Young Fredle (4 page)

He struggled to be silent, but it was already too late.

3
Outside

They had pushed him out onto the pantry floor and left him there behind its closed doors. He knew he had no chance of getting back behind the wall, even if he had felt well enough to try to fight the mice who would be guarding the hole, or even just argue with them. He had felt too sick to struggle and then he’d been ejected with such force that he was all the way out in the middle of the pantry floor before he came to a halt. Sick and unhappy and frightened, Fredle did what mice do: he froze, and trembled, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. Maybe if he had had to wait longer he would have gathered himself together and formed some kind of a plan, but almost immediately the pantry door opened and Fredle was blinded by light.

A gasp, above, and the door slammed shut. Now Fredle
could only wait, and now he wondered: What would went be? Whatever could it be, to need a word so huge and dark that nobody wanted to speak it? Did he have to be brave when he met it? And would he always, he wondered miserably, have this pain in his stomach, as if fear had sharp teeth and was chewing its way out from inside him?

He wondered where Axle was now, and if Kidle had already forgotten him. He remembered how he had once invited Kidle to come along with him and Axle, and how his little brother had squeaked so loudly with excitement they had to scold him to be quiet. He wondered why that was what he remembered. He wondered—

The door opened again and Fredle shut his eyes tight against the light and also against having to look at whatever he might see. He heard Mister say in a rumbly voice, too loud and close for Fredle to be able to understand all the words, “… Patches will get rid …” And Missus’s clearer voice said, “I can’t just …” Mister rumbled something else and Missus said, “… a way to take it out …”

Fredle kept his eyes closed and his ears open. He thought he should at least try to move, but his hot, heavy stomach weighed him down. He waited, and trembled, and could not think.

With a thump, the air around him closed off and he could no longer hear anything. His eyes flew open then but he could see only a weak, whitened light, gleaming all around him. It was a wall, a round wall. Dim shadows moved behind it. But when he looked down he could still see his two front paws, quite clearly, their gray, bony surfaces and sharp yellow nails,
and when he scratched on the pantry floor he could hear a clear
scritch, scritch
.

Looking up, Fredle saw that the pale wall was also close over his head.

Then a new floor slid under the wall, and moved toward him. He backed away. The strange floor scraped over the wood of the pantry floor and Fredle kept backing up until the wall stopped him and he was forced to step onto the sliding floor. It was cool under his feet and hard as glass, but it wasn’t glass. It was metal but like glass it was too smooth for his nails to grip, so he slid forward along it until his nose bumped against the opposite wall.

Sliding, thumping, he felt the floor rising up beneath, lifting him. This felt like falling but it was the opposite of falling. Could he fall up? Fredle wondered. As far as he knew, no mouse had ever had this happen to him. Was this went?

Without moving, he was moving; he could feel it. The trap—if this was some new kind of trap—was gliding along smoothly and he could see shadowy shapes moving by, beyond the pale wall. He heard a sound like a door closing, but the movement continued.

Then the floor was falling away and he was falling with it, then stopping, stopping and falling, stopping and falling.
Fredle couldn’t catch his breath, for the fear and the feeling sick. Finally the floor swooped down—carrying Fredle with it—until he almost fainted from the speed and steepness of the descent, and then a sudden landing.

What—

The cool, smooth metal floor slipped out from under him, the mysterious trap rose up and disappeared, and he huddled in a light even brighter than the one when the pantry door had opened. This was a light so bright that it hurt to see. He squeezed his eyes shut.

From above him he heard Missus say, “I don’t know. I hope you …” And then she was gone.

In the darkness of his closed eyes, Fredle felt warm air and he smelled wetness and something else, something entirely strange to him, coming from a floor the likes of which he had never before set his paws on. Keeping his eyes tightly closed, from the brightness and from fear, too, Fredle slid his feet, cautiously, gently, back and forth on this not-floor. It was cooler than wood and not nearly as smooth; also, it was soft. His nails slipped into it. His stomach still felt sick, felt overfull and angry.

Even so, a sharp smell penetrated his senses—a smell of something that made him want to eat it, sick as he was. How could that be? Fredle wondered. How could he possibly think of eating anything? But this was like wanting a drop of the cool water from the pipes under the sink, something different from hunger. He opened his eyes.

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.