Of Mice and Magic Page 4

  “Quiet!” Ben hissed. “They’ll hear us.”

  “Ben?” his dad shouted. “Ben, where are you?”

  For half a second, Ben wondered if his dad had somehow recognized his voice or maybe realized that Ben had turned into a mouse.

  Maybe he’ll even know how to fix me, Ben thought.

  He began to squeak a reply, when his dad added, “Come down here and help us catch these mice!”

  Ben’s heart sank. A clicking noise startled Ben, and the clock began to chime.

  Gong!

  The slab beneath Ben slid forward, and a little pair of wooden doors flung open. Cuckoo! the clock sounded from a whistle behind Ben’s head.

  Ben’s parents turned to stare. His father was moving the piano so that his mom could look under it. But now they gaped as Ben quivered on the wooden perch, a hundred yards above the floor.

  The plank slid back, and the doors closed.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ben shrieked.

  Amber began to race down the chain, head first, but Ben doubted that he could manage such a feat.

  Gong! went the clock again. The plank slid forward.

  Suddenly Ben was out in space, like a swimmer on a high-dive board, only he didn’t have any water to jump into and all of the spectators wanted him dead.

  Cuckoo! sounded the clock.

  Mom headed for Ben, vacuum cleaner aimed like a cannon.

  Ben tried to tell his legs to jump, but they went as limp as yarn.

  In seconds, the wind grabbed him and sucked him down. He clung to the lip of the vacuum and hung on for dear life.

  “Mom, help,” he cried.

  But his mother said, “Oh, no you don’t,” reached down, and pried his fingers loose.

  The vacuum slurped him through a long tunnel, as if he were on a waterslide. His chin slammed painfully against the ribs of the vacuum hose.

  “Heeeeelp!” he screamed.

  Then he thudded into a dark chamber amid a pile of dust, lint, hair, and dead bugs. Through the plastic housing of the vacuum, he could see distorted images of his mom and dad as they chased Amber. The vacuum’s motor whined deafeningly, and dust swirled. It lodged in his fur, wedged into his lips, stung his eyes, clogged his ears and nostrils.

  Ben gasped. There was too much dust in the air. Every time he drew a breath, he felt as if he’d cough his lungs out. He covered his snout with his little paws and hunched over, struggling to breathe.

  After painful seconds, he fainted and fell. It seemed that he was falling, falling, for several long minutes. Then everything went black.

  Chapter 5

  STRANGE CRITTERS

  Everyone likes a mole in his hole,

  And mice can be nice too.

  But remember, my child, wherever you go,

  NEVER trust a shrew!

  —A COMMON RHYME TAUGHT AMONG VOLES

  “Wild mice,” Amber wondered. Would they be friendly?

  AMBER SLOWLY WOKE FROM a nightmare in which an enormous metal python was swallowing her. Her chin thunked against its ribs as she slid down. Yet as she woke, the reality was as bad as the dream. She heard Ben’s dad grumbling as humans do, but she couldn’t understand him.

  “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Ben’s dad called. “Come get the mice. Tasty little mice for a nice kitty.”

  Amber tumbled in a cloud of dust, over and over, until she landed with a thud on something hard. She began to cough the grit from her lungs.

  Dimly, she recalled how the humans had cornered her and sucked her into the vacuum cleaner.

  “Amber, are you all right?” Ben called weakly.

  She shivered. The night was cold and wet, as is common in Oregon during winter.

  “Where are we?” Amber asked. Her eyes were full of dust. They stung too much for her to want to open them. She sniffed. She could smell lush grass and ice and foggy night air. In all of her dreams, she’d never imagined such scents. “It smells . . . glorious!” She raised her snout high. “Is this . . . the Endless Meadow?”

  “This,” Ben said dryly, “is a garbage can.”

  She cracked open her eyes. She lay in a huge container. Now she could smell more than grass and night air. She tasted a riot of odors. Old washrags in the garbage can vied with rotting food and paint thinner to see which could give off the most noxious fumes.

