Mouseheart

Then she turned slowly in the direction of the cracked rock that cradled Zucker and Hopper.

  Zucker stiffened and clenched his teeth.

  As Firren made to approach, there was a shout from deep within the tunnel:

  “Firren, come quick! Firren!”

  She hesitated only a moment, to squint toward the split in the rock where her quarry hid, holding his breath. Then she turned on her hind paws and set off running . . . running into the ghostly echo of her own name as it filled the darkness. Firren . . .

  Firren . . .

  Firren . . .

  “Told ya those little bugs were good luck,” Zucker whispered.

  “What was so lucky about that?”

  “You’re still breathin’, aren’tcha? And there’s no sword sticking outta your belly, which I’d say also qualifies as a stroke of good luck.”

  Lucky or not, Zucker and Hopper did not remove themselves from the cleft in the rock until they were sure Firren was long gone.

  Hopper was weak-kneed and light-headed when at last they squeezed out from their hiding place.

  But Zucker simply raised his arms in a luxuriously casual stretch.

  “Well, that was a close one, huh?”

  “What?!” Hopper could have bitten him! “Is that all you have to say?”

  “C’mon . . .” Zucker gave him an infuriatingly innocent look. “You’re safe. I’m safe. So what’s the problem?”

  “What’s the problem?” Hopper sputtered, aghast. “Rats with swords are after you! And you sacrificed that poor little cricket to save your own skin!”

  “Psshht.” The rat waved his paw in dismissal. “They’ll never catch that bug. And for the record, kid, I was saving your skin too.” He leaned so close to Hopper that their noses touched. “Just don’t make me regret it, huh?”

  Hopper gulped but stood his ground. “Who was she?”

  “Her?” An emotion Hopper could not identify flickered across Zucker’s rugged face. “Her name’s Firren. She’s . . .” Zucker furrowed his brow as he searched for the right word. “She’s kind of a rebel.”

  “Against what?” Hopper demanded. “Against whom?”

  Zucker’s shoulders sagged. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s a really long story, kid.”

  “Well, I’ve got time.”

  The reality of that hit Hopper like a punch. The truth was, he had nothing but time down here in this hole. He was lost. Stranded. More trapped than he’d ever been in his cage at the pet shop.

  Zucker must have noticed the pain in Hopper’s eyes because his voice softened to a kinder tone. “Let’s just get ourselves to shelter,” he said. “We can talk on the way.”

  This time, by unspoken agreement, they did not run. As they wound their way through the long tunnel at a more manageable pace, Zucker explained.

  “Firren and her crew are what you might call anti-Romanus. In other words, they hate us.”

  Hopper shot Zucker a look. “Go figure.”

  Zucker chuckled. “Yeah, well, politics are complicated, kid. Anyway, lately Firren and her gang have been skulking around these parts looking to capture Romanus scouts. She calls her little band the Rangers.”

  “Are you a scout?” Hopper asked. “Is that why she was after you? Is that why you hid?”

  “Uh, not exactly.” Zucker cleared his throat. “The thing is, there’re a lot of things I’d like to say to Firren. Problem is, that girl’s philosophy has always been ‘Stab first, ask questions later.’ She’s unpredictable. So it’s hard to say whether she would have given me a chance to speak my piece or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or captured us and held us for ransom, or maybe just sliced us to ribbons with that dang shiny sword of hers and eaten us for dinner.” Zucker sighed and used one scarred paw to smooth the bristling fur on his neck. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure which of those would be worse.”

  Hopper had an opinion on that but kept it to himself.

  They trudged on in silence.

  Now that Hopper’s eyes had fully adjusted to the lack of light in the passageway, he was able to make out even more details of his new home—none of which did much to lift his spirits. More stone, more mold, more dirt, more desolation.

  Occasionally, though, he would spot something scratched or scraped into the surface of the wall. Symbols and squiggles, like the ones he remembered from the paper scraps that, in another lifetime, had lined the bottom of his cage. Messages he could not decipher.

  Death to Titus.

  Romanus Rules.

  Felina Forever. Long Live the Queen.

  La Rocha Is the Truth That Shall Set Us Free.

