The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo [35]
“Save the princess.”
“Ah, yes, the princess. The beautiful princess. That’s how this whole story started, isn’t it?”
“I have to save her. There is no one but me to do it.”
“It seems to be that way with most things. No one to do the really disagreeable jobs except oneself. And how, exactly, will you use a spool of thread to save a princess?”
“A rat has taken her and hidden her in the dungeon, so I have to go back to the dungeon, and it is full of twists and turns and hidden chambers.”
“Like a maze,” said the threadmaster.
“Yes, like a maze. And I have to find my way to her, wherever she is hidden, and then I have to lead her back out again, and the only way to do that is with the thread. Gregory the jailer tied a rope around his ankle so that he would not get lost.” As the mouse said this, he shuddered, thinking of Gregory and his broken rope, dying, lost in the darkness. “I,” said Despereaux, “I . . . I will use thread.”
The threadmaster nodded. “I see, I see,” he said. He took a meditative bite of celery. “You, friend, are on a quest.”
“I don’t know what that is,” said Despereaux.
“You don’t have to know. You just have to feel compelled to do the thing, the impossible, important task at hand.”
“Impossible?” said Despereaux.
“Impossible,” said the threadmaster. “Important.” He sat chewing his celery and staring somewhere past Despereaux, and then suddenly he leapt off his spool.
“Who am I to stand in the way of a quest?” he said. “Roll her away.”
“I can have it?”
“Yes. For your quest.”
Despereaux put his front paws up and touched the spool. He gave it an experimental push forward.
“Thank you,” he said, looking into the eye of the threadmaster. “I don’t know your name.”
“Hovis.”
“Thank you, Hovis.”
“There’s something else. Something that belongs with the thread.” Hovis went into a corner and came back with a needle. “You can use it for protection.”
“Like a sword,” said Despereaux. “Like a knight would have.”
“Yes,” said Hovis. He gnawed off a length of thread and used it to tie the needle around Despereaux’s waist. “Like so.”
“Thank you, Hovis,” said Despereaux. He put his right shoulder against the spool of thread and pushed it forward again.
“Wait,” said Hovis. He stood up on his hind legs, put his paws on Despereaux’s shoulders, and leaned in close to him. Despereaux smelled the sharp, clean scent of celery as the threadmaster bent his head, took hold of the thread around Despereaux’s neck in his sharp teeth, and pulled on it hard.
“There,” said Hovis, when the piece of thread broke and dropped to the ground. “Now you’re free. You see, you’re not going into the dungeon because you have to. You’re going because you choose to.”
“Yes,” said Despereaux, “because I am on a quest.” The word felt good and right in his mouth.
Quest.
Say it, reader. Say the word “quest” out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn’t it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.
“Goodbye,” said Hovis as Despereaux pushed the spool of thread out of the threadmaster’s hole. “I have never known a mouse who has made it out of the dungeon only to go back into it again. Goodbye, friend. Goodbye, mouse among mice.”
THAT NIGHT Despereaux rolled the thread from the threadmaster’s lair, along innumerable hallways and down three flights of stairs.
Reader, allow me to put this in perspective for you: Your average house mouse (or castle mouse, if you will) weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of four ounces.
Despereaux, as you well know, was in no way average. In fact, he was so incredibly small that he weighed about half of what the average mouse weighs: two ounces. That is all. Think about it: He was nothing but two ounces of mouse pushing a spool of thread that weighed almost as much as he did.
Honestly, reader, what do you think the chances are of such a small mouse succeeding in his quest?
Zip. Zero. Nada.
Goose eggs.
But you must, when you are calculating