Emmy and the Rats in the Belfry (5 page)

I
T WAS HOT
. The midday sun beat down on the triangular green, wilting its patchy grass. One tree cast a spindly shade over a single park bench and a low planting of yews. Behind them, almost hidden, Emmy sat on the ground with her chin on her knees. The patch of shade was getting smaller, and she was sweating.

She stared moodily at the empty pet carrier and wished again that Ana hadn't gotten Ratty to bite her twice. Sure, Ana was having all kinds of fun visiting Rodent City as a rat, but meanwhile Emmy was stuck waiting around at the back entrance. Because of course she couldn't shrink now. Ana would need both Sissy-patches—one to turn human and one to grow.

Ratty had told Emmy she should shrink anyway. “Sissy just went to get the mail,” he had insisted in the professor's apartment. “She'll be back soon.”

But Emmy didn't want to take the chance. Enough had gone wrong already; she didn't want to risk missing the party when her parents were coming. Then, too, if the professor was right and it had been Miss Barmy who had stolen the patches, who knew what she might be planning? No, Emmy had better stay full size—and alert.

But she was getting sick of waiting. Emmy ducked under the spreading branches of the yew and put her mouth to the tunnel opening. “Aaaaannnaaaa!” she called, long and low.

Silence. Emmy glanced at her watch. Should she go get Ratty? He could run down the long passageway to Rodent City and find Ana in Mrs. Bunjee's loft.

“Mraoow?” A furry head butted under the yew beside her and sniffed delicately at the hole in the ground.

“Get lost, Muffy.” Emmy glared at the housekeeper's cat, who backed just out of range and curled up under the far branches of the yew, watching Emmy with unblinking eyes.

Well, there was no way she could leave to get Ratty now. Even if she chased Muffy off the green, the cat would come back. Emmy had a brief, unhappy vision of Ana dangling from Muffy's mouth and groaned aloud. She would just have to wait.

She was on her hands and knees, calling into the tunnel for the fifth time, when a voice spoke behind her.

“Emmy! What on earth are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be getting ready for your party?”

Emmy tipped back on her heels to see her father looking down at her and, past him, her mother getting out of the car holding a bakery box. Across the street, Brian was tying balloons to the door of the Antique Rat.

“I'll be there soon, Dad,” Emmy said, hoping it was true. “I'm just—I'm just waiting here for somebody.”

Her father frowned. “When you're supposed to be hosting a party?”

Emmy gazed up at him, feeling desperate. “It's
about
the party,” she said. “It's a surprise.”

Her father looked unconvinced, but Kathy Addison called and he turned away. Emmy watched with a flutter of anxiety as her parents walked across the street into the Antique Rat. Would the professor be awake yet? What would Squippy tell them?

“Mrraaow!” There was a sudden soft thump under the yew, and a thin, high squeal from the tunnel's mouth.

“Bad Muffy!” Emmy hauled the cat away by the hind legs and hung on. “Hurry, Ana! Get in the pet carrier!”

A small and fluffy rat scampered into the blue plastic carrier, reached a paw through the barred door, and yanked it shut, breathing hard. “Oh, my gosh, that cat is a monster! But I had such a fun visit—Mrs. Bunjee had three kinds of cookies, and fresh lemonade, and—”

“And you're
late
,” said Emmy as she strode across the green, the carrier bumping at her hip. The door of the Antique Rat slammed behind her, and she was halfway to the stairs before Squippy called out, “Did you get the supplies you needed? You know, for”—she lowered her voice with a roguish smile—“the
surprise
!”

Her father turned around. “Emmy told me she was waiting for someone.”

“No doubt she was doing both!” Professor Capybara spread his hands, smiling. “There are lots of secrets and surprises with a party!”

Emmy gave him a grateful look, waved at the adults, and disappeared up the stairs.

Thomas and Joe's card for Squippy was beyond ugly. The minute Emmy let Ana out of the pet carrier, Joe led them to the kitchen table to admire it.

“We had an hour and a half, and a lot of macaroni,” said Joe proudly. “Hideous, isn't it?”