  The phrases meant nothing to Hopper, not even the one scrawled in the largest, boldest hand, although that one seemed somehow more meaningful than the rest . . .

  THE SQUEAK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!

  To Hopper it was just a lot of mysterious gibberish.

  But there were drawings, too, and these amazed Hopper. Life-size renderings of rats and mice bearing flags and banners of every imaginable color. He couldn’t help but marvel at these elaborate illustrations, these epic rodent battles—although whether these wars had been waged in the distant past or were still yet to be fought in some indeterminable future, Hopper could not tell.

  “They call these the Runes,” Zucker explained. “I haven’t been out this far in a while. I’d forgotten how much of this graffiti—” The rat stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Hopper, who was walking behind, crashed right into him.

  When Hopper turned to see what had brought Zucker to a standstill, he felt the blood drain to his feet.

  There, scraped into the solid surface of the stone wall, was a word Hopper had never seen. It consisted of three squiggles that had been deeply carved into the rock, then painted over and filled in with brilliant color—a rich, royal-looking shade of purple. The squiggles spelled out:

  M Ū S

  But there was an image. Beneath the word.

  An image of a face. A mouse’s face.

  And around the right eye someone had carefully, purposefully chalked a perfect white circle.

  Hopper’s heart pounded in his chest; for a moment, it seemed, the world did not turn. Time toppled over itself, then stood still, upended and off-kilter, waiting for one small mouse to breathe again. One small mouse who could grasp but a single coherent thought in his head: That’s me.

  As Zucker stared at the likeness carved into the stone, Hopper thought he saw a shadow of sadness darken the rat’s eyes.

  But what baffled him was the fact that Zucker had yet to comment on how much Hopper resembled the face in the rune. The white circle in the drawing was unmistakable. So why hadn’t Zucker made the connection? Didn’t he see it?

  It suddenly occurred to Hopper that perhaps he didn’t!

  After all, Hopper had been rolling around in the muck and mire for hours now. Maybe his white circle was obscured by dirt and no longer visible; maybe it simply blended into the rest of his grungy, grime-encrusted fur.

  So if the uncanny resemblance to Hopper wasn’t what had caused Zucker to stop dead in his tracks, then what had?

  “Who is it?” Hopper ventured, his voice a mere wisp of itself.

  Zucker’s face was somber. “Just somebody I used to know.”

  This told Hopper nothing. Was the face in the rune a friend or a foe? Hopper couldn’t begin to guess. If Zucker considered this the face of an enemy, how would he react if Hopper were to point out such an undeniable similarity to himself?

  He made a split-second decision that for the moment it would be best to keep the information to himself.

  Instead Hopper pointed to the three purple letters. “What does that say?”

  “It says ‘Mūs.’ ”

  Hopper felt a rush of wonder in his belly. “Mews?”

  “No, Mūs.” Zucker quirked a grin at him. “Ya know . . . from the Latin.”

  Now it was Hopper who was stunned. The last word o
n his mother’s lips had been this one . . . Mūs . . . and now here it was written in big purple letters on a wall in the bowels of the earth. Beneath a face that looked unnervingly like his own.

  Hopper gulped. “What does it mean . . . Mūs?”

  “Depends on who you ask,” Zucker grumbled. “And frankly, kid, I just don’t have the energy to go into it right now.” A strange look came over the rat, and he eyed Hopper more closely. “You know, it occurs to me you never told me where you came from.”

  “Is that important?”

  Zucker lowered one eyebrow. “Could be. Did you travel north or south to get here?”

  Hopper looked at him blankly.

  “What I mean is, did you come up or down?”

  “Down. Way down!” Hopper’s next words came out in a flurry. “My name is Hopper. I lived in a pet shop and then there was a boy and a snake, so I escaped. My brother got hurt and my sister disappeared after we fell into the rushing river, and then I was carried down by the waterfall and here I am.”

  “So you are an uplander, then.” Zucker sighed. “I kind of figured. But jeez, kid, why didn’t ya just say so?”

  Hopper folded his arms. “Gosh, I don’t know. I guess I was just so busy dodging speeding metal monsters, hiding from rat Rangers, and running for my life, that it must have slipped my mind.”

