The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo [34]
“Is that a bug speaking to me?” he asked.
“No,” said Despereaux, “I am a mouse. We met before.”
“A mouse!” bellowed the king. “A mouse is but one step removed from a rat.”
“Sir,” said Despereaux, “Most Very Honored Head Person, please, you have to listen to me. This is important. I know where your daughter is.”
“You do?” said the king. He sniffed. He blew his nose on his royal cloak. “Where?” he said, and as he bent over to look more closely at Despereaux, one tear, two tears, three enormous, king-sized tears fell with an audible plop onto Despereaux’s head and rolled down his back, washing away the white of the flour and revealing his own brown fur.
“Sir, Most Very Honored Head Person, sir,” said Despereaux as he wiped the king’s tears out of his own eyes, “she’s in the dungeon.”
“Liar,” said the king. He sat back up. “I knew it. All rodents are liars and thieves. She is not in the dungeon. My men have searched the dungeon.”
“But no one really knows the dungeon except the rats, sir. There are thousands of places where she could be hidden, and only the rats would know. Your men would never be able to find her if the rats did not want her found.”
“Accccck,” said the king, and he clapped his hands over his ears. “Do not speak to me of rats and what they know!” he shouted. “Rats are illegal. Rats are against the law. There are no rats in my kingdom. They do not exist.”
“Sir, Most Very Honored Head Person, that is not true. Hundreds of rats live in the dungeon of this castle. One of them has taken your daughter and if you will send —”
The king started humming. “I can’t hear you!” he stopped to shout. “I cannot hear you! And anyway, what you say is wrong because you are a rodent and therefore a liar.” He started to hum again. And then he stopped and said, “I have hired fortunetellers. And a magician. They are coming from a distant land. They will tell me where my beautiful daughter is. They will speak the truth. A mouse cannot speak the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth,” said Despereaux. “I promise.”
But the king would not listen. He sat with his hands over his ears. He hummed loudly. Big fat tears rolled down his face and fell to the floor.
Despereaux sat and stared at him in dismay. What should he do now? He put a nervous paw up to his neck and pulled at the red thread, and suddenly his dream came flooding back to him . . . the dark and the light and the knight swinging his sword and the terrible moment when he had realized that the suit of armor was empty.
And then, reader, as he stood before the king, a wonderful, amazing thought occurred to the mouse. What if the suit of armor had been empty for a reason? What if it had been empty because it was waiting?
For him.
“You know me,” that was what the knight in his dream had said.
“Yes,” said Despereaux out loud in wonder. “I do know you.”
“I can’t hear you,” sang the king.
“I’ll have to do it myself,” said the mouse. “I will be the knight in shining armor. There is no other way. It has to be me.”
Despereaux turned. He left the weeping king. He went to find the threadmaster.
THE THREADMASTER was sitting atop his spool of thread, swinging his tail back and forth and eating a piece of celery.
“Well, look here,” he said when he saw Despereaux. “Would you just look at that. It’s the mouse who loved a human princess, back from the dungeon in one piece. The old threadmaster would say that I didn’t do my job well, that because you are still alive, I must have tied the thread incorrectly. But it is not so. And how do I know it is not so? Because the thread is still around your neck.” He nodded and took a bite of his celery.
“I need the rest of it,” said Despereaux.
“The rest of what? Your neck?”
“The rest of the thread.”
“Well, I can’t just hand it over to any old mouse,” said the threadmaster. “They say red thread is special, sacred; though I, myself, after having spent so much time with it, know it for what it is.”
“What is it?” said Despereaux.
“Thread,” said the threadmaster. He shrugged