The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo [28]
“I got the little meecy’s tail, though,” said Mig. She bent over and picked up Despereaux’s tail and held it up, proudly displaying it to Cook.
“So?” shouted Cook. “What good will that do us when the rest of him has disappeared into the pantry?”
“I don’t know,” said Mig. And she braced herself as Cook advanced upon her, intending to give her a good clout to the ear. “I don’t know.”
DESPEREAUX WAS PONDERING the reverse of that question. He was wondering not what he would do with his tail, but what he would do without it. He was sitting on a bag of flour high atop a shelf in the pantry, crying for what he had lost.
The pain in his hindquarters was intense and he wept because of it. But he also cried because he was happy. He was out of the dungeon; he had been recalled to life. His rescue had happened just in time for him to save the Princess Pea from the terrible fate that the rat had planned for her.
So Despereaux wept with joy and with pain and with gratitude. He wept with exhaustion and despair and hope. He wept with all the emotions a young, small mouse who has been sent to his death and then been delivered from it in time to save his beloved can feel.
Reader, the mouse wept.
And then he lay down on the sack of flour and slept. Outside the castle, the sun set and the stars came out one by one and then they disappeared and gave way to the rising sun and still Despereaux slept. And while he slept, he dreamt.
He dreamt of the stained-glass windows and the dark of the dungeon. In Despereaux’s dream, the light came to life, brilliant and glorious, in the shape of a knight swinging a sword. The knight fought the dark.
And the dark took many shapes. First the dark was his mother, uttering phrases in French. And then the dark became his father beating the drum. The dark was Furlough wearing a black hood and shaking his head no. And the dark became a huge rat smiling a smile that was evil and sharp.
“The dark,” Despereaux cried, turning his head to the left.
“The light,” he murmured, turning his head to the right.
He called out to the knight. He shouted, “Who are you? Will you save me?”
But the knight did not answer him.
“Tell me who you are!” Despereaux shouted.
The knight stopped swinging his sword. He looked at Despereaux. “You know me,” he said.
“No,” said Despereaux, “I don’t.”
“You do,” said the knight. He slowly took the armor off his head and revealed . . . nothing, no one. The suit of armor was empty.
“No, oh no,” said Despereaux. “There is no knight in shining armor; it’s all just make-believe, like happily ever after.”
And in his sleep, reader, the small mouse began to cry.
AND WHILE THE MOUSE SLEPT, Roscuro put his terrible plan into effect. Would you like to hear, reader, how it all unfolded? The story is not a pretty one. There is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light.
Listen. This is how it happened. First, the rat finished, once and for all, the job he had started long ago: He chewed through Gregory’s rope, all the way through it, so that the jailer became lost in the maze of the dungeon. Late at night, when the castle was dark, the serving girl Miggery Sow climbed the stairs to the princess’s room.
In her hand, she carried a candle. And in the pockets of her apron were two very ominous things. In the right pocket, hidden in case they should encounter anyone on the stairs, was a rat with a spoon on his head and a cloak of red around his shoulders. In the left pocket was a kitchen knife, the same knife that Miggery Sow had used to cut off the tail of a certain mouse. These were the things, a rat and a knife and a candle, that Mig carried with her as she climbed up, up, up the stairs.
“Gor!” she shouted to the rat. “It’s dark, ain’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” whispered Roscuro from her pocket. “It is quite dark, my dear.”
“When I’m princess