Thumbelina

Once there was a woman who longed with all her heart for a little child of her own, though she had no idea how to find one. So she went to an old witch and said, "I do so wish for a tiny child. Can you help me?"

"That's easily done," said the witch, and gave her a single barleycorn. "This is no ordinary seed. Plant it in a flowerpot, and watch what happens."

The woman thanked her, paid her well, and went home to plant it. At once a tall, lovely flower grew up, its petals shut tight like a bud. When the woman leaned down and kissed it, the flower burst softly open — a beautiful red and yellow tulip — and there, sitting on the green velvet cushion at its center, was a tiny girl, no bigger than a thumb. So they called her Thumbelina.

A polished walnut shell was her cradle, violet petals her mattress, a rose petal her blanket. By day she sailed a tulip leaf across a plate of water, rowing with two white horsehairs, and she sang so sweetly that no one had ever heard anything like it.

One night an old toad hopped in through a broken windowpane and saw her sleeping. "What a fine wife for my son," said the toad, and carried off the walnut shell, cradle and all, down to the marshy stream where she lived.

Her son could only croak, "Croak, croak, brek-ek-ek-ex!" when he saw the pretty little girl.

"Hush, you'll wake her," said the old toad. "She's light as thistledown — she could easily run off. We'll set her on a lily pad out in the stream while we make the wedding room ready."

So they left Thumbelina alone on the broadest lily leaf, water all around her and no way to shore. When she woke and understood where she was, she wept bitterly.

But the little fish beneath the water had heard everything, and they thought her far too lovely to be given to the toad's ugly son. So they gathered round the stem that held her leaf and gnawed it through with their teeth, and away floated Thumbelina, down the stream, far from the toad forever. Birds along the banks sang, "What a lovely little maiden!" as she passed.

A white butterfly came and settled on her leaf, and she tied her sash to him so her little boat went faster. But then a great cockchafer beetle swooped down, caught her about the waist, and carried her up into a tree, leaving the butterfly still tied to the drifting leaf below — and she grieved to think he might starve there.

The beetle set her on a leaf and brought her nectar, telling her how pretty she was. But when the other beetles came to look, they turned up their noses. "She has only two legs — how strange." "No feelers at all." "She looks just like a human. How ugly!" And though Thumbelina was as lovely as ever, the beetle believed them in the end, and left her on a daisy, wanting nothing more to do with her.

All that summer she lived alone in the forest, sleeping under a clover leaf, drinking dew, eating flower honey. But when autumn came the leaves fell, and when winter came it was bitterly cold. Her clothes were in rags, and every snowflake that landed on her felt as heavy as a shovelful would to us. She wrapped herself in a dry leaf, but it split down the middle and gave no warmth at all.

Near the forest lay a cornfield, long since harvested, only frozen stubble left standing — a whole forest to her. Shivering, she came at last to the door of a field mouse's snug burrow, warm and full of stored corn.

"You poor little thing," said the field mouse, who had a kind heart. "Come in and eat with me." And she let Thumbelina stay the winter, so long as she kept the house tidy and told stories, which Thumbelina was glad to do.

"We'll soon have a visitor," the field mouse said one day. "My neighbor calls every week — he's very rich, wears a fine black velvet coat. If you could catch him for a husband you'd want for nothing. Though he cannot see. You must sing him your prettiest songs." But it was a mole, and Thumbelina cared nothing for him.

The mole came calling in his velvet coat, learned and wealthy, though he despised the sun and had never seen a flower and spoke ill of both. Thumbelina sang for him anyway, and though he said nothing of it, he began to love her voice.

The mole had dug a long tunnel between his house and the field mouse's, and one day he led them through it, warning them not to be frightened by a dead bird lying in the passage — a swallow, feathers and all, that had died in the cold not long before. When they reached it, the mole pushed up a hole to the sky so they might see, and there lay the poor swallow, wings folded close, feet drawn under its feathers.

