Early in December, just after Timmy Cramer had started counting the days until Christmas. A great blizzard engulfed the little town of Candlemarsh where the Cramer family lived in a modest, white-frame farmhouse.
Gusty clouds of sand-sharp snow descended on the roads and trees, and the wind became a groaning presence in the eves of Timmy’s home.
At the window, the eight-year-old boy watched round-eyed and long-faced, as billowing white waves of storm swept over the landscape. No yellow school bus, no mail or delivery trucks--not even his own father’s battered blue pick-up could navigate the unplowed roads.
Dad called every day from Aunt Helen’s house, where he would be staying until the roads were made passable: Yes, he was safe. No, it didn’t look like he’d make it home for a day or two. Yes, he’d be there in plenty of time for Christmas.
This last bit of information wasn’t the least bit reassuring to Timmy, especially when the passing days brought no relief from the onslaught of snow. The boy was at once consoling and obstinate with his mother. The storm had to end sooner or later, he would tell her, but “no,” he didn’t want to clean his room or feed the cat!
Instead, he kept his vigil by the window, as the wind-whipped power lines outside snapped up and down between the poles. He wasn’t sure Christmas could come without Dad at home.
When the electricity failed, it was, strangely enough, a gradual thing. For hours the lights flickered like fireflies, blinking on and off. Then, like a rubber band stretched too many times, a vital cable sagged, and the house went dark. Mother said she didn’t know how the lines had stayed up as long as they did. She put another log on the fireplace and sent Timmy to bed.
The young boy took a flashlight downstairs. His basement room was dark and cold. Without electricity to turn its motor, the usually rumbling gas furnace was strangely silent. Timmy reluctantly eased himself between icy sheets. A shiver ran up his spine, and, on impulse, he flashed his light beneath the bed to search for the socks he’d taken off.
“Better to wear them to bed,” he thought, as the faint wand of light settled on first one stocking and then the other amongst a clutter of long-forgotten toys: A faded plush donkey with just one eye spilled its insides into the dust devils there. One solitary roller skate and a rusty tin soldier maintained a silent vigil under the bed, until the tiniest movement attracted Timmy’s attention to the farthest corner against the wall where his baseball mitt lay.
There in the palm, nestled into the webbing between the thumb and first finger, were three tiny mousekins, silky, downy gray with just a hint of pink showing underneath. Their mother’s bright eyes glittered as she nudged them out of the nest and into a hole in the wall.
Pulling on his socks, Timmy lay back and listened to the rustlings in the room. Soon his eyes grew heavy, and he would have fallen asleep had not his fingers relaxed enough to drop the flashlight. The resulting thud brought him to his senses. Fumbling around, in an effort to retrieve his only source of light, Timmy opened his eyes wide with astonishment.
Things had changed beneath the bed. In fact, the whole room had been transformed. The bottom side of Timmy’s blue-tick mattress had become the ceiling, and the boy, cowering behind one enormous, stump-like leg of his bed, found himself an unwitting witness to an amazing drama unfolding before his eyes.
Part 2
The room had changed, and somehow many days had slipped by between the time Timmy had dropped his flashlight and the moment when he found himself dwarfed by his very own bed.
“It’s only three days until Christmas,” Mama mouse was telling her children. Her bright eyes were now framed by wire-rimmed glasses, and a crisp white apron was tied firmly around her stout middle with an enormous bow in back.
Each of the three little mousekins listened intently, as their mother explained that this year the holidays would be a little different.
“Sh-h, don’t wake your father. You realize that since he lost his leg to that dreadful, hungry cat, he has not been himself. It’s hard for him to get about, yet he wants desperately to be gathering our Christmas as in years past. The more he frets, the more desperate he becomes. He is so afraid that Christmas will pass our family by. We must do something to lighten his spirits.
“Luckily, the pantry is still well-stocked. I plan to bake all of his favorite foods—crumb pudding, cheese nachos, and tunnel-of-fudge cake. But, Mousekins, getting the gifts will be up to you.”
The three little mice hopped up and down with excitement, their tiny toenails rattling on the wooden floor as they ventured out into the enormous world beneath the bed. And how vast it was!
For, although the bed had grown, along with almost everything beneath it, they, and the boy Timmy, who watched secretly from his station behind the giant post, were dwarfed by their surroundings. All sorts of perils awaited the tiny creatures, as they crept forth to rummage for Christmas treasures.
