Knjigice
Fairy tale · Animal stories
The Lion and the Mouse
Aesop's fable of how the smallest can help the greatest
Also in: Lev in miška (Slovenian) · Lev a myška (Slovak)
In the middle of the wide savanna, where the grass ripples like a golden sea, a mighty lion dozed under an old acacia tree. His russet mane shone in the sun, and everyone tiptoed around him. Only a tiny grey mouse was in such a hurry to get home that she didn't look where she was going — whoosh! — right across the lion's paw. The lion opened one eye.
1
The great paw rose and — plop! — the mouse was caught beneath it as if under a warm mountain. "Don't be angry, great lion!" she squeaked. "I never meant to wake you. Please let me go, and one day I'll repay you. I promise!" The lion looked at her closely. She was so tiny that a laugh began to tickle him under his whiskers.
2
"You? Repay me?" laughed the lion, and the savanna rumbled. "How could a little mouse help the king of the animals?" But the laugh softened his heart. He lifted his paw, and the mouse darted into the grass. "Thank you!" she called back. "You'll see — a mouse keeps her word!" The lion yawned and slept again. Who would believe a mouse…
3
Then came the rains. Warm showers whispered across the savanna and the grass grew taller than ever. Under the roots of the acacia the mouse had a dry, soft nest that smelled sweetly of grass. Every day she carried home seeds and blades of grass, and listened to a deep boom-boom rolling far across the wet plain — her great friend, roaring.
4
Then the dry-season sun blazed out and the grass turned to gold. Every day the lion walked his kingdom from the river to the great rock, and in the evening he lay on its warm edge and watched the stars light up over the savanna, one by one. He didn't know that somewhere in the grass, a tiny mouse was still keeping her promise.
5
But one morning, hunters came to the savanna with a great net of thick ropes. They stretched it in the grass, and when the lion stepped into it — whoosh! — the net snatched him and swung him high into a tree. He hung among the branches, tangled as if in a basket too big, unable to move at all. The hunters went to fetch their wagon.
6
Then the lion roared. He roared so loudly and so sadly that the whole savanna trembled. Far away, the mouse lifted her head out of her nest. She knew that voice! "My lion is in trouble," she said. "Now is the time to keep my word." And she ran through the tall grass, past thorns and stones, faster than ever before.
7
The mouse climbed up the trunk, straight to the net. "It's me, your mouse!" she called. "Just hold still!" And she began to gnaw. Rope after rope, strand after strand, her tiny sharp teeth nibbled on. Night fell, the stars came out one by one, and still the mouse gnawed and gnawed, and would not stop for a moment.
8
At dawn the last rope snapped — crack! — and the lion slipped through the hole, landed softly in the grass and shook himself as if after rain. He was free! "You," he said, looking closely at the tiny mouse, "have saved me. The smallest in the savanna has helped the greatest." The mouse blushed with pride right down to the tip of her tail.
9
From that day on, the lion and the mouse were the best of friends. Now the mouse rode on the lion's mane every day, as on a golden throne, and from up there she could see the whole wide savanna. And the lion gladly told everyone who cared to listen: "Even the smallest can help the greatest. This very mouse proved it to me."
10The End
