The Song of the Winns

by Frances Watts

  “Of course,” Ebenezer murmured. His expression had grown concerned at the mention of injured mice.

  Flora continued, “You’re in room 17. The dorm is in block 1, on the other side of the oval. I’d suggest you drop off your bags and then go straight to the hall, which is the building beside it. Tobias is going to say a few words before dinner.” She indicated a building close by; its high windows were lit up. “That’s the cafeteria there.”

  “Thank you,” said Beezer. “Come on, everyone.” She and Ebenezer began to lead the way across the grassy oval.

  “What about Slippers and Feast?” Alistair said, hesitating. He couldn’t wait to tell Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson the secret he’d discovered about his scarf, but he knew he had to wait until they were alone. When Slippers Pink had told them about the hidden paths through Gerander, she had made Alistair and Tibby Rose promise that they would never reveal the secret to anyone.

  The tall dark brown mouse and smaller almond mouse exchanged a wry look. “If I know Tobias,” said Slippers, “we probably won’t be staying long.”

  “Long enough for dinner, though, I hope,” said Feast.

  “Come on, Alistair,” Ebenezer called.

  “Quick, tell her,” Tibby Rose murmured in Alistair’s ear.

  “Slippers . . . ,” Alistair began. His hesitant tone must have alerted her to the fact that he had something important to say, because Slippers said, “See you, Flora. Bye, Max,” and moved to Alistair’s side. She, Feast, Alistair, and Tibby Rose began to walk slowly across the oval, keeping some distance between themselves and the others. Alistair noticed several mice flitting around the edges of the oval, and heard the occasional hum of voices carrying on the gentle breeze.

  “What is it, Alistair?” Slippers asked.

  “I think—I think I know something about the paths of Gerander,” he said in a rush. “I think Mom might have knitted them into my scarf, like a map.”

  Alistair heard a sharp intake of breath, though he couldn’t tell whether it came from Slippers or Feast.

  But Slippers merely said, “Tobias will want to hear this too. Feast and I will set up a meeting.” She touched Alistair lightly on the arm. “You go with your family. We’ll see you in the hall in a few minutes.” And then the two FIG operatives strode off into the night.

  “Who’s Tobias?” Tibby Rose asked, as she and Alistair jogged to catch up with the others, their rucksacks bouncing uncomfortably on their backs.

  “I don’t know,” Alistair replied, following his brother and sister up the steps of a two-story brick building.

  As they walked down the corridor they passed small huddles of mice, clustered in twos and threes and speaking in hushed voices. A few nodded to the newcomers but most were so engrossed in their conversations they merely stepped aside absentmindedly so that Alistair and his family could squeeze past.

  The triplets and Tibby Rose barely had time to drop their bags on the floor of a small room with two sets of bunk beds before they were being hurried out of the dormitory block to the building next door and through the double doors at the rear of the hall.

  The hall was a large unfurnished space with a high ceiling and wooden floors, and a stage facing the doors. Alistair noticed a stack of gym mats in an alcove and a few sporting pennants fixed high up on the walls, and guessed that it probably doubled as a gymnasium. The room would have seemed huge when it was empty, but tonight it was crammed with mice, some standing alone in somber silence, others talking excitedly in groups, their voices echoing off the bare surfaces. Where had they all come from? As overwhelming as it was to find himself surrounded by so many mice—more overwhelming for Tibby Rose, who had never been in such a crowd, he realized as he felt his friend press closer to his side—it was also exhilarating to think that they were all members of FIG, and all here to play a part in liberating Gerander.

  Through the crush Alistair saw there were quite a few rucksacks shoved up against the walls, and he wondered what it would be like to sleep in this cavernous space, among strangers. For a moment he thought longingly of the apartment in Smiggins: his bed in the small room that had once been Beezer’s study, the shelf full of books, the jumble of sporting equipment in the corner. But with the Sourians after them, it was no longer safe for them to stay there. All he owned now was what he could fit in his rucksack. Then he thought of the refugee families Flora had mentioned; if they had had to flee their homes suddenly, they’d be lucky to have that much.

