by Joy Cowley
We all nodded.
“A difficult journey for nothing,” said Retsina.
“Have you thought about all you’ve learned through those challenges?” Furrow asked.
We were silent, all bitterly disappointed. The longing for Ratenburg had made the city real to us—although I do believe if something is too good to be true, it usually isn’t. But that hadn’t stopped us building images of luxury in our minds.
I suspected Furrow was correct about the learning. I tried looking at our travel not as hardship but as what we had been taught on the way. We had become skilled at solving problems. We had learned a lot about ourselves, and each other. We knew what it meant to work together as a family. And I had found a brother.
The ratlets shifted and whispered to each other. I think they understood.
Retsina asked, “What happens now? When rats find out there’s no rat city, where do they go?”
Furrow replied, “Some go over the mountains to new places. A few turn back. Others decide to stay in the valley. Life isn’t perfect here. There are cats and dogs and farmers who hate rats. But if you’ve done the Ratenburg journey, you’ll be okay. You’ve developed skills to cope with a less than perfect world.”
Dear friend, we decided that we too would stay in the valley. After a while, I realised that a perfect city called Ratenburg was actually our desire to gain something better for our family. I think that on the way we found something better within us. We truly had come to a new place in our lives. I looked at the ratlets. In the future, they would have their own stories to tell their sons and daughters, who would probably become Farm rats. I sighed to think what wonderful stories would be told.
That night, while Retsina tucked our ratlets into the hay, my brother Roger and I stood in the doorway of the barn. Roger scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder how many rats start out, and die before they get here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe most of them.”
“Do you think they’re the ones who get to Ratenburg?”
“What do you mean?”
“When they turn up their paws,” said Roger. “Drop dead. They go to a perfect city for rats?”
“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe not.”
We were turning to go back into the barn, when he gave a sudden squeak and nudged me with a paw. “Look, Spinny! Look up there!”
I followed his gaze and saw the light in the sky.
“Our family star!” said Roger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ENDINGS ARE ALSO BEGINNINGS
It would be most ungracious of me if I were to end this story with anti-climax. To be sure there was disappointment, especially for my lovely Retsina, who had grown up with stories about the glorious city of Ratenburg. For me, disappointment was associated with exhaustion: we had given every scrap of energy to the long and difficult journey and felt betrayed by the result. It was like risking a rat trap only to discover that the cheese bait was plastic.
That first evening, I had seen logic in Furrow’s wisdom, and I tried to be optimistic for the sake of my dear family, but it was several days before I truly felt gratitude. Thankfulness grew, first and foremost, for the Farm rats and their kindness. They may not have been as educated as city rats. They knew nothing of humming-bean high-rise apartments, air-conditioning ducts, buses, traffic lights, wharves and ships, and they were rather blunt in their conversations. Their hearts, however, were all goodness and they cared for a group of strangers as though we were their own.
They warned us about the farm humming beans and their cat, and told us that the pigs were friendly, having no prejudice against rats. If we ran out of food, we could visit the troughs because pigs didn’t mind sharing. That made us all regret the times we had relished small slices of bacon or ham.
Then there was a baker in the village who threw out old bread and buns to the dogs. Dogs, said Furrow, preferred food from the butcher’s shop. If rats waited until dark, there was always plenty of bread to be had, and sometimes a bun filled with raspberry jam and cream.
The Farm rats told us that we’d have to leave the hay shed as winter closed in, because the hay would be fed out to the cows. Then it would be best under the farmhouse, near the base of a chimney that was warm day and night.
“Bet it gets crowded,” said Roger. “Bet the cat knows rats are there.”
He was probably right, but we decided we had time enough to find some other winter dwelling.
Gradually we grew accustomed to country living in one place. The hardest thing for me was trusting our children to the company of young Farm rats, but, as Retsina pointed out, our babies were growing up and needed to be with rats their own age. Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta would come back to the hay shed, laughing, squeaking, but as soon as I tactfully enquired where they had been, they fell silent.
“Dear old Spinnaker!” Retsina nibbled my ear in that persuasive way she had. “You’ve been such a good papa. Go on being a good papa and don’t try to hold them back.”
I had to confess that this was the only shade of sadness in our new situation. My wonderful children had learned much. Now they were learning to keep secrets from me.
How could I have known so little about my family?
On the day of the first frost, Furrow told us it was time to leave the hay shed and go to winter premises. “The farmer will come with his tractor and a front-end loader. It has big prongs that are driven into the stack. The hay will be taken out in scoops and fed to the cows.”
Soon after Furrow’s announcement, our four ratlets and their friends rushed into the shed. Gamma jumped up and down with excitement. “Mama! Papa! Come and see what we’ve done!”
I can assure you, dear friend, that I had no idea what was in store for us. The youngsters took us across fields of grass coated with cold dew, over a small wooden bridge and into an overgrown orchard. There, the ground was covered with fallen leaves, yellow around the pear trees, red and brown around the cherries. On the far side was an ancient walnut tree, its branches nearly bare.
“Look up!” said one of the Farm rats.
“We’ve made you a house!” cried Beta.
High on the trunk was a hole as big as a large apple.
“It’s hollow inside!” said Alpha. “We got rid of the spiderwebs and lined it with dry leaves. It’s very cosy, Papa. It can be our winter house.”
I started to climb the tree but my eyes were watery and I didn’t see the sign until Alpha called, “Delta wrote that!”
Carved into the bark, above the hole, was the word Ratenburg.
Copyright
Print edition first published in 2016 by Gecko Press
This e-book edition published in 2016 by Gecko Press
PO Box 9335, Marion Square, Wellington 6141, New Zealand [email protected]
Text © Joy Cowley 2016
Illustrations © Gavin Bishop 2016
© Gecko Press Ltd 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilised in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Gecko Press acknowledges the generous support of Creative New Zealand
Cover by Vida Kelly
Edited by Anna Rogers
Text design and typesetting by Katrina Duncan
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–776570–75–1
E-book ISBNs: 978–1–776571–02–4 (epub); 978–1–776571–03–1 (mobi)
For more curiously good books, visit www.geckopress.com
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