The first little mouse, being the bravest of the three, led the way through a tangle of debris. Timmy held his breath as the tiny creatures wandered through the sharp, tangled coils of his “Slinky.” Dwarfed by it himself, he now understood what it might mean should the sharp edges spring together on the tender tail or foot of a tiny mouse.
The slinky tunnel ended just on the edge of the bed, where the one-eyed donkey seemed to be nibbling at fringes of bedspread. How forlorn the little burro seemed. Timmy couldn’t remember the last time he had played with old One Eye.
Nevertheless, the mousekins were delighted. Somehow it didn’t matter to them that the creature was half-blind, or that tiny puffs of fluff sprouted from several moth-eaten spots behind his ears.
The first mouse caught hold of a bedraggled ribbon beneath the donkey’s chin and invited him to follow. All it took was a little tug.
Now the second mouse must lead the way. Being more timid than the first, he walked with his head down. He hadn’t taken many steps before he ran right into the sticky web of an enormous grape-like spider. The inky spider rolled back his lips with a ghoulish smile to reveal two glistening fangs. Timmy felt a lump rise in his throat, as the spider crept along the strand of web. Closer and closer he came to the tiny mouse.
Part 3
Suddenly, old One-Eye, stretched out his long tongue and licked a strand of web. The spider, losing his footing on the dampened filament, slid all the way down onto the floor, where One-Eye stomped on him.
Only then did the second mousekin dare look up. But when he did, he came face to face with Timmy’s rusty, old tin soldier. The battle-scarred warrior raised a creaking arm to free the web entangled mouse. Gratefully, the second mouse reached out to the soldier and invited him to Christmas dinner.
Now the third mouse must try his luck at finding Christmas treasures. He wandered back and forth, picking up a marble here and discarding it there, because it was too heavy. Then he found an apple. Papa Mouse loved apple fritters just about as well as anything.
Excited by such luck, the third mousekin began to push the irregular sphere toward home. One-Eye volunteered to carry it, but the apple, long past its prime, had become a cottage for a worm. The angry creature snaked his head out of a tunnel-like entrance and scolded mouse and donkey, until they both felt rather foolish. Backing off, they left the apple behind.
Suddenly, an eerie growl startled the mice and their new friends. Even the boy jumped, as he saw the fluorescent green of Tabby’s eyes glowing like two enormous lanterns from a far corner of the room. The mousekins huddled in terror behind the brave backs of One-Eye and Rusty.
Even Timmy crept farther behind his bedpost and waited, hoping the huge cat would not hear the loud pounding of his heart.
The fearsome creature twitched her tail, a menacing rumble sounding in her throat, as she stalked her prey in the dimly-lit space beneath the bed.
Just then, someone grown-up—it sounded like Timmy’s mother—called. “Here Kitty,” and Tabby skulked away in reluctant obedience. It was a long time before anyone dared move.
Old One-Eye was the first to break the stiff posture of terror. He blinked his good eye and wobbled a tremulous ear, as the mousekins crept out from behind him and began to gather their wits for the long journey home.
They had by now covered most of the territory beneath the bed without finding anything more spectacular than a bedraggled donkey and a rusty soldier. The third mouse leaned abjectly against Timmy’s mateless roller skate, wondering if there was any possible merit in towing it home, but unable to come up with a possible use for it, he turned away to follow his dejected brothers.
As the mousekins headed back, Timmy watched their drooping shoulders. For the second time, a huge lump welled up in his throat, and he felt a tear trickle down his cheek. Plop! It splattered squarely on a bit of One-Eye’s fluffy stuffing. And then he knew exactly what to do.
Gathering up a , Timmy puff of fluff, he patted it to his damp cheeks and chin. Other puffs went around the sleeves of his red pajamas and under the edge of his nightcap. Catching a glimpse of himself in the reflection of an old, foil gum wrapper, he practiced a jolly “Ho-Ho-Ho.”
He chuckled again as the startled mice turned with saucer-like eyes to gaze upon the very image of jolly old St. Nicklemouse. And indeed, Timmy felt very much like Santa. It was as though he had actually become that generous Christmas elf by the mere act of donning beard and fur.
Almost before you could say “Merry Christmas,” he had old One-Eye tethered to the roller skate. Enlisting Rusty’s help as driver, he mounted the makeshift “sled” and pulled the three mousekins up beside him.
Together they whisked around the remaining space beneath the bed, gathering up the most unusual assortment of Christmas gifts ever.
The piece of gum-wrapper foil, torn and rolled into beads strung on a piece of bedspread fringe became a beautiful necklace for Mama Mouse. An old wool sock, torn into strips, became four warm, red mufflers for the mousekins and their father.
