Young Fredle

  Even if he’d never seen anything like them before, Fredle knew without a doubt that the narrow green strips standing tall all around him were what he was smelling and what he wanted to be eating. Without thinking, he took a bite.

  It was stringy and watery and tasteless as a dog’s brown chunk. It also took a lot of chewing, but he persevered. He forced it down his throat and waited, to find out how his stomach would react. When he was sure his stomach didn’t feel any worse, and because he still wanted more, he ate his way through a whole long stalk of it.

  While he was chewing, Fredle looked around. He had to squint against the brightness, but it took so long to make a bite swallowable that he had time to notice lots of things. He noticed how very many of those tall green stalks there were, all around him, and he noticed that straight ahead, hidden behind the stalks, was a dark space, protected by a white wall with holes all over it. He noticed, although without really noticing, that he was seeing colors that were bright and clear, not dim and dark. He noticed, too, that his stomach didn’t feel as sick as it had, and he went on chewing.

  When he’d had enough, Fredle made his way cautiously toward the bright white wall. He pushed his way through the stalks, trying not to let his nails dig into the soft floor, because how could he know that his feet wouldn’t sink so deeply into the softness that he’d be trapped? He trod as lightly as he could—and, being a mouse, that was very lightly—until he arrived at a wall with openings all along it as small as mouse-holes, and some of them so low he could easily peer through.

  He saw a shadowy light beyond the wall, and the odd floor smell was stronger in there. Nothing moved that he could see or hear, although it wasn’t the same kind of empty quiet as a nighttime kitchen. Waiting beyond the white wall there seemed to be a dark, quiet territory, crowded with shadows and smells and sounds too soft and fine even for his ears, as if it was inhabited by creatures much smaller even than a mouse.

  Most importantly, it smelled and sounded and felt safe, which the green stalks and bright air behind him did not. So Fredle scrambled up through one of the holes and tumbled down into the darkness.

  When he landed on a floor even softer than the one he had left behind, he was suddenly exhausted. He was so entirely tired that even being afraid couldn’t keep him awake. He dug himself a shallow place close to the white wall and curled himself up in it. It was not until he was about to fall into sleep that he realized: his stomach didn’t hurt.

  It was noise that woke him. Noise came from over his head and from beyond the wall, thumpings and barkings and behind them a loud roaring that abruptly stopped. But it wasn’t silent out there after that. Out there was filled with sounds.

  Fredle had sprung awake as suddenly and completely as he had fallen asleep. At first, like any other creature waking up in a new, unknown place, he was confused and alarmed. He didn’t know this nest and it wasn’t a nest at all. Light was oozing in through the many holes in the wall, there was not as much space over his head as he was used to, and it wasn’t warm. He heard only unfamiliar sounds and unfamiliar silences, he saw only an empty space he’d never seen before, and—most odd and unmouselike of all—he was alone.

  Beyond the wall, outside, the dogs barked: “Hello, Angus! I took care of the baby!” “We’re home! Mister was proud of me!” “Let’s run!” Then Mister said, “Hello, you two. Let me hold her for a minute. We took one blue ribbon and two reds. He just keeps improving,” and Missus said, “There’s a pot roast for supper, are you hungry?” There were loud footsteps over Fredle’s head. After that, it was quiet again. Eventually, Fredle grew curious about just exactly what lay beyond his wall. He raised his head high enough to be able to look out through one of the holes and see what there was to see, now that the light wasn’t so blindingly bright.

  He saw those green stalks, going on and on, but then something above them caught his attention, a dark movement, back and forth. He couldn’t make sense of what he saw, until—“Stop, Sadie,” one dog panted. “I was working hard all day I’m thirsty.” The dogs were outside, like he was, Fredle realized. “Let’s go in,” the dog said, and there were more thumping sounds from above, lighter this time.

  After the dogs were gone, Fredle could see that no matter how far he looked up, over the tops of those stalks, he couldn’t see a ceiling. The air stretched up and up, and white things floated in it, and it was blue, and pink, too, and a golden orange as well.

  Inside, colors were dark and could be seen only rarely, mostly on the boxes and cans on the pantry shelves. Inside, you almost never saw color, but outside, seeing color seemed to be normal. Even the air outside had color, unlike the dim gray air in the nighttime kitchen or in the spaces behind the pantry wall. These tall stalks were green like peas, but brighter. This soft floor was brown, but not nearly as dark as the crust on that good sweet thing.

  Remembering, he warned himself not to forget that good sweet thing, because probably that had been what made him sick.

  He wanted to remember that because being sick was what had made the mice push him out to went.

  Because of which, he continued, thinking it out, Missus had somehow transported him outside and now he was here, alone. With only a white wall full of holes to protect him. With those green stalks crowding up against it. With the air stretching away without a ceiling to end it.

  With an empty stomach, too, Fredle realized. But he had no idea where to find food. He could eat those stalks, he knew, but somehow, now, they didn’t appeal to him, not the way they had before. They were a kind of food that only tasted right when you were sick, he thought, and then he wondered, Would food that tasted good when you felt bad automatically taste bad when you felt good again?

  As he wondered about these things, Fredle was walking along behind the white wall, his nose to the ground, foraging. He foraged without finding anything until his way was blocked by another wall, also made of wood, but without any holes in it. So he turned around and foraged back the way he had come.

  He came to the place where he had slept, just a shallow hollow place. He foraged on past it, still following the white wall.

  Nothing and nothing and nothing to eat. There was only the soft floor. He knew that he was going to have to go beyond the white wall again, because now he was getting thirsty, too. At least the bright light had left the air. Fredle felt more comfortable coming out from behind the protection of his wall into darkness, where he could see perfectly well but not himself be easily seen, if there was anything out there to see him.

  Was anything alive out there? Fredle hesitated behind his wall, growing more and more frightened. Was there anything waiting out there to went him? A cat, or, worse than a cat? What could it be that was worse than a cat? Then Fredle thought of a new worry. Was there anything to eat out there, and if there was, how would he ever find it? Axle, he knew—and it made him jealous—would just scramble up through one of the holes in the white wall and find out.

  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 st
range 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.