  The hubbub had risen to a deafening pitch when a mouse with fur the color of orange marmalade walked onto the stage at the front of the hall.

  Alistair felt a hand on his back and turned to see that Feast had squeezed through the crowd to stand beside him. Slippers stood on the other side of Tibby Rose.

  “That’s Tobias,” Feast Thompson whispered, nodding toward the marmalade mouse. “He’s been running FIG ever since Zanzibar was captured.”

  “He’s also Zanzibar’s cousin,” added Slippers Pink. “They spent a lot of time together when they were growing up in Gerander—in hiding, of course. The Sourians have never been content to let the rightful king of Gerander walk free.”

  The marmalade mouse held up a hand and the crowd fell silent. He began to speak with calm authority.

  “Friends, it has been three generations since the earthquake that devastated our homeland.”

  A gentle sigh rippled through the crowd.

  “And it has been three generations since the Sourian army poured over the border into Gerander to help in our recovery . . . and then refused to leave.”

  The gentle sigh became a hiss of disapproval.

  Tobias’s voice became louder as he continued, “Friends, for far too long our homeland has been occupied by the Sourian oppressors. Our people are prisoners in our own land!”

  A wave of angry murmurs swept through the crowd now.

  Tobias’s voice carried above the murmurs. “Since FIG was founded, everyone here has made many sacrifices. There have been many setbacks and many tragedies in our struggle against a more powerful opponent. And frankly, we have had little cause for optimism. But these are extraordinary times, and the news I wish to share with you today is worthy of celebration—”

  “Zanzibar is free!” came a voice from the back of the crowd, and a small cheer went up.

  Tobias raised his hands and the hall fell quiet once more. “Worthy of celebration and cause for great concern,” he finished. He paused then, as if expecting another outburst, but the hall full of mice was silent. “As those of you who have been engaged in surveillance work are aware, there has been unusual activity in Gerander of late. We have reason to believe that the Sourian army has been increasing troop numbers. No doubt they are worried about the consequences of Zanzibar’s escape. No doubt they are worried that under Zanzibar’s leadership, Gerandans will rise up and repel the Sourian invaders”—Tobias’s voice grew louder, booming across the hall—“and Gerander will be a free and independent nation once more!”

  “Hurrah!” The room rang with cheers and Alistair felt a thrill of excitement run through him.

  “Where is Zanzibar now?” asked a broad brown mouse to Alistair’s left. “Is he here?”

  Tobias shook his head. “No, Zanzibar is not here. For security reasons, he has gone into hiding. But I have met with him, and we have put together a strategy. It is time for us to redouble our efforts. The Sourians seem to be planning some sort of crackdown, but Zanzibar is free and momentum is on our side: we must seize the opportunity and act! Starting tonight I will be handing out assignments—some of them very risky. But for now . . . welcome. Enjoy this time with your friends and colleagues before the hard work begins.”

  The marmalade mouse nodded once, then strode from the stage to thunderous applause.

  No sooner had the applause died down than Alistair spied several mice striding toward the sides of the hall and hefting rucksacks onto their shoulders. It was obvious from their rapid movements and whispere
d conversations that they were about to embark on urgent missions.

  “Rescue detail!” someone was bellowing above the buzz of talk. “Could everyone in the rescue detail please report to the library immediately? Your briefing starts in five minutes.”

  Mice were rushing in all directions, being summoned to one of the many meetings that seemed about to start or delivering messages or trying to find word of friends and relatives. Alistair and his family were caught up in the surge of mice flowing out of the hall and across the oval to the cafeteria. If the smells issuing from the long, low building were anything to go by, both Feast and Alex would be satisfied.

  There was a bottleneck at the door, but once he was inside Alistair saw that the walls of the cafeteria were lined with tables groaning under the weight of pots and platters and trays and tureens of delicious food. There was even a dessert buffet, and it looked as though a few mice had skipped dinner altogether and were already helping themselves to generous portions of cake and pudding.

