Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a semi-runted mouse by the name of Cinderella. It so happens that her daddy-mouse had the surname Cinder, but since he refused to take any responsibility for his offspring (there were five others), their mother gave all of them his surname. If she intended to mark her territory, it backfired, because Daddy Cinder was a very popular mouse in the neighborhood. Soon there were a lot of little Cinders in town, and her children were no more remarkable than the rest.
Mother mouse eventually got over Daddy Cinder, at least to the extent of being able to semi-successfully raise her offspring. She was a good mama, very loved. The only trouble was, she was raising a bunch of mice on her own, and it wasn't always easy to feed all those mouths. One particularly cold evening, food was scarce and the little mice were squeaking. Cinderella was sick in bed and it looked like she might have pneumonia. At least that's what Doctor PickledEar said after examining her x-rays. "See all these white opacities?" He shook his head and prescribed a bunch of antimousotics. "Make sure you finish the pellets. If you stop before completing the series, we will have to start all over again."
Mama mouse confided in Doctor PickledEar about the food situation. "I don't know what to do." She sniffled. "My children are so hungry and the cellar is empty. Cindersoot took all of the potatoes with him when he left me. I don't have anything left."
Doctor PickledEars nodded and thought. "I have contacts, let me see what I can do." He went outside. Through the window, Cinderella saw him flip through a little notebook and pace back and forth while talking on his cellular phone. After a little while he came back in and said, "I've worked it all out. One of my contacts is having a community feast down by the river. He said to let you know that the food is free, all you can eat." Doctor PickledEars gave Mother Mouse the address and waved goodbye as he ducked out the door and headed for home.
Mother mouse was in a much better mood now. She washed her face and put a little blush on her fur. She even tied a little bow in her hair tuft. Then she took five little mice, minus Cinderella, and headed out to join the feast. "I'll bring you back something as quick as I can," she told Ella.
Hours past.
When mother mouse finally dragged her sopping wet feet through the door, it was nearly midnight. She didn't look at Cinderella. Instead she bolted the door, shuttered the windows and lowered the blinds. "What's the matter?" Cinderella asked, but mother mouse just shushed her as she scurried around the house checking to make sure everything was secure. At last, she seemed satisfied. She pulled Cinderella into her arms and carried her down the stairs to the emergency tunnel. "What's happening?" Cinderella asked. Mommy mouse tucked her into a damp little bed, with scratchy bits of straw for a mattress. "I don't like this bed." She whimpered. "Cinderella, listen to me!" Her mother snapped. "I need you to stay here and be quiet. Don't come out unless I tell you it is safe to do so, understood?" Ella nodded.
Mother mouse went back upstairs. A few minutes passed, and Cinderella was drifting off to sleep when she heard a loud crash up stairs. She could hear the howling wind blowing outside. She heard mother mouse scream and start throwing kitchen pans. She heard another sound that sent a little chill down her twenty-six vertebrae. It sounded like a cross between chalk on a chalkboard and a screamed series of metallic clicks. Cinderella burrowed deeper into the itchy-scratchy straw. She put her pillow over her head and peeked out at the dimlit stairs.
Mother mouse appeared and scampered down to her. She scooped up Ella and retreated to the deepest, dampest part of the tunnel. It was so cramped that Ella lay on Mother Mouse's tummy while roots from a nearby azalea bush tickled the back of her neck. Something at the top of the stairs was digging, clicking and chewing up the boards of the staircase. Mother mouse covered Ella's mouth when she squeaked a little bit.
It was very scary, but sometime in the night, Ella drifted off to sleep. The next morning, she awoke to find herself tucked back into the bed of straw. Mother mouse was sleeping next to her. She got up quietly and tiptoed down the tunnel to the place where it turned upward. She could see daylight at the top of the stairs. She listened and all was silent. She tested the first step, and then tiptoed up. She was almost to the top of the stairs when she had to stop. There in the middle was a deep dark hole. The tunnel was wider, and the stairs were missing. Little alarm bells started going off in Ella's tiny mouse brain, and she back tracked carefully. She crawled into bed with her mommy who stirred and gathered her close.
"There's a hole at the top of the stairs," she whispered to mommy mouse. "I don't know how we're going to get out of here." Mommy's eyes popped open. "You went up the stairs?!" She snapped. "Why didn't you listen to me. I said, ' don't go up unless I tell you it is safe." Didn't I tell you that?!" Cinderella nodded. "I'm sorry mommy, but it was so quiet, I thought it would be okay."
Mommy mouse shuddered. "When it is quiet, that is when you should be most afraid. Monsters hide in the dark." Ella's eyes grew wide. "Do you think there's a monster in that hole at the top of the stairs?"
Mommy mouse shrugged, "There might be. I'm certainly not going up there to find out."
"Then how are we going to get out of here?" Ella wiggled loose of the blankets and stood up. "I'm so hungry, I could eat a frog."
"It's good to see you're feeling better." Mother mouse replied. "I may have to call Doctor PickledEars again. After everything that happened, I'll likely catch cold."
