The Curse of Mousebeard

by Alex Milway

  Algernon dragged the periscope to his eyes and stared into its murky black viewfinder.

  “Keep a watch out that window, lad!” he said, waiting for the periscope to break the water level.

  The other submarines were still searching for them, but without any light coming from Algernon’s sub it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Time and time again Scratcher’s hands were tempted to pull the lever, but he managed to remain calm.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” replied Algernon, “and there’s a mist picking up!”

  Suddenly a small object flew downward past the window.

  “What was that?” said Scratcher.

  “Eh?”

  Another came shooting downward.

  “Look!” Scratcher pleaded, as a chiming ring sounded on the side of the submarine.

  Algernon released the periscope and swiveled his chair to flick a line of switches. The inside of the sub became bathed in blue light, and Algernon readied the controls.

  “They’re bullets!” he said frantically. “Pull that lever, boy! Something’s happening!”

  Scratcher jumped to attention and pulled downward. The submarine’s engine started to roar, and Algernon shunted the gearstick forward. With a slight shudder, the craft zipped forward and rose to the surface.

  Emiline was crouching on the wooden planks with her hands covering her head. Shots were coming from all sides, and the Old Town Guard had cut them off from the quayside. Drewshank and Indigo were kneeling beside her, weapons in hand, but their only protection against the soldiers’ rifles was the mist.

  “It’s gone past the hour now,” said Indigo. “Where are they?”

  “They’ll be here, I know it!” said Emiline.

  Drewshank squeezed his fingers tighter around his sword’s grip.

  “They will,” he said, as a wave broke against the wharf and splashed over him.

  “The soldiers are coming,” said Indigo, feeling the wooden planks rock with the increased weight of the men.

  Emiline looked into the black water again. All sorts of thoughts ran through her mind as she stared aimlessly. But then, like a moment of inspiration, a white light shone out of the water and right into her face. The wooden planks beneath her splintered and crunched, and Algernon’s submarine appeared from below—barging its way to the surface before squeezing through the wooden posts to the other side.

  “They’re here!” she cried happily.

  The submarine slowed to a halt and the small hatch on its back flipped open.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Scratcher, leaning out and offering his hand to his friends. The wooden jetty started to wobble, and Emiline jumped off, landing on the metal top of the submarine.

  “What took you so long!” she said hurriedly before falling inside.

  “Where’s Spires?” asked Scratcher, noticing his absence.

  Indigo jumped next, and he acknowledged the boy before descending.

  “He didn’t make it,” said Drewshank, landing on the sub and falling in.

  “What?” said Scratcher, pulling the lid down to seal the submarine. Bullets hit the metal, but they did no harm as the submarine vanished into the water.

  “Where is he?” he asked, pulling himself into the now cramped interior.

  “Horatio?” said Algernon, unable to take his eyes off the controls.

  Emiline stepped forward and caringly placed her hand on Algernon’s back.

  “They killed him,” she said, feeling her stomach tumble inside.

  “What!” he shouted, spinning his chair around. He instantly turned back to the window and kicked his foot down.

  “They what?” said Scratcher.

  “They killed him,” said Drewshank plainly.

  Scratcher’s face grew pale.

  Algernon twisted a valve, and the submarine started to growl as the engines worked harder. He pulled his goggles down over his glasses and focused on the route ahead.

  “They will pay dearly for this…,” he said coldly.

  The Boater Mouse

  A FAIRLY RARE BROWN MOUSE, FOUND ONLY IN WARMER CLIMATES, THE Boater is rather unusual in its method of travel. Instead of crawling across land, like most mice, the Boater likes to hollow out branches or large seeds in order to form small raft-like vehicles that float on water. Blessed with unusually large ears that double as sails, the Boater Mouse harnesses the wind like no other. It also has a peculiar ability for direction: the species has been known to sail almost 150 miles in its search for a mate, and neither sea nor ocean can hold it back.

