The Mouse and His Child
Behind them in the shadows of the trees stretched the double tracks of tin feet and the odd prints left by Frog’s trailing woolen fingers. And bending over the trail in the snow was a figure clothed in a greasy scrap of silk paisley tied with a dirty string. The clockwork elephant followed, with two empty paper bags slung on her back. The planner of the bank robbery, growing doubtful of Ralphie’s prompt return, had thought it prudent to come out to meet him and collect the booty.
“ ‘Rat slain in bank holdup attempt,’ ” said Manny Rat. “That idiot Ralphie! I suppose that means no treacle brittle for me. And those wretched windups have gone off with the frog as if their single purpose were to make a fool of me. Now I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole dump unless I find them and smash them!”
“MIDNIGHT!” rang the clock on the steeple of the church across the meadow. “Twelve o’clock and all’s peaceful here. Sleep well!”
Out of the light of the moon that floated clear in a cloudless sky, Frog paused under the trees that bordered the meadow. He turned to look back anxiously over the snow behind them, then faced forward again, listening. The mouse and his child walked on a little way, then stopped, unwound. “What’s the matter?” asked the child.
“I hear something up ahead,” said Frog. “And Manny Rat is close behind us. I’ve seen him dodging in and out of the trees. If he catches us, I fear that our friendship may not survive the encounter.”
“I hear something now,” said the child. It was a far-off, ghostly whistling, and the rhythmic whisper of a distant drum.
“Whatever it is,” said Frog, “it can scarcely be worse than Manny Rat in his present mood. Let us press on.” He wound up the father, and hopped beside him and the child toward the sound of the drum and the whistling that now drew closer.
In the shadows of the trees ahead a green light, pale and dim, glimmered and was gone. Then it glimmered again. “Fox fire beacon,” said Frog. He stopped, and knocked the mouse and his child down to stop them too. “I’ve seen those before,” he said, “and I’ve smelled that same musky scent I smell now. What’s in front of us is… ” He leaped aside as a wood mouse bolted past, dragging her children with her.
“War!” she cried.
The drumming grew fierce and louder, and the whistling could now be recognized as the shrill singing of piercing little voices accompanied by a reed fife:
Onward, shrews, for territory!
Victory crown our might!
Onward, shrews, for fame and glory!
Heroes, to the fight!
“What are shrews?” asked the child.
“They look something like mice,” said Frog, “but they’re short-tailed, sharper-nosed, and smaller — very little and very bloodthirsty. They eat constantly, and when they have a war they eat even more.” The mouse father’s motor having run down, Frog stood him and the child on their feet again. The band of shrews was less than a hundred yards away, and the scout who had signaled with the phosphorescent wood moved off to join them. Frog watched the fox fire bobbing dimly, growing smaller in the distance.
“Their eyesight’s very poor,” he said. “They haven’t seen us yet. Perhaps they’ll go away, and just as well. They’re a commissary company, I think, after rations. That’s why the mouse was running so hard. In any case, they don’t eat tin.”
“Do they eat frogs?” asked the child.
“When they catch them,” Frog replied.
The shrews moved into the moonlight, and the child, looking beyond his father’s shoulder, saw the little company, spiky with the tiny spears they carried, clustered black against the snow. The singing had stopped, but the rolling beat of the nutshell drum and the piping of the reed fife continued while the scout made his report.
“Those spears have poisoned tips,” said Frog.
“Be careful,” said the child. “Don’t go any closer.”
“There’s no going back, either,” said Frog. “Here’s Manny Rat.”
“Good evening!” called Manny Rat in a hoarse whisper. He had left the elephant in the brush behind him, the better to come upon his quarry in silence. “Are we doubtful of the future?” he said. “Do we wonder which way to turn?”
Frog, remembering his promise to travel with the mouse and his child for as long as their destined roads might lie together, decided that those roads must now diverge. Friendship was a noble thing, but life was sweet. Therefore he hopped out of the shadows to meet Manny Rat, hoping to find some soft answer that would turn away his anger from himself at least.
