Emmy and the Rats in the Belfry

by Lynne Jonell

  Yes, everything was going according to plan, Cheswick thought as he clawed his way up a tall wooden stool and scrambled onto the countertop. And such a plan! Carefully thought out in every detail, even down to the final revenge on Emmaline Addison …

  Cheswick hunched his furry shoulders and looked down over the edge of the counter, feeling oddly ashamed. Of course Jane knew best. Still, he didn’t quite understand why she needed to harm a little girl. Wasn’t it enough for her that she was going to grow and become human again? The police couldn’t watch her house forever. Soon enough, she would be able to find a new place—maybe out of the country—where she could start over. Perhaps a nice place on the Riviera, in the south of France? Cheswick had never been to France, and he had always wanted to go.

  The black rat hauled the last bag of supplies over the rim of the counter and fell back on his rump, hard. Where was Jane? He looked past the microscopes, past the test tubes and the Bunsen burner’s steady flame, and saw at last the piebald rat. She was up on a windowsill, leaning on the sash with her back to him.

  Cheswick watched Miss Barmy as she gazed out through the glass, apparently lost in thought. Her fuzzy cheeks bunched, and he could tell she was smiling.

  Was she gazing at the moon? Or the stars? She looked positively enchanted …

  Ah! Cheswick pressed his paws to his chest, almost bursting with emotion. He understood it now! The sight of such far, high beauty had called up Jane’s better self, the nobility that he had always known was there. And now she had no need for revenge, or even to grow human again … She would be content to be his ratty love, with a litter of ratlings in a sandy riverbank somewhere. France would be perfect! They could raise the children to be bilingual!

  He leaped to the windowsill in a single bound. He would look out with Jane, side by side. Together, they would look up at the stars, and dream, and hope, and plan …

  But no. The window was boarded up. There was no view outside; there was nothing to be seen but darkness.

  No, wait—there was something. The flame from the Bunsen burner gave a little light, casting a reflection on the surface of the glass. Cheswick could even see his own face! His whiskered muzzle, his pointed ears, and next to him—

  Oh.

  Cheswick slumped a little. Now he could see what Jane had been looking at all this time.

  Miss Barmy fluffed her patches of white and tan and arranged the fur between her ears with a skillful paw. Then she curled her tail gracefully over her shoulder and smiled again at her own reflection.

  “Chessie?”

  The black rat straightened with an effort. “Yes, Jane?”

  “I like this lighting. It’s very—”

  “Romantic?” said Cheswick, with a flicker of hope.

  “Flattering,” Miss Barmy finished.

  Cheswick gazed at her softly lit reflection, and sighed. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. After all, it was a very pretty reflection … if a bit fuzzy.

  “There’s a nice little breeze coming in,” he said. He put his ear to the gap in the window frame and listened with pleasure to the night sounds of crickets, the peep of frogs from some nearby reeds, and a light fluttering of leaves that sounded like the beating of a hundred thin wings—a hundred bat wings—

  There was a sharp knock at the siding near the floor, and a flat, fuzzy face poked beneath the hanging tar paper. “We’ve got her,” said a raspy voice. “And now you must to pay Manlio and the bats, no?”

  “Twenty-five mealworms,” said Cheswick, counting them out. He folded back the tar paper and looked up into the sky, where a cloud of bats descended in a series of erratic drops. Below them, swaying, was a dark blot the size of a pear, and against the faint light of the moon a slender tail could be seen hanging down.

  “Fifty,” said Manlio, watching the squirming white worms drop one by one into his bag. “You forget—there is the brother for to bring, too.”

  “The brother?” Cheswick said sharply. “He’s here?”

  “Certamente, there is the brother. He is a heavy one—I think maybe we charge thirty mealworms for him. But we must to make the special trip for him, see? When the sweet fuzzy one, she is inside with the Mamma, yes?”

  “We don’t want the brother,” said Cheswick, glancing nervously over his shoulder back inside.

  Manlio Bat drew back, staring at the large black rat. “The Rat Mamma, she no want her son?”

  “Er … not yet,” said Cheswick. “She wants to have time alone with her daughter, first.”

