The Great Alta Saga by Jane Yolen

Author:Jane Yolen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504045551
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy

THE TALE:

There was once a nest of seven mice who lived behind the kitchen wall. They had been warned by their Mam before she disappeared that when they were old enough to go out of the nest, they had to go with great care and all together, not one at a time.

“For if you go one after one,” she said, “the great cat who lives by the stove will eat you up. It will catch you if It can.”

Now the little mice listened to her, but that was all she said. And so how could they be afraid of an It they had never seen? One by one, when they were old enough they crept out of the hole. And one by one they disappeared into It’s mouth. Until at last there was only the smallest mouse left, named Little Bit.

Little Bit’s turn came on a bright spring day. But he had heard the sound of It’s teeth and claws outside the hole. And though Little Bit was small, he was cunning. He peeked out of the hole and sure enough there was the monstrous It, snoring by the stove, with one eye open.

“This needs a plan,” he told himself. So he searched throughout the hole and all along the inside of the boards, until he came up with enough materials to complete his plan. He worked for many days, well into the evening, for plans take patience and time. But at last he was done. He looked at his handiwork: an army of twenty mice made from sticks and gray cotton, with raisins for eyes and string for tails. He tied them one to another and the last he tied to his own tail with a special knot.

“All home free!” he cried as loud as he could, to alert the cat. “Come on, boys!” Then he ran out of the hole hauling those toy mice behind him, lumpity, bumpity, over the floor.

Well, It was up in a single jump, certain of the fine meal ahead. And It picked off the mice from the back end first: one, two, three … but they were all stuck together. Their tails tangled in It’s claws. It howled in anger and stuffed two in It’s mouth. Phew! Phwat! Psssaw!

Little Bit ran free, as the knot slipped loose from his tail. When he got to the kitchen door, he stopped for a moment, singing out:

“I am just a Little Bit,

But I made a fool of It.

Greedy guts and greedy paws

Makes a tangle out of claws.”

Then he ran out into the spring meadow to look for his Mam.

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