Snowflake (9 page)

Yet, as it is, near to the finish of every journey there was all the stir and excitement of impending arrival
somewhere,
the feeling that everything thereafter would be new and different.

Snowflake was aware of this anticipation in the children. They were eager, restless and impatient and fretful when the river instead of forging onwards dissolved into swirls and eddies and seemed to move in slow circles instead of forward to its destination.

And deep in her heart, Snowflake knew that the time was not far distant when, in spite of the promises they had made, the children must go away and, departing, leave behind with her all the beautiful lives she had dreamed for them. Yet she could not keep from hoping that it would not happen.

At its mouth where it finally entered the sea, the great river divided into five, wandering past the scattered islands of the sunken land.

The main stream drove directly towards the west, pointing like an arrow at the setting sun.

The sun was a red ball on the horizon of the limitless ocean when at last they arrived there.

Pausing only to bid a brief goodbye to Snowflake, each of the children chose a different branch.

Snowdrop turned to the south; Rainflake entered the one that bent south-west. Snowcrystal chose the one leading north; Raindrop-Minor rushed headlong into the arm curving north by west.

Each thought that his or her branch would lead most quickly to adventure and success. They had hardly brushed Snowflake’s cheek with the farewell kiss when they were off, quivering with excitement to meet what lay ahead of them. And when each of them reached the bend in the river branch, he or she paused only to turn around and wave a last farewell and then was gone.

Alone, Snowflake took the path to the blood-red west and the great sea.

In the sea, all was changed from everything Snowflake had ever known.

Its waters were deep, mysterious and restless.

Throughout her life Snowflake had experienced movement, the gay, rapid run of the mountain rill, the frothing charge of the rocky cascade, the airy freedom of the falls, the steady flow of broad rivers and the dance of the wavelets stirred by the summer wind on the surface of the lake.

But the ocean heaved and surged endlessly this way and that, like someone in torment. It rose and fell, swirled and swept, pulsed and rocked as though it could never come to rest. Always the surface appeared moving and troubled, and Snowflake became a part of its aimless procession.

And where before the rivulets and brooks, the streams, the runnels, the torrents, the rivers and the lake of which she had been a part were sweet and fresh, the waters of the vast and boundless ocean were salt, and from then on Snowflake always seemed to have in her mouth the bitter taste of tears.

Everything in the sea was enormous compared with what Snowflake had known in the past, the waves, the currents, the fish and the ships.

When she was called upon to hold up a liner, it was so huge that one could have packed into it all the boats large and small that Snowflake had ever seen and still have had room for twice as many more.

Where the little lake steamer had been two decks high, these on the ocean had ten or twelve decks, one on top of the other. Where their friend of the paddles and the gay flag had but one thin smokestack, these that plied the seas to and fro had three and four funnels, each one large enough to conceal a house, and the garden too.

And whereas the friendly lake vessel had passed lightly over Snowflake and Raindrop without hurting them, the giant cargo and passenger ships weighing many thousands of tons, crushed her with their great bulk. And besides, now that Raindrop was no longer there to share the burden, the entire weight of these ocean giants fell upon her. Snowflake felt that she was growing very tired.

There seemed to be no place that Snowflake could go to find peace in the vast ocean through which she was now drifting aimlessly, driven by wind and current, or roaring storm.

When the weather was bad she tried sinking into the green and gloomy depths where it was always calm and still. But she was frightened there by the finny giants that came swimming up to stare with great round eyes as large as dinner plates.

Some had triple rows of jagged teeth, others huge pointed spikes like spears, and once when she sank far into the black deep she encountered fish lighted up as though by electricity. One looked like a railway coach going by at night and another carried two lanterns in front of its hideous face by means of two long spines that shot out from its head. Deeper still there were the white and sightless worms and other blind monsters that groped through the dark.

These strange beasts, so unlike the gay, sleek trout and silvery salmon of her beloved rivers and lake, disturbed Snowflake and she soon returned to the surface to bear the full brunt of the storms.

The storms too were terrifying.

The raging winds whipped the surface of the sea into living mountains of grey waters, their crests white-capped with salt froth racing before the gale.

One moment, Snowflake would be lifted dizzyingly to the top of a watery peak and the next instant she would be plunged to the very bottom of the fluid, heaving valleys of these flying hills to gaze upwards and see them, angry and swollen, looming above her, towering walls of water curving inwards as though about to fall upon her with all their weight and crush her.

At times the wind would snatch her from the topmost mountain crag and send her flying through the air as spray to look down upon the endless marching ranges of the angry sea before she fell back to the surface once more to be buffeted and battered almost beyond endurance.

Sometimes these violent tempests would last for days, driving Snowflake ahead of them for many hundreds of agonising miles before they blew themselves out and came to an end.

Yet, the sea could be calm and friendly too, and there were days when the surface was as still as her lovely lake had been, with the sunshine sparkling on blue waters that were hardly more than ruffled by a delicate wind.

But how vast and lonely it was at those times, and Snowflake thought she almost preferred the menace and excitement of the storm to the empty spaces with not a single thing to see as far as the eye could reach.

Sometimes there might be the masts of ships and the tips of smokestacks to be glimpsed far away below the horizon, or she might be so fortunate as to encounter a single steamer ploughing its way across the empty desert of water, and then Snowflake would try to throw herself in its way just for company, even though the weight of the giant hurt her. But for the most part she appeared to be the centre of a wide and empty circle made by the line where the sea met the sky all about her.

And too, now that Raindrop and the children were gone, there was no one to talk to any more, at least no one that Snowflake cared about, and she learned what it was to be lonely.

One day was just like another in Snowflake’s life now—waves, the huge ships with their threshing screws that turned the water to milk behind them, dolphins, porpoises, sharks and whales and other monsters that lurked in the deep. And the trackless sea.

And yet it was not quite the same, for while she did not know where she was going, Snowflake had been driven steadily southwards. The water of which she was a part became warmer, the sun hotter, the seas calmer and the storms less frequent.