“
I
dumped the glitter on,” said Ratty.

Ratty and the boys had pasted colored-paper cutouts on the cardboard Emmy had brought. On top of this, they had arranged dry macaroni to make big, clumsy letters that spelled out THANX SQUIPPY!!! Next they had spray-painted the macaroni gold. Then, more construction paper around the edges to make a border. Then, macaroni on top of that, colored with markers. Lastly they had squiggled what looked to be a massive amount of glue over the whole thing and dumped the entire bottle of silver glitter on top.

Emmy gazed at the monstrosity in awe. “I've never seen anything that comes even close.”

Ana, who had scampered up to the tabletop on her own, grinned toothily. “Squippy will love it. She'll probably save it for years.”

Thomas leaned his elbows on the table and smiled up at Emmy happily. “My bird flew away,” he confided. “I told you it was only sleeping.”

Raston coughed behind his paw, but any further remarks were interrupted by Brian's thumping feet on the stairs.

“Better change back and grow, Ana,” the teenager said. “Your guests are here.”

Raston pricked his ears, suddenly alert. “It's time for the party already?”

Emmy fished in her pocket for the two Sissy-patches and handed them over. “Careful. They're pretty powerful.”

“Maybe not,” said Brian, watching Ana peel off the backing with her paws. “Those are from the batch we made yesterday, remember? The professor tweaked the formula so they wouldn't be so strong.”

Ana slapped the patch on one short arm, and her squat, fuzzy shape slowly shifted, thinned, and transformed into a tiny figure wearing a red jumper. She looked at them in surprise. “I hardly felt a thing!” She put on the next patch, and grew in slow motion, like a balloon being inflated with gentle puffs of air.

“You're lucky you're not using patches from the old batch, then,” said Emmy. “When I grew with one, it was like being kicked by a horse. Ow, Ratty! Pull your claws in when you run up my arm, will you?”

“But Sissy's not here!” Raston's worried face peered at her from her shoulder.

“Where did she go?” asked Brian.

“One of the postal bats said that she had a special delivery waiting, so she went to get the mail.” The Rat scrubbed at his muzzle with nervous paws. “She should have been back by now.”

“She probably just stopped at Rodent City,” said Joe. “Come on, we have to go downstairs.”

“But she'd want to show
me
the letter! She can't read, remember?”

Thomas, perched on a high kitchen chair, swung his legs. “Maybe my bird is out looking for her and will come back and tell us where she is!”

Raston put his head in his hands. “Listen, feather-brain, your bird is—”

“At a bird party, probably!” said Emmy brightly. “But we have to go to our own party now, so just wait for her, Ratty, okay?”

“She'd better hurry,” muttered the Rat, “or all the biscotti will be gone.”

 

The space between the floors of the Antique Rat was dim. Row upon row of wooden joists supported the apartment above, while squares of ceiling tile rested on a metal grid suspended by wires. Here and there, thin shafts of light pierced upward like bright skewers through gaps in the fiberboard tile.

Two rats lay side by side on a square, their eyes pressed to one of the small, crumbling holes. From the room below came a muffled babble of conversation and the clink of cups and plates.

“We need some more holes, Cheswick,” said the piebald rat.

The black rat sighed. He had already made fifteen holes at least. Small enough to avoid detection, yet large enough for a sifting of dust to filter through, they had taken quite a bit of effort on his part. He was happy to do it, of course, but he wouldn't mind a little appreciation. And his right index claw was all ink-stained from writing, too.

He glanced at the plastic bag beside him, full of tiny, silvery scales. “Don't you think we have enough holes?”

Jane Barmy shook her furry head. “The Addisons keep moving around. We need another one by the punch bowl.”

Cheswick was reluctant to move. Jane Barmy's head was very close to his, and he wanted to enjoy the moment. “When is your father coming to deliver the letter?”

“In about ten minutes. So you'd better get busy making those extra holes, Cheswick. I don't want to have done all this work, only to fail because Emmaline's parents weren't standing in the right spot!”

