He took his sister by the hand and thus they started on again.
With trustful eyes the little thing gazed up at the prevailing gray all about them and accompanied him willingly; only that her small hurrying feet could not keep up with him as he strove onward like someone bent on settling a thing once and for all.
They were going on now with the dogged endurance that children and animals have, not knowing what is ahead or when their reserves may give out.
However, as they went, they could not tell whether they were going down the mountain or not. They had soon turned downhill to the right but then came to elevations leading up. Often they encountered sheer rises they had to avoid; and a hollow in which they were walking led them around in a curve. They climbed hummocks that became steeper under their feet than they expected; and what they had deemed a descent was level ground or a depression, or went on as an even stretch.
“But where are we, Conrad?” asked the child.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “If only my eyes could make out something and I could get my bearings.”
But on every side was nothing but a blinding whiteness, white everywhere that none the less drew its ever narrowing circle about them, paling beyond into fog that came down in waves, devouring and shrouding everything till there was nothing but the voracious snow.
“Wait, Sanna,” said the lad, “let’s stand still a little and listen and see if we can’t hear something, — a sound from down there in the valley perhaps, a dog or a bell or the mill, or maybe someone calling; we ought to be able to hear something, at any rate, then we’ll know which way to go.”
They stood still, but heard nothing. They stood a little longer, but there was nothing to be heard, not a single sound, not the faintest except their breath; indeed in the stillness reigning, it was as if they could hear the snow falling on their very eyelashes. Their grandmother’s prediction had still not come true, the wind had not risen and, what was rare for those regions, not a breath stirred overhead, anywhere.
After waiting a considerable time, they went on again.
“Never mind, Sanna,” said her brother, “don’t be frightened, just follow me and I’ll get you there yet. If it would only stop snowing.”
She was not afraid but lifted her feet as well as she could and followed him. He led her on through the white fluctuating all-pervading pearly opaqueness.
After a time rocks suddenly loomed up dark and indistinct in the white luminescence — they had almost run into them — rocks that rose so sheer scarcely any snow could cling to them.
“Sanna, Sanna,” he said, “there are the rocks, let’s go on, let’s go on.”
They went on, had to, between rocks and along the base. The rocks admitted of swerving neither to right nor left, leading on in one narrow hollowed-out channel. After a time the children left them behind and could not see them any more. As unexpectedly as they had come in among them, as unexpectedly they came out. Again there was nothing about them but whiteness, with no dark obstructions looming up. It seemed just one vast volume of white and yet one could not see three feet ahead; everything was closed in, so to speak, by a mysterious white obscurity, and since there were no shadows it was impossible to judge the size of objects and the children did not know whether to step up or down until steepness raised the foot and compelled it to climb.
“My eyes hurt,” said Sanna.
“Don’t look at the snow,” answered the lad, “but at the clouds. Mine have been hurting a good while, but it doesn’t matter, I have to look at the snow anyhow, in order to watch the road. But don’t be scared. I will get you down to Gschaid yet.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
They went on again; but however they went or however they turned it didn’t seem ever as if they were beginning to go downhill. At either side steep rooflike formations led upward, and they walked between, but always up. Whenever they went outside the “roofs” and turned downhill, it became so steep immediately they had to come back; their little feet often encountered jagged objects, and they were constantly avoiding hummocks.
They noticed also that whenever their feet sank deeper in the fresh snow, they did not feel an earthy firmness beneath but something different, like already frozen, older snow. But they kept on, walking fast and steadily. If they stopped, everything was silent, unbelievably silent; when they walked they heard the shuffling of their feet, nothing else; for the pall of flakes descended without a sound, such heavy snow one could fairly see it wax deep. The children themselves were so thickly covered they did not stand out against the general whiteness and would not have been able to see each other if they had been more than a few steps apart.
It was a blessing the snow was dry as sand, so it shook off easily and slid from their feet and little mountain-shoes and stockings without caking and soaking them.
At last they again came to something with form, immense shapes heaped in gigantic confusion, covered with snow that was sifting everywhere into the crevices; the children had, moreover, almost stumbled on them before they had seen them. They went close to look.
Ice — nothing but ice.
There were great slabs lying, covered with snow but on the edges glassy green ice showed; there were mounds of what looked like pushed-up foam, the sides dull but with inward glimmers as if crystals and splinters of precious stones had been jumbled together; there were, besides, great rounded bosses engulfed in snow, slabs and other shapes, slanting or upright, — as high as the church steeple or houses in Gschaid. Some were eroded into cavities through which an arm, a head, a body, or a great cartload of hay could pass. All these irregular shapes had been driven into one another or upright, and stood out in the form of roofs or eaves; and overlying and overlapping them were great white cat’s-paws of snow. Even a fearsome black boulder huge as a house lay tilted up under the ice, resting on its point, so that snow could not cling to the sides. And not this stone merely, but others, and yet larger ones, locked in the ice, which one did not notice at first, formed a wall of Cyclopean debris along the ice rim.
“There must have been a great deal of water here, because there is so much ice,” said Sanna.
“No, it wasn’t made by water,” answered her brother, “it’s the ice of the mountain, and always here since God made it so.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said Sanna.
“We are as far as the ice now,” said the lad, “we are on the mountain, you know, Sanna, the one that looks so white in the sun from the garden. Now think hard about this. Do you remember when we were sitting in the garden, how pleasant it was, how the bees hummed round us, how sweet the lindens smelled, and how the sun was shining so bright on us?”
“Yes, Conrad, I remember.”
“We would look at the mountain too. We saw how blue it was, blue as the gentle sky, we saw snow up there even though it was summer in the village and hot, and the wheat was getting ripe.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
“And down where the snow ends, you see all manner of colors if you look hard, — green, blue, and a whitish color — that is the ice that looks so small from down below because you are so far away, and that, as Father said, is going to be there as long as the world lasts. And then I’ve often noticed that the blue color keeps on below the ice, — probably stones, I’ve thought, or maybe ploughed ground and pastures, and then come the pine woods that go down and down, and all kinds of rocks in between, then the green meadows, then the woods with leaves, and then our own meadows and fields in the valley of Gschaid. Now you see, Sanna, we are at the ice and from here we will go down over the blue color and through the woods where the rocks are, then over the meadows and then through the woods with the leaves, and then we shall be in the valley of Gschaid and then it will be easy to find our village.”