Tales From Moominvalley (4 page)

*

So the whomper had to go to bed at sundown, and he felt very embittered towards his daddy and mummy. Naturally they had behaved badly many times before, but had never been quite as silly as this. The whomper decided to go away. Not to punish them, only because he suddenly felt so utterly tired of them and their inability to understand what was important or dangerous.

They simply drew a line straight through all things and declared that on one side of it everything was believable and useful, and on the other side everything was simply thought up and useless.

I'd like to see them eye to eye with an Aitchumb, the whomper mumbled to himself when he padded downstairs and slunk out in the garden. Believe me, they'd be amazed! Or a mud snake, indeed. I could send them one in a box some day. With a glass lid, because I wouldn't want them swallowed up, not really.

The whomper went back to the forbidden marsh, because he had to show to himself that he was independent. The marsh had turned blue, nearly black, and the sky was green. There was a bright yellow streak of sundown by the horizon, that made the marsh look terribly large and gloomy.

Of course I'm not lying, said the whomper and went plodding along. It's all real. The enemy and the Aitchumb and the mud snakes and the Ghost Wagon. They're quite as real as our neighbours and the gardener and the hens and my scooter.

And then the whomper stood quite still in his tracks and listened.

Somewhere in the distance the Ghost Wagon started rolling, it whisked red sparks over the heather, it creaked and cracked and gathered speed.

You shouldn't have taken any notice of it from the first, the whomper told himself. Now it's coming. Run!

The grass tufts gave and slithered under his paws, black water holes looked at him like large eyes out of the sedge, and he could feel the mud squashing between his toes.

You mustn't think about the mud snakes, the whomper said, and so he thought of them, strong and clear, and they came creeping out of their holes at once, licking their moustaches.

I wish I were like my fat baby brother, the whomper cried in desperation. He thinks only with his tummy and stuffs himself with sand and earth. He even tried to eat his balloon once. We'd have lost him if he'd succeeded.

This thought enchanted the whomper and made him stop his running. A fat baby brother rising straight up in

the air. His legs would be sticking helplessly out and the string dangling from his mouth...

Oh, no!

Far out on the marsh a light shone. It wasn't the Ghost Wagon, it was just a small square window with a steady light burning.

Now go there, the whomper told himself. Just walk, don't run, because running makes you scared. And don't think, just walk along.

*

It was a circular house, so it probably belonged to some mymble or other. The whomper knocked at the door. He knocked several times, and as no one came to answer he opened it and went inside.

Inside was warm and nice. A lamp stood on the window-sill and made the night coal-black. A clock was ticking away somewhere, and atop a large wardrobe a very small mymble was lying on her stomach, looking down at him.

'Hello,' said the whomper. 'I've saved myself at the last minute. From mud snakes and live fungi! You've no idea!'

The small mymble regarded him silently and critically. Then she said:

'I'm My. I've seen you before. You were tending a fat little whomper and mumbling to yourself all the time and waving your paws about. Ha ha.'

'Never you mind,' said the whomper. 'Why are you sitting on that wardrobe? That's silly.'

'To some people,' drawled little My. 'To some people it may look silly. For me it's my only hope of escape from a horrible fate.'

She leaned down over the edge of the wardrobe and whispered:

'The live fungi are already in the parlour.'

'Eh,' said the whomper.

'From up here I can see that they're sitting just behind

the door,' little My continued. They're waiting. You'd better make that doormat into a roll and push it against the crack. Otherwise they'll flatten out and start to crawl in here under the door.'

'But that can't be true,' said the whomper, feeling a lump in his throat. Those fungi didn't even exist this morning. I've invented them.'

'You did, did you?' little My said haughtily. 'The sticky kind? The kind that grows into a sort of thick blanket and fastens itself on people?'

'I don't know,' whispered the whomper. He trembled a little. 'I don't know...'

'My granny is quite grown over with them,' little My said. 'She's in the parlour. Or what's left of her. She's just a large green lump, only her whiskers keep sprouting out at one end. You'd better push the carpet against that other door. It might help, but I'm not sure.'

The whomper's heart was thumping hard and his paws felt so stiff that he had a hard job in rolling up the carpets. Somewhere in the house the clock went on slowly ticking.

That's the sound the fungi make when they grow,' little My explained. They grow and grow until they burst the doors, and then they're free to crawl over you.'

'Let me up on the wardrobe!' the whomper cried.

'Sorry, no room here,' said little My.

There was a knock on the outer door.

'That's funny,' said little My and sighed, 'funny that they care to knock on doors when they can come in as they please...'

The whomper rushed to the wardrobe and tried to climb it. The knock was repeated.

'My! Someone's at the door!' a voice called from an inner room.

'I hear, I hear, I hear,' little My called back. 'That was Granny,' she explained to the whomper. 'It's strange that she's still able to speak.'

The whomper stared at the parlour door. It opened slowly, a black little crack. He gave a cry and rolled in under the sofa.

'My,' Granny said, 'haven't I told you to go and answer the door? And why have you rolled up the carpet? And why don't people ever let me sleep?'

She was a terribly old and cross granny in a large white nightgown. She went to the outer door and opened it and said: 'Good evening.'

'Good evening,' said the whomper's daddy. 'I'm terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour. But I wonder if you've seen my boy, the next-to-youngest one...'

'He's under the sofa,' little My said.

'You can come out,' said the whomper's daddy. 'No one's angry.'

'Oh, under the sofa. Well,' Granny said, a little tiredly. 'Of course it's nice to have one's grandchildren visiting, and naturally little My can always ask her little playmates to come here! But I wish they'd play in the daytime and not at nights.'

'I'm so sorry,' the daddy said quickly. 'He'll come in the morning next time.'

The whomper crawled out from under the sofa. He didn't look at My, nor at her granny either. He walked straight for the door and out on the steps and into the dark.

His daddy walked beside him, saying nothing. The whomper felt so hurt that he was very near to tears.

'Daddy,' he said. 'That girl... you'd never believe... I'm not going back there, not in a thousand years,' the whomper continued savagely. 'She tricked me! She told such stories! She makes people sick with her lies!'

'I understand,' said his daddy comfortingly. 'Such things can be very unpleasant.'

And they went home and ate all the dessert that was left over.

The Fillyjonk who believed in Disasters

O
NCE
upon a time there was a fillyjonk who was washing her large carpet in the sea. She rubbed it with soap and a brush up to the first blue stripe, and then she waited for a seventh wave to come and wash the soap away.

Then she soaped and rubbed further, to the next blue stripe, and the sun was warming her back, and she stood with her thin legs in the clear water, rubbing and rubbing.

It was a mild and motionless summer day, exactly right for washing carpets. Slow and sleepy swells came rolling in to help her with the rinsing, and around her red cap a few bumble-bees were humming: they took her for a flower!

Don't you pretend, the fillyjonk thought grimly. I know how things are. Everything's always peaceful like this just before a disaster.

She reached the last blue stripe, let the seventh wave rinse it for a moment, and then pulled the whole of the carpet out of the water.