When I Was a Little Girl

by Zona Gale

Thus it chanced that, after all the years, Hazen, though he was far from dreaming the truth, was once more roaming through the rooms of his birthplace and treading the floors that had once echoed the step of his father, the king.

It was a wonderful place, the like of which Hazen thought he had never seen before, save only in the palace of the father of the princess. Above stairs the rooms had hardly been disturbed since that old day of the hurried flight of all his father’s court. There was a great room of books, as rich in precious volumes as the king’s library which he already knew, and there, though this he could not guess, his own father had been wont to sit late in the night, consulting learned writers and dreaming of the future of his little son. There was the chapel, where they had brought Hazen himself to be christened, in the presence of all the court; there the long banqueting room to which he had once been carried so that the nobles might pledge him their fealty, the arched roof echoing their shouts. The throne room, the council room, the state drawing rooms—through all these, with their dim, dusty hangings and rich, faded furnishings, Hazen footed; and at last, up another stair, he came to the private apartments of the king and queen themselves.

Breathing the life of another time the rooms lay, as if partly remembering and partly expecting. In the king’s room was the hunting suit that he had thrown off just before the attack, the book that he had been reading, the chart that he had consulted. In the queen’s room were tarnished golden toilet articles and ornaments, and in her wardrobe her very robes hung, dusty and mouldering, the gold thread and gold fringes showing black and sad.

And then Hazen entered a room which seemed to have been a child’s room—and it was his room, of his first babyhood. Something in him stirred and kindled, almost as if his body remembered, though his mind could not do so. Toys lay scattered about—tops, a football, books, and a bank. The pillow of the small white bed was indented as if from the pressure of a little head, and a pair of tiny shoes, one upright, one overturned, were on the floor. Hazen picked up one little shoe and held it for a minute in his hand. He wondered if some of the little garments of the child, whoever he was, might not be in the hanging room. And he opened the closed door.

The door led to a closet and, as he had guessed, little garments were hanging there. But it was not these that caught his eye and held him breathless and spellbound on the threshold. On the high shelf of the closet stood a small glass casket. And in the casket was a little bit of live thing that fluttered piteously, as if begging to be released, and frantic with joy at the coming of light from without.

Hazen’s heart beat as he took the casket in his hand. It was the most wonderful little box that ever he had seen. And the little living thing was something like a fairy and something like a spirit and so beautiful that it seemed to Hazen that he must have it for his own. Something stirred and kindled in his mind so that it was almost a memory, and he said to himself:—

“I have seen a casket like this. I have had a casket like this. Nay, but the very earliest thing that ever I can remember is a casket like this from which no one knew how to release this little living spirit.”

For the little spirit was fast in the crystal prison, and if one broke the casket, one would almost certainly harm the spirit—but what other way was there to do?

With the casket in his hand and the little spirit fluttering within, Hazen ran back below stairs to the old man.

“Look!” Hazen cried. “This casket! It is from the closet shelf of some child’s room. I remember a casket such as this, and within it a little living spirit. I have had a casket such as this! What does it mean?”