The Tsar ordered everybody to pack up as many things as the sleighs could carry, food and clothes and cook-pots and the children’s school-books, money and jewels, tool-chests and linen-chests, cups and saucers, bed-clothes and brushes and tooth-powder, and flee from the city before the snow should bury them all alive. He himself headed the procession with ten golden sleighs, each drawn by twelve black horses. Thus the whole population of the rich and royal city climbed out of dormer windows or broken roofs, and drove through the snowstorm toward the South, where the great dark forests were. When they looked back for the last time, the snow had already covered the roofs, till only the golden tops of the church-steeples showed above it, and a few hours later even these disappeared. King Winter had sacked the city of the Merciless Tsar.
Three days and nights the Tsar and his people had to drive, before they came to a place where the snow was light enough so they could shovel it and really reach the solid brown earth underneath. That was in the great forests, where owls hooted, wolves howled, and foxes barked all night, and big bears sat up on their haunches to watch the newcomers with doubt and curiosity. The people took saws and axes, hammers and nails out of their tool-chest and began to cut down big trees and build rude log-cabins to live in.
“Build mine first,” said the Tsar, sitting in his sleigh and jiggling his feet to keep warm.
So they all labored together and made him a wooden palace, with stables for his horses and quarters for the coachmen and a big wooden terrace for his Majesty to walk on after dinner. Then they made their own houses close around, and a wall of brushwood, thorns and vines about the whole settlement, to keep the wolves and bears away.
Thus they lived for months and months in great misery. Soon all their food was eaten up, and the men had to go hunting, but they could not kill enough game to feed such a large population. Then the Tsar became quite terrified, for he knew that he must starve very soon if they found no help. Several times he sent messengers to the distant shore of the White Sea, to find out whether the snow had not melted and his city reappeared; but everyone who came back said no, the city was not to be found; you could not even tell where it had been.