  Despite the fact that only the stars and a moon behind a cloud gave any light, Amber could see well. She lay sprawled in an old sardine tin, with wads of newspaper, crumpled cereal boxes, and smelly cans all around. A crusty sardine had cushioned her fall. Amber peered up. Ben loomed over her, a shadow against the starlight.

  “Let’s find a place to hide,” Ben urged, “before the neighbor’s cat, Domino, comes.”

  Alarms went off in Amber’s mind. She’d seen an evil kitten at the pet shop—spike toothed with fiery green eyes that glowed with cruelty. It had purred threats as a customer carried it around.

  Amber leaped to her feet.

  Ben tottered away from her through the garbage, slogging amidst a quagmire of baked beans, climbing a can that rolled crazily beneath his feet, then tiptoeing along a newspaper until he could peer down.

  “You know, it can’t be more than three feet to the ground, but it looks like I’m peering over a cliff.”

  “What’s that?” Amber asked. She pointed to a wall of boards with white pickets aimed at the moon, sealing off the neighbor’s yard. “Are we in a big cage?”

  “It’s a fence,” Ben said. “I guess it is a cage, sort of. People build them around their houses.”

  “Humans live in their own cages?” Amber asked.

  From the corner of her eye, Amber saw something huge and monstrous suddenly move to the side. She let out a startled yelp. “What’s that?” The Something swayed like a giant above the houses.

  “Just a pine tree.”

  “Oh.” Amber had never heard of a tree before. “Do they eat mice?”

  “Nah, it’s a plant—like grass or moss, only bigger.”

  “Then why is it moving?” Amber demanded.

  “The wind is blowing it.”

  “Wind?” Amber asked. “What’s wind? Is it bigger than a tree?” She imagined some hideous monster knocking trees aside in its effort to eat her.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ben said.

  Amber cried, “Why didn’t anyone ever warn me about these things?” Tears welled up in her eyes. She felt alone in a strange and terrifying world. No, she realized, I’m not alone. I’m worse than alone, because I’m with Ben. “And I’m not stupid,” she said angrily. “I just don’t know anything.”

  Amber heard a cat meow behind the fence.

  “Come on,” Ben whispered. He clung to the lip of the garbage can with his rear feet and stretched his nose toward the ground, searching for something to hang onto as he lowered himself. He used his tail to balance for a moment, but suddenly fell.

  He hit the ground. “Now you.”

  Amber leaped from the garbage can. Stalks of grass took her weight, and then sprang her back up. She’d hardly felt the ground at all. “Fun!”

  “Quiet!” Ben said, slapping a paw over Amber’s mouth.

  He peered up at the picket fence. A black, shadowy form suddenly appeared atop it. Amber could make out a wiry tail and two pyramids for ears. It was Domino!

  The cat perched atop the fence, its tail waving in excited jerks. It sniffed the air and, for a long moment, just peered toward the trash can.

  “Don’t move,” Ben whispered. He pulled Amber down, so that they could both hide in the deep grass.

  The cat crouched and wiggled its rump as it set its feet. Its ears drew back, and it went as still as could be, trying to make itself invisible.

  Amber didn’t dare move.

  For long minutes, the cat crouched, waiting. The grass that the mice hid in smelled overpowering, and the damp ground gave off hundreds of strange and subtle scents.

  Ben reached down and picked some grass, deftly t
wisted it, and put it on his head. He smeared mud on his face.

  Atop the fence, Domino purred a little song:

  Nibble, nibble, on the mice,

  With their heads off, they look nice!

  Though they’re fast, I’ll run much faster,

  And drag their corpse

  To the porch,

  As a present for my master!

  Just then, a yowl came from the street. A tomcat shouted, “Hey, Domino, what you doing?”

  “Hunting mice,” Domino hissed, leaping from the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Amber heard the two cats softly making plans. Domino hissed, “You run around the front and flush them into the backyard. I’ll do the lion thing and snag them as they run past.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the second cat hissed.

  “Come on,” Ben whispered. He and Amber scampered through the tall dry grass into the backyard, scuttling beneath a forest of weeds before the cats had time to carry out their plan. They stopped to catch their breath, and Ben pointed to the woven grass on his hair.

