The Three Mulla-mulgars

by Walter De la Mare

These Mullas danced; they crouched down in the dreadful cold, thinking to warm their hands at these uncountable fires. And, lo and behold! in a little while, looking at one another, each was a Mulgar, white and sparkling too. Their very hairs, down-arm and up-arm, every tuft stood stiff and white with frost. Like millers they stood, all blazing in the night.

And that was the beginning of Witzaweelwūlla (the White Winter). For it was only three days after Tishnar's fires were kindled that Nod first saw snow. Now one, two, three, a scatter of flakes, just a few. "Feathers," thought Nod.

But faster, faster; twirling, rustling, hovering. "Butterflies," thought Nod.

And then it seemed the sky, the air, was all aflock. He ran out snuffing and frightened. He clapped his hands; he leapt and frisked and shouted. And there, coming up out of the swamp, were his brothers, laden with rushes, and as woolly with snow as sheep. Because it looked so white and crisp and beautiful Nod even brought out a pot and filled it with snow to cook for their supper. But there, when he lifted the lid, was only a little steaming water.

By-and-by they began to wonder and to fear no more. How glad they were of all the wood they had brought in, and of their great cupboardful of victuals! They made themselves long poles, and would go leaping about to keep themselves warm. They built such roaring fires on the hearth they squatted round that the sparks flew up like fireflies under the black, starry sky. Snug in their hut, the brothers would sit of an evening on their three stools, with their smoking bowls between their legs. And they would open their great mouths and drone and sing the songs their father had taught them, beating to the notes with their flat feet on the earth floor. But, nevertheless, they pined for the cold and the snow to be over and gone, so that they might start on their journey! Every morning broke bleak and sparkling. Often of a night new snow came, till they walked between low white walls on their little path to the forest. But in spite of the cold which made them ache and shiver, and their toes and fingers burn and itch, they went out searching for frozen nuts and fruits every morning, and still fetched in faggots.

Often while they squatted, toasting themselves round their fire, Nod would look up, blinking his eyes, to see the faces of the Forest-mulgars peeping in at the window, envying the Mullas their warmth, though afraid of their fire, and calling softly one to another: "Ho, ho! look at the Mulla-sluggas [lazy princes] sitting round their fire!" And Thumb and Thimble would grin and softly scratch their hairy knees. Thumb, indeed, made up a Mulgar drone, which he used to buzz to himself when the Munza-mulgars came miching and mocking and peeping. (But it was a bad and dull drone, and I will not make it worse by turning it into my poor English from Mulgar-royal.)

Nod often sat watching the Forest-mulgars frisking in the forest, though every morning the light shone through on many perched frozen in the boughs. The Mullabruks and Manquabees made huddles in the snow. But the tiny Squirrel-tails, with their dark, grave, beautiful eyes and silken amber coats, still roosted high where the frost-wind stirred in the dark. Sometimes on a crusted branch of snow Nod would see five—seven—nine of these tiny, frost-powdered Mulgars cuddling together in a row, poor little frozen and empty boxes, their gay lives fled away. And when his brothers were gathering sticks in the forest, he would smuggle out for them two or three handfuls of nuts and pieces of cake and Sudd-bread. All the crusts and husks and morsels he kept in a shallow grass-basket, which his mother had plaited, to feed these pillowy Squirrel-tails, the lean Skeetoes, and the spindle-legged flycatchers.

Birds of all colours and many other odd little beasts came in the snow to Nod to be fed. He summoned them with the clapping of two sticks of ivory together, till his brothers began to wonder how it was their victuals were dwindling so fast. But once, when Thumb and Thimble were away in the forest with their jumping-poles, and he had ventured out on this errand with his basket full of scraps, he forgot to put up the door behind him. When he returned, skipping as fast as his fours would carry him, wild pigs and long-snouted Brackanolls, Weddervols, and hungry birds had come in and eaten more than half their store. The last of their mother's treasured cheese was gone, and all their Ummuz-cane. That night Thumb and Thimble went very sulky to bed. And for the next few days all three brothers sallied out together, with their poles, searching and grubbing after every scrap of victuals they could find with which to fill their larder again.

Some time after this, so hard and sharp grew the cold that Thumb and Thimble were minded to put on their red metal-hooked jackets when they went out stick-gathering. They took their knives and nut-sacks over their shoulders, and muffled and bunched themselves up close, with cotton-leaves wound round their stomachs, and their skin caps pulled low over their round frost-enticing ears. And they told Nod to cook them a smoking hot supper against the dark, for now the snow was so deep it was a hard matter to find and carry sticks, and they meant to look for more before matters worsened yet. So Nod at once set to his cookery.

He made up a great fire on the hearthstone. But in spite of its flames, so louring with gathering snow-clouds was the day that he had to keep the door down to give him clearer light; and, though he kept scuttling about, driving out the thieving Brackanolls and Peekodillies that came nosing into the hut, and scaring away the famished birds that kept hopping in through the window-hole, even then he could not keep himself warm. So at last he went to the lower cupboard, under the dangling Portingal, and took out his sheepskin coat. He put away the dried kingfisher which his mother had wrapped in the fleece to keep it sweet, and buttoned the ivory buttons, and skipped about nimbly over his cooking in that. Then he heaped more wood on—logs and brush and smoulder-wood—higher and higher, till the flames leapt red, gold, and lichen-green out of the chimney-hole. Then he said to himself, flinging yet another armful on: "Now Nod will go down and get some ice to melt for water to make Sudd-bread." So he went down to the water-spring.