They were brown field mice and they were running toward the chicken pen, all together, from the direction opposite Fredle’s lookout behind the fence post. They had been waiting together for Missus to feed the chickens, just the way a family of house mice gathered behind the hole in the pantry door, waiting to go out into the nighttime kitchen. As Fredle watched them, a dark puddle of bad, jealous, sad feelings rose up inside him.
It was loneliness, the bad feeling. Loneliness was back and worse than ever, with the sight of this family of field mice foraging together. Fredle knew better than to try to go out and join them. They might be scrawny brown field mice but they were still mice. Mice don’t share and they don’t like strangers and they don’t like changes.
Slowly, Fredle returned to his own solitary nest, so unhappy that he didn’t even try to be careful to stay under cover or race across open spaces. Loneliness wrapped itself up close and cold around Fredle. What could he do but go to sleep?
When Fredle next awoke, it was night and he was thirsty. For a while, he waited behind his lattice wall, watching and listening for possible danger; then he scrambled through an opening down onto the dark, grassy ground. There, he forgot all about being thirsty, because sharp and bright in the black air those lights were shining again. What they might be, he didn’t know, but there they were, hanging in the air, motionless, twinkling. Beautiful.
Somehow, looking up at those brightnesses, Fredle felt less alone. Why should that be? he wondered. He knew perfectly well that he was still one small mouse, far from his family and his own nest, alone outside. He knew there was no other mouse nearby to warn him, to flee from danger beside him, to help him keep safe. Fredle knew all that, but he still felt the loneliness drawing back, until it was as distant as those brightnesses. He breathed in deeply and kept on looking up.
He looked and looked. He couldn’t stop looking. They were so strange and lovely, those white, sparkling brightnesses with blackness all around them. He wanted never to stop looking at them, as long as they were there in the air to be seen. He thought that, like loneliness, they were sometimes present and sometimes not.
That thought distracted him, and he stared into the closer darkness. A second ago he had felt happily alone but now he felt sadly alone. Loneliness, he thought, came and went, kept changing. Or maybe it was him that kept changing?
But mice didn’t change. They didn’t change territory and they didn’t change food and they didn’t change feelings. Mice stayed the same—same nests, same days asleep, and same nights foraging for the same food. Change made things different and that could be dangerous, so mice didn’t tolerate it. What was Fredle supposed to do about all this changing that was being forced on him?
He guessed that all he could do was enjoy the good things and endure the bad things. He guessed that was all any mouse could do. And since the brightnesses were very good things, Fredle stayed where he was, staring up into the dark air, where they glittered and glimmered.
7
Neldo
Fredle spent the next days and nights thinking, wondering, foraging in the compost, and sleeping. Sometimes the brightnesses appeared in the night sky and sometimes they did not. Sometimes a single, much larger brightness floated up among them. As night after night went by, he discovered that there were several of these larger things, in several curving shapes and sizes, even one so large and round and white that its light cast shadows like the sun in daylight.
One daytime he was awakened from a light sleep by a snuffling sound, close by, separated from him only by the thin lattice wall. He froze in his nest.
“I smell you.”
It was Sadie’s voice.
“I’m a good smeller. I’m the nanny and if there’s one of those lights moving around on the floor I’m the dancing dog. What are you?”
Fredle stayed still, stayed silent.
“I know you’re under there. I think you’re a mouse.”
Fredle didn’t move.
“I’m just a dog,” Sadie said. She waited. “Can’t you hear me? You’re living under the porch, aren’t you.”
“No,” whispered Fredle, as softly as he could so as not to sound at all like a mouse.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I thought …” She must have turned her head away because Fredle had to strain his ears to hear what she said next. “You’re right, there’s no one there.”
“I told you,” Angus answered.
“He said so,” Sadie said, and the dogs ran off.
Fredle remained in his nest for a time, alert, watchful. He was waiting for the light outside to increase a little, but not too much. That was the time he had decided was safest for the long journey to the compost pile. Whispering voices distracted him from his thoughts—and they were whispering mouse voices! He perked up his ears to catch what they were saying and made himself stay still, despite his excitement.
“I said, go away,” said an irritated voice that Fredle recognized as Bardo’s. The voice that answered he did not know.
“Won’t.”
“You followed me.”
“So what?”
“You know the rules. Only the go-between is allowed. You better go home, Neldo.”
“You can’t make me.”
There were two of them, quarreling in angry whispers just beyond the lattice.
“You don’t know these house mice.”
“He’s just a mouse.”
“He’s bigger than us, and stronger, and gray.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of him and I’m not afraid of you, either, so don’t bother showing me your teeth, Bardo. You don’t scare me.”
“Then I’ll tell Father and he’ll make you afraid. Believe me, if you don’t go home right now I’m telling him.”
“Just let me look. Just one peek?”
“Then you’ll go?”
“I promise.”
Fredle relaxed his ears, closed his eyes and breathed slowly, in and out, in and out. He waited. He heard soft sounds from beyond the lattice and then Bardo said, “You promised,” and everything was quiet again.
