The Secret of the Ginger Mice

by Song of the Winns

  Beezer, meanwhile, had appeared from the bedroom, yawning and beaming. “Oh, my dears!” She hugged Alice and Alex in turn, kissed the part of Alistair’s head that wasn’t buried in Uncle Ebenezer’s squashy belly, and then turned to Tibby Rose with a friendly smile. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” she said.

  Alistair pulled away from his uncle’s belly and announced, “This is my friend Tibby Rose. From Templeton—in Souris.”

  “Alistair fell on me,” Tibby supplied helpfully.

  “Tibby Rose from Templeton, eh?” Ebenezer looked thoughtful. He took Tibby’s hand and shook it vigorously. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, my dear. A very great pleasure.”

  Alistair looked around the familiar room. More than once on the perilous journey home he had wondered if he would ever see this room again; he couldn’t believe he was actually here.

  “Have you been walking all night?” said Beezer, with a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. “You must be exhausted. But what are you doing here, Alistair? When your uncle went to speak to his FIG contacts they told him that you’d been taken to a safe house far away.” She turned to fix Alex and Alice with a stern look. “Which you two would have found out if you’d stayed here like you were supposed to!” Despite her scolding, Alistair could tell that she was so pleased to have them all safely home that she wasn’t really angry at his brother and sister.

  “But Alistair didn’t stay at the safe house,” Alex argued. “He and Tibby Rose traveled all the way home from Souris. So it was lucky we went to rescue them.”

  “Actually, it was lucky that they rescued us, Alex,” Alice pointed out.

  “It sounds like you all have a lot of explaining to do,” Aunt Beezer remarked.

  “And a lot of eating to do by the looks of you,” added her husband. “You’re all looking terribly thin. You must be hungry!”

  “Am I ever!” said Alex, and he was off to the kitchen, his uncle close behind saying happily, “I’ll make you the best breakfast you’ve ever had.”

  “Are you sure you have enough food?” Alistair heard Alex say in a muffled voice, as if his head was deep in the pantry.

  “I hope so,” said his uncle, his voice sounding slightly choked up. “But I’ve only been cooking for two this last week, haven’t I?”

  Despite Alex’s fears the cupboard proved far from bare, and breakfast was a feast of eggs (poached, scrambled, coddled, hard boiled, soft boiled, and sunny-side-up), toast with jam (apricot, strawberry, blackberry—“No thanks,” chorused Alistair and Tibby Rose—blueberry and raspberry) and crumpets with marmalade (orange, lime, and kumquat), pancakes (soaked in maple syrup), French toast (also soaked in maple syrup), porridge, cereal, and fresh fruit.

  It was some time before the triplets and Tibby Rose were ready to recount their adventures, and once they began, it took them even more time (right through lunch, in fact) to tell everything that had happened. Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer looked grave and gloomy through most of their tellings—especially when Alice explained their suspicions about Mrs. Zetland. But there was one part of Alistair’s story that brought smiles to the faces of his aunt and uncle.

  “Zanzibar is free?” Ebenezer’s face lit up and his mustache sprang up in delight. “Oh, happy day!” He leaned across the table and gave Beezer’s hand a squeeze.

  “I thought you hated FIG and Gerander, Uncle,” Alice said.

  “Ah well . . .” Ebenezer looked contrite. “I was angry and grief-stricken, and I was desperate to protect you kids. I thought if I ignored Gerander and FIG you would be safe, but I discovered it wasn’t that simple. And I ignored my own principles.” He shook his head in shame. “You remember what I told you? All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good mice to do nothing. I’ve always believed that. So Beezer and I have decided we can no longer be content to do nothing. We have rejoined FIG.”

  “Hurrah!” said Alistair. “We want to join FIG too. Though I think Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson must be pretty mad at me and Tibby.”

  “You met Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson?” Alistair’s uncle looked impressed.

  “Do you know them, Uncle?”

  “Me? No. I’ve heard of them, of course—they’re very high up in FIG, very high indeed—but I’ve never met them personally. Your parents have, of course. Before they . . .” He trailed off into silence.

