Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (17 page)

Chapter 20

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED

The fierce wind that carves a mighty mountain can also polish a diamond and thus reveal its inner light.

—RUFUS FLYCATCHER

Nightwing came whistling toward Amber, his voice sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard.

UNSURE WHAT TO DO, Ben stood with quivering legs until he heard a voice from the back of the cave.

“How quaint,” Nightwing said. “My little blood-sucking parasite has a friend.”

Ben whirled just as Nightwing came swooping out of the darkness and grabbed Ben with his gnarled feet.

Nightwing swept over the Weird Wood, swooping between bushes like an ace pilot, diving between the fork of two branches in a twisted pine, bursting through the leaves of a low-hanging vine.

Ben should have realized how good he was. A bat that can fly through a hailstorm without getting hit wouldn’t think twice about flying through this twisted jungle. “I knew that she’d come back,” Nightwing said, as if to a confidante. “She couldn’t resist. Without you as her familiar, she’s just another vermin.”

Nightwing came whistling toward Amber, screeching in the daylight, his voice sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Ben saw Amber on the ground, running for all she was worth. She’d lost her only weapon, and now she was darting blindly along a low trail.

She peered over her shoulder, saw Nightwing swooping above her, and dove sideways into some brush.

Nightwing overshot her position and swooped up into the air, doing a barrel roll as he hurtled back toward her.

“What do you think?” the bat said. “Shall I mush her with a dirt clod and turn her into a little statue that will only last until the next rain? Or shall we make a more permanent sculpture of her—a monument to her stupidity?”

“She’s not stupid,” Ben groused. “She just doesn’t know anything.”

Ben turned and began to climb through Nightwing’s thick fur, all eight legs trembling.

“What are you doing?” Nightwing demanded.

“I’m hungry,” Ben said. “Your blood. I smell it in your veins, Master. It calls to me.”

Nightwing gave a simpering laugh as he soared over the brush pile where Amber had taken refuge. “Come to take your rightful place at last?”

Ben only grunted in midstride. But it wasn’t his rightful place that he was after. He needed to distract the bat, and he could think of only one way to fight back. He would plunge his little needlelike mouth deep into the bat’s flesh and sever his “juggler” vein!

But suddenly Amber was out in the open, trying to run from beneath the brush, and Nightwing hissed a curse. “You cannot fight me. I am the immortal, the mystical, Edgar. Allen. Poe!”

Amber was leaping over a large round stone, looking up over her shoulder toward Ben and Nightwing, when she began to scream.

Suddenly the stone beneath her feet began to melt, like butter, and Amber was melting with it, mushing into a creature half-mouse, half-stone.

She cried out in a wail of grief, and with all of his heart, Ben wished that he were still Amber’s familiar, that his magic power might flow to her.

* * *

Amber glanced up as Nightwing’s shadow passed overhead. He seemed huge for a bat, as big as all of the sky.

She was all out of magic. She’d felt the last of it drain from her when she killed the snake-eagle, hurling her needle into its eye.

And now, she knew that she would die. There were monsters everywhere in the Weird Wood. She could see them running from the mouth of the cave, could hear them converging on her from every direction.

Her only hope was to run madly, race through the brush, and hope that it was thick enough to slow her attackers.

She rushed through a patch of sunlight. There was a sandy brown stone beneath her, and as the bat hissed, Amber felt her feet giving way beneath her, sinking into the sediment, becoming one with the stone.

She tried to pull her knees up, to free herself, but she could feel her legs frozen, immovable. She was turning into rock! She could hear it, a sound like stones cracking and grating against one another, and she could feel it—the rock rising up above her knees, to her waist, climbing toward her chest.

Time seemed to stop. The bat was there above her, Ben desperately plunging his proboscis into the monster, as if it were a spear.

Nightwing was so sure of himself, so confident, that he flew with his eyes closed while his huge ears were swept forward.

