#minor spoiler

Because I’ve been thinking about mice since posting the Strawberry Time teaser, and there’s a mouse scene - or rather, a whole mouse story - over here too. 

I read a long time ago (and strangely, can’t remember where) that “if you read good books, good books will come out of you.” Well, for a goodly portion of my younger years, I read fairy tales. Indeed, for much of high school, I toted around Jack Zipes’ doorstop collection of French fairy tales: Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment.

I mention this because, after I wrote this sequence, I read it aloud to a fandom friend and felt a tangible shift when I moved from the Everlark scene into the tale that Peeta is telling Katniss. I’d reread it silently a dozen times in writing/editing and obviously knew exactly where it was going, but in reading it aloud, by the time I got to the end I was crying. (And no, the ending isn’t sad.) I can distinctly remember this happening just once before: upon rereading (aloud, for a final edit) the end of Prince Peeta and the Mockingjay-Maid.

So, for what it’s worth, I guess fairy tales come out of me.

This is just a snippet of that tale and it opens kind of clunkily because it’s unfolding from an Everlark conversation. (Sorry for any confusion. :/)

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The minstrel spoke with wit and wisdom in perfect balance, maintaining the king always as his superior, even as they spoke as equals, and each night, what tales he told! Full of wonder and magic they were: talking beasts and enchanted maidens, trees that ripened with jewels rather than fruit, golden fish swimming in rivers of silk and silver doves nesting in a tapestry-sky. And when the king was certain his mind could bear no further astonishment, the minstrel would sing to his harp and lute, lulling the young monarch to sweet, refreshing slumber filled with the most beautiful dreams.

The king ached to have such a man as father and counselor and friend, and the minstrel admired the king in turn. Though his life was a wandering one, he accepted the proffered fine quarters for a fortnight – time sufficient, the king was certain, to persuade the minstrel to stay on longer still: a sennight, three months, a year.

But the dreaded final eve of the minstrel’s visit arrived at last, and no present the king could offer would sway him to remain, though his refusals were all courtesy and grace. “I shall return – assuredly, my friend,” he told the king. “But the woods and wilds call me, and I must return to their paths.”

The young king wondered, not for the first time, whether the minstrel was not in fact a king in his own right, governing all the wildwoods of the world and their denizens. For the silence of the birds at his singing seemed as much homage as awe, and now and again the king had glimpsed a snout or beak peeping out of the minstrel’s pocket or collar or sleeve, to be rewarded with crumbs and a stroke of one deft finger.

“But ere I depart,” said the minstrel, “I would share with you my deepest confidence and very greatest treasure,” and from an inner pocket of his jerkin he withdrew a nubbin of downy gray fur, no bigger than the tip of the king’s thumb – surely a willow catkin, except it bore a tiny point of a snout and shining eyes like round black beads.

A mouse, so small and perfect that the king caught his breath in astonishment.

“This is mine own companion,” said the minstrel, “dearer to me than my own flesh, and the repository of my songs and tales. Shall I demonstrate?”

The king, stunned to speechlessness, could only nod, so the minstrel set the mouse upon his shoulder, where she began, in a voice sweeter than any bird’s, to tell of a shy prince trapped in a tower by a wicked magician, with three great ferocious boars as his watchdogs, and of the crafty scullery maid who freed him with the aid of a sparrow, a pint of sour milk, a head of cabbage, and two stout sticks.

The king had never heard such a tale, neither from the minstrel nor any other, and he humbly begged the mouse for another, and another, and another, and each story was new to his ears and more wondrous than the one before.

The candles guttered and the fire burned low, and at last the minstrel rose from his chair. “I must rest, ere I begin my journey,” he told the king, though he looked far more thoughtful than weary. He had spoken little as the mouse spun her tales and now he observed the king closely, as though he anticipated a question.

And it came, as inevitable as sunrise, for the minstrel knew mice and men in equal measure, and he had watched the captivation grow on both sides these past hours at the hearth. Indeed, it was at the mouse’s own request that he had shown her to the king, and she had never spun tales for any but the minstrel himself.

“Please, may I keep her with me?” asked the king, at once plaintive as a child and shamed by this unthinkable request, for he had heard enough of the oldest tales to know what befalls those who seek another’s greatest treasure, however innocently and honestly.

The minstrel regarded him steadily, and it seemed there was something of amusement in his eyes, though his face and words were grave indeed. “She was hewn from my very heart,” he replied, “like a jewel; a pearl of great price. You could sell all you own and still never possess her.”

“I do not wish to possess her,” cried the king in horror. “I wish her to be my companion – and would indeed pay any price for that honor.”

“It will cost everything you now possess,” said the minstrel carefully. “Every stone, every thread, every plank. Would you pay such a price – more than a king’s own ransom – simply to keep company with a storytelling mouse?”

“Gladly,” the king replied without hesitation, for he had learned long ago that a palace brimming with riches is nothing compared with one true friend at the fireside.

“For all her virtues, she is a common field mouse,” the minstrel reminded him. “The stories are hers alone to give, and should she trust you not, you will have nothing for your sacrifice but a small, silent wild creature taking up space in your last pocket and eating a full share of your crumbs.”

“If she trusts me not, I would not wish her to stay with me,” the king answered tenderly, bowing his golden head to the little mouse, and as such he did not witness the minstrel’s fleeting smile.

When the king raised his face once more, the minstrel’s expression was both somber and shrewd, and it seemed that firelight danced across his striking features, though the logs on the hearth were now scarcely embers. Not for the first time, the king wondered whether the minstrel might be a powerful magician, and what the storytelling mousekin might be in her turn.

“Will you sell all you own, that this mouse may belong to you?” asked the minstrel in an eerily resonant voice, like distant thunder at dusk, balancing the precious creature in the palm of one outstretched hand, as though she were indeed the rare pearl he had described.

“I will sell all I own that I may belong to her,” answered the king softly, and this time he caught the flicker of a smile on the minstrel’s lips. “Return in a fortnight, if you will, and you will find me better than my word.”

“I look forward to it,” said the minstrel, as though they spoke of breakfast or a walk in the gardens, his firelit features and the strange resonance of his voice gone as though they had never been.