by Emily Butler
“Captain Andrée,” inserted Freya.
“The captain,” agreed Zoose. “And he starts talking to Henriksson, who runs the shop, describing a contraption he wants built to hang underneath a balloon that will carry him all the way to the North Pole. Says he’s going to be the first person to get there, and that a balloon is the best way to go. Says it’s never been done before, but it’s perfectly safe with the air currents being what they are. He’s got it all plotted. I’m listening to the whole conversation, thinking there’s no way I’m going to miss out on this one. So Henriksson builds the basket, and I make sure there’s a place for me, see? When the captain has it shipped to the island, I’m already aboard, snug as a bug in a rug.”
“But what will you do when we land?” Freya asked.
“It’s not what I’ll do; it’s what I’ll be. And that’s the first mouse to explore the North Pole,” Zoose said. “I never worry about what I’ll do. Doing is what happens along the way.”
Freya found her companion’s lack of planning unimpressive, but before she could say another word, the balloon gave a tremendous lurch. Then it began to plummet. Uneasy, she braced herself against the woven walls with outstretched wings.
“This is not the smooth sailing one might hope for,” she said.
“It never is,” said Zoose placidly.
Once again there was much commotion in the basket above their berth as the men raced around, trying to coax the balloon to fly higher. Zoose pressed a large round ear to the inner basket and listened for a moment. Then he nodded knowingly.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s going on?” Freya asked.
“We’re having a problem with the sun, on account of its being too hot,” said Zoose. “The man with the camera has it all figured out.”
“You mean Nils,” she said.
“That’s the one. He reckons that when the balloon rises, the sun warms the gas inside and it takes up more space. You know how that business works, right?”
“Yes, of course, gas expands when heated,” said Freya. “I did go to school, once upon a time.”
“Not me,” said Zoose. “But I’m a fast learner. So the gas gets bigger and spills out of the balloon. Then she sinks. This old girl has eight million holes pricked in her, in case that’s news to you. They’re mostly covered with varnish. Mostly.”
Freya felt the first tingling of panic and squelched it firmly. “Holes, you say? I wasn’t aware of any holes.”
“Millions of ’em,” repeated Zoose. “The captain told Henriksson that the balloon was sewn together by a dozen lovely ladies in Paris who put in eight million stitches. And every time their needles stabbed through the silk, what did they make? A teeny, tiny hole. And what might seep out of that hole and make its escape? A little molecule of hydrogen, the very thing that’s supposed to keep us up in the air!”
Freya was impressed by the mouse’s understanding of molecular science, a subject she found rather perplexing. But she sensed that he was playing on her nerves.
“This knowledge did not deter you from making the voyage, I see,” she said.
“Not for a minute. Like I said, the holes are mostly covered with a varnish invented by the captain himself. Top-secret stuff, boiled eel skin and tree sap and whatnot. But Nils thinks some of the holes might be releasing gas anyway, the closer we get to the sun.”
“Then the problem corrects itself!” said Freya. “The balloon lets out some gas, moves away from the sun, and all is well.”
“Ah,” said Zoose, “but what if she sinks too far and we wind up in the ocean?”
He was plainly enjoying her discomfort, and she resolved to keep her qualms to herself. After all, traveling entailed risks, and one had to rise to the occasion. And rise she would, just like the balloon.
Unfortunately, the balloon wasn’t rising. It was sinking, and not in the manner of a bird making a graceful descent. No, it was more like a cheap yo-yo on a knotted string. It dropped and then stopped suddenly, snagged on a current of air that might send it back up or just tumble it about a bit. Then it would drop again, spastically, before zigging left or right. Finally, the balloon gave up altogether and plummeted toward the water, where the basket landed with a wet slap.
