I don’t know how much time passed. Hours. An entire day? I only came to because Squirrel Nutkin was sitting on the bench, looking down at me and chattering. I sat up, blinking. It was getting dark and the streetlamps were on. My brain, so starved for sleep, didn’t want to surface. I sat there in a stupor and then I stood up, swaying dangerously. Squirrel Nutkin dashed over to the stroller and up onto the handle, his tail swishing back and forth. He kept gesturing wildly with his little hands. “Okay, okay,” I said.
I lifted the blanket. The stroller was empty. In the place where the baby should have been was a walnut.
A walnut?
It’s true. I picked it up. It was heavy, the heaviest walnut I’d ever felt, the heaviest walnut in the world. Instantly, I knew that my baby was tucked inside. “Dear one,” I said, and held her to my heart. Now, I could put her in my pocket with my Chapstick and loose change. I could take her everywhere and she would never cry or sputter at my breast or wake me with her radioactive glow. I might even be able to pry open the shell and look at her from time to time—my tiny, tiny baby, my Thumbelina. I kissed the shell. “Thumbelina,” I whispered. This was the kind of baby I could be a good mother to. And in that moment, I felt happy.