Anton and Cecil, Book 2 (13 page)

“Dayo, please.” Hieronymus spoke softly from his cage. “You have to understand. I really want to go.”

The parrot blinked at the mouse, his beak open. “You do?” he squawked softly.

Hieronymus nodded and opened his paws. “I can't live like this, and I need your help.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, coming closer.

Cecil looked over his shoulder at Anton, his head spinning with exhilaration. “Come on, come on! Now or never, little kit.”

“Hush, Cecil!” spat Anton, sheer panic in his voice. His paw shook as he pressed and pressed on the latch. Suddenly a horizontal bar moved slightly. Anton gasped. “It's just like the latch on Willy's crate on the train!” He jammed down hard with both paws, the other end of the bar lifted out of its slot, and just like that the cage door swung open.

“Yes!” cried Hieronymus, dashing out and clutching Anton's foreleg. “Oh, so good to breathe free air again!”

“You know, it's the same . . .” Cecil began, when the door to the room opened wide.

There stood Miss Betsy, gaping at the scene. No one moved for a long moment.

Dayo broke the silence.
Well howdy, little lady!
he drawled.

“Merlin!” screeched the girl, looking at Dayo. She frowned at the parrot as if he'd been derelict in his duties. Dayo looked away.
Pretty bird,
he muttered.

She swung her gaze to Hieronymus and gasped. “Snowball!” she howled. “You're out of your cage!”

All hat and no cattle,
droned Dayo quietly.

“And YOU!” The girl stabbed a thin finger accusingly at Cecil. “You filthy beast, how did you get in here? Get out of my way!” She lunged forward, grabbing for Hieronymus.

Cecil drew back in surprise, then fluffed out his tail savagely. “Oh no you don't!” he growled. He took a deep breath and snarled, loud and long from his chest, just the way Katya had done for him in the village. And it had the same effect—the girl screamed and stumbled backward.

“Quick!” shouted Cecil. “Everybody move!”

In a flash both cats sprang from the table, darted past the little girl, and slipped through the doorway. Hieronymus scrambled down the table leg and streaked across the floor, not far behind them. Dayo lifted off from his perch and flew in tight circles around the room, squawking incoherently, then whooshed out the door as well.

“Merlin!” wailed the girl. “Snowball! Wait!”

The man and woman were hurrying up the stairs when the creatures came zipping down, underfoot and overhead. The woman screamed and jumped aside, but the man turned in pursuit. The front door was shut tight, and the cats skidded to a stop and looked around frantically for another way out. They ran toward the back of the house, through a small room with a fireplace and several high tables, and into a long room furnished with many chairs of various sizes. At the far end of the room Cecil saw a curtain move—an open window.

“Up there!” he yelled. “Hurry!”

The cats bounded over two low chairs and scrabbled across a table covered in cloth and strewn with small, shiny items. They heard things tumbling away and breaking on the floor as they snagged the cloth with their claws and dragged it with them along the table, but finally they were at the window. Cecil pulled up short and looked over his shoulder just as Anton sprang through and disappeared.

Hieronymus was running hard, making the turn into the room as fast as his legs could carry him. His face was set, but Cecil saw that the little rodent was not as quick as he used to be, and the man was close behind, almost upon Hieronymus. As he drew close to the mouse, the man pulled his hat from his head and stretched it in front of him, ready to trap the pesky pet with it. Cecil cried out, but he was too far away to do any good.

At that moment Dayo banked into the room, narrowly avoiding the furniture and flapping his wings furiously to stay aloft. He saw Hieronymus and the outstretched hat, and he dove. Just as the man leaped forward to clap the hat over the mouse once and for all, Dayo swooped in, snagged Hieronymus's tail with his beak, and flew straight up over the chairs to the window. Hieronymus yelped as his head bumped across the sill, and then they were through.

The girl rushed into the room, shrieking. Her head swiveled from the man sprawled on the floor to the open window. Cecil glimpsed her stamping her little foot before he turned and bounded out after his friends.