It stayed quiet for a long time, until finally Fredle heard just the smallest sound, as if tiny claws were scratching lightly for a hold on one of the openings. This was followed by the softest of thumps, as a mouse landed behind the lattice wall. Fredle sprang up, eyes wide open, and got himself between Bardo and escape before that scrawny little mouse even knew what was happening.
Bardo dropped the orange peel he’d been carrying in his mouth. His eyes looked from side to side, to see where he might run, but when he spoke it was in a normal and friendly voice that Fredle didn’t trust for one minute. “Hey, Fredle. You’re awake.”
Fredle didn’t say anything. He waited, to hear what lies and half-truths Bardo would try out on him. He had figured out, during all the long, lonely nights and days, that if he looked carefully at the untrue things Bardo said, he could catch glimpses of the true things Bardo was trying to hide.
“So,” said Bardo. “In that case”—he pushed the orange peel toward Fredle—“this is for you.” Then he waited, paws moving restlessly. When Fredle neither moved nor spoke, Bardo said, “Don’t you say thanks to the someone who’s been bringing you food whenever he can? Getting himself in trouble for it?”
“What do you mean trouble?” asked Fredle, not even trying to sound friendly.
“Everybody-angry-at-you trouble.”
“You’re the go-between. It’s your job.”
“You don’t know anything about anything, Fredle,” Bardo told him and Fredle guessed that here, outside, that was pretty true.
“What do you say we go out for a forage?” Bardo asked.
“Sure. OK.” Fredle had a lot more questions he wanted to ask.
“What about this peel I brought you?”
“You can keep it,” Fredle said.
“What is garbage, anyway?” he asked Bardo when they had come to a safe shelter behind one of the large green cont
ainers.
“Stuff that’s too heavy to carry all the way to the compost,” he answered, in the confident way that made Fredle suspect that he didn’t know.
“Like what?” Fredle asked.
“Are you trying to irritate me?” Bardo demanded. “Because you’re starting to, with all these questions. Just pay attention to not getting eaten, Fredle. Think you can manage that?”
Instead of quarreling, Fredle asked about the brightnesses in the sky. Bardo told him that the humans called the tiny ones stars. “I heard Mister, it was a winter night and he said it to Missus, Look at those stars. Then she called one of the big ones—”
“I’ve seen those, too,” Fredle said. Stars, he repeated silently to himself, for the pleasure of saying the word. Stars. Just saying it made him remember, as if he could see them now, those white twinkling things.
Bardo ignored him. “—moon, she called it a moon. Moons don’t look at all the same as stars and no mouse knows exactly how many of them there are. And the biggest one? It’s almost as bright as the sun.”
“I know,” Fredle said.
“And don’t dawdle on the road,” Bardo told him as they scrambled across the rough dirt strip.
Road, Fredle repeated to himself.
“One of those machines can run right over you on the road,” Bardo warned him. “Squoosh you flat. Went you before you know it.”
At the compost, Fredle chewed some green, leafy food (celery, or lettuce, maybe chard—Bardo admitted that he didn’t know for sure, and that Fredle did believe) while continuing to ask questions about the names of things. Only once did Bardo mention chickens (“You never get chicken or any meat or bones in the compost”), but he was happy to talk about the snakes in the woodshed (“Black, they’re black and real long”). Bardo reminded Fredle that the snakes were dangerous. “You don’t want to get anywhere close to those snakes, or that woodshed. They’re worse than any owl or raccoon.”
Owls, Fredle knew by then, were birds that hunted by night, swooping down out of the sky to seize mice in their sharp talons and fly off with them. Raccoons, however, sounded more like dogs to him, and he knew that dogs didn’t hunt mice. “What’s so bad about raccoons?” he asked.
Bardo was glad to tell him. “There’s nothing worse than a raccoon, and they run in packs, a lot of them at once. They’re a natural enemy, every mouse knows that. They get into everything, hunt by night, take whatever they want out of the garden—there’s nothing good about a raccoon. Dirty, quarrelsome, untrustworthy. Mice steer clear of them. There’s nothing they won’t eat. Chickens, mice, lettuce—rats, too, for all I know. The barn cats don’t dare bother them. I have heard that the dogs can chase them off, but I’ve never seen it, myself.”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about all that,” Fredle insisted.
“What does a house mouse know except how to lie around and get fat? That’s why you have a go-between,” Bardo reminded him.
“Hunh,” Fredle answered, and they parted company at the garden gate.
“I’ll watch you safe back to the garbage cans,” Bardo offered, as if he cared about the house mouse’s safety.
Fredle thanked him, but he knew better; he could see the chicken pen and what must be the woodshed beyond. However, since he didn’t want Bardo to know how much he knew, Fredle scurried off across the grass.
When he entered the dim light of his own territory, he knew immediately that something wasn’t right. He wondered: Who? What? Was he in danger? Pretending to have sensed nothing odd, he listened to the faint, eager breathing and located his visitor, over in a corner where the lattice wall met the steps. Fredle positioned himself with his back to the hard, solid rear wall. He was pretty sure it was another mouse. What would another mouse want with him? Was he in danger?
