stairs, stretching and jumping from one to the next. Fortunately, the people who had lived in the house before Bethany’s family had owned a cat (Hamilton didn’t even like to think about that), so there was a catflap in the back door. It locked with a bolt, but today Hamilton was lucky. Mum was using the tumble dryer, and had opened the catflap to hang the hose through. He took a run and a jump at the catflap, wriggled past the hose, and fell upside down in a snowdrift.
After the initial surprise, he turned the right way up, looked from side to side, and shook snow from his ears and whiskers. It was most useful, he thought, to have a thick warm hamster coat, but the snow on his paws was unpleasantly cold.
But never mind if his paws were cold – he wasn’t going back until he’d enjoyed a bit of snow. First, he ran to the shed where Sam’s rabbit, Bobby, lived. Bobby might like to play in the snow too. Hamilton darted under the shed door.
‘Bobby!’ he called, scratching at the hutch. ‘Are you awake?’
There was a silence, then a rustling of straw and Bobby’s nose was soon twitching at the wire netting.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Smarty-whiskers. Awake? Course I’m awake. Been up for hours. Anything going on?’
‘It’s snowing!’ said Hamilton, bouncing with excitement. ‘Do you want to see?’
Bobby twitched an ear. ‘What would I want to do that for?’ he demanded.
‘It’s beautiful!’ insisted Hamilton. Perhaps Bobby, who lived in his hutch in the shed, had never seen snow. ‘Do you want to have a look? I can open your hutch for you. There are plenty of gaps in the walls for you to look through.’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Bobby. ‘I know all about snow. It’s cold and you can’t eat it. Useless.’
‘But it’s amazing!’ said Hamilton, waving his paws as if he could magic the right word out of the air. ‘It’s wonderful!’
Bobby took a drink from his bottle. ‘You’re a bit funny, you,’ he said, and sat back to wash his ears.
It was a shame. Hamilton would have liked to share the snow with someone, but Bobby wasn’t interested, so he ran into the garden to play.
The snowy landscape was so magical and so confusing that he stood for a moment wondering what to do. Should he make tunnels in it, roll in it, make a snowman or throw snowballs? Should he do all of them, and if he did, which should he do first?
Rolling in it might not be a good idea, even with a fur coat, but he remembered what Bethany had said about how to make a snowman. He made a ball about the size of a pea, and began to push it through the snow, over and over, watching in delight as it grew bigger.
A ball wouldn’t be the right shape for a hamster, even a plump one, so he made a fat snow sausage, rolled it until it was about his own size and stood it on end with a snowball on top. A couple of pebbles from the path became its eyes, and it soon had whiskers of dry grass. Its pebble nose dropped off, but Hamilton decided that his first ever snow hamster was a pretty good effort. He wished he could take a photograph of it.
But now he could feel the cold creeping through his fur. Time to get warm. Hamilton ran to the catflap.
To his horror, Mum had finished the tumble-drying and had put the hose away. The catflap was closed. He pushed at it with both paws, but it was firmly bolted. He was locked out.
Being an intelligent hamster he ran around the house looking for an open window, but he hadn’t realized that people don’t leave downstairs windows open on cold December days. He explored, sniffed and scrabbled at the walls, but there didn’t seem to be any way into the house at all. He was running towards the front door when he discovered something new and quite astonishing about winter.
A drain near the front door had become covered with leaves, so that water from the drainpipe had overflowed on to the path and frozen. Hamilton didn’t notice the ice – at least, not until his paws flew out from under him and he was whizzing forward on his tummy.
Where the patch of ice stopped, so did Hamilton. He stood up, shook his ears and thought how much fun that had been.
Sledging! That’s what he’d been doing! He’d never realized that you could sledge without a sledge! But of course, he thought as he ran back for another go, humans can’t. Hamsters can. We’re made that way. This time, he slid on his back forwards, then on his back backwards, and on his tummy backwards, then standing up (and falling down), and balancing on one paw, then the other paw, until…
… until, all of a sudden, it wasn’t fun any more. Water had seeped through his soft fur, making it heavy and chilled, and his paws hurt with cold. He might catch cold and be ill and worry Bethany, and he really didn’t want to do that, especially on such an important day.
A robin suddenly hopped on to a step nearby, and it occurred to Hamilton that he might not be the only animal out in the snow. Minim, the music teacher’s
cat, might be out too! He’d met Minim before, and once was enough. Running close to the wall, searching all the time for a way in, he came at last to the front door again.