Manny Rat hesitated. The frog was utterly helpless against him, yet the rat became uneasy. He had always feared the fortune-teller a little; he felt him to be not only a prophet of good or bad luck, but its active agent as well. He drew nearer, and staring past the frog, he saw the mouse child staring back at him, the night sky mirrored in his glass-bead eyes. Manny Rat felt himself by some strange magnetism drawn to the father and the son, felt that something was wanted of him, forgot almost that he was there to smash them. He shook his head and picked up a rock. “Step aside, Frog,” he said; “I’m going to smash your friends.”
Frog, racking his brain for some way of placating Manny Rat, acted on a sudden impulse. “Let me read your future,” he said.
Manny Rat held out his palm and laughed. “Go ahead,” he said. “I may very well be the only member of the present company that has one.”
Smiling, the frog approached, but he never took the rat’s extended paw, nor did he speak the fair words he was shaping. He found himself looking into Manny Rat’s eyes, and other words, obscure and cryptic, came into the fortune-teller’s mind; against his will his broad mouth opened, and he spoke them: “A dog shall rise,” he said, “a rat shall fall.”
Manny Rat leaped back as if he had been struck. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he snarled.
Frog had no idea of what those words meant, nor did he care. He wished heartily that he had never set eyes upon the mouse and his child as his mouth opened again and he heard, as from a distance, his voice repeat, “A dog shall rise; a rat shall fall.”
“That may be,” said Manny Rat, his fears forgotten in his rage, “but you’ll fall first. You and your windup friends will finish up together. I’m going to tear your throat out.”
“Of course,” said Frog. “Why not?” He nodded sadly, then turned his back on Manny Rat and looked toward the shrews as they right-faced and prepared to march away. Above the spears a tattered moleskin guidon hung limply in the moonlight. Frog sighed, and wondered what the mole’s last thoughts had been.
“Useless to look to them for help,” said Manny Rat. “If you have any parting words for one another, now is the time to say them.”
“RATIONS!” bellowed the frog. “FRESH MEAT FOR THE ARMY! RATIONS FOR THE TROOPS! RIGHT HERE!”
“Rations!” came the shrill response across the snow. The compact little mass of black figures grew suddenly large as it wheeled about and sped forward, the spears all pointing in a single direction and the guidon fluttering like hunger’s lean banner.
“Stay for dinner, do!” urged Frog as Manny Rat took to his heels, but the thwarted rat made no reply. Running for his life, he vanished in the darkness of the trees as a wave of musk scent surged over the fortune-teller, the father, and the son.
“Uncle Frog!” cried the child. “The shrews will eat you up!”
“Better they than Manny Rat,” said Frog. Having intended to betray his friends, he had betrayed himself instead, and now, calm and resigned, he waited as the briskly trotting shrews skidded to a halt before him, two or three of the more shortsighted troops bumping into the mouse and his child and knocking them over. All of them were thin and famished looking, and moved their jaws as if determined to be chewing hard whenever anything should come their way.
“Tough — very hard and tough,” said one, rubbing his nose where he had bruised it on the father’s tin.
“Save him for the officer’s mess,” said another as he pinched the
frog. “This one’s fine. This one’s plump and tasty. He smells good.”
“Oh, yes,” said someone else. “I’ve had frog. Frog’s good.”
A stiff-nosed corporal appeared, looked up at Frog, and took a straw from a mouse skin pouch. “One frog,” he said, and notched the straw with his teeth. “Two … two what?”
“Mice,” said Frog.
“They don’t smell like any mice I ever ate,” the corporal said, and bit more notches in his tally. “Who turned you in anyhow?”
“Destiny,” said Frog.
“You can’t trust anybody,” said the corporal. He put away the straw and turned the captives over to a guard. “All set,” he reported to the sergeant in command of the commissary patrol.
