The Little Eggshell

As it happened one day, I sat at the table waiting for my lovely wife to finish our breakfast. Now, as she was cracking the eggs, a bit of the shell fell in with the mixture.

She cursed her poor luck, but I, thinking little of it, told her, “No matter. A little eggshell never hurt anyone.”

Her attitude took on quite a serious manner, and this is the tale she related to me, thusly.

Once not far from our own pleasant village there was once another village much like it, and in this village lived a little eggshell. The little eggshell was quite small indeed, and so it was often spoken about it that it could not hurt a thing. No, it could not harm a fly.

As it so happened, one day, the village tailor was want for bread, but having no funds to purchase such said to himself, “I shall take bread from the little eggshell. It cannot harm me, for it could not harm a fly. And what use does a little eggshell have for bread anyhow.”

And so the tailor paid the little eggshell a visit, and post-haste relieved it of its daily bread. Thinking himself so clever, the tailor got it in his head to continue his wanton thievery and, what's more, make a daily routine out of it. For what was the little eggshell to do? It could not harm him. No, it could not harm a fly.

Now, when the remainder of the village learned of the tailors action, you would think they might come to the little eggshell’s rescue, but not so.

“What a clever stratagem,” they each thought, and in their hearts desired to take advantage of the little eggshell likewise. For it could not harm them. No, it could not harm a fly.

And so they did.

The baker claimed the eggshell’s broom, for he was want of a new one. The miller took its cow as his own. The hunter relieved it of its cloak. The woodcutter made off with its produce. And on and on went the robbery till the little eggshell had nothing left but its name and the appendages that were fixed to its body. And were they not quite fixed, the villagers would have made off with them as well.

So the little eggshell had nothing. And let me tell you, be it man or eggshell, when one is deprived of all its possessions in such a ruthless manner, it twists up the heart in a way quite grotesque. For when one has nothing left to lose, one does things they otherwise would consider unthinkable.

When night came to the village, the people retired to their homes and beds with their newly acquired goods, thinking nothing of the matter. But the little eggshell, it did not sleep. It waited till all was silent, then it went straight way up to the home of the woodcutter and laid hold of his axe.

Taking said axe, the little eggshell paid a visit to each and every home in the village that night. Now I will spare you the details as I wish my wife had spared me, but it suffices me to say not a soul rose the following morning, and that village is no more.

Now the moral is this, no matter how small something may appear, there is nothing in this world that is harmless.

I tell you this because a story needs a moral. If otherwise it has no moral, then it may not be a story at all, it may be a memory. A memory belonging to a little girl who found herself secreted away in the cabinet of a clock, commanded to remain perfectly still and perfectly silent no matter what she may see or hear. And when morning came, finding herself with a still beating heart, ran with the greatest haste, never to return to the place of her birth or the place where the little eggshell lived.

But I will say no more on the matter, for a moral this story has, and so a story it shall remain.