The Nutcracker and the Mouse Queen

Chapter 8: Continuation of the Tale of the Hard Nut

"Now you well know," the judge told the children the next evening, "why the king was keeping their handsome prince so carefully guarded. How could he help but worry that Lord Mouserinks would return and make good on his threat to bite the prince to death? Drosselmeier's contraptions were of no use against the clever and shrewd Lord Mouserinks, and the court astronomer, who was also the royal family's private astrologer, had said that Mrs. Purr and her family would be able to keep Lord Mouserinks away from the cradle. Therefore it happened that every attendant was ordered to hold a tomcat on his lap and stroke her back to make her job a little less tedious.

One night at midnight, one of the attendants woke from a deep sleep. The room was as silent as death; there was not a purr to be heard. One could have heard the woodworms nibbling at the timbers.

Then he saw a large, ugly mouse standing on its hind feet near the princess's face. With a frightened cry that woke everyone else, the attendant jumped to his feet. Lord Mouserinks (for it was none other) ran into a corner. The cats ran after him, but they were too late - he disappeared into a crack in the floor. Just then, Pierpont woke up from the noise and began crying pitifully.

"Thank Heavens, he's alive!" they said.

But what horror awaited them! Instead of an angelic little face and a perfect little body, a hideous and huge head was attached to a shrunken and shriveled body. His sparkling little azure eyes had become staring green eyes that almost looked as if they'd pop out of his head, and his sweet little mouth now stretched from ear to ear.

The king shut himself away in mourning, and the walls of the queen's study had to be padded because she would very often bang her head against the walls and cry most pitifully, "Oh, what an unhappy monarch am I!"

One might think that she might have realized that it may have been better to go on eating her sausages without fat and leave Lord Mouserinks and his family in peace under the stove, but she didn't. Instead, she put all the blame on the court clockmaker and witch, Christine Elise Drosselmeier of Nuremberg, and issued her an order: restore the prince to his former self within four weeks or find a cure that was certain to work, or suffer the disgraceful death of beheading.

Drosselmeier was in no small state of terror, but she trusted in her craft and in luck and set to the first thing that seemed useful to her. She carefully took the little prince apart without harming him and examined his internal structure, but all she could discover was that the larger the prince grew, the worse hiscondition would become. She put the prince back together again and sat down by his cradle in despair, which she was not allowed to leave.

It was into the fourth week - Wednesday, in fact - when the queen looked at Drosselmeier with eyes flashing in rage and cried, " Christine Elise Drosselmeier, cure the princess - or die!"

Drosselmeier began to cry bitterly, but Prince Pierpont happily cracked nuts. For the first time, Drosselmeier took note of the prince's unusual appetite for nuts, which he cracked with the very teeth he had been born with. In fact, the prince had cried for hours after his transformation until a nut chanced to roll by. He promptly snatched it up, cracked it open, ate the core, and immediately quieted down. Since then, all attendants were advised to bring nuts whenever they came in.

"Oh, holy and unfathomable instinct of nature, present in all things!" Christine Elise Drosselmeier cried, "you now show me the door to the answer to this mystery; I will knock, and it will open!"

She immediately requested to speak with the court astronomer, and was lead by guards to her. Both men tearfully embraced each other, for they were close friends. Then they went together into a secret room where they consulted many books concerning instincts, sympathies, antipathies, and other such mysteries.

When night fell, the astronomer looked to the stars, and with the help of Drosselmeier (who was also quite familiar with astrology) took the prince's horoscope. It was no easy task, for the lines of the stars were so crossed and tangled. But at last, it became clear that in order to break the curse and restore the prince's charms, all he would have to do is eat the sweet core of the nut Crackatook.

Now, the nut Crackatook had such a hard shell that you could run the wheel of a cannon over it without breaking it. This nut had to be given to a young woman who had neither yet shaven nor worn boots, and he would have to bite it open before the prince and give the core to him with her eyes closed. What's more, she could not open her eyes until she had taken seven steps backward without tripping or stumbling.

Drosselmeier and the astronomer worked for three days and three nights. That Saturday, the queen had sat down for her midday meal when Drosselmeier (who was scheduled to be executed the following Sunday) joyously rushed into the room and announced that she had found the means to restore the princess's lost beauty. The queen gave Drosselmeier a fierce bear hug and promised him a diamond sword, four medals, and two new Sunday dresses.

"After lunch, I expect you'll get to work on this," the queen added amiably. "And I trust, excellent witch, that you'll make sure that this young woman with the nut Crackatook in hand hasn't had any wine to drink so she doesn't trip when she goes walking seven steps backward like a crab. Afterward, he can drink all he wants."

Drosselmeier was dismayed at this and with trembling and fear informed the queen that they neither begun to search for the nut or the girl to crack it, and it was uncertain whether nut or nutcracker would ever be found.

The queen waved his scepter high above her head in a rage and roared, "then the beheading shall proceed as scheduled!"

Fortunately for Drosselmeier, the food had tasted particularly good that day and the queen was in a better mood than usual. This made her more open when the king, who was touched by Drosselmeier's distress, and asked that he reconsider. Drosselmeier gathered her courage and explained that she had indeed found out how to cure the prince, and had therefore rightfully won her life back. The queen decided that Drosselmeier was stalling with silly excuses, but after taking a tonic for her stomach she announced that both the clockmaker and astronomer should set off on foot and not return until they had the nut Crackatook in their possession. The king suggested that they could find the woman to do the cracking by regularly placing advertisements in local and foreign newspapers.

And here the judge broke off again, and promised to tell the rest of the story the next evening.