How fast am I becoming a mouse? he wondered.
“What?” Thorn asked. “Did you ask me something?”
“No,” Ben said. He worried. He’d caught himself preening this morning, running his tiny paws through his fur to get out seeds and dirt, and then licking it clean.
Ben wondered at that. He moved like a mouse, and he was beginning to act like one. More importantly, he had begun to feel like a mouse, to feel his heart pound when he heard the bark of a dog or glimpsed a hawk from the corner of his eye.
A week to a mouse is like a year to a human. Each day Ben spent as a mouse, becoming more and more of a mouse, nearly two months of his life was lost. He’d been a mouse now for almost a week.
Is it worth the trade? he wondered, to give up being human in order to help a bunch of dumb mice?
“Dumb?” Thorn asked. “I’m not dumb.”
Ben sat for a moment, astonished. He was sure that he hadn’t said a thing.
Ben thought really hard and aimed his thought at Thorn. Can you hear me?
“Not very well,” Thorn said. “Not with you whispering softer than a gnat!”
“I didn’t whisper!” Ben said. “I was just thinking. You read my mind. Thorn, you’re a telepath!”
“I am?” Thorn said. “Well, of course, that makes sense. I am the smartest mouse in the world. It only makes sense that I’d be a telepath, too.”
A terrible fear came over Ben. He’ll know everything I think, everything I feel! he worried.
A horrid, embarrassing feeling came over Ben. He remembered Amber, the way that she had looked three days ago, after they had defeated Nightwing. For a moment she had shown him what she would look like if she were a human. She’d promised that when she turned him back into a human, that she’d become one, too. Her mousy hair had been so soft and silky; her dark eyes had sparkled. Ben had never seen a girl so pretty.
Ben felt sick and panicky. Now that stupid Thorn will hear everything that I think, Ben thought. He’ll know how I feel about Amber!
Ben tried to calm himself, to control his thoughts.
Did you hear what I was thinking? Ben asked in his head, aiming his thought right between Thorn’s eyes.
Thorn didn’t even blink. He was peering out over the moonlit snow, watching for owls and foxes.
Did you hear me, you dumb mouse? Ben asked again inside his thoughts.
Thorn showed no sign of having heard him.
“Everything quiet on the far side of the tree?” Thorn asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said. Loser, loser, Thorn is a loser.
Ben sat for a long minute.
“Did you hear me?” Ben said. “Did you hear what I was just thinking?”
Thorn looked at him curiously. “No,” he said. He acted as if something was wrong. He leaned over to his left and pounded on his right ear, as if trying to clear sand out of his head.
“Try thinking something at me now.”
I think I have a crush on Amber, Ben thought, and felt his face blush.
Thorn just stood there with a dumb look. “Huh,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be working now. I can’t hear a thing. Maybe it was just a temporary anomaly brought on by ionic storms in the upper atmosphere.”
“Maybe,” Ben said. But he felt suspicious.
He went back deeper into the hollow log and lay down next to Amber.
If I leaned against her, Ben wondered, would she know that I like her, or would she just think that I want to keep warm?
Outside, as Thorn watched the snowfields, he listened in on Ben’s thoughts.
Oh, Thorn told himself, I’m pretty sure that she already knows that you have a crush on her. After all, you wouldn’t risk your own life for just any old mouse.
Ben lay down and tried to sleep, but he worried about his mother . . .
* * *
That night Ben’s mother, Mona, lay in his small bed, eyes red from crying. She didn’t know where he’d gone, but she was somehow hoping that he would return. If he had run away, maybe he would come home, sneaking into his room for some clothes or a toy that he wanted, and she hoped that she would catch a glimpse of him.
She didn’t know if he had run away or if he really had turned into a vampire. She only knew that she wanted him back.
But in five days, there had been no word from him.
Her heart was broken.
She wondered if she had been a poor mother. Ben’s room was spotless, while the rest of the house was a dump. Mona wondered about that. Maybe Ben ran away just in the hopes of finding someplace clean to live. Maybe he’d found a new mother, one who liked to scrub the grout between the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, one who showered on a regular basis.
And as she stared out the window, where the light from stars powdered the big fir trees out back, an image appeared in her mind.
It was a mouse, a small gray mouse like those you would find at a pet shop.
He looked at her with beady eyes, his whiskers twitching, and words formed in Mona’s mind.
“Hello,” the mouse said. “My name is Thorn. I am a friend of your son, Ben.”
Mona imagined that it was only a dream. Ben had loved mice. She was afraid that he had left the house because she wouldn’t let him have one. So it only made sense that she would dream of mice.
“I hope that you’re a good friend,” Mona said.
“Oh, Ben has given me a lot to be thankful for. That’s why I decided to send you this telepathic message.”
Mona had to think for a moment. She wasn’t sure what telepathic meant. It sounded like a conjunction of telephone and pathetic. So what would that mean—a bad phone call?
“You see,” Thorn went on, “Ben is very worried about you. So I wanted to let you know that he is all right. He’s been turned into a mouse, but it won’t be long until he’s human again.”
