The Secret of the Ginger Mice (14 page)

Faster and faster they rolled, until the barrel was hurtling at such a speed that Alice closed her eyes and huddled as far down into the barrel as she could, too scared to watch.

Alex, who seemed to think this was all a thrilling
adventure, whooped, “We're heading for a dip!”

Suddenly they were flying through the air, still turning, before landing with a jarring crash that sent pain through every bone in Alice's body.

“Make it stop,” she whimpered.

“No can do, sis,” cried Alex. “Not at this speed! Whoops—black ice.”

He had no sooner spoken than the barrel stopped rolling and began to slide. Opening her eyes, Alice saw that they were now careening headfirst down the mountain. To her dismay, there was no sign of an end to it—just snowy slopes as far as she could see.

“Here comes a bumpy patch!” Alex announced, as their sliding was arrested by a thud. For a moment they were airborne before landing again with a thump. There followed several long minutes—hours it seemed to Alice—in which they bounced and thumped through a field of small hard mounds of snow. When they finally hit a clear stretch Alice was almost relieved as they began to roll once more.

“Woohoo! This is the way to travel!” Alex shouted.

Alice, curled up in the bottom of the barrel, closed her eyes again and waited in misery for the ordeal to end.

After what seemed like a lifetime, the mountain's slope became gentler, the rolling of the barrel slower.

“Oh,” said Alex in disappointment. “We're stopping.”

Sure enough, the barrel gradually rolled to a halt.

The two mice crawled out of the barrel and stood up on shaky legs. Alice tottered around in the snow, swaying slightly. It felt like the whole world was still turning and she couldn't quite balance or focus.

Then Alex said, “Um, sis . . .,” and the world slipped back into focus with a suddenness that made Alice gasp.

There in front of them was the woodcutter's sled—and on the sled, watching them, were Sophia and Horace.

10

A
listair peered through the curtain of willow, his heart in his mouth, as first one then a second boat of Queen's Guards rowed swiftly past, oblivious to the presence of the fugitives mere meters away. When the last ripples from the boats had disappeared, he let out a huge sigh of relief, then leaped from the raft and pulled it onto the bank beneath the willow's canopy. Looking around, still breathing hard, he saw that they were fully enclosed in a cool green room. As he had hoped, they could look out, while being completely hidden from view.

“A hideout,” said Tibby, a bit shakily. “Just what a
couple of dangerous rebels need.” She rose and stumbled unsteadily from the raft onto the bank.

They lay on their backs on the soft grass, light filtering gently through the green strands.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Alistair said, when he had caught his breath. “We're just too visible—we can barely move without being set upon, and we can't live on blackberries forever.”

“You're telling me,” said Tibby, holding up her hands, still blackberry-stained from breakfast. “If we don't change our diet soon, I'm probably going to turn permanently purple.”

Alistair imagined a purple Tibby Rose and began to laugh—then he sat up suddenly. “Of course! I can't believe I didn't think of it before.”

Tibby sat up too. “Um . . . you're seriously worried about me turning permanently purple?” she said.

“Worried? No! Turning purple is
exactly
what we should do. We can dye ourselves!”

“Uh, Alistair,” said Tibby, “you know how much we stand out being ginger . . . Don't you think purple mice are going to be a little obvious?”

Alistair waved away her concerns. “Of course we'll be obvious—but unless Sourians also consider purple mice to be their enemies, which would be pretty unlucky, we'll just look like a couple of nutcases who've dyed
themselves a crazy color. No one will know that we're ginger underneath the dye. And the color will wash out eventually, so we won't be purple forever.”

Tibby Rose nodded slowly. “In that case,” she said, “it's a fantastic idea! Let's do it.” She paused. “Do we know how to make dye from blackberries?” she asked hesitantly.

“You bet we do,” said Alistair. “See this?” He unwound his scarf from around his neck and held it out so Tibby could admire the vivid colors. “Mum made all her own dyes—and I helped.”

“Well, it's nice to know something's going our way,” said Tibby.

With his optimism restored, so was Alistair's energy, and he jumped up and went back to the raft. Carefully gathering the remainder of their blackberries—now a little warm and overripe from their exposure to the midday sun—he piled them into the two cup-like paddles and scooped a handful of water into each.

“Okay,” he said, “now we need to squash them and mix them with the water until they're a thick paste.”

Tibby copied his actions as he squeezed the blackberries into mush and vigorously mixed the mush with the water. “I'd kind of hoped I wouldn't have to use my arms again for about ten years,” she sighed.

After several minutes of squashing and squeezing and
stirring, Alistair decided that their mixtures had the right consistency, and they began to slather the purple paste all over their fur.

“Make sure you get it everywhere,” Alistair instructed. “Behind your ears, between your toes—cover every bit of ginger. Here, I'll do your back, then you can do mine.”

When they were completely covered in purple goo, Alistair stuck his head through the curtain of green.

