“Krishna offered to the little girl mouse … the hand of the sungod in marriage … but instead she chose a little boy mouse.”
–Srila Prabhupad

The Little Girl Mouse
By Kathryn S. Gardiner

A mouse in little brown shoes and she wanted to feel love. She dreamt of it, imagined it, knew in her small, strong heart that it would be the most splendid feeling she would ever feel. She walked the streets until her shoes wore through; she walked the streets—through puddles and over cobblestones—just thinking of him.

He would be beautiful, she decided, the day she saw the king’s handsome son on his horse. Yes, he would be beautiful. He would be the prince; powerful and beautiful and they would live in gold and crystal. Their children would have his ebony hair and violet eyes and she would be beautiful, too, because he loved her.

But the prince never heeded the weather, she noticed. He never cared that his carriage splashed mud on the children playing outside their homes when the rain finally stopped. He never cared that the children’s clothes had holes.

Walking one night, the little girl mouse passed the apothecary and witnessed through the window as the bottles in his shop bubbled and hissed. “This one,” he told the old, aching farmer, “will take away pain. This one will make you see like new.”

The little mouse’s eyes opened wide and bottomless brown. He would be brilliant, she decided. She could love a brilliant man, who bent chemistry and biology to his will. She would stand beside him, hold his mortar and his pestle; she would learn the different herbs and bring them at his beckon—or seconds before he called because she would know his needs so well. She would be brilliant, too, because he loved her.

But the apothecary left his window open too late and the little girl mouse knew there was no great magic in water mixed with the same dyes that had made her shoes brown, her tattered little dress sky blue. She saw him count his money and mix his dyes and knew the old, aching farmer would never stop hurting.

She walked early in the morning when the weather turned fine. The morning sun glinted off bright metal in the fields by the castle walls and the little girl mouse peered through cracks in the stone. She saw the knights in their fine armor with their polished swords. Her little heart beat fast to look at them. He would be strong, she decided, a man able to protect and defend. A protector and a defender of the people, of the good and true. She would stand atop the battlements and watch him ride to war. Handkerchief in her tiny hand, she would wait, brave and sweet, for his return. She would be strong, too, because he loved her.

But the knights, their armor was too fine and they didn’t like to get it dented. When raiders came, they stayed inside their walls. Families with no shoes had no gold to give to repair broken blades and the little girl mouse knew then that the good and true were only protected by coincidence.

She walked mornings, days and nights. The little girl mouse found small crumbs of food and patched her dress with bits of fabric left on the tailor’s floor. She thought of the prince, the apothecary, the knights, and her little, strong heart ached. She felt love’s lack, though she’d never met it. Her stomach rumbled for food she’d never tasted and she began to think how wicked and cruel the world seemed. All the beautiful were ugly; all the brilliant were cheats; all the strong were cold. What a cruel and wicked—lonely—little world.

The little girl mouse walked through puddles and didn’t care that the water soaked through her brown shoes. She would mend them and the holes would simply come again—or she could stop walking.

Which she did, right then, as soon as she thought it. She sat down with a splash in the puddle and didn’t care about the mud turning her sky blue dress as brown as her shoes. All the beautiful were ugly; all the brilliant were cheats; all the strong were cold, and it simply didn’t matter if one little girl mouse ruined her dress in the mud.

“Why are you sitting in a puddle?” a voice asked, and she turned to see a little boy mouse as small as she, his clothes as ragged. His little toes stuck out of the ends of his black shoes.

“Because I want to,” she answered. She looked to the big, dark sky.

“You might get cold,” the little boy mouse said.

“I don’t care,” she replied. Her voice felt hard on her tongue.

The little boy mouse’s eyes glittered in the darkness as he watched her a moment. “Okay,” he said, and scurried off into the alley.

The little girl mouse glared at the sky and saw emptiness. A world gone hollow.

Minutes later, she heard the scuffle of gentle footsteps and saw the little boy mouse emerge from the dark between the buildings. He carried in his hands a thick, worn blanket, patched and patched again with different scraps. He stepped toward her with a shrug and placed the blanket on the cobblestones at the dry edge of the puddle. “You might get cold,” he said. “The mud won’t hurt it and you can keep it if you like.”

She watched him with brown, open eyes as he nodded in farewell, tipped the creased and rumpled hat on his head and disappeared back into the night.

The little girl mouse felt a tear in the corner of her left eye. The mud seeped through the holes in her shoes, turned her sky blue dress dark and dirty, and she admired a constellation of patches on a worn blanket left by her side on the road.