The Snow Bear

Well, today I’ve got a treat for you. Or, at least, I’ve got a problem maybe you’ll help me fix. When I was a child, back in the days, at the newspaper kiosk you could find a couple of magazines with fairy stories in it. The publications included a leaflet, with the text of the […]

Well, today I’ve got a treat for you. Or, at least, I’ve got a problem maybe you’ll help me fix.

When I was a child, back in the days, at the newspaper kiosk you could find a couple of magazines with fairy stories in it. The publications included a leaflet, with the text of the story, and an audio cassette with voice actors reading the stories. They were absolutely charming and they shaped a lot of what I consider pleasant these days.
Now, one of those stories is perfect for these Winter Tales: it was called “The Snow Bear”. But, for the life of me, I can’t figure out whether it was some sort of original retelling (I don’t think so) or which tale it was drawn from. All I know, from this upload of the issue in question, is that the story included illustrations by Peter Richardson.
They were the Italian version for a Singapore-based publishing, if you believe, and the original tale was narrated by Derek Jacobi, the incredible Shakespearian actor. I couldn’t find this version: below you have the Italian one.

The tale tells the story of two brothers, Hans and Trudy, who live at the feet of a great mountain, called the Snow Bear because the peak looks like a snow bear when it’s covered in snow.

The two brothers knew that mountain like the back of their hands; since they were very young, they had climbed it with their parents. One day – they had just turned seven – they asked if they could go there alone; after some uncertainty, their father agreed.
“As long as you don’t stray from the path and, as soon as you reach the top, come right back; don’t forget that the sun sets soon.”
The next day, Hans and Trudi put on warm clothes and heavy boots and set off towards the mountain. Hans was carrying a haversack with breakfast on his back.
They had just started to climb that Trudi fell behind.
“Hey, are you tired already?” asked Hans.
“No, but there’s something in my left boot that’s stinging me,” replied Trudi.
She sat down on a stone and took off her boot to examine it; a large nail was sticking out of the school, and though she tried to beat it with a stone she couldn’t because it was too close to the toe.

The two boys were pondering what to do when they heard a curious noise: tap, tap, tap and then tap, tap!
They looked at each other in surprise. Who on earth was tapping something on that lonely mountain? They got up and among the blueberry bushes they saw a strange little man who, sitting cross-legged on a rock, was busy trying to straighten a crooked nail. On a nearby rock, there were hammers, pincers, nails and pieces of leather, all very small. The little man was wearing worn and tattered clothes and overall his appearance was not very pleasant. The two boys had the same idea. “Excuse me, sir,” Trudi asked him shyly, “couldn’t you help me? I’ve got a nail in my shoe…”
“I have plenty to do,” he replied annoyed, “but let me see this shoe.”
Trudi sat down next to him, and the little man took a pair of pliers and in a jiffy pulled out the goby, then took another straight one, with a clover-shaped head, and nailed it neatly into the boot.
“Thank you very much indeed,” said Trudi, “now I’m comfortable!”
“That’s the way it should be,” replied the little man with a grimace, and repeated, “That’s the way it should be.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money to pay for your work,” the little girl continued.
“And what would I do with the money?” blurted the little man.
He looked so troubled and unhappy that Hans asked him, “Would you like something to eat?”
He took out of his haversack two slices of black bread, some cheese and two small yellow apples: they were not rich and could not afford anything better.
The little man grabbed the bread with both hands and devoured it as if he hadn’t seen food for who knows how many days, then it was the turn of the cheese, after which he swallowed the apples: stem, skin and core, all disappeared in an instant.

“A simple meal, but better than nothing,” muttered the little man, spitting out an apple seed, “and now leave me alone.”
The astonished boys returned to the path. “What a greedy little man, I didn’t think he’d devour all our breakfast. I’d heard my mother tell about the little men in the mountains who sometimes appear to the travelers, but she said that if you are nice to them, they bring you luck”.
They walked in silence for a while. Then, when the path began to get steeper, they heard again the tap, tap, tap of the little man’s hammer.
They stopped suddenly; but where could he be? How had he reached them so quickly? It was then that they saw before them a kind of bright green meadow. “It might be a marsh,” said Hans, and he threw a large stone into it, which with a horrible gurgling sound was sucked out of the bog.

“One more step and we would have been swallowed up like that rock,” whispered Trudi, “good thing we thought we heard the little man’s matinee and stopped in time!”
They continued walking, looking ahead more carefully. The wind was getting colder and colder as they climbed the last steep part of the mountain.
They had almost reached the top when again, tap, tap, tap, the hammer resounded with force….
Hans stopped for a moment and realized that the rock outcrop he was about to climb was wobbling. He felt it with his foot without leaning and the rock plunged downstream, dragging in its fall other rocks that rolled down with a gloomy rumble.

The two boys stopped pale with fear: if only Hans had leaned against the rock, he would have fallen down too!
“Well, now we’re so close that nothing else can happen to us now.” A few minutes later, in fact, they were safe and sound on the summit.
The wind blew and rumbled like a pack of wolves and froze them to the bone. They circled the Snow Bear and snuggled into the hollow formed by his knees.
“We have nothing to eat now, though,” said Trudi.
“Strange, my haversack weighs as if it were full,” observed Hans.
“Then open it up and look inside.”
Hans did as his sister suggested, and when he opened it, the two boys gasped.

There were two sliced and buttered loaves of bread, two creamy cheeses, and two big red apples.
“I don’t know how they got in here, but they’re definitely for us, so let’s eat,” Hans concluded.
“You’re right. The little man really did bring us luck,” his sister echoed.
They had never tasted such delicious food. They ate everything calmly and did not leave a single crumb; and when they answered to go down the mountain, it was later than they had imagined. The sun was barely peeking out of the surrounding peaks, and very soon it would be hidden altogether.
“Come on, Trudi, we must hurry,” her brother urged her.
Almost immediately it became dark and the two brothers began to stumble on their hasty descent.
Hans stopped. “I can’t make out the path anymore, now what do we do?”
Trudi looked around: rocks and nothing but rocks.
But then, “Look, Hans! What are those lights? Can’t you see them flickering?”
“Yes, I see them, they seem to be pointing to a path; let’s try to follow them, maybe they’ll lead us home. Come!”
The little lights were a good guide, and the boys, taking courage, followed them without difficulty.

“Look, the little lights twinkle with every step we take,” said Trudi, “as if we left them there when we went up. But how can that be?”
“The nail the little man put in your boot must be fairy,” reflected Hans, “where it first touched the ground there is now a light to guide us.”
The boys hurried on. When they arrived at the point where they had found the little man among the blueberries, the lights went out. But by now they were close to home and the path was wide and safe. They ran that last stretch. “We are late”; Hans wheezed, “but when Father and Mother hear our story, they will understand and not be angry with us.”
Hans was right.
When Mother heard how poor and battered the little man was, she made him a waterproof cape, and the boys left it in the blueberry bushes where she had met him.
The next day a heavy rain fell, and when the two brothers went back to the place and the cape was gone, Hans and Trudi were happy to imagine the little man on the mountain sheltered and warm under his cape.

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