Part 5

So the Tsar waited for a cold, bright night, when the Northern Lights played across the starlit sky, and on that night he went out all alone into the deep forest. He wrapped himself in his richest purple cape, set his crown upon his head and put white ermine boots on his feet. As he walked unattended over the frosted snow, under the great pine branches, he looked so royal that the wolves in the forest stood at a respectful distance and did not dare to eat him, though he was all alone. He walked for an hour or more and wondered whether he had gone in the wrong direction to find the Wise Woman’s hut. At last, just when he was ready to give up the search, he saw a tiny square of window-light behind some thick holly-bushes, and following that, he came upon the hut.

It was low and covered with heavy moss, patched with snow and edged with black pine cones. The little window pane was a sheet of ice. (In summer it melted away, but then the Wise Woman would not need a window pane, for the air coming in would not be cold.) The door was made of rough bark and had a big, twisted root tied to it for a knocker. The Tsar picked up the root and let it fall three times: Thump! Thump! Thump!

“Mother Mir!” he called, and his voice sounded very big in the still, black forest, “Mother Mir! Mother Mir!”

At first he thought she was not going to open, but by and by the door swung back, all by itself, and he stooped and went into the little room. There was a fire on the hearth; near it on a pile of leaves sat the brown old woman, counting lily-seeds. She had hands like gnarled wood, and long grey hair that swept the floor. But her eyes were keen and clear and her lips were red.

“A million and three, a million and four,” she counted, dropping the seeds into a bag. “A million and five, and six, and seven, and eight; a million and nine red lily seeds.” Then she tied up one bag, pushed it into a corner, and opened another with seeds of a different kind.

“Good evening to you, Mother Mir,” said the Tsar.

“Good evening, Tsar; have thy people sent thee to me?”

“Sent me!” he cried, drawing himself up so he bumped his crown on the ceiling. “Sent me, indeed! I am the most wealthy and wonderful Tsar and no one could keep me or send me.”

“Except King Winter,” the Wise Woman corrected him.

The Tsar flushed with anger and pride.

“That’s why I came to thee, Mother Mir. What shall I do to recover my buried city?”

“What thou must do, is very simple, O merciless Tsar. But if thou art not willing to do it thou shalt never see thy city again. Thou must repent of thy mercilessness, and become as humble as Hanka the Fool. Thou must give all thy wealth away; and let thy last gift be to a poor wayfarer, to atone for thy sin, that thou didst refuse a wayfarer shelter and food in thy palace.”

The Tsar was puzzled. He had never thought how wicked he was and did not know what it would be like to repent.

“How shall I repent, Mother Mir?”

“Go back to thy people, look into their houses, see how hungry and unhappy they are because of thy mercilessness; perhaps it will make thee repent.”

“But how shall I recover my city by being humble, O most Wise Woman?”

“I have told thee all thou needst to know; now go thy way and let me count my seeds, for Spring will come and I must plant these flowers throughout all the forests of the world and they all are numbered, though people think they grow wild by themselves.” Then she began counting seeds in the new bag: “One, two, three, four, five—”

The Tsar went home through the wintry forest, under the Northern Lights, still wondering what it would feel like to repent. When he returned to his people he did as the Wise Woman had told him—stopped at one house after another, and looked in at the windows.

In the first house he saw a mother who was so ill that she had to lie in bed while the father cooked the dinner and the dog was trying to mind the babies; and the dinner for them all was one woody turnip. The babies were crying, the mother was crying, the dog was crying, and the father said over his cooking-pot:

“It is all the fault of the Merciless Tsar. If he had not been so proud and haughty and turned that strange wayfarer from his door, we would not be starving now!”

The Tsar, watching through the window, felt a shiver run down his spine. “I might send them a little of my wealth,” he thought, “just to stop their crying.” Then he turned away and looked in at the next hut.

Here he saw an old man on his knees praying to St. Peter.

“O dear St. Peter,” he said, “please take me to heaven soon, for I have such awful back-aches that I don’t want to live any more. I got them from being whipped when I begged the Merciless Tsar for a penny!”

The Tsar felt his conscience twinge him a little. “I will send him a doctor to rub his back,” he said. And he turned away again and went to the third house.

Here sat a young girl, all alone, spinning thin cotton thread with frozen fingers. All the time as she spun, the tears were running down her face. The Tsar took off his crown, turned his cloak inside out so one could not see the rich purple velvet, but only the lining, left his boots outside, and went into the hut.

“I am a stranger,” he said. “Let me sit down a moment and get warm. And tell me why thou art crying.”

“Because my lover is dead,” replied the girl, setting a chair for the stranger. “He had his head cut off for contradicting the Tsar. And now even if we should return to our city, even if I should be rich and care-free, I can never, never be happy again.” And she cried harder than ever.

