Young Fredle (8 page)

Fredle was awake. His heart beating fast. It was dark and he didn’t know what had jerked him up out of sleep. Then he heard it. What was that?

He lay still and listened. It sounded almost as if hundreds of mice were running back and forth just beyond the lattice wall.

Because it didn’t sound
exactly
like mice, he lay for a long time, listening.

All the little noises, each separate but also all mixing together—were ants attacking the house? Did ants know a way inside? That question got Fredle out of his nest and over to one of the openings in the lattice.

He looked out into a black darkness through which silver things were falling, falling down through the air, maybe in long lines, maybe just little silver speckles—Fredle couldn’t see them clearly enough to know for sure. What had Bardo said?
Looks like rain
. Bardo had said that when he looked at the gray air, and Fredle thought that these falling things might be rain, falling out of the sky, making little sounds when they hit the ground. Bardo hadn’t said rain was dangerous, so Fredle stuck his head out through the lattice.

Wet! It was wet and—he stuck his tongue out and then drew it quickly back into his mouth, tasting—it was water, just like the water on the stalks of grass, just like the drops of water on the pipes under the sink.

Fredle was thirsty, so he spent a while with his head stuck out through an opening, using his tongue to catch the water. Then he pulled his wet head back inside. He was cold now; his ears, especially, felt wet and cold. Inside, at home in his own family nest, Fredle had never been cold. Sometimes, out in the kitchen in the dead of night, he had felt a little chilly, but as soon as he got back behind the pantry wall it was warm, and by the time he scrambled into the nest and curled up next to his brothers and sisters, he couldn’t even remember what chilly felt like. Here, outside, it was different. The cold started with his ears and then spread to his paws and his tail, even though they weren’t wet. Here, the dirt under his paws grew damp and chilly. Moreover, now that he had reminded himself of home, there was a coldness inside of him, too, growing larger, as if it planned to meet up with the coldness outside and turn Fredle into a total misery.

Just what
had
Bardo been up to, bringing him food but then leaving him out on the compost?

Fredle was alone outside, alone and cold, alone and frightened, alone and hungry. There was nothing he could do about it, he realized, and that realization was colder than even the night rain, more frightening even than went. So frightening—

Fredle ran away from it. He didn’t think, he couldn’t think, his feet just moved as fast as they could, as if he could
run away from his own ideas. He ran across to the hard back wall and scraped his nose all along it, searching for an opening. There had to be an opening. He’d make one, with his claws. He scratched and scratched against the hard surface, but after a while his paws started to hurt and he hadn’t made any progress at all, and he knew he never would. So he ran, again. He ran until he hit a wooden wall and then he ran back along the lattice, hoping to find something, anything, some food, some way back into the house. His mind raced as fast as his feet but he couldn’t think, all he could do was feel the loneliness, all around him, filling the air and making it hard to breathe.

Fredle ran until he had to stop, the sound of his own breathing loud in his ears. He had thought he’d pushed the
loneliness away, but now it was back, and stronger than before. He couldn’t outrun it and he couldn’t drive it away. He’d never escape it. He’d never find his way home and what would he eat?

Tears started to flow from his eyes.

Mice don’t cry
. That was one of the rules Grandfather had taught him and Fredle repeated it to himself.
Mice don’t cry
.

Yeah, well, maybe
, Fredle answered Grandfather silently.
But mice don’t live alone, either, and house mice don’t go outside, so so much for those rules
. Also, he couldn’t stand being alone like this for one more instant. It was more than he could bear. He wanted to go home. He knew he couldn’t and he wanted to and he had never been more miserable in his life.

But now he was also wondering: Was home still the nest behind the pantry wall? Or was home now the little place lined with soft grass where he had been sleeping since he’d arrived outside? How many sleeps did it take to make a home?

With all of these questions in his mind, the loneliness was being pushed back, away into some more distant place and that was—Fredle remarked to himself as he felt his breathing grow more steady—a good thing. A very good thing.

By this time, Fredle had dried off. His little nest was the nearest thing to home he had, for now, and he wasn’t really hungry—a lucky thing, since he didn’t want to have to go out in all that cold, wet water trying to find something to eat—and he had had plenty to drink. So he curled up to think, but not about himself. Instead, he thought about what Bardo had
shown him, and what Bardo had told him, and especially what Bardo hadn’t wanted him to notice.

It didn’t take Fredle long to begin getting curious about those chickens, and after a while he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke again, it was daylight and the rain had stopped falling. Looking out through the opening in the lattice, Fredle noted that the daylight now had a golden shine to it. He could see the grass lying flat on the ground and the brown rutted dirt beyond, and beyond that something very large, a big, dark gray, house-shaped building in the distance. Could that be the chicken pen? The woodshed? Bardo had talked about a snake in the woodshed. Keep away from that snake, Bardo had said; that snake lives on mice.

All that talk about how dangerous the snake was and no talk at all about chickens—whatever they were. That was making Fredle very curious indeed.

He was also hungry. And he realized, all this wondering about Bardo, and the chickens, and even the hunger, too—all of these things pushed the sad and solitary feeling farther away. As soon as he’d thought that, Fredle could see loneliness oozing back toward him, ready to make him miserable all over again, so he squeezed himself through an opening, tumbling out into the cool, clear air, and froze, right next to the lattice, to listen, to smell, to look.

He saw nothing that looked dangerous and heard only sounds from afar—a distant rumble, one dog barking two quick sharp barks, somewhere the crying baby. Hoping it was safe, Fredle ran quickly along the route that rounded the steps and
went in front of the other lattice wall to the big green garbage cans. To get to the garden fence he was going to have to cross the cut grass and the rutted dirt. He was going to have to go fast, and alone. There was no Bardo to lead him, no Axle to tell him to follow close. He was going to have to do it all by himself.

