![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarFandom: Hamster Princess series by Ursula Vernon
Summary: Harriet and Mumfrey solve the riddle of a squirrel, a gerblin (that’s a goblin that looks like a gerbil) and some magical Purim noisemakers.
Characters: Harriet Hamsterbone, Mumfrey, original squirrel character, other original rodent characters
Words: 2,550
Notes: Forkitsune_scribe for Purimgifts 2022.
Chag sameach, Kitsune_Scribe! I was delighted to get your request for Hamster Princess, which is such a great fit for Purim. (Spunky princess hero! Silliness and fun!) Thanks for giving me the opportunity to play with Harriet and folklore. (Notes on sources at the end.)
Read on AO3, or here below:
Harriet Hamsterbone and her trusty battle quail Mumfrey had been shlopping across uneven terrain for much of the day, so they agreed to stop at the next village they came across for a bit of a break.
At the edge of the next village—they hadn’t even made it quite into the village proper—they came across a small squirrel perched on the side of a well, his bushy tail drooping disconsolately.
Harriet could see that she and this squirrel were clearly made of very different stuff. If Harriet were feeling disconsolate she would be stomping, not moping.
Nevertheless, she hopped off Mumfrey’s back and approached the young squirrel.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Harriet Hamsterbone and this is my battle quail Mumfrey, and we’re good at quests. Has someone stolen your prized possession? Threatened your family? Tell me who, and I can go hit them with a sword for you.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” the squirrel sighed. “My name is Shmulik Squirreltail, and I just feel I’ve been a bit stupid, but I can’t figure out where exactly things went wrong.”
“Well—” began Harriet.
“Qwerk,” murmured Mumfrey, shuffling up behind her. That was Quail for “No, don’t start telling him how smart you are, too.”
Harriet, who had indeed been about to tell the squirrel that she was not only very good with a sword but also an expert at numbers and fractions, changed tack: “Well, Mumfrey and I can help you. Maybe we can puzzle it out together?”
“Sure,” sighed Shmulik. He patted the stone rim of the well he was sitting on. “Here, do you want to sit down?”
Harriet didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to find some Ogrecats to bop over the head with her sword, or maybe a nice high precipice from which to practice her cliff-diving. But Mumfrey had been shlopping uncomplainingly over rocks all day, and Harriet knew he wasn’t interested in any more Ogrecats or cliffs today.
She sighed, got some birdseed out of her pack for Mumfrey, and sat down on the edge of the well.
“Okay,” said Harriet. “Tell me all about it.”
The squirrel’s tail flicked with the first sign of excitement Harriet had seen from him, now that someone was willing to hear his woeful tale. “It started this morning,” Shmulik said. “I was sitting here by the well, playing with the new wooden grogger I got for my family’s Purim party tonight, when all of a sudden…I dropped it in the well!”
Harriet blinked at him. “Oh, okay. That’s not hard to fix. Do you want me to dive in and get it?”
“No, no, no,” Shmulik said. “You don’t understand, it’s so much more complicated than that!”
This squirrel was turning out to be quite melodramatic.
“Okay, so what happened next?” Harriet asked, resigning herself to an unnecessarily complicated retelling of the day’s events.
“Then…” Shmulik said in nearly a whisper. “Then, a goblin came up out of the well! And gave me a brass grogger to replace my wooden one! The goblin said if I shook it, hamantaschen would come flying out. And I tried it, and they did!”
“That sounds great!” Harriet said, suddenly feeling more enthusiastic about this story.
Mumfrey, too, lifted his head from the birdseed he was pecking and said “Qweerk!” which was Quail for “It’s been a long day of shlopping and I could definitely go for some poppy seed hamantaschen right about now.”
“It was great,” Shmulik said mournfully. “But I don’t have the brass grogger anymore.”
“What!” said Harriet, dismayed. “How did that happen? I thought you said you got it just this morning!”
“I did, but on the way home I stopped to show my new grogger to Gruna the Dormouse. She took it into her house to polish it for me—”
“Uh-huh,” said Harriet, who was starting to see where this was going.
“—and then I went straight home, but when I got home, the grogger didn’t work anymore! It was just an ordinary grogger, not a magical one.”
