"I couldn't find anyone!" he gasped. "I looked everywhere and I couldn'tfind anyone and we saw the trucks come here and I saw the lights on and Ithought the humans were still here and I came in and I heard your voicesand you've got to coine because it's Dorcas!"
"He's alive?" said Grimma. "If he isn't, he can swear pretty well for a dead person," said Sacco, sagging to the floor. "We thought you were all de-" Grimma began. "We're all fine except for Dorcas. He hurt himself jumping out of the truck! Come on, pleaseV "You don't look in any state to go anywhere," said Grimma. She stood up.
"You just tell us where he is." "We got him halfway up the road and we got so tired and I left them and came on ahead," Sacco blurted out. "They're under the hedge and-" His eyes fell on the snoring bulk of the human. He stared at Grimma. "You've captured a humanf' he said. He stumbled sideways. "Need a bit of a rest. So tired. So tired," he repeated, vaguely. Then he fell forward. Grimma caught him and laid him down as gently as she could. "Someone put him somewhere warm and see if there's any food left," she said to the nomes in general. "And I want some of you to help me look for the others. Come on. This isn't a night for being outside." The expression on the faces of some of the nomes said that they definitely agreed with this point of view, and that among the people who shouldn't be out on a night like this was themselves. "It's snowing quite a lot," said one of them, uncertainly. "We'll never find them in all the dark and snow." Grimma glared at him. "We might," she said. "We might find them in all the dark and snow. We won't find them by staying in the light and warm, I know that much." Several nomes pushed their way forward. Grimma recognized Nooty's people, and the parents of some of the lads. Then there was a bit of a commotion from under the table, where the oldest nomes were clustering together to keep warm and have a good moan. "I'm comin' too," said Granny Morkie. "Do me good to have a drop of fresh air. What you all lookin' at me like that for?" "I think you ought to stay inside, Granny," said Grimma gently. "Don't you come the bein'-tactful-to-old-people to me, my gel," said Granny, prodding her with her stick. "I bin out in deep snow before you was even thought of." She turned to the rest of the nomes. "Nothin' to it if you acts sensible and keeps yellin' out so's everyone knows where everyone is. I went out to help look for my uncle Joe before I was a year old," she said, proudly. "Dreadful snow, that was. It come down sudden, like, when the men were out huntin'. We found nearly all of him too." "Yes, yes, all right, Granny," said Grimma quickly. She looked at the others. "Well, we're going," she said.
In the end fifteen of them went, many out of sheer embarrassment.
In the yellow light from the shed windows the snowflakes lookedbeautiful. By the time they reached the ground they were prettyunpleasant.
The Store nomes really hated the Outside snow. There had been snow in theStore, too, sprayed on merchandise around Christmas Fayre time. But itwasn't cold. And snowflakes were huge beautiful things that were hungfrom the ceilings on bits of thread. Proper snowflakes. Not ghastlythings which looked all right in the air but turned into freezing wetstuff which was allowed to just lie around on the floor.
It already was deep as their knees.
"What you do is," said Granny Morkie, "you lift your feet up really highand plonk them down. Nothin' to it."
The light from the shed shone out across the quarry, but the dirt roadwas a dark tunnel leading into the night.
"And spread out," said Grimma. "But keep together."
"Spread out and keep together," they muttered.
A senior nome put his hand up.
"You don't get robins at night, do you?" he asked cautiously.
"No, of course not," said Grimma.
"No, you don't get robins at night, silly," said Granny Morkie.
They looked relieved.
"No, you get foxes," Granny added, in a self-satisfied way. "Great bigfoxes. They get good and hungry in the cold weather. And maybe you getowls." She scratched her chin. "Cunnin' devils owls. You never hear 'em till they're almost on top o' you." She banged on the wall with herstick. "Look sharp, you lot. Best foot forward. Unless you're like myuncle Joe-a fox got 'is best foot, 'e 'ad to have a wooden leg, 'e waslivid."
There was something about Granny Morkie's cheering people up that alwaysgot them moving. Anything was better than being cheered up some more.
The snowflakes were caking up on the dried grasses and ferns on eitherbank. Every now and again some of it fell off, sometimes onto the dirtroad, often onto the nomes stumbling along it. They prodded the snowytussocks and peered doubtfully into the gloomy holes under the hedge, while the flakes continued to fall in a soft, crackly silence. Robins, owls, and other terrors of the Outside lurked in every shadow.
Eventually the light was left behind and they walked by the glow of thesnow itself. Sometimes one of them would call out, softly, and thenthey'd all listen.
It was very cold.
Granny Morkie stopped suddenly.
"Fox," she announced. "I can smell it. Can't mistake a fox. Rank."
They huddled together and stared apprehensively into the darkness.
"Might not still be around, mind," said Granny. "Hangs about for a longtime, that smell."
They relaxed a bit.
"Really, Granny," muttered Grimma.
"I was just tryin' to be a help," sniffed Granny Morkie. "You don't wantmy help, you've only got to say."
"We're doing this wrong," said Grimma. "It's Dorcas we're looking for. Hewouldn't just be sitting out in the open, would he? He knows aboutfoxes. He'd get the boys to find somewhere sheltered and as safe aspossible."
Nooty's father stepped forward.
"If you look the way the snow falls," he said hesitantly, "you can seethe air conditioning is blowing it this way." He pointed. "So it piles upmore on this side of things than that side. So they'd want to be as muchaway from the air conditioning as possible, wouldn't they?"
"It's called the wind, when it's Outside," said Grimma gently. "Butyou're right. That means"-she peered at the hedges-"they'd be on theother side of the hedge. In the field, up against the bank. Come on."
They scrambled up through the masses of dead leaves and dripping twigsand into the field beyond.
It was desolate. A few tufts of dead grass stuck above the endlesswilderness of snow. Several of the nomes groaned.
It's the size, Grimma thought. They don't mind Ae quarry, or the thicketsabove it, or even the ~ad, because a lot of it is closed in and you canpretend there are sort of walls around you. It's too big for them here.
"Stick close to the hedge," she said, more cheerfully than she felt.
"There's not so much snow there."
Oh, Arnold Bros. (est. 1905), she thought. Dorcas doesn't believe in you, and I certainly don't believe in you, but if you could just see your wayclear to existing just long enough for us to find them, we'd allappreciate it very much. And perhaps if you could stop the snow and seeus all safely back to the quarry as well, that would be a big help.
That's crazy, she thought. Masklin always said that if there was anArnold Bros., he was sort of inside our heads, helping us think.
She realized that she was staring at the snow.
Why is there a hole in it? she thought.
Chapter 12
IV. There is nowhere to go, and we must go.
-From the Book of Nome, Exits III, v. IV
"Rabbits, I thought," she said.
Dorcas patted her hand.
"Well done," he said weakly.
"We were on the road after Sacco left," said Nooty, "and it was gettingreally cold and Dorcas said to take him to the other side of the hedgeand, well, it was me who said you can see rabbits in this fieldsometimes, and be said find a rabbit hole. So we did. We thought we'd behere all night."