Door, thought Hamilton. Simple.
If you want to get into a house, go through the door.
If you want somebody to open the door, you ring the bell.
He stood back to take a good look. A honeysuckle was growing up the drainpipe beside the door and the woody, twirling stems would be easy to climb. From there, he could reach the doorbell, Mum would open it and his next problem would be getting in without her knowing he’d been out in the first place. He’d manage it somehow.
He took a run at the honeysuckle, scrambling from one branch to another. Normally, that would have been fun, but he was too cold to enjoy it and it was hard to grip the stems with frozen paws. I’m a hero in one of Bethany’s books, he told himself. I’m a polar explorer. And soon, he thought, as he reached out towards the doorbell, I’ll be a warm, dry hamster.
He pressed the doorbell. Nothing happened. He pressed harder. This time, the bell was so loud and startling that Hamilton lost his balance and fell helplessly from the branch. Unable to stop, he tumbled from the next branch to the next, trying to catch at anything at all. He grabbed at a twig, but it bent, swayed and snapped beneath him. With flailing paws, he dropped into the snow just as Mum opened the door.
Mum looked from side to side. She was sure she’d heard the doorbell. Had she been mistaken? The sewing machine had been making a noise. She stepped outside, and looked again. By the time she shrugged, gave up and went back into the house, Hamilton had scrambled out of the snow, slipped past her and hidden behind a waste-paper basket.
He stayed there, shivering. Mum closed the door, rubbed her cold hands and went back to her sewing. Hamilton, grateful, exhausted and almost too tired to climb, struggled slowly back to the warmth and safety of Bethany’s room.
He had been looking forward to his nest with all his heart. But it seemed too hard to climb all the way up to his cage, especially when Bethany’s pink fluffy slippers were warming under a radiator.
They looked soft, cosy, and so, so comfortable…
Bethany kicked off her snowy boots at the door, ran upstairs and threw her school bag into a corner. In just over an hour, she had to be back at school and getting ready for the concert.
‘Hello, Hamilton –’ she began, and stopped. He wasn’t waiting to meet her, and the cage was unlocked –‘Hamilton?’
She checked the nest box, hoping to find him in there – but there was no warm, sleepy hamster. Her hand met nothing but a cold nest. A little shiver of fear ran through her.
‘Hamilton?’ Bethany called anxiously, and lifted the pillows from her bed to see if he was hiding under there. No good. She looked under Wimble, but he wasn’t there either. She opened cupboards, checked behind curtains and lay on the floor to look under the bed, calling his name all the time. There wasn’t a squeak or a twitch of a whisker. With every second, Bethany became more worried. How could she go to the concert, not knowing where Hamilton was?
She looked down from the window, and saw that it was growing dark. Soon, the snow would freeze over. A terrible thought came to her and she sat down on the bed, pressing her face into her hands.
Oh, why had she ever told him about snow? She had told him how beautiful it was. She had taught him all about snowmen and snowball fights. He must have gone out to explore! The thought of Hamilton slowly freezing in the garden was unbearable. He could be trapped in a snowdrift, alone and squeaking for help as the air grew colder and colder. She rushed downstairs, grabbed her coat and ran outside, desperately whispering his name into corners and under bushes as the sky grew darker, and slithering on patches of ice. ‘Hamilton! Please, please, Hamilton, where are you?’
Tears came to her eyes, and she brushed them away crossly. There was no time to cry. For such an intelligent animal, Hamilton didn’t seem to understand danger. But, when she had rubbed her eyes, she saw that a very clear furrow ran through the snow. It was exactly hamster-size.
Bethany felt a moment of joy – he’s been here, I just have to follow this trail! she thought. Then her heart sank again. The snow on either side of the furrow was already turning to glittering crystals of ice. Hamilton might have been out here hours ago. Was he still outside? Was he far away, lost and cold?
She walked along the furrow, then stopped, gasped and lost all hope.
Before her stood a frozen hamster.
‘Hamilton!’ she cried, and dropped to her knees to scoop him up. The snow hamster fell to pieces in her hands.
Something like a sob or a hiccup rose in Bethany’s throat, and she found herself laughing because Hamilton had made a snow hamster, and crying because he had been out in the cold and was still missing. Concentrate, she told herself. The furrow ends here. Hamilton must have built the snow hamster, and come back the same way. Turn back.
Closer to the house, where the snow wasn’t so deep and soft, Bethany could just detect a tiny trace of pawprints, and her heart began to beat more quickly. These were definitely his prints. He had come round the house, perhaps looking for a way in.
