A woman lived alone in a neat cottage with a red roof and a box of dark earth on the sill. Each morning she watered the earth, though nothing grew there yet, and each evening she laid her hand beside the empty box, looking at it for a while. At last she went to an old wise woman, who placed a barleycorn in her palm. “Plant this,” she said. The woman pressed the grain into the soil, and by morning a green shoot stood there, straight as a pin.
By noon, the shoot had become a flower like a closed tulip, with its petals folded tight. The woman kissed the red and yellow petals, and the flower opened. Inside, on the pale green seat, sat a tiny girl no bigger than a thumb. She had bright eyes, fine hair, and a dress made from the flower’s own soft lining. The woman called her Thumbelina. At night she slept in a polished walnut shell, with a blue violet petal for a blanket, and by day she played on a plate of water where flowers floated like little boats.
One night, when the window stood open to the summer air, a broad old toad climbed in from the garden bed. She saw Thumbelina asleep in her walnut shell and nodded to herself. “My son shall have a fine little wife,” she said. Lifting the shell in her damp hands, she carried Thumbelina to the river before dawn and set her on a …
6 chapters
