The Tale of Despereaux Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouse. You do not want to be let go. Here, in this dungeon, you are in the treacherous dark heart of the world. And if Gregory was to release you, the twistings and turnings and dead ends and false doorways of this place would swallow you for all eternity.
    “Only Gregory and the rats can find their way through this maze. The rats because they know, because the way of it mirrors their own dark hearts. And Gregory because the rope is forever tied to his ankle to guide him back to the beginning. Gregory would let you go, but you would only beg him to take you up again. The rats are coming for you, you see.”
    “They are?”
    “Listen,” said Gregory. “You can hear their tails dragging through the muck and filth. You can hear them filing their nails and teeth. They are coming for you. They are coming to take you apart piece by piece.”
    Despereaux listened and he was quite certain that he heard the nails and teeth of the rats, the sound of sharp things being made sharper still.
    “They will strip all the fur from your flesh and all the flesh from your bones. When they are done with you, there will be nothing left except red thread. Red thread and bones. Gregory has seen it many times, the tragic end of a mouse.”
    “But I need to live,” said Despereaux. “I can’t die.”
    “You cannot die. Ah, that is lovely. He says he cannot die!” Gregory closed his hand more tightly around Despereaux. “And why would that be, mouse? Why is it that you cannot die?”
    “Because I’m in love. I love somebody and it is my duty to serve her.”
    “Love,” said Gregory. “Love. Hark you, I will show you the twisted results of love.” Another match was struck; the candle was lit again, and Gregory held it up so that its flame illuminated a massive, towering, teetering pile of spoons and kettles and soup bowls.
    “Look on that, mouse,” said Gregory. “That is a monument to the foolishness of love.”
    “What is it?” asked Despereaux. He stared at the great tower that reached up, up, up into the blackness.
    “What it looks like. Spoons. Bowls. Kettles. All of them gathered here as hard evidence of the pain of loving a living thing. The king loved the queen and the queen died; this monstrosity, this junk heap is the result of love.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Despereaux.
    “And you will not understand until you lose what you love. But enough about love,” said Gregory. He blew out the candle. “We will talk instead about your life. And how Gregory will save it, if you so desire.”
    “Why would you save me?” Despereaux asked. “Have you saved any of the other mice?”

    “Never,” said Gregory, “not one.”
    “Why would you save me, then?”
    “Because you, mouse, can tell Gregory a story. Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”
    And because Despereaux wanted very much to live, he said, “Once upon a time . . .”
    “Yes,” said Gregory happily. He raised his hand higher and then higher still until Despereaux’s whiskers brushed against his leathery, timeworn ear. “Go on, mouse,” said Gregory. “Tell Gregory a story.”
    And it was in this way that Despereaux became the only mouse sent to the dungeon whom the rats did not reduce to a pile of bones and a piece of red thread.
    It was in this way that Despereaux was saved.
    Reader, if you don’t mind, that is where we will leave our small mouse for now: in the dark of the dungeon, in the hand of an old jailer, telling a story to save himself.
    It is time for us to turn our attention elsewhere, time for us, reader, to speak of rats, and of one rat in particular.
    End of the First Book



AS OUR STORY CONTINUES, reader, we must go backward in time to the birth of a rat, a rat named Chiaroscuro and called Roscuro, a rat born into the filth and darkness of the dungeon, several years before the mouse Despereaux was born upstairs, in the light.
    Reader, do you know