The Secret of the Ginger Mice

by Song of the Winns

  And the two mice settled down for their first supper away from home.

  6

  Enemies

  As they walked slowly down the street away from the newspaper kiosk, glancing left and right to make sure they weren’t observed, Alistair said to Tibby Rose in a low voice, “I don’t think it’s safe for us to be walking around in open sight like this. We need to find a quiet place where we won’t be disturbed so we can plan what we’re going to do next. Do you know anywhere?”

  “Sorry,” Tibby said. “I’ve lived in Templeton my whole life, but I don’t know my way around at all.” She looked at him unhappily. “Maybe you should go on without me. I’d probably just slow you down, anyway.”

  “Look, Tibby,” said Alistair, “I’d understand if you wanted to go home. In fact, you probably should. But if you do want to come with me, I could really use your help; I don’t know much about Souris—and besides, I’d be glad of the company.”

  Tibby smiled. “Well, I can definitely help you with that. And as for Souris, I might not have seen much of the country, but I reckon I could draw the map in my sleep.” She reflected for a moment and then said, “And I might not know Templeton by foot, but I’ve had a pretty good view of it from my treehouse.” She looked around until a tall round bell tower several hundred meters away caught her eye. “On the other side of that tower is the river. There’s a swimming beach near the town, but if we walk downstream a bit we should be able to find a quiet spot.”

  “Sounds perfect,” said Alistair, thinking longingly of the cool river as his neck began to prickle beneath his scarf. Although only late morning, the sun beat down from the cloudless sky so fiercely that the cobbles beneath his feet were glazed with heat.

  At that moment a slender white mouse with a folded newspaper in one hand and a briefcase in the other strode briskly around the corner and then stopped dead and stared at Alistair and Tibby Rose in shock.

  “Let’s get a move on,” said Alistair.

  They hurried past the white mouse, who watched their progress down the street with open-mouthed disbelief.

  Tibby Rose led the way, stopping every now and then as if to consult a map in her mind’s eye. For the most part, the streets they went down were deserted; the other mice in town were probably, quite sensibly, avoiding the heat of day, Alistair surmised. In Smiggins, too, they tended to stay indoors during the hottest part of the day, though the heat in his town was less sharp and dry, and the light softer than in Templeton, where the light blazed off the pale-gray stone of the buildings so that it almost hurt his eyes to look at them.

  It was a relief when, after endless narrow streets of unrelenting glare, they turned into a shady tree-lined square with a fountain in the middle. Alistair hurried over to bathe his face, then cupped his hands under the water cascading from the upper tier of the fountain into the pool below and drank thirstily.

  “Aren’t you hot?” he asked Tibby Rose, who stood by watching.

  She shrugged. “I’m used to it. Besides, I’m not wearing a woolen scarf.”

  Alistair gave her a small smile. “Don’t you start,” he said. “You sound like my sister.” At the thought of Alice he felt a pang of sorrow. His family must be awake by now, wondering and worrying. If only he could let them know he was okay.

  “Where’s the bell tower from here?” he asked Tibby Rose.

  She pointed to the far corner of the square. “Right there. That street to the left of it should take us to a path down to the river.”

  Alistair wiped his damp hands on his fur as they crossed the square, passed through an archway, and left the town behind. The cobbles stopped abruptly and they were descending a dirt path toward a slightly muddy-looking river lined with rushes and large leafy trees. Just ahead of them, water lapped at a stretch of pebbly beach, and Alistair could see half a dozen mice of about his own age splashing in the shallows. Another group was taking it in turns to swing on a rope tied to the bough of an overhanging tree, dropping into the river like stones and then swimming back to shore. They seemed to be having a competition to see who could swing out the farthest.

  “Alex and Alice would love that,” he said to Tibby Rose. “Hey, we can ask those kids about the quickest way to get to Shetlock.”

  They continued down the path until they’d reached the edge of the beach, then Alistair called, “Hello? Excuse me?”

  A couple of heads turned and a sharp-faced mouse cried, “Look at those two! They’re . . . they’re ginger!”

