Tales From Moominvalley (18 page)

The woody reddened violently and whispered: 'In beautiful things. As beautifully as you can. So I've heard.' Then, overwhelmed by its shyness, it clapped its paws to its face, upset the teacup and disappeared through the verandah door.

'Now keep quiet a moment, please, and let me think,' Moominpappa said. 'If the fir tree is to be dressed as beautifully as possible, then it can't be for the purpose of hiding in it. The idea must be to placate the danger in some way. I'm beginning to understand.'

They carried the fir out into the garden and planted it firmly in the snow. Then they started to decorate it all over with the most beautiful things they could think up.

They adorned it with the big shells from the summertime flowerbeds, and with the Snork Maiden's shell necklace. They took the prisms from the drawing-room chandelier and hung them from the branches, and at the very top they pinned a red silk rose that Moominpappa had once upon a time given Moominmamma as a present.

Everybody brought the most beautiful thing he had to placate the incomprehensible powers of winter.

When the fir tree was dressed the hemulen's aunt

passed by again with her chair-sledge. She was steering the other way now, and her hurry was still greater.

'Look at our fir tree,' Moomintroll called to her.

'Dear me,' said the hemulen's aunt. 'But then you've always been a bit unlike other people. Now I must... I haven't the least bit of food ready for Christmas yet.'

'Food for Christmas,' Moomintroll repeated. 'Does he eat?'

The aunt never listened to him. 'You don't get away with less than a dinner at the very least,' she said nervously and went whizzing down the slope.

Moominmamma worked all afternoon. A little before dark she had the food cooked for Christmas, and served in small bowls around the fir tree. There was juice and yoghurt and blueberry pie and eggnog and other things the Moomin family liked.

'Do you think Christmas is very hungry?' Moominmamma wondered, a little anxiously.

'No worse than I, very likely,' Moominpappa said longingly. He was sitting in the snow with his quilt around his ears, feeling a cold coming on. But small creatures always have to be very, very polite to the great powers of nature.

Down in the valley all windows were lighting up. Candles were lit under the trees and in every nest among the branches, and flickering candle flames went hurrying through the snowdrifts. Moomintroll gave his father a questioning look.

'Yes,' Moominpappa said and nodded. 'Preparing for all eventualities.' And Moomintroll went into the house and collected all the candles he could find.

He planted them in the snow around the fir tree and cautiously lighted them, one after one, until all were burning in a little circle to placate the darkness and Christmas. After a while everything seemed to quieten down in the valley; probably everyone had gone home to await what was coming. One single lonely shadow was wandering among the trees. It was the hemulen.

'Hello,' Moomintroll called softly. 'Is he coming?'

'Don't disturb me,' the hemulen replied sullenly, looking through a long list in which nearly every line seemed to be crossed out.

He sat down by one of the candles and started to

count on his fingers. 'Mother, Father, Gaffsie,' he mumbled. 'The cousins... the eldest hedgehog... I can leave out the small ones. And Sniff gave me nothing last year. Then Misabel and Whomper, and auntie, of course... This drives me mad.'

'What is it?' the Snork Maiden asked anxiously. 'Has anything happened to them?'

'Presents,' the hemulen exclaimed. 'More and more presents every time Christmas comes around!'

He scribbled a shaky cross on his list and ambled off.

'Wait!' Moomintroll shouted. 'Please explain... And your mittens...'

But the hemulen disappeared in the dark, like all the others that had been in a hurry, and beside themselves over the coming of Christmas.

So the Moomin family quickly went in to look for some presents. Moominpappa chose his best trolling-spoon which had a very beautiful box. He wrote 'For Christmas' on the box and laid it out in the snow. The Snork Maiden took off her ankle ring and sighed a little as she rolled it up in silk paper.

Moominmamma opened her secret drawer and took out her book of paintings, the one and only coloured book in all the valley.

Moomintro's present was so lavish and private that he showed it to no one. Not even afterwards, in the spring, did he tell anyone what he had given away.

Then they all sat down in the snow again and waited for the frightening guest.

Time passed, and nothing happened.

Only the small woody who had upset the cup of tea appeared from behind the woodshed. It had brought all its relations and the friends of these relations. Everyone was as small and grey and miserable and frozen.

'Merry Christmas,' the woody whispered shyly.

'You're the first to say some such thing,' Moominpappa said. 'Aren't you at all afraid of what's going to happen when Christmas comes?'

'This is it,' the woody mumbled and sat down in the snow with its relations. 'May we look? You've got such a wonderful fir tree.'

'And all the food,' one of the relations said dreamingly.

'And real presents,' said another.

'I've dreamed all my life of seeing this at close quarters,' the woody said with a sigh.

There was a pause. The candles burned steadily in the quiet night. The woody and its relations were sitting quite still. One could feel their admiration and longing, stronger and stronger, and finally Moominmamma edged a little closer to Moominpappa and whispered: 'Don't you think so too?'

'Why, yes, but if...,' Moominpappa objected.

'No matter,' Moomintroll said. 'If Christmas gets angry we can close the doors and perhaps we'll be safe inside.'

Then he turned to the woody and said: 'You can have it all.'

The woody didn't believe its ears at first. It stepped cautiously nearer to the fir tree, followed by all the relations and friends with devoutly quivering whiskers.

They had never had a Christmas of their own before.

'I think we'd better be off now,' Moominpappa said anxiously.

They padded back to the verandah, locked the door and hid under the table.

Nothing happened.

After a while they looked anxiously out of the window.

All the small creatures were sitting around the fir tree, eating and drinking and opening parcels and having more fun than ever. Finally they climbed the fir and made fast the burning candles on the branches.

'Only there ought to be a star at the top,' the woody's uncle said.

'Do you think so?' the woody replied, looking thoughtfully at Moominmamma's red silk rose. 'What difference does it make once the idea's right?'

'The rose should have been a star,' Moominmamma whispered to the others. 'But how on earth?'

They looked at the sky, black and distant but unbelievably full of stars, a thousand times more than in summer. And the biggest one was hanging exactly above the top of their fir tree.

'I'm sleepy,' Moominmamma said. 'I'm really too tired to wonder about the meaning of all this. But it seems to have come off all right.'

'At least I'm not afraid of Christmas any more,' Moomintroll said. 'I believe the hemulen and his aunt and Gaffsie must have misunderstood the whole thing.'

They laid the hemulen's yellow mittens on the verandah rail where he'd be sure to catch sight of them, and then they went back to the drawing-room to sleep some more, waiting for the spring.

Table of Contents

TALES CONTENTED

The Spring Tune

A Tale of Horror

The Fillyjonk who believed in Disasters

The Last Dragon in the World

The Hemulen who loved Silence

The Invisible Child

The Secret of the Hattifatteners

Cedric

The Fir Tree