Thumbelina

Once upon a time, in a tiny cottage at the edge of a village, there lived a kind woman who wished for nothing more in the world than to have a child. She had a garden full of roses and lavender and sweet peas that climbed the wooden fence, and she had a little cat who purred by the fire, but the cottage felt empty without the sound of a child's laughter. One day, she visited a wise old fairy who lived deep in the woods, in a house made of woven branches and moss. 'Please,' the woman said, 'I wish for a child, even a very tiny one. I would love her with all my heart.' The fairy smiled a knowing smile and placed a single barleycorn in the woman's hand. It was golden and warm, no bigger than a grain of rice. 'Plant this in a flowerpot,' the fairy said, 'water it with care, and see what grows.' The woman thanked the fairy and hurried home, her heart beating fast with hope. She filled her prettiest flowerpot with soft, dark soil, pressed the barleycorn gently into the earth, and set it on the windowsill where the morning sun would find it.

Every day, the woman watered the flowerpot and whispered kind words to the little seed sleeping in the soil. Days passed, and then a week, and then one bright morning, a green shoot pushed up through the earth. It grew quickly, unfurling two small leaves, then four, then a slender stem that reached toward the sunlight. At the very top of the stem, a bud appeared, round and tight, wrapped in pale green petals. It looked like a tulip, but more beautiful than any tulip the woman had ever seen, with petals that shimmered pink and gold in the light. 'How lovely you are,' the woman whispered, and she leaned down and kissed the closed petals. The moment her lips touched the bud, the petals opened with a soft, silky sound, and there, sitting in the very center of the flower, was the tiniest girl imaginable. She was no bigger than the woman's thumb, with bright eyes the color of cornflowers and hair like spun gold. She wore a dress made of flower petals, soft and delicate as a butterfly's wing. The woman gasped with joy and cradled the tiny girl in her hands. 'I will call you Thumbelina,' she said, tears of happiness rolling down her cheeks, 'and I will love you forever.'

The woman made Thumbelina a bed from a polished walnut shell, with a mattress of violet petals and a blanket cut from a rose petal, soft as silk and scented with summer. During the day, Thumbelina sat on the kitchen table beside a wide china plate filled with water, which was her lake. She floated across it on a large tulip petal, paddling with two white horsehairs for oars, and she sang in a voice so sweet and clear that the woman would stop her work just to listen. Thumbelina's world was wonderfully small. A thimble was her drinking cup. A button was her stepping stone. A spool of thread was a fine seat, and a folded handkerchief made a perfect blanket for a picnic on the windowsill. She would watch the butterflies through the glass and wave to the bees as they hummed past the garden. The garden itself was like a vast, enchanted forest to Thumbelina. A single rosebush was a great flowering tree. The path of flat stones was a wide road. A puddle after rain was a silver lake. She was happy in her tiny world, and the woman was happy too, for the cottage was no longer quiet. It was filled with the sound of Thumbelina's singing.

But one dark, damp night, while Thumbelina slept in her walnut-shell bed on the windowsill, something crept into the cottage. A large, wet, ugly toad squeezed through a crack in the window, her wide mouth grinning and her bumpy skin glistening in the moonlight. She had heard Thumbelina singing and decided that this tiny girl would make a perfect bride for her son. 'What a pretty little thing,' the toad croaked, peering into the walnut shell with her bulging eyes. 'My son will be so pleased.' Before Thumbelina could wake, the toad snatched up the walnut shell with the sleeping girl inside and carried it out through the window, across the dewy garden, down the muddy bank, and into the wide, slow stream that flowed past the village. In the middle of the stream sat a broad, flat lily pad, green and round as a dinner plate. The toad set the walnut shell down on the lily pad and swam away to fetch her son. When Thumbelina woke and saw where she was, surrounded by dark water on every side, with no way to reach the bank, she began to cry. Her tiny tears fell into the stream like the smallest raindrops you could imagine.

The toad returned with her son, who was even uglier than his mother, fat and brown and covered in warts, with a wide, droopy mouth. He stared at Thumbelina and croaked, 'Ribbit! Ribbit!' which was his way of saying he thought she was very nice indeed. 'You will marry my son,' the mother toad announced proudly, 'and live with us in the mud at the bottom of the stream. Is that not wonderful?' Thumbelina shook her head and cried harder, for she did not want to live in the mud with toads. She wanted to go home to her walnut-shell bed and her kind mother. While the toads swam off to prepare a wedding chamber in the mud, the little fish swimming beneath the lily pad heard Thumbelina crying. They poked their silver heads above the water and saw the tiny, beautiful girl weeping on the leaf. They felt so sorry for her that they decided to help. One by one, they nibbled at the green stem that held the lily pad to the bottom of the stream, chewing and chewing with their tiny mouths until the stem broke free. The lily pad drifted away down the stream, carrying Thumbelina far from the ugly toads.