"What happened?" Ella whispered. "Where is everybody? Did you leave them somewhere else?"
Mother mouse turned her head away and didn't respond for a long time. Finally she choked a little as she said, "The monsters took them all, while we were at the feast, I barely got away. Your brothers and sisters weren't fast enough."
Little tears dripped down onto Ella's nose, and she licked the saltiness. She couldn't believe what mother mouse said, but she had never lied, so it must be true. Ella wasn't bouncing up and down on her straw bed anymore. She laid against Mother mouse in a limp little bundle and clung to her. "You're all I have left of my whole litter." Mother mouse whispered with a touch of despair in her voice. "We're going to have to stick together from now on. The good news is that it will be easier to feed one baby mouse, than six. The bad news is that we still don't have any food and we're stuck in here."
"What are we going to do?" Cinderella asked again.
"We're going to have to dig our way out." Mother mouse sighed. "It's not going to be easy, since we haven't had proper nourishment, but I did get quite a bit of food in my stomach before the monsters showed up so I'll do most of the work.
Mother mouse ran up and down the tunnel a few times, sniffing at the top of it with her nose and tugging on various roots. At last she determined the best place to begin digging. She'd found a root that was big enough to fill her whole paw. "See, Cinderella? We can follow this root and it will keep us from getting lost." She started to dig. As she dug, Cinderella helped carry piles of dirt out to the room at the front of the tunnel. Every time she looked around cautiously and over toward the stairs.
They had made quite a bit of progress, and mother mouse thought they were surely getting close to the surface when Cinderella went to dispose of some dirt and heard a clicking noise coming from the top of the stairs. It wasn't very loud, like it had been the other night. It sounded like the clicking creature was talking in its sleep. She hurried back to mother mouse and told her.
"You're going to have to do the digging now, Cinderella." Mother mouse said. "I'll carry the dirt. If anything happens to me, just follow the root. You'll get to the surface in no time." Cinderella clutched her mothers shirt and shuddered. "I don't want anything to happen to you. I can't survive out there without a mommy mouse."
"Nothing's going to happen to me." Mother mouse laughed. "Don't be a worry-wort. Start digging."
Cinderella dug and dug. Mommy mouse hauled dirt. The clicking from the stairs grew louder, and now Cinderella could hear it all the way at the top of the escape tunnel. "Hurry!" Mother mouse encouraged, "I don't know how long the stairwell will hold him off."
Not only did the creature make a lot of very horrible clicking sounds, but Cinderella could hear it digging and scraping. Mommy mouse took some dirt down the tunnel and then the clicking grew much louder. She came back a moment later. "He broke through the wall into the main room! Hurry he's right behind us." She climbed up the tunnel and started helping Cinderella dig. "Just let the dirt fall." She answered the unasked question. "We need to get out of here fast! The dirt around us is pretty soft, it won't take him long."
Cinderella could hear the sound of clicking right beneath her. She glanced down but she couldn't see anything in the dark. "Don't try to look. Just keep digging." Mother mouse squeaked in terror. She dug wildly and just then a sliver of light appeared. "Oh thank the Lord of Mice." Mother mouse widened the hole.
Someone else started helping her widen the hole, but it wasn't Cinderella. A set of paws on the outside of the hole began scraping away dirt. A large red nose appeared. Then a pair of grey, silky ears and two beady black eyes. "What's going on?" The male mouse asked.
"Here, take my little mouse." Mother mouse squeaked as she handed up Cinderella. Ella noticed he had a big round tummy and bulging biceps. He looked rather startled as he took Ella and set her on the grass. Then he reached into the hole and pulled out Mother mouse. "There's a monster in there!" She squeaked.
The big male mouse rolled a big round rock over the opening to the tunnel. "Quick, help me add some more." Mother mouse and the stranger worked together to pile a lot of rocks on top of the tunnel entrance. They could hear the critter scratching and clicking wildly in frustration at being defeated.
"You have a very pretty sword." Ella spoke as she fingered the hilt. "Why didn't you just kill the monster like they always do in fairytales?"
The strange mouse stroked his chin hairs and smirked. "I guess I could have, but I was afraid I would lose. If I lost, the monster would have come and ate you for breakfast."
"Heroes never lose." Ella pointed out. "There's no way you could have lost."
The strange mouse wrinkled his nose.
"Real life doesn't happen the same way it does in stories, Ella, " Mother mouse said, "and you don't have to kill a monster to be a hero." She smiled at the strange mouse and Ella noticed little crinkles at the corner of her eyes. "Thank you." She said to him quietly. "I don't even know your name."
"Robert Furbottom, mame." The strange mouse replied, tipping a little brown hat. "Don't thank me yet." He added. "You're not out of the woods. As long as you're here, you're in mortal peril. Do you have any friends who can take you in for a few days while you get back on your feet?"