Suddenly Mona recalled the mouse that had come downstairs a week earlier. It had look crazed and fearsome, so her husband had whacked it with a spatula, and she had sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner.
“Ben?” she said, fear rising in her throat.
“Yep, that was him,” Thorn said.
“Is he still alive?” Mona cried.
“Oh, he’s no worse for the wear,” Thorn assured her. “He’ll be home in a few days. He’s already saved the world once this week, and now he’s going to go try again. I just hope he makes it home alive. That evil bat nearly killed him, and I’m afraid that the worm he’s going up against—well, let’s just say that it looks like the fight will be a nasty one. I just wanted to let you know, so that you don’t have to worry anymore. Ben’s alive! At least for the moment.”
With that, Thorn disappeared.
Mona found herself staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide open. She didn’t recall having opened them. She must have been wide awake the whole time.
I did receive a telepathetic message, she thought, on the verge of breaking into tears. Ben is coming home!
Immediately she jumped up out of bed.
For the first time in years she raced downstairs and began to clean the house.
By the time Ben gets home, she promised herself, the dishes will all be spotless and put away in the cupboard. The floors will be mopped, the laundry clean and folded. The refrigerator will be stocked with pizza and root beer.
We’ll have a big party if Ben makes it home alive.
Chapter 13
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Water may flood your burrow.
Wind may leave you battered.
But no matter what storms confront you in life, with courage and determination you can weather it.
—LADY BLACKPOOL
The owl was all white, with just a few patches of brown feathers on her back.
Amber felt bleary eyed when Thorn woke her well before dawn. The moon was riding high in the sky, reflecting on the snow almost as bright as day. The pines in the fields nearby were nothing but black shadows.
With
the rest of the mice, she went to work digging under the tree, looking for more pine nuts.
She was so bleary eyed that she didn’t see the owl before she struck.
She was digging in the snow one moment, and the next she became aware of a huge shadow rushing over her, the thunder of beating wings. She whirled to see an owl lifting Bushmaster into the sky.
Bushmaster struggled for a second but dropped his spear as he rose into the air.
“Hey!” Amber shouted. “You bring him back here!”
She pointed her finger, and suddenly the owl spun down toward the ground and released Bushmaster just a few feet in the air.
The poor vole fell into the snow face first and groggily pulled himself upright.
“Just for that,” Amber told the owl, “you’re going to give us a ride over the mountains.”
Amber peered up at the owl. She seemed huge, twelve times taller than a young mouse. The owl was all white, with just a few patches of brown feathers on her back.
“A snow owl!” Ben said. “I saw one like that a couple of winters back. My dad said that if the snow owls fly south, it means we’re going to have a storm.”
Ben asked the owl, “Is there a storm coming?”
“Of course,” the owl screeched. “Can’t you feel it? It’s a big one.”
Bushmaster sat in the snow for a second, rubbing his paws over his shoulder. The owl’s claws hadn’t pierced his skin. He wasn’t bleeding, but Amber felt sure that he would be bruised and sore.
Bushmaster looked at the mice and then nervously eyed the owl. Amber could tell that he didn’t want to ride. But bravely he said, “We’d best be on our way.”
So they climbed the owl. Ben looped one end of his fishing line around the owl’s neck and then secured himself and his friends to the other end of the line so they wouldn’t fall off. Then Amber cast a small spell that made the owl begin her climb. She kept low, flying just above the treetops, and made her way over the forests high into the mountains.
After only a couple of hours, they were climbing through an area of stark pines, barren of any leaves. A few years earlier, the gypsy moth beetles had infested the forest, killing the trees. Now all that was left were dead trees with black branches thrusting up through the snow. They looked like skeletal fingers raking the sky.
The wind became blustery, and the snow owl seemed to buck and veer. Gray clouds swept in from the west, like a huge gray hand, and already its fingers reached above them.
Down on the ground, Amber could see mice hopping through barren fields. At first she saw only two or three, but as the owl climbed higher, she became aware of dozens more, maybe hundreds. Little brown mice, wet and cold, hopping through the snow in broad daylight. Most were common house mice, grayish in color, but there were plenty of deer mice with their brown backs and white feet, and jumping mice like Ben with reddish backs, and even a few pack rats.
“Hey, you guys?” Amber called down to them as the owl climbed a steep rise, her wings beating like thunder. “Where are you all going?”
The mice said nothing. None of them spoke or looked up. None of them even hesitated. It was as if they couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see her. Instead, they slogged forward in mute silence.
Suddenly the owl topped the rise, and the trees gave out completely. There, on a steep sheet of ice, Amber saw tens of thousands of mice darkening the ground, trying in vain to climb up the ice sheet. The sun glaring off of the snow nearly blinded her, but Amber saw mice scurrying up the steep slope, some hopping, others feeling their way timidly.
A pack of coyotes waited for them at the base of the ice sheet, just lounging about. The coyotes had hair in dozens of shades of gray and brown, worn and grizzled. They were so full of mice already that it looked as if they’d swallowed pillows, and they didn’t even bother hunting anymore. Most just lay atop a rock, sunning. Perhaps when a mouse scurried over them by accident, they’d eat it.
