A Very Cold Friendship

High in the mountains, deep winter had set in. More and more snow was falling from the sky, and now the flakes seemed to be falling all at once, in large clumps. The whole forest was buried under a knee-deep blanket of sparkling white snow.

The animals that spend all winter asleep were sweetly dozing in their dens and nests. Those who stayed awake over the winter were doing their best to find good things to eat. Some of them had changed their coats to white for the winter so that they wouldn’t be so easy to spot in the snow. The fox and the weasel had both dressed up in completely new white winter coats.

And in the middle of that white world, someone else was also standing in the middle of the forest. That someone was also white. He was a tall figure with a round belly. Where you might have expected a nose he had a carrot, and his hands were made of sticks. Unusually, he didn’t have a pot on his head, but he did have a hat made out of a small log! Two stones in place of eyes helped him look at the beautiful wintry forest around him. Yes, he was a snowman! The gamekeeper’s children had built him there while they were out feeding the forest animals with their father.

The snowman looked around, stretched his frozen body, yawned, and spoke for the first time.

“Hellooooo!” he boomed into the silence. But only a few birds sitting in the treetops were disturbed by the sudden noise. They quickly flew away. There was no one else around.

The snowman frowned. He was all alone. He tried to peel himself off the snowball he was standing on to move …