Mina and the Snagged Snow Cloud
In the white castle on the hill, the smallest person in the kitchen was Mina. She was so small that she stood on a flour sack to stir the porridge, and so quick that the porridge never once caught on the bottom.
But Mina’s real work was socks. Everybody in the castle brought her their socks with holes in, and she mended them with a needle as thin as an eyelash. She darned so neatly that nobody could ever find the hole again. Sir Long, the tallest guard, once brought back the same sock three days running, sure she had forgotten it. On the third day he turned it inside out, and outside in, and held it up to the window, and gave up.
“I know there was a hole,” he said. “I put my toe through it.”
“There was,” said Mina. “There isn’t now.”
The King of that castle was a cheerful king, and every year he made the kitchen the same promise. On the first day of snow there would be a holiday. No porridge, no pots, no socks. Instead there would be tea trays, and the long white slope of the castle hill, and everybody going down it as fast as they liked.
Mina had never been. Last winter the first snow came on the one night she was away at her grandma’s in the town. By the time she climbed back up the hill, it had all gone to slush. The King found her looking at the brown puddles, and he made her a promise of her own.
“Next year,” he said, “you shall go down first.”
So all year, Mina got ready. She chose her tray, the oval one with roses painted round the rim. She polished the bottom of it every Sunday until it shone. She practised sitting on it in the pantry and leaning round corners.
And all year, on top of the tallest spire, the golden goose turned in the wind. It was the castle weathervane, and a very good one, except for one thing. Whenever there was a pudding in the oven, the goose turned to point at the kitchen, whichever way the wind was blowing. Nobody knew why. Everybody found it useful.
On the morning the first snow was meant to fall, the whole kitchen was at the windows before breakfast.
The sky was cold and blue. Then, over the far hills, came a cloud. It was fat and white and low, so full of snow that it sagged in the middle like a laundry bag. It sailed over the town. It sailed up the castle hill. And just as everyone took a breath to cheer, it caught its hem on the golden goose, like wool on a nail, and stopped.
It tugged. It bulged. It leaned toward the town with all its might. But it could not let a single flake go.
You might think a cloud could simply snow where it stood. It cannot. A snagged cloud, as everybody in that castle learned that morning, is far too busy being snagged.
And the golden goose, with a cloud wound round its tail, could not turn at all.
“Well,” said the King, on the steps in his dressing gown. “That is a nuisance.”
“Leave it to me,” said Sir Long.
“Quite right,” said the King. “Big troubles need big people.”
Sir Long was the tallest guard in the castle, and very likely the tallest man in the kingdom. His ladder, however, was a perfectly ordinary ladder.
He leaned it against the spire and climbed. He climbed to the top rung. He stood on his toes on the top rung and stretched his arm as high as it would go, and his fingers were still three yards short of the goose.
“Three yards!” he called down. “I’ve never been short of anything in my life.”
Next came Old Hob the bell-ringer, at a run. Old Hob believed that every problem in the world wanted more bell. A lost key wanted bell. A cake that would not rise wanted bell. A cloud on a spire most certainly wanted bell.
“We’ll shake it loose,” said Old Hob, and rang the great bell. Bong. Bong. Bong.
The spire hummed. The cloud wobbled like a jelly on a plate. And with every wobble its hem swung round the goose’s tail and caught again, until it was wound on twice as tight as before.
“Not enough bell,” said Old Hob, and would have rung it again if the King had not asked, very politely, for a little quiet.
Then the Queen sent for her kite-maker, who had a kite for every kind of wind. The kite-maker sent up the strongest one, red, with a tail of bows, to hook the cloud and tug it gently free. The kite climbed, and climbed, and went into the cloud with a soft white puff. It did not come out. The string went slack.
“Well,” said the King. “Now we have two.”
Everybody went back inside to think. Mina sat on her flour sack with one of Sir Long’s socks, her rose tray propped beside her, and thought about the goose. Then she thought about the cat.
Long ago, the castle cat had liked to sleep at the very top of the tallest spire, curled against the warm gold of the goose. The King’s great-grandfather was so fond of that cat that he had a stair built inside the spire for the cat alone. The cat stair went round and round, narrow as a chimney, with steps no deeper than a loaf. The castle cat of these days was fat and preferred the kitchen. Nobody had climbed the cat stair since the King was a boy, because nobody fitted.
Mina put down the sock and went to find the King.
“I think I’d fit,” she said.
The King looked at Mina, and at the little door at the foot of the spire, which was about the size of an oven door. Then he looked at the cloud.
“I think you would,” he said. “Will you be careful?”
“I’m always careful,” said Mina. “That’s what darning is.”
Round and round she went. Every so often there was a window no bigger than a teacup, and through each one the town looked a little smaller. At three hundred and twelve steps she came out at the top, onto a ledge with a golden rail round it, put there long ago for the cat. The rail came up to Mina’s middle, which was exactly right.
Up close, the cloud’s hem was not smooth at all. It was knitted, loose and soft like a winter scarf, and cold as a snowball in her fingers. The goose’s tail feathers had sharp gold tips, and loop after loop was caught on them, wound round twice by Old Hob’s bell. Anybody who pulled would only make it tighter.
So Mina did not pull. She took out her needle as thin as an eyelash, slid it under the first loop, and lifted it off. Then the second. Then the third. The cloud held quite still while she worked, the way a sheep holds still for someone it trusts. Forty-one loops she lifted, stitch by careful stitch. When the last one came free, she found a little tear in the hem. So she drew one cold white thread from the edge of the cloud and darned the tear shut, so neatly that nobody could ever find it again.
The cloud drew back from the spire. It gave itself a long shake from one end to the other, the way a dog shakes after a pond. And then it let the snow go.
All of it, all at once, over the whole town. Over the roofs and the market and the duck pond and the long slope of the castle hill, so thick and soft that the people below disappeared into it, laughing.
Before it sailed away, the cloud did two more things. It let down the red kite, bows and all, and tucked it into Mina’s hands. And it dropped one snowflake onto her sleeve. The snowflake was the size of a button, with six fine points, and it did not melt. It did not melt that morning, or that winter, or ever. Mina wore it as a brooch for the rest of her life.
At the foot of the cat stair the whole castle was waiting in the snow. Mina gave the kite back to the kite-maker. Old Hob rang the bell once, for joy, and for once everybody agreed it wanted bell.
“I have always said that big troubles need big people,” said the King. “I shall have to stop saying it. Holiday! The whole kitchen. And Mina goes first.”
High above them, the golden goose swung round on its pole and pointed straight at the kitchen. Cook had put a pudding in for when everyone came back cold.
So Mina sat down at the top of the castle hill on the oval tray with the roses, the one she had polished every Sunday all year. Sir Long gave her a push. And down she went, first of everybody and faster than anybody, with snow flying up on both sides and a snowflake on her sleeve that would never melt. She laughed the whole way to the bottom, and then she picked up her tray and ran straight back up the hill to go again.