No,
Amber realized in a rush of insight.
He’s not confident. He’s flying by sound.

The stone had risen to her chest by now and would soon be at her neck.

Amber did the only thing that she could think to do. With one last desperate hope, she roared, “Leave us alone!”

The sound that came out was louder than the whistle of a freight train. It blasted the brush and shook leaves from the trees. It bounced off the mountainside and hit the clouds, reverberating like a bell.

And it struck Nightwing like a cannonball.

The big-eared bat, navigating solely by sound, veered sharply and slammed into a tree, a tree whose branches looked like grasping arms, a tree whose trunk had knotholes that looked like eyes and another that looked like a gaping mouth, and whose leafless limbs looked like arms flailing uselessly at the sky.

There was the sound of snapping bones, and the bat flopped down in a broken heap, landing amid a wild cucumber bush whose trumpet-shaped flowers made little satisfied smacking sounds as vines and tendrils grabbed the bat and gently began tugging it down into the dirt at its roots.

A mist began to rise from under the bush, a black shadow of smoke that lengthened and grew, like an enormous dragon. And then the wind began to whisper through it, and the shadow was borne, like a captive, out to sea.

Chapter 21

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MOUSE IN THE WORLD

To be defeated, you must first give up.

—BUSHMASTER

“We really did change the world.”

BEN FELL TO THE GROUND and stood in a daze for a moment, his ears still ringing from Amber’s sonic blast.

He peered about and saw monsters racing toward Amber.

But she just stood there, a creature made of stone, unmoving, uncaring. She had become a statue.

The monsters gathered around Amber, glaring at the little stone statue. There was the eelipede and Fanglorious, a skunk-leech and a scorpion-rat. From every direction, the monsters began to appear.

None of them spoke or growled.

With Nightwing gone, they seemed lost.

Ben scampered up to the stone statue.

Amber’s head was twisted up, just in the way that it had been when she’d roared. Her mouth was open, and there was a frantic look in her eyes.

Ben climbed up on the statue, and tears came to his eyes.

“Now what’s going to happen to me?” he said bitterly. “You can’t just leave me here. Amber? Can you hear me?”

But Amber didn’t move. She just stared up toward the morning sunlight, her stone eyes unblinking.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I’m sorry that I put you through so much. I’m sorry that I tried to feed you to the lizard. I’m sorry that I tried to leave you. Come back, Amber. Come back, and I’ll stay with you. I’ll help you free the mice of the world.”

Amber remained still, unmoving.

Fanglorious growled, “She’s dead, lad. They’re all dead—them folks that got turned into rocks and trees. They’re no more alive than . . . Nightwing.”

Ben whirled on the snake. Here in the sunlight, the strange snake with vibrant colors painted along its side seemed obviously destined to be the new leader of SADIST.

“Do you know any magic?” Ben said. “Can you turn her back into a mouse? I could be your familiar.”

But Fanglorious shook his head. “Aside from my strange coloration, there isn’t anything magical about me.”

Ben looked out over the other monsters. There was nothing special about any of them, he decided. They were just unfortunate critters who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Turning away, Ben began the long trek home. It was miles and miles to Dallas, Oregon. And he suspected that he’d never make it alive. He was already so hungry and tired that he didn’t even think he could make it to the nearest freeway.

Still, there’s a chance,
he thought. I could go to the freeway and wait by the side of the road for some mountain biker to come along. Then all I have to do is hop on, get a drink, and hope that he takes me in the right direction.

But then what? Even if Ben made it home alive, what would he do? Crawl into his mother’s messy house and live among the ants and the cockroaches until he grew old and died?

Yeah,
Ben thought,
that’s what I’ll do.

Ben hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when his legs got tangled and he tripped, falling on his face. He just lay there a moment, wishing that someone would step on him, when he felt something strange—a quivering in the ground. A pounding sound came once, then stopped, then rose again more loudly.

Just like on
Jurassic Park, Ben thought.
A T-Rex is coming.