  At that, every head turned and the cavorting mice stopped their games to stare.

  “Enemies!” cried a large square-bodied mouse with a kink in his tail. “Get them!” He picked up a stone and threw it at Tibby Rose and Alistair.

  “No,” said Alistair, jumping back to dodge the missile and holding up his hands. “Wait! We’re not your—”

  “Get them!” The cry echoed along the surface of the water, and suddenly all the mice were hurrying out of the water to converge on the beach.

  “Run, Tibby!” urged Alistair, pushing Tibby Rose ahead of him along the path downstream.

  Tibby didn’t need to be told twice, and they fled down the path, jeers and cries following them.

  The square-bodied mouse took off in pursuit, pausing only to scoop up a handful of stones. Several of his friends followed, and soon a shower of stones began to rain down behind the fleeing mice.

  “Gingers!” cried the sharp-faced mouse, her voice bristling with hatred as she hurled a stone.

  “Ouch!” cried Alistair, almost thrown off-balance as it struck him hard on the shoulder.

  “Got one!”

  Her companions crowed in triumph.

  “Are you okay?” Tibby panted, swerving as a stone landed on the path ahead of her.

  “Yes,” Alistair gasped. “Just keep going!” He could hear the heavy breathing of the pursuing mice, and risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw that they had reached the path. His heart raced in his chest. “They’re getting closer!”

  The two ginger mice hurtled along the path, ducking and dodging the stones being flung at them.

  Tibby Rose was breathing raggedly as the path snaked uphill away from the river.

  A hand brushed his tail and for a terrifying instant Alistair thought he was caught.

  “C’mon, Tibby,” he urged, his own breath catching in his throat, and despite their tiring legs, the two ginger mice put on a burst of speed.

  They were running between shoulder-high shrubs now, the path twisting and curving so that they couldn’t see more than a few meters ahead. Alistair hoped desperately that the path didn’t suddenly stop in a dead end.

  As they reached the top of the hill and skidded down the other side, the gang of mice scrambling behind them, he could see that a bit farther ahead the path forked into two. This gave Alistair an idea. In front of him Tibby Rose nearly stumbled as the ground dipped away and Alistair sprinted forward and grabbed her hand. “Stay close,” he said, and as they rounded a corner he pulled her through a dense tangle of leaves and twigs into the cover of a shrub. “Don’t make a sound,” he hissed in her ear.

  They sat in silence, trying to keep their breathing shallow as their pursuers approached. The leaves of the shrub fluttered as they ran past—one, two, three, four, five.

  Then they heard a bellow of frustration from the square-shaped mouse who had led the pack as he slowed to a stop at the fork in the path. “Which way did they go? Did anyone see?”

  “I think they went left,” said one.

  “No, right,” puffed another.

  “Let’s split up,” suggested the high voice of the sharp-faced mouse. She was obviously enjoying the chase.

  There was a pause, then the square-shaped mouse said, “Nah, it’s too hot. I need another swim.”

  The sharp-faced mouse began to protest: “But shouldn’t we go get the Queen’s Guards? Ginger mice are our enemies—you know that, Snodgrass. They’re probably Gerandan rebels.”

 
“Put a sock in it, Janice,” said Snodgrass. “They were kids our own age. And look how they ran from us. They weren’t exactly dangerous, were they?”

  The other mice sniggered, and the group began to retrace their steps along the path back to the swimming beach. As their voices faded, Alistair and Tibby Rose continued to sit in frozen quiet, despite the twigs scratching their arms and faces. When at last his pulse had slowed, and he couldn’t hear a sound other than the distant hum of insects, Alistair stuck his head out of the bush and looked around. “I think it’s safe now,” he said. He pushed through the leaves and then stuck a hand back into the shrub to haul Tibby Rose out.

  “That was scary,” he said, brushing leaves and dirt from his fur.

  “That was petrifying,” said Tibby. “And just because we’re ginger?” She shook her head in bewilderment.

  They set off down the path, taking the fork that led back toward the river.

