手袋を買いに English

The cold winter came down from the north into the forest where the fox and her cub made their home.

One morning, the young fox tried to come out of the den,

"Ah!"

he cried, covering his eyes, and came tumbling over to his mother.

"Mother, something is stuck in my eye — take it out, quickly, quickly!"

he said.

The mother fox was startled, and in a fluster gingerly removed the little paws covering his eyes to look — but nothing was stuck there at all.

The mother fox stepped outside the mouth of the den, and only then did she understand.

In the night, a great deal of pure white snow had fallen.

The sun was glittering down upon that snow, which reflected the light with a blinding brightness.

The young fox, who had never known snow, had been struck by so strong a glare that he thought something had lodged in his eye.

The young fox went out to play.

When he ran across the snow that was as soft as raw silk floss, powdery snow flew up like spray, and a little rainbow would briefly shimmer through it.

Then suddenly, from behind him,

"Thud-thud — whoosh!"

came a tremendous sound, and powdery snow fine as bread crumbs came billowing down over the little fox.

The little fox was so startled that he tumbled through the snow and fled some ten meters away.

He turned to look back, wondering what it could be, but there was nothing there.

It was only snow that had avalanched from the branches of a fir tree.

Snow was still sifting down through the gaps between the branches like fine white silk thread.

Before long the young fox returned to the den,

"Mother, my little hands are cold, my little hands sting!"

he said, holding out to his mother both paws, which had gone wet and turned the color of peony blossoms.

The mother fox breathed a warm "ha——" onto his hands, and as she gently wrapped them in her own warm paws,

"They'll be warm again in no time — when you touch snow, they warm right back up," she said,

but she worried that her darling little one might get chilblains on his hands, and decided that come nightfall she would go into town and buy him a pair of woollen gloves to fit his little paws.

The deep, dark night spread its shadow like a furoshiki cloth, coming to wrap the fields and forest, but the snow was so white that no matter how it was covered, it kept floating up pale.

The two silver foxes, mother and cub, came out of the den.

The young one tucked himself beneath his mother's belly and from there trotted along, blinking his perfectly round eyes and looking here and there as they walked.

Before long, a single light became visible in the distance ahead.

The young fox spotted it and said,

"Mother, look — a star has fallen all the way down to that low place!"

he asked.

"That is not a star,"

she said, and at that moment the mother fox's feet froze in place.

"That is the light of the town."

When she saw the lights of the town, the mother fox recalled a time she had gone there with a friend, and the dreadful trouble she had come to.

Her friend, the other fox, had refused to listen when she urged caution, and tried to steal a duck from someone's house, so a farmer caught sight of them and chased them mercilessly until they barely escaped with their lives.

"Mother, what are you doing? Come on, let's go!"

the young fox called from beneath her belly, but the mother fox's feet simply would not move forward.

So, having no other choice, it was decided that the young one would go into town alone.

"Hold out one little paw, dear,"

said the mother fox.

While she held that paw for a moment in her own, she transformed it into the hand of a sweet little human child.

The young fox opened and closed that hand, pinched it, and sniffed at it.

"How strange, Mother — what is this?"

he said, and by the light of the snow he gazed long and intently at his own hand, which had been changed into a human hand.

"That is a human hand. Now listen carefully, dear — when you get to town there will be many human houses. First you must look for a house with a round hat sign out front. When you find it, knock on the door — tok tok — and say 'Good evening.' Then someone will open the door just a crack, and through that gap you put in this hand — yes, the human hand — and say 'Please give me a pair of gloves that fit this hand.' Do you understand? Whatever you do, do not put out the other hand."

That is what the mother fox told him.

"Why not?"

the young fox asked back.

"If a human realizes the other party is a fox, they will not sell you gloves — worse, they will grab you and put you in a cage. Humans are truly frightening things."

"Hmm."

"Whatever you do, do not put out that hand — only stretch out this one, the human hand."

And with that, the mother fox pressed into the human hand the two nickel coins she had brought.

The young fox set off through the snow-lit field, making his way toward the lights of the town.

At first there had been just one light, but it became two, then three, and finally swelled to ten.

Watching them, the young fox thought that lights, just like stars, came in red and yellow and blue.

Before long he entered the town, but the houses along the street had all already shut their doors, and from the high windows only a warm-seeming glow fell long across the white snow of the road.

Above most of the signs outside, however, small electric lights were burning, and so the young fox looked at them as he searched for the hat shop.

Signs for bicycles, signs for spectacles, and all manner of other signs — some painted freshly in new paint, others peeling like an old wall — passed before him, but to the young fox, making his very first visit to town, none of these things meant anything at all.

At last the hat shop was found.

The sign with the large black silk top hat, which his mother had described carefully along the way, hung there illuminated by a blue electric light.

Just as he had been told, the young fox knocked: tok tok.

"Good evening."

Inside, some faint rustling sounds could be heard, and presently the door rolled open just an inch or so, and a band of light stretched out long across the white snow of the street.

Dazzled by that light, the young fox panicked and thrust in the wrong hand — the very hand his mother had told him again and again never to put out.

"Please give me gloves that fit this little hand."

The hat-shop man was taken aback.

It was a fox's paw.

A fox's paw was asking for gloves.

Surely, he thought, it has come to pay with leaves.

So he said,

"Give me the money first."

he said.

The young fox obediently handed over the two nickel coins he had been clutching.

The hat-shop man balanced them on his fingertip and clinked them together — ting ting — and the clear, bright sound told him these were not leaves at all but real money, so he took a pair of children's woollen gloves from the shelf and placed them in the young fox's paw.

The young fox gave his thanks and then started back along the way he had come.

"Mother said humans were frightening, but they aren't frightening at all — why, he saw my paw and didn't do a thing to me,"

he thought.

But still the young fox found himself wanting to know what humans really looked like.

Passing beneath a certain window, he heard a human voice.

What a gentle, what a beautiful, what a serene voice it was.

"Sleep, sleep,

on your mother's breast,

sleep, sleep,

in your mother's arms ——"

The young fox was sure that singing voice must be that of a human mother.

Because when the young fox fell asleep too, his mother fox would always rock him in just such a gentle voice.

Then a child's voice was heard.

"Mother, on a cold night like this, the little foxes in the forest are crying 'cold, cold,' aren't they?"

Then the mother's voice replied,

"The little foxes in the forest are listening to their mother fox's lullaby and trying to sleep in their den too, I imagine. Now then, you must hurry off to sleep as well. Let's see whether the little fox in the forest or you falls asleep first — I'm sure it will be you!"

Hearing this, the young fox was suddenly overcome with longing for his mother, and he dashed away in the direction where his mother fox was waiting.

The mother fox had been waiting anxiously, trembling as she watched for her little one's return, and when he came she pressed him to her warm breast and nearly wept with joy.

The two foxes made their way back toward the forest.

The moon had risen, so the foxes' fur gleamed silver, and in their footprints, shadows of cobalt gathered.

"Mother, humans aren't frightening at all!"

"Why do you say so?"

"I made a mistake and put out my real paw. But the hat-shop man didn't grab me — he gave me these lovely warm gloves just the same."

And he showed her, clapping his gloved hands together pat-pat.

The mother fox

"My goodness!"

was astonished, but then she murmured, "Are humans truly good? Are humans truly good?"

she murmured.