“Now what could I do to help her?” thought the Tsar. But suddenly it occurred to him that there was nothing in the world he could do that would bring her lover back or even make her any happier again. Then he felt so sorry that the tears ran down his cheeks, too, and he went outside and threw himself down upon the snow for unhappiness.

“Oh, I have been so wicked!” he cried. “I have been so merciless that I have made all my people miserable. And I can’t help the poor girl, and it’s all my fault—I have been so awfully, awfully wicked!”

All night long, he lay in the snow, even after all the window-lights had gone out, and no one knew he was there. When morning came and people opened their doors to see what the weather was like, they saw their most wealthy and wonderful Tsar, without boots or crown and with his coat turned inside out, lying face down, on the ground. They called the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chamberlain and many other lords from the wooden palace, and ran to pick him up, for they thought he must be dead or at least fainted. But when they touched him he sat up all by himself and looked at their surprised faces.

“Your wonderful highness, what has happened?” they cried.

“I have repented!” replied the Tsar.

Henceforth he became so humble and mild that people called him the Merciful Tsar. He took a basket of food and carried it to the poor people who had only one woody turnip to eat, and he went to the lame old man with a bottle of liniment and rubbed his back till it got well, and every day he sent some gift, a jewel or a gold-piece or a silver thimble, or something of the sort, to comfort the girl whose lover had been beheaded for contradicting him. He gave his wooden palace to his lords and ladies, and moved into a tiny brown hut, moss-covered and patched and without window-panes, way at the end of the village. No beggar ever went empty-handed from his door; and if a little boy cut his finger or bumped his knee, the other boys would say:

“Go to the Tsar, Aliushka, he will put a rag with ointment on it and make it well!”

Soon he had given away so much of his wealth that he was quite the poorest man in the village. One day just as he sat down to eat his last piece of dry bread, a very weary old woman came to his door and said:

“Alms, alms, for the love of St. Peter, O most Merciful Tsar!”

“I have nothing but this piece of bread, but you may have it,” he replied, and gave her his frugal dinner. The old woman sank down upon the block of wood that was his only chair.

“Ah, but you don’t know how weary I am!” she sighed, nibbling the bread with her toothless gums. “I have no hut to live in, no place to lay my head, no roof to shelter me from the icy winter.”

“Thou art sleepy,” he said. “Lie down on the bed.”

As soon as she had lain down and fallen asleep, he took a piece of charcoal from the fire place and wrote on the table, where she would surely see it when she woke up:

“Take my hut, and my bed, and everything I own. I have moved out. There is another piece of bread in the kitchen drawer, but it is mouldy.” Then he left the hut, shut the door carefully so the snow should not blow in and went to the village gate, where there was a public bench; there he sat down.

Presently he heard a great commotion in the village; a lot of people were coming toward the gate where he sat. In their midst walked Hanka, the Fool, with big boots on his feet, an axe in his belt, and a fishing-rod over his shoulder. Everybody was shouting to him:

“Good luck on thy way! Good luck, Hanka! Good luck to thee, brave wayfarer, may all the Saints help thee against the wolves in the forest!”

“Where art thou going, Hanka?” asked the Tsar.

“Far away to the White Sea,” replied the Fool. “We are all starving in the village, so I am going to chop a hole through the ice and catch fish.”

“Alas!” replied the Tsar, suddenly remembering what the Wise Mother Mir had told him. “Thou art a wayfarer now, Hanka, and I should give thee my last gift to atone for my old cruelty to the wayfarer who came to my palace-gate. But I have nothing, nothing left to give, not even a safety-pin!”

“Give me thy blessing, O most Merciful Tsar,” said Hanka the Fool. “Surely with a Tsar’s blessing I could go safely in my long and arduous way. It would keep off the wolves and bears and robbers that attack poor wayfarers in the forest.”

“Yes, I will give thee my blessing,” agreed the Tsar.

So Hanka knelt down in the snow, and the Tsar gave him a blessing for the journey.

Hanka travelled for many days through deep and drifted snow. Over his head the black crows flew from tree to tree, and all night when he crouched by his brushwood fire he heard the wolves howling and the foxes barking in the great forest. But no beast or bird or prowling robber ever tried to hurt him; that was because he traveled with the Tsar’s blessing on his head.

At last he came to a great field of ice and snow that he supposed was the White Sea. He took his axe and began to chop the frozen floor, because he was a fool and did not know that there was really solid land under his feet. Suddenly his axe struck on something that cracked like wood.

“What’s this?” cried Hanka, jumping back and dropping his axe. “It can’t be ice, for it isn’t clear; it isn’t wood, for it’s too white; it isn’t stone, for it’s too brittle; I know!” and he jumped up and down with pleasure because he knew. “It’s ivory!”