  “Slippers Pink was happy about Zanzibar’s escape too,” Alistair remarked, resuming his story. “After we met the mouse from Gerander we were picked up by an owl, Oswald—the same owl who carried me from here to Templeton—and he took us to meet Slippers and Feast . . .”

  But the news of Zanzibar’s escape from the prison in the Cranken Alps was a rare piece of good news in Alistair’s tale.

  “So for all we know, Sophia and Horace could be on their way here now,” Beezer summed up. “Fortunately, they don’t know we’ve got Alistair here. Did they mention Tibby Rose at all?”

  Alex and Alice looked at each other then shrugged.

  “Not a word,” said Alice. “Why should they?”

  “Why indeed?” Ebenezer mused, stroking his mustache. “I don’t suppose they knew where she was. No one did, after all. . . .”

  Tibby looked at Alistair with raised eyebrows then said to the triplets’ uncle, “Do you know me?”

  “Know you?” Ebenezer looked startled. “Of course not. We’ve never met before today.”

  “But the way you were talking,” Tibby persisted. “It sounded like maybe you’d heard of me before. Did you—did you know my father, perhaps?”

  “Your father?” Ebenezer was looking uncomfortable.

  “No, my dear,” Beezer broke in. Her voice was kind but firm. “I’m afraid not. I think Ebenezer was just surprised that Alistair should be taken all the way to your house in Souris. Anyway, the important question is: What do we do now? Ebenezer and I will talk over everything you’ve told us, and then we’ll all discuss it together over dinner.”

  That afternoon, Tibby Rose and the triplets took turns in the bathroom. Alistair enjoyed a good long shower with a lot of soap and scrubbing, after which his fur looked decidedly more ginger than purple. Then they had long naps, luxuriating in proper beds with clean sheets, Alice sharing her bed with Tibby Rose.

  It was a clean and rested Alistair who was setting the table for dinner when he heard a tapping at the shutters. The sound gave him such a start that he dropped the cutlery with a clatter.

  His uncle glanced at him quickly, then cautiously unlatched the window, pushed open the shutter, and peered out.

  Hovering outside was a very grumpy-looking owl.

  “Oswald!” said Alistair guiltily as Oswald fixed him with an ill-tempered glare and then settled on the windowsill.

  “So you’re here, are you? I suppose you thought you were clever running off on me like that. Well, I know a couple of mice who’ll be having a very sharp word with you. Poor Slippers was beside herself with worry when I went back and told her what you’d done. Hmph.” He turned his gaze to Alistair’s uncle, said, “she sent you this,” and dropped a note into Ebenezer’s hand. He had just raised his huge wings to take off when Tibby Rose, who had been sitting on the couch with Alistair’s copy of Treasure Island, jumped up and said, “Wait!”

  The big bird paused.

  “Oswald,” said Tibby tentatively, “I’m really sorry we made things difficult for you, and I know you’re pretty mad at us, but I was wondering if I could ask a favor.”

  “A favor?” snorted the owl. “You’d be lucky.” Then, perhaps moved by the crushed look on Tibby’s face, he said gruffly, “All right, what is it?”

  “I was wondering if you would take a message to Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet? I’d like to let them know that I’m okay.”

  The owl regarded her solemnly from under his great feathery brow and then sighed. “I suppose I owe them a message after swallowing the last one. But be quick about writing it, I haven’t got all night.�
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  Tibby Rose beamed. “Thank you, Oswald!”

  Uncle Ebenezer fetched her a pen and a piece of paper, and Tibby Rose hurriedly wrote a message and then folded the paper. “And please tell Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson how sorry we are that we didn’t wait for you like we’d agreed,” she added as she slipped the message into the owl’s beak.

  Oswald gave an impatient cluck, then flapped his wings once, twice, and soared off the windowsill into the night.

  Ebenezer gazed after the giant bird with a somewhat dazed expression. “Friendly chap, isn’t he?”

  It was Beezer, who had come in from the kitchen at the sound of Oswald’s voice, who asked, “What does it say?,” prompting her husband to remember the note in his hand.

  Alistair’s uncle hastily unfolded the piece of paper he was clutching and read aloud:

  “Dear Ebenezer and Beezer, I hardly know how to tell you this, but we have just heard the wonderful news that Rebus and Emmeline are alive! Alive? They’re alive?!”