  “She want the daughter, but not the son?” Manlio repeated, his thin voice rising. “Is none of my business, maybe, but what kind of Mamma is this?”

  Cheswick ignored the question, watching instead as the colony of bats settled ever lower, squeaking like a hundred tiny rusty gates. The swaying rat in the harness touched the ground, lifted, then dropped again, stumbling as she tried to land on her feet.

  “Attenzione! Be careful!” cried Manlio.

  “I want the harness,” said Cheswick as Manlio agitated his wings and fluttered to where Sissy lay on the ground, entangled in limp strings.

  “Then you will to pay,” snapped Manlio, busily snipping through knots with his sharp small teeth. “A harness, she costs. There, my so beautiful Cecilia, you have had the great adventure in the sky! But now you are back to the earth, and soon you will see the Rat Mamma, no?”

  Sissy staggered, clutching Manlio for balance.

  “Hey, Giovanni!” Manlio patted Sissy on the shoulder with his wing as a large, hairy bat sidled forward. “Giovanni, he will help you stand until you recover the balance, no? I must to go make the arrangements …”

  Sissy glanced up, looking dazed. “And then you’ll get Rasty?”

  Manlio hopped to the gap in the siding, where Cheswick waited in the shadows. “For the harness, fifteen worms more,” the bat said briskly. “And listen—the little Cecilia, she think her brother is to coming soon. They have much the love for each other, much the—how you say, the feeling famiglia?”

  “Family feeling,” said Cheswick. “I understand it’s considered important.”

  “Considered important? Considered? Guido, my cousin, he almost to break his wingtips flying for to deliver the message to us, all the way from the Grayson Lake … this, because he my cousin, my famiglia! And I, I do all I can—for the honor of the Bats Postale! The postal bats, comprendo?”

  “I comprehend,” said Cheswick sharply. “But what you don’t seem to comprehend is that it’s none of your business! You have been hired to transport one rat—one, got it? And not to give advice when you haven’t been asked!”

  Manlio sighed. “Is right. Is not none of my business. But the beautiful Cecilia, she will be oh so sad—”

  Cheswick glared at him, and the bat fell silent. “Now bring her in, but blindfold her, first.”

  “Blindfold?” Manlio’s voice rose again.

  “Her mother wants to surprise her, see?” snapped Cheswick. “And you give me any more objections, I’ll take my business elsewhere! I hear you’ve got a lot of mouths to feed up there in your belfry, Mister Bat!”

  Manlio swirled his wings about him like a cape, and bowed. “Comprendo, Signor Ratto—I understand. The sweet fuzzy one, she will break her heart, and the brother will wait and wait, and no one will come for him.”

  Cheswick frowned. “Maybe I’d better give you a note to drop in his paws, or he might come looking for her. Wait just a minute.”

  16

  EMMY WOKE and lifted her head off the table. Sun was streaming through dirty curtains, and she looked around, confused. Where was she? Why wasn’t she in her own bed, and who was that girl sleeping on the floor?

  Then she remembered. She was at Great-Aunt Melly’s house with a runaway orphan and a broken-hearted rat.

  They had stayed up late. Aunt Melly, still half stunned—rats could talk? and shrink?—had gone up in a daze to settle Aunt Gussie for the night, and called down faintly that the guest room at t
he top of the stairs had two beds. But Emmy and Ana had kept on cleaning long into the night, waiting with Raston for the return of the bats.

  They hadn’t come and they hadn’t come. Finally, Emmy had put her head down on the table just to rest for a minute—and not woken up till morning. Ana must have collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. But the Rat was sitting on the windowsill, a tiny piece of paper clutched in his paw.

  Emmy sat up and combed back her hair with her fingers. “Ratty,” she said.

  No answer.

  Emmy moved closer. “Maybe the bats got tired, Ratty. Maybe they can only do one heavy delivery a night.”

  The Rat, a dejected-looking lump of fur, threw one paw over his eyes. With the other he extended the tiny note. “It’s all a mistake,” he said in a hollow voice. “Ratmom doesn’t want me. She only wants Sissy.”

  “What? I don’t believe it.” Emmy snatched the note and held it close to her eyes, scanning the miniature writing.

  But it was true. There, in black and white, were the cruel words “I don’t want to see you right now.”