“No one about,” he said, beckoning to Tibby Rose. “Come on, we need to let the dye dry in the sun.”

When the blackberries had baked to a hard crust, Alistair said, “That should do it. Now let's wash this muck off.” He waded into the river, shivering at first as the water swirled around his legs in cold eddies. Drawing a deep breath, he steeled himself and dived in. The fresh cool water was a shock, but a reviving one. He forgot his tiredness, his hunger and aching muscles, and remembered instead sunny days in the green glade below the waterfall just south of Smiggins; water fights with his brother and sister, Aunt Beezer's fast neat freestyle and Uncle Ebenezer's ponderous backstroke, his big belly riding high above the water line.

Alistair surfaced, water streaming from his purple-crusted fur, and said, “Wow! How good does that feel?”

To his surprise, Tibby was still standing by the river's edge.

“C'mon, Tib,” he said. “It's cold at first but it's beautiful once you're in.”

Tibby took a cautious step forward then stopped. “I—I can't swim,” she said, looking embarrassed.

Alistair opened his mouth and then closed it again. Of course . . . When would she have had a chance to learn, stuck her whole life in that house on the hill? He felt ashamed of his own insensitivity and it occurred to him how brave Tibby had been, to be facing so many new things all the time without hesitation. Trusting him.

He swam back to the shore. “When we get to Smiggins, I'll teach you to swim,” he promised. “But I suppose we'd better start scrubbing.”

The two mice stood in the shallows and, with the help of plenty of water and some stones from the river, scraped the blackberry crust from their fur. At last they stood before each other, transformed.

“We look kind of . . . muddy colored,” said Tibby Rose dubiously.

“With a definite purple tinge,” observed Alistair, inspecting his brownish-purple arms. “But,” he added, “we're not ginger—that's the main thing. So, shall we try our luck in town, see if some kind shopkeeper will take pity on a couple of poor purple mice and give us a loaf of bread?”

“Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful?” said Tibby
dreamily, rubbing her stomach. “I've never been so hungry in my life.”

Alistair wrapped his scarf around his neck, then they scrambled up the high bank to a dusty road and started walking upriver, back to the town they'd fled barely a couple of hours before with the Queen's Guards in pursuit.

They hadn't seen much of the landscape during their flight downriver, but now Alistair saw that the town they were approaching was surrounded by cornfields, the corn almost at head height. Most fields sported enormous scarecrows—mice made of straw and dressed in old hats and boots. Alistair knew that these were necessary; a crow was as likely to eat the farmer as the corn.

“Alistair,” said Tibby, “is that mouse over there green?”

Alistair turned to gaze across the river to where Tibby was pointing. He saw a blue-striped tent, and a mouse tending a cooking pot over a fire. “She does look green,” Alistair agreed. “It must be a shadow from the river or the tent or something.” He laughed. “Wouldn't it be funny if we started seeing odd-colored mice everywhere, now that we're purple? Then we wouldn't stand out at all!”

They came to a gate in the town's southern wall—glad
to have found a gate other than the one by the bridge where they had been spotted by the guard—and joined a stream of mice hurrying along the cobbled street. To Alistair's surprise, those coming in the other direction were all wearing broad smiles and some, when they saw Alistair and Tibby Rose, even broke into peals of laughter. At first Alistair thought it must be their purple-tinged fur that had caused the mice to smile, but then they turned a corner and saw the reason for the mirth.

They found themselves in the middle of a compact square surrounded by shops and open-air cafés. In the square's center was a fountain—Alistair recognized the imperious countenance of the statue that stood atop the fountain as that of Queen Eugenia. Sourians must certainly love their queen, Alistair thought. That, or the Queen loved to see images of herself. But it was not the statue of the Queen that had drawn the eye of the crowd in the square, though Alistair couldn't see what it was. “Let's take a look,” he said, and he and Tibby Rose squeezed their way to the front of the crowd.

What they saw was a group of five mice quite unlike any mice Alistair had ever seen before. The smallest of the group was very young, no more than five or six—and bright orange. There was a pair who looked to be a couple of years younger than himself; one was scarlet and the other lime green, and they were juggling a random
assortment of objects—an apple, an egg, and a lemon for one, a tennis ball, a radish, and a potato for the other.

Watching over the younger three were a portly canary yellow mouse with a piano accordion slung around his neck, and . . . Alistair found himself looking into the amused eyes of a very striking mouse indeed. Tall and slim, his fur was a deep midnight blue—all except his left arm and right leg, which were colors Alistair had seen on mice before, but never in such a jumble. There was brown and white and black and gray and . . . yes, even a flash of ginger. A gold earring glinted in each ear. His companions might have been as vivid as the jungle parrots Alistair had seen in books, but it was this dark compelling mouse who really drew the eye.

Yet despite his unusual appearance, something about the ironic gleam in the mouse's dark eyes told Alistair that he was perfectly well aware of the odd picture he made, but that it suited his purpose—whatever that might be.