  “I never knew it before, but it looks like I’m the only ginger mouse in Templeton,” Tibby continued. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me, and that’s why Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet kept me hidden all these years.” She laughed bitterly. “Or maybe they’re ashamed of me.”

  “I don’t know,” said Alistair. “They didn’t seem that way to me. Maybe they weren’t ashamed so much as worried about how others might treat you.”

  “I suppose there are lots of ginger mice in Smiggins?” Tibby said.

  “I’m the only one I’ve ever seen,” said Alistair. “But no one seems to be particularly hostile toward me because of it. They often seem surprised when they first meet me, and I get teased every now and then at school, but no one’s ever called me an enemy.” He remembered the sneers of sharp-faced Janice and blockish Snodgrass. “What was that about Gerandan rebels?” he asked. “Isn’t Gerander part of Souris?”

  “It’s a province kind of west and south of here. That’s all I know about it.”

  Alistair shook his head slowly. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with us,” he said. They continued down the path without speaking for a few moments, then he added, “But everything about today has been so weird that it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that I am a Gerandan rebel.”

  Tibby started to laugh. “Yeah, and I’m one too.”

  They were still laughing when the path opened out at the river bank, which was, Alistair was pleased to find, quiet and deserted. The tall reeds lining the banks bent listlessly in the heat, and the only movement came from the dragonflies skimming the surface of the river, which was deep and clear away from the churning of the swimmers. They both bent to drink, then flopped onto the ground, exhausted.

  “I still have no idea why I woke up in another country, and fell from the sky onto the only other ginger mouse I’ve ever met,” said Alistair.

  “I can’t help you there,” said Tibby Rose. “I’ve gone from being a lonely orphan to a dangerous enemy of my people in the space of a few hours.”

  “Okay,” said Alistair, turning onto his side and propping his head on his elbow, “maybe we should leave the big questions for later and start by trying to solve our immediate problems. We need to work out how to get to Shetlock from here—preferably without drawing any more attention to ourselves. Any ideas?”

  Tibby sat up. “Do you remember the map of Souris I showed you in the library?”

  “More or less,” said Alistair. “Possibly I’ve forgotten some of the finer details since almost being captured by the Queen’s Guards and then chased by a gang of bloodthirsty savages with stones.”

  “Pass me that stick near your elbow.” Tibby took the stick and drew a rough diamond shape in a patch of bare earth between them. “We’re here,” she said, putting a cross in the middle of the upper half of the diamond. “East of the Cranken Alps, due north of Grouch.” She drew a larger cross to represent the Sourian capital. “Between us and Grouch is the Eugenian mountain range.” She sketched in some triangles for mountains. “From Grouch, we’d need to travel south to the coast—here.” She indicated the bottom tip of the diamond. “It’s the closest point to Shetlock.”

  “So we just head south,” said Alistair.

  “That’s right.”

  He studied the map for a moment. “Do you know much about those mountains, the Eugenian Range?”

  “I think they’re pretty rugged,” Tibby replied, “going by the contours of the map.”

  “Is it possible to go around them?”

  “Sure. It’s longer, though.”

  “Probably worth it,” said Alistair. “We didn’t exactly come equipped for mountain climbing. And even if it’s not the most direct route, we’d probably save time by being able to travel faster.”

  “Makes sense to me,” said Tibby Rose.

  Alistair sighed and tugged the ends of his scarf. “We haven’t come equipped for anything,” he said. “We’ve got no food, no money, no friends, no means of transport . . . Are you sure you want to do this, Tibby? Look at what we’ve had to face so far, and we haven’t even left your hometown.”

  Tibby met his questioning gaze with a resolute look. “What kind of home could Templeton ever be to me if I can’t even walk down the street in safety?” she said. “I have to leave.”

  Alistair nodded. “I’m sure Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer will help you once we reach Smiggins. The question is, how do we get there?” Trailing his hand in the cool water of the river he followed the current downstream with his eyes, the steady flow soothing his disordered thoughts. “We should probably avoid towns, travel by night as much as possible . . . Hmm . . . ‘You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.’”

