Young Fredle (5 page)

Up he scrambled.

On his feet, outside, he hid in among the tall stalks, and listened. The dim air was filled with sounds, none of which he recognized. Moreover, the air outside had changed color and in the distance it now looked a dark gray-blue. What had happened to all that light? But he didn’t smell any food and he couldn’t tell if the sounds he was hearing—voices? movement? whisperings?—were close or far away.

Fredle felt outside stretching off in front of him. The empty vastness of it made him want to turn and scramble back into his—What was it? You couldn’t call it a nest. A nest was lined with soft cloths, it was warm; many mice lived together in a nest. What Fredle had was nothing more than a cradle, but it was still the safest place he knew, and part of him wanted to run back to it.

Except he was so hungry. Fredle gave up and chewed away at one of the stalks, and then he ate another, until his stomach felt full enough. It didn’t feel really full, but he was no longer thirsty and he needed to get back behind the wall, to be out of the dangerous outside with all of its strange sounds and all of its emptiness.

Huddled back next to the white wall in the shallow little place that at least smelled familiar, at least smelled like
him
, Fredle wished that Axle had been pushed out with him, and then he wished that he had gone off with her—wherever it was she had gone off to—and then he wished that they had never found that good thing, because that was the beginning of all this badness. Fredle wished and wished and wished, but all the wishing didn’t make any difference.

In fact, the wishing made him feel hopeless and hungry and sad, and those feelings mixed in together to make a feeling so bad that he didn’t want to be having it. So he went to sleep, even though it wasn’t his usual time. He curled up, closed his eyes, and marched himself off, as if sleep were an actual place, like home, like the kitchen—a place a mouse could go to.

4
The Unknown and the Unexpected

For the second time, Fredle was woken up by noise from beyond his white wall, and when he looked out one of the holes he could see that it was daytime again. The air was so bright that Fredle had to blink away tears, to see.

The dark shapes he saw moving against the light made barking sounds, so he could recognize them as the dogs, Angus and Sadie. He hadn’t known that dogs were so big, and neither had he realized how very loud their barking was. One of them jumped up out of sight and could be heard running along over Fredle’s head (if that was what was happening; that was what it sounded like, anyway), and Fredle was surprised at how a dog’s footsteps thumped. Dogs weren’t animals that scurried or scuttled, hoping not to be noticed. They weren’t afraid of being hunted or caught in a trap. Fredle wondered
what it would be like to be a dog, big and loud and free from dangers.

Hiding in the shadows, his nose and eyes looking out through the opening in the wall, Fredle was both frightened and excited. These were dogs up close. There was a bowl set out on the stalks, and when the dogs suddenly appeared, landing in front of him, they both stuck their noses into it and water splashed out.

They must be drinking
, Fredle thought. When they’d gone off, he would go out and drink some water himself; some drops had caught on the sides of the stalks, he could see them shining there, and Fredle was, he realized, terribly thirsty.

He was thirsty, hungry, and alone—the three worst things for a mouse to be.

At that thought, fear rose up all over again in Fredle and he would have crept back into his place to escape it in sleep, if it hadn’t been for those dogs. Curiosity kept him with nose, ears, and eyes pointed out through the opening.

“I smell mice,” said Sadie, lifting her head. Water dropped down off her long tongue and her bright brown ears were cocked toward the wall where Fredle hid and listened. But the dog didn’t see Fredle. Fredle was too small,
it was too dark and shadowy behind the wall, and as long as Fredle didn’t move he couldn’t be seen. He was a mouse; he knew how to freeze.

“Of course you do,” answered Angus. “There are mice all over the farm. You know that, Sadie. That’s why Mister and Missus have cats.”

“But, Angus, this one’s different.”

“One mouse is no different from any other,” Angus announced. His whole head was black, except for his white nose, and his voice had no doubt in it. He sounded just as bossy as Axle and Father, so Fredle’s sympathies went immediately to Sadie. “Mice are all the same and none of them are any good to eat, whatever Patches might say.”

Patches?

“I like
our
food. Don’t you like kibbles?” said Sadie. That made no sense to Fredle and apparently made no sense to Angus, either, because he just snorted and stuck his snout back into the bowl of water. When he’d finished drinking he said, “Let’s go check the barn.”

“I’ll scare those cats, won’t I?” Sadie answered as she ran off, out of Fredle’s view.

“We’ll give those rats something to think about, too,” said Angus, following her.

Without further thought, Fredle scrambled out through the hole toward the bowl, to lick at the water dripping off the green stalks next to it. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something sliding by, hidden among the stalks, but when he lifted his head to look he saw nothing but green stalk after green stalk, packed thickly in together,
and he went back to licking up water and thinking about the dogs.

