Young Fredle

  “We’re not asleep,” Fredle pointed out. “Anyway, since I’m awake I’m going to do it. Come on along if you want to.” He actually hoped she would want to join him in the search, because things were more enjoyable when you had company. But he would go looking, with or without her.

  “All right,” Linu said. “I’ve been thinking about upstairs. It’s pretty easy to see that to get there you’d have to find a way through the ceiling. So,” she finished, in case Fredle couldn’t think it out for himself, “the first thing is, you have to find a way to the ceiling.”

  They both looked up.

  The ceiling was not made of impenetrable stones and mortar, like the cellar walls. It was made out of strips of wood, like the cupboard shelves. Wooden boards ran across it, and there were also the round white pipes, as well as the long black lines. Linu was right; Fredle knew that as soon as she had spoken. The ceiling was the only possible entrance to upstairs.

  Was it possible to move across the ceiling? Upside down? He couldn’t imagine it. But that was a problem he couldn’t solve from down below. If it was possible, he wouldn’t see how until he actually got up there.

  The first thing, then, was to find a way up the wall. Fredle and Linu climbed to the shelves where the baskets stood, which was a known and easy path, and from there, continuing slowly, they found footholds on stones that jutted out from the wall. When they had arrived at the top of the wall, they discovered a board just wide enough to walk along single file. That was easier going, and for mice, with their natural balance and light-footedness, not perilous.

  However, they had no known route to follow. They were exploring.

  Fredle looked all around, noticing everything he could, and he thought. He wondered aloud, “Where do the pipes go?” and he answered himself, “Upstairs. I’ve seen pipes in the kitchen. In the sink cupboard.”

  “They look like they go through holes in the ceiling, don’t you think? See?” Linu asked. “Can you see a board that leads over to the pipes? I think this one—” And she was off.

  “Don’t go too fast,” Fredle advised, and followed her.

  They were in the middle of the ceiling when once again light exploded all around them. This time, Fredle knew enough to simply freeze where he was. He looked down at Missus from above, and she didn’t look so very big after all, bending to take things out of one machine and put them into the other, which immediately started making its own rumbling noises, like hundreds of raccoons, snoring. Then she went out of sight. When they could no longer hear her footsteps ascending, the light disappeared again. After a while, “Is it safe now?” Fredle asked.

  “Did you see how high we are? I didn’t know you could get up onto these boards and be so high. You are an adventurer, Fredle.”

  Fredle was surprised to hear that, but he didn’t mind. “Maybe I am, sometimes,” he said.

  “I think we can get from here to the pipes that go from the top of the water heater,” she told him. “We can get to a lot of new places from here.”

  Moving quickly but carefully, because you wouldn’t want to fall from so high up, they made their way across to the boards that crossed above the water heater. Standing there, looking up, they could see a pipe entering the ceiling through a hole large enough for a mouse to squeeze through.

  “What did I say?” asked Linu.

  “And you were right!”

  For a while, they looked at it. Then they talked about how easy it would be for a mouse to get up there from where they stood, and Fredle knew that he was almost home. He turned to Linu.

  “Make my farewells to everyone. Especially Tarnu. Can you remember that?”

  “I’m not silly,” she told him crossly. “Of course I can. But, Fredle?”

  “What’s wrong? Do you want to come, too?” Fredle hadn’t thought of that before, but now that he had he wondered what Linu would think of life in the kitchen, and wondered how the kitchen mice would react to learning what it was really like to live in the cellar. Now that he had thought of it, he rather hoped she would come with him.

  But she was shaking her head. “I better not.”

  “If you know the way to get there, then you also know the way back,” he told her.

  Linu continued shaking her head, but she said, “I’d have to say goodbye, and explain where I’d be, and tell them I’d be with you so I’d be safe.”

  Then Fredle was shaking his head. He had learned that if you didn’t get going right away—if, for example, you went back to say goodbye or take a last look at the stars—then something might easily happen to keep you from ever reaching your destination. Or even to make you went. If reaching your destination was important, you couldn’t hesitate. “I can’t wait,” he apologized to Linu.

  Just as he was saying that, she was saying, a little sadly, “I can’t go.”

  So they parted, Linu to retrace her steps along the boards and Fredle to go along the pipe until it turned up, into the ceiling, into the house above.

  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 on
ly 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.

  Following Father’s quiet progress down to the pantry floor entryway, he got close enough to Grandfather to whisper, “Is Axle really and truly alive?”

  “Of course. She’s young and strong. I’m the one you should be surprised to find still here.”

  That was good enough for Fredle, for the time being. He could wait to hear the details. He was content to be back in his usual place between Grandfather and Kidle, one of a line of mice creeping out into the kitchen to forage. Being home, with familiar mice all around him, familiar boards under his feet and the familiar dim light all around,
knowing where he would look for food and what he might find, knowing that somewhere ahead in the night kitchen Axle was foraging (and wouldn’t she be surprised to see him!), Fredle had the feeling that nothing had changed.

  It was a wonderful, comfortable feeling. It was the feeling he had been longing for ever since he had been shoved down along the wall and pushed out onto the pantry floor. He was home, where Father and Grandfather knew what a mouse had to do, where they had their own nightly routines, where he knew what the dangers were, and where Father’s family had its own territory, its very own section of the board behind the pantry wall, trespassed upon only by the occasional ant or spider. Within the walls, a mouse could move in perfect safety from the kitchen to his nest, or to the cupboard under the sink and the narrow space behind the stove. Fredle felt once again that he was a very lucky mouse. He had had an adventure and he had come safely home.

  He found Axle foraging under the table. “Axle!” he cried.

  “You?” she gasped. “I never thought—I thought—Fredle? Is that you, really?”

  “Woo-Hah,” he laughed. “Yes, it is.”

  “Quiet!” she warned him.

  Fredle lowered his voice. “Am I glad to see you. How did you—”

  “You know the rule, Fredle. Forage comes first. I’ll try to come to your nest, later, after. Talking now is too risky.”

  Axle was as bossy as ever, but Fredle didn’t mind. He was so glad to see her strong, gray body and round, dark eyes, and the familiar curve of her half-ear that—now that he had seen them, he knew—resembled one of the moons he had glimpsed in the night sky.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Axle about the moons and the stars, the compost and the raccoons—especially the raccoons. Axle would enjoy those raccoons. He would be able to admit to her that it was his sweet tooth that got him into that particular bit of trouble, too. She’d like that, and she’d understand the temptation.

  Fredle’s foraging didn’t go particularly well. He found only one kibbles; it was enough to fill his stomach, but its dry tastelessness only made him think about the sweetness of onions and apples, the crisp freshness of ramps and bitter chewiness of orange peel, all the good things he’d learned to eat. After a trip into the kitchen sink cupboard for water, he was ready to return to the nest.