It really was ivory. Hanka was standing on the buried city, and his axe had broken the ivory roof of the Tsar’s palace!

He went on chopping, and digging the snow and splinters away with his hands. At last there was such a big hole that he could jump into it. There was a deep, dark chamber underneath, but Hanka was not afraid, so he let himself down through the hole.

Here he stood, in the empty, snowed-up palace of the Tsar! Of course he had never been in it before, and though it was dark and damp, and had not been cleaned for a year, he thought it was almost too splendid to be real. He took a match from his pocket, struck it on the wall and looked round by its feeble flare.

“Golden chairs,” he whispered, so much impressed that he could not speak aloud, “and velvet rugs and such bright, brocaded curtains! I have heard people talk about these things, but I have never believed they were real. Here is a door, and a stairway; that must lead downstairs. Oh, I will go all through the palace and look and look!” He went softly down the stairs, striking matches to light his way, and putting the burnt ends into his pocket so as not to litter the floors.

The whole palace was just as the Tsar and his people had left it in their flight. From some of the rooms they had carried off the bed-clothes and things, but in others the beds were unmade and odd stockings and handkerchiefs and powder-puffs lay around, that no one had thought to take along. Hanka picked them all up and put them neatly on a chair. Here he found a candle, too, so he could light his way without striking matches all the time.

He went to the kitchen and found it very untidy, for the cook had left in a hurry. He had left the cake in the oven, where it had burned to ashes and some milk on the window sill, where it had turned to cheese and then to something worse, so Hanka held his nose with one hand while he washed the pitcher with the other. But in a beautiful box he discovered some crackers that were still quite good, and on a shelf above it was a pot of jam, so he sat down on the table-corner and ate to his heart’s content, for he was nearly starved.

When he could eat no more, he remembered how often he had heard people talk about the marvels of the great throne-chamber, where the musicians used to play and the Lord Chancellor to read in a loud voice all the news from the Tsar’s empire, and where people were brought trembling before the throne to be sentenced to death.

“I must see the chamber,” thought Hanka. So he prowled through all the pantries and banquet halls and reception rooms till he came to a door of ebony and gold, richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

“This must be it,” he murmured. “If I only dared to look in! Of course, it will be quite empty—the musicians have left it and the Lord Chancellor is not there and the throne is deserted—but still it must be very splendid.”

Carefully he shot back the silver bolt and the great door swung open. A breath of very cold air struck his face, as though he had stepped into an ice-cave. And for a moment he really thought he had. In the four corners of the room stood four great men of ice, with folded hands, heads bowed under the ceiling, and eyes that shone like cold December stars. They were the four Spirits of the North: Silence, and Frost, and Loneliness, and Northern Light, who guarded the city since the Tsar and his people had fled. And on the Throne in the middle of the room sat King Winter with a crown of ice upon his head and a foot-stool of snow under his feet.

Hanka’s knees shook with terror and he dropped his candle on the mosaic floor. The candle went out, yet the room was full of light, a still, blue light, like the reflections in a block of ice. The four great men did not move. But King Winter raised his hand and beckoned to the lad.

“Come here,” he said quite kindly. Hanka had fallen to his knees, and crept upon them across the floor, holding up his hands for mercy.

“Who art thou?” demanded the King.

“Have pity, O most wonderful King! I am only Hanka the Fool.”

“Have ye come back from the great forests, thou and thy friends?”

“Sir,” replied Hanka, kissing his feet, “It is only I who have come. I did not mean to chop through the roof of the palace. I meant to chop a hole in the ice of the White Sea to catch some fish, for the Tsar and his people are starving.”

“Thou hast come alone?” asked King Winter in surprise, “How is it that wolves and bears and all the wild beasts have spared thee, and robbers have not beaten thee to death?”

“Because, O Most Wonderful Majesty, I traveled with the Tsar’s blessing on my head.”

King Winter sat up, and even the four Spirits looked startled.

“But since when,” asked the King, “doth the proud Merciless Tsar stoop to give his blessing to such a beggar-lad as thee?”

“Oh,” cried Hanka, “he is not proud, indeed he isn’t! He is as humble as I am, even I, Hanka the Fool. We call him the Merciful Tsar, for he has turned from all his wickedness, and given his wealth away. I was a wayfarer, and he had no other gift for me, so he gave me his blessing, Most Wonderful King!”

At these words King Winter arose, the four spirits lifted their heads, there was a murmur of many voices and then fairy music everywhere.

“Rise up, Hanka,” said the Ruler of the North. “My reign in the City is over, for the Merciless Tsar has repented and become as humble as thou. Go back to the great forests where thy Tsar and his people are, and tell them to return hither, for King Winter and his forces have left the city, and it belongs to the Tsar once more! In token of this, in case thou shouldst forget what to say, take that bag of snow-stars behind the Throne, and carry it to the Tsar.”

