The Girl in the Windmill

MAARTJE VAN DIJK lived in a windmill.

At the age of ten, her vater and moeder perished at sea, and she was sent to live with her Opa on the coast. Despite her grief she grew to love him, and he taught her all about how to grind the village’s grains and tend the enormous sails and gears that made the mill run.

Her Opa hadn’t always run the mill, though. Each evening, by firelight, he would show Maartje the amazing feats of transformation that he used to perform all over the world.

“Oh, please do the mouse again,” Maartje would plead, and Opa would smile broadly at his one-person audience and twitch his nose. His thick, white mustache would grow thinner and wispier, and his ears would grow larger and fold inward. His old, brown jacket would grow fuzzy, like fur, and he’d shrink himself down to barely three inches tall. Only his eyes—his bright blue, sparkling eyes—gave away his true identity. Then he’d scamper around Maartje’s feet, and she’d shriek and cover her eyes. When she