  MOUSING NOTES

  This isn’t the easiest of mice to keep, as you are legally bound to offer it a home with either a lake or large pond. Under no circumstances can it be caged.

  A New Adventure

  THE CAGE CARRIED EMILINE, SCRATCHER, AND INDIGO upward, their stomachs turning over as they watched the Silver Shark fall away from them. Algernon’s submarine was once again securely lashed to the deck, and the daylight reflected off its copper surface.

  “One more pull!” shouted Fenwick from above, as the walkway emerged over their heads. His rotund mouse, Trumper, scurried up onto his shoulder to watch them emerge through the floor.

  With a slight crunch, the cage slipped into place, locked tight, and the door swung open—much to everyone’s relief.

  “That’s so far up!” exclaimed Scratcher. “My legs are like jelly.”

  “Come on in,” said Fenwick, smiling, and ushered them through the storeroom to a vaulted meeting room, whose floor pitched at a slight angle. Algernon, Drewshank, and Mousebeard were sitting with Professor Lugwidge around a dark wooden table. Oil lamps lit the room from above and highlighted their faces in such a way that made them look even more serious and grave than they were.

  “Meet Professor Rudolph Lugwidge,” said Algernon to the new arrivals, “and everyone else meet Indigo.”

  Everyone said hello, but none felt that they could say anything more. The atmosphere was too tense for niceties. Mousebeard was visibly fuming, his eyebrows leaning down so heavily that his eyes were almost covered.

  “I’ve been told of our loss,” said Mousebeard, “but I wanted to hear it from you, Emiline.”

  Emiline suddenly felt nervous and exposed. At the pirate’s command she took a seat and started recalling the events at Hamlyn. Emiline watched his eyes, and as she struggled to describe the butler dying, she noticed them grow distant and sad. She realized that Algernon’s and the pirate’s loss was even greater than her own. Her mouth felt dry and her throat became sore, so she stopped talking. Portly ran down Emiline’s shoulder to her hand, where he immediately wrapped his damaged tail around her finger.

  Mousebeard took a breath so deep it was as though he hadn’t inhaled for days.

  “I still can’t believe that the message was a forgery,” said Algernon. “It looked so much like his writing.”

  “And we have nothing of his,” said Mousebeard. “No word of what it was he died for?”

  “Nothing,” said Drewshank, noticing Emiline’s difficulty and coming to the rescue. “They’d cleaned out the whole room.”

  “Then they have truly hit us hard.”

  Mousebeard let out a rumbling growl as he smashed his fist into his opposite palm.

  “I only have this,” said Emiline quietly, remembering the bloodstained handkerchief and removing it from her pocket. She placed it on the table. “He was holding it so tightly….”

  “Just like Horatio,” said Algernon, allowing a smile to escape from his otherwise stern face. “He’s stitched his name onto it!”

  Mousebeard looked at the bloody cloth and saw the delicately stitched lettering in the corner. His beard bristled, and his eyebrows rose to reveal his dark eyes once more.

  “And since when did Horatio’s name start with the letter ‘N’?” he said curiously, picking it up between his thick fingers and holding it to the light. “How are your eyes these days, Algernon?”


  Mousebeard spelled out the letters as he scanned along:

  “N, O, R…”

  He stopped dead and looked to Lugwidge.

  “… G, A, M, M, O, N.”

  “My word!” said the professor.

  “Norgammon?” said Drewshank quizzically, unaware of its meaning.

  Algernon pulled the leather hat from his head for the first time in weeks and held his scalp.

  The pirate turned the handkerchief onto its side and read aloud a set of coordinates stitched in tiny letters and numerals along its edge.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t look at it,” said Emiline, kicking herself.

  “And so things come full circle,” said Mousebeard. “Maybe that woman wasn’t quite so mad as you thought, Professor. This is too much of a coincidence!”

  “A coincidence?” said Algernon.

  “The professor, here, explained to me that the woman on Stormcloud Island claimed to have found Norgammon,” said Mousebeard. “And now Lovelock seems to have discovered its location.”

