The Secret of the Ginger Mice (3 page)

“And there's a piece of wool from Alistair's scarf caught on the shutter,” Alice added.

Ebenezer gently shooed his niece and nephew away from the window and leaned out himself.

“I see. Well, it seems to me there are three
possibilities,” Beezer said, ticking them off on her fingers. “One: he's fallen.”

Ebenezer, still half out the window, shook his head. “I don't think so. If he'd fallen, we'd see him lying three stories down in the lettuce patch. But there's no sign of him out here.”

“Two: he's run away. Maybe with the help of a friend and a ladder?”

Alice shook her head. “Alistair would never run away. He has no reason to. And besides, he would never worry us like that.”

“Never,” Alex confirmed.

“Then that only leaves the third option,” said their aunt. She looked grave. “Alistair has been kidnapped!”

2

F
ar away, over the mountains and then a sea and then some more mountains, lived a young mouse by the name of Tibby Rose.

How Tibby Rose came to be living with her grandpa and great-aunt in their big old white house on a hill at the edge of Templeton was the most dramatic thing ever to happen in her otherwise utterly undramatic life.

She had arrived nearly twelve years ago. The night was dark and moonless, and very windy. Great-Aunt Harriet particularly remembered the wind, because when she first heard the tapping sound she thought it must be a branch of the giant oak tree at the left side of
the house knocking against an upstairs window pane. But no, when the wind dropped for a moment, they both clearly heard that the knocking was coming from the front door.

Grandpa Nelson reached the door first and when he threw it open was overjoyed to see his daughter, Lucia. Two years earlier Lucia had fled the house in the middle of the night to marry a mouse who was “nothing but trouble,” according to Great-Aunt Harriet (who had helped raise her niece after Lucia's mother died of pneumonia). And to this day that was all Tibby Rose knew about her father, for Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet refused to talk about him.

“I told her he'd be trouble,” was all Great-Aunt Harriet would ever say, to which Grandpa Nelson would respond wistfully, “Ah, but she loved him, Harry.”

Despite the harsh words spoken when Lucia had left, there were no cross words now. They kissed her and hugged her and ushered her inside out of the blustery wind, through the dark hall and into the warm kitchen. But when they saw her in the light, Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet each gave a little gasp. Lucia's once-silky fur was now coarse and matted, and her once-bright eyes were dull. Then the bundle in her arms began to squirm and her eyes shone for a moment as she unwrapped a grubby cloth to reveal a baby mouse,
no more than a few months old. She was smaller than average, even for a mouse so young, but that wasn't the most unusual thing about her.

“A gingernut,” Grandpa Nelson said when he had got over the initial shock. “A little gingernut.”

“Strawberry blonde,” his sister, Great-Aunt Harriet, corrected sharply. Great-Aunt Harriet was very fond of correcting people.

“She's rose,” said the baby's mother softly. “Like the first blush of dawn.” And she told her father and aunt that she had named her daughter Tibby, after the great explorer Charlotte Tibby, and Rose, like her pink-tinted ginger fur.

Then Lucia revealed that her husband was dead, and she was home to stay. Of course, they had seen immediately that she was very ill, and though Grandpa Nelson, who was a doctor, took time off from his job at the hospital in order to look after her, within six weeks Lucia too was dead. Great-Aunt Harriet quit her job as the principal of Templeton Green Primary School to look after Tibby Rose, and after Grandpa Nelson had retired from the hospital a few years later, they had both looked after her together, just like they had looked after her mother.

Since her dramatic arrival at the old white house on the hill that windy night, precisely nothing had happened
in the life of Tibby Rose. She never went to school, since Great-Aunt Harriet had decided to teach her great-niece herself at home. If she was sick she didn't go to see the doctor in town, for who better to look after her than her very own grandpa, who had been considered one of Templeton's finest doctors? In fact, Tibby Rose never saw any mice other than her great-aunt and grandfather. High on the hill at the edge of the town, there weren't even any neighbors for Tibby Rose to talk to. The only company she had other than her two elderly relatives was to be found in the books of Great-Aunt Harriet's huge library.