  “You want some?”

  “I may not know much,” Amber said, “but that doesn’t mean that I want to look stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. It’s camouflage. To the cats, we’ll just look like a pile of grass.”

  “Aren’t there animals that eat grass?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Cows and horses and stuff.”

  “So what difference does it make if you get eaten by something that eats mice or something that eats grass?”

  Ben thought for a long moment, then with some embarrassment, he pulled the twisted grass from his head.

  He led the way through a field of dandelions under the dark pine that leaned overhead, keeping themselves deep in the shadows. Huge pinecones the size of buses laid scattered atop beds of moldy pine needles. Unearthly mushrooms grew in little groves of white and yellow. A giant slug oozed across the ground like a booger that had come to life.

  Amber heard strange noises, the groaning of wood, the hissing of leaves in the wind, the cries of night birds. Some startled creature went thumping away. Everywhere she looked, odd leaves, shaped like snouts, waggled in the shadows under the breeze.

  “Where are we going?” Amber asked.

  “Underground,” Ben said. “I know a place where there are some wild mice. I caught Domino trying to eat one here last summer.”

  “Wild mice,” Amber wondered. Would they be friendly? Or would they bite her tail?

  Finally, the woods opened, and they reached a dark tree. Ben poked his nose in the pine needles at its base.

  “What are you looking for?” Amber asked.

  “Ah, found it!” Ben peered down a black hole, like an open mouth, leading under the pine needles.

  Amber crept close and sniffed. She could smell a bitter scent at the mouth of the tunnel—urine. “No mice live here,” Amber said, warily. “It smells strange.”

  “Sure they do,” Ben said.

  Ben squeezed into the hole and began crawling on all fours. Amber couldn’t see a thing, but her whiskers were just the right length to brush against the sides of the burrow as she crawled. Amber trailed so close to Ben that she kept stepping on his tail.

  The burrow slanted down and down, veered, then circled back up. It was almost like being inside the vacuum hose. Amber felt strange, frightening things brushing against her ears. The passage broadened. They crept past a black opening that smelled of poop, but kept to the main tunnel.

  “I sure wish I had some light,” Ben said.

  “Me too,” Amber added.

  Suddenly a pebble in front of them began to glow. At first it was only a soft light, almost as if Amber imagined it, but then the pebble went as clear as the glass on her old cage, and a brilliant light poured from it, chasing the shadows through the hole ahead.

  “You are a wizard,” Ben said in amazement. He turned back and peered at her. She felt as surprised as he.

  Ben reached down with one paw. He touched the pebble experimentally. He picked it up, revealing the way ahead.

  The walls of the burrow were worn smooth, but white things dangled down like limp whiskers.

  “What are those white things?” Amber asked.

  “Roots from the tree,” Ben whispered. He heard a moaning sound and saw something pinkish that oozed backward into a small hole. “And that’s a worm.”

  Amber heard a scuffling ahead. She looked forward, where the burrow twisted away, and saw a pair of bright eyes peering at them—cruel eyes.

  “Who’s there?” an old critter called gruffly. He sounded angry. Very angry.

  He had a grizzled face, bright black eyes, and long whiskers, much like Amber’s.

  “Just a couple of lost mice,” Ben answered, “searching for a place to stay the night.”

  “Keep right there until I can sniff you,” the old critter said.

  Amber heard the small pad of the fellow’s feet as he squeezed through the burrow. He was a fat mouse, Amber decided. He sniffed at Ben, and Amber caught a wild scent—clean fur and meadows.

  “Phew,” the creature said. “Dirty mice! Mice in our burrow. Well, we’re gentlefolk. Besides, it wasn’t always our burrow. Mice dug it in the first place. My name’s Vervane. Come along.”

  Vervane spun with a bit of a grunt—a real trick in the narrow tunnel—then padded away.

  Amber could smell him better now and felt sure that Vervane wasn’t a mouse after all. Besides, his tail was way too short.

  They moved swiftly to a large chamber where fungi clung to the pine roots that dangled from the roof. Ben’s light showed that nice dry leaves, grass stalks, and hair littered the floor. The old critter looked grizzled. Fur covered most of his ears.