The tiny creatures squeaked with delight, as Timmy continued, in his St. Nicklemouse disguise, to gather odds and ends, explaining just how each item could be fashioned into a gift.
When the roller skate sled was almost overflowing, St. Nicklemouse did something for which the mousekins could find no logical explanation. The jolly bearded elf added an old-fashioned clothespin to the top of the pile before securing the whole load with a shoelace.
But the giggling mice were too excited to give it much thought. After all they were on their way home, laden with gifts and they had St. Nicklemouse with them to pass the presents out.
As they neared the nest by the hole in the wall, Mama Mouse ran out to greet them, but Papa Mouse could hardly shuffle more than a few steps in their direction. To walk at all, he had to press his nose against the floor, supporting weight that should have been carried by his missing leg, and his poor snout was sorely blistered from previous efforts. He sat in the background, while St. Nicklemouse passed out the gifts and smiled at how miraculously the family had been provided for.
Actually, he was feeling almost jovial. The good smells of Christmas dinner wafted from the kitchen. And here were his sons recounting their adventures as though they had been to a carnival instead of all the harrowing places they described.
When Timmy awoke the next morning, he was not surprised to feel absolutely worn out. Sleepy as he was, he was glad to see that his bedroom furniture had shrunken back to its proper proportions and that the electrical power had been restored to the house during the night. The furnace room heater had resumed its usual rumble.
In a moment of curiosity, he leaned far over the edge of the bed, stretching his neck to see the yellow beam of his flashlight still glowing, however faintly, to reveal an almost clean-swept floor. Mother would be so pleased. Only the shiny coils of his slinky, a lone marble, a shriveled apple, and his baseball glove marred the comparative emptiness.
And there, in the palm of the glove, nestled into the webbing between the thumb and first finger, were three little mousekins, silky downy gray, with just a hint of pink showing underneath. Their mother’s glittering eyes seemed to wink, as she nudged them out of the nest and into a hole in the wall, beside which, Papa mouse proudly stood guard, leaning on his brand-new clothespin crutch.
Upstairs, Timmy could hear his mother talking to someone. As he mounted the steps, the voice became his Dad’s. Christmas had come to the Cramer house after all! Timmy was so grateful, he went and fed the cat.
Early in December, just after Timmy Cramer had started counting the days until Christmas. A great blizzard engulfed the little town of Candlemarsh where the Cramer family lived in a modest, white-frame farmhouse.
Gusty clouds of sand-sharp snow descended on the roads and trees, and the wind became a groaning presence in the eves of Timmy’s home.
At the window, the eight-year-old boy watched round-eyed and long-faced, as billowing white waves of storm swept over the landscape. No yellow school bus, no mail or delivery trucks--not even his own father’s battered blue pick-up could navigate the unplowed roads.
Dad called every day from Aunt Helen’s house, where he would be staying until the roads were made passable: Yes, he was safe. No, it didn’t look like he’d make it home for a day or two. Yes, he’d be there in plenty of time for Christmas.
This last bit of information wasn’t the least bit reassuring to Timmy, especially when the passing days brought no relief from the onslaught of snow. The boy was at once consoling and obstinate with his mother. The storm had to end sooner or later, he would tell her, but “no,” he didn’t want to clean his room or feed the cat!
Instead, he kept his vigil by the window, as the wind-whipped power lines outside snapped up and down between the poles. He wasn’t sure Christmas could come without Dad at home.
When the electricity failed, it was, strangely enough, a gradual thing. For hours the lights flickered like fireflies, blinking on and off. Then, like a rubber band stretched too many times, a vital cable sagged, and the house went dark. Mother said she didn’t know how the lines had stayed up as long as they did. She put another log on the fireplace and sent Timmy to bed.
The young boy took a flashlight downstairs. His basement room was dark and cold. Without electricity to turn its motor, the usually rumbling gas furnace was strangely silent. Timmy reluctantly eased himself between icy sheets. A shiver ran up his spine, and, on impulse, he flashed his light beneath the bed to search for the socks he’d taken off.
“Better to wear them to bed,” he thought, as the faint wand of light settled on first one stocking and then the other amongst a clutter of long-forgotten toys: A faded plush donkey with just one eye spilled its insides into the dust devils there. One solitary roller skate and a rusty tin soldier maintained a silent vigil under the bed, until the tiniest movement attracted Timmy’s attention to the farthest corner against the wall where his baseball mitt lay.