The dogs were often in the kitchen; he knew that. Now he knew that they were also outside. He could deduce, therefore, that there was a way to get from the kitchen to outside. And if there was a way to get from the kitchen to outside, there was also a way to get from outside back into the kitchen.

But did you have to be as big and strong as a dog to find it?

Returning to his place, Fredle thought hard. He was thinking so hard about the dogs that he didn’t even think to notice that he was no longer blinking in the bright daylight, as if he had gotten used to it, and he almost didn’t notice that there, right beside his little nest, was a dried-up piece of orange peel.
Orange peel? What? How did
—
?
His stomach began to growl and he stopped wondering.

Eating and being full and then falling into a sound sleep, Fredle forgot to think about returning to the kitchen, but he dreamed of home. He dreamed he was back in his round, soft nest, with the warm bodies of his family to curl up next to as he slept.

When he awoke, day still had not ended. The last long lingering rays of light reached in through the holes in his white wall and illuminated the uneven soft floor. For the first time, Fredle could see the wall that marked the opposite side of this territory, so he went over to smell it, and touch it with his nose, and look closely at it. It was rougher, harder, and cooler than his white wooden wall. It was gray and had no holes. In fact, this back wall was made of two different hard things, one of
which ran in streaks between the others, sealing off any open spaces, as if to make the whole wall stronger and better at keeping out anything that wanted to get in.

Fredle thought about that and wondered if there might be some crack in this wall, some opening through which a mouse could squeeze his soft bones.

That night, under cover of darkness, Fredle went farther through the tall stalks than he had before, until he came at last to the end of them. At the edge, he peered out into empty black air. Strange sounds filled the darkness, creakings and groanings, chirpings and whistlings, as if that whole nighttime world was busy with life. But nothing moved except for the gently waving stalks. He stood motionless, staring into the night, listening intently. Then he looked up.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh.”

The black air above him was filled with white specks that winked and blinked and trembled. They gave no light. Instead, they sparkled, brightly. Fredle had never seen anything like it before, but it wasn’t frightening. It was too beautiful to scare him. His eyes wanted to keep on looking up at all the white brightnesses, to discover if there was any design in them, to see if they moved, to wonder about them.

No mouse had ever said a word that even hinted at such things. Fredle thought that he might be the first mouse ever to see them. That thought made him feel how terribly alone he was, in this unknown outside world, but at the same time excited and glad to be exactly who he was exactly where he was, the first mouse ever to see this.

He lingered there for a long time before at last returning to his place, and when he was woken up the next morning by the same thundering sounds of the dogs jumping down onto the stalks to drink their water and leave drops scattered all around for him, he saw another orange peel beside his bed. Someone had crept silently in during the night and—being careful not to waken Fredle—had left food for him.

Who would be bringing him food? Not a mouse, because mice didn’t give food away. And why would food be brought to him? Missus? She knew he was out here because she had carried him out. But Missus was human and humans didn’t feed mice, they set traps and had cats to went them. Of course Fredle ate the peel, but still, he wondered. When he had eaten and made a quick run outside to drink the water the dogs left, he returned to his place. For a long time he pretended to sleep. He was waiting, hoping to catch sight of whatever it was that was bringing him food. Then, pretending no longer, he did fall asleep.

An explosion of sound, a deafening noise, woke him. It was just outside his flimsy white wall. He froze, standing stiff-legged on all four paws.

Something came up close, to attack his white wall. It was like a cat closing in on its prey, but no cat was that loud; also, cats didn’t approach and then back off to approach again, roaring all the while.

If it was speaking, he couldn’t make out any words. Fredle didn’t know if he could have even
heard
words, it was so loud and he was so frightened. The whole little space he was trying to call his home roared and echoed, and he ran back to crouch
against the cold rear wall, making himself as small as he could.

Suddenly, it stopped.

There was only silence, although the silence rang with the memory of the roaring sound. Then Fredle heard clanking sounds, then Mister talking and the dogs, Sadie’s bark quicker and sharper than Angus’s. She was saying, “Yes! Run!” and Angus was saying, “Not so fast, stay behind me.”

Hearing familiar dog voices soothed Fredle, so, more than a little fearfully, he made his way up to the white wall—ready to bolt back if he needed to. If outside had such horrible monsters living in it, he wasn’t sure he should ever go out from behind his wall again. Even with those night brightnesses being so beautiful out there, outside could never feel safe with that kind of noise in it.

Fredle almost didn’t dare to lift his nose up and through the hole, and when he did he was sorry he had. Everything was different. Everything had changed. Everything was ruined. All the stalks were lying flat, cut off, never to stand upright again, and the air was filled with their scent. Fredle drew back to his place, and did not know. All he could think was, it couldn’t be good.