“Yeah,” agreed Harriet. “It sounds like the grogger you took home wasn’t a magical one at all. So what happened next?”
Shmulik sighed. “I came back here to the well, to complain to the goblin that the grogger was broken.”
“Of course you did,” said Harriet.
“What?” said Shmulik.
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “Harriet, that was rude.”
“Sorry!” said Harriet. “I just meant, of course you came back here to complain to the goblin! That must have been so disappointing when the grogger stopped working!”
Mumfrey gave her a sideways look, but Shmulik brightened and said, “Yeah! And the goblin was totally nice about it and gave me a new silver grogger instead. That grogger was amazing! It spun out all kinds of beautiful Purim costumes, including a really funny one for dressing up as a walnut. But…”
“Let me guess,” Harriet muttered.
“When I got home, the silver grogger didn’t work anymore either!”
“Did you stop anywhere on your way home?” Harriet asked, trying (and probably failing, judging by Mumfrey’s continued sideways stare) to sound patient.
“No, I went straight home! Well, I did stop just for a moment to show it to Gruna, because she was outside her house again when I went by.”
“Uh-huh,” said Harriet. “And did she take it inside to polish it or do anything else that took the grogger away from where you could see it?”
“Yeah! How did you know?”
“And then the grogger you took home with you didn’t do any magic, right?”
“By the time I got home, the silver grogger wasn’t magic anymore,” Shmulik agreed. “Look, I have it right here. I brought it back to show the goblin that it doesn’t work.”
Harriet took the silver grogger and gave it an experimental spin. It made a very satisfying clatter, but didn’t spin out hamantaschen or costumes or anything else but noise.
“Can I talk to the goblin this time?” Harriet asked Shmulik, handing the grogger back.
“Sure,” said the little squirrel. “I don’t see how that will help, but you’re welcome to try.”
Harriet leaned over the well and yelled in her politest yell, “Hey, uh, goblin? Can we talk for a second?”
There was some splashing and spluttering from down, then a goblin came swimming up through the dark blue-green water. It looked mostly like a gerbil, but with scales instead of fur.
“What now?” demanded the gerbil goblin, which Harriet decided to think of as a gerblin, since that contained all of the letters from gerbil and five sixths of the letters from goblin and in general combined the two words quite effectively.
“Hi,” said Harriet. “I’m Harriet Hamsterbone and I’m here to help out Shmulik. I’m really sorry to bother you again, I guess you’ve been bothered a lot today, but I think I know what’s going on here. And do you think maybe you could give us two groggers this time? A real, magical one for my friend Shmulik here, which he won’t lose this time—”
(“I—what?” sputtered Shmulik.)
"—and also a decoy one to teach the greedy dormouse Gruna a lesson?” Harriet finished.
The gerbil-like goblin grinned a very gerblin sort of grin. “I like the way you think, Harriet Hamsterbone. Yes, I will give you two groggers.”
The gerblin disappeared back into the water with an impressive splash that made Harriet want to try cliff-diving into this well, if only she could find any cliffs near enough to jump from. Which she looked around and determined there definitely weren’t.
Mumfrey hopped over to peer into the well, too, then looked at Harriet like he knew what she was thinking.
“I mean, I won’t,” Harriet sighed. “I’d have to, I don’t know, hire a bird or a bat to fly me over this village and drop me right above the well, which all sounds like a lot of trouble. Even if it is awfully nice, splashy water…”
Mumfrey said “Qweeerk” in a way that meant, “You’re on your own with that one.”
Just then, the gerblin resurfaced with an equally impressive splash. In each front paw was a grogger, one made of gold and one made of lead.
The gerblin held up the grogger on the left, the gold one. “This grogger is for young Squirreltail here. It will spin out baskets of Purim gifts for all your friends and family.”
Shmulik took the grogger from the gerblin. Harriet quickly cautioned, “But maybe don’t spin it until we get back to your house, okay?” She was thinking of all the baskets Mumfrey would have to schlep if the squirrel started swinging the grogger around now.
The gerblin continued, holding up the noisemaker on the right, “And this grogger will make a fitting gift for that nosy dormouse, Gruna.”