  “Hang on,” said Drewshank; “you’ve lost me! What’s this Norgammon?”

  Lugwidge shifted his spectacles on his nose and looked at the handkerchief.

  “Captain Drewshank,” he said, his old teaching instinct coming to the fore. “Norgammon is an ancient, lost land from a past so distant to us now it’s been considered a myth for centuries.”

  “Could it really have existed?” asked Algernon.

  “Well,” said Lugwidge, scratching his chin, “our mousing mythologies must originate from somewhere, I suppose. But I find it hard to believe it….”

  “Our mythologies?” asked Drewshank.

  Professor Lugwidge peered at the captain over the top of his glasses.

  “Ancient mythology tells us only a small amount concerning Norgammon, but it is an intriguing tale. If I remember correctly—and it’s a long time since I taught ancient mousing lore—the people of Norgammon, the Mussarians, were renowned for worshipping mice as though they were gods.”

  “That sounds daft,” said Scratcher.

  “You might think so now, but back in the distant past, they didn’t have our science and understanding to explain the ways of the world. To them, everything that occurred was directly related to the well-being of mice. There were gods of the sea; gods of the air; gods of the mountains… the list goes on—and all of them were mice.”

  “So why haven’t I heard of this Norgammon or the Mussarians before?” asked Drewshank.

  “You clearly didn’t study hard enough at school,” said the professor sharply. “It’s thought that a great apocalypse destroyed their civilization. You find whispers of its culture in ancient history books; there are a few stories and tales. The Mussarians are thought to have been a warrior race, and a quite brutal one too, but the facts are very murky indeed. I mean, that Norgammon has escaped our searching for so long would say to me that it doesn’t exist anymore—if it ever existed in the first place. It’s quite likely the creation of someone’s overactive imagination.”

  “But stranger things have happened, Professor,” said Algernon. “Remember when that girl found the Deep Sea Lava Mouse? That creature was thought to have been extinct for nearly a million years—the only record of it in fossils—and yet there it was, caught in a fishing net….”

  “That is a fair point,” said Lugwidge, “although a matter of the Deep rather than our more visible world above the sea.”

  “But this is not just about the past,” said Mousebeard forcefully. “That Lovelock is interested in it would say to me there’s more here than meets the eye. Maybe the key to breaking my curse lies there?”

  “Now that would be going too far, and being too presumptuous,” said Lugwidge.

  Algernon rubbed his forehead excitedly.

  “But just consider, leaving the curse aside for a second, what might be discovered in this ancient world?” he said. “It would be the archaeological and mousing find of the century!”

  “And Lovelock will waste no time in taking it for his own,” said Mousebeard.

  “Beatrice Pettifogger did mention that Lord Battersby was off exploring,” said Drewshank. “Perhaps the search is already under way?”

  Mousebeard banged his hand down on the table, and all of them jumped in their seats.

  “It could be another Golden Mice fiasco all over again,” said Algernon. “And just look at what he’s done with those!”

  “What do you mean?” said Mousebeard.

  “In Hamlyn,” replied Drewshank. “I had the misfortune of being witness to one of their new breeds.”

  “New breeds?” said the professor.

  “They’ve successfully crossed the Golden Mouse to create a much larger hybrid—they intend to farm it for its golden fur.”

  “Heavens… you are lying!” said Lugwidge.

  “No sir,” said Indigo. “I was the mousekeeper there. They finally bred a workable hybrid nearly two months ago.”

  “Workable!” exclaimed Drewshank, before baring his teeth and tapping them with his fingers. “It tried to savage me!”

  “Indigo has some tales to tell of the place,” said Emiline. “You should see his trained Sharpclaws!”

  “Sharpclaws?” exclaimed everyone.

  “And his boot!” added Emiline. “He has a secret compartment with super-charged mousing explosive and all sorts in it!”