  “Who brought this?” Emmy demanded. “Manlio?”

  Raston nodded.

  “But didn’t he say anything else? Did he at least tell you where your mother lives?”

  Raston shook his head. “He just swooped by, dropped the note on the windowsill, and flew off. I tried to grab one of his wings, but I wasn’t fast enough.” He sniffled, wiping his eyes with his paw. “And I wasn’t fast enough to stop him when he took Sissy away in the first place. If I’d been eating my Brussels sprouts, I could have stopped him, I bet. And now I don’t even know where my sister is, and it’s all because I’m—I’m just—”

  “Just what, Ratty?” said Ana, sitting up.

  “Flabby!” Raston said, sobbing bitterly. “I’m a soft, floppy, weak excuse for a rodent, is what I am!”

  “But, Ratty—”

  “Don’t deny it!” cried the Rat. “I haven’t been eating right! I haven’t been exercising! I’ve been scarfing down peanut-butter cups and biscotti, and lounging about, and now see what it’s got me? No sister, no mother, and …” He bent his arm, trying to make his biceps pop up, without success. “No muscles!” he wailed.

  “Listen, Ratty,” said Emmy. “It’s not your fault.”

  “You can’t be expected to catch a bat,” added Ana, but the Rat just shook his head and trudged off to the bookshelf in the hall. And soon after, the girls could hear his rhythmic grunts as he began to go through the exercises shown on the brightly colored pages of Get Flabulous!

  It was a busy morning for everyone. Raston built up his muscles. Aunt Melly got dressed and tended to Aunt Gussie. And the girls finished the kitchen and started work on the entryway and front rooms. Ana was dusting the antique dollhouse and Emmy was vacuuming the hall when the doorbell rang.

  Emmy jumped. She caught sight of a dark blue sleeve through the front curtains, and the glint of metal on an official-looking belt, and backed away, leaving the vacuum running noisily.

  Aunt Melly peered down from the top of the stairs, looking frightened. “Who’s at the door?”

  “The police!”

  Aunt Melly clutched at her chest. “Some nosy neighbor told them about Gussie! They’ve come to take her away!”

  Emmy grabbed Ana and shoved her into the hall closet. The Rat, alarmed, jumped off his book and scurried after.

  “Don’t make a sound!” Emmy hissed. Then she ran around the newel post and up the stairs. “Quick, Aunt Melly, straighten your collar—comb your hair—that’s right. Now come on down; you have to answer the door.”

  The old woman leaned heavily on the banister. “Can’t they let her die in peace? It won’t be long, now. She was even worse this morning …”

  “Aunt Melly! Stop looking so scared!” Emmy gripped her great-aunt’s arm and helped her down the final step. “Nobody’s going to take Aunt Gussie away. You’re dressed instead of in your robe, and the house is clean—at least the part they’ll see—and you look like you’re taking care of things. The police are probably here because of—” She shot a look at the hall closet door, still open an inch.

  “Psst!” Ana’s finger beckoned frantically through the crack.

  Emmy spoke sideways, not turning her head. “What?”

  The doorbell rang again and was accompanied by a loud knock. Aunt Melly glanced nervously over her shoulder. “I’d better answer that, or they’ll wonder what’s wrong.”

  “Please don’t tell the police I’m here,” Ana begged. But Aunt Melly was shutting off the vacuum, her back turned, and did not respond.

  Emmy risked a quick look back. “I won’t tell.”

  “But what if she does? I’d rather be a rat forever than live with people who don’t want me!”

  “Now, then,” said Officer Crumlett, consulting his notebook, “we know that Ana Stephans did not get off the train at Schenectady, because we have reviewed the video from the train station platform.” He crossed his legs, leaned back, and took a glass of iced tea from the tray Emmy held out.

  Emmy brought the tray back to the kitchen, thinking it was a good thing Ana hadn’t changed from a rat to a girl in front of the video camera, or the police would have had a big surprise. She arranged her face in what she hoped was an innocent expression and returned to the front room. It was a perfectly clean and tidy front room, too—they had even dusted the keys of the upright piano in the corner—and Emmy was confident that everything looked good.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Melly looked distinctly uneasy. She sat rigidly on a chair, her hands knotted in her lap, and glanced at the hall closet door more times than Emmy thought wise.