Harriet took the lead grogger and grinned. “This is going to be great,” she said. “Thanks, Mr. or Ms., uh—”
“Gerri,” said the gerblin. “My name is Gerri.”
Which made sense alliteratively, Harriet supposed, though she’d been expecting something a little more goblin-y. “Right, thank you, Gerri. We appreciate your help.” Harriet looked at Shmulik and then at Mumfrey. “Ready?”
“Qwerk,” agreed Mumfrey.
“Ready,” said Shmulik, bouncing up eagerly from the edge of the well, though he still looked a little vague on what the plan was.
“Shmulik, can you show us the way to your house?”
And so Gerri the Gerblin splashed back down into the well, as Harriet, Mumfrey and Shmulik Squirreltail set out in an odd little procession, traipsing through the village with one gold grogger that reflected the sunlight with blinding brightness and one dull, heavy lead grogger that even Harriet was finding kind of a nuisance to carry.
Up ahead, Harriet could see a dormouse with a broom outside one of the cottages. She was sweeping her front steps in a manner that suggested she wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the sweeping, but was keeping her eyes and ears perked up for any interesting happenings in the street.
“Hide that gold grogger somewhere,” Harriet whispered to Shmulik. “If she sees it, she’s going to want that one, but we want to keep her focused on this lead one that the goblin meant for her.”
Shmulik considered for a second, then popped the grogger neatly into his mouth and stored it in one of his cheek pouches. Hamsters are no slouches when it comes to storing things in their cheeks, but even Harriet was impressed.
Harriet hefted the lead grogger a little higher as they approached Gruna the Dormouse’s cottage.
The dormouse looked up, her eyes bright. “Hello, Shmulik!” she called. “How funny to see you passing by my house so many times today. And this time you’ve brought friends. Is that another grogger you have with you?”
Shmulik, his mouth full of grogger, could only smile and nod. So Harriet said, “Yes, look at this magical grogger, made of the purest lead, brand new from the goblin in the well at the edge of town. Isn’t it lovely?”
Gruna squinted at the heavy leaden object Harriet was holding. “Yes, it’s uh…it’s very nice,” she managed. “May I have a look at it?”
“Of course!” Harriet thrust it into the dormouse’s paws before she could change her mind.
“I’ll just uh…maybe I can polish it up for you a bit,” the dormouse muttered. She sounded uncertain about whether that was even possible, but she skittered away into her cottage anyway.
“Do you think she’ll spin the grogger?” Harriet whispered. “Or does she realize this one is a trick?”
Shmulik shrugged and wriggled, his eyes bright and excited.
Mumfrey said, “Qwerrk,” which was Quail for “The ways of rodents are a mystery to me.”
Just then came a high-pitched shriek from within the house. Gruna dashed back out, scratching wildly at her fur. “Fleas!” she shrieked. “I spun that nasty, horrible grogger and a thousand fleas swarmed out and started biting me! Make it stop, oh, make it stop! Please, I’ll give back the other groggers I stole!”
Stole? Shmulik’s mouth dropped open in surprise—which caused the gold grogger to fall out of it. Fortunately, Mumfrey caught the grogger with his beak before it could hit the ground.
Gruna thrust something into Shmulik’s paws, and something into Harriet’s. It was the two groggers, the brass one and the silver one Shmulik had showed her on his previous trips through the village. As the stolen items left Gruna’s paws, the fleas hopped away and the dormouse gave a great sigh of relief.
Shmulik was delighted, hopping to and fro, his fluffy tail waving wildly up and down. “Look, Harriet! Look, Mumfrey!” he cried. “It’s the brass grogger and the silver grogger! And now we have the gold grogger, too!”
Shmulik swung the brass grogger around his head, and great golden hamantaschen pattered down to the ground all around, their buttery fragrance filling the air. Then Shmulik took the silver grogger from Harriet’s paw and gave it a swing, and fabrics and fanciful masks swirled down out of the air. Harriet was pretty sure she saw a costume in there that was meant to represent the magical well itself, and another that was clearly Gerri the Gerblin.
Finally, Shmulik took the gold grogger from Mumfrey’s beak and swung it. Great big wicker baskets full of brightly packaged foodstuffs came flying out so fast that Harriet had to duck.
“Okay, okay!” she called to Shmulik. “We get it, all of them work!”
