The Secret of the Ginger Mice (9 page)

“Ha! I think if I'd seen a ginger mouse wearing a scarf I'd probably remember it. Do your parents know where you are?” she asked, eyeing their rucksack suspiciously.

Alex nudged Alice and they both opened their eyes very wide. “No, ma'am. You see . . . we're orphans.”

If the farmer's wife felt sorry for them, she disguised it well. “So you've lost your mother and your father?”

Alex and Alice nodded sadly.

“And now you've lost your brother?”

They hung their heads so that their whiskers drooped.

“Hmph, it seems to me you are two bad, careless mice to be losing your relations like that. If you want some of my freshly baked bread you're going to have to work for it.”

“But . . . but, good farmer's wife . . .”

“I'm not the farmer's wife, you cheeky brat—I'm the farmer. Now do we have a deal?”

Alex sniffed the air longingly, glanced back at Alice, then turned to face the farmer.

“And you can tell your friends there's no point hanging around,” she added before he could open his mouth. “I'm not running some kind of free bakery for indigent mice here, you know.”

“What friends?”

“Down the lane—a gray mouse and a black one.” She waved her hammer toward the junction of lane and road.

But when Alex and Alice turned to look there was no sign of mice of any color.

“They were there before,” said the farmer grumpily.

“Was there a ginger mouse with them?”

“Don't you think if I'd seen a ginger mouse I'd have said I'd seen a ginger mouse?” demanded the farmer, her hands on her hips.

“I guess so,” Alice murmured.

“Well, you guess right,” said the farmer. She put down her hammer, walked over to the side of the house and picked up two yellow buckets. “You see the cherries on the trees over there?” She ducked her chin at a row of cherry trees laden with fruit. “Pick them.”

“But—there must be twenty trees there,” protested Alex.

“You'll find a ladder over beside the house. If you each fill five buckets, I'll give you a good supper and let you sleep in the barn.”

Alex frowned impatiently and Alice knew what he was thinking. They didn't have time to waste picking cherries if they wanted to catch up with Alistair's kidnappers! But the sun was close to setting and they were tired and hungry. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to stop here. She poked Alex in the back and said to the farmer, “Thank you. We'd appreciate it.”

“Empty your buckets into that crate over there—and no eating the cherries.” The farmer gave Alex a particularly meaningful stare. “I'll know if you do.” And she picked up her hammer and set to work on the fence once more.

Alex and Alice took the buckets and walked over to the first tree. “Since this was your stupid idea,” said Alex, “you take the ladder and go for the high branches—I'll take the ones closer to the ground.”

“
My
stupid idea?” said Alice. “You're the one who brought us here. And you're the one who ate all our sandwiches back near Smiggins.
You
can go up the ladder.”

“Oh, all right,” Alex grumbled, “we'll take it in
turns.” He fetched the ladder and began to climb.

They set to work, stretching and picking, stretching and picking, Alex's hollow moans following each rumble of his hollow belly. But as tempting as the sun-warmed fruit was, neither of them dared steal a single cherry. At first, Alex passed the time imagining what the farmer's “good supper” might consist of. “Freshly baked bread . . . a salad of figs and blue cheese . . . a crisp apple and a sharp cheddar . . . strawberries and cream . . . or maybe”—he lifted his half-full bucket to his nose and inhaled the rich cherry aroma—“cherry pie. Mmmmm.” After a while, though, he grew too hungry and dispirited even to dream of food and complained about the work instead. “Why are cherries so small?” he asked plaintively. “It takes so many of them to fill a bucket.”

Alice, who had barely been listening to her brother as they filled bucket after bucket with fruit, suddenly called up, “It was strange, wasn't it, how the farmer saw a black mouse and a gray mouse, just like Mr. Grudge did?”

“Huh?” Alex stopped mid-complaint and, resting his bucket on a rung of the ladder, rubbed the sweat-soaked fur of his brow. “If she actually saw them,” he said. “They weren't there when we looked.”

“Well, she doesn't look like the imaginative type to me,” said Alice. “But if they were the kidnappers, why didn't they have Alistair with them? And why were they
behind us, not ahead of us? It just doesn't make sense.”

“I say it's a coincidence,” said Alex. “Your turn up the ladder.”

They swapped places and continued picking, arms aching from the strain of constant reaching combined with holding the heavy buckets. The sun sank slowly behind the hills, bringing some relief from the relentless glare, and had just dipped over the horizon by the time Alice said, “And that's five.” She lowered her last bucket of cherries to her brother, waiting impatiently below. He had tipped his fifth bucket into the crate some time before, and was eagerly anticipating the good supper. “Come on, hurry,” he said. “I think I smell onions frying.”

“Watch,” said Alice, feeling suddenly energetic now that the work was done. She stepped lightly from the ladder to the branch it was leaning on. She sat on the limb, then threw herself backward to hang from her knees and began to swing. Back and forth she went until, at the height of a forward arc, she unhooked her knees and executed a perfect somersault, landing lightly on her feet. “Ta-da!”

