Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm(39)

The maid heard these words clearly, leapt out of bed, and stumbled to the door. The thieves ran for their lives, as though a wild dog were on their trail, but noticing nothing, the maid went to light a lantern. When she approached, Tom Thumb slipped out to the barn without being seen. After inspecting every corner and finding nothing, the maid finally returned to bed and thought she must have been dreaming with open eyes and ears.

Tom Thumb climbed around in the hay and found himself a cozy place to curl up and sleep – he intended to rest until daybreak and then make his way home to his parents. But other experiences lay in store for him. Life is full of trials and tribulations! At the crack of dawn the maid climbed out of bed to feed the livestock. Her first task was to go to the barn to grab an armful of hay, precisely that armful, alas, in which Tom Thumb lay asleep. But he slept so soundly that he was oblivious and did not blink an eye until he found himself in the mouth of a cow that had snatched him up along with the hay.

“Dear God,” he cried, “however did I land in the gristmill!” But soon he fathomed where he was. Now he had to take pains not to land between two teeth and be crunched up, and thereafter he had to stay afloat, slithering along down into the stomach. “They forgot to put windows in this little room,” he said. “No rays of sunlight shine in, nor did anyone fetch me a night-light.” He found the lodgings altogether lacking, and worst of all, more and more hay kept coming through the door, and the space got ever tighter. Finally he cried out in terror as loud as he could, “Don’t bring me any more feed, don’t bring me any more feed!”

The maid was just milking the cow, and when she heard a voice without seeing anyone about, and fathomed that it was the same voice she had heard during the night, she took such fright she slipped off the milking stool and spilled the milk and ran as fast as she could to her master and cried, “For God’s sake, reverend, sir, the cow just spoke.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” replied the pastor, but went to the cowshed to see for himself what’s what.

But no sooner had he set foot inside than Tom Thumb cried out again, “Don’t bring me any fresh feed, don’t bring me any fresh feed.”

Whereupon the pastor took fright, believing it to be an evil spirit that had entered the cow, and he decided to kill it. So the cow was slaughtered, but the stomach in which Tom Thumb lodged was tossed into the garbage heap. Tom Thumb had an awful time wriggling his way out, until he finally managed. But when he went to poke his head out, poor lad, he was engulfed by a new misfortune. A hungry wolf came running up and gobbled down the entire stomach in one gulp. But Tom Thumb never lost courage. Perhaps, he thought, I can bend the wolf’s ear with my words, and he shouted out of the pit of the wolf’s paunch, “Dear wolf, I know where you can find a tender tidbit.”

“Where’s that?” said the wolf.

“In a house on such and such a street, if you creep along the curb, you’ll find cake, bacon, and sausage aplenty, as much as you can eat,” and told him the way to his father’s house. The wolf, not needing to be told twice, slunk along in the dark of night and ate his fill in the storeroom. Once he was full he wanted to slink off, but he had become so fat that he couldn’t fit out the door again, which is just what Tom Thumb counted on. He promptly started making a prodigious racket in the wolf’s gut, raging and roaring as loud as he could.

“Will you be quiet,” said the wolf. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

“What’s fair is fair,” the little one replied. “You had your fill, now it’s my turn to make merry,” and he started screaming again at the top of his lungs. The racket finally awakened his father and mother, who went running to the storeroom and peaked through a crack in the planks. As soon as they saw a wolf crouching within, they ran off. The man fetched an ax and the woman a scythe.

“Stand back,” said the man as they entered the storeroom, “and once I heave to with a blow that stuns him, swing the scythe and cut him to pieces.”

Then Tom Thumb heard his father’s voice and cried, “Dear Father, I’m here, stuck in the body of the wolf.”

Overjoyed, the father cried out, “Thank God, our beloved child is back,” and had his wife stay the scythe so as not to harm Tom Thumb. But he heaved to again and struck the wolf with such a mighty blow to the head that it fell dead. Then the parents found a knife and shears, cut open the wolf’s belly, and promptly pulled out their little son.

“Heaven help us,” said the father, “we were worried to death about you!”