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.
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.”
43
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 the odds of the mouse’s success, factor in his love for the princess. Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains. And spools of thread.
Even with the love and purpose in his heart, Despereaux was very, very tired when he reached the door to the castle kitchen at midnight. His paws were shaking and his muscles were jumping and the place where his tail should be was throbbing. And he still had a very, very long way to go, into the kitchen and down the many stairs of the dungeon, and then, through, somehow, someway,
He leaned his head against the spool of thread, and he smelled celery there and he thought of Hovis and how Hovis seemed to believe in him and his quest. So the mouse raised his head and squared his shoulders and pushed the spool of thread forward again, into the kitchen, where he saw, too late, that there was a light burning.
Despereaux froze.
Cook was in the kitchen. She was bent over the stove. She was stirring something.
Was it a sauce? No.
Was it a stew? No.
What Cook was stirring was . . . soup. Soup, reader! In the king’s own castle, against the king’s law, right under the king’s very nose, Cook was making soup!
As the mouse looked on, Cook put her face into the steam rising from the pot and took a deep breath. She smiled a beatific smile, and the steam rose around her and caught the light of the candle and made a halo over her head.
Despereaux knew how Cook felt about mice in her kitchen. He remembered quite clearly her instructions to Mig regarding himself: Kill him. The only good mouse is a dead mouse.
But he had to go through Cook’s kitchen to get to the dungeon door. And he had no time to waste. Soon daylight would dawn and the whole castle would be awake and a mouse would have no chance at all of pushing a spool of thread across the floor without attracting a great deal of attention. He would have to sneak past the mouse-hating Cook now.
And so, screwing his courage to the sticking place, Despereaux leaned against the spool of thread and set it rolling across the floor.
Cook turned from the stove, a dripping spoon in her hand and a frightened look on her face, and shouted, “Who’s there?”
44
“WHO’S THERE?” shouted Cook again.
Despereaux, wisely, said nothing.
The kitchen was silent.
“Hmmmmph,” said Cook. “Nothing. It’s nothing at all. Just my nervous Nellie ears playing tricks on me. You’re an old fool,” she said to herself as she turned back to the stove. “You’re just an old fool afraid of being caught making soup.”
Despereaux slumped against the spool of thread. And as he leaned there, his heart pounding, his paws shaking, a small wonderful something occurred. A midnight breeze entered the kitchen and danced over to the stove and picked up the scent of the soup and then swirled across the floor and delivered the smell right directly to the mouse’s nose.
Despereaux put his head up in the air. He sniffed. He sniffed some more. He had never in his life smelled anything so lovely, so inspiring. With each sniff he took, he felt himself growing stronger, braver.
Cook leaned in close to the kettle and put the spoon in and took the spoon out and blew upon the spoon and then brought it to her lips and sipped and swallowed.
“Hmmmmm,” she said. “Huh.” She took another sip. “Missing something,” she said. “More salt maybe.” She put the spoon down and took up an enormous saltshaker and sprinkled salt into the kettle.
And Despereaux, feeling emboldened by the smell of soup, again set to work pushing the spool of thread.
“Quickly,” he said to himself, rolling the spool across the floor, “do it quickly. Do not think. Just push.”
Cook whirled, the saltshaker in her hand, and shouted, “Who goes there?”
Despereaux stopped pushing. He hid behind the spool of thread as Cook took the candle from the stove and held it up high.
“Hmmmmmph,” she said.
The candlelight came closer, closer.
“What’s this?”
The light came to rest directly on Despereaux’s big ears sticking up from behind the spool of thread.
“Ho,” said Cook, “whose ears are those?”
And the light from the candle then shone full in Despereaux’s face.
“A mouse,” said Cook, “a mouse in my kitchen.”
