Page 92 - СКАЗКИ СНЕЖНОГО ЭЛЬФА

mum’s faint voice. ‘Could you get me a branch with new cones…
pink ones?’
Snowyflake ran up to her mum, only to see her eyes staring
at the ceiling. Mum’s consciousness was swallowed by her ill-
ness. The girl cried for a while, feeling sorry for her mum, then
got dressed and went to the forest. She thought a coned branch
would please her mum, and Christmas was supposed to smell
of a fir-tree.
The forest was cold and snowy; paths were hardly seen
through the trees, and Snowyflake was walking deep in snow.
Upper there was a quick squirrel jumping from one branch to
another. Snowyflake’s house was at the end of the village and
she often left some food on an old stump, so she didn’t wonder
at the squirrel; birds and animals were accustomed to taking a
treat from her hand. The squirrel was chattering alarmingly, as
if trying to warn the girl, but Snowyflake walked steadily, look-
ing for a fir-tree with new cones as pink as cheeks in a frosty
day. The trouble was those cones were growing on big trees,
too high to be easily reached. At last Snowyflake noticed quite
a few pink cones high on a spruce whose branches nearly
touched the ground, forming a low canopy at the body of the
tree. Snowyflake entered the fir cover, looked up and decided
to climb along the branches to get at the cones. She belted a
small axe and carefully stepped along the branches, as if she
were climbing up the stairs. The cones were nice and were
hanging, sunlit, from the branches. Snowyflake smiled, think-
ing how happy her mum would feel. She moved forward on a
thick bough and tried to chop down a small branch. The branch,
painfully shaking, bounced and tried to avoid the axe.
‘You just wait a bit,’ the girl pleaded the fir-tree. ‘You’ve got

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