The Snow Puddle Race

Behind the bakery was a little kitchen garden, edged with thyme and buzzing with bees. Isla lived next door, and she loved it best in the morning.

Today the garden was white. The first snow had come in the night. Isla stood at the gate in her red boots and gasped.

"Snow!" she said.

In the middle of the garden sat the old tin bath, where the bees came to drink. Snow had filled it right to the top. Isla wanted to build a snowman, and she wanted it to be a bee snowman, with a tin bath for a hat.

But the sun was coming up. Drip. Drip. The snow on the bath began to melt, and the water crept down the sides.

"Oh no," said Isla. "It's shrinking!"

She scooped a big pile of snow with her hands. She ran to the bath and plopped it on top. It melted. She scooped another. It melted too.

"Plop, plop, drip, drip," said Isla. "Come on, snow!"

Her shadow was still a few steps behind her, the way shadows are in the morning. It wobbled across the white like a slow, sleepy dog. Isla stopped and looked at it. The shadow was cool and blue, and the snow inside it was not melting at all.

"Aha," said Isla.

She tugged the bath, bump, bump, into the shade of the thyme wall. Then she packed the snow in tight, round and round, with a bee buzzing near her ear.

The bee had come for its own breakfast, a tiny purple flower. It did not care a bit about snowmen. It bumbled along the wall and sat on a thyme leaf.

Isla rolled the snow into a belly. She rolled a smaller one for a head. The shade kept them cold and firm.

Last of all, she put a blue thyme sprig on top, like a hat.

"Hello, snowman," whispered Isla.

The shadow finally caught up and stood beside her. Under the thyme, the snowman stayed white and still, and the bee went buzz, buzz, buzz.