Young Fredle (22 page)

18
The Return

It was a long journey for Fredle, walking beside the pipe where he could and balancing on top of it when he had to, scrambling up insulation and across thin, narrow boards. Eventually, the pipe emerged into a dark, closed place that smelled of soap and flowers. Rolls of soft paper stood in a stack in one corner. There was nothing at all familiar about the place, although it did smell faintly of mouse, as if once, long ago, a family of mice had lived there. What kind of mice would they have been? Fredle wondered. But they weren’t there now and he didn’t want to linger. The darkness was too thick; it lay too heavy on his eyes and skin. He knew he had arrived upstairs, but this wasn’t the part of upstairs he was looking for, so he went back down the pipe, back inside the walls and along to where the pipe next went up, to enter another enclosed space.

This space was not as dark as the first. It had doors, one of which was not fully closed. Moreover, the soapy smells here were sharp and familiar, and so were the boxes and soft sponges and stiff brushes and folded pieces of cloth through which Fredle clambered, moving hastily in his excitement, heading for the light. He knew where he was. When he went cautiously up to the opened door and looked out, he saw the kitchen.

It was light in the kitchen, although not as bright as daytime outside. From his hiding place, Fredle couldn’t see any movement, but he heard human voices, and the baby fussing. He heard the soft click of dog nails on the floor. He waited, listening, trying to understand what he was seeing, to identify something he had previously seen only in darkness.

He smelled food. He could now identify one of the smells as chicken, but that was the only familiar odor.

He heard Mister say, “This is the best chicken noodle soup you’ve ever made, honey.”

“You always say that,” Missus answered.

“It’s always true,” Mister said.

“And I always tell you, the secret is lots of bones in the stock. But
do
you think the baby is running a temperature?”

“She’s teething, that’s all.”

“Should I call the doctor?” asked Missus.

“If it’ll make you feel better,” said Mister. “Angus and I are taking the truck up to check on the sheep and then I’ll be in the cornfield until supper. That’s where I’ll be if you need me.”

All of this time, the baby was fussing away, not crying, just making little unhappy, dissatisfied sounds.

“You know where
I’ll
be,” Missus answered.

There was a scraping sound, and “Angus? Come,” Mister said. Fredle watched shadows moving across the black-and-white floor.

A voice quite close to him said, “Fredle? What are you doing in there?”

Fredle froze.

“I know it’s you. Didn’t you hear me?”

Before he could answer, Missus had called Sadie away. “That stuff under the sink will make you sick, you know that, you silly girl.” Then the door shut tight, leaving Fredle once again in darkness.

Then he could only hear the muffled sounds of the baby and a rushing sound in the pipes, as if a stream were running through them.

He waited.

The watery sound ceased and then he could no longer hear the baby. It would still be day, out there in the kitchen, he thought. He knew he should wait where he was, in safety, until night. But he had waited so long, he had been waiting since the long-ago day Missus carried him outside, and he could wait no longer.

The cupboard door was now firmly closed, so Fredle returned to the wall. This was a path he knew, following the pipes under the sink to get inside the wall behind the stove and from there over to the pantry. From the pipes, Fredle could travel within the closeness of the walls without any fear of predators—safe, inside, making the long, slow journey home. Or he could enter the kitchen through the hole behind the
stove, from which it was only a short dash across to the pantry door and the quickest way home.

When he came out behind the stove, Fredle turned
that
way, and when he came to the end of the narrow passage between stove and wall, he stuck a wary nose out to be sure the kitchen was empty.

With a soft thud, the cat landed just in front of him.

Fredle didn’t even stop to think. He ran. Ran back into the passage, out of reach of that long, clawed leg.
Then
he froze.

“Well, well,” Patches purred.

“It’s Sadie’s little friend.”

Fredle was relieved to hear that. “Yes,” he said. “Fredle.”

The cat’s paw groped into the narrow space, long nails scraping on the wall and floor. Fredle protested, “I’m Sadie’s friend, remember?”

“That will be useful to you the next time we meet outside,” Patches said. He didn’t sound at all unfriendly. “But at present you are inside. Although you do seem to have caught that bad outside habit of running away.”

Fredle didn’t bother answering. He was considering his situation. Cats, he knew, were patient. Mice, on the other hand, are by nature panicky. But Fredle had more sense than to run straight into a cat’s claws just because that was the straightest way home. He knew there was the other route. He would rather have entered the pantry through the hole at the bottom of the door and gone from there into the walls for a quick climb home, but that was no longer a choice.

