At the edge of a wide wood stood a cottage with a bent chimney and a patch of beans climbing up the wall. A woodcutter and his wife lived there, and though they were poor, their table was always swept and their bread was shared. When evening came, they sat close together by the fire. For many years they had wished for a child, and one winter morning, when frost lay white on the bucket by the well, their wish was answered. They had a son no bigger than a thumb, and because of that, they called him Tom Thumb.
Tom was so small that he could sleep in a walnut shell lined with wool, yet there was nothing little about his voice or his mind. He climbed the table leg as if it were an oak tree, rode in his father's hat, and knew the creak of every floorboard in the cottage. One morning, the woodcutter tied up a bundle of sticks and said, “I must take the cart to the forest, but no one is here to guide the horse.” Tom stood on the bread board and called, “Put me in the horse’s ear, Father, and I will tell him where to go.”
His mother shook her head at first, but Tom laughed, and his father lifted him with two careful fingers. Tom sat in the horse’s ear like a rider in a high brown tower. “Gee now,” he cried, and then, “Haw there,” and the horse stepped …
6 chapters