Not good, not good, worried Freya, whose berth was now just inches above sea level. She could feel the damp coming up from the bottom of the basket. Freya had no fear of water, though it had been years since she’d swum recreationally. From her perspective, there was nothing especially terrifying about being lobbed into the ocean. But she was a penguin, not a fish. She wouldn’t last long if she was trapped in a wicker basket under the water. “Perish the thought!” she said out loud. Then, sheepish, she glowered at Zoose in case he was inclined to mock her. The mouse said nothing at all, but watched and listened with ears pricked and nose quivering.
As the balloon struggled to rise, things only got worse. The basket jolted and jounced over the surface of the ocean, and Freya was tossed around like a rag doll. If she hadn’t packed herself in so tightly, she might have been seriously injured. As it was, Zoose was thrown against her quite violently.
“Oh, do be careful!” she implored as he smacked into her shoulder.
“I’ve had taxi rides worse than this!” yelled Zoose as he somersaulted backward into the dark, referring in gasps to “every pothole in London.” Then he was buried in some cotton stuffing and temporarily silenced.
Freya listened to the men inside the basket. “The sand, Knut, the sand! Dump it all, every last bag!”
“But, Captain!” Knut exclaimed. “That’s five hundred and fifty pounds of ballast! What if we need it when we reach north?”
“The only thing we’ll need is life jackets if we don’t get off the water! Lose the sand!” bade Captain Andrée. There was a note in his voice that Freya hadn’t heard before. She was sure he would offer almost anything to the sea if it would only let go of the basket.
Plish! Plosh! Bag after bag of sand was thrown overboard, and bit by bit the sea loosened its grip. The crew cheered as the balloon, lighter now by a quarter ton, lifted itself into the air. Freya heard them clap each other on the back, elated to be flying again. The cause for alarm had passed! She herself felt almost giddy, an emotion more foreign to her than any other. With more space, she might have danced a little jig.
“There we are, right as rain again!” she said to Zoose, who was picking cotton out of his whiskers. He looked pale behind his fur. Freya was so full of relief that some of it flowed over into concern for the mouse. “Buck up, now. We’re back on track!”
“I wish we were on track—a railroad track, that is. Trains are how I like to travel,” admitted Zoose. “I don’t relish being this far off the ground.”
“Well, I do,” said Freya. Now that they were newly airborne, she was savoring the idea of her own birdliness more than she could possibly have imagined. Of course, she was every bit the land dweller that the mouse was. Yet she did have feathers. “I feel like I’m in my element!” she exulted.
Then the basket heaved again, buffeted by the wind, and Freya smacked her head against her suitcase.
“How’s your element now?” muttered Zoose, who was upside down and missing a shoe.
“Oh, shut up,” she whimpered as the basket creaked and shuddered. Things only grew more difficult as the sky darkened. The balloon was battered by gusts of cold wind that did not let up for a minute, and Freya was amazed when Zoose burrowed deep into the cotton and began to snore.
There was no sleep for her that night, not a wink.
As pinpoints of light filtered into the basket, Freya hoped her frightful ordeal was over. She was proud of herself. Her resolve had been tested and had not been found lacking. She was frazzled in body, but her mind was vigorous! The abominable motions of the basket were waning—now it seemed unhurried and purposeful. And she’d been through far worse, Freya told h
erself. Today would be a piece of cake.
Cake! Truth be told, Freya wasn’t hungry in the least. Her stomach was rumbly, as if she’d swallowed a pailful of pollywogs. But Mrs. Davidson was very specific on the point of breakfast: After a long night journey, breakfast is an absolutely necessary consideration, and a really good meal should be taken. Freya lacked the makings of a really good meal, but she did have a tin of sardines she’d been saving. Under normal circumstances, it would be rude to open such a smelly item in a small space shared with other travelers. But the mouse was still asleep, and Freya suspected he was used to any number of strong odors. She stuck her beak into one of her food parcels and extracted a tin can.
“Oooh, something smells scrummy!” said Zoose, poking his nose out of his burrow and catching Freya in the very act of taking her first bite. “Nothing like waking up to a whiff of sardines. Hits you like a punch in the face, and I mean that in a very good way.”