When she was younger, Tibby had loved stories, particularly stories full of adventure and excitement, or about families and friendship. But it had been a few years since she had read books like that. The adventure stories just reminded her how dull her own life was, and the books about families and friendship made her feel lonely. The kinds of books Tibby liked now were factual: biographies and geographies and books about how to make and build things—which meant projects to keep her busy and keep loneliness at bay. Her favorite books of all were the books written by Charlotte Tibby herself, documenting her many incredible journeys and the survival skills she'd learned along the way. Tibby Rose wished that one day she would travel the world like
the original Tibby, meeting interesting new people and seeing strange and wonderful places. More and more she felt like she was going to suffocate in the old white house on the hill, with only Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet for company. She began to fear her life was just going to go on and on in this way, every day the same, never changing. Until one day—a day that started out just like any other—it
did
change.

Tibby Rose woke up, dressed and made her bed, just like always. She ran down the stairs to breakfast, just like always. She heard Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet arguing about the color of the toast, just like always. She stepped out onto the veranda and walked down the steps to fetch the bottle of milk that had been left by the letterbox, just like always. Only that's when things changed. One minute she was bending over to pick up the milk bottle, the next she was lying flat on her stomach with the breath knocked out of her and something heavy pinning her to the ground.

With a frightened squeak, muffled by grass, she struggled to claw herself out from under the weight on her back. Finally it shifted and she managed to squirm her way clear of what she now saw, to her surprise, was another mouse. He clambered to his feet and Tibby Rose
found herself staring at a mouse about her own age and height, with ginger fur and a colorful woolen scarf.

“Who are you? And where did you come from?” asked Tibby Rose, astonished.

“I'm Alistair—and I came from up there I think,” said the ginger mouse, pointing at the sky. He sounded equally astonished. “Where have I landed?”

“On me! Tibby Rose. What are you doing here?”

“I don't know,” said Alistair. He frowned. “I remember I heard a tapping at the shutters so I opened them, and then I must have banged my head or something, because next thing I knew . . . well, here I am—which is where, by the way?”

“Templeton,” said Tibby Rose.

“I've never heard of it,” said Alistair. “How could I fall out the window and land somewhere I've never heard of?”

“I don't know,” said Tibby Rose. It did seem a peculiar thing. “Where was the window you fell out of?”

“Smiggins,” said Alistair.

“I've never heard of
that
,” said Tibby Rose. “You'd better come inside and talk to my Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet.” And she led him into the big wooden house.

Grandpa Nelson was sitting at the kitchen table watching Great-Aunt Harriet, who was browning some toast under the griller. “Not too brown,” he was saying as Tibby Rose and Alistair entered.

“It'll be as brown as I make it,” said Great-Aunt Harriet.

Grandpa Nelson looked friendly enough, Alistair decided, with his round ears and round tummy and snow-white fur.

“It's a gingernut,” said Grandpa Nelson, sounding shocked. “Another gingernut.”

Great-Aunt Harriet, who'd had her back to them, spun around, and for once she agreed with her brother. “It certainly is,” she said, staring hard at the ginger mouse. “Who are you? Who is this, Tibby Rose?”

“I'm . . . Alistair,” said the ginger mouse a little nervously, for Great-Aunt Harriet, who was tall and thin with steel-gray fur, bristling whiskers, and a sharp, pointy nose, did look rather fierce.

“He fell out his bedroom window in Smiggins and hit his head and then landed on me,” explained Tibby Rose.

“A bedroom window?” repeated Grandpa Nelson doubtfully. “In Smiggins? I've never heard of Smiggins. Is it on the other side of Grouch?”

“Grouch?” Alistair repeated in disbelief. “But Grouch is in Souris.”

“Of course it's in Souris,” said Tibby Rose. “That's where we live.”

“Young man,” said Great-Aunt Harriet sternly, “exactly where is Smiggins when it's at home?”

“South of Shudders, of course—in Shetlock.”

“Shetlock!” hooted Grandpa Nelson. “You must have had some whack on the head, my boy. Why it would take at least a week to get from here to Shetlock—if you were going by the direct route. It's not something you can accomplish by falling out of a window.”

“But . . . that can't be,” said Alistair. “This . . . this must be a dream. Yes, it's getting dark and misty. I'll wake up in a minute.”