Fredle had never fought. Mice didn’t fight. Of course, he had wrestled around with his brothers and sisters the way mouselets always do, but that wasn’t real. But if this was some stranger up to no good, Fredle was ready for a fight.
He jumped up, without warning, leapt from his position by the wall to land on all four feet facing the visitor. Then he walked slowly—threateningly—toward the other mouse.
It said, “How did you know I was here?” and wasn’t a bit afraid.
He thought he recognized the voice and decided to surprise her. “Hello, Neldo.”
“How do you—Bardo told you about me, didn’t he? What did he tell you about me?” She came up closer to Fredle, a field mouse even smaller and scrawnier than her brother, but just as brown. “It’s probably true what he said, but not the way he makes it sound. I make them nervous,” she explained, and then fell silent, staring at Fredle.
Before Fredle could say anything, however, before he could ask her what she was doing there, why she made them nervous, whoever they were, or what she wanted with him, she asked, “What’s your name? Bardo doesn’t tell us names. He’s the go-between, did he tell you?”
Fredle nodded.
“I don’t know why they call him that, since his job is to keep you away from us. What is your name?”
“Fredle.”
That seemed to please her. “Fredle,” she repeated. “He said you were a giant, almost as big as a rat. But Bardo’s a liar, sometimes.”
“I’ve noticed,” Fredle said.
“Most of it’s just mischief, although—sometimes?—it’s pretty mean mischief. You can never be sure about Bardo. I think they should let me be go-between, but they don’t trust me to do what I’m told. They think I don’t care about the rules. They’re right, but I’d still make a better go-between.”
Like her brother, she talked a lot. In fact, she was a chatterer, and Fredle began to hope she might be willing to tell him a way back into the house, a way home.
“He says you’re nasty. Are you?”
“No,” Fredle said.
“I bet you don’t bite, either, do you.”
“Only food, so far in my life,” Fredle said.
“But how did you escape? From inside the house, I mean, because they keep the inside mice like chickens, that’s what I’ve heard. Was it scary, escaping?”
Neldo had mixed everything up. “Why would they keep us like chickens?” he asked.
“To eat. Everything eats mice,” she explained. “We’re at the bottom of the food chain, except maybe for ants. And beetles. And spiders, too. Not counting vegetables, of course, especially the vegetables that grow out in the open, the tomatoes and peppers, lettuce and beans? They’re the real bottom because they’re so easy to forage.”
“But aren’t all vegetables the same?” Fredle asked.
Neldo gave the little squeaking sound that is a mouse’s laugh, and rarely heard. “That’s like saying all mice are the same and just look at us two, a field mouse and a house mouse, look how different we are.”
“There is something to what you say,” Fredle said. He guessed that if he could change his sleeping and eating habits, he could change his opinions, too. “And the differences don’t end with looks, do they? I’m a kitchen house mouse, which is different from being a cellar house mouse or an attic house mouse.”
“I’m a woodshed field mouse,” Neldo announced.
Fredle asked, “Aren’t there snakes in the woodshed?”
“There’s only one I ever heard of. It’s not easy, being a woodshed mouse, even though, actually, the snake lives up in the rafters and our nest is way at the back, in the bottom layer of wood.” Then she changed the subject. “Bardo says you’re easy to fool. Are you?”
“I don’t know,” Fredle said. “Maybe.” He thought about it. “But maybe not.”
“I think that if you escaped from the house you must be something special,” Neldo decided.
This was a compliment Fredle didn’t deserve. “I didn’t escape. No house mouse wants to go outside. It’s not as if we’re prisoners, inside. We live there.”
“Then what are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Well,”
he said, starting at the beginning of the story, with finding the good thing.
Neldo interrupted him almost immediately. “It was brown? It was sweet? Don’t you know what that is?”
“The inside was white and it was almost all inside. The brown was only a thin shell. That white soft filling was … It tasted”—and unexpectedly Fredle could remember exactly how that flavor spread out in his mouth—“wonderful.”
“Chocolate, that was chocolate, that shell, I bet. We never eat chocolate,” Neldo told him, sounding a little bossy now. “Chocolate’s bad for mice.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“You’re a mouse. Where are your survival instincts?”
“I don’t know how you can talk to me about survival instincts when you live with a snake.”
They had made one another cross, and sat silent for a while, until Neldo asked, “Aren’t you going to finish the story? About how you escaped?”
“If I have to,” Fredle answered grumpily, and so he did, which, strangely, cheered him up.
When he’d finished, Neldo remarked, “Missus saved your life. Do you think she meant to?”
“Why would she want to do that?”
“Nobody saves mice,” Neldo agreed. “In the woodshed, if you’re too old, you’re left—we push that mouse out, we have to. Or if he’s sick? That mouse gets pushed out into the open space in front of the woodpile. For the snake.”
Then Neldo stopped talking.
Fredle told her, “When we push ours out, they just disappear. I think, maybe, the cat?”
“If there’s a cat in the house there’s no maybe about it.”