The appetizing crunch of tiny bones held no appeal in the presence of this irritating stranger, who emerged from his nest, nose all aquiver. So much for breakfast. Travel is the true touchstone of character, Mrs. Davidson admonished. Well, she would not be selfish. She extended the tin in his direction. “Help yourself,” she said.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Zoose, seizing the food with delight. He nibbled the flesh off each fish as neatly as corn off the cob, pulling the spiny remains from his mouth and smacking his lips with gusto. Freya felt her stomach heave, and she pressed her face to the basket, reviving herself with deep, cold breaths.
A little civility goes a long way in traveling, she remembered. “Did you sleep well?” she asked, ignoring the gulping and offensive sighs of pleasure coming from the mouse.
“Like a log,” said Zoose between oily mouthfuls. “It was like being back in the sock with my brothers, but even better. I feel sorry for anyone that’s never been rocked to sleep by a balloon!”
“Rocked to sleep, were you? I’m astonished. The balloon was whacked about like a tennis ball all night long. We rode through a storm, you know,” said Freya.
“Didn’t feel it,” said Zoose, handing back the empty tin. “I’m fresh as a daisy. You should eat something—food will set you straight!”
“You don’t say,” grumbled Freya. She put the tin away. “I could probably manage a plain breakfast bun, if I had one. Which I do not.”
“But I do! I happen to have a plain breakfast bun—well, part of one, at least. We’ll just brush off the dirt where it got stepped on, and presto! Good as new!” said Zoose. But no sooner had he turned to rummage through his things than the basket slammed into something solid, pitching the mouse backward and into the softest part of Freya’s belly. She felt the air whoosh out of her. Then bump! went the basket, and Freya whirled around, slipped and fell on top of Zoose, who struggled in vain to free himself from her superior bulk. This back-and-forth went on for several minutes until, during a momentary lull, Freya managed to peek through the basket.
“Oh, no! We’re on the ice!” she cried. “We’ve come down too far. We’re flying too low!”
Zoose angled himself against the side of the basket and took a look. It was true. The basket scraped along a field of ice that extended as far as the eye could see. It crashed into every jagged ridge and wrinkle in its path. As solidly built as it was, nevertheless it would be smashed to bits if the balloon didn’t gain some altitude.
“We’ve left the water behind us, at least,” said Zoose. “Maybe this is the North Pole? Not much to look at, is it?”
But the rate at which the humans were casting out ballast told Freya that they had not arrived at the North Pole. There was a frenzy of activity above her, and through her peephole she saw a massive anchor fall over the side of the basket and land with a heavy thud.
“Not the instruments!” she heard the captain shout. “Remember our duty to science!”
There was some discussion, and the anchor was followed by a really splendid medicine chest. Then a large wooden buoy was jettisoned; a familiar blue-and-yellow flag popped from its top and fluttered handsomely on the way down.
“God save the king,” said Freya. Surely the captain had meant to claim the glory of discovering the North Pole for Sweden with that flag. Well, it wasn’t important.
“Ah, now, that’s a shame,” lamented Zoose as several crates marked with the words Champagne were cast overboard. These sacrifices bought a few feet of lift, but not nearly enough to allow the balloon to clear the formations that jutted high above the ground and menaced the balloon and its cargo.
The adventurers drifted at the mercy of the wind, which sometimes bashed them into the ice and sometimes left them suspended and going nowhere at all. They had no way to steer the craft and nothing left to dump, at least nothing that wasn’t vital to their success once they landed. Sleep was out of the question: the moment one closed one’s eyes with fatigue, the balloon plunged downward and collided with the ground, where it was pulled for yards like a prisoner being dragged from his cell to the gallows.
And so it went on, unrelentingly. “A novel form of punishment, this is,” Freya quipped weakly. “We must have done something awful in a past life to deserve it. And I don’t even believe in past lives.”