“Uncle Ebenezer would be proud, sis,” Alex said, picking up the bucket.

Together they walked over to the crate, where the farmer was waiting, a disapproving look on her face. “This is a farm, young lady, not a circus.”

“Sorry,” said Alice meekly. “Um . . . we've finished.”

“Took you long enough,” was all the farmer said. “Your supper's over by the barn. I expect you to be gone by morning.” She stomped onto the porch and sat on the front step to tug her boots off.

Her two workers walked quickly toward the barn, Alex in the lead.

As he reached the barn, he stopped dead. “A loaf of bread,” he said dully. “And a jug of water. That's
all
.” He sank to his knees on the grass. “Not even anything to put
on
the bread!” He turned toward the steps just in time to see the farmer disappearing inside. “Call that a good supper?” he shouted as the tantalizing aroma of onions drifted across the yard.

And the two mice settled down for their first supper away from home.

6

A
s they walked slowly down the street away from the newspaper kiosk, glancing left and right to make sure they weren't observed, Alistair said to Tibby Rose in a low voice, “I don't think it's safe for us to be walking around in open sight like this. We need to find a quiet place where we won't be disturbed so we can plan what we're going to do next. Do you know anywhere?”

“Sorry,” Tibby said. “I've lived in Templeton my whole life, but I don't know my way around at all.” She looked at him unhappily. “Maybe you should go on without me. I'd probably just slow you down, anyway.”

“Look, Tibby,” said Alistair, “I'd understand if you wanted to go home. In fact, you probably should. But if you do want to come with me, I could really use your help; I don't know much about Souris—and besides, I'd be glad of the company.”

Tibby smiled. “Well, I can definitely help you with that. And as for Souris, I might not have seen much of the country, but I reckon I could draw the map in my sleep.” She reflected for a moment and then said, “And I might not know Templeton by foot, but I've had a pretty good view of it from my treehouse.” She looked around until a tall round bell tower several hundred meters away caught her eye. “On the other side of that tower is the river. There's a swimming beach near the town, but if we walk downstream a bit we should be able to find a quiet spot.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Alistair, thinking longingly of the cool river as his neck began to prickle beneath his scarf. Although only late morning, the sun beat down from the cloudless sky so fiercely that the cobbles beneath his feet were glazed with heat.

At that moment a slender white mouse with a folded newspaper in one hand and a briefcase in the other strode briskly around the corner and then stopped dead and stared at Alistair and Tibby Rose in shock.

“Let's get a move on,” said Alistair.

They hurried past the white mouse, who watched their progress down the street with open-mouthed disbelief.

Tibby Rose led the way, stopping every now and then as if to consult a map in her mind's eye. For the most part, the streets they went down were deserted; the other mice in town were probably, quite sensibly, avoiding the heat of day, Alistair surmised. In Smiggins, too, they tended to stay indoors during the hottest part of the day, though the heat in his town was less sharp and dry, and the light softer than in Templeton, where the light blazed off the pale-gray stone of the buildings so that it almost hurt his eyes to look at them.

It was a relief when, after endless narrow streets of unrelenting glare, they turned into a shady tree-lined square with a fountain in the middle. Alistair hurried over to bathe his face, then cupped his hands under the water cascading from the upper tier of the fountain into the pool below and drank thirstily.

“Aren't you hot?” he asked Tibby Rose, who stood by watching.

She shrugged. “I'm used to it. Besides, I'm not wearing a woolen scarf.”

Alistair gave her a small smile. “Don't you start,” he said. “You sound like my sister.” At the thought of Alice he felt a pang of sorrow. His family must be awake by
now, wondering and worrying. If only he could let them know he was okay.

“Where's the bell tower from here?” he asked Tibby Rose.

She pointed to the far corner of the square. “Right there. That street to the left of it should take us to a path down to the river.”

Alistair wiped his damp hands on his fur as they crossed the square, passed through an archway, and left the town behind. The cobbles stopped abruptly and they were descending a dirt path toward a slightly muddy-looking river lined with rushes and large leafy trees. Just ahead of them, water lapped at a stretch of pebbly beach, and Alistair could see half a dozen mice of about his own age splashing in the shallows. Another group was taking it in turns to swing on a rope tied to the bough of an overhanging tree, dropping into the river like stones and then swimming back to shore. They seemed to be having a competition to see who could swing out the farthest.

“Alex and Alice would love that,” he said to Tibby Rose. “Hey, we can ask those kids about the quickest way to get to Shetlock.”

They continued down the path until they'd reached the edge of the beach, then Alistair called, “Hello? Excuse me?”

A couple of heads turned and a sharp-faced mouse cried, “Look at those two! They're . . . they're ginger!”

At that, every head turned and the cavorting mice stopped their games to stare.