Fairy Tales

THE DROP OF WATER

I’M SURE YOU’RE FAMILIAR with a magnifying glass—one of those round lenses that makes everything look a hundred times bigger than it is? When you look through it at a drop of water from the pond, you see over a thousand strange animals that you otherwise wouldn’t see in the water, but they’re there and that’s the truth. It almost looks like a whole plate full of shrimp sprawling around each other, and they are so ravenous that they tear arms and legs, ends and pieces out of each other, and yet they seem happy and satisfied in their way.

There was once an old man whom everyone called Creepy Crawley because that was his name. He always wanted to get the best out of everything, and when something didn’t work, he used magic.

One day he was sitting and looking through his magnifying glass at a drop of water from a puddle in a ditch. My, how they were creeping and crawling in there! All of the thousands of little animals were hopping and jumping, pulling at each other and eating each other.

“Oh, but this is just disgusting!” said old Creepy Crawley. “Can’t we get them to live in peace and quiet and mind their own business?” And he thought and thought about it, but couldn’t come up with anything, so he had to use magic. “I’ll give them color so they are more visible,” he said, and he poured a little drop of what looked like red wine into the drop of water, but it was witch’s blood of the very best quality that costs two shillings. So then all the strange animals turned pink all over their bodies. It looked like an entire town of naked savages.

“What have you got there,” asked another old troll. He didn’t have a name, and that was the best thing about him.

“Well, if you can guess what it is,” said Creepy Crawley, “then I’ll give it to you, but it’s not easy to find out when you don’t know.”

And the troll who had no name looked through the magnifying glass. It really did look like an entire city, where all the people were running around without clothes! It was hideous, but even more hideous to see how they pulled and pushed against each other, how they nudged and nibbled, pinched and pounded at each other. What was on the bottom tried to get on top, and what was on top tried to get underneath. “Look, look—his leg is longer than mine! Snip! Away with it! There’s one who has a little lump behind its ear, a little innocent lump, but it bothers him, and it will bother him more!” and they hit at it, and they hacked at him, and they ate him because of that little lump. One was like a little maiden, sitting quite still, and wanted just peace and quiet, but then she came forward, and they pulled at her and tugged at her, and they ate her too!

“This is really fun,” said the troll.

“Well, but what do you think it is?” asked Creepy Crawley. “Can you figure it out?”

“That’s easy to see,” said the other, “It’s obviously Copenhagen or another big city. They’re all alike. A big city is what it is!”

“It’s ditch water!” said Creepy Crawley.