The lily pad floated gently down the stream like a little green boat. Thumbelina dried her tears and looked around. The banks were lined with wildflowers, yellow buttercups and white daisies and tall purple foxgloves, and the sun sparkled on the water like scattered diamonds. A beautiful white butterfly fluttered down and landed on the lily pad beside her. Thumbelina untied the ribbon from her dress and looped one end around the butterfly and the other around the lily pad, and the butterfly pulled her along faster, gliding over the smooth water. For a while, Thumbelina felt almost happy. The air was warm, the water was calm, and the world slid past like a painting. But then a large brown beetle with shiny wings buzzed down from the sky, snatched Thumbelina up in his hard, pinching legs, and flew away with her into the treetops, leaving the lily pad and the butterfly far behind. The beetle set Thumbelina on a high branch of an oak tree and offered her honey from the flowers. He thought she was the most interesting creature he had ever seen. 'Look what I found!' he called to the other beetles, and they all came crawling along the branches to see.

The other beetles crowded around Thumbelina, their shiny shells clicking and their antennae waving. They looked her up and down, and then they began to whisper to each other. 'She has only two legs,' said one beetle, shaking his head. 'How strange.' 'She has no antennae at all,' said another. 'She does not even have wings,' said a third, and they all shuddered. 'She is really quite ugly,' they decided, 'not like a proper beetle at all.' The brown beetle, who had thought Thumbelina was lovely, now began to doubt himself. If all the other beetles said she was ugly, perhaps she was. 'You had better go,' he said sadly, and he flew her down from the tree and set her on a daisy in the meadow below. Poor Thumbelina. She was not ugly at all, of course. She was beautiful. But the beetles could not see beauty in anything that did not look like a beetle. Thumbelina sat on the daisy and cried a little, because the beetles' words had hurt her feelings. But then she dried her eyes and looked around at the wide, green meadow stretching before her, and she decided she would have to be brave. She was alone now, truly alone, and she would have to take care of herself.

All through the warm summer, Thumbelina lived alone in the meadow and the forest. She wove herself a tiny hammock from blades of grass and hung it beneath a large leaf that sheltered her from the rain. She drank dewdrops from flower petals in the morning, each drop as big as an apple to her. She ate pollen and honey from the wildflowers and tiny sweet berries no bigger than her fist. She befriended the ladybirds and the dragonflies, and she learned to read the weather by watching the ants. When the ants hurried underground, she knew rain was coming. She sang to herself every evening as the sun went down, and sometimes a nightingale would perch nearby and listen, tilting its small brown head as if to say, 'What a lovely song.' The days were long and golden, and the meadow was full of life and color. But even in the warmth of summer, Thumbelina was lonely. She missed her mother. She missed her walnut-shell bed and her tulip-petal boat. She looked up at the great blue sky and wondered if she would ever find a home again, a place where she truly belonged.

Then the summer faded, and autumn crept in on cool, misty mornings. The leaves turned gold and red and brown, and they fell from the trees in great rustling showers. The flowers wilted and closed. The berries shriveled on their stems. The birds began to fly south in long, dark lines across the gray sky, calling to each other as they went. Thumbelina shivered in her grass hammock. The nights grew longer and colder, and frost painted silver patterns on every blade of grass and every fallen leaf. Her little petal dress was thin and worn. She had no warm coat, no fire, no shelter from the icy wind that blew across the bare, brown fields. She wandered through the stubble of the harvested wheat field, and to her, each dry stalk was as tall as a tree trunk, and the furrows between them were deep valleys. She was hungry and cold and frightened, and she did not know where to go. Then, at the edge of the field, she found a small round door set into the earth, half hidden by dry leaves. It was the entrance to the home of a field mouse, and from inside came the most wonderful smell of warm grain and toasted seeds.

Thumbelina knocked on the tiny door with her frozen fingers, and a plump, brown field mouse with bright, kind eyes opened it. 'Oh, you poor little thing!' the field mouse exclaimed, seeing Thumbelina trembling with cold, her lips blue and her petal dress torn. 'Come in, come in, out of the cold!' The field mouse's home was warm and snug, a network of little rooms and tunnels dug neatly beneath the earth. There was a cozy kitchen with a tiny stove, a pantry stacked with grain and nuts and dried berries, and a sitting room with soft moss cushions and a warm fireplace. Thumbelina warmed herself by the fire and ate the grain porridge the field mouse offered her, and the warmth crept slowly back into her tiny body. 'You may stay with me through the winter,' the field mouse said generously, 'if you help me keep the house tidy and tell me stories each evening. I do love a good story.' Thumbelina was so grateful she could hardly speak. She swept the floors and made the beds and told the field mouse wonderful stories every night, and the field mouse listened with her bright eyes shining. For a while, Thumbelina felt safe and warm again.