“Let’s go then,” said the sergeant. “And no more fife and drum — we’re getting too close to the border.”
“Rations, fall in!” shouted the corporal. The frog and the mouse and his child were hustled to the head of the column. Behind them a little group of captive wood mice shuffled their feet and wept.
“Shut up,” said the guard to the wood mice, “or I’ll stick you with this spear and you’ll go bye-bye right now.”
“Forrard, hoo!” yelled the sergeant. The scout with the fox fire trotted on ahead; the guidon bearer stepped out bravely under the lean banner; the troops shouldered their spears and marched off with short tails whisking, their massed black shadow keeping step with them across the moonlit snow as they herded their rations back to headquarters.
The mouse child, as he walked backward, found himself facing the drummer boy. “Is it really a war?” he asked the little soldier.
“Of course it is,” replied the shrew. “Our territory’s all hunted out, so we’ll have to fight the shrews down by the stream for theirs.”
“It’s the other way around, the way I heard it,” said the fifer. “I heard their territory’s all hunted out, and they invaded ours.”
“What’s a territory?” asked the mouse child.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s a territory?’ ” said the drummer boy. “A territory’s a territory, that’s all.”
“Rations don’t have territories,” said the fifer.
“Not after we catch them,” said the drummer boy, “but they do before. Everybody does.”
“We didn’t,” said the mouse child.
“No wonder you’re rations now,” said the little shrew. “What chance has anybody got without a territory?”
“But what is a territory?” asked the mouse child again.
“A territory is your place,” said the drummer boy. “It’s where everything smells right. It’s where you know the runways and the hideouts, night or day. It’s what you fought for, or what your father fought for, and you feel all safe and strong there. It’s the place where, when you fight, you win.”
“That’s your territory,” said the fifer. “Somebody else’s territory is something else again. That’s where you feel all sick and scared and want to run away, and that’s where the other side mostly wins.”
The father walked in silence as a wave of shame swept over him. What chance has anybody got without a territory! he repeated to himself and knew the little shrew was right. What chance had they indeed! He saw now that for him and for his son the whole wide world was someone else’s territory, on which he could not even walk without someone to wind him up. Frog wound him now as they marched, and the father felt the key turn in his back as a knife turns in a wound.
No one spoke for a time. The wood mice whimpered softly, the shrews’ feet pattered on the crusted snow, the frog’s matchbox rattled as he hopped, and the tin feet of the mouse and his child scraped steadily ahead to the buzzing of their motor. The whole company were nervously alert as they marched, and the spears clicked against one another, pointing this way and that as the shrews, sniffing incessantly, looked behind them or peered aside into the shadows of the trees along the meadow’s edge.
“Where are we now?” said the corporal, his long nose twitching anxiously.
“Almost there, I think,” said the sergeant. The route he was taking was not one that the company had used before, and there was no spoor to guide him or the scout who reconnoitered up ahead; the sergeant was relying on his sense of direction to bring him to an area where he could pick up the scent of his battalion.
“When are we getting back to headquarters?” demanded a shrill voice from the ranks.
“Let’s eat now!” yelled someone.
“Knock it off,” snapped the uneasy sergeant, and sniffed the air again.
The frog hopped patiently along without a word. As far as he knew he was hopping to his death, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself. He had attained his present age, however, by paying closer attention to not being eaten than his enemies could bring to bear on eating him. Therefore he put aside his fears and opened all of his perceptions to every possibility of escape.
Looking down at the tracks made by the mouse and his child as they walked ahead of him, he noticed that the father, owing to one of his legs being bent more than the other, did not walk in a perfectly straight line, but in a series of long arcs that curved always to the left. Being at the head of the column, he had imperceptibly taken the whole company off their course of march, and a sensation of uneasiness had begun to spread through the ranks.
“I feel funny,” said the drummer boy. However soldierly he bore himself, he stood less than two inches high; the moonlit meadow suddenly seemed vast and dangerous around him, and his trembling paws involuntarily rattled a soft tattoo on his drum.