It made Thumbelina terribly sad, for she loved the birds who had sung to her all summer. But the mole only nudged it with his stubby foot. "No more piping for him. Lucky none of my children will ever be birds — nothing to their lives but tweet-tweet, and then they starve come winter."

"Very sensibly said," agreed the field mouse.

Thumbelina said nothing. But that night, when the others were asleep, she went to the swallow, brushed the feathers back from its head, and gently kissed its closed eyes. "Perhaps you were the very one who sang to me last summer," she whispered. "Thank you for your beautiful song."

Then, lying her head against its breast, she felt something stir — for the bird was not dead after all, only frozen stiff, and now, warmed, life was returning to it. Swallows who linger too long before flying south sometimes drop as if dead in the cold, and lie buried under the snow until spring.

Thumbelina trembled with fright, for the bird was enormous beside her — but she took courage. Night after night she crept down to him with soft down and a mint-leaf blanket, and brought him water in a flower petal, until at last he was strong enough to open his eyes.

"Thank you, dear child," he said. "I shall soon fly again in the warm sun." He told her how he had torn a wing on a thornbush and fallen behind the other swallows, remembering nothing more until he woke to find her caring for him. All winter she nursed him in secret, for neither the mole nor the field mouse could abide him.

When spring came at last, the swallow made ready to fly away, and asked whether she would come too, riding on his back to the green woods and beyond. But Thumbelina thought of how it would grieve the field mouse to lose her.

"No, I cannot," she said, though tears came to her eyes as she watched him go.

"Farewell, farewell, dear little maiden," he sang, and flew off into the sunshine.

Now the field mouse told her she was to marry the mole. "Such good fortune for a poor child like you!" And though Thumbelina wept and begged not to, spiders were hired to spin her a trousseau, and the wedding day was set.

On the last morning, before the mole came to carry her below the earth forever, she slipped out to say farewell to the sunlight, wrapping her arms around a small flower. "Give my greetings to the swallow, if ever you see him," she whispered.

"Tweet, tweet!" came a voice overhead — and there he was. Overjoyed to see her, he listened as she told him everything: how she must marry the mole and live always in the dark below ground.

"Winter is coming for me too," said the swallow. "I'm flying to warmer lands. Come with me — away from the mole and his dark rooms, to where the sun always shines and it's always summer."

"Yes," said Thumbelina, "I will come," and she climbed onto his back, tying her sash to one of his feathers, and up they flew, over forests and seas and snowy mountains, Thumbelina tucked warm beneath his feathers with just her head peeking out.

At last they came to a warm and sunlit country, where lemons and oranges hung in the trees and the air smelled of mint and myrtle. Beside a blue lake stood a white marble palace, half in ruins, vines climbing its broken pillars, and swallows' nests tucked at the top — one of them the very swallow's own home.

"Here I live," he said, "but this place isn't fit for you. Choose one of the flowers below, and you shall have everything you wish for."

He set her down on the petal of a great white flower growing among the fallen marble — and there, to her astonishment, sat a tiny man, as clear and delicate as glass, wearing a golden crown and shining wings, no bigger than herself. He was the prince of all the flower folk, and though he startled at the sight of the enormous swallow, he was overjoyed at the sight of Thumbelina, for she was the loveliest maiden he had ever seen. He set his crown upon her head and asked her to be his wife and queen of all the flowers.

This time, Thumbelina said yes gladly — for here was a very different husband indeed from a toad's son or a mole in black velvet. Out from every flower came tiny ladies and gentlemen bearing gifts, and best of all was a pair of gossamer wings, so that she too could fly from bloom to bloom.

"You shall not be called Thumbelina anymore," said the flower prince. "That name is too plain for someone so lovely. We will call you Maia."

The little swallow, though his heart was heavy at parting from her, sang the wedding song as sweetly as he could. Then he spread his wings and flew all the way home to the north, to a little nest above the window of a man who loves to tell fairy tales — and there he sang, "Tweet, tweet," and told him this whole story, just as it is told to you now.