“It’s magic!” Shmulik cried rapturously, spinning himself around in the middle of the street and whirling all three groggers at once. Foods and cloths and wicker baskets were everywhere. An apricot hamantaschen landed on Mumfrey’s beak. Mumfrey nibbled experimentally, appeared to find apricot filling as suitable as poppy seed, and happily chomped the rest of it.
Shmulik finally stopped spinning. He looked up at Gruna the Dormouse, who was staring sourly at the spectacle. And maybe also looking a little guilty and embarrassed.
“Gruna,” Shmulik said, “will you come to my family’s Purim party? There’s enough food for everyone! And we’ll need to find someone to give all these baskets to.” The little squirrel looked around, as though noticing the heaps of gifts around him for the first time. “Will you come?”
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “That’s really generous of you, Shmulik.”
“Qwerk,” muttered Harriet, which meant the same thing except in a sarcastic tone of voice.
Gruna stared at Shmulik with wide eyes. “You want me at your party? After I tried to take these away from you?”
“Of course,” said Shmulik simply. “You’re our neighbor.”
So Harriet, Mumfrey, Shmulik and Gruna all headed down the road, loaded with as many baskets and treats as they could carry. The Squirreltail family home turned out to be a warm, cozy burrow big enough to hold all the Squirreltail relations and their guests as well. Together they danced and ate hamantaschen and exchanged gifts late into the night.
And a week later, Harriet hired a migrating snow goose who was willing to drop her over the village for a very reasonable fee, so she could skydive into the lovely splashy water of the gerblin’s well.
End notes:
This story is a fusion of Ursula Vernon’s wonderful Hamster Princess series with the plot of The Magic Dreidels by Eric A. Kimmel, which is itself a Jewish/Chanukah-themed retelling of “The Tablecloth, the Donkey, and the Stick,” a folktale found around Europe. I also read/referred to a similar story, The Bachelor and the Bean by Shelley Fowles, which is adapted from “The Old Bachelor Who Lost a Bean,” a Jewish folktale from Morocco. Retellings of retellings!
All images of Harriet belong to Ursula Vernon.
.
Summary: Harriet and Mumfrey solve the riddle of a squirrel, a gerblin (that’s a goblin that looks like a gerbil) and some magical Purim noisemakers.
Characters: Harriet Hamsterbone, Mumfrey, original squirrel character, other original rodent characters
Words: 2,550
Notes: For
kitsune_scribe for Purimgifts 2022.Chag sameach, Kitsune_Scribe! I was delighted to get your request for Hamster Princess, which is such a great fit for Purim. (Spunky princess hero! Silliness and fun!) Thanks for giving me the opportunity to play with Harriet and folklore. (Notes on sources at the end.)
Read on AO3, or here below:
Harriet Hamsterbone and her trusty battle quail Mumfrey had been shlopping across uneven terrain for much of the day, so they agreed to stop at the next village they came across for a bit of a break.
At the edge of the next village—they hadn’t even made it quite into the village proper—they came across a small squirrel perched on the side of a well, his bushy tail drooping disconsolately.
Harriet could see that she and this squirrel were clearly made of very different stuff. If Harriet were feeling disconsolate she would be stomping, not moping.
Nevertheless, she hopped off Mumfrey’s back and approached the young squirrel.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Harriet Hamsterbone and this is my battle quail Mumfrey, and we’re good at quests. Has someone stolen your prized possession? Threatened your family? Tell me who, and I can go hit them with a sword for you.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” the squirrel sighed. “My name is Shmulik Squirreltail, and I just feel I’ve been a bit stupid, but I can’t figure out where exactly things went wrong.”
“Well—” began Harriet.
“Qwerk,” murmured Mumfrey, shuffling up behind her. That was Quail for “No, don’t start telling him how smart you are, too.”
Harriet, who had indeed been about to tell the squirrel that she was not only very good with a sword but also an expert at numbers and fractions, changed tack: “Well, Mumfrey and I can help you. Maybe we can puzzle it out together?”
“Sure,” sighed Shmulik. He patted the stone rim of the well he was sitting on. “Here, do you want to sit down?”