  A dozen of his kin nestled in the corners of the chamber, including a mother who lay on her side, nursing some young kittens. All of the strange critters were like Vervane—nasty and grizzled, with short, unsightly tails.

  One young girl shouted, “Grandpa, Grandpa, who’s here?”

  “Mice,” Vervane said with disdain. “A dirty pair of them. Queer folk, carrying a star.”

  “Mice?” the girl asked. Her small dark eyes grew wide, and she gazed at Amber and Ben with a mixture of wonder and suspicion. She bounded forward and gaped in awe at the light that Ben held. “Hi. My name is Meadowsweet. Is it true that you eat grubs?”

  “Of course not—” Ben started to say.

  But Amber burst in, “I’ve never eaten a bug myself, but I hear that they can be quite tasty.”

  Ben looked at Amber, his jaw dropping in surprise. The human boy apparently didn’t understand much about mice at all.

  “Aren’t you mice?” Ben asked the folks in the burrow, for they looked very mouselike.

  “Of course not,” Meadowsweet said. “We’re the peaceful folk of the meadows and woods—the voles. We only eat plants, not flesh.”

  Meadowsweet ran around Ben and Amber in a circle, and three others her size joined in. They began to sing:

  In grain fields in summer, among berries and vines,

  The peaceful folk of the field you will find,

  Cutting down wheat stalks, gathering oats,

  Picking up pine nuts and preening their coats.

  Then they carry their food, down to their holes.

  They are the voles, peace-loving voles.

  The girls ended the song by dropping to their backs and wriggling their paws in the air as they giggled.

  Amber smiled. Every moment since Ben had brought her to his home had been terrifying. But for the first time all night, she felt safe.

  “Come on,” the young ones shouted.

  “You have a song, don’t you?”

  “Sing us your song!”

  Ben shrugged and hung his head, too embarrassed to sing. “I don’t have one.”

  “Don’t you at least have a song to tell us what you are?” old Vervane demanded.

  “I . . . I don’t need a song,” Ben said. “I’m a human!”

/>   The voles gaped in astonishment. The glowing stone alone was miraculous, but this was too much.

  Vervane’s mouth dropped. “Say again?”

  “I’m human,” Ben affirmed.

  The mother vole whispered to Vervane, “Maybe he got kicked in the head by a bullfrog or something . . .”

  “It’s true,” Amber said. “He is human, or was, until just awhile ago. Then something happened, and he turned into a mouse.”

  Old Vervane eyed them suspiciously, as if he didn’t much like mice and trusted them even less. “What happened, exactly?”

  Ben pointed at Amber with one finger of his paw. “It’s her fault. She turned me into a mouse.” Tears of rage formed in his eyes, and Ben began shaking, as if eager to be able to tell on Amber.

  The voles drew back in fear, eyes growing wide, as their suspicion turned to Amber.

  “Is this so?” The old vole’s eyes narrowed.

  Amber nodded slightly.

  “Are you a good wizardess,” Vervane asked in a kindly tone, then sneered, “or a naughty one?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Amber said, feeling deep inside her, looking for an answer. “I’ve never done magic before. It just sort of happened.”

  “I don’t know much,” Vervane said, his voice dripping with accusation, “But I’ve been around for a couple of years, and I can tell you this: transmogrification spells don’t just happen. That’s high enchantment!”

  The mother vole offered, “She’s young. She doesn’t look like a dark mage. She’s just a scared little mouse.”

  “That’s the problem,” Vervane groused. “She’s a mouse. A vicious, bug-gobbling mouse. I don’t trust ’em. Especially pocket mice! They look all big-eyed and innocent—right to the second that they snatch your young! I haven’t seen a mouse around here in months, and I’m not happy about these ones.”

  “It’s not as if she were a shrew,” the mother said. “And she’s not a pocket mouse or anything quite so dangerous. She’s a . . . a house mouse.”

  “Yes,” Vervane agreed, “a lazy vermin that lives off human scraps, gnawing through walls and stealing from the kitchen. I don’t like their kind, and I don’t want them here.”