The pale orange sun slipped behind the whale-shaped mountaintop as the group gathered among the boulders in the hills behind the house, first catching their breath, then laughing in astonishment. Cecil was shocked that the “plan,” such as it was, had actually worked.

“I couldn't believe it when I felt Dayo's beak clamp down and I was plucked into the air,” said Hieronymus, wiping tears of relief from his cheeks and rubbing his sore tail with his paws. “I didn't know you could fly that well,” he said to the parrot.

“Nor did I,” admitted Dayo, arranging and smoothing his feathers. He turned to Cecil. “That snarl of yours was impressive.”

Cecil chuckled. “And effective. A lynx taught me that.” He looked sheepishly at Anton. “I guess we should have checked
all
the windows before we tried the roof, huh?”

Anton shook his head, smiling. “I'll never forget the girl's face when she opened the door and saw us all,” he said. “She turned so red!”

“Little Miss Betsy,” said Dayo, clucking his beak softly.

“Sheesh,” said Cecil, shuddering. “What a screamer.”

“She does have a strong voice,” Dayo agreed.

“Only if you like screeching,” said Anton, his face turning serious. “And she kept poor Hieronymus locked up like a prisoner. What a tyrant.”

“Even so, she did seem to delight in our company,” Dayo pointed out.

“Dayo?” said Hieronymus, scrutinizing the bird. “What are you thinking? Aren't you glad to be free?”

“Yes. Flying outside is fun.” He shifted on his skinny legs. “But it's getting late. I'd better be heading back.”

“What do you mean?” cried Hieronymus. “You're not going back there, are you?”

Dayo bobbed his head thoughtfully and raised his eyes to the dusky evening sky. “I am. She's not that bad, you know. She appreciates my talents.”

“Well, so would others,” said Hieronymus gently. “You could travel with us for a while, see the world. You don't have to stay a prisoner.”

The parrot smiled and idly dragged his talons along the rock face. “I was never a prisoner—the window was always open, remember? And I
have
seen the world, and it's dangerous. When I was taken from my homeland, I traveled here in a box on a great ship over an endless ocean. I didn't think I would survive. And the trip took so long, I don't think I could ever go back, even if I knew the way. Besides, there are no other parrots out here, no family for me. With Miss Betsy, I have a home, I'm not afraid, and I have someone to talk to. And Hieronymus, you know, I really like to talk.” He gazed at the mouse and gave a short bow. “It was an honor sharing a room with you. You're a gentlemouse, and I learned quite a lot from you.”

“Likewise,” said Hieronymus, his voice quavering.

Cecil exchanged a glance with Anton, and knew his brother was thinking the same thing. Animals made choices—a “bargain with humans” as Katya would say—and you had to make the choice you could live with.

Dayo turned to Anton and Cecil. “There are very large cats where I come from, lions and cheetahs—frightening brutes, fearless and loyal. You two are every bit as brave as they are. It's been a pleasure.” He cocked his head at Cecil.

“And you turned out to be better than the average bird,” said Cecil, grinning.

The door on the house slammed in the distance, and they heard the little girl's high voice calling. “Merlin! Merlin, where are you? Come back!” A pause, and a small sob. “Please come back!”

“Off I go,” said Dayo. “Best of luck to you all.” He flapped into the dusk, blending in with the pale gray sky, and disappeared. One final call drifted back to them on the breeze.
That train has left the station, boys.

Cecil took a breath and looked at the others. “Ready?”

Hieronymus nodded. “Let's get far away from here.” He turned and scampered off, the cats right behind him.

CHAPTER 13

The Great Cat

H
ieronymus ran ahead of his rescuers without looking back or pausing for breath. When they were beyond the town, Anton shouted, “You can stop now. No one is following us.” The mouse slowed, glancing over his shoulder, and then stopped abruptly, sitting up on his hind legs as the cats caught up with him.

