The others, however, weren’t. “Don’t rush us,” Father said crossly. “The mouselets aren’t experienced foragers like you, Fredle. I don’t know what kind of bad habits you’ve picked up wherever you’ve been, but you can start getting rid of them right now.”
Father grumbled on. “And two of those mouselets can never find themselves enough to eat. Of course they’re failing to flourish, what does your mother expect to happen? What does she think I can do about it?”
“Um-hmm,” answered Fredle. This was a downside to having been away for so long: you had to catch up on all the bad things that had happened while you weren’t there.
Or maybe, he thought, it was a downside to coming back?
And then he wondered: Was Father sorry that he had come back?
The foraging continued and Fredle waited by the pantry door, alert for Patches. He heard Mother’s voice telling the mouselets, “Hurry up, it’s dangerous. You can’t still be hungry, Ardle. Stay close, Doddle. Remember the cat, everyone—Idle, NO!”
He heard other whispered comments: “Hungry season coming, mark my words.” “Used to be, there were more crumbs under the table.” “Was that the cat?” “Used to be, there were always kibbles.”
Grandfather came to stand near Fredle, within easy reach of the hole through the pantry door. “You’ve come back to hard times, young Fredle.”
“You know, Grandfather? Down in the cellar there’s—” Fredle began, but he was interrupted.
“I’m glad I’ll soon be went. It won’t be too long now.”
Fredle wanted to deny this, but it was true. Grandfather was old. Hoping to cheer the old mouse up, he started to tell Grandfather what had happened to him, even though Grandfather hadn’t asked. “I was outside, Missus carried me outside. At night, outside, it’s dark, not dim like inside. Outside, it’s a bright darkness and sometimes there’s a moon. Grandfather? Or maybe it’s a lot of moons, I don’t know, nobody knows, but a moon is like …” He tried to think of what a moon was like. “Like a white circle that shines out light. It floats in the dark air, way up high, and only at night. It’s nocturnal, like mice.”
He waited, but Grandfather had nothing to say to this. Grandfather just stared into the shadowy kitchen and waited.
“And in daylight—which is so bright, you can’t imagine it—there are colors,” Fredle went on. But Grandfather hadn’t even looked at him, so he stopped trying to talk and turned his attention back to listening. He listened to Mother’s worried voice urging the mouselets to hurry up, and Father saying, “Stop that chattering, you two, just stop it.”
Then, after a long time, Grandfather did speak, so softly it was almost a whisper. “Moon. What a word that is. There’s a word to dream about, moon. Hear it, Fredle?”
Father came up to the door in time to hear this. “Get started, Grandfather. You know you’re slow and we can’t always be waiting for you.”
Fredle heard a dog bark, too far off for him to know if it was Angus or Sadie, and he wondered if the dog was barking at something seen through a window, out in the garden or near the chicken pen, or moving across in front of the barn. He heard faint baby cries, and then Father had gathered his whole family together, to file back up to the nest.
There Fredle curled up beside Kidle. “Are you still hungry?” Kidle asked. “I am.”
“You want to go back down and forage some more?” Fredle offered.
“We can’t do that. It’s almost day, and besides, what if Father found out?”
“But—” Fredle began, but Kidle said, “It’ll be all right once I go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow night will be better, don’t you think?”
Soon, Fredle’s whole family was asleep. Fredle rested his head on the rim of the nest to make it easy for Axle to find him. He waited and waited, but Axle did not come. Eventually, he fell asleep himself.
Fredle didn’t sleep deeply, however, and he didn’t sleep well. He woke up several times during the day and had to wait patiently, motionless so as not to disturb the others, for sleep to return.
* * *
The next night, after foraging briefly and with enough success to keep his stomach quiet through the next day, he set out to find Axle. He looked under the table and around the refrigerator, and finally found her beside the stove. “You didn’t—” he started to say.
“I forgot,” she said, so quickly that he knew he couldn’t believe her. “You didn’t come find me, either.”
“I thought you said—”
Axle shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. She looked right at Fredle. “I don’t know what happened to you, all this time you’ve been gone, but it must have been better than what happened to me. A lot better.”
Fredle had been looking forward to telling Axle his story. “Well, it was Missus who—”
“I was trying to find a way up to the attic, where they’re not cellar mice, dirty, and half-crazy from eating soap. I thought I could stand it, up with the attic mice, I could learn to eat the weird things they eat, cloth and wood and insulation. But I couldn’t find the way and I was all alone in some spidery corner between the kitchen and the attic, somewhere, I didn’t know where, and I was so thirsty. I just barely had the strength to creep into a cupboard—not the kitchen one, but I could smell water, and there were pipes, like in the kitchen, and paper, in rolls, in a stack. I ate soap, Fredle.”
“I think I was there, too!” Fredle cried. “I smelled—”
“I was in that cupboard for nights! Where else could I go? It was so dark,” Axle remembered. “I had to eat that paper. I was alone. I was all alone, Fredle.”
“I know about that,” Fredle said. “When I was alone—”
“I couldn’t sleep, there was only that paper to eat, except for soap, it was … I hated it. I was alone,” she said again, as if that explained everything. “So I came back.”
