Snowflake (4 page)

It began first with a strange drumming that sounded from overhead and seemed to go on endlessly. Snowflake had never before heard anything like it, for it was the noise made by rain when first it falls in the early spring upon the hard crust of the winter’s snow.

Yet, somehow, Snowflake had the feeling that whatever was happening above was welcome and might be in answer to her prayer. Her fears were quieted and she listened to the new sound with a sense of comfort and hope.

The drumming softened to a plashing to which was added now a gentle murmuring. The long rains at last had filtered down from above and the waters were moving restlessly beneath the layers of frozen snow and ice that still covered the earth.

Then one day the rain ceased and it began to grow lighter. At first Snowflake could not believe it was true. But the darkness in which she had lived so long turned to deep blue, then emerald green, changing to yellow as though a strong light were shining through a heavy veil.

The next moment, as though by magic, the veil was lifted. Overhead the sun, warm and strong, burned from a cloudless sky. Snowflake was free once again. Her heart gave a great shout:

“The sun! The sun! Dearly beloved sun! How glad I am to see you.”

Snowflake was filled with gratitude for her release, and she cried out: “Oh thank you, thank you!” just in case the One who had heard her prayer and had freed her from her dark prison might be listening.

Then for the first time she looked about her and was filled with renewed surprise and delight.

What a different world it was from the mass of grey and white into which she had been born. Now everything was fresh and green and carpeted with flowers.

True, the high mountain peaks were still capped with white and a few small patches of snow yet lingered on the hillside, but everywhere there was young and tender grass and Snowflake caught a glimpse of small white blossoms like tiny bells on curved green stems.

There were all the old familiar sights, the square schoolhouse, the church, the gaily painted houses of the village, but the trees that once had bent beneath the burden of snow now proudly lifted high their new buds in their arms to show them to the sun.

Since Snowflake had been the first to arrive of the winter’s fall upon the mountain, so she had been the last to be uncovered. All about her now there was the rushing, liquid music of running waters.

And because of the great joy and happiness she felt, Snowflake too began to run.

She ran over the smooth grass on to the path and down the hill past the butcher store where the fat sausages hung in rows in the window, past the bakery piled high with new brown loaves, across the market square and by the schoolhouse where at the window she caught a glimpse of the little girl with the red cheeks raising her hand to answer a question put by Herr Hüschl, the teacher.

She ran under a fence and over a gutter; she ran through the farm of the peasant who owned the grey cow, past the barn and around the haystack, over the yellow feet of a white hen engaged in pulling a worm from the ground, and under a black cat who leaped into the air and shook his paw in the most amusing manner.

She ran past a boy bouncing a rubber ball and another spinning a top; she ran over a meadow that was full of yellow primroses and across a field where a farmer with his two big horses was cutting a deep furrow with his plough. She ran through a quiet wood and awakened the first violet beneath its broad green leaf. She ran . . .

And as she did so she noticed for the first time that something strange had happened to her. She was different from what she had been before.

A most wondrous and exciting change had taken place. Snowflake was no longer a lace-like creature of stars and crosses, triangles and squares all woven into one pattern that was all her own. Now she was round and as pure as the morning light, crystal clear and like a tiny silver mirror she was able to catch and give back every colour in the world about her.

One moment she took on the emerald green of a frog sitting on a piece of moss, and the next she flashed crimson as for an instant she reflected the gill of a swift darting brook trout.

She copied the deep purple of a crocus growing near the bank, changed to the yellow of the first buttercups, and a minute later took on the sombre brown of an old oak tree.

Thereafter she mirrored the pale pink of the cherry blossom, then the tint of orange filched from the breast of a robin as he flew by, and the light blue of the spring sky. The grey of a rock, the black of a crow’s glossy wing, the dapple of a young calf, all were hers.

But there was another change that had taken place as well.

Snowflake could not stop running once she had started down the hill. She did not know that she had begun a long journey, that she must run evermore and that not until the end of her days would she ever again be still.

All about her were her brothers and sisters who had tumbled out of the sky with her the day she was born and who too had changed from white snow to crystal clear water, and they had joined Snowflake on her voyage.

But now it was more than merely running over the hill. It was a kind of a mad dash, a leaping over beds of smooth stones and pebbles, a flinging of oneself down, down, downwards with a sweet sense of freedom, of making music as one went, a splashing, murmuring, gurgling, rushing that lifted Snowflake’s heart and made her feel happier than she ever had been before.

How thrilling life had become, throwing oneself over the edge of a little falls to tumble unharmed into a frothing pool below, dashing around jagged rocks or moving in stately fashion through a deep dark pool where a willow dipped its young shoots.

What sights there were to be seen as Snowflake went rushing down the side of the mountain sometimes in bright sunshine and at others through the dark of pine forests which the sun had not yet warmed so that at times she ran between banks of snow still unmelted and saw brothers and sisters of hers that had not yet been changed and must still wait.

To them she called back gaily: “Come . . . come . . . Do not stay there so cold and unhappy. It is spring. There is so much to be seen and so much to be done. Follow me . . . follow me away, dear brothers and sisters!”

But there was not even time to look back to see if they were coming, so fast was she leaping and dashing over rock and rill until she came to the bottom of the mountain where flowed a broader but more placid stream winding between low green banks. Alongside it ran the railway with every so often a train passing by filled with people.

Snowflake saw that this was the distant valley and the tiny toy railway that she used to see from high on top of the mountain where she had lived when she was a child. She felt quite grown up when she entered the dark-green, glassy waters of the stream.

With a froth and a swirl, the mountain brook entered the valley stream and Snowflake with it, and at once she began to move off with the strong, deep, steady current of the water.

There was yet time for Snowflake to look behind her for one last glimpse of whence she had come. High up on the green mountain she saw the houses of the village clinging to the side of the hill. She could even make out the white schoolhouse with the dark shingled roof, and the grey stone church with the steeple shaped like an onion, only now it was
their
turn to look tiny like the toys of children.

To her surprise she saw that the peak of the mountain that rose high above the village was still white and covered with snow.

And she thought how strange that so many of her brothers and sisters had been fated to remain behind while she had been chosen to change into what she was and go on to see the world. And she wondered why. Then she thought of the One who had made her and who must love her more than all the others, since He was so kind to her. Yes, that must be it.