“So do I,” said the fifer, “and you know why and I know why — we’re lost, and we’re in their territory.” The guidon bearer, the sergeant, and the corporal, as their own misgivings were put into words, stopped short, and the column halted unevenly as each shrew bumped into the one in front of him. The scout, whose sorties had been growing ever briefer, snapped back to the company as if connected to them by a rubber band, and hastily buried his fox fire in the snow. The father, unable to push his son past the fifer, trod the snow until his spring ran down.
“Are you scared?” the mouse child asked the drummer boy.
“Me, scared? Never!” declared the young soldier. “At least I don’t think I’ll be scared. It’s my first war, really.” They were in a little hollow screened by a thicket on the windward side. Their voices now were strangely loud in the still air, and everyone fell silent.
“What’s going to happen, Uncle Frog?” whispered the mouse child.
“I don’t know,” said Frog, “but look sharp for a chance to escape.”
“War,” muttered the father. “The trash can, the dump, murder, robbery, and war.”
“Shut up,” said the shrew who was guarding them, and drawing in his breath suddenly, fell forward with a spear in his back.
“Ambush!” yelled the sergeant. “First platoon, move up on the right flank. The rest of you fall back and cover! Fifer, sound Distress!”
The musk scent was overpowering as the shrews regrouped to face the attack from the thicket, and the little fifer sent the notes of the distress call piping across the moonlit meadow until a spear cut him short. The drummer boy snatched up the fife, and the piercing call trilled in the moonlight again, drawing another whistling flight of spears. Then the fife was once more silent as the drummer fell with a spear in his throat. He tried to shout, “Onward, shrews!” but had no breath to say it, and died without a word.
“Here they come!” cried the sergeant, and the enemy shrews were upon them, shrieking their battle cry, “Ours! Ours! Ours!”
“Now!” said the frog to the father. Keeping low and moving quickly, he pulled three spears from the snow, arming himself with one and placing the others under the father’s arms so that they pointed forward over the child’s shoulders. He was about to wind the father for their flight when the mouse child’s eyes met his. For an instant the frog was held by some silent compulsion while the shrill cry of the battle rose
around them; then he knew what the child wanted and dared not ask for. Hesitating only a moment, Frog leaped among the shrews where the fighting was bloodiest, took the nutshell drum from the body of the little soldier, and returning safely, hung it from the mouse child’s neck.
“Follow us!” shouted the father to the captives cowering behind them.
“Onward, mice!” cried the child, and felt the little drum resounding to his voice.
The wood mice, with much whimpering, followed, flattening themselves against the snow while spears rattled against father and son and flew over their heads. Frog, ducking and dodging, fought off the shrews that blundered into his path, but both sides were too absorbed in the battle to pursue the fleeing rations.
Once among the trees at the meadow’s edge, the surviving wood mice dispersed and ran for their homes, while the breathless frog leaned on his spear and panted, and the mouse and his child strode forward until their spring ran down. Behind them on the snow lay fallen shrews and wood mice, their open mouths still shaping final cries of rage and fear, their open eyes fast glazing in the moonlight. The mouse child stared beyond his father’s shoulder at the astonishing stillness of the dead. The father looked at the spears he carried; he had felt the weight of enemies upon them, and for the first time in his life knew what it was to strike a blow for freedom.
“Look!” said Frog. The snow was black with screaming shrews as the opposing armies of meadow and stream, responding to the distress call, converged in the hollow, and the dead and the dying were trampled in alternate waves of attack and retreat.
“Ours! Ours! Ours!” chanted the defenders of their territory, while the attacking shrews, giving ground but always charging again, screamed, “Onward! Onward! Onward!”
While the frog and the mouse and his child watched from the trees, two weasels came bounding over a rise of ground on the other side of the hollow. Lithe and keen, they seemed almost to slide between the moonbeams as they ran. Then they stopped, their heads swaying snakelike as they sniffed the musk scent.