Mother mouse thought about it, but she couldn't think of any friends who would want to help her. It might have something to do with the longstanding quarrel over Daddy Cinder and a long list of rude things she had said over the days to the other Mommy Mice. Finally she said, "I can't think of anyone. We just moved here."
Robert shrugged. "Well, we're just going to have to kill it ourselves then. I was hoping we could just move you to a new home and not have to deal with it, but its probably best if we just eradicate the creature so you can have your home back."
He pulled out his cellphone and made a phone call. "Hey, Buster, how long do you think it will take to get a team together to deal with a funnel spider?"
Cinderella could hear a high pitched voice respond, "I dunno, Robert. It's the weekend. Is it urgent?"
Robert thought so. He explained the situation and Buster agreed to get a few mangy mice together and come by in an hour. After he hung up, he turned to Mother Mouse and said, "I really don't want you hanging out here in the open. There's all kinds of birds who would love to get a piece of you." Mother mouse nodded. "Why don't you come stay at my place while we get the bug taken care of."
Mother mouse reluctantly agreed. "You'll love it," he added. "There's food." That did the trick. Mother mouse and Cinderella followed Robert through the woods, into a clearing and down into a old vegetable patch. Mother mouse gaped. "I didn't even know this place was here."
Robert grinned. "It's bountiful in the summer. Right now it doesn't look like much. Most of the plants froze last week. This week has been warmer, thankfully, otherwise I wouldn't have been up top."
They wandered between the broken and wilting vines of what used to be cucumbers, and came out in front of a wide dirt pad in front of the biggest pumpkin Cinderella had ever seen. "Come on! Let me show you. I think you'll love it." They followed Robert over to a long vine hanging over the side of the pumpkin. "Feel this!" he touched it with his paw, "It's covered in a thick carpet of fur. It's pretty warm for the feet in the winter, and it has real decent grip. So you don't have to worry about slipping off when you climb it." He beckoned them to follow as he went up the vine to the top of the pumpkin. He pulled a leaf back that draped over the vine. "Come through here. This is the only way up here. It's the safest nest I've ever built." He put the leaf back in place and lead them down a narrow set of stairs into the middle of the pumpkin.
Cinderella couldn't believe she was entering a house entirely made of food. She had to resist the urge to eat the railings as she tiptoed down the steps. The staircase quickly ended on a wide landing that lead into a large room filled with intricately carved furnishings. They weren't made out of pumpkin. It seemed that Robert might be skilled in wood crafting. There were perfect little sofas, and end tables, plush rugs and piles of books. In the ceiling above the room were little holes poked through the pumpkin roof to let in shafts of natural light. Mother mouse looked very impressed.
"You must be doing alright for yourself, to be able to afford a place like this!" She commented.
Robert nodded. "Well, actually, this was my wife's home when I met her. She died a few years back and I just haven't had the courage to move on yet." He frowned. "There's so much of her still here."
Mother Mouse groaned. "I'm so sorry. Forgive me for being so rude."
"Don't be sorry!" He quickly brightened and tugged her onward. "That was a long time ago. I'm quite okay to talk about it."
They followed Robert down another set of stairs that wound around the outside of the inside of the pumpkin to a large basement full of pumpkin seeds. "Help yourself!" Robert spread his arms wide. "I have more than I need. If you need to use the bathroom, there's a hole over in that corner." He indicated a little room in the corner. "Now let me show you where you can sleep tonight."
Mother Mouse and Cinderella each stuffed a couple seeds in their cheek pouches and followed Robert back up the stairs to the living space. "We're going to have to go up, to get to the loft." They followed him to a door behind the living space. It went into a large room with a bed and many other furnishings. "That's my room," he explained. In one wall was another door and stairs going up. At the top was a very tiny room with nothing in it but some old broken furniture and a little bed.
"I'm sorry its not much. Technically this is the attic. I can bring you up some warmer blankets and you should be able to make the bed work."
"Are you kidding? Robert, this is perfect!" Mother mouse gushed. This is a palace, all things considered. "Thank you for being so kind."
"I'm starting to think I would do almost anything for you." He grinned. He scampered off and returned within moments carrying a stack of blankets. He helped Mother Mouse remake the bed. A few of the slats were broken, but when he didn't seem to know how to fix them, Mother mouse said, "It's fine, don't worry about it. We can figure it out tomorrow."
Next Robert brought up steaming cups full of hot pumpkin juice. Mother mouse drank a lot of it with him, but she wouldn't let Cinderella have any. "It's not for little mice," she said. "Eat your seed and get ready to sleep."
After she tucked Cinderella into bed, she went downstairs with Robert to visit. It took Cinderella a long time to go to sleep, because she felt uncomfortable being in such an unfamiliar environment. At first she tried to listen in on what Mother and Robert were saying, but they were whispering and pretty soon she drifted off to sleep.
There were five other mice born with Cinderella. They are CinderMason, CinderCharlie, CinderRose, CinderGrace and CinderPolly. Sadly, all of them died when they were eaten by a coven of hungry Funnel spiders.