  Zucker was silent for a good long moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Kid’s here less than a day and already he’s got an attitude,” he said, giving Hopper a sound clap on the back. “Maybe you’ll be okay down here after all, little one.”

  Hopper didn’t answer him.

  He only hoped the rat was right.

  chapter nine

  EXHAUSTED AND PREOCCUPIED, Hopper could think of nothing but the hauntingly familiar face he’d seen carved into the stone wall: the mouse—nay, the Mūs—with that unique and distinctive white circle surrounding its right eye.

  It looked just like me, Hopper thought. But how? Why? His mother had told him to seek out the Mūs, and now, it seemed, he looked as though he could be one. He pictured them, hundreds or maybe even thousands of tiny brown mice, darting around in these dismal tunnels, peppered with pure white markings.

  A thriving society of lookalikes, of Hopper doppelgangers.

  Of Hoppelgangers!

  The image was mind-boggling. He desperately wanted to ask Zucker again what a Mūs was, but he didn’t think he should chance it. After all, the rat’s reaction to the drawing had been unreadable, and Hopper couldn’t risk pointing out his uncanny resemblance to a creature whom this tunnel dweller might possibly consider an enemy.

  Finally they reached the crest of a small rise in the path, and Zucker had to gently nudge Hopper out of his reverie.

  “There it is, kid. Atlantia. Feast your eyes.”

  At the bottom of the dusty slope lay the vast, walled city of Atlantia. Hopper blinked and rubbed his eyes, certain that what he was seeing could only be an extension of his daydream.

  Zucker seemed to read his mind. “You aren’t seeing things, kid. It’s real.”

  “My,” was all Hopper could think to say. “Oh my.”

  The sheer scope of Atlantia alone was staggering to a former cage dweller like Hopper, for it seemed to spread a million miles in every direction. From his vantage point atop the small knoll, Hopper could see only glimpses of the sprawling underground metropolis. But if the angled rooftops, stout chimneys, and graceful spires of Atlantia were any indication of what awaited him at ground level, it promised to be extraordinary.

  “It’s magnificent!” he breathed.

  “And that’s only the skyline,” Zucker reminded him. “Not that there’s any actual sky to speak of, since we’ve got about a billion tons of earth over our heads. But you know what I mean.”

  Hopper’s gaze settled on the wall that surrounded the city; surely it was impenetrable, except where it was interrupted by an imposing metal gateway. Even from this distance he could hear the great din that rose from within the heart of the city—it was the sound of a hundred thousand conversations happening at once. It was the sound of commerce and friendship and life; of the myriad everyday dealings that came with residing in such a glorious place. He’d never dreamed there could be that many voices, opinions, ideas.

  Suddenly Hopper couldn’t get there fast enough.

  As Zucker led him down the hill toward the towering gate, Hopper saw that it was fashioned of sturdy iron spikes.

  This didn’t strike Hopper as particularly welcoming.

  And even less welcoming was the burly, uniformed guard who stood on the opposite side of the iron bars with his back to them; his long, hairy tail swishing in an ominous rhythm.

  Maybe Hopper wasn’t so eager to visit this Atlantia after all.

  “Don’t worry, little guy,” Zucker said. “I can handle that big oaf.”

  The closer they got, though, the bigger the oaf seemed to get. Hopper estimated that the guard was roughly twice as tall as Zucker, three times as broad, and heavier by many, many pounds.

  “He’s awfully large,” Hopper whispered.

  “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘gigantic,’ ” Zucker replied, speaking in hushed tones out of the side of his mouth. “Keep it to yourself, though. Clops is a little sensitive about his weight.”

  “Clops?”

  “Nickname. Short for Cyclops. Which, as you’ll see, is kind of self-explanatory.”

  “Is he some special breed of rat?”

  “Nope. He’s not a rat at all. He’s a—”

  Just then the enormous guard whirled, swatting at the air with a fat, filthy paw from which sprang claws that looked fatally sharp.

  “—cat,” Zucker finished.

  Cat!

  The word incited the same instinct in Hopper that the snake had. His blood reacted before his brain did, bubbling with an undeniable impulse. Fear whistled through him, tingling from the tips of his ears to the end of his tail. His senses understood what his intellect didn’t:

  Cat.

