Snowflake (6 page)

“Dear Snowflake,” Raindrop said.

“Dear Raindrop,” Snowflake replied shyly.

Then they united, one with the other.

And thereafter they continued to flow with the river and were no longer two but one.

She was Raindrop, and Raindrop was Snowflake. They were still in many ways themselves, but each was now a part of the other.

So perfectly did they blend that it seemed as though thereafter they thought with but one mind, spoke with one voice and lived with but one soul.

Each seemed to understand what the other wished or felt before it was even said. Each gave of his or her strength. United, they felt secure against anything that might befall them.

Snowflake remembered all the good things that had happened to her since she was born, the cradle of the wind, the sunrise, the little girl, the release from the snow prison, the run down the hill . . . She felt she had never been as happy as she was now.

Some time later, Snowflake cried out: “Raindrop! Where are we? What has become of our river?”

Raindrop looked. The banks of the river past which they had been gliding for so long were no longer there. Instead they seemed to be a part of a large, smooth, blue body of water. The land on both sides was far distant and low.

“Oh,” said Raindrop, who knew many things. “We have flowed into a lake. How splendid! Now we may rest for a while.”

“I am glad,” Snowdrop said. “I am tired after so much running. It will be good just to remain here together quietly in the sunshine.”

“And when it is too warm,” Raindrop said, “it will be cool and sweet at the bottom, for the lake is very deep.”

“How happy I am to be here, dear Raindrop!”

But already a shadow was approaching on the surface, accompanied by a strange clicking noise.

“Oh!” Snowflake cried. “What can it be?”

Raindrop soothed Snowflake’s fears at once. “It is only a man in a rowing boat,” he told her. “He is going to pass over us. He wants us to hold him up.”

Snowflake asked: “Will it hurt? Once when I lived up on the mountain I was run over by a little girl with a sled, and I cried.”

“This is different,” Raindrop promised. “You will hardly feel anything. Besides, don’t forget, there are two of us now. We are together.”

The boat, rowed by a fisherman wearing a crumpled hat, passed over them, and Snowflake felt only a sense of sweetness and of power as she helped to hold him up, and then in the form of a little wave, slapped gently against the side of the boat.

“Oh!” she cried, “that was fun!”

After that, she and Raindrop held up many kinds of boats, graceful sailing dinghies that glided by without a sound, long, slender barges, noisy, roaring motorboats, and once even a large white steamboat that swept them up with its paddle wheel and whirled them over, hissing with steam and clanking loudly. But because she was with Raindrop, Snowflake was not afraid and even enjoyed the excitement.

Thus Snowflake and Raindrop remained in the lake for many days and weeks, resting, drifting idly and learning many things about the world in which they were living.

Sometimes they floated close to the shore amidst green lily pads crowned with yellow and white pond lilies, where the water birds rustled in the reeds and frogs and turtles sunned themselves on old logs. The voices of the frogs changed from their spring to their summer songs and the turtles stared with sleepy eyes.

Other times they passed beautiful villas near the edge of the lake, villages, and even a small town with a railway station and a steamboat pier from which the white steamer with the paddle wheels departed.

The steamer had a huge red flag with a white cross on it of which she was very proud. Snowflake and Raindrop became good friends with her, played with her often, and helped to hold her up. They always knew when she was coming for she would give a long tuneful blast on her whistle as she sailed up the lake.

Many people came to live by the edge of the lake, for it was the time of summer holidays.

They went into the water to swim and Snowflake and Raindrop laughed to see how awkward they were at it, snorting, splashing and coughing as they churned over the surface, compared with the silvery fishes who had only to think where they wished to go and with a single wave of their fins and a flip of their tails they were there.

On the strand where the blue lake lapped against a beach of yellow sand, children waded, their skirts and trousers rolled up to their thighs, and Snowflake loved to play about their fat little legs and hear them scream with joy as the wavelets spanked against their brown skins.

On moonlit nights, lovers came out in skiffs and allowed their oars to drift idly while they sat with their heads together and let their hands trail in the cool water. Then Snowflake and Raindrop would pass by and caress their fingers.

At such times, Snowflake would ask: “Do you still love me as much as when you first saw me?” And Raindrop would reply:

“But of course I do. What a silly question to ask.”

Snowflake would smile contentedly at his answer.

Time passed. There came a day when Raindrop said to Snowflake: “Have you noticed anything?”

“I do believe we are moving again,” she replied.

“Yes. We have come to the end of the lake.”

It was true. They had left the place where they had entered far behind, so far that they could not even see it any more, so far indeed that not even a glimpse of the distant snow-capped mountains was any longer to be had.

They were close to the banks of quite a large city with many churches, towers, stone buildings and green parks. Slowly but surely they felt themselves being swept by.

They came to an opening in the shore where they passed beneath a bridge and thence into a kind of canal, the sides of which were lined with stone and tall gabled houses. They were moving more quickly now. Then the canal led into a broad river into which they were drawn, and soon the city was left behind.

The long, happy rest was over. The journey had begun again.

The river in which Snowflake and Raindrop now found themselves was a broader and more stately one than the first they had encountered after their breathless run down the mountain.

Its pace was more slow, its bends wide and graceful, and there was time to look about to see everything as they moved along with the current.

It was a much busier river too, and because it was both deep and wide, there were almost as many boats on it as there had been on the lake, from small canvas canoes with double paddles, worked by brown young men bare to the waist, to the long barges flying the gay pennants of the family wash from the stern, and the busy tugs and steamers with coloured flags nailed fore and aft, and black smoke rising straight up from their smokestacks.

Snowflake was used to boats now, and she and Raindrop made it a point to pass beneath them whenever one came near so as to help to hold them up. They liked best to go beneath the barges, for there always seemed to be cheerful accordion and harmonica music coming from them, and everyone aboard appeared to be living a happy and carefree life, including the dogs and children.

One day, not long after they had left the lake and were floating with the river through a green valley whose slopes were tiered with vines on which hung great clusters of white and purple grapes, Raindrop said: