Seeing that he had their all attention, Old Malvin begun his tale. His voice was hoarse and after speaking longer sentences, he needed to rest for a second or two. This clearly showed how old he was and yet one could see that, despite his age and tiredness, he was happy to have a honour to tell the story to this audience. Dara had been right: Malvin did like talking about past.
“Friends. I will tell you about the event that happened before the great fire, when humans still used to visit this building. I was a young mouse back then, even though some of you may find it hard to imagine me as anything but old. It was a summer day. I and two other mice, Marta and Rick, was exploring the woods near this chapel, enjoying the morning. After some time, we came across a cage. It surprised us greatly, as we hadn’t seen something like that in midlle of woods before, but we were even more surprised by what was inside the cage. A living creature. It looked very much like you and your friends, Cinankhen, but at the time we had only a vague idea what it could be. It was Rick, who remembered what his mother had told him about animals different from our own kind and he stated that creature in cage was a rabbit. But what was it doing inside the cage in this place, we wondered. Cage was a man’s thing, so maybe it belonged to some human? Eventually, we got our courage up and we approached the rabbit. We talked and it turned out that the cage had fallen on her (as it was female rabbit), trapping her inside. We decided to help her get out, as woodland’s creature should help each other, shouldn’t they? However, it was easier said than done, as we couldn’t bite through grating. Lifting this cage was out of the question too, as it was simply too heavy for us all.”
Old Malvin stopped to rest a bit and gather his memories of that day.
“For some time we were thinking how to get that rabbit out of the cage, but all methods required more strength than three mice and a rabbit could possess. Then, I got one idea and I said to my others: maybe we could get our human to help us? At that time, there was a man, who was visiting this place almost daily. What a good fellow he was! He understood how hard it is for us sometimes to simply survive and he always left something in chapel for us to eat. Always. Well… Maybe he didn’t know best what our preferences are, but it is a thought that counts, right? Anyway, we had run back quickly and we saw that our human was just leaving the chapel. The problem was, as you’ve surely gathered, how to make him follow us to the cage? The time was running out, as man closed the door and as was in habit he took out some small metal, shining thing with a string attached to it and he begun whispering something incomprehensible. We were all thinking how to get his attention, when suddenly Marta darted towards the human and run between his feet. That surprised our human greatly, which was a bit silly if you think of it. How in the world, a small mouse could scare a human so much, that he jumped up and dropped this metal thing he had been holding? Yet he did and as soon as that thing touched the ground, Marta grabbed it with her muzzle and run towards tree line. Everybody was absolutely taken aback by this action, not excluding our human, but he quickly snapped out of the shock and began pursuit. Some unusual chase, that was. What a shame you couldn’t see it!” Malvin said with sparkles of amusement in his eyes “I guess that our human was past his prime, as he became quite tired by the end of the chase, which stopped right next to the trapped rabbit. Marta dropped stolen thing then and there and leapt to nearby bush. As soon as he saw a cage, our human lifted it up and our new friend could regain her freedom. A happy ending.”
