The Mouse and the Great Pumpkin

Far away, on the other side of the misty hills, there lived a people of shy mice. They had made their home beneath an enormous oak for many generations already. Not one of them still remembered where they had once come from, but then again, it did not much interest them either. More than anything else, they longed for the peace and safety of their own little village.

The village mice loved stories, and they told them gladly in the evenings around the fire. Though there were more tales than any single mouse could remember, one stood above the rest, and it was told at every feast. It was the story of a great pumpkin, so huge and so orange that it held wonder and food enough for the whole village for a month.

The village mice's whiskers quivered with excitement as they recalled the treats the story described. The smallest mice dreamed of pumpkin cake and the bigger ones of pumpkin soup, though some thought pumpkin pie sounded best of all. And although the mice could have sworn they knew exactly how those treats tasted, they had no real idea whether such things had ever even existed. For the stories had come to the village long, long ago, in a time when the mice still wandered through the forests. By now no one could be sure which parts had ever been true and which had been invented.

But there was one old story that was never told at feasts. It was only whispered, and only when the frost came too early. The oldest mice remembered it from their grandmothers. There was, they said, a kind of cold that did not belong to nature. A cold with no name. It does not come with the snow or the wind; it creeps in from within. First it makes the legs heavy, then the eyelids, and at last the heart. It tempts you to rest, to give up, to sink into sleep. Those who yield to it never wake again. The old mice called it only the Darkness, and they called it softly, for they believed that to speak its name aloud would draw it nearer.

The villagers' lives did not usually hold much worry or sorrow, for most years the winter came in its time and left in its time. This year, though, the autumn had given signs of a different kind of winter, for the air had turned unusually cool while it still ought to have been warm. The mice had not managed to gather enough food into their stores by summer's end, and already those stores were nearly empty. The oldest mice looked at one another without saying aloud what they were thinking. This cold had come too early.

Every mouse felt in its heart that the food would likely not last even to the middle of winter. They had no choice but to wait and hope for the best, but the situation did not look especially promising. The longer they waited, the quieter the village grew.

Unknown to the village mice, but at the same time to their great fortune, on one especially cold autumn evening, in the living room of an utterly ordinary home, something more than the dying hearth-fire was sparking. A young mouse sat on the floor, lost in thought, watching the flames. Each rising spark seemed to carry off with it a small piece of his restlessness. The wind howled outside, and branches clattered against the windows.

The other mice usually had empty pockets, but in this mouse's pockets there was always some small treasure to be found. Perhaps an oddly shaped stone, a bird's feather, or a birch seed. He collected them because they reminded him that the world was full of small wonders, even if his own yard was familiar. Where the others longed for peace and routine, he longed to know what lay beyond the oak. Now, watching the dying fire, he felt something else as well. He did not want only to sit and wait until the cold crept into his legs too.

When the last glow died in the hearth, the mouse who had been watching it stood up and resolved to act. He wanted to set out and find the great pumpkin of the stories, the one that would save his village. He did not know where he would begin or how he would find the pumpkin, but his heart told him that he at least had to try. Waiting and hoping were exactly what that nameless cold wanted. To set out was its opposite.

The decision felt good and frightening at the same time. The mouse paused a moment at the door and tried to understand what he was really feeling, and whether he was making a great mistake. In his heart there was a warm feeling that felt like courage. But at the same time his paws were trembling, and that felt like fear. Two feelings struggled in him at once, and it confused him.

"How can I be so frightened and so certain at the very same time?" the mouse wondered. He did not know the answer. Perhaps it could only be learned by setting out.

The mouse packed the last of his food into his bag, pulled on his warmest clothes, and rushed out the door into the dark of night. In his pocket was a small, smooth stone he had found last spring at the edge of the brook. It felt comforting in his hand, and he squeezed it tightly as the cold night air met him.

He did not yet know it himself, but in that moment his own story began. That story was not only a journey to the pumpkin. It was a journey against the nameless cold. It was a story that all the mice would come to know for generations yet to come.