Young Fredle (12 page)

By then, the two mice had come up to another small, low window, equally dark, equally well-sealed-off as far as Fredle could see, and it was time to turn back, he knew, time to return to their own side of the house. He was looking forward to seeing those flowers again. He always looked forward to seeing the flowers. The stars, too; he always looked forward to seeing the stars floating in the dark night air, and he enjoyed watching the wandering moons as they came and went, their gleaming whiteness, their various shapes and sizes, each one different from the others. It wasn’t only Neldo he wouldn’t see again when he found a way to get back inside, he realized.

That night, as he sat looking up at the sky, contentedly alone and admiring, Fredle noticed a darkness—like a cloud but not at all like a cloud—in the air above him, a darkness closer than the stars and moons.

Without hesitation, as if he had been born and bred outside, Fredle ran, and—as if he had somehow made a mental note of this without even paying attention, like a genuine field mouse—he ran to the steps, not to his lattice wall. The steps were the nearest shelter.

A dark shape fell out of the air, wings spread wide, toward the spot where he had been standing until just two seconds ago. There was a rushing sound, like wind, and a short, irritated squawk, and then the darkness rose upward again.

Fredle watched it go off. He was just as frightened as he should have been, which was very frightened indeed. Maybe it was an owl, maybe a hawk, maybe an eagle. It could have been anything that hunted by night, but he knew that if he hadn’t been looking up at the stars, he’d never have seen it in time.

After that, he was careful to always occupy a different position for his skygazing. Raptors, he guessed, like mice, were creatures of habit. That bird must have seen him there more than once before it decided to attack. Fredle could have stopped going out into the night, but he wasn’t about to
not
look at the stars, and the moons. He understood now that once he found his way back inside, he’d never see them again.

Not many days after that, Bardo and Neldo and Fredle were all foraging together on the compost. Fredle was thinking that later, after a short rest, he would head off along the foundation in a new direction. Not knowing what he might find there, hoping that he might come upon a way in, gave him a bright feeling, eagerness and excitement and just enough fear to make it an adventure.

“I’m going to explore past the garbage cans,” he announced. “Around the fourth side. Do you want to come?”

“Not me,” Bardo said.

“Me either,” Neldo said. “I don’t go there. The cats go hunting around that side of the house once the weather gets warm.”

“If even Neldo stays clear, you better believe it’s dangerous, chum,” Bardo agreed. “I can tell you that I’ve seen with my own eyes Fox coming around the corner with a fat, frightened gray house mouse in his jaws.”

“Some of them get away,” Neldo said.

“Even if they do, no house mouse lasts long out here. So I would advise against heading off in that direction, young Fredle.”

Fredle pretended to be concentrating on an eggshell, which had the advantage of being very light and thus easy to move around, with the disadvantage of being difficult to chew. But really, he was thinking about what Bardo had just told him, without meaning to. Fredle could draw the logical conclusion: if the barn cats came around from that fourth side of the house carrying a house mouse, then there was a way in. He could be sure that the cats must know how to get into the house because he absolutely knew that no house mouse would voluntarily venture outside.

“I’ll spare you the disappointment,” Bardo said. “Eggshells aren’t worth the trouble of chewing them up.”

Fredle turned his attention to a dark gray strip of apple peel. “What is that chicken feed you all go foraging for?” he asked.

“Corn,” Neldo said.

“Neldo,” Bardo warned her. “You know the rules.”

“What difference does it make if he knows? Haven’t you figured it out yet? He’s not going to try to share our food. He just wants to survive out here until he can get back inside. He’s no danger to us, Bardo.” She turned back to Fredle. “Plus there are brown things, like the dogs get only much smaller, some kind of kibbles, and something gritty and pale, like dirt. We never eat that. But the chickens like it; chickens will eat anything, they just peck away at the ground and swallow whatever comes up. They’ll eat
bugs
. Ick-ko.”

“Do they eat mice?” asked Fredle, since
anything
included mice and it was easy to see that a mouse was a lot smaller than a chicken.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” said Bardo. “But you don’t want to get between a chicken and its food. A good strike with one of those beaks and a chicken will cripple you, and chances are you’ll be dinner for the snake before you know it.”