“I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to run on solid earth,” Hieronymus said. “There's something humiliating about running in a wheel. It feels so pointless.”

“It didn't look too dignified,” Anton agreed.

Cecil chortled. “I'd have to be pretty desperate before I'd run in something like that.”

“Well,” said Hieronymus. “I was desperate. I'd been in that cage a month before I even got a message out to the network. They sent in a team who tried to get the cage door open one night while Dayo was asleep, but even a mouse can't chew through steel, and we couldn't figure out the latch.”

“Sometimes,” said Cecil, “you just need a cat.”

“You can say that again,” said Hieronymus.

“Sometimes you just need a cat,” Cecil repeated.

“I've never been so happy to see a cat in my life as I was when I saw your faces upside down in that window.”

“Well, you're a free mouse now,” said Anton, brimming with happiness at the sight of his friend sitting close by. “But what I'm wondering is how you wound up in a cage.”

“It's a long story,” said the mouse, rubbing his paws together as if to warm himself up for the tale.

“Maybe we could find a bite to eat before you start,” said Cecil.

“I'm pretty thirsty myself,” said Anton. They looked about. They were sitting in a narrow, sandy field halfway between the back of the town and the rising foothills of the mountain shaped like a whale. The sun was low in the sky and the mountain cast a long, cool shadow across the plain. Without consulting, all three turned away from the town and walked toward the mountain. There were some scrubby bushes huddled together at the base, which they knew might mean water nearby. Anton and Cecil strode side by side; it was too hot for them to run, but Hieronymus streaked ahead. He disappeared briefly under one of the bushes. As the brothers closed in, he came out looking pleased.

“There's a little stream,” he announced, “and some nice black berries.”

“Berries,” Cecil said. “I don't like the sound of that.” But in fact when they arrived at the tall brambles climbing the face of a rock, the berries proved to be delicious. Anton ate a few, while Cecil investigated the sparkling stream that ran downhill and pooled in a depression between two flat stones. “Will you look at this,” he called back joyfully. “Minnows!”

“I'll stick with the berries, thanks,” said Hieronymus. He was sitting on the ground with a berry as big as his head between his paws.

“I haven't had fresh fish since I don't know when,” said Anton, and in a few leaps he joined his brother who was scooping little black minnows into his mouth with his paw.

“I'm not sure minnows qualify as fish,” Cecil said, moving aside to give his brother room. “But they sure taste great to me.”

Hieronymus, his face smeared with purple juice, scurried to the water's edge and took a long drink. “This seems like a pretty good place. A mouse could live here quite comfortably.”

“It might get lonely,” Cecil said. The sun had dropped behind the mountain and dusk had descended with unnerving speed. An owl hooted somewhere above them.

“It's a little creepy too,” observed Anton.

Then all three jumped straight up in place as an agonized scream tore through the air. It was deep, sonorous, furious—a cry of frustration and rage.

“My whiskers,” whispered Hieronymus, who was the first to return to the ground. “That's one big, angry creature.”

“It's a cat,” said Anton.

Cecil nodded in agreement. “It's a very large cat.”

Again the cry filled the air, and this time the brothers tracked it with their ears, their heads turning together toward a break in the boulders just above the pool.

“It's up there,” Cecil said. “And it's in trouble.”

“We'd better go see what we can do,” Cecil said, his eyes bright at the thought of another rescue mission.

“Dayo told me all the cats are really big around here,” Hieronymus said softly. “Maybe I'll just wait for you here.”

Anton studied his anxious friend. “Don't you know by now that if you're with us, no cat is going to harm you? If we leave you behind, you're defenseless. Also, you might be helpful.”

Hieronymus shuddered. “I've been in that cage so long, I've lost my courage.”

Cecil was already moving in the direction of the roar. He looked back at his brother and the mouse. “Oh, come on,” he said. “What would your ancestors say?”