He didn’t move. The ground quivered again, and then the rumbling shook in earnest. It felt as if the whole world would tear apart. The trees were shaking, and the monsters roared in fear.

Ben staggered to his feet and peered around. The creatures were gaping about in terror and began to scream.

Ben was looking straight at the eelipede when it shrieked. One moment, there was a horrible monster in front of him, with armored plates on its back and a hundred oily feet, and the next there was a giant wolf eel slithering on the ground while a centipede crawled off.

The same happened with a nearby scorpion-rat. One moment, there was an evil creature squeaking in pain, thrashing its tail as if looking for something to poison, and the next moment there was a rat racing away from a tiny scorpion. Even Fanglorious was a strange snake one moment, and the next he was a common garter snake, slinking away, while next to him lay a Polaroid camera.

Is all of Nightwing’s magic dying with him?
Ben wondered. He glanced toward Amber and saw what looked like dust falling off of her.

Suddenly she breathed. She threw her tiny paws up in the sky and shouted to the creatures and the plants of the Weird Wood, “You’re free! I free you all!”

And then Ben saw the truth: Amber was un-mushing everything!

A nearby bush that had looked like some monster trapped in pain, suddenly turned into a crow and flapped into the sky. A tree became a deer that bounded away gracefully. And suddenly there were raccoons and squirrels and robins bolting from Shrew Hill in a wild stampede.

Amber whirled toward Ben. “Let’s get out of here,” she shouted, “before we get trampled by a herd of rampaging chipmunks!”

Just then, a crazed cottontail came leaping through the grass, and Amber ducked just in time to keep from getting squished.

Amber reached a paw out to Ben, and he went whisking toward her and landed with a plop on the soft fur of her belly.

“Hold on tight,” she commanded him, and then added, “I wish we were at your house.”

The effect of her wish was amazing. It was as if a bottle rocket exploded beneath Amber. One moment she was standing on the ground, and the next moment there was a hissing explosion, and she was hurtling through the air. The force of the wind buffeted Ben, and he clung tightly to her fur, but even eight legs didn’t seem to be enough. He began to slip, and Amber reached down with a comforting paw and just held him in place.

Then they were whisking through the air, shooting over the endless forests, the hills and lakes, the winding rivers.

They picked up speed, and the wind became stronger, and suddenly it stopped altogether. They were going faster and faster, but it was as if there were a magical pocket of air that surrounded them. Ben realized that Amber must have wished for it.

“Did you mean what you said?” Amber asked. “Do you really want to stay a mouse and come with me to help free all of mousekind?”

Ben thought for a long moment. “I guess,” he said, for he didn’t have any other choice.

“I think that you’re lying,” Amber said. “I think that you really want to be a human.”

“I don’t know,” Ben said honestly. “I wasn’t very good at it.”

“And I haven’t been very good at being a mouse,” Amber said. “At least . . . I wasn’t good to you.”

Ben thought back on all that had happened, on how Amber had come to save him, even if all that she could do was to act as a decoy and draw off his enemies. “You did pretty good at the end,” Ben said.

Amber smiled.

“If I turned you back into a human,” Amber asked, “could we still be friends?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, growing excited at the thought. “I could even help you. I could take you to pet shops and help you free the mice. And then we could let them live in the backyard, and I’d bring lots of food for them, and . . .” the thought trailed off. “But you can’t turn me back into a human. You can’t cast a spell that’s a lie.”

“You’re right,” Amber said. “I didn’t want you to be a human because I thought that it meant that I would lose you. But . . . I think I know a way.” Amber sniffed.

Ben looked up and saw that Amber was crying.

Suddenly there was a jolt, and they began to slow, as if they were in a car that was running out of gas. They shuddered, and Ben looked down. They were dropping toward Ben’s backyard.

“Hold on,” Amber said. “I think you’re running out of magic.”