She glared at Fredle.
“It took me a long time to find the way home,” he told her, so that she would know that he, too, had wanted to come back.
“They let me stay. I was sure they’d push me out, even though by then I was fine again, but they never even mentioned it. We never figured it out, Fredle. We just didn’t understand. We treated it like some game, but—it’s—Bad things happen when you break the rules.”
“I know,” Fredle said, first remembering how glad he’d been to see Bardo and then almost wishing he could see Neldo and her brother again. “But not always, not all bad.”
Axle continued. “Something was bound to happen, sooner or later. We were heading for trouble. I was sorry to hear you got pushed out.”
Fredle waited for her to ask him about what had happened to him, how he had managed, where he had gone and what he had seen, but she didn’t have a single question. Instead, she told him, “It’s getting pretty crowded behind the pantry.”
“In the cellar—”
“A lot of the mouselets will have to be pushed out, unless we all want to go hungry. It’s not easy, these days,” Axle said. Then she did have a question. “Where are you going?”
Fredle had turned around to leave. He looked back to explain, “I want to …” But he was too sad to say more.
He went to wait by the pantry door with Grandfather. Grandfather didn’t even greet him, he just said, “Really and truly? Up in the air? Moons?”
Fredle was glad to be able to say to him, “Really and truly.”
“I wish I wasn’t old,” Grandfather said.
“You’d like the lattice wall, too,” Fredle said, wishing the same thing. “You can see through it, to outside and the green of the grass, and—”
“I don’t know,” Grandfather answered quietly, but he didn’t tell Fredle if what he didn’t know had to do with grass and the lattice wall or with something else. “I just don’t know.”
As they made the trip back up to their nest, Fredle asked Kidle, “Is something wrong with Grandfather?”
“He’s worried about how we’ll manage. I think
he expects, any day, that he’ll be the one pushed out.”
“I shouldn’t have come back.”
“That’s not it,” Kidle assured him. “We’re all glad and I’m really glad. It’s only, what Father says, it’s hard times.”
“What can we do to make them better?” Fredle asked.
“When times are hard, all a mouse can do is hunker down. That’s the way mice are.”
Not me, Fredle wanted to tell him, but first he wanted to talk to Axle again. That is, he wanted to try to talk to Axle. He wanted to give her another chance.
So before he went to sleep, he crept back along the board to her family’s nest. “Axle?” he whispered. “Axle!” and eventually he saw her head rise over the rim. “Come down,” he said.
“I can’t. You know that, Fredle.”
“I wanted to tell you,” he whispered. “I met raccoons.”
“Raccoons?”
“A band of them, they were going to eat me—after they showed me the lake and fed me some fish. But I escaped.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” Axle asked. “We’re too old for stories now, Fredle,” she told him. “I’ve grown up and you should have, too.”
“And there were stars,” said Fredle, desperately.
Axle didn’t ask him what any of those things might be, stars, or fish, or lake, and she didn’t ask him what raccoons looked like and smelled like, or talked about. “Go to sleep, Fredle,” she advised him. “That’s what I’m going to do. That’s all a mouse can do when he has to go to bed hungry.”
Fredle didn’t move. “In the cellar—” he tried again, but she was gone.
Fredle didn’t want to return to his nest. He wasn’t tired. But where could he go? Here, inside, within the walls, there was no place to go, and even if you got somewhere, it would be just like the place you left. Everything was the same, here, inside, he thought. Everything didn’t change and mice didn’t change and the way things were was the way things had to be. He had certainly heard the rules often enough.
Thinking that made Fredle tired, but not in the way that made him simply want to sleep. He was tired in a way that made him not want to do anything except go back to the nest and wait for sleep to come and find him. He turned slowly around.
Why couldn’t mice change? he wondered tiredly. And then he was awake and paying full attention to his own question because he knew that he had changed. He had changed, and not just once but many times. This thought gave him a surge of energy and he no longer had any desire to return to the nest. Instead, moving along within the walls so as to be safe (he hadn’t changed that much; it would be really stupid for a mouse not to worry about safety), he made his way to the cabinet under the kitchen sink, hoping that once again the door would be open and maybe he could hear something happening or—this would be the best—maybe he would have a chance to talk with Sadie.
The cupboard door was open and there was sunlight in the kitchen, some of which brightened the space under the sink, where Fredle hid himself between a tall green box and a round white container, both stinking of soap. Fredle heard Mister and Missus talking. He didn’t hear the dogs.
“I’m worried,” Missus said.
“I am, too,” Mister answered.
“But I’m really worried now. She’s sleeping but I gave her Tylenol, so that’s why.”
“If her temperature goes up again, or goes above a hundred and two, we’ll swing into action. What do you say to that? I’ll work in the barn today, or maybe in the garden. I’ll keep close by.”
“I’m way behind on the weeding.”
“You’re worried, it’s understandable; it keeps you busy, having a baby, the baby being sick,” Mister said. “Sadie? Angus? Let’s go down to the barn and give our ladies some peace and quiet.”