  Alistair joined the line filing past an array of pastas and sauces, and piled a plate with spaghetti, which he topped with a generous sprinkling of Parmesan. Then he pushed his way through the crowd until he saw a long table around which his family and friends were gathering. He slipped into a spot saved for him between Feast Thompson and Slippers Pink. It was great to see them again; funny, too, to be meeting up with them so far away from the lonely cliff top on the Sourian Sea where he had last seen them. But there were so many mice assembled here for FIG’s special meeting, he had the feeling that if he sat still long enough everyone he had ever met would walk by. There was, in fact, one mouse he was hoping to see: Timmy the Winns, a mysterious midnight blue mouse whom he and Tibby Rose had met on their journey through Souris. It was Timmy who’d first given Alistair the idea that there might be something special about his scarf.

  “Is Timmy the Winns here?” he asked Feast Thompson.

  Feast shrugged and looked around vaguely. “He’ll be here somewhere. It’s hard to spot anyone in this crowd, though.”

  Alistair thought that a midnight blue mouse would be sure to stand out, yet he hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of him. Or was it possible that Timmy wasn’t blue anymore? After all, he and Tibby Rose had been a brownish purple when they’d met Timmy and his traveling companions—they’d dyed their fur with blackberry juice so the Sourians, who despised ginger mice as Gerandan spies, would stop chasing them—but now they were ginger.

  As he scanned the crowd, Alistair’s eyes met those of a white mouse at another table. The other mouse appeared to be looking directly at him. As he gazed back, Alistair couldn’t read the white mouse’s expression. It didn’t seem hostile, nor did it seem friendly. It seemed merely alert and . . . speculative, Alistair thought. Then someone walked between them, and when Alistair was next able to see the white mouse, he was engaged in conversation with a scruffy brown mouse to his left.

  “Slippers, do you know him?” Alistair indicated the white mouse who had been staring at him.

  Slippers Pink looked over. “Hmm, yes,” she said. “That’s Solomon Honker. I wonder what he’s up to?” But before Alistair could ask anymore questions about the white mouse, Slippers was saying, “Eat up. You too, Tibby Rose.” Tibby was on Slippers’s other side. “Tobias said he’d see us straight after dinner.”

  Alex was already getting up for a second helping at the dessert buffet by the time Alistair twirled the last piece of spaghetti around his fork.

  Alistair and Tibby Rose stood too, but they followed Slippers and Feast right past the dessert table and out of the cafeteria. They walked across a cement play area on which Alistair could just make out the faded chalk squares of a handball court, and pushed their way past a small crowd of mice to slip through the door of a building marked SCHOOL OFFICE.

  “What are they all waiting for?” Tibby Rose asked.

  “They probably have meetings with Tobias too,” Slippers explained as they strode along a corridor. “He’s using the principal’s office as his headquarters.”

  Suddenly a dark gray mouse with sharp features came out of an office and barred their way. “Pink, Thompson, what are you doing here? Who let these children in?” He scowled at Alistair and Tibby.

  “Out of the way, Flanagan,” Feast Thompson said brusquely. “Tobias invited us—and them.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the dark gray mouse muttered, and turned to rap on the door he had just closed behind him. When a voice called, “Enter!,” he slipped into the office, leaving the others standing in the corridor.

  “Who’s he?” asked Alistair.

  “Tobias’s assistant,” said Slippers Pink. “He’s a bit . . . overprotective . . . when it comes to Tobias.”

  “Flanagan thinks he’s the only one who should have access to Tobias,” Feast elaborated, not bothering to hide the dislike in his voice.

  They stood in silence as a murmured exchange went on behind the closed door, then Flanagan emerged and gestured to them. “Tobias will see you now,” he said ungraciously.

  The marmalade mouse sitting behind the principal’s desk half stood as Alistair and the others entered the office. He was wearing a pair of wire-framed reading glasses, which he removed to reveal tired, red-rimmed eyes. While he had seemed vigorous and energetic when rallying the FIG members in the hall, up close his weariness was unmistakable.

  “Have you got enough chairs? Just pull some over from the table there, will you, Feast?”