The mouse made no response to her feeble joke. She peered at him closely and thought he looked a little green about the whiskers. He held his head in his paws and periodically clutched his stomach. She felt positively seasick herself, and by the sounds of it, so did the humans.
By the time the meager Arctic sun began to set, Freya had resorted to her trick of chanting multiplication tables. The alternative was to lose one’s mind, although it possibly amounted to the same thing.
When she had gone all the way through the thirteens twice, she turned to poems, which she recited aloud. Her favorite one began like this:
It is an ancient Librarian
Who stops to talk with me.
Her bearded chin and milky eyes
Are things I can’t unsee!
She holds me with her withered hand.
“There was a book,” croaks she.
“Back off! Don’t touch me, crazy bat,
Or I shall count to three!”
“Count away, thou dunderhead,”
Hisses the Librarian.
“But hear the tale, for soon you’ll be
A moldering mound of carrion….”
“Carrion?” asked Zoose.
“It means ‘dead and rotting flesh,’ ” explained Freya.
“I knew it!” groaned the mouse, pausing until a wave of nausea passed. “You might as well ask Death to ride with us in this balloon!”
“Fiddlesticks. It’s just a poem,” said Freya.
“It’s an invitation,” insisted Zoose.
“What superstitious nonsense. Every schoolchild in Sweden knows this poem by heart. It’s as famous as—”
She was interrupted by an atrocious bash as the basket scudded into another hummock of solid ice.
“No more poems about death,” said Zoose as they swung furiously from side to side.
“As a matter of fact, it’s a poem about a book,” said Freya. (And also about death, she admitted to herself.)
There was no more conversation in the darkening basket, and the voyagers spent another night trying to ignore how unbearably tired they were becoming. The balloon doddered along now, unable to hurdle the lowest ridges and hitting everything in its path. Not even the mouse could rest. By the dawning of the third day, it was clear that something would have to be done.
“We can’t go on like this,” said Zoose. “They need to bring down the balloon.”
“Aren’t you worried?” asked Freya.
“Not a bit,” said Zoose. “It’s just a matter of finding a straight spit of ice and letting out some hydrogen, nice and slow. We’ll come down like a f
eather on a mattress. You’ll see.”
“Well, I expect Captain Andrée is the man to do it. After all, he’s flown balloons before.”
Zoose snorted. “I could do it, and the only thing I’ve ever flown is a kite, when I was no bigger than a bottle cap. Nothing to it—you just pull on a string.”
Freya was certain it was more complicated than that, but she lacked the energy to argue. She wasn’t sure she could say one more word. She had never been this exhausted in her life. What if she started to hear voices, or to see things that weren’t there? Nothing was distinct inside their dim cabin, but even so, shapes were beginning to weave and wobble in a very strange way. The mouse, for example, resembled a very large pincushion once belonging to her late aunt Agatha. She looked away.
The end was quick and merciful. Hammered by the elements during its flight, the balloon was now coddled in its final descent, tenderly caressed by the wind as it sank onto the ice. Freya felt a slight bump as the basket touched down. Then it slowly tipped over and came to rest on its side.
“That’s it?” she asked, unprepared for this mellow conclusion to such a grueling, sleepless passage. Could it all be over?
“What, did you think we was going to burst into flames or something?” chuckled Zoose as he vanished from the basket.
Where the mouse went was of no concern to Freya, nor did she hear his parting words. The most she could manage to do was pull her padded jacket around herself and curl up into a ball. Is any of this real? she wondered. Have I flown across the ocean? Is this what I chose? She was engulfed by sleep before she could think of any answers.
When Freya awoke, the absurdity of her predicament dawned on her. She was lodged with her few possessions inside a basket, in unfamiliar territory, with no means of transportation, and her peculiar companion was gone. In other words, she was in a real pickle. One might almost despair.