  “Now, little girl, I need to ask you. Was Ana talking to anyone else on the train? Anyone she might have gone off with?” Officer Crumlett clicked his pen against his teeth.

  Emmy shook her head.

  “Did Ana say anything to you about running away?”

  “It is a terrible thing,” Aunt Melly interrupted in a wavering voice, “when a child goes missing.”

  “Yes, but I was asking—”

  “Even if the child is perfectly safe somewhere”—her eyes strayed once again toward the closet door—“other people don’t know that, and of course they are worried.”

  “Naturally, but—”

  “And if anyone knew where the child was,” Aunt Melly went on, “they might think they had a duty to inform the authorities, even if—even if—” She faltered and buried her face in her knotted hands. “Oh, dear!”

  Officer Crumlett looked both confused and suddenly alert. Emmy patted the elderly woman on the back, thinking fast, and looked up at the police officer. “Aunt Melly used to be a schoolteacher, and she gets very emotional when kids are in trouble.”

  Aunt Melly groped for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Really, I simply cannot go on with this.”

  “I’m sorry to upset you, ma’am,” said Officer Crumlett, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Just a few more questions—”

  Aunt Melly wailed aloud.

  Emmy glanced past the policeman to the closet door—she couldn’t help herself—and saw to her horror that it had swung open. If Officer Crumlett turned around, he would see Ana for sure.

  But it seemed likely that he would find out about Ana in any case. Aunt Melly was just feeling too guilty to keep the secret. And really, Emmy could see her point. Everyone was worried about Ana now—her relatives, the police, the people at the orphanage, the social worker. Squippy was probably in a lot of trouble for losing track of Ana, and she might even lose her job.

  Officer Crumlett leaned forward, solid and stern, his hands on his knees. “Emmy, you must tell me. Did Ana say anything, anywhere, at any time, about running away?”

  “Well …” Emmy looked past him to the hall closet. Ana’s head was poking around the doorjamb, and the desperation in her face was like a shout. Ana lifted her left hand—the Rat was perched on her palm—and then she placed her right fore
finger very close to the Rat’s sharp front teeth.

  Emmy knew at once what Ana was trying to say.

  Aunt Melly, though, was still mopping her eyes. She blew her nose with an elderly honk, sniffled twice, and looked up at Officer Crumlett’s broad blue shirtfront.

  “Officer,” she quavered, “I’m afraid I must tell—”

  “Aunt Melly!” Emmy gripped her aunt by the shoulder and shook it slightly. “Please don’t torture yourself! Officer Crumlett knows you can’t tell him anything. He doesn’t blame you.”

  “No, indeed,” began the policeman, but Emmy was not finished. If Aunt Melly wanted to tell the truth, then Emmy would tell the truth. “Ana didn’t exactly talk about running away. But she did say she wished she could turn into a rodent.”

  “A … rodent?” Officer Crumlett rubbed his red-veined nose.

  Emmy nodded. “She said that if she could turn into a rat, then she wouldn’t have to live with people who didn’t want her.” She fixed Aunt Melly with an earnest gaze. “She said she might never change back.”

  Aunt Melly took in a little breath. She glanced quickly past the policeman to the hall closet, and her eyes widened.

  Officer Crumlett clicked his pen and put it in his pocket. “I trust you realize this is a serious matter. I am not asking if Ana Stephans liked to pretend, or wished she could change into a little furry animal, or believed in fairies. The police force is interested in facts. And the fact is, we want to find that little girl and keep her safe.”

  Aunt Melly’s spine stiffened, and she spoke with sudden decision. “That is exactly what we hope for as well—that you will find her safe and unchanged.”

  The policeman looked slightly confused, but he pulled out a small card from his pocket. “If you remember anything else, here’s my number. We’re checking all the towns on the railroad line from the last time Ana was seen. And believe me, we are questioning Miss Gwenda Squipp very closely.”

  “Now, Ana,” said Aunt Melly after the door shut behind Officer Crumlett, “I can’t say I like the way you forced me to choose between doing the right thing and keeping you safe, er, human.”