Then Fredle realized: he was going to
get
to do it all by himself.

His heart grew lighter and he made the run, paws tangling a little in grass that lay flat and thick, bony toes stubbing on the rough dirt, until he came to rest again, close up to the foot of a garden fence post. Then he went on more slowly, to the compost pile nearby, where he found potato peels and a carrot top. When he had eaten enough, he lay on the soft pile and thought about where he wanted to go next.

After foraging, you went home to sleep: that was the way mice did things. But Fredle didn’t want to rest; he wanted to learn about the chickens.

Fredle trotted off toward the far corner of the garden fence. When he heard a dog barking—Sadie, by the sound of her—and Missus responding, Fredle froze behind a post. At first he just listened, then he took the chance of peeping around.

Missus was carrying a basket in one hand and a bucket in the other. She and Sadie were heading away from the garden to where another fence rose, behind which things moved and chittered. Fredle guessed that either the basket or the bucket had the baby in it.

“It’s such a nice day,” Missus said. “We can all use a little sunshine.”

“Sunshine, yes!” Sadie barked. “Look out, chickens, here we come! And sunshine, too!” She ran on ahead.

The gabble from behind that high fence grew louder, and Fredle, making a dash up to the next fence post for a better view, saw that there were birds in there, kept prisoners—or were they kept safe?—by the fence.

“Sadie? Down. Stay. I need you to watch the baby,” Missus said, and Sadie lay down beside the basket with her nose on her paws, while Missus opened a door in the high fence and went inside.

The birds—

But
were
they birds? Fredle could see wings flapping as they gathered around Missus’s legs, but they weren’t flying through the air, so could they be birds? Also, instead of making occasional loud comments like the crows, these birds chuckled and chittered constantly. Then his attention was caught by Missus, who reached into her bucket and threw something out around her, scattering it by the handful. Seeing how the chickens reacted, Fredle guessed it was food she was giving them.

The food sprayed around, in all directions, and the chickens scrabbled around after it, pecking and gabbling. Missus stood and watched this for a few minutes; then she left the fenced area, through the same door.

“Good dog, Sadie,” she said. “You’re an excellent nanny. That’ll do.”

Sadie got up. “I smell that mouse,” she said, but Missus didn’t understand.

“Shall we take a little stroll down to the barn and see
what’s new with the cows?” Missus asked. “You haven’t seen the cows for a few days, Sadie.”

“But I did,” said Sadie. “Yesterday and before that, too. Angus checks them with me.”

“And neither have I,” Missus said, and they walked off, Missus carrying both the bucket and the basket.

The baby hadn’t made a sound. Fredle guessed that it was asleep, and he wondered if babies slept whenever they felt like it, daytime or nighttime, unlike house mice but very like the way he himself was sleeping now.

The chickens were working busily to fill their stomachs—heads down, sharp yellow noses pecking at the ground. As Fredle watched, they wandered around, even putting a head through the fence every now and then.

Probably, the way Missus tossed the food all around her, some must fall out through the fence, and Fredle wondered what that food was, if it was something a mouse might like. He was, he realized, enjoying himself. It was interesting to see all these new sights, think all these new thoughts, learn about all these new places and the things in them. When you were alone, you didn’t have to talk to anybody else, or take care of them, or wonder if you were getting in their way or be cross if they were getting in your way. When you were alone, nothing interfered with you.

Fredle decided to go closer to the chicken pen and find out what that food was, if he could eat it. The chickens were trapped inside their fence, so they couldn’t harm him with either their pecking noses or their flapping wings. Chattering away quietly to themselves, the chickens didn’t pay attention
to anything besides their food, so why shouldn’t he satisfy his curiosity? He was about to move out of the shelter of the post when he noticed movement in the grass beyond the chicken pen, little twitches of brown in all the green, so swift and silent that only the sharp eyes of a mouse could catch it, and recognize it.

They were brown field mice and they were running toward the chicken pen, all together, from the direction opposite Fredle’s lookout behind the fence post. They had been waiting together for Missus to feed the chickens, just the way a family of house mice gathered behind the hole in the pantry door, waiting to go out into the nighttime kitchen. As Fredle watched them, a dark puddle of bad, jealous, sad feelings rose up inside him.

It was loneliness, the bad feeling. Loneliness was back and worse than ever, with the sight of this family of field mice foraging together. Fredle knew better than to try to go out and join them. They might be scrawny brown field mice but they were still mice. Mice don’t share and they don’t like strangers and they don’t like changes.

Slowly, Fredle returned to his own solitary nest, so unhappy that he didn’t even try to be careful to stay under cover or race across open spaces. Loneliness wrapped itself up close and cold around Fredle. What could he do but go to sleep?

When Fredle next awoke, it was night and he was thirsty. For a while, he waited behind his lattice wall, watching and listening for possible danger; then he scrambled through an opening
down onto the dark, grassy ground. There, he forgot all about being thirsty, because sharp and bright in the black air those lights were shining again. What they might be, he didn’t know, but there they were, hanging in the air, motionless, twinkling. Beautiful.

Somehow, looking up at those brightnesses, Fredle felt less alone. Why should that be? he wondered. He knew perfectly well that he was still one small mouse, far from his family and his own nest, alone outside. He knew there was no other mouse nearby to warn him, to flee from danger beside him, to help him keep safe. Fredle knew all that, but he still felt the loneliness drawing back, until it was as distant as those brightnesses. He breathed in deeply and kept on looking up.