Patches settled his body down into the crouch position, his tail waving back and forth along the floor.

Fredle squeezed himself around to go back into the wall and begin the difficult ascending pathway along beams and insulation.

There was the usual lightlessness within the walls, but he had so often followed Axle up and down this path that his feet remembered the way, and he still remembered exactly where it was necessary to go very carefully and where he could move without paying such close attention.

Taking this path reminded him of Axle, and he hoped she had made it safely to the attic. He already knew, although he hadn’t realized it until just then, that she hadn’t gone to the cellar. If she had, the cellar mice would have welcomed her,
and fed her, and made her one of them, unless she had chosen, as he had, to return home. But even in that case, the cellar mice would still be talking about her. Axle would have been—just as Fredle was sure he himself was now—one of their best stories, to tell and retell in the gatherings by the water heater.

Fredle climbed and wondered and wished Axle well, wherever she had ended up. As long as she didn’t went, he could be happy for her.

Arriving at last at the wide familiar board, Fredle stopped, to breathe everything in, the dimness, the sound of snoring and rustling and an occasional cough or whimper, the dusty, mousey smell of the air and the sight of two pale nests lying between tall wood-and-plaster walls. Then all of his attention turned to that corner nest, the one he was at last approaching, coming up to the side of, crawling over the edge of.

Home was warm with the bodies of sleeping mice. As if he were only coming back late from a foraging expedition and his arrival was not worth waking up for, the various bodies shifted around to allow him to take his usual place next to Kidle, where he fell immediately into a deep, restful sleep.

19
Home

Fredle opened his eyes to see Kidle staring down at him in happy surprise.

“Where’d you come from? Father! It’s Fredle! Mother? Grandfather? It’s Fredle! He’s come back!”

Fredle stood up, feeling a little foolish and very proud. They were all looking at him, absolutely amazed, all the remembered faces plus several new and unknown ones.

“There’s no need to shriek, Kidle,” said Father, and then Mother said, “It can’t be,” and Father asked cautiously, “Fredle?” as if unable to believe his own eyes and nose.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Grandfather said.

They crowded close around him, touching him with their cool, pointed noses.

“Woo-Hah,” Fredle laughed, out of sheer happiness.

“What did he say?” Mother asked Father.

“That didn’t sound like our Fredle,” said Father.

“What if it’s not? What if it’s a danger to the mouselets?”

“It is me, Mother,” said Fredle. “It really is.”

“You look different,” she complained.

“No he doesn’t,” Kidle disagreed.

“Grown-up,” Grandfather diagnosed. “Like Axle.”

Axle? It seemed that Fredle’s perfect happiness could grow more perfect. Was that possible? “Axle?” he asked.

“She came back a couple of nights after—” Father stopped. Then he said, “All right, everyone. Everyone awake? It’s time.”

“Doddle isn’t ready,” said Mother. “He’s just a mouselet and I don’t like to leave him alone. It’s just sleepiness, I’m sure he’s not sick, but—”

“If a mouselet can’t forage, we have to push him out,” said Father.

“Besides,” said Landle, one of Fredle’s many brothers, “you’ve been saying there are already too many of us. And now there’s Fredle, too.”

“I could bring back something for Doddle,” Fredle offered. “For him and for you, Mother.”

“Mice don’t do that,” Father said.

“I know, but why don’t we?” Fredle asked.

“You haven’t been back one night and already you’re starting with the questions,” said Father.

Grandfather was more patient. “You know we don’t eat in our nests, young Fredle. Besides, you don’t want to begin carrying food around for other mice. Trust me, I know. That kind of thing leads to nothing but trouble.”

“How?” asked Fredle. If Grandfather knew something dangerous that happened as a result of helping out another mouse, Fredle thought he wanted to know what that was. “How do you know?”

“It’s Fredle for sure,” said Father gloomily. “All right, everybody. We can talk later, but right now we have foraging to do. Everybody in place if you plan to eat tonight.”

Fredle wanted to ask about Axle, but now he was remembering how the evenings were always arranged. Forage first, and then, after, if there was the chance, you could talk. He wondered if he really could hope that Axle, too, had been able to escape the worst consequences of eating chocolate. He wondered if she knew it was called chocolate. He thought she would be impressed by everything that had happened to him and would want to hear all about all of it. She used to be the one telling her adventures and now he had adventures of his own to tell her.