Only one coyote bothered to try hunting—if it could be called hunting. It was lying in the snow at the bottom of the ice sheet, with its mouth open. The mice were so thick on the ground, that it was black with them, and every few seconds, a mouse or two would step into the coyote’s mouth, and it would simply snap the helpless mouse up and then swallow.
Amber watched the scene in horror, feeling dazed. She’d seen something like this in her vision last week while peering into the newt’s eyes. She’d seen mice marching blindly toward destruction. Somehow it hadn’t seemed real.
Now their plight struck her to the heart.
And suddenly she was up above the ridge, the owl cresting the mountain, and she heard wormsong even through her helmet of carved walnut:
Nectar pools in silver flowers,
Sweeter than a winding stream.
Drink and thirst no more forever,
In the wellspring of your dreams.
The song hit her like a numbing blast, and all of her thoughts left her, all of her hopes.
Amber heard the voice, and took a step out into thin air . . .
Chapter 14
CREEPY CRAWLY
When our enemy sees the face of pure evil,
it had better belong to one of my troops.
—GENERAL CRAWLEY
The human peered down, breathing heavily through the respirator on the suit.
Meadowsweet the vole crept under the fence into the yard behind Latonia Pumpernickel’s house, leading a contingent of mice and voles on a raid of the garbage can.
They skirted a huge fir tree, using a forest of mushrooms as a screen to hide them from predators. Meadowsweet was armed with a spear made from a wooden toothpick, and she wore a helmet made of walnut shell, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She stopped for a long moment and peered toward the garbage can. Something was wrong.
She sniffed the air for Domino the cat. She and the mice had chased it off a few nights ago, but cats had a way of returning.
All she could smell was humans. Nothing strange about that. They were, after all, right behind a human’s house.
Meadowsweet reached the clearing at the edge of the lawn and took one last look toward the midday sky. No sign of hawks or crows or other flying predators.
With a squeak, she took her spear in her mouth and raced to the nearest garbage can.
The pet shop mice followed her with shouts of triumph. As Meadowsweet waited at the base of the can, gripping her spear and watching for predators, other mice raced up.
One of them hurled a grappling hook over the lip of the garbage can, then began climbing the knotted fishing line.
In seconds, half a dozen mice were in the can, and last of all, Meadowsweet climbed to the very lip. There she whirled and looked about, still on guard duty.
Dozens of tantalizing odors assailed Meadowsweet. She could smell lettuce and leftover cucumber salad. She smelled freshly baked granola and peanut butter cookies.
Meadowsweet’s stomach rumbled from hunger; her mouth began to water.
“Score!” one of the mice shouted as he found something wonderful. There were chattering cries of delight, shouting, “Oh, my gosh!” and “I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Meadowsweet heard the mice shuffling through papers and diving deep into the garbage.
She was so hungry that she couldn’t help peering down into the garbage can to see what the others had found.
Craning her neck, she spotted a wonderland. There was a huge pepperoni pizza lying in a bed of salads. A forest of tender peeled carrots rose up from the pizza, and in its very center was a mountain of blueberries.
Lining the sides of the garbage can were cookies and fudge of every description.
Meadowsweet peered at it all, her heart pounding in delight.
But something was wrong, she decided. There was too much food. This wasn’t like the other garbage cans, filled with nasty papers and old boxes. Here was food, copious amounts of food. No human had ever tasted it.
“It’s a trap!” s
he shouted.
At that instant, she heard a cracking noise above her and whirled to look up.
A dozen humans had surrounded the garbage can. They looked like Special Forces troops decked out in solid black night gear. They carried automatic rifles, had night goggles covering their right eyes, and wore thick flak jackets.
A dozen rifles were pointed at Meadowsweet’s chest, the little red dots from their laser sights shining on her like a brilliant red sun.
A lone man pushed his way through the crowd. He wore a special bio-terrorism suit made of gold foil, with a thick green glass on the faceplate. His suit was especially made not only to keep out chemicals, but also to withstand the radiation and heat of a nearby nuclear blast.
The human peered down, breathing heavily through the respirator on the suit, and growled something in the human tongue.
General Crawley aimed his own pistol at the mouse, and said, “Listen to me, you little Martian nutcase vermin: my name is Ira Crawley, and I’m a general in APE—Americans Protecting Earth. You might even call me the Big APE. This here is my planet, and if you try to poke me with that needle of yours, I wouldn’t give a ball of boiled snot for your chances of survival. You hear me? Now take me to your leader!”
Meadowsweet, of course, didn’t understand a single word that he said. But she could sense the rage in his tone, and she knew that she was caught.
Trembling in fear, she dropped her little spear and surrendered.
Chapter 15
THE STRAGE BURROW
When you’re weary to the bone,
Even the humblest burrow
Feels like home.
—A SAYING AMONG VOLES
The burrow smelled clean and healthy, like sweet hay.
Amber woke to find Ben holding her. She was dead tired and covered with sweat. Her heart was beating wildly and she panted for breath, as if she’d just got done with a long, hard fight.
Ben’s paws were wrapped around her, covering her ears.
Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze Page 8