Long long ago, in the age before television, lived a woman named Jana in the mountains of Bohemia. With her lived her daughter, Holena and her stepdaughter Marushka. Holena and her mother were very lazy and always forced Marushka to do all the work. She would chop the wood, fetch water from the well, scrub washing the stream, and tend the garden while Holena would lie around on her bed eating honey cakes all day.
That may be why Marushka met all 12 months of the year together.
It was winter, the middle of January and a blizzard was raging. There was so much snow that it had to be cleared away from the doors with spades, and in the forest on the hill trees stood up to their waits in snowdrifts couldn’t even sway when the wind pushed them. People kept indoors and sat by their stoves. On such a day, toward nightfall, the wicked stepmother opened the door, saw the snowstorm raging, and then returned to the warm fire and said to her stepdaughter “Go to the forest and pick some snowdrops. Tomorrow is your sisters birthday.”
Marushka stared in disbelief, would her stepmother really send her out into the forest in the middle of a blizzard? It was so cold and dark out there, and what snowdrops would she find. They didn’t bloom until March.
“Even if you do get lost, who is there to mourn for you?” Holena said spitefully. “Go, and don’t come back without the flowers. Here, take the basket.”
Marushka couldn’t believe it, but she wrapped herself in a torn shawl and left the house. The wind tore at the shawl and threw snowflakes into her eyes as she walked, dragging her feet through the snowdrifts.
If grew darker and darker, the sky was black, and there was not a single star to peer down at the white earth below.
She came to the
forest. Now it was quite dark, and she couldn’t even see her hands.
The child sat on the stump of a tree-if she must freeze to death,
what difference would it make where she waited?
Suddenly a light
flashed far away among the trees-as if a star had got caught among
the branches. She stood up again and began to struggle toward the
light. Often, she sank in the snow, often she had to climb over
fallen trees.
“I mustn’t lose the light,” she kept thinking of herself.
The light became brighter and still brighter. Now she could catch the scent of warm smoke and she could hear the crackling of logs burning in a fire.
On she hurried at them and wondered who they could be. They didn’t look like hunters and certainly not like woodcutters-they were so beautifully dressed, some in silver, some in gold, some in green velvet.
She began to count and she counted twelve: three old people, three middle-aged, three young ones, and the last three were just boys.
The young ones sat close by the fire, the older ones farther away.
Suddenly one old man turned around. He was the tallest one there, with a long beard, bushy eyebrows and carrying a long staff covered in ice. He looked at Marushka and asked her loudly “Where did you come from? What do you want?”
The little girl showed her empty basket and said “I’ve got to pick some snowdrops and put them in my basket.”
The old man laughed.
“It’s not my idea,” Marushka replied. “My stepmother sent me here for them and told me not to come back with an empty basket.”
The twelve men glanced at her then and began to whisper among themselves. The child stood there listening, but she could not make out what they were saying; it was as though it were not people speaking at all, but the trees rustling.
They whispered and whispered and then they stopped.
The tall old man turned to her again and asked “What will you do if you don’t find the snowdrops? They won’t appear before March, you know.”
“I must stay in
the forest,” answered the girl bursting into tears. “I’ll wait
for March. It would be better to freeze to death in the woods than to
go home without the snowdrops.”
Suddenly the youngest of the
twelve, a gay fellow with his fur coat hanging over one shoulder,
rose to his feet and walked up to the old man.
“Brother January,” he said, “let me come in your place for an hour.”
The old man stroked his long beard and said “I would do it willingly, but March can’t come before February.”
“It’s all right,” murmured another old man, very shaggy, with an untidy beard. “You can let him come in your place for an hour, I won’t argue! We all of us know this child-sometimes at the river with her pails, or in the forest gathering a handful of wood…she’s one of us. She belongs to all of us, to all the months, so we must help her now.”
“Very well,” January said. “I will give up my place for one hour.”
He then passed the staff to man with the shaggy beard, who Marushka assumed was February.
February raised the staff and cried “Winds howl! Lightning Crash! Sleet and storm cause buildings to shake. North wind blow, twisting and turning like a snake!”
February then passed the staff to March saying, “It is up to thee, Brother.”
March seized the staff, struck the ground and sang “Earth awake, thaw the dirt and loam. Ants awake, leave your hidden home. Birds return to sing your song. Bears and squirrels also come along. Pool and stream melt and flow. Flowers, and especially snowdrops, grow!”