  Scratcher sat quietly, feeling a little dismayed. Emiline had hardly spoken to him since they’d met up in the submarine. She seemed to find Indigo much more interesting.

  “And these Golden Mice, where are they now?” said Mousebeard.

  “They’ve been sent all around the Great Sea,” said Indigo. “There are factories everywhere—they have them all set up and ready. I swear they’re probably already harvesting pure gold by the bucketload.”

  “Then matters are worse than even I feared,” said Mousebeard. He looked to Algernon, who instinctively knew what he was about to say.

  “Our old acquaintances, Algernon. We need to contact them. Our daggers need to be drawn….”

  “I know,” he replied. “Professor Lugwidge, do you have an Onloko Mouse in need of some action?”

  “We have a collection of the finest—it’s a necessity out here,” said Lugwidge. “I’m sure there might be one kicking its heels.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “You don’t charge, do you?”

  Lugwidge laughed at him.

  “You can have this one on me,” he said.

  “So with that all settled,” said Mousebeard determinedly, “we now need to plot our course to Norgammon, if it’s there to be found. And if we can ruin Lovelock’s plans in the process, so be it.”

  “It would appear we’re at the start of yet another adventure,” said Algernon, smiling. “And, Professor, will you join us?”

  Lugwidge shook his head.

  “Oh no,” he said. “These legs aren’t what they used to be. Besides, you lot haven’t changed—here you go, off on a wild mouse chase. I hope this time you don’t get more than you bargained for.”

  “This time,” said Mousebeard, “we’ll be prepared!”

  “There are ships on the horizon, Captain!” came the word from below.

  Mousebeard looked out of Lugwidge’s window and noticed four ships—currently just black specks against the overcast sky—far out in the distance. The rest of the crew were already on board the Silver Shark, and the submarine had been hoisted onto its deck. The pirate picked up his hat and made his farewell.

  “Thank you for your help, Professor. I must be leaving,” he said, buttoning his jacket. It was far looser these days.

  Professor Lugwidge shook his hand and smiled.

  “No matter what else occurs, and no matter what you’ve done in the past, I’m proud of you, Jonathan. If I can ever provide more help…”

  Mousebeard interrupted.

  “I think you’ll soon have soldiers knocking on your door. You’ll have eno
ugh worries of your own….”

  “Ah, soldiers…,” said Lugwidge, “nothing I can’t handle. Besides, it’s far too easy to distance yourself from the world when action is required. I’m happy to have played a role!”

  Mousebeard’s huge hand clamped over the professor’s shoulder.

  “And it won’t be forgotten,” he said.

  He left the room and walked to the supply cage that was ready and waiting for him. He closed the door behind him, and as Professor Lugwidge released the winch, letting the cage drop, Mousebeard saluted.

  “You should never have quit at Old Rodents’,” he shouted.

  Professor Lugwidge craned his head through the trapdoor.

  “I didn’t! I was made to leave!”

  “Fired?”

  “Could say that!”

  Mousebeard laughed, and the cage hit the deck of the Silver Shark. He walked out and called to his crew as Lugwidge disappeared from view.

  “Hoist the sails, raise the anchor! What are you all waiting for?”

  “Aye, sir!” shouted everyone.

  With a level of excitement amongst the crew that hadn’t been felt for weeks, the Silver Shark pulled away with the wind in its sails. Norgammon lay in wait somewhere out on the Seventeen Seas, and they were determined to find it before the Old Town Guard.

  The Balletic Tree Mouse

  FOUND ONLY ON THE ISLAND OF ANKON THOR, THE BALLETIC TREE MOUSE is difficult to spot in the wild, where it inhabits only the highest treetops. It’s a real treat to find, however, as this mouse is a born entertainer: to win its mate, the male of the species will undertake amazing gymnastic feats while hanging from the branches by its tail. Due to the risky nature of this bizarre mating ritual, this mouse is more often seen lying dead on the forest floor than it is alive.

  MOUSING REGULATIONS: