“Croak, croak, brekka krekka” was all her son could say.
Then they took the lovely little bed and swam away with it, but Thumbelina sat alone on the green lily pad and cried because she didn’t want to live with the nasty old toad, or have her ugly son for a husband. The little fish who were swimming in the water must have seen the toad and heard what she had said, and they wanted to see the little girl. They stuck their heads out of the water, and as soon as they saw her and saw how lovely she was, they thought it was terrible that she was going to be married to that nasty toad. No, that should never happen! They swarmed in the water around the green stalk that held the lily pad she was standing on and gnawed through the stalk with their teeth. Then the lily pad floated away down the river—away with Thumbelina, far away where the toad could not follow.
Thumbelina sailed past many places, and the little birds sitting in the bushes saw her and sang, “What a lovely little girl!” Thumbelina on her leaf floated further and further away, and that is how she traveled out of the country.
A beautiful little white butterfly flew around and around Thumbelina and finally sat down on the lily pad because it liked her. Thumbelina was so happy because the toad could not get her, and because they were sailing through such lovely country. The sun shone on the water like the finest gold. Then she took a sash she had around her waist and tied one end around the butterfly, and the other she connected to the lily pad. It started floating more quickly and Thumbelina too, of course, since she was on the leaf.
Just then a big June bug came flying by. It saw her and immediately grabbed her around her slim waist and flew up in a tree with her. But the green lily pad floated away down the river and the butterfly too, since it was tied to the leaf and couldn’t get loose.
Oh, dear God, how frightened poor Thumbelina was when the June bug flew up in the tree with her! But most of all she was sad about the beautiful white butterfly that she had tied to the lily pad. Since it couldn’t get loose, it would starve to death. But the June bug didn’t care about that. He sat with her on the largest, greenest leaf in the tree and gave her the sweetest flowers to eat and said that she was so beautiful, even though she didn’t look like a June bug in the least. Later all the June bugs who lived in the tree came to visit. They looked at Thumbelina, and the lady June bugs pulled on their antennas and said, “She doesn’t have more than two legs—that looks pitiful.” “She has no antennas!” said another. “She is so slim-waisted, yuck! She looks like a human. How ugly she is!” said all the female June bugs, yet Thumbelina really was so lovely. The June bug who had taken her thought she was, but when all the others said she was ugly, he finally thought so too and didn’t want her any longer. She could go where she pleased, and they flew down from the tree with her and set her on a daisy. She sat there crying because she was so ugly that the June bugs didn’t want her, even though she really was the loveliest thing you could imagine—so fine and clear as the most beautiful rose petal.
All through the summer poor Thumbelina lived alone in the forest. She braided herself a bed from blades of grass and hung the bed under a big dock leaf so that the rain wouldn’t fall on her. She plucked the nectar out of flowers to eat and drank the dew that gathered on the leaves each night. In this way the summer and autumn passed, but then winter came—the long, cold winter, and all the birds that had sung so nicely for her flew away. The trees and flowers withered, and the big dock leaf she had lived under rolled up and became a yellow, dried-up stalk. She froze terribly because her clothes were torn, and she herself was so little and thin. Poor Thumbelina! She would freeze to death. It started to snow, and every snowflake that fell on her would have felt like a whole shovelful on us since we are big and she was only an inch tall. She wrapped herself in a withered leaf, but that didn’t help, and she shook with the cold.
Right outside the forest was a big corn field, but the corn was long since gone. Only a little dry stubble stood there on the frozen ground, but for her it was like walking through a whole forest. And oh, how she shivered! Then she came to the door of the field mouse—it was a little hole under the stubble of corn. The field mouse lived there warm and cozy. She had the whole living room full of corn and a nice kitchen and pantry. Poor Thumbelina stood right inside the door like any other poor beggar and asked for a little grain of barley because she hadn’t had anything to eat for two days.
“You poor little thing!” said the field mouse, because she was actually a kind old mouse. “Come into my warm house and eat with me!”
Because she liked Thumbelina the field mouse said, “you can stay here with me for the winter, but you’ll have to keep the room spick and span and tell me stories because I just love hearing stories.” Thumbelina did what the kind old field mouse asked, and she had it very nice there.
“We’ll have company pretty soon now!” said the field mouse. “My neighbor visits me once a week. He’s better off than I am. He has big rooms in his house and wears a splendid black velvet coat! If you could get him for a husband, you’d be well taken care of, but he can’t see. You’ll have to tell him the very best stories you know!”
But Thumbelina didn’t care for that. She didn’t want the neighbor for a husband because he was a mole, who came visiting in his big velvet coat. He was very rich and very well educated, the field mouse told her. His home was twenty times larger than the field mouse’s house, and he certainly knew a lot, but he couldn’t stand the sun or flowers. He spoke ill of them because he’d never seen them. Thumbelina had to sing for him, and she sang both “Three Blind Mice” and “The Farmer in the Dell,” and the mole fell in love with her because of her beautiful voice, but he didn’t say anything because he was such a slow and steady man.
He had recently dug a long hallway through the ground between his house and theirs. Thumbelina and the field mouse were allowed to walk there whenever they wanted to, but he told them not to be afraid of the dead bird that lay in the hallway. It was a whole bird with feathers and a beak that had evidently died quite recently, just at the beginning of winter, and was buried exactly where the mole had dug his hallway.
The mole took a piece of dry rotted wood in his mouth since it shines like fire in the dark and walked ahead of them lighting the long dark corridor. When they came to the place where the dead bird was lying, the mole pushed his broad nose up to the roof and shoved up the earth so a big hole appeared, and light could enter. A dead swallow lay in the middle of the floor with its lovely wings pulled tightly to its body, and the legs and head drawn in under the feathers. The poor bird had clearly frozen to death, and Thumbelina felt so sorry for it because she was very fond of all the small birds that had chirped and sung for her the whole summer. But the mole pushed at it with his small feet and said, “now it’s not chirping anymore! It must be miserable to be born as a little bird! Thank God that none of my children will be birds, for a bird has nothing but its twitter and starves to death in the winter.”
“You’re a sensible man to say that,” said the field mouse. “What do the birds gain for their songs when winter comes? They starve and freeze as if there’s any value in that.”
Thumbelina didn’t say anything, but when the other two turned their backs, she knelt down, brushed aside the feathers that covered its head, and kissed the closed eyes. “Maybe it was this one who sang so beautifully for me this summer,” she thought. “How much joy it gave me—the dear lovely bird!”
The mole filled in the hole that allowed the light to shine through and escorted the ladies home, but that night Thumbelina couldn’t sleep. She got up from her bed, braided a little blanket from the hay, and carried it down to