This reminder of Hieronymus's glorious family tree, tales of which he had told Anton on their first shipboard meeting, affected Hieronymus like a tonic. He passed his paws over his whiskers and ears, rotated his shoulders to limber up, and bounded behind Cecil, who was carefully making his way over the boulders that blocked the way. Anton brought up the rear, snuffling up the berries Hieronymus hadn't finished.

The rescue party heard the scream again. The voice sounded vexed past endurance, and they corrected their course. “We're close,” Cecil said.

“Stay low,” Anton called to him. “We don't know what we're going to find.”

Hieronymus was emboldened by his ability to blend in with the scenery. “I'm the same color as these rocks,” he observed. “Can you see me? I'll bet you can't even see me.” He darted ahead, passing Cecil, who was pulling himself up a jagged rock face. At the top he stopped and let out a soft squeak of alarm.

“What is it?” Cecil asked, climbing up behind the mouse. Then he, too, let out a mew of surprise. He looked back at Anton, who was head and shoulders above the top, pushing up with his hind legs braced against a convenient outcrop. “Wait till you see this!” he said softly. Anton quickly and quietly joined his comrades and looked down upon the astonishing scene.

Below them in a narrow clearing an enormous cat, the largest they had ever seen, struggled helplessly. He was tawny gold from ears to tail, except for his muzzle, which was white. He had a long tail, thick as a ship's mooring rope, and paws the size of lobsters. When he turned his great head, Anton caught a glimpse of his eyes, golden and black-rimmed, glinting in the dying sunlight.

“Cats have mercy!” Anton exclaimed. “That must be the Great Cat.”

“Whatever he is, he's certainly in a Great Fix,” observed Hieronymus.

The huge cat's back leg was caught in a knot of rope attached to a tall pine and he was clearly unable to free himself from it. He was standing on three legs, pulling forward until the captured leg was parallel to the ground, then he turned back and fell to tearing at the rope with his front claws. But his efforts only served to tighten the knot. In frustration he fell down upon his side and let out a deep whine. Exhausted, he dropped his head to the ground with a thud and closed his eyes.

Cecil was already halfway down the rocky descent and Hieronymus scampered after him. Anton paused, taking in the powerful animal—bigger than a human and much stronger—and he reflected that being large and fierce wasn't always the easiest way to live in the world. Then he hurried down and joined his friends, who stood together at the Great Cat's head. The trapped animal gazed at them in silence, blinking his golden eyes as if he couldn't believe what he saw. When he spoke his voice was deep and warm and thrilling.

“Where on earth did you come from?” he said.

Cecil appeared awestruck, opening and closing his mouth a few times before finally murmuring, “Well, that's a long story.”

“I've never seen such tiny cats,” he said. “I must be dreaming.”

Anton stepped closer. “No, we're real enough. We'll try to help you get free.”

“I don't see how you can help,” the Great Cat said. “I've been caught here since this morning. The more I struggle, the worse it gets. This cord is strong. If I can't tear it off, how could you?”

“Ahem,” said a high, squeaky voice. Three sets of cats' eyes swiveled to focus on the little gray creature, who was examining a bit of the cord at a safe distance from the Great Cat's head. “I'm your mouse,” Hieronymus said, standing up to his full height. “This job is a cinch. I will have to ask you to be patient and maintain a calm and pleasant demeanor.”

“Do you have any idea who you're talking to?” said the Great Cat, pulling himself up on his front paws. “I've a good mind to make a snack of you.”

Anton gulped. “No, don't eat him,” he said quickly. “If Hieronymus says he can do it, he can do it. He can gnaw through anything.”

The Great Cat closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. “It's not as if I have any choice,” he said. “He's welcome to try.”

Hieronymus set to work, examining the Great Cat's hind leg, where the rope knot was so tight it had bitten cruelly into the thin flesh. The cord was taut, rising a little as it neared the tree. Hieronymus moved a few steps back and chose a spot where it passed close to the ground. He was able to sit up and grasp the thin, twisty rope between his paws. “It's made of horse-tail hair,” he observed. “Very oily and strong.”