There in the palm, nestled into the webbing between the thumb and first finger, were three tiny mousekins, silky, downy gray with just a hint of pink showing underneath. Their mother’s bright eyes glittered as she nudged them out of the nest and into a hole in the wall.
Pulling on his socks, Timmy lay back and listened to the rustlings in the room. Soon his eyes grew heavy, and he would have fallen asleep had not his fingers relaxed enough to drop the flashlight. The resulting thud brought him to his senses. Fumbling around, in an effort to retrieve his only source of light, Timmy opened his eyes wide with astonishment.
Things had changed beneath the bed. In fact, the whole room had been transformed. The bottom side of Timmy’s blue-tick mattress had become the ceiling, and the boy, cowering behind one enormous, stump-like leg of his bed, found himself an unwitting witness to an amazing drama unfolding before his eyes.
Part 2
The room had changed, and somehow many days had slipped by between the time Timmy had dropped his flashlight and the moment when he found himself dwarfed by his very own bed.
“It’s only three days until Christmas,” Mama mouse was telling her children. Her bright eyes were now framed by wire-rimmed glasses, and a crisp white apron was tied firmly around her stout middle with an enormous bow in back.
Each of the three little mousekins listened intently, as their mother explained that this year the holidays would be a little different.
“Sh-h, don’t wake your father. You realize that since he lost his leg to that dreadful, hungry cat, he has not been himself. It’s hard for him to get about, yet he wants desperately to be gathering our Christmas as in years past. The more he frets, the more desperate he becomes. He is so afraid that Christmas will pass our family by. We must do something to lighten his spirits.
“Luckily, the pantry is still well-stocked. I plan to bake all of his favorite foods—crumb pudding, cheese nachos, and tunnel-of-fudge cake. But, Mousekins, getting the gifts will be up to you.”
The three little mice hopped up and down with excitement, their tiny toenails rattling on the wooden floor as they ventured out into the enormous world beneath the bed. And how vast it was!
For, although the bed had grown, along with almost everything beneath it, they, and the boy Timmy, who watched secretly from his station behind the giant post, were dwarfed by their surroundings. All sorts of perils awaited the tiny creatures, as they crept forth to rummage for Christmas treasures.
The first little mouse, being the bravest of the three, led the way through a tangle of debris. Timmy held his breath as the tiny creatures wandered through the sharp, tangled coils of his “Slinky.” Dwarfed by it himself, he now understood what it might mean should the sharp edges spring together on the tender tail or foot of a tiny mouse.
The slinky tunnel ended just on the edge of the bed, where the one-eyed donkey seemed to be nibbling at fringes of bedspread. How forlorn the little burro seemed. Timmy couldn’t remember the last time he had played with old One Eye.
Nevertheless, the mousekins were delighted. Somehow it didn’t matter to them that the creature was half-blind, or that tiny puffs of fluff sprouted from several moth-eaten spots behind his ears.
The first mouse caught hold of a bedraggled ribbon beneath the donkey’s chin and invited him to follow. All it took was a little tug.
Now the second mouse must lead the way. Being more timid than the first, he walked with his head down. He hadn’t taken many steps before he ran right into the sticky web of an enormous grape-like spider. The inky spider rolled back his lips with a ghoulish smile to reveal two glistening fangs. Timmy felt a lump rise in his throat, as the spider crept along the strand of web. Closer and closer he came to the tiny mouse.
Part 4
Suddenly, old One-Eye, stretched out his long tongue and licked a strand of web. The spider, losing his footing on the dampened filament, slid all the way down onto the floor, where One-Eye stomped on him.
Only then did the second mousekin dare look up. But when he did, he came face to face with Timmy’s rusty, old tin soldier. The battle-scarred warrior raised a creaking arm to free the web entangled mouse. Gratefully, the second mouse reached out to the soldier and invited him to Christmas dinner.
Now the third mouse must try his luck at finding Christmas treasures. He wandered back and forth, picking up a marble here and discarding it there, because it was too heavy. Then he found an apple. Papa Mouse loved apple fritters just about as well as anything.
Excited by such luck, the third mousekin began to push the irregular sphere toward home. One-Eye volunteered to carry it, but the apple, long past its prime, had become a cottage for a worm. The angry creature snaked his head out of a tunnel-like entrance and scolded mouse and donkey, until they both felt rather foolish. Backing off, they left the apple behind.
Suddenly, an eerie growl startled the mice and their new friends. Even the boy jumped, as he saw the fluorescent green of Tabby’s eyes glowing like two enormous lanterns from a far corner of the room. The mousekins huddled in terror behind the brave backs of One-Eye and Rusty.