While he spoke, a whole army of spirits, snow-fairies and wind-fairies and genie, crowned with frost-flowers, gathered from all parts of the palace. Some came from the bedrooms, where they had been asleep in the bureau-drawers, some from the kitchen where they had been hiding under cups and mixing-bowls, some peeped down over the pictures on the parlor wall, or between the curtains, or even out of the empty hall-stove. They all joined hands in a ring and danced around Hanka, who sat bewildered on the floor with his axe and fishing-rod, wondering where all these creatures had been while he had explored the palace.

“Joy, joy,” sang the spirits, “we are going home again, home to the North Pole, to our friends, the seals and polar bears, the long waiting-time is over, for the Merciless Tsar has repented—joy, joy, joy!”

Then there was a tinkle of icicles outside the door, as King Winter’s sleigh with the three white horses came jingling up. The palace doors flew open and Hanka saw that the snow had already melted down almost to the turquoise terraces. The king leaped into his chariot, waved his hand to the humble fool who had followed him to the door, and away went the royal horses, over the frozen White Sea to the distant North Pole, with all the fairy train holding on and running behind as swiftly as the wind.

Hanka turned back and looked at the empty throne chamber. The four great Spirits had vanished, though he had not seen them running away with the fairies. But where they had stood, the floor was cracked a little, and four yellow crocus-flowers had sprung up through the stone.

Hanka felt very lonesome and frightened in the big, splendid palace. He picked up his axe and rod and the bag of snow-stars King Winter had ordered him to take, and ran as fast as he could through the open door, over the terraces, through the town and gates to the open country outside. Everywhere the snow had gone away so quickly that the second stories of all the houses were quite free and the first stories just appearing. Beyond the gates, he came upon great streams of water that were running down to the White Sea, where the ice was melting and wiping out the track of King Winter’s sleigh. Hanka turned toward the South, to the great forests where the Tsar’s people had built their wooden village. He sang aloud as he walked, because the warm sun was shining on his back, and his stomach was full of crackers and jam, so he felt very happy despite the heavy bag of snow-stars on his shoulder. If he had not been a fool he would certainly have wondered why they were so heavy; but he was a fool so he just carried them and did not wonder at anything. Above him in the treetops the birds were singing as happily as he, the air smelled sweet and warm, and in some places Mother Mir’s flowers were peeping through the thin, wet snow.

“Why, I believe it’s going to be Spring!” said Hanka.

In the village, the Tsar was still sitting on the bench beside the gate. The villagers came to offer him food, but he refused it, saying “You have not enough for yourselves. I will not eat your food. Give it to your children, good people!”

“But you will starve!” they cried. “Oh no,” replied the Tsar. “Some good Saint will take care of me.”

And in the night, when the village was quiet and dark, the crows in the forest flew to him and brought him some frozen berries, the squirrels brought nuts to appease his hunger, and the fairies from the great Forest brought partridge-eggs and reindeer milk.

It was a beautiful sunny morning, when the villagers who stood about the gate talking to the Tsar saw Hanka returning, with his axe and rod and a bag over his shoulder. “Look, look,” they cried, “he is bringing a whole bagful of fish!”

“But where do you suppose he got the bag?” said the Tsar. “He didn’t have it when he left.”

They were not kept guessing very long. Hanka came running and shouting:

“Greetings, O Merciful Tsar, greetings from King Winter! He gave me a message to thee, but I have forgotten it, but here is a bag of snow-stars for thee, and thy city is all thawed out, King Winter has gone back to the North Pole. And I went through thy palace and found lots of crackers and jam, which I ate. I didn’t mean to steal, but there was nobody to ask for them so I had to take them.”

The Tsar smiled and nodded.

“Thou art welcome to my crackers and jam, dear Hanka,” he said, as he opened the bag of snow-stars, took it by the lower corners, and turned it upside down.

Out of the bag rolled thousands and thousands of sparkling, flashing diamonds! The people stood open-mouthed, and Hanka sat down with surprise when he saw what he had been carrying.

“That means we may return, for King Winter’s war is over,” said the Tsar. So all the people went back to their city on the shores of the White Sea, where the streets were paved with silver, the walls were shining marble, and the church steeples were topped with gold. The Tsar sat on his throne again, but he ruled his people now with mercy and justice, so everyone liked to be brought before him to see his mild fatherly face.

Hanka was allowed to live in the palace all his life, and had a silver fishing-rod, a silken line and a diamond sinker, and was permitted to cast for gold-fish in the royal pond. King Winter came for a visit once every year with a little snow just to remind people of his past reign; but he always found the people ready to joke and laugh at the bad weather he brought, for they were all happy and contented who lived in the city of the Merciful Tsar.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard (or amusing) spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Cruise of the Little Dipper, by Susanne Langer