  “You look completely worn out, Tobias,” Slippers said as she lowered herself into a seat.

  But Tobias waved away her concern. “I’m fine,” he said, slumping back into his chair. “Just busy.” He waved a hand at the piles of paper on his desk. “We’ve got a few operations on at the moment, and a few more in the planning. Speaking of which . . .” He leaned forward and turned a kindly look on Alistair and Tibby Rose. “What a pleasure to see a couple of young faces,” he said. “I’ve got a son about your age who’s spending summer vacation with a friend. I’m afraid he doesn’t write nearly as often as I would like.” He shook his head fondly at a framed photo of a miniature version of himself. “And speaking of young mice who worry their elders, you’ve had quite an adventure, I hear. All the way from Souris to Shetlock.” If he was angry at them for running away from the house in Templeton where Tibby’s Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet lived, he wasn’t showing it. If anything, he sounded amused, Alistair thought.

  “They certainly have,” Slippers Pink agreed, sounding distinctly less amused. “But I think the information they have for us now might be worth all the trouble they caused me and Feast.” She lifted the corner of her mouth in a smile. “Tell Tobias what you told us, Alistair.”

  Taking a deep breath, Alistair stood up, unwound his scarf from around his neck and laid it flat on Tobias’s desk. He quickly explained how he and Tibby Rose had encountered the mysterious mouse named Timmy the Winns on their journey through Souris, and how Timmy had sung him a song about the Winns. Alistair hadn’t known at the time where the Winns was—indeed, he’d known hardly anything about Gerander at all back then—but Timmy’s song about the river had nonetheless sounded familiar. Alistair repeated the first verse now:

  “From rock to ridge to tunnel to tree

  The songs are there for you to see;

  Read the land and follow the signs,

  Read the river between the lines.”

  “I asked Timmy about the Winns, and he said . . .” Alistair thought for a minute as he tried to recall Timmy’s exact words. “He said, ‘It is the spine that knits our head to our feet.’

  “And then we met you,” Alistair said, looking now at Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson, “and you told us about the secret paths through Gerander that my mother knew, and it was almost like you expected me to know them too.”

  “I was hoping Emmeline might have told you,” Slippers admitted. “But you hadn’t heard of them.”

  “She’d never mentioned them,�
� Alistair confirmed. “Then Tibby Rose and I met up with Alice and Alex, who were coming to find me. On the way back home to Smiggins, we stopped off in Stubbins to show Tibby the house where we used to live. And I was thinking about Mom and Dad, and about how Mom had given me this scarf the night before they left, and then I remembered a song she had sung. It was the same tune as Timmy the Winns’s song.” He recited the words:

  “A burning tree

  A rock of gold

  A fracture in the mountain’s fold,

  In the sun’s last rays when the shadows grow long

  And the rustling reeds play the Winns’s north song.”

  As Alistair reached the end of the verse there was a knock on the door and the dark gray mouse entered.

  “What is it, Flanagan?” Tobias asked absently, his gaze still fixed on Alistair’s scarf.

  “An urgent message has come for you. It’s sealed, and it’s marked for your eyes only.”

  Tobias put on his reading glasses and held out a hand for the envelope, but instead of giving it to him his secretary said, “Perhaps you’d better step outside to attend to it, sir.” He didn’t even glance at the four mice who sat between him and Tobias.

  Tobias sighed. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “I’d better see what this is about.” He rose from his chair and left the room.

  When he re-entered the office a few minutes later he seemed distracted. He stood by the door, his eyes drifting around the room before settling on the scarf spread out on the table. He stared at it as if transfixed, then, with an impatient noise, he crumpled the letter he was holding into a ball and lobbed it toward the wastepaper basket by his desk. “Nothing important,” he said dismissively.

  “Is it just my imagination, or is Flanagan even more paranoid than usual?” Slippers asked as Tobias slid back into his seat.

  “We, ah . . .” The marmalade mouse paused. “There have been some security issues,” he said finally.

  Beside him, Alistair sensed a new alertness about Slippers Pink.