S
QUIPPY WAS SQUEALING
over the card. “Look, everyone! Ana made me the sweetest thing!” She tapped the macaroni letters for emphasis, and the card shed a fine dusting of silver glitter.

Ana looked embarrassed, as well she might, Emmy thought. The huge and heavy card
looked
as if it had been made by two boys and a rat.

Emmy handed Professor Capybara a cup of punch and was rewarded by a nod of approval from her father and a smile from her mother. Well, good. Maybe this party was helping them think better of her, then.

She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye as she filled another cup and tried to look past the grown-up bodies blocking her way. Was someone going up the stairs? Or was that Thomas's arm, waving in wide arcs from side to side?

“Excuse me,” she began, but her voice went unheard. Gwenda Squipp put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. Emmy held on tight to her cup of punch to keep it from spilling.

“And
this
girl,” Squippy went on, “arranged it all! The party, and the surprise, and everything! Such a loving, giving child! You must be terribly proud of your daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Addison!”

Emmy smiled in what she hoped was a loving, giving way and tried to bask in the glow of approval that surrounded her, but she was distracted. Thomas was leaping up and down on the stairs now—she could see the round, blond head briefly appearing above the heads of the crowd, the eyes wide and urgent, looking for … her?

“Don't worry, dear,” said Squippy, pulling in Ana on her other side. “You're sweet children, and now that I've got you both together, I'm going to tell you a story about
my
childhood, when I did something very much the same!”

Emmy, trapped, watched Thomas climb on the stair rail and scan the packed room, his face anxious. Where was Joe?

“Yes, these childhood memories are lovely to recall in years to come …”

Emmy looked desperately up at Squippy. She would probably be talking for another twenty minutes straight, and in the meantime Thomas was going to kill himself or break a leg at least. What had happened that was so important? She had to find out.

Her father was no help—he had mumbled a few gracious words and melted away into the crowd at the beginning of Squippy's tale. It was a neat trick, and one Emmy envied, but it was easier for grown-ups than for children. She tried to catch her mother's eye, but her mother, too, was carrying on a quiet conversation with someone at her shoulder and already edging to one side.

Emmy eyed her cup of punch. She didn't want to do it, but there was no other way to politely escape. She waited for Squippy's next squeeze of her shoulder (it didn't take long) and turned her wrist as if she had been jostled.

“Oh no!” Emmy tried to sound horrified.

Squippy jumped as the punch splashed on the floor.

“I'll clean it right up!” said Emmy, backing away. “I'll just go up and get some rags and things.”

She threaded her way through the crowd, careful not to bump any elbows. When she saw Joe, she grabbed him by the sleeve and towed him to the foot of the stairs, where Thomas met them with relief. “Come
on
!” he whispered. “Sissy's got a letter from Schenectady!”

At the kitchen table, Sissy could hardly speak for crying, and Raston wasn't much better. Before them was a white square of paper, unfolded.

Emmy looked closer. There was writing on it, spiky and thin, as if written with a claw dipped in ink. At the bottom was a strange red impression, like a smeared lipstick kiss from two very small, very thin lips, and below that was a signature.

RATMOM

“She's alive! She wants me to come visit her in Schenectady! Oh, Rasty!” sobbed Cecilia. “Just smell her perfume on the letter!”

The two gray rats put their heads down close to the paper, sniffing deeply.

“Watch it, you're going to breathe in all that glitter,” Emmy warned. The glitter Ratty had dumped on Squippy's card had gotten everywhere—the floor, the table, and even Sissy's letter were covered with small, silvery scales.

Joe peered at the letter. “Why does she only invite Sissy?”

There was an awkward pause and then everyone spoke at once.

“I'm sure she
meant
to invite you, Ratty.”

“Maybe she was in a hurry, and forgot?”

“
Anybody
can make a
mistake
—”

Raston flipped a careless paw. “She probably didn't even know I was here.”

“My dear little squoochums,” Emmy read aloud. “My precious ratty darling …” She looked up. “That sounds like something Cheswick Vole might say.”

“It
is
a little weird,” Joe agreed.

“It's a mother's love,” said Raston, stiffly. “Look!” He pointed to the red smudge beneath the signature.

“What's that?” Joe looked at it with interest. “Blood?”

“No, it's her kiss! What are you, blind?”

“Oh, it
is
!” Cecilia looked more closely. “What a pretty shade of lipstick!”

Joe was frowning. “What I still don't get is how your mother knew Sissy was here, in Grayson Lake. Schenectady's pretty far away.”

“The postal bats must have told her.” The Rat shrugged. “They really get around, you know—flying back and forth—and I've never met a bat that wasn't nosy. If some of them heard the gossip that Sissy was in Rodent City, and if they went to Schenectady afterward, and if they happened to run into Ratmom, and if they told her …”

“That's an awful lot of ifs,” said Joe. “And if the bats heard about Sissy, why wouldn't they have heard about you too, Ratty?”

“Who cares?” cried Cecilia. “The point is, she found
one
of us, at least, and—oh, Rasty, we
have
to go to Schenectady! But how, that's the question.”

“There's the train … but it might be dangerous to ride in the cars. Too many people, not enough hiding places.”

“We could ride on the roof of the train—”

“Or ride the rails!”

“We could mail ourselves in a box with air holes …”

“But that might feel too cramped.”

“Well, you keep working on it,” said Emmy. “I've got to find some rags and a bucket.”

 

Emmy wrung out her rag in the bucket of soapy water and mopped the sticky patch of floor by the punch bowl. The party noise had only gotten louder, but Squippy's voice rang out clear and shrill.

“… then Brian will take us straight to the train station after the party. He's such a dear boy, and so responsible!”

“I used to take that very train when I was a boy,” came the voice of Emmy's father, “to visit my aunts. They were spry old girls, and strict, too. They would not let me get away with leaving things in a mess, no sir!”

Emmy scrubbed a little harder. She didn't think it was fair of her father to talk like that, when she was cleaning up at this very minute. She glanced upward and suddenly blinked.

Emmy rubbed at her eye. Ana squatted down. “What's wrong?”

“Got some glitter in it,” whispered Emmy. “I wish she'd stop waving that dumb card around!”

“And those relatives of hers!” Squippy cried over their heads. “It's so wonderful that they're taking her in and giving her a home!”

Ana winced, and Emmy suddenly decided she'd had enough. She stood with her bucket. “Ana wants to say good-bye to her friends,” she said, and just that easily she and Ana were walking through the crowded room.

They found Joe and Thomas at the lab counter, sitting on stools with a plate of biscotti between them. A steady sound of munching came from the inside of the open pet carrier.

Raston poked his head out. “Where's the professor?” he asked, crumbs spraying from the side of his mouth.

“We've got to show him the letter,” said Cecilia from behind him. “And find a way to Schenectady!”

Ana turned her head. “Did I miss something? What letter?”

Emmy and Joe explained, at length.

Ana looked at them thoughtfully. “
I'm
going through Schenectady. I leave on the train in about an hour.”

“But what if the letter isn't really from their mother?” Joe rubbed his forehead. “I have my doubts, actually—”

“Look! It's Mr. B!” Thomas pointed to the window.

The children were suddenly alert. Crossing the green and heading straight for the Antique Rat was a harmless-looking man in a shoemaker's apron.

Joe's eyes narrowed. “What's
he
doing, coming here?”

Ana huddled on her stool, her face pale.

Emmy threw an arm over the girl's shoulders. Mr. B seemed gentle and kind, but he was Miss Barmy's father, and he had helped her keep Ana and four other little girls prisoners for years. Ana probably still had nightmares about him.

The bell tinkled as the street door opened. Joe got off his stool and stood in front of Ana. Near the door, the professor's jovial face turned grave.

The crowd quieted in a wave of silence that began at the door and spread out to fill the whole room. Mr. B smiled hesitantly, then shuffled over to Emmy's parents, pulled an envelope from his pocket, and handed it to Jim Addison. The hum of conversation started up again.