Harriet didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to find some Ogrecats to bop over the head with her sword, or maybe a nice high precipice from which to practice her cliff-diving. But Mumfrey had been shlopping uncomplainingly over rocks all day, and Harriet knew he wasn’t interested in any more Ogrecats or cliffs today.
She sighed, got some birdseed out of her pack for Mumfrey, and sat down on the edge of the well.
“Okay,” said Harriet. “Tell me all about it.”
The squirrel’s tail flicked with the first sign of excitement Harriet had seen from him, now that someone was willing to hear his woeful tale. “It started this morning,” Shmulik said. “I was sitting here by the well, playing with the new wooden grogger I got for my family’s Purim party tonight, when all of a sudden…I dropped it in the well!”
Harriet blinked at him. “Oh, okay. That’s not hard to fix. Do you want me to dive in and get it?”
“No, no, no,” Shmulik said. “You don’t understand, it’s so much more complicated than that!”
This squirrel was turning out to be quite melodramatic.
“Okay, so what happened next?” Harriet asked, resigning herself to an unnecessarily complicated retelling of the day’s events.
“Then…” Shmulik said in nearly a whisper. “Then, a goblin came up out of the well! And gave me a brass grogger to replace my wooden one! The goblin said if I shook it, hamantaschen would come flying out. And I tried it, and they did!”
“That sounds great!” Harriet said, suddenly feeling more enthusiastic about this story.
Mumfrey, too, lifted his head from the birdseed he was pecking and said “Qweerk!” which was Quail for “It’s been a long day of shlopping and I could definitely go for some poppy seed hamantaschen right about now.”
“It was great,” Shmulik said mournfully. “But I don’t have the brass grogger anymore.”
“What!” said Harriet, dismayed. “How did that happen? I thought you said you got it just this morning!”
“I did, but on the way home I stopped to show my new grogger to Gruna the Dormouse. She took it into her house to polish it for me—”
“Uh-huh,” said Harriet, who was starting to see where this was going.
“—and then I went straight home, but when I got home, the grogger didn’t work anymore! It was just an ordinary grogger, not a magical one.”
“Yeah,” agreed Harriet. “It sounds like the grogger you took home wasn’t a magical one at all. So what happened next?”
Shmulik sighed. “I came back here to the well, to complain to the goblin that the grogger was broken.”
“Of course you did,” said Harriet.
“What?” said Shmulik.
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “Harriet, that was rude.”
“Sorry!” said Harriet. “I just meant, of course you came back here to complain to the goblin! That must have been so disappointing when the grogger stopped working!”
Mumfrey gave her a sideways look, but Shmulik brightened and said, “Yeah! And the goblin was totally nice about it and gave me a new silver grogger instead. That grogger was amazing! It spun out all kinds of beautiful Purim costumes, including a really funny one for dressing up as a walnut. But…”
“Let me guess,” Harriet muttered.
“When I got home, the silver grogger didn’t work anymore either!”
“Did you stop anywhere on your way home?” Harriet asked, trying (and probably failing, judging by Mumfrey’s continued sideways stare) to sound patient.
“No, I went straight home! Well, I did stop just for a moment to show it to Gruna, because she was outside her house again when I went by.”
“Uh-huh,” said Harriet. “And did she take it inside to polish it or do anything else that took the grogger away from where you could see it?”
“Yeah! How did you know?”
“And then the grogger you took home with you didn’t do any magic, right?”
“By the time I got home, the silver grogger wasn’t magic anymore,” Shmulik agreed. “Look, I have it right here. I brought it back to show the goblin that it doesn’t work.”
Harriet took the silver grogger and gave it an experimental spin. It made a very satisfying clatter, but didn’t spin out hamantaschen or costumes or anything else but noise.
“Can I talk to the goblin this time?” Harriet asked Shmulik, handing the grogger back.
“Sure,” said the little squirrel. “I don’t see how that will help, but you’re welcome to try.”
Harriet leaned over the well and yelled in her politest yell, “Hey, uh, goblin? Can we talk for a second?”
There was some splashing and spluttering from down, then a goblin came swimming up through the dark blue-green water. It looked mostly like a gerbil, but with scales instead of fur.
“What now?” demanded the gerbil goblin, which Harriet decided to think of as a gerblin, since that contained all of the letters from gerbil and five sixths of the letters from goblin and in general combined the two words quite effectively.
“Hi,” said Harriet. “I’m Harriet Hamsterbone and I’m here to help out Shmulik. I’m really sorry to bother you again, I guess you’ve been bothered a lot today, but I think I know what’s going on here. And do you think maybe you could give us two groggers this time? A real, magical one for my friend Shmulik here, which he won’t lose this time—”
(“I—what?” sputtered Shmulik.)
"—and also a decoy one to teach the greedy dormouse Gruna a lesson?” Harriet finished.
The gerbil-like goblin grinned a very gerblin sort of grin. “I like the way you think, Harriet Hamsterbone. Yes, I will give you two groggers.”
The gerblin disappeared back into the water with an impressive splash that made Harriet want to try cliff-diving into this well, if only she could find any cliffs near enough to jump from. Which she looked around and determined there definitely weren’t.
Mumfrey hopped over to peer into the well, too, then looked at Harriet like he knew what she was thinking.
“I mean, I won’t,” Harriet sighed. “I’d have to, I don’t know, hire a bird or a bat to fly me over this village and drop me right above the well, which all sounds like a lot of trouble. Even if it is awfully nice, splashy water…”
Mumfrey said “Qweeerk” in a way that meant, “You’re on your own with that one.”
Just then, the gerblin resurfaced with an equally impressive splash. In each front paw was a grogger, one made of gold and one made of lead.
The gerblin held up the grogger on the left, the gold one. “This grogger is for young Squirreltail here. It will spin out baskets of Purim gifts for all your friends and family.”
Shmulik took the grogger from the gerblin. Harriet quickly cautioned, “But maybe don’t spin it until we get back to your house, okay?” She was thinking of all the baskets Mumfrey would have to schlep if the squirrel started swinging the grogger around now.
The gerblin continued, holding up the noisemaker on the right, “And this grogger will make a fitting gift for that nosy dormouse, Gruna.”
Harriet took the lead grogger and grinned. “This is going to be great,” she said. “Thanks, Mr. or Ms., uh—”
“Gerri,” said the gerblin. “My name is Gerri.”
Which made sense alliteratively, Harriet supposed, though she’d been expecting something a little more goblin-y. “Right, thank you, Gerri. We appreciate your help.” Harriet looked at Shmulik and then at Mumfrey. “Ready?”
“Qwerk,” agreed Mumfrey.
“Ready,” said Shmulik, bouncing up eagerly from the edge of the well, though he still looked a little vague on what the plan was.
“Shmulik, can you show us the way to your house?”
And so Gerri the Gerblin splashed back down into the well, as Harriet, Mumfrey and Shmulik Squirreltail set out in an odd little procession, traipsing through the village with one gold grogger that reflected the sunlight with blinding brightness and one dull, heavy lead grogger that even Harriet was finding kind of a nuisance to carry.
Up ahead, Harriet could see a dormouse with a broom outside one of the cottages. She was sweeping her front steps in a manner that suggested she wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the sweeping, but was keeping her eyes and ears perked up for any interesting happenings in the street.
“Hide that gold grogger somewhere,” Harriet whispered to Shmulik. “If she sees it, she’s going to want that one, but we want to keep her focused on this lead one that the goblin meant for her.”
Shmulik considered for a second, then popped the grogger neatly into his mouth and stored it in one of his cheek pouches. Hamsters are no slouches when it comes to storing things in their cheeks, but even Harriet was impressed.
Harriet hefted the lead grogger a little higher as they approached Gruna the Dormouse’s cottage.
The dormouse looked up, her eyes bright. “Hello, Shmulik!” she called. “How funny to see you passing by my house so many times today. And this time you’ve brought friends. Is that another grogger you have with you?”
Shmulik, his mouth full of grogger, could only smile and nod. So Harriet said, “Yes, look at this magical grogger, made of the purest lead, brand new from the goblin in the well at the edge of town. Isn’t it lovely?”
Gruna squinted at the heavy leaden object Harriet was holding. “Yes, it’s uh…it’s very nice,” she managed. “May I have a look at it?”
“Of course!” Harriet thrust it into the dormouse’s paws before she could change her mind.
