The Secret of the Ginger Mice (2 page)

His brother, Alex, was lying face down on the couch. It seemed the somersault he'd been attempting had turned into a belly flop.

“You need to spring from the knees more, Alex,” Uncle Ebenezer advised. “So anyway, like I was saying earlier, the most difficult kind of somersault to do is when you're holding another mouse by the tail. Why, I remember being up a tree one time when, just as I was reaching for a delicious ripe Camembert, I heard a desperate squeak behind me and turned to see Rebus teetering on the branch.” He wobbled wildly on the rug to show them what he meant, waggling his mustache for extra emphasis. “Your father always was a bit clumsy,” he remarked.

Uncle Ebenezer had happened to mention during dinner that he had been a particularly excellent somersaulter in his youth. “Not just ordinary somersaults, you understand—
daring, death-defying
somersaults from high places,” he'd said.

Now Alice and Alex were keen to test their own somersaulting prowess.

Unlike his brother and sister, Alistair was more interested in the story than the somersaulting, and as he stood beside the couch trying to keep his tail from Alice's grasp, he considered which question he should ask out of the many that had occurred to him. The obvious ones,
he knew, would be: Where was the tree and what was the Camembert doing in it? But he also knew that the answer would make no more sense than his uncle's explanation of why the Stilton had been in an underwater cavern or why the hunk of cheddar had been hidden under a bush at the top of a treacherous cliff in other stories Ebenezer had told the triplets. So instead he asked: “What did you do?”

Uncle Ebenezer nodded, as if this was indeed the most appropriate question, and said, “Well, I had to make a quick decision: save my brother, or save the Camembert. Of course, I saved Rebus—though rarely have I encountered such a ripe, runny Camembert.” He looked dreamily at the ceiling for a moment, then continued.

“Just as your father toppled forward from the branch I flung myself backward, hooking my knees around the limb, swinging forward—or was it backward?—to grab Rebus by the tail. Then I kept swinging, higher and higher, until I had enough momentum to somersault off the branch and land at the bottom of the tree. Rebus was rather shaken, naturally, so I slung him over my shoulder and carried him home. I have always been extremely agile,” he added modestly, raising his eyebrows at his nephews and niece.

“With the truth,” muttered Aunt Beezer, who was sitting at the dining table marking essays. She met
Alistair's eye and gave him a wink. Alistair's aunt was a math professor and, unlike her husband, was always extremely accurate.

Alex, Alice, and Alistair had been living with their aunt and uncle in their tiny apartment in the small town of Smiggins for four years now. The triplets had come for a two-week visit while their parents were on what was supposed to be a short business trip, but there had been an accident, and Rebus and Emmeline had never returned.

Four years . . . Alistair's memories of their home in Stubbins were becoming fainter, but sometimes, when he least expected it, he would suddenly remember the sheen of his mother's brown fur as it caught the light from the hall when she came in to kiss him good night. Or the way his father's whiskers creased when he smiled, which he did often.

Alistair tugged idly at the ends of the scarf wrapped around his neck and recalled the night his mother had given it to him.

“Keep it safe,” his mother told him as she laid the scarf on Alistair's pillow, “and never lose it.”

He had immediately recognized it as the one she had been knitting by the fire night after night in the weeks before she and the triplets' father had gone away. Emmeline was always knitting, and for the first eight
years of Alistair's life the sound of her needles clicking was the first thing he heard when he woke up, and the last thing he heard when he went to sleep. She also dyed her own wool in dazzling hues, often with Alistair's help, and knitted everything in vivid stripes—except this scarf. He had watched as the scarf grew, filled with strange shapes and squiggles in every color he had ever seen (like saffron and emerald green and turquoise) and some he hadn't even heard of (like heliotrope and vermilion and ultramarine). There was only one distinct stripe, a blue one, running down the whole length of the scarf. It was a curious creation, unlike anything Emmeline had ever made before, but Alistair thought the scarf was very beautiful. He couldn't believe that all along she had been knitting it for him.

Alistair couldn't explain why, but it seemed to him that his mother's words as she had given him the scarf that last night had carried a special weight. That the scarf represented a special promise between the two of them. He'd even, as time wore on, started to feel that to lose the scarf would be to forget his mother in some way. And so he wore the scarf every day and every night, even when, like now, it was the middle of summer. The only time he took it off was to have a bath or when he went swimming—or when Uncle Ebenezer insisted that he be allowed to wash it once in a while. . . .

Uncle Ebenezer's story about rescuing their father as he fell from the tree branch had inspired Alice and Alex, and they were now hanging upside down by their knees from the back of the couch.

“Like this, Uncle?” said Alice. “It's easy!”

“Not so easy if you are holding another mouse by the tail,” Ebenezer pointed out, so that Alex immediately tried to grab at Alice's tail, saying, “Let me try it!” Then Alice succeeded in grabbing Alex's tail, while their uncle was crying above the kerfuffle, “But don't forget the swinging—you have to be swinging as well . . . Come on, Alistair—give it a go!”

All three young mice, urged on by their uncle, had made several noisy attempts to launch themselves off the back of the couch—with no notable success—when Aunt Beezer came to stand over them.

She shook her head, frowning. “You three . . .,” she said.

Thinking that their noise must be disturbing her, Alex, Alice, and Alistair hung their heads guiltily. At least, they would have if their heads hadn't been hanging upside down already. But when Alistair dropped off the couch and was able to see his aunt the right way up he realized she was smiling.