Fredle didn’t respond. He finished his strip of apple peel and set off. As he came up to the garden gate post he saw the large figure of Missus, approaching. Fredle froze.

Missus carried a basket in one hand and the bucket in the other. Sadie bounded along beside her. “We’re working! Weeding the garden! Feeding the chickens! Taking care of the baby! It’s warm and sun—” Sadie fell silent, sniffing the air, and then she said quietly, “Hello, Fredle. My job is to watch the baby.” She went to the basket Missus had set down just inside the garden fence and sat in the dirt beside it. “Do you want to see our baby? I could lift you in my mouth but you have to be quiet.”

However, Missus leaned down to stretch a thin cloth over the top of the basket before she went off into the garden, so Fredle couldn’t have seen the baby even if he had trusted Sadie to put him up in her mouth and not eat him. He tried to explain it to her. “It’s not safe for a mouse to be near humans.” Or
dogs
, he didn’t add.

“The baby can’t hurt you. Not yet, anyway, because babies can’t do anything, not even pull my ears. That’s why I have to be her nanny.”

Fredle stayed crouched behind his post. “Where’s Angus?”

“When Mister checks the sheep in their pasture, Angus helps him. Sometimes I help, too, but not today.” Sadie lay down beside the baby’s basket, which wasn’t really a basket at all but more like a box with a handle, and pointed her nose at the post behind which Fredle hid. “What are you doing here?”

“I was foraging in the compost.”

“You don’t eat compost, do you? Ick-ko.”

“It’s better than your kibbles.”

“You eat my kibbles?”

“Not when they’re in the bowl,” Fredle assured her quickly, in case—like Patches—the dogs resented it if a mouse took the food from their bowls. “But sometimes you spill them.”

“I’m thirsty,” Sadie said, a little sadly. “I want a drink of water. I want to go get a drink from the stream and chase a frog. Have you ever smelled a frog? The stream isn’t far, just across the field, and I can run fast. I can run very fast,” she told Fredle, and sighed. “But I have a job.” Then, “I have a job!” she told Fredle, proudly.

Fredle was feeling a little thirsty, too, now that the subject had come up, and he thought that a juicy apple peel would refresh him.

“Are you going? Will you come back?”

“If I can,” Fredle said.

Bardo and Neldo were no longer at the compost, and he went quickly to the part of the pile where he’d noticed more apple peels—which he hadn’t mentioned to his two companions, although neither had he tried to hide it from them. On his way back to the lattice he stopped to talk with Sadie, but she had fallen asleep and was snoring gently. He was about to move on when Missus approached and Sadie leapt up with a short, happy bark.

“Sadie? Sit,” Missus said, in a stern voice. “I’m going to feed the chickens. You stay with the baby.”

Sadie lay down again beside the basket. Fredle had never eaten corn, so he started to follow Missus toward the chicken pen, coming cautiously out from behind the shelter of his fence post. Luckily for him, he hadn’t taken many steps before he looked up and sighted two cats ahead. He froze.

One of the cats was large and all white. The other was large, too, but black-and-white.
The barn cats
, he thought. They stalked through the sunlight in front of the open barn door. They were coming toward the garden.

The cats hadn’t seen him. Slowly, watching the cats, he backed up the short distance to the safety of the fence post near which Sadie slept beside the baby in its basket.

The cats stretched lazily in the sunlight and then strode side by side along by the woodshed. From this angle, Fredle
could see into Neldo’s home. He noticed that only a few logs were piled up in it and that there might have been—but it might also have been only his fears taking a shape—something long and dark, darker even than the dark gray barn, hanging down from the ceiling. The cats paid no mind to any of that. They turned toward the chicken pen.

When they caught sight of the cats, the chickens squawked and darted up into the air with their wings outspread and flapping. Not being able to fly, the chickens ran away from the cats, who went right up to the fence and stared in at them, fat cat tails raised, backs arched, sharp teeth showing as they hissed.

“Shoo!” said Missus. “Get away, cats! Shoo!”

The cats yawned.

Missus dashed right at them, waving her bucket. “I mean it! Shoo!”

Slowly, to show Missus that they were doing it because they wanted to, not because she told them to, the cats moved off. They went in different directions. The white one came toward the garden while the black-and-white one went back to sit in the dirt and scratch itself, right in front of the woodshed.