“Thomas!” Emmy hissed. “Go over there and get some punch! They'll talk in front of you if you pretend you're not listening!”

“Use your innocent look,” Joe added.

Thomas opened his blue eyes wide.

“Yeah, that one!”

The small, slightly round, blond-haired boy marched away, looking somehow even younger than his six years.

Ana's mouth turned up a little. “Wow, he's good.”

Joe nodded. “I know. It's almost scary.”

Emmy, watching intently from her high stool, saw her father open the envelope. As he read, his smile faded. He handed the letter to his wife. There was an animated discussion. Thomas drifted back after a while, holding a punch cup with both hands.

“What? What?” Emmy was too impatient to be polite. “Listen, drink that later, will you?”

Thomas licked the punch-colored stain on his upper lip. “Mr. B said a letter for your parents was sent to his house by mistake.”

“And?” demanded Joe.

“It was from Emmy's great-aunts, or something, and they want her to come and visit.” Thomas turned to Emmy. “And your mom said they couldn't just send you off without calling first to make sure, but the letter said not to call, the phone was out of order. Your dad thought it all sounded weird, and they don't trust Mr. B, and so they don't want you to go, Emmy, and I want my punch now—spying makes me thirsty.”

Emmy stared at her parents from her perch on the stool. The crowd had shifted, and she could see only the tops of their heads, but as she gazed she suddenly saw a faint shimmer above them, as if the air were full of glitter.

She frowned slightly. Squippy must
really
be waving her card around for the glitter to be flying up over their heads.

Emmy turned to Thomas again. “They said I wouldn't have to go? You're sure?”

Thomas nodded over the rim of his cup.

“It
does
seem weird,” said Joe. “Why would a letter to your parents accidentally end up in Mr. B's mailbox? He's not a neighbor. And his last name isn't even close to Addison.”

Thomas shrugged. “Your dad asked the same thing, and Mr. B said maybe it was because he used to be the care—the careterk—”

“The caretaker?” Emmy said.

Thomas nodded. “He used to do yard work and stuff for that old guy who was there before you.”

“Great-Great-Uncle William,” said Emmy.

“Is that true?” asked Ana.

Emmy explained. It had been surprising to her, too, when she had found out. But Mr. and Mrs. B were distantly related to old William Addison and had lived in a cottage on the estate for many years, taking care of the house and yard. Their daughter, Jane, had grown up with old William's daughter Priscilla, but then Priscilla had died …

“It gets complicated,” Emmy finished. “And it's boring. I can't keep it all straight.”

“So you're related to
Jane Barmy
?” Ana's expression was horrified.

“Barely,” said Emmy. “She's, like, a second cousin once removed, or a first cousin twice removed, or something like that.”

“But why,” Joe asked, “would Mr. B come over
here
to deliver the letter?”

“Maybe he saw Emmy's parents going in,” said Thomas. “Can I have another cookie?”

“Shh,” murmured Ana. “Look who's coming.”

Moving steadily through the crowd like the prow of a ship, Jim Addison bore down on them, with Emmy's mother and Gwenda Squipp in his wake.

“Emmy!” her father boomed, smiling broadly. “We have good news!”

“It's a last-minute invitation, but we knew you'd want to go,” said her mother.

“They'll teach you responsibility,” said her father. “And you'll love the river.”

“We've got to run home and pack this minute,” Kathy Addison said, looking at her watch. “You're leaving in less than an hour!”

“And why!” cried Gwenda Squipp. “Because you're traveling with Ana and me!”

“It all worked out so perfectly,” marveled her mother, shaking her head. “Almost as if it had all been
planned
.”

The three adults stood beaming at Emmy with the same happy, confident expression. Silver glitter, like tiny scales, dusted their shoulders and hair.

Emmy stared at them blankly. There was something here she didn't understand. “What are you talking about?” she asked with growing apprehension.

Her father chuckled and passed her a letter. Joe and Ana, on either side, looked over her shoulder at the thin, spidery, old-lady writing. Thomas stopped chewing his cookie. Several crumbs fell out of his open mouth.