Snowflake (10 page)

Thus she was able to spend more days on the surface under the blue skies, with the burning sun beating down. And gradually Snowflake became aware of a change that was taking place in her. She had felt that for some time she had been growing weaker. The great zest for life and love of living, the pleasure she used to take in all things large and small, was beginning to pass. She was tired much of the time, even when she had been doing nothing but resting and dreaming.

And Snowflake knew that she must be approaching the end of her days.

How this end was to take place, what it would be like, or where she would go, Snowflake could not tell. But she was aware that somehow it would have to do with the sun. She did not understand this and it saddened her, for she remembered how happy she had been the first time she had seen it rise and how she had longed for it through the dark days when she had lain buried beneath the snow on the mountainside.

But the blazing yellow disc had come to be like a furnace glowing in the sky burning with tropical heat and she recalled that other enemy fire, that she had vanquished. She recognised in this blazing star that had once been her friend a force stronger than herself.

At first she resisted, for even though she had lost those dearest to her, she was filled with love of life. Lonely though she was in this vast emptiness, she was still glad to see the colours in the sky at dusk, or watch the yellow moon rise from the rim of the ocean, to greet a bird winging its solitary way across the wastes of water or to try to count the stars that spangled the heavens at night.

But more and more she realised her strength and will were ebbing and that she must soon depart.

Then came the day when the sun beating out of a brazen sky appeared to concentrate its strength and power on her alone. Snowflake knew that she could resist no longer and that her time was come.

And she was frightened.

For she felt that she was being drawn upward from the sea, that the liquid life she had so loved was being drained from her, and that soon she would not be any more.

And in those last moments, her thoughts turned back to the days when she had been young and to the questions that had never been answered. Why? What was the purpose of it all? And above all, Who?

For what reason had she been born, and sent to earth, to be gay, and sad, to have moments of happiness and others of sorrow? To end as nothing, drawn up into the bosom of the sun from the surface of an endless ocean?

Truly, the mystery seemed greater than it ever had before, and more futile. Where was the sense, the rightness, or the beauty in being born but to die, to live but to be wasted in the end?

Who was the One who had decreed that what had happened to her should happen, and why? Was it only to amuse Himself that He had made her a unique and shining crystal and sent her tumbling from the sky? Or had there been some purpose that she could not guess that lay behind it all?

Had He forgotten her altogether? He had loved her once. She remembered that, and how it felt, warm and sweet, tender and secure as though nothing could ever happen to harm her. Yet how soon He seemed to have tired of her to let her wander and suffer aimlessly through this strange world He had created.

The sea lay below her now. The glowing sun had her in its grip. Already her form was altering from the lovely crystal drop she had occupied for so long. It was shrivelling and drying. Soon there would be nothing left but a tiny feather of vapour adrift in the sky.

High overhead floated a soft white cloud. Was that her destination? Snowflake remembered that it was in a cloud she had been born.

Yet in those last seconds, there were other things that Snowflake remembered too.

For now her whole life seemed to roll by before her dimming eyes.

She had fallen upon a mountainside and a little girl with a red cap and mittens had passed over her on her sled.

She had been made into the nose of a snowman who resembled a teacher in the village and every one who had come to see the snowman had laughed and felt the better for it.

She had gone tumbling down the hillside in the spring and had awakened a sleeping violet in a wood.

She had been caught in a mill-race and turned the miller’s wheel to grind wheat so that a woman could bake a loaf of bread for her husband and her children.

She had merged with a dear and tender raindrop whom she loved and with him entered a lake where she had spent the happiest days of her life.

As she thought of the lake she remembered all the swimmers she had helped and the bare brown legs of the children she had cooled on hot summer days.

She heard again the gay hoot of the friendly white paddle steamer with the brave flag of red with a white cross at its stern, and she saw the long barges beflagged with wash and merry with music that she had helped to speed safely on their way.

She thought of her children and the contentment of Raindrop on the long journey they had made together.

With a shudder she remembered the awful duel with fire which she had won; she heard again the dying hiss of the vanquished flames and saw once more the figure of the fireman at the window holding the sleeping child in his arms, safe and sound because of her victory.

She had sent forth her own to go their way and carry on the work of water wherever it was wanted. She herself had entered the lonely sea to go where she was called and give herself where she was needed.

As she neared the white cloud drifting overhead there came to her in one brief flash of understanding
something
of the vast and beautiful design woven by Him who had created all.

Hers had been a humble life. Never at any time had she been or pretended to be anything but a little snowflake.

But as she looked back she saw that she had been useful, that always when she had been needed she had been there to fulfil her purpose. To have helped a little girl with red cap and red mittens to be in time for school was not to have been born in vain.

Even to have been a part of the nose of a snowman that made people laugh and forget their troubles was useful.

She saw that all her life she had been called upon to serve. She had watered a wild flower, sheltered a frog, speeded a fish, turned the miller’s wheel to make a loaf of bread, put out a fire, and held up the bows of the largest liner.

How thoughtful and tender, how exquisitely beautiful, careful and loving was the plan behind all that had happened to her from the very day she was born. And she knew now that never, not for one single, solitary instant, had she been forgotten or overlooked by Him.

For the last time she wondered about the what and why of this world into which she had been born. There had been her mountain, the village, the valley, the river, the lake and the ocean. Each had seemed so huge and yet how small they were when she considered the vast sun, the hanging moon and all the stars in the sky.

As the earth was to the firmament, one tiny wandering sphere, so had she been but one lost droplet added to the waters that led everywhere to the sea.

There were, then, the great and the small, the beautiful and the ugly, the many and the few, the proud and the humble. Yet she knew now that none was so poor, so tiny, none so humble, unseen or unsung that its role in the Great Design was not as important to Him as that of the most glorious and mighty. The snowflake and the sun were one in significance in the scheme of Creation. A billion interlocking stars were no greater or more loved by Him than the simplest crystal or droplet that fell to earth. There was no one or nothing that did not matter.