They sputtered and began to fall, and just as they neared the ground, Amber seemed to get her magic back, and they spurted the last few yards over the huge pine trees and housetops, over the cars and yards.

And then they were there, falling with a thud among the wildflowers and deep grass.

Against all hopes, Ben found himself home, and a profound sense of gratitude welled up in him.

“Ben,” Amber said. “Close your eyes. And keep them closed for a minute.”

“Why?” he started to say, but it just came out as a grunt. He closed his eyes.

“Now,” Amber said, “let’s see if I can do this right.”

She reached down, stroked Ben’s head and back, and then stepped away a few paces. Ben sat in the sunlight, letting it bounce on his head. In the distance he could hear the slamming of a car door as the neighbor headed for work, and from the fields across the street came the song of a meadowlark.

“Ben,” Amber said sincerely. “I wish that we could see what it would be like to be human.”

Then it happened. Ben felt no pain this time. Only a twinge really, as his extra four legs began to shrink away.

His front legs turned into arms, and he could feel himself rising, rising, his hands and feet all on the ground, until he straightened up and stood.

He just held still, quivering in the sunlight, rejoicing in the sensation of being human—in feeling the cool morning wind blowing on his arms and face. He hadn’t felt that in days—not as a mouse, insulated by fur, or even as a tick, insulated by a carapace.

“You can open your eyes now,” Amber said, and Ben looked down and saw the bare feet of a young woman. She wore a simple dress that looked like a print stolen straight from the backyard—stalks of grass, buttercups and daisies, dried coneflowers and Indian tobacco.

And as Ben looked up into her face, he gasped. Amber stood before him, transformed. She was, Ben realized, the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen. Her hair was a strange brownish gray. Mouse-colored, he realized. And her eyes were black and sparkling.

“Amber?” Ben asked in amazement.

She nodded. “We’re low on magic. This won’t last. But I think that when we’ve got enough power again, I can wish that you are human, as long as I’m human too.”

“Wow,” Ben said.

Had Amber been that pretty as a mouse?
Ben wondered. And in his heart he knew the answer. Of course she had been that pretty. That’s why he had picked her from the pet shop.

But what now?
he wondered.
What would I do with her? Where would she live?

He imagined her living like a wild creature in the woods up above the house, somewhere near Bushmaster’s burrow. But then he thought,
No, she’ll be a human now. She’ll need a house, and I’ll need to take her to school with me.

He imagined keeping her in the attic where Mom and Dad never went. She could use magic to feed herself, and they could go everywhere together, freeing the mice of the world.

And even as he stood there, imagining what the future might bring, he began to shrink again.

In moments, he was small again. As small as a mouse.

He heard a yowl.

The sound of a cat wouldn’t even have registered a week ago, but Ben nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled, and saw the white body and black spots that identified Domino.

The cat was fleeing in a wild panic, and right behind him, tripping and leaping, half a dozen mice and voles gave chase, all of them armed with needles.

He could almost imagine the news headlines now, as word got out that the mice of Dallas, Oregon, had armed themselves.

“We’ve already changed the world,” Amber said, her black eyes peering at him from dark fur. “Maybe more than either one of us has realized. Maybe that’s all that I really need to do—teach the mice of the world how to free themselves.”

Ben glanced back toward the house and thought of going home. He noticed that there was a mass of black objects spilling out the back door of the garage. Flies. Dead flies.

And he remembered the spider who’d said that the odds against him getting out of the pet shop alive were a million to one.

A million greenbottle flies!
Ben thought.
Looks like he collected on the bet.

“We really did change the world,” Ben said, shaking his head in wonder. He looked at the flies and imagined trying to clean out the garage with a shovel. That was one mess that he didn’t ever want to pick up, even if he had to leave it for his mother.

Then he turned away, and he and Amber went hopping toward Bushmaster’s hole beneath the pine—hop, stop, and look.

And for the moment, Ben was grateful just to be a mouse again.