Moominvalley in November (19 page)
Read Moominvalley in November Online
Authors: Tove Jansson
Tags: #General, #Fantasy, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Family, #Classics, #Children's Stories; Swedish, #Friendship, #Seasons, #Concepts, #Fantasy Fiction; Swedish
Snufkin stood outside his tent and knew that it was time to break camp, he was ready to be off. The valley would soon be cut off.
Slowly and calmly he pulled up the pegs and rolled up the tent. He doused the fire. He was in no hurry today.
Everything was empty and clean, all that was left was a rectangle of bleached grass showing where he had lived. The snow would cover that up, too, the next day.
He wrote a letter to Moomintroll and put it into the letter-box. His rucksack was already packed and waiting on the bridge.
At first light Snufkin went to the beach to fetch his five bars of music. He climbed over the banks of seaweed and driftwood and stood on the sand waiting. They came immediately and they were more beautiful and even simpler than he had hoped they would be.
Snufkin went back to the bridge as the song about the rain got nearer and nearer, he slung his rucksack over his shoulders and walked straight into the forest.
*
That evening a tiny but steady light was shining in the crystal ball. The family had hung the storm-lantern at the top of the mast and they were on their way home to hibernate for the winter.
The south-west wind was still blowing and the bank of clouds had risen high in the sky. There was a smell of snow in the air, a heavy, clean smell.
*
Toft wasn't surprised when he saw that the tent had gone. Perhaps Snufkin had understood that Toft was the only one who should meet the family when they got home. For an instant, Toft wondered whether Snufkin perhaps understood a great deal more than one would think - but only for an instant. Then Toft began thinking about himself again. His dream about meeting the family again had become so enormous that it made him feel tired. Every time he thought about Moominmamma he got a headache. She had grown so perfect and gentle and consoling that it was unbearable, she was a big, round smooth balloon without a face. The whole of Moominvalley had somehow become unreal, the house, the garden and the river were nothing but a play of shadows on the screen and Toft no longer knew what was real and what was only his imagination. He had been made to wait too long and now he was angry. He sat on the kitchen steps hugging his knees and kept his eyes tight shut, huge strange pictures crowded into his head and suddenly he was scared! He jumped up and started running, he ran past the kitchen-garden, the rubbish-heap, straight into the forest and all of a sudden it was dark, he was in the waste ground, the ugly abandoned forest that Mymble had talked about. Inside there was perpetual dusk. The trees stood uneasily close to one another, there wasn't enough room for their branches, and they were all quite thin. The ground looked like wet leather. The only things that glistened were the flame-coloured finger-tip mushrooms growing like small hands out of the dark, and on the tree trunks there were great mouldy lumps looking like cream and white velvet. It was a different world. Toft had no pictures and no words for it, nothing had to correspond. No one had tried to make a path here and no one had ever rested under the trees. They had just walked
around with sinister thoughts, this was the forest of anger. He grew quite calm and very attentive. With enormous relief the worried Toft felt all his pictures disappear. His descriptions of the valley and the Happy Family faded and slipped away, Moominmamma glided away and became remote, an impersonal picture, he didn't even know what she looked like.
Toft walked on through the forest, stooping under the branches, creeping and crawling, and thinking of nothing at all and became as empty as the crystal ball. This is where Moominmamma had walked when she was tired and cross and disappointed and wanted to be on her own, wandering aimlessly in the endless forest lost in her dejection... Toft saw an entirely new Moominmamma and she seemed natural to him. He suddenly wondered why she had been unhappy and whether there was anything one could do about it.
The forest began to thin out and huge grey mountains lay in front of him. They were covered with depressions full of boggy ground almost to their peaks, where they rose big and completely bare. Up there was nothing, just the wind. The sky was vast, and full of great scurrying snow-clouds. Everything was enormous. Toft looked behind him and the valley was just an insignificant shadow below him. Then he looked at the sea.
The whole sea lay spread out in front of him, grey and streaked with even white waves right out to the horizon. Toft turned his face into the wind and sat down to wait.
Now, at last, he could wait.
The family had the wind with them and they were making straight for the shore. They were coming from some island where Toft had never been and which he couldn't see. Perhaps they felt like staying there, he thought. Perhaps they will make up a story about that island and tell it to themselves before they go to sleep.
Toft sat high up on the mountain for several hours looking at the sea.
Just before the sun went down it threw a shaft of light through the clouds, cold and wintry-yellow, making the whole world look very desolate.
And then Toft saw the storm-lantern Moominpappa had hung up at the top of the mast. It threw a gentle, warm light and burnt steadily. The boat was a very long way away. Toft had plenty of time to go down through the forest and along the beach to the jetty, and be Justin time to catch the line and tie up the boat.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 12 Thunder and Lightning