“I’ll just uh…maybe I can polish it up for you a bit,” the dormouse muttered. She sounded uncertain about whether that was even possible, but she skittered away into her cottage anyway.
“Do you think she’ll spin the grogger?” Harriet whispered. “Or does she realize this one is a trick?”
Shmulik shrugged and wriggled, his eyes bright and excited.
Mumfrey said, “Qwerrk,” which was Quail for “The ways of rodents are a mystery to me.”
Just then came a high-pitched shriek from within the house. Gruna dashed back out, scratching wildly at her fur. “Fleas!” she shrieked. “I spun that nasty, horrible grogger and a thousand fleas swarmed out and started biting me! Make it stop, oh, make it stop! Please, I’ll give back the other groggers I stole!”
Stole? Shmulik’s mouth dropped open in surprise—which caused the gold grogger to fall out of it. Fortunately, Mumfrey caught the grogger with his beak before it could hit the ground.
Gruna thrust something into Shmulik’s paws, and something into Harriet’s. It was the two groggers, the brass one and the silver one Shmulik had showed her on his previous trips through the village. As the stolen items left Gruna’s paws, the fleas hopped away and the dormouse gave a great sigh of relief.
Shmulik was delighted, hopping to and fro, his fluffy tail waving wildly up and down. “Look, Harriet! Look, Mumfrey!” he cried. “It’s the brass grogger and the silver grogger! And now we have the gold grogger, too!”
Shmulik swung the brass grogger around his head, and great golden hamantaschen pattered down to the ground all around, their buttery fragrance filling the air. Then Shmulik took the silver grogger from Harriet’s paw and gave it a swing, and fabrics and fanciful masks swirled down out of the air. Harriet was pretty sure she saw a costume in there that was meant to represent the magical well itself, and another that was clearly Gerri the Gerblin.
Finally, Shmulik took the gold grogger from Mumfrey’s beak and swung it. Great big wicker baskets full of brightly packaged foodstuffs came flying out so fast that Harriet had to duck.
“Okay, okay!” she called to Shmulik. “We get it, all of them work!”
“It’s magic!” Shmulik cried rapturously, spinning himself around in the middle of the street and whirling all three groggers at once. Foods and cloths and wicker baskets were everywhere. An apricot hamantaschen landed on Mumfrey’s beak. Mumfrey nibbled experimentally, appeared to find apricot filling as suitable as poppy seed, and happily chomped the rest of it.
Shmulik finally stopped spinning. He looked up at Gruna the Dormouse, who was staring sourly at the spectacle. And maybe also looking a little guilty and embarrassed.
“Gruna,” Shmulik said, “will you come to my family’s Purim party? There’s enough food for everyone! And we’ll need to find someone to give all these baskets to.” The little squirrel looked around, as though noticing the heaps of gifts around him for the first time. “Will you come?”
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “That’s really generous of you, Shmulik.”
“Qwerk,” muttered Harriet, which meant the same thing except in a sarcastic tone of voice.
Gruna stared at Shmulik with wide eyes. “You want me at your party? After I tried to take these away from you?”
“Of course,” said Shmulik simply. “You’re our neighbor.”
So Harriet, Mumfrey, Shmulik and Gruna all headed down the road, loaded with as many baskets and treats as they could carry. The Squirreltail family home turned out to be a warm, cozy burrow big enough to hold all the Squirreltail relations and their guests as well. Together they danced and ate hamantaschen and exchanged gifts late into the night.
And a week later, Harriet hired a migrating snow goose who was willing to drop her over the village for a very reasonable fee, so she could skydive into the lovely splashy water of the gerblin’s well.
End notes:
This story is a fusion of Ursula Vernon’s wonderful Hamster Princess series with the plot of The Magic Dreidels by Eric A. Kimmel, which is itself a Jewish/Chanukah-themed retelling of “The Tablecloth, the Donkey, and the Stick,” a folktale found around Europe. I also read/referred to a similar story, The Bachelor and the Bean by Shelley Fowles, which is adapted from “The Old Bachelor Who Lost a Bean,” a Jewish folktale from Morocco. Retellings of retellings!
All images of Harriet belong to Ursula Vernon.
.