From behind his post, Fredle now watched the white cat, which was moving slowly, lazily, silently, through the grass, its attention fixed on something in the garden. What something was it stalking? Fredle wondered.

When Fredle turned his head—just slightly because cats could perceive the smallest of movements, even the smallest movements of mice—he saw that it was Sadie toward whom the cat was heading, and that was a relief.

Sadie lay beside the basket with her nose on her paws and her eyes closed. Her ears were raised, but they were always raised, so that might not mean anything. Next to her, little noises came out of the basket and the light cloth that Missus had spread over the top of it rose and fell. It looked as if a giant mouse was running along upside down underneath that cloth. This was what the cat had seen and was curious to find out about.

The cat came up to the basket, and then circled around until it stood on the far side, across from Sadie. It watched the cloth moving. The cloth rippled and the cat watched. Then the cat sank down, tensed its muscles, and crouched, concentrating on whatever it was that moved like that and made those sounds. Its tail waved slowly, back and forth, against the ground.

For just a few seconds, Fredle was undecided. He had been taught to freeze, but then he had also been advised to run, here outside. Moreover, Sadie had saved him from Patches. Taking care of the baby was Sadie’s responsibility and Fredle wanted to help her, even if she was a dog.

It wasn’t even a few seconds, it was only two or three, that Fredle hesitated. The cat was crouched, ready to spring, and Fredle moved. He dashed out from cover and ran toward the sleeping dog, as quick as any squirrel and not even looking to see if the cat had noticed him.

No clawed cat paw landed on top of him. No victorious screech sounded. He made it safely to his destination, which was the soft part right under Sadie’s shoulder. He stuck his nose in there and gave her a quick nip.

With a yowl, Sadie jumped up, fully awake. Fredle had to
get himself quickly into the shelter of the baby’s basket or she might have knocked him around.

He knew she hadn’t seen him. He also knew—by the sound of her furious barking—that she
did
see the cat, right away.

“Get out of here, Fox! You get away from Baby or—”

“Or what?” came a mocking voice.

Anxious, Fredle crept along until he could see what was happening. He saw that the cat had abandoned its hunter’s crouch and was once again standing, back arched, tail fat, hissing at the brown-and-white dog.

“Out!” barked Sadie. Then she bared her teeth and snarled. “Get out!”

“As if I’d ever be afraid of you,” said Fox, but he stalked off, head held high.

The baby was howling now.

“And stay away. You better!” barked Sadie.

Missus came running up to the fence, still holding the bucket of chicken feed. She looked at Sadie. “What’s wrong, girl? What is it?” She bent down and took the cloth off the baby’s basket. “Hello, Baby, don’t cry, it’s just Sadie barking and that’s what dogs do. Everything’s all right.”

“I saved the baby!”

“Quiet, Sadie, there’s nothing. Baby doesn’t like all that barking.”

“Fox was going to—”

“Quiet, Sadie,” said Missus firmly.

Sadie stopped barking. She lay down again, beside the basket, and rested her head on her paws, looking up at Missus.

“Good dog. I won’t be much longer,” said Missus, and she walked away.

Sadie had started sniffing. She lifted her head. “Fredle?”

“I bit you,” said Fredle. “I’m sorry if it hurt, but that cat—”

“I saved the baby!”

“I saw.”

“That was Fox and he’s a bad one.”

“I could tell.”

“Don’t bite me again,” Sadie said.

“I needed to wake you up.”

“Friends don’t bite,” Sadie told him. “Angus never bites me, not even when we’re wrestling and quarreling. And I don’t bite him, or any other friend.”

“All right,” said Fredle. “I understand, it’s a rule.”

“I’d bite that Fox,” Sadie said, growling at the memory. “I’m glad you woke me up, but I’d never bite Patches. Patches is my friend.”

Fredle went back to the protection of the post and waited there until Missus had come to pick up the baby and gone off, back to the house, with Sadie at her heels. Then he returned to his nest, to curl up for a short sleep. He wanted to be well rested when he went out looking for a way into the house, on the fourth and final side, where nobody had ever searched before, at least as far as he knew.