  Beezer threw her arms around her husband’s neck while their nephews and niece stood open-mouthed in shock. Alistair’s heart began to race. Could it be true? But how . . .? Where . . .?

  “Keep reading!” he urged his uncle.

  “They are in prison in Gerander—most probably on Atticus Island—where they have been held for some years. Oh!”

  Alistair’s insides froze as Ebenezer’s shoulders slumped. The hand holding the letter dropped to his side, and his other hand rose to cover his face. “Oh, my poor brother . . .,” he whispered. “And dear Emmeline . . .”

  He resumed his perusal of the letter: “Rest assured, every effort will be made to free them. . . . “He read silently for a moment, his brow furrowed, then said, “Here’s a bit about you, Alistair: I am distressed to tell you that Alistair left the safe house. We encountered him briefly in Souris, along with a mouse called Tibby Rose, and his intention was to return to you. We are so worried about the pair of them. Please send us word with Oswald if you have heard from him . . . . You know I am glad to see you, Alistair, but you really shouldn’t have run off on Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson like that. Oh, what am I saying? I’m so glad to see you I don’t care who you disobeyed! You must leave Smiggins immediately . . . Ah yes, it’s as we thought. As you are probably aware, much has been happening in Gerander. A special FIG meeting is to be held in Stetson . . . That’s to the northwest, I believe, near the Gerandan border. I suggest we rendezvous there.”

  Ebenezer looked at Beezer. “What do you think, Beez?”

  “That settles it really,” said his wife. “We can’t stay here, so we’ll all go to Stetson for the meeting. But I really think this lot could use a good rest. I propose we set off first thing tomorrow morning.”

  As their aunt and uncle talked, Alistair, Alex, and Alice stared at each other.

  “They’re alive,” Alice said finally, her eyes shining.

  Alistair nodded wordlessly. So many emotions were crowding his mind he didn’t know what to feel. Joy that Rebus and Emmeline were alive, of course. To think that he would see them again; feel his mother’s gentle touch, hear his father’s deep laugh. He felt weak suddenly, as a great weight of sadness that he had carried within him for four years began to dissolve. But then he remembered the tortured look in Uncle Silas’s eyes as he’d spoken of his years imprisoned on Atticus Island. What must his parents have suffered? He gripped the ends of his scarf. Then he felt his brother’s hand squeeze his shoulder.

  “The FIG meeting . . . It’s near Gerander,” said Alex eagerly. “We’ll be able to help look for them. You too, Tibby.”

  Alistair shot his brother a grateful look as Tibby, who had been standing a little apart, took a step forward, smiling. Privately, Alistair was a bit worried that Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson would not want him and Tibby Rose in FIG after their deception on the cliffs near Sadiz. Two of the highest-ranking members of FIG probably thought they were untrustworthy! But maybe if he sang them his mother’s song they would relent? If it was related to the secret paths through Gerander that Slippers had spoken of, surely his information was too valuable to ignore, even if they were mad at him. It might even—Alistair felt a prick of excitement between his shoulder blades—it might even help in the rescue of his parents.

  Over the family’s favorite dinner of cheese and boiled potatoes, they celebrated the happy news that Emmeline and Rebus were alive.

  “I knew it all along,” Uncle Ebenezer kept saying. “Haven’t I always told you how strong and courageous your father is?”

  When they’d finished dinner, they turned to a discussion of the preparations they would need to make the following morning, with Tibby listing the ideal equipment for a proper survival kit.

  Uncle Ebenezer pointed out that they would need to pack for winter, too, as there was no telling how long they would be away from home. “Your poor old scarf is looking a fright,” he said to Alistair. “Imagine if your mother saw it looking like that! I’ll wash it tonight, and it will be dry by morning.”

  Reluctantly, Alistair unwound the scarf from around his neck and held it out. As it unfurled, and he gazed at the familiar jumble of shapes and squiggles, and the long blue stripe down the center, the words of the old Gerandan suddenly came back to him. “A thin ribbon of land . . .,” he’d said. And that stripe of blue . . .

  “Uncle Ebenezer, where is the River Winns?”

