Adalbert Stifter - Rock Crystal

The cloudbanks had dropped behind the mountains on every side and bending low about the children, the arch of heaven was an even blue, so dark it was almost black, spangled with stars blazing in countless array, and through their midst a broad luminous band was woven, pale as milk, which the children had indeed seen from the valley, but never before so distinctly. The night was progressing. The children did not know that the stars move westward and on, otherwise it might have been possible for them to tell the hour of night, as new stars appeared and others vanished; they, however, supposed them to be the same ones. The ground all about lay bright in the starlight but they saw no valley, nothing familiar; nothing was to be seen anywhere but whiteness — all was pure white. Only a sombre horn, a sombre head, a sombre arm, was discernible, looming up at this point or that from the shimmering waste. The moon was nowhere to be seen; perhaps it had gone down early with the sun or not risen at all.

After a great while Conrad said: “Sanna, you mustn’t go to sleep; you know what Father said, ‘if you fall asleep in the mountains you’re sure to freeze,’ the way the old ash-woodsman went to sleep and was dead on a stone four long months and not a soul knew where he was.”

“No, I’ll not go to sleep,” the little thing answered wearily.

Conrad had shaken her by the hem of her frock to rouse her and make her listen.

Then silence again.

Presently the lad was conscious of a gentle pressure on his arm, that grew heavier and heavier. Sanna had fallen asleep and settled down on him.

“Sanna, don’t go to sleep, please don’t,” he said.

“No,” she murmured drowsily. “I’m not asleep.”

He moved a little away from her to rouse her, but she just dropped over and would have gone on sleeping on the ground. He grasped her shoulder and shook her. Although his motions were somewhat brisker he found he was cold and that his arm was numb. He was alarmed and jumped up. He clutched his sister, shook her harder and said: “Sanna, let’s stand up a while, so we’ll feel better.”

“I’m not cold, Conrad,” she answered.

“Yes you are, Sanna; get up,” he exclaimed.

“This fur jacket is nice and warm,” she said.

“I’ll help you up,” he said.

“No,” she said and was silent again.

Then suddenly it came back to him. Grandmother had said, “Just a tiny sip warms the stomach, so that even on the coldest winter day you can’t feel the cold.”

He picked up the calfskin bag, opened it and groped about till he had found the little flask in which his grandmother was sending his mother the black coffee extract, took the wrappings off, and with considerable effort pulled out the cork. Then he leaned down over Sanna and said: “Here is the coffee Grandmother is sending Mother, taste just a little, it will make you warm. Mother would give it to us if only she knew what we need it for.”

The child — who only wanted to rest — said: “I am not cold.”

“Just a little, then you may go to sleep.”

This prospect tempted Sanna; she so nerved herself for the effort that she almost choked on the liquid. After her, Conrad too drank a little. The double distilled strength of the decoction had an immediate effect, all the more powerful because the children had not tasted coffee before. Instead of going to sleep, Sanna became more animated, and herself admitted that she was cold, but said she felt quite warm inside now, and that her hands and feet were getting warm too. The children even chatted together a while.

As soon as the effect began to wear off, they took more and more of the extract in spite of the bitter taste, and their young nerves, unaccustomed to the stimulant, were strung to a pitch of excitement sufficient to overcome the dangerous drowsiness.

It was midnight by this time. Young as they were, they had always fallen asleep each Christmas Eve when it grew late, under the positive strain of joy and overcome by bodily weariness, had never heard the peal of the bells nor the organ at midnight Mass although they lived close by the church. At this very moment all the bells were ringing, the bells in Millsdorf, the bells in Gschaid, and on the farther side of the mountain there was still another little church whose three clear-chiming bells were ringing out. In remote places beyond the valley there were innumerable churches with bells all ringing at this very hour; from village to village, the waves of sound were floating, and in one village you could at times hear through the leafless branches the chiming of the bells in another. Away up by the ice, however, not a sound reached the children; nothing, for here nothing was being heralded. Along the winding paths of the mountain slopes lantern lights were moving, and on many a farmstead the great bell was rousing the farmhands, — unseen here, and unheard. Only the stars twinkled and shone.

Even though Conrad kept before his mind’s eye the fate of the frozen woodsman — even though the children had drunk all the black coffee in the little vial to keep their blood stirring, the reaction of fatigue would have been too much for them and they would never have been able to fight off sleep, whose seductiveness invariably gets the better of reason, had not Nature in all her grandeur befriended them and aroused in them a power strong enough to withstand it.

In the vast stillness which prevailed, a stillness in which not a snow-crystal seemed to stir, three times they heard the roar of the ice. What appears the most inert and is yet the most active and living of things, the glacier, had made the sounds. Three times they heard behind them the thundering as awesome as if the earth had broken asunder, a boom that reverberated through the ice in all directions and, as it seemed, through every smallest vein of it. The children sat, open-eyed, gazing up at the stars. Something now began to happen, as they watched. While they sat thus, a faint light bloomed amid the stars, describing upon the heavens a delicate arc. The faint green luminescence traveled slowly downward. But the arc grew brighter and brighter until the stars paled away a shudder of light, invading other parts of the firmament — taking on an emerald tinge — vibrated and flooded the stellar spaces. Then from the highest point of the arc sheaves radiated like points of a crown, all aglow. Adjacent horizons caught the brightening flush; it flickered and spread in faint quivers through the vastness round about. Whether or not the electricity in the atmosphere had become so charged by the tremendous snowfall that it flashed forth in these silent magnificent shafts of light, or whether unfathomable Nature was to be explained in some other way: after a while the brightness paled, grew fainter and fainter, the sheaves dying down first, until imperceptible finally, and again there was nothing to be seen in the sky but thousands and thousands of familiar stars.

The children said not a word, the one to the other. They remained, on and on, never stirring from where they sat, gazing intently at the sky.

Nothing particular happened after that. The stars sparkled and fluctuated, crossed now and again by a shooting star.

At last, after the stars had been shining a great while and not even a glint of the moon had appeared, everything changed. The sky grew paler, then slowly but unmistakably it began to color, the fainter stars waned, and there were fewer of the bright ones. Finally the most brilliant had set, and the snow toward the heights could be seen more distinctly. Then one horizon took on a yellow tinge, and along its edge a ribbon of cloud kindled to a glowing thread. Everything grew clear, and the distant snow-mounds stood out sharp in the frosty air.

“Sanna, it’s almost day,” said the lad.