Sir Rattle and the Terrible Spoon

Sir Rattle was the bravest knight in the whole kitchen.

He was a mouse, and he was very small, but he had a thimble for a helmet and a toothpick for a lance and a heart the size of a walnut, which for a mouse is enormous.

He had fought the Broom. He had faced the Vacuum Cleaner, which roared, and lived. He had once stared down the Cat for a full three seconds, which no other mouse in the house had managed, and he never let anyone forget it.

Sir Rattle feared nothing.

Except spoons.

"They're the wrong shape," he explained to his squire, a beetle called Pim. "A fork, you can see what it's thinking. A knife is honest. But a spoon? Round at one end, long at the other, and shiny, so that when you look into it your face goes upside down. That's not natural, Pim."

"No, Sir Rattle."

"And they come in drawers. In rows. Nested. Waiting."

"Yes, Sir Rattle."

Most nights this was not a problem. Most nights the spoons stayed in their drawer and Sir Rattle stayed under the skirting board and everyone was happy.

But tonight the little girl who lived in the house was having soup.

Sir Rattle heard the drawer open. He heard the clink. He peered out from under the skirting board and saw it, lying on the table beside the bowl, catching the lamplight: a spoon. A big one. The worst kind.

"Stay here, Pim," he said. "This is knight's work."

"You could just not go, Sir Rattle."

"A knight does not just not go."

He put on his thimble. He took up his toothpick. He walked out across the kitchen floor, which is a long way for a mouse, with his heart going like a drum and his knees going like something less brave than a drum.

He climbed the table leg. He reached the top. There, in front of him, was the spoon, lying on its back, looking up at the ceiling with its one round silver eye.

Sir Rattle raised his lance.

The spoon did nothing.

He stepped closer. In the bowl of the spoon, a small upside-down mouse in a thimble stepped closer too.

"Halt," said Sir Rattle, to the upside-down mouse. The upside-down mouse said it back, silently, at exactly the same time.

Then a very large hand came down, and picked up the spoon, and Sir Rattle, who had been standing a bit too close, went with it.

Up he went. Up past the bowl, past the girl's chin, past her nose, until he was level with two enormous eyes that went very wide.

"Oh," said the girl. "Hello."

Sir Rattle, clinging to the handle of the terrible spoon, with his thimble over one eye and his lance somewhere on the table below, said the bravest thing he could think of, which was, "Good evening."

The girl laughed. Not a loud laugh. A soft one, the kind you do at bedtime when you have just been given something nice. She lowered the spoon, slowly, and tipped it, gently, and Sir Rattle slid off onto the tablecloth beside a crumb of bread the size of his head.

"You can have that," she whispered. "I'm not supposed to feed mice. But you're a knight."

Then she ate her soup, with the spoon, and Sir Rattle sat beside the crumb and watched the terrible spoon go in and out of the soup, and in and out, and found that after the twentieth time it was really quite boring, and that boring is a very good thing for a spoon to be.

He carried the crumb home across the kitchen floor. Pim was waiting.

"Well?" said Pim. "Did you defeat it?"

Sir Rattle took off his thimble. He thought about the upside-down mouse, and the big hand, and the soft laugh.

"We came to an understanding," he said, and lay down on the crumb, and was asleep in a moment, the way the truly brave always are.