Anton, who had been thinking there was a strong smell of horse in the air, said, “That explains it.”

“What an officious creature that mouse is,” said the Great Cat.

“He comes from a long line of know-it-alls,” Cecil assured him.

Then, as Hieronymus began to chew the rope, Anton and Cecil exchanged names with the Great Cat, who was called Montana.

“I am, I believe, the biggest cat in the world,” declared Montana. Anton nodded vigorously—this must be true.

“All animals fear me,” Montana continued, “and all humans, too.”

“And yet,” Hieronymus squeaked, spitting out bits of rope from between his teeth, “here you are in a trap, set by humans.” He glanced at the others, his eyes twinkling. “Happens to the best of us, I expect.”

Montana scowled at Hieronymus, who went back to work on the rope. “A mistake, yes. One I won't make again. I have no interest in their world. I prefer to be alone.”

Anton wondered if this was really true or if it was simply what the Great Cat had grown accustomed to, but said nothing.

Montana described how one night he had climbed the tallest mountain and stood at the top from where he could see a great distance, and he knew that he was the most powerful creature in his domain. He did not like to be seen. His loyalty, he said, was to the sky, as only the sky was beyond his control.

“And now,” Montana concluded, “it appears that I'm going to be indebted to two tiny cats and a silly mouse.” He chuckled, a sound so rich and full of vibration that Cecil and Anton, without warning, began to purr.

As Hieronymus gnawed, he thought of the long history of his family and of his own adventures in the world, of his recent captivity and now this rescue of the largest cat in the world. Pride swelled his heart. He chewed through the last stubborn strands of the rope and held the two ends apart over his head. “The Great Cat is free!” he proclaimed.

Montana jerked his back leg forward and swished his heavy tail, accidentally sending Hieronymus sprawling face down on the ground. In a great bound Montana crossed the clearing. He leaped joyfully from boulder to boulder while Anton and Cecil watched, purring.

Hieronymus pulled himself to his feet, then dusted himself off with his paws. “Well. Can you beat that?”

Montana sprang high up, disappearing and reappearing above them. The night was quiet and still. Suddenly the three friends heard a sharp, yipping sound, far off at first and then closer.

Cecil shivered. “Coyotes,” he said grimly.

“Is he just going to leave us here after we saved his life?” Hieronymus asked. Then they saw the Great Cat, high up, looking down at them from a steep cliff, his yellow eyes gleaming in the dark.

“He did say he prefers to be alone,” Anton observed.

As they watched, Montana disappeared again, but they could hear him crashing through the rough stones and spindly trees. He entered the clearing in a great leap and sat down before them, looking eminently pleased with himself. “I've reached a decision,” he said.

“We'd like to hear it,” Hieronymus said coolly.

“I've never shared my den with another animal in this world, but it's not safe for you three out here tonight, and as I am indebted to you, I invite you to come with me now.”

Anton breathed a long sigh of contentment.

“We accept,” Cecil said.

And so the two cats and the mouse set out behind their protector, who slowed his pace so that they could keep up. After a long, twisting, rocky climb they came to a narrow opening in the face of the mountain. “This is it,” Montana said, stepping aside so that they might enter.

Anton and Cecil went in, but Hieronymus paused at the entrance, looking back the way they had come, and then up at the sky, where the moon was milky white and the stars twinkled brightly.

“You can really see the heavens from up here,” Hieronymus observed. “The stars tell many a story.”

Montana made a snuffling sound, which might have been a laugh. “They do,” he agreed. “That group just overhead, that's the Great Lion. He climbed a mountain so high he stepped into the sky.”

“Really?” said Hieronymus. “We call that the Sagacious Mouse. He is so wise he gives off light. The old name for him is Mus Sapiens.”

“Hmmm,” said Montana. “I've not heard that story. In fact, I've never talked to a mouse before.”

Hieronymus huffed. “I'm sure they mostly just run screaming when they see you.”