  “The Winns?” His uncle looked surprised. “Ah, you’re thinking about Timmy, are you? He certainly sounds like a character. You know, he reminds me a bit of—,” Ebenezer broke off and shook his head. “No, that would be impossible. . . .” Then, catching sight of Alistair’s questioning look, he said, “The Winns is Gerander’s greatest river. It runs right down the center of the country, with hundreds of tributaries running off it. It’s largely thanks to the Winns that Gerander is such a fertile, productive land.”

  So he was right, Alistair thought. The Winns was in Gerander. And it ran right through the center of the country, just like the blue stripe on his scarf ran right down the center. What was it Timmy had said? It is the spine that knits our head to our feet. Had the midnight blue mouse been looking at Alistair’s scarf when he described the river as knitting the country together? Now that he thought about it, it seemed to Alistair that he had. As his uncle took the scarf and headed to the laundry, Alistair remembered what Slippers had said about the secret paths of Gerander. They have never been recorded in writing, she had told them, but are passed down through families in other ways; they are sung or painted or danced. Was it possible that instead of painting the paths, Emmeline had knitted them into his scarf? And that the scarf and the song went together? This was important news for Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson!

  Alistair was trying to catch the eye of Tibby Rose, who was helping Aunt Beezer and Alex gather together the empty plates, when his uncle came back into the room and his aunt said, “Now let’s talk of happier things and try to have a pleasant evening. We don’t know what kinds of dangers and discomforts we might have ahead of us.”

  “I don’t think anything could be more uncomfortable than rolling down a mountain in a barrel,” said Alice.

  “Or more dangerous than jumping off that cliff near Shambles,” said Alex. “Did we tell you how high it was, Uncle? I bet the cliff you jumped from with the cheddar wasn’t nearly so high.”

  “Well, it does sound like you were very brave,” said their uncle. “But of course you forget that when I jumped off the cliff I was holding your father by the tail.” Ebenezer indicated the couch. “Now imagine that the top of the couch is the cliff. . . .”

  “Alistair?” called Alice a little while later. “Come over here and let me hold your tail.”

  Alistair looked over. His sister was standing on top of the couch next to Tibby Rose. Uncle Ebenezer was standing beside Tibby Rose, explaining something to her that involved lots of hand gestures and wiggles of the mustache. Tibby was straining slightly to bear
the weight of Alex, who she was holding by the tail.

  “Alistair,” said Alice impatiently. “Hurry up!”

  With a happy sigh, Alistair slipped off his chair and went over to join them. He was not going to let Alice hold him by the tail, but from now on he would join in any other adventure she and his brother had in mind.

  “Coming,” he said.

  Acknowledgments

  For insight, encouragement, and inspiration, I would like to thank David Francis, Belinda Bolliger, Barbara Mobbs, Helen Glad, and Lydia Papandrea.

  Look out for the next book in the exciting

  The Song of the Winns series in 2013, The Spies of Gerander!

  Alistair, come back!” called his uncle as Alistair stood in the middle of the road.

  A giant owl swooped towards the ground, its talons outstretched. Alistair could just make out the shape of a mouse grasped in each talon.

  “Oswald!” said Alistair, waving. “Over here.”

  The owl hovered inches above the ground, then carefully released its two passengers, who stumbled a moment before regaining their balance. In the twilight Alistair saw a tall lean mouse and a small slim one in shiny black boots. It was Feast Thompson and Slippers Pink.

  “We’ll walk from here,” the slim mouse was telling the owl, “and meet up again later.”

  “Hi, Feast!” Alistair said as the owl soared into the darkening sky. “Hello, Slippers.”

  Feast Thompson and Slippers Pink turned at the sound of his voice. Slippers, Alistair noticed, was looking distinctly queasy; she hated flying.

  “Alistair! Tibby Rose!” Slippers rushed over and hugged first Alistair and then Tibby Rose, who had joined him.

  By this time, the others had left the shelter of the bushes, and Alistair introduced Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson to his family.

  “A pleasure to meet two of FIG’s highest operatives,” said Ebenezer.

  “People only call us that because we spend so much time in the air,” said Slippers, laughing.