Marushka noticed that while March sang the ice on the staff vanished and it began to bud. When he was done she looked around in amazement. All of the snowdrifts and icicles were gone. There was soft, fresh earth beneath her feet. All round her she heard the ripple of running water, and the sound of melting snow. The buds on the branches were bursting and green leaves pushed out of their dark skins.
“You must hurry,” March reminded her. “We only have an hour.”
Marushka ran quickly to gather the snowdrops. The ground was thick with them and it did not take her long to fill the basket. She hurried back to thank the 12 months but when she got back to where the fire was both it and the brothers were gone.
She returned to her home and had hardly gotten back when the snow instantly came back with the blizzard blowing just as strong as before.
“Ah, so you’re back already!’ said her stepmother and sister. “Where are the snowdrops?”
Marushka didn’t reply but poured the snowdrops from her apron on to the bench and put the basket beside them. Jana and Holena were amazed.
“Where did you get them?” Jana asked
Marushka told them all that had happened. They listened and shook their heads, not knowing whether to believe her or not. It was hard to believe, but there were the snowdrops, all fresh and white, lying on the bench to remind one of March. They exchanged sidelong glances, and the stepmother asked “Did the months give you anything else?”
“I didn’t ask them for anything else.”
“What a fool, what a fool!” said Holena. “It is rare to meet all 12 months at the same time. Had I been in your place, I would have known what to ask for. I’d have asked for apples and pears from October, strawberries from July, mushrooms from September, cucumbers from May.”
“There’s a clever girl!” said the stepmother. “In the winter, strawberries and pears are worth their weight in gold. And this little fool brings nothing but snowdrops! Put on some warm clothes, my girl, they won’t cheat us with a basket of silly flowers.”
“They certainly won’t!” answered her daughter, her arms already in her sleeves and a kerchief over her head.
Jana and Holena went out into the cold following Marushka’s footprints. They were both very cold and uncomfortable. Holena especially was unused to being in the snow.
“Why didn’t I just stay in my bed and have Marushka come back out” Holena thought to herself. “I will freeze to death if I stay out here too long.”
It was then that they saw the light of a fire up ahead. She pointed it out towards her mother and they went towards the light, struggling through the snow, and finally came to the clearing. A large woodpile was burning, with 12 men sitting around it softly talking to one another.
Jana and Holena barged their way up to the fire, did not bow in greeting or say a kind word, but chose the best spot and sat down to get warm.
The brothers fell silent. The forest was still. Suddenly January struck his staff on the ground.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where do you come from?”
“From my house,” Holena replied. “You have given my sister a large basket of snowdrops. So I came, following her footsteps.”
“We know your sister,” said January, “but we’ve never set eyes on you. What is the purpose of your visit?”
“I’ve come for a present, my birthday is tomorrow. I want June to fill my basket with strawberries, and I’d like large ones too. And July could give me fresh cucumbers and white mushrooms, and August some sweet pears and apples. September could give me ripe nut. And October…”
“Wait a moment,” said January. “Summer doesn’t come before spring or spring before winter. It’s a long way to go yet until the month of June. I’m January, the master of the forest now, and I shall reign here for my full thirty and one days.”
“How disagreeable you are!” said the mother. “It’s not you we came to see at all! There nothing to get from you but snow and frost. It’s the summer months I want.”
January scowled. “Then search for summer in winter!” he bellowed.
He lifted his staff and a snowstorm blew up from the earth to the sky shrouding the trees and the clearing where the twelve brothers were sitting. One could not even see the fire for the snow, one could only hear it hissing somewhere, crackling and moaning.
The women were suddenly terrified. “Stop!” they cried. “Stop! That’s enough!”
But it was too no avail, both Jana and Holena got lost in a snowbank and froze to death.
When her stepmother and stepsister never returned Marushka realized what must have happened. She continued to work to maintain the cottage and eventually married and had a family of her own. She always kept a garden and people said that such a wondrous garden had never seen before. Flowers bloomed there before anywhere else, berries ripened, pears and apples mellowed. It was cool in the sweltering heat, quiet when storms raged.
“All the months of the year seem to visit that young woman at once,” people used to say.
They never knew how right they were.