‘It’s as if he wanted to shelter from the snow,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Poor little –’
‘BETHANY!’ Mum appeared at the door, and Bethany jumped. ‘What do you think you’re doing! We have to be out in less than an hour, and you’re messing about in the snow as if you had nothing to do and all day to do it in! Your tea’s ready. Look at you! You’re soaked to the ankles! Did you fall in the snow? Get out of those wet things before you catch pneumonia! We don’t want anyone else with a cold! And quickly!’
There was no point in arguing, and the trail did look as if Hamilton might have found his way back into the house. He could be sheltering somewhere. She could only hope so. Perhaps she’d get upstairs and find that, while she’d been outside, he’d made his way back and was safely curled up in his nest box. She ran upstairs to look, but the nest box was as empty as before.
‘Oh, Hamilton,’ she said, and peeled off the chilly wet socks that were clinging to her ankles. ‘Hamilton,’ she repeated, rubbing warmth into her cold feet. She remembered that she’d left her slippers by the radiator to get warm, and gratefully slipped her right foot into her right slipper. That was much better. But she couldn’t get her left slipper on at all.
She waggled her toes. Something must have got stuck in there. Something soft. Must be a pair of socks. She lifted it up to look inside, and two bright but somewhat indignant eyes looked back at her.
‘Hamilton!’
Gladness ran all the way through Bethany. It washed the cold out of her, and filled her with warmth as she lifted him out.
‘I was so worried about you!’ she said, cradling him in her hands. ‘You’ve been out in the snow, haven’t you?’ She picked him up and tried to speak sternly. ‘You know it’s bad for you to get cold and wet.’
Hamilton shrugged.
Bethany gave him her phone. I’M OK, he texted. HAD FUN. MADE SNOW HMSTR. But when he looked properly at Bethany’s face, he saw that her eyes were a bit pink and there were traces of tears on her face. SORRY, BETHANY, he texted, and ran up her arm to nuzzle her face.
‘Don’t do it again,’ said Bethany. ‘And I know about your snow hamster. I found it when I was looking for you.’ His eyes lit up, and she decided not to tell him that it had scared her to bits and she’d accidentally wrecked it. ‘Are you warm now? Do you feel ill?’
Hamilton nodded for the first question and shook his head for the second. Then, he looked purposefully back at the warm, pink slipper and pointed at it.
‘You want to go back?’ she asked. ‘Probably the best place for you. You have a lovely sleep.’
She put him carefully back in the slipper, where he turned round a few times to make himself comfortable again.
‘Bethany!’ called Mum. ‘Tea! Now!’
‘Coming!’ She came down to the warm kitchen to
find Sam happily eating cheese on toast.
‘My costume’s gone missing,’ he grinned. ‘Nobody knows what’s happened to it. I’ll have to be a snowball in my white PE kit after all.’
Bethany looked carefully at his face. It seemed a surprising coincidence that the costume he didn’t want to wear had disappeared, but there was no time to ask about it.
Bethany ate quickly, and hurried back upstairs.
‘It’s time to go to the concert,’ she told Hamilton as he peeped out of her slipper. He sat up straight, his eyes bright and his whiskers twitching with excitement. ‘Hide in my bag and be very, very good. No adventures. Don’t go anywhere without telling me. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
She opened her bag so that Hamilton could run into it, and, with a sudden bright idea, popped the slipper in too. He jumped into it and disappeared. Presently, two paws appeared over the edge and Hamilton popped up, looking over the edge of the slipper as if it were a boat and he were steering it home. Careful to miss Hamilton, Bethany threw in her phone, her hairbrush and a few other odds and ends that she might want, and stepped into her shoes.
‘Time to go!’ called Mum.
‘Ready!’ Bethany called back, and read the new message on her phone.
R U NERVOUS?
‘Yes’, she said. ‘I know we can get the song right. It’s just the thought of all those people looking at me that makes me scared, but I’ll be fine with Chloe there. And you, Hamilton.’
The school hall sparkled with tinsel, garlands and paper angels. Children swarmed everywhere, some in costumes and some in school uniform. Teachers and parents brushed hair, fastened buttons and helped small angels with their halos. Snow was falling again. A little group of the younger children pleaded to be allowed to go out to play, and were firmly told that they mustn’t.
‘But we made a slide at break time,’ said one of them.
‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Strickland, Bethany’s teacher. ‘That’s why you’re staying in. We don’t want any broken legs, thank you.’