  Run!

  But before Hopper could even flinch, Zucker kicked out his leg and planted his paw firmly on his tail, effectively pinning him in place where he stood.

  “Where ya gonna go, kid?” Zucker whispered. “Back into the tunnels to fend for yourself? That’s something I’d strongly advise against.”

  “But it’s a cat!” The syllable all but scathed his tongue.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.”

  With his tail pinned to the ground, Hopper realized he had no choice but to believe the rat; still, he trembled as he took in the hair-raising sight that was Cyclops, the cat guard.

  He was a hulking creature with angular features and long teeth that flashed like daggers. Several tufts of his orange fur appeared to have been yanked out by the roots, revealing mottled flesh beneath. He was scarred and gnarled in more places than he wasn’t, and worst of all, Hopper realized with revulsion, he was missing an eye. The one he did have was bad enough—a sickly yellow-green color that seemed to glow from within, with a pupil that was nothing more than a bottomless black slit.

  Whatever had become of his other eye, Hopper was sure he did not want to know; the empty socket had healed into a ghastly purple protuberance that was crusted over in some spots, while from others there oozed a foul-looking slime. One of his teeth—or fangs, in Hopper’s estimation—was cracked in half and formed a jagged stalactite that jutted down from the cat’s upper jaw. Most of his whiskers were bent or broken.

  Zucker threw Hopper a grin. “Good-lookin’ guy, huh?”

  Cyclops pressed his disfigured face against the bars and hissed.

  “Aw, c’mon!” Zucker wiped a paw across his eyes. “Enough with the spitting! I didn’t come here to get a face fulla cat saliva. Open the gate!”

  “Who’s the prisoner?” Cyclops demanded, glowering at Hopper.

  “He’s not a prisoner, he’s a guest.”

  “Since when do you entertai
n company?”

  “Ha. Funny. You’re a regular laugh riot, Clops.”

  The cat let out a blood-curdling “Meeeooowww” as his one good eye bore into Hopper in a way that was almost hypnotic. The compulsion to run was greater than ever, but Zucker’s paw remained unyieldingly upon his tail.

  “Yer guest . . .” Clops licked his lips. “He looks like a Mūs to me.”

  Hopper went cold. Something about the way the big cat snarled the word “Mūs” made it clear that whatever a Mūs was, it wouldn’t be welcome beyond these walls.

  “Wrong again, you brainless waste of whiskers,” Zucker snarled. “He’s not a Mūs, he’s an uplander. And quit lickin’ your ugly chops, because he’s not your lunch, either.”

  For a moment the rat and the cat stared at each other.

  Hopper felt dizzy. He remembered that Keep had housed smaller, fluffier versions of this monster—kittens—in the shop. They made sweet, mewling sounds and pounced around playfully in their cages, and the patrons loved them. Surely those ill-advised humans could not possibly have known that this is what those precious little puff-balls would grow up to be.

  “Maybe I should leave . . . ,” Hopper whispered.

  Zucker shook his head, not taking his eyes off the cat. “You heard me, kid. You’re my guest. Now, as soon as Clops here moves his big, mangy self outta my way, you and me are gonna go inside so I can introduce you to my father.”

  Clops got the message. There was a clattering of keys and then a mighty screech as the iron gate swung open.

  Atlantia! It was breathtaking.

  Hopper’s head swiveled right to left, then left to right, then back again, his black eyes drinking in the sights of the bustling city.

  Zucker pointed out the marketplace with its stalls containing all manner of delectable edibles. Rats in smocks and aprons hawked their wares while shoppers hurried from place to place, sampling merchandise and haggling for bargains.

  “Best grub in the city,” barked one plump rat merchant. “Straight from the upland, folks. Get it while it’s fresh.”

  Hopper gaped at the array of foods—sunflower seeds and crusts of bread and dried legumes and juicy chunks of overripe fruit of every sort. He tasted something Zucker called “soda”—a syrupy liquid that seemed to sparkle on his tongue; he marveled over things like nuts and cheese crumbles and bits of cakes and pastries.