Even Timmy crept farther behind his bedpost and waited, hoping the huge cat would not hear the loud pounding of his heart.
The fearsome creature twitched her tail, a menacing rumble sounding in her throat, as she stalked her prey in the dimly-lit space beneath the bed.
Just then, someone grown-up—it sounded like Timmy’s mother—called. “Here Kitty,” and Tabby skulked away in reluctant obedience. It was a long time before anyone dared move.
Old One-Eye was the first to break the stiff posture of terror. He blinked his good eye and wobbled a tremulous ear, as the mousekins crept out from behind him and began to gather their wits for the long journey home.
They had by now covered most of the territory beneath the bed without finding anything more spectacular than a bedraggled donkey and a rusty soldier. The third mouse leaned abjectly against Timmy’s mateless roller skate, wondering if there was any possible merit in towing it home, but unable to come up with a possible use for it, he turned away to follow his dejected brothers.
As the mousekins headed back, Timmy watched their drooping shoulders. For the second time, a huge lump welled up in his throat, and he felt a tear trickle down his cheek. Plop! It splattered squarely on a bit of One-Eye’s fluffy stuffing. And then he knew exactly what to do.
Gathering up a , Timmy puff of fluff, he patted it to his damp cheeks and chin. Other puffs went around the sleeves of his red pajamas and under the edge of his nightcap. Catching a glimpse of himself in the reflection of an old, foil gum wrapper, he practiced a jolly “Ho-Ho-Ho.”
He chuckled again as the startled mice turned with saucer-like eyes to gaze upon the very image of jolly old St. Nicklemouse. And indeed, Timmy felt very much like Santa. It was as though he had actually become that generous Christmas elf by the mere act of donning beard and fur.
Almost before you could say “Merry Christmas,” he had old One-Eye tethered to the roller skate. Enlisting Rusty’s help as driver, he mounted the makeshift “sled” and pulled the three mousekins up beside him.
Together they whisked around the remaining space beneath the bed, gathering up the most unusual assortment of Christmas gifts ever.
The piece of gum-wrapper foil, torn and rolled into beads strung on a piece of bedspread fringe became a beautiful necklace for Mama Mouse. An old wool sock, torn into strips, became four warm, red mufflers for the mousekins and their father.
The tiny creatures squeaked with delight, as Timmy continued, in his St. Nicklemouse disguise, to gather odds and ends, explaining just how each item could be fashioned into a gift.
When the roller skate sled was almost overflowing, St. Nicklemouse did something for which the mousekins could find no logical explanation. The jolly bearded elf added an old-fashioned clothespin to the top of the pile before securing the whole load with a shoelace.
But the giggling mice were too excited to give it much thought. After all they were on their way home, laden with gifts and they had St. Nicklemouse with them to pass the presents out.
As they neared the nest by the hole in the wall, Mama Mouse ran out to greet them, but Papa Mouse could hardly shuffle more than a few steps in their direction. To walk at all, he had to press his nose against the floor, supporting weight that should have been carried by his missing leg, and his poor snout was sorely blistered from previous efforts. He sat in the background, while St. Nicklemouse passed out the gifts and smiled at how miraculously the family had been provided for.
Actually, he was feeling almost jovial. The good smells of Christmas dinner wafted from the kitchen. And here were his sons recounting their adventures as though they had been to a carnival instead of all the harrowing places they described.
When Timmy awoke the next morning, he was not surprised to feel absolutely worn out. Sleepy as he was, he was glad to see that his bedroom furniture had shrunken back to its proper proportions and that the electrical power had been restored to the house during the night. The furnace room heater had resumed its usual rumble.
In a moment of curiosity, he leaned far over the edge of the bed, stretching his neck to see the yellow beam of his flashlight still glowing, however faintly, to reveal an almost clean-swept floor. Mother would be so pleased. Only the shiny coils of his slinky, a lone marble, a shriveled apple, and his baseball glove marred the comparative emptiness.
And there, in the palm of the glove, nestled into the webbing between the thumb and first finger, were three little mousekins, silky downy gray, with just a hint of pink showing underneath. Their mother’s glittering eyes seemed to wink, as she nudged them out of the nest and into a hole in the wall, beside which, Papa mouse proudly stood guard, leaning on his brand-new clothespin crutch.
Upstairs, Timmy could hear his mother talking to someone. As he mounted the steps, the voice became his Dad’s. Christmas had come to the Cramer house after all! Timmy was so grateful, he went and fed the cat.