For some reason, overhearing this conversation and the sounds of the two dogs getting up, their nails clicking on the floor, their steps following Mister’s steps away, and the snap of the door, closing, made Fredle feel better. Less uneasy. He went back up to his nest and fell asleep.
20
In the End
That night, something happened in the kitchen that had never happened before, not in Father’s memory or Grandfather’s, either. As the mice foraged, scattered into the shadowy corners of the kitchen, light broke out, all around them, a light so bright that for a few seconds nobody could see anything.
Under the table and behind the stove or refrigerator, mice froze, and two unfortunate mice froze where they were in the wide, empty space between the stove and the table, between pantry and refrigerator.
The cat pounced.
Mister stood by the counter and paid no attention to cat or mouse. He started talking to someone, but not Angus, although Angus stood at his side and, at the sound of Mister’s low, hurried words, looked up into his face. Then Missus rushed in, carrying the baby, who was fussing unhappily but rather quietly, as if she didn’t have the energy to really cry.
“The hospital’s expecting us,” Mister said. “Let’s go, Angus. Sadie? Where is that dog?”
“She’s gone to ground, I expect. It’s what she does when there’s trouble, or thunder. Under our bed or in the baby’s closet. Should I—”
“She’ll be all right. I just thought they’d be better off outside. We don’t know how long we’ll be.”
“No, we don’t. Do we.”
“It’ll be fine, I hope.”
“Babies run high temperatures all the time. I do know that.”
Then Mister and Missus, the baby, and Angus left the room and the door closed behind them. But the light stayed on.
After many long moments, the mice moved, scurrying to get safely back to their entryways—the pantry door, the hole behind the stove—foraging forgotten in their fear and their hope to be safe. The cat pounced again, and after that there was only silence.
When the light had burst out, Fredle had been at the far end of the kitchen, chasing a pea around one of the table legs. He froze, but not from fear or for safety. It was the sight of colors that stopped him in his tracks. He had already forgotten how many colors there were, when there was light, and he looked around at the brown of the table leg, the black and white of the floor, and an orange chunk of carrot that had rolled up against the wall. He had already swallowed the pea, so he couldn’t enjoy its greenness. When the humans and the dog had left the room, he’d chosen not to join the run back to the pantry door. He listened for the cat, and watched for him, and hoped that Grandfather, who was so slow now, had as usual finished his foraging early and been at the pantry door when the lights went on. He hoped that the mouselets had been near Mother, who would have kept them safe. Although, he thought—because mice have to be practical about this—if the cat got them, got Doddle, for example, the nest would have one less mouth to feed.
Just where Patches was, Fredle didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to move until he did. How long that would be, he couldn’t guess. However, before he had located the cat, he heard Sadie clicking into the kitchen and saw her go to her water bowl to drink. “Sadie!” he called, in the loudest whisper he could manage. “Sadie!”
Dogs have fine hearing. Sadie lifted her head and looked around. “Fredle?”
“Over here, under here.”
She found him easily. “What are you doing?” she asked, not even lowering her voice. “Inside, I mean, and here, too, now. Why are you under our table? The baby is sick,” she told him. “The baby is very sick.”
“I saw them carry her out.” Fredle could understand why Sadie sounded so sad. Her job was to take care of the baby and now the baby was sick. With the baby gone, she didn’t have a job.
“Everyone had loud voices, so I went under the bed. They ran around. When I’m under the bed I’m not in the way,” Sadie explained. “But I think I should have come down. Angus came down.”
“He went outside through the door,” Fredle told her.
“Being under the bed doesn’t make the w
orry stop,” Sadie told him.
“I’m sorry, Sadie.” Fredle didn’t blame her for being upset. He didn’t know what the humans would do with a dog who didn’t have a job.
“It’s nicer to be worried with someone.”
“What will your new job be?”
She was surprised. “Am I having a new job? Will I be good at it?”
Fredle spoke in a gentle and sympathetic voice, reminding her, “They’ve taken the baby away.”
“Is somebody else going to take care of the baby? Is Patches? Angus has to be trained and win ribbons in shows and herd sheep, so he can’t do it. But I do a good job. Missus says.”
Fredle was about to explain about went, and being sick and being pushed out, but he heard Patches padding softly toward them and scurried to safety underneath Sadie’s stomach.
“Is that that mouse? That Fredle?”
“He’s talking to me,” Sadie said.
From his safe position, Fredle pointed out, “You’ve already eaten two mice. You can’t be hungry.”
“You should go away, Patches. You make Fredle worry.”
That was certainly true.
Patches said, “You can’t hide him there forever.”
“Oh,” said Sadie. “He’s right, Fredle, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Fredle wasn’t sure what might happen next if he didn’t speak up, so he spoke up. “We could walk together over to the stove, you and me, and when we get there I could get behind it, where Patches can’t reach me. Then I could wait with you, and worry with you, too, without being went.”
It was a good idea, so it was what they did.
Patches watched this operation, and yawned. “What good does worrying do?” he asked. “What good does worrying do either one of you?”
“I can’t help it,” Sadie answered.
“Cats know better than to worry,” Patches said.