“You three are like chalk and cheese and a ping-pong ball.” And indeed, considering they were triplets, they
looked nothing alike. Alex was tall, solid, and strong; if he wanted to beat Alice in a fight, he just sat on her. Then again, Alice, though small, was fast and wiry, and was usually able to outrun Alex before he could sit on her. Alistair, who was of average height and build, tried to avoid situations where he might be squashed or chased (which by his reckoning made him the most sensible of the three). Of course, it was not only in size that they differed: Alex was white, like their father, with a patch of brown on his right shoulder blade; Alice was a deep chocolate brown, like their mother, with a white patch on her left hip. Alistair was ginger, like—like no other mouse he had ever seen, though his parents had assured him there were plenty of other ginger mice in the world, just none in Stubbins (or, as it turned out, Smiggins).

“And what's more,” said Aunt Beezer, interrupting the beginning of an argument between Alex and Alice over which of them was chalk, which was cheese, and who might be the ping-pong ball, “you're going about that all the wrong way. A couch is
not
a tree branch—you have to adapt your methods accordingly.” She sprang lightly onto the back of the sofa then dived off headfirst, doing a somersault in the air before landing gracefully on her feet.

“Wow, Aunt Beezer!” Her nephews, niece, and husband applauded loudly.

“Show
us
how to do that!” cried Alex.

And the rest of the evening until bedtime was spent somersaulting off the back of the couch until they had all mastered the trick (except Uncle Ebenezer, who apparently wasn't as agile as he used to be).

That night, Alistair slipped immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, until he was woken by a tapping on the shutters shortly after midnight.

Alex yawned and stretched and opened his eyes to the sunlight battering at his eyelids. Someone must have opened the shutters, even though it was only—he glanced at the clock on the bedside table—six thirty. Six thirty! He glanced over at his sister's bed. She was asleep with her head buried under her pillow. Alistair's bed, which was right under the open window, was empty.

With a sigh Alex pulled back the covers. There was no chance he'd get back to sleep now. He might as well see if there was any of last night's cheesecake left over. He padded out to the kitchen, expecting to see his brother there. But Alistair wasn't in the kitchen, or the lounge/dining room, or the bathroom. And as he passed the front door, he noticed that the chain was still on. Alex forgot about food for a moment, and went to listen at his aunt and uncle's bedroom door, but all he could
hear was Ebenezer's loud trumpeting snore, punctuated by Beezer's sighing whistle—no Alistair.

Curious now, and a bit worried, he returned to the bedroom. “Alice,” he said, shaking his sister, “Alistair's gone.”

Alice muttered something and shook him off, but he pulled the pillow from her head and repeated, “Alistair's gone.”

“I don't blame him,” said Alice, grabbing for her pillow. “If you don't stop shaking me
I'll
leave too. It
is
school holidays, you know. We're allowed to sleep late—or get up early, if you're Alistair.”

“I'm serious, sis. I've searched the whole flat, and he's not here.”

“So maybe he's outside.”

“But the chain is still on the door,” Alex said.

“Huh.” Alice was silenced for a moment. “That
is
strange.” Yawning, she threw back the bed covers and sat on the edge of the bed. “How about the window?”

“Well, I wouldn't risk trying to climb down from the third floor, and if I wouldn't there's no way Alistair would.”

They both went to the window and looked out. Below them was a vegetable patch belonging to Mr. Grudge who lived on the first floor, and then a small square of lawn, and beyond that a road which would soon
be busy with mice going to work or doing the shopping, but at this hour was still quiet. Even Mr. Grudge, who rose with the sparrows to do the watering before the sun grew too hot, wasn't in his garden.

As Alice craned over the windowsill a flutter of turquoise caught her eye—a piece of wool was snagged on the corner of the half-open shutter.

“Alex,” she said, turning to face her brother, “was Alistair wearing his scarf when he went to bed?”

Alex shrugged. “I guess so. He hardly ever takes it off.”

“Then I think we can say for sure that Alistair went through this window.”

“But how?” demanded Alex. “And why? It doesn't make any sense.”

Alice stuck her head out the window again. “Alistair!” she hissed in a loud whisper. “Alistair, are you out there?”

Alex jostled her aside. “Alistair!” he bellowed.

Alice hit him on the arm. “Not so loud—you'll wake Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer.”

“You wouldn't want to do that,” said a voice behind them.

Both mice jumped. It was their aunt, her eyes alert though her creamy fur was rumpled. Alice could hear Ebenezer's snores still rumbling faintly from the room next door.

“What is it?” said Beezer. “Is something wrong?” Her gaze darted from her niece to her nephew and back again. “Where's Alistair?”

It seemed to Alice almost as if her aunt was expecting trouble. Her throat was dry suddenly. “He's . . . gone,” she said.

Her aunt put a warm hand on Alice's shoulder and, without turning around, called sharply, “Ebenezer? Wake up—Alistair's gone.”

At once her uncle's rumbling ceased. “Oh no,” they heard him mutter, his voice croaky with sleep. “Oh no . . .” Again it seemed to Alice that while his reaction was immediate, urgent even, he had responded more with dismay than surprise. He shuffled into the triplets' room, indentations from his pillow still visible in his tan fur.

“So you say Alistair has left the apartment through the window?” Beezer began.

“That's right,” said Alex, looking perplexed. “The shutters were open and so was the window, and the chain is still on the door.”