One evening, there was a knock at the field mouse's door, and in walked her neighbor, the Mole. He was a large, fat creature dressed in a fine black velvet coat, and he was very rich. He owned tunnels and storerooms that stretched for miles underground. But the Mole was blind and could not see the sun or the flowers or the stars, and he did not want to see them. He thought the sun was a nuisance and flowers were a waste of time. 'Everything worth having is underground,' he declared in his deep, rumbly voice. He came to visit the field mouse often, and he loved to listen to Thumbelina's stories. The field mouse whispered to Thumbelina, 'You should be very nice to the Mole. He is the richest creature for miles around. He would make an excellent husband for you.' Thumbelina's heart sank. She did not love the Mole. She did not want to live underground forever, in the dark, never seeing the sun or the sky or the flowers. But she was a guest in the field mouse's home, and she did not know how to say no. She nodded politely and tried to smile, but inside, her small heart ached with sadness.

The Mole invited Thumbelina and the field mouse to walk through his newest tunnel, a long passage he had just finished digging between his home and the field mouse's. As they walked through the dark, cold earth, Thumbelina stumbled over something soft. She reached down and felt feathers, smooth and silky. It was a swallow, lying on the cold ground, its wings folded, its eyes closed. It looked dead. The Mole nudged it with his foot. 'Stupid bird,' he grumbled. 'That is what comes of all that flying about in the sunshine. Now it is dead and good for nothing.' He walked on, and the field mouse followed. But Thumbelina knelt beside the swallow and pressed her tiny ear to its breast. And there, faint as the tick of the smallest clock in the world, she heard a heartbeat. The swallow was not dead. It was only frozen, barely alive, its heart slowing with the terrible cold. That night, after the Mole and the field mouse had gone to sleep, Thumbelina crept back through the tunnel with a blanket she had woven from cotton grass. She tucked it gently around the swallow and whispered, 'Please do not die. Please hold on.'

Every night that long, dark winter, Thumbelina crept through the tunnel to tend the swallow. She brought it crumbs of grain and drops of water, and she lay beside it to share her warmth. She sang to it softly, the same sweet songs she had sung in the meadow, and slowly, slowly, the swallow began to recover. Its heartbeat grew stronger. Color returned to its dark feathers. One night, it opened its bright black eyes and looked at Thumbelina. 'You saved my life,' the swallow whispered, its voice weak but grateful. 'I was flying south with my family when the cold caught me, and I fell. Without you, I would have frozen.' Thumbelina smiled and stroked the swallow's soft feathers. 'You must rest,' she told it, 'and grow strong again.' All through the winter, the swallow healed, hidden in the tunnel, known only to Thumbelina. They became the dearest of friends. The swallow told her about the warm lands in the south, where the sun always shone and the flowers bloomed all year round and tiny people like Thumbelina lived inside the blossoms. 'Come with me,' the swallow begged when spring arrived. 'I will carry you there.' But Thumbelina felt she could not leave the kind field mouse who had sheltered her.

So the swallow flew away into the blue spring sky, promising to return, and Thumbelina watched it go with tears in her eyes. She went back to the field mouse's house and tried to be happy, but the world underground felt darker and smaller than ever. The field mouse had been busy planning. 'The Mole has asked to marry you,' she announced cheerfully, 'and I have said yes on your behalf. You will be married at the end of summer. Is that not exciting? You will live in his beautiful tunnels and never want for anything.' Thumbelina could not speak. She did not want to marry the Mole. She did not want to live underground forever, in the dark and the silence, never feeling the sun on her face or seeing the flowers or hearing the birds sing. But the field mouse had been so kind to her that she could not bring herself to refuse. The summer passed in a blur of wedding preparations. Four spiders were hired to weave her a wedding dress from the finest spider silk. The Mole's tunnels were decorated with glow-worms for lanterns. And every day, Thumbelina climbed to the entrance of the field mouse's burrow and stood in the sunshine, letting the warm breeze touch her face, knowing that soon she would never feel it again.

The day of the wedding arrived. The tunnels were lit with hundreds of glow-worms, casting a pale, greenish light. The wedding dress was ready, shimmering and delicate. The Mole stood waiting in his best black velvet coat, looking very pleased with himself. The field mouse fussed over Thumbelina's hair and straightened her dress. 'You look lovely, dear,' she said. 'The Mole is a lucky creature.' Thumbelina walked slowly toward the tunnel entrance, but before she went underground for the last time, she stopped and looked up at the sky. The sun was warm and golden, and a gentle breeze carried the scent of wildflowers across the meadow. A butterfly drifted past. A lark sang somewhere high above. 'Goodbye, beautiful sun,' Thumbelina whispered, and the tears rolled down her tiny cheeks. 'Goodbye, flowers and blue sky and warm wind. I will never see you again.' She stretched her arms up toward the light, as if trying to hold on to the warmth one last time. And then she heard it, a sound that made her heart leap in her chest, a familiar, joyful chirping from high above. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the sun, and there was the swallow, circling down toward her.