  “What?” asked Tibby, who was idly filling in the rest of her makeshift map.

  “Huckleberry Finn,” said Alistair. “Tibby, what direction is this river flowing?”

  Tibby thought for a minute, studying her map. “South,” she said finally. “It starts in the Crankens and flows into Lake Eugenia at the foot of the Eugenians. But what’s Huckleberry Finn got to do with it? Isn’t that the name of a book? I think I’ve seen it in Great-Aunt Harriet’s library.”

  “Huck Finn is this white mouse, a kid like us, and he meets up with a black mouse, Jim, who has run away from his owner. He was a slave, just because he has black fur. I never understood how one mouse could make another a slave just because of the color of his fur.” He rubbed his shoulder where the stone had struck him and remembered the sharp-faced mouse shouting, Gingers! “Anyway, my point is, Huck and Jim travel down this huge river on a raft. It’s a pity we don’t have one.”

  They were both silent, the only sound the water lapping gently at the bank, then Tibby said, “You know, I could probably make one.”

  “You could?” Alistair sat up. “But we don’t have any tools or materials.”

  “Actually, we have got the materials,” said Tibby. “There’s a grove of bamboo over there—bamboo is the perfect wood for a raft; lightweight, floats well. We can find some vines or creepers to tie the sticks together. As for tools, we can use stones to hack down the bamboo we need.”

  Alistair looked at Tibby. “That’s amazing, Tib. All I did was mention a raft and you work out how to actually make one.”

  Tibby smiled modestly. “I read about how to make a raft in a book by Charlotte Tibby, the explorer, but I wouldn’t have thought of it if you hadn’t given me the idea.”

  “Okay, then—let’s get to work. Tell me what I should do.”

  They both stood and, checking that the coast was still clear, headed toward the bamboo grove Tibby had indicated.

  “We need about a dozen bits of bamboo,” she decided, “all about the same circumference.” She wrapped her hand around a trunk that was twice her height and so thick her fingers only just touched on the other side. “Like this. If you get started on the bamboo, I’ll look for something we can fasten them together with.”

  Alistair found a shallow stretch of the river and began to pick up the flat smooth stone
s one by one, running his thumb along their sides to test for a thin edge. When at last he had found one that seemed sufficiently thin, he took it over to the bamboo. It was slow hot work, hacking and sawing at the tough, fibrous trunks, and more than once as he felt the woolen scarf prickling at his throat he wished his mother had made him a memento that was a little cooler against his fur. Sunglasses, for example.

  He had managed to cut four lengths when he heard Tibby Rose calling to him in a low voice.

  “Alistair, over here.”

  She was on the other side of the clearing, and when Alistair reached her, he found that she had been collecting strands from a thick vine that was draped over a fallen log. This wasn’t what she had called him for, though. “Look,” she said. “Blackberries.”

  Alistair had been too preoccupied to notice his hunger, but when he saw the blackberry bushes he was almost overcome by the gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Brilliant!”

  They ate their fill of the tart, juicy berries, then got back to work. The sun was getting lower in the sky by the time they had a dozen sticks of bamboo, stripped of leaves, ready to fasten with the vines Tibby Rose had gathered. They laid the trunks together on the ground, and Tibby showed Alistair how to loop the vines around and between each stick to hold it firm against its neighbors. When they had fastened the bamboo at four even intervals, they each picked up an end of the raft and carried it to the water’s edge.

  “Wait a minute,” said Tibby Rose as they lowered it into the shallows. “We’ll need something to steer with.”

  She darted back to the bamboo grove and, picking up the stone Alistair had discarded, selected a long piece and began to saw at it. “Steering pole,” she said breathlessly when she returned.

  Tibby stepped carefully onto the raft, which wobbled a bit, but held her weight. Then Alistair pushed off, wading knee-deep into the river, and climbed aboard.

  “We did it!” Tibby cried delightedly as they bobbed lightly on the current. She held the raft steady with the pole planted in the sandy bottom. “Now what, Captain?”