'Thumbelina!' the swallow cried, landing beside her on the grass. 'I have come back for you. You do not have to go underground. Climb on my back and I will carry you to the warm lands where the sun always shines and tiny people live in the flowers. You saved my life, dear friend. Let me save yours.' Thumbelina did not hesitate. She climbed onto the swallow's warm, feathered back and held on tightly to the soft down around its neck. The swallow spread its wings and rose into the air, higher and higher, until the field mouse's burrow was a tiny dot below and the whole countryside lay spread out like a patchwork quilt of green and gold. They flew south, over forests and rivers and mountains capped with snow, over sparkling blue seas and golden beaches, over villages where children played in the streets and church bells rang in the evening. The air grew warmer. The sun shone brighter. The land below turned lush and green, filled with orange groves and olive trees and flowers of every color. Thumbelina laughed and sang as the wind streamed through her golden hair, and the swallow sang too, and their two songs wove together into one joyful melody.

The swallow flew on until it reached the most beautiful land Thumbelina had ever seen. Great white marble columns stood among the trees, covered in climbing roses and jasmine. A warm breeze carried the scent of a hundred different flowers. And everywhere, growing in wild, glorious abundance, were the most enormous, beautiful blossoms, white lilies and golden sunflowers and deep red roses the size of houses, to Thumbelina at least. The swallow swooped down and set Thumbelina gently on the petal of the largest, whitest lily in the field. And there, standing in the center of the flower, was a tiny person, no bigger than Thumbelina herself. He was a young man, with delicate wings as clear as glass and a tiny crown of gold upon his head. He was the prince of the flower people, and he was the most beautiful person Thumbelina had ever seen. He looked at Thumbelina, and she looked at him, and they both knew, in the way that hearts sometimes know things before minds do, that they had found each other at last.

'Who are you?' the flower prince asked, his voice soft and musical, like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. 'I am Thumbelina,' she said. 'I have traveled a very long way.' The prince took her hand, and it fit perfectly in his, as if it had been made to be held. 'Welcome,' he said. 'Welcome home.' The flower people gathered around, tiny and beautiful, each one living inside a blossom, and they gave Thumbelina a pair of wings of her own, clear and sparkling as morning dew, so that she could fly from flower to flower in the warm sunshine. They gave her a new name too, a name in the language of flowers that meant 'the one who was lost and is now found.' The swallow perched in a nearby tree and sang its happiest song, for its dear friend had found where she belonged. And Thumbelina, who had been stolen by toads and abandoned by beetles and nearly married to a mole in a dark tunnel underground, stood in the sunshine with the flower prince's hand in hers and felt, for the first time in her life, that she was exactly where she was meant to be.

The warm days passed gently in the land of flowers. Thumbelina and the flower prince spent their time flying together through the sunny meadows, sipping nectar from golden blossoms and resting on soft petals that rocked gently in the breeze. The swallow visited often, telling stories of the lands it had seen on its travels, the snow-capped mountains and the wide blue seas and the forests where the leaves turned to fire in autumn. In the evenings, as the sun sank low and painted the sky in shades of apricot and rose and dusky purple, the flower people would gather on a great white lily and listen to Thumbelina sing. Her voice drifted across the meadow like the softest lullaby, and even the butterflies would fold their wings and rest, and the fireflies would glow a little brighter, as if her song made the whole world more beautiful.

And far away, in a little cottage at the edge of a village, the kind woman who had planted a barleycorn and wished for a child sat by her window one evening and heard, carried on the warm south wind, the faintest thread of a familiar song. She closed her eyes and smiled, for she knew, deep in her heart, that her tiny daughter was safe and happy, somewhere in a land of endless sunshine and flowers. The stars came out one by one above the quiet cottage, and above the warm meadow where Thumbelina slept in a lily blossom with the prince beside her and the swallow tucked under its wing in the tree above. The whole world seemed to settle into a gentle, peaceful stillness, like a sigh of contentment. And that, dear child, is the story of Thumbelina, the tiny girl who traveled a very long way to find where she belonged. Sometimes the journey is hard, and sometimes the world feels too big, but if you are kind and brave and patient, you will find your place. Now close your eyes, curl up small and warm, and let the soft wind carry you gently off to sleep. Goodnight, little one. Sweet dreams.