by Anna Fargher
The forest swished above them and they slowed, allowing only their eyes to peek over the bank. Below, two grey birds with black masked heads sat either side of the entrance to the bramble maze. The shrikes were not big, larger than a sparrow yet smaller than a starling, and Pip breathed easier, finding them not nearly as threatening as she’d imagined. But then she saw what lay beside them. Impaled on the thorns, another bird with inky feathers and a white underbelly dangled, bloodied and torn. Its species was unrecognizable, and she and Madame Fourcade swallowed, seeing the shrikes’ hooked beaks and talons.
‘Listen,’ Monique whispered, her ears snapping forward. The clattering of wings was growing rapidly louder. A moment later they all instinctively ducked when a cloud of shrikes fluttered from beneath the brambles and swirled in the air above the two guards. Pip’s throat pounded as a white pigeon with milky blue eyes dived through the throng and settled on the thorns.
‘We’ve got everything we need,’ Lucia cried, cocking her head to her army of Butcher Birds scattering themselves upon the brambles with their cold black gazes staring obediently. ‘We’ve killed everyone inside and the Umbrella Mouse and Noah’s Ark cannot be far ahead of us. We must trap her before her story travels any further. Spread out on the journey east toward Paris. Madame Fourcade is up to something,’ she spat, as if saying the hedgehog’s name left a bad taste in her mouth. ‘Leave no stone unturned! I must have justice for Noah’s Ark’s escape from the camp! I want to watch Pip and Madame Fourcade blister and burn, just like that villainous eagle and that traitorous rat we picked out of the ashes!’ Lucia shrieked. ‘The myth of the mouse who undermined the regime must be destroyed!’
The Butcher Birds cheered with high-pitched screams, and a sickening wave of grief made Pip feel faint. Sinking her head into Madame Fourcade’s embrace, her mind flashed with memories of Hans’s and Léon’s smiling faces, the warmth of their bodies and the kindness they’d shown when she’d lost everything she’d known.
‘Terror will replace hope in the hearts of the Resistance!’ Lucia continued. ‘Interrogate and kill every member you find on sight. Punish their friends, crush their families and, at each stop you make on your way to Paris, tell every animal you see that we have wiped out the Maquis. No one will ever dare to rise up against us again! The hunt is on! The Resistance will think twice before helping a pitiful little mouse kitten once they know only pain and death will follow! We shall have our vengeance! Now fly!’
Pip and her friends ducked as the white pigeon and the swarm of shrikes whirled into the air and disappeared into the distant trees.
A chill descended on the brambles as the animals held their breaths and peered over the crest of the bank again, their ears alert for signs of the enemy. A few minutes passed and they exhaled, knowing they were alone.
‘That vicious . . .’ Madame Fourcade growled furiously, catching herself before she swore. She looked down at Pip, still clinging to her, and her face softened, meeting her devastated gaze. ‘We will avenge Hans and Léon, and I will never let them touch you, chérie,’ she vowed. Her voice was firm but her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Lucia and the Milice’s days are numbered. Our liberation will make sure of that. Henri, Gabriel, Madeleine,’ she called, her voice still hushed. ‘They’ve gone.’
‘Come on,’ Pip said defiantly, wiping the upset from her face with a shivering paw and bounding over the bank with a lump of sorrow in her throat. ‘We have to see if anyone survived.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Madeleine said, trotting after her with the white wolf, and bending her head to the ground. ‘It will be quicker this way.’
Pip looked into the she-wolf ’s face with a quiver of unease. She’d never known a more frightening creature, and being this close to her made all her senses tingle with danger.
‘There’s no need to be afraid, little one.’ Madeleine gave Pip a friendly nudge with her cold, wet nose, and when Pip met her gaze she could see the worry and sadness clouding the wolf ’s silver eyes.
Pip reminded herself that the wolves had done nothing but protect her. She clutched the grey wolf ’s coarse fur and clambered up to stand between her ears.
‘Let’s go,’ Henri said, catching up, with Madame Fourcade on his head and the bats swinging from his antlers.
‘Follow me,’ Pie clacked, carrying Monique on his back.
They tried not to look at the remains of the gatekeepers as Pie led the way through the bramble maze with the others cantering behind. Weaving in and out of the barbed corridors through sheaths of light where the morning sunshine pierced the roof of thorns, they soon approached the opening to the cave, and slowed with their ears flattening against their heads. The beehive no longer hung above the opening. It lay in pieces across the forest floor, dotted with small grey feathers and the curled-up bodies of honeybees and bats, strewn across the ground. Seeing their fallen friends, the bats dangling from Henri’s antlers yelped and covered their faces with their wings. Monique’s lips trembled as Pie landed beside a bee and tenderly nudged its remains with his beak.
‘This was a massacre.’ Madame Fourcade shook her head in despair with Henri. It was the most horrible thing Pip had ever seen and she looked away, knowing the sight would haunt her forever.
The air grew heavy with dread as the animals followed Pie into the cave, which glowed dimly in the light of the bioluminescent mushrooms growing up the walls. The large cavern inside was cold and black without the glitter of the fireflies and a metallic, musky smell made Pip’s blood thunder in her ears.
Madeleine sniffed with Gabriel, their hackles rising with the others’ as they arrived. ‘The Rogue Wolves were here . . .’
‘Gaspard!’ Pip cried, spotting a large shape slumped on the ground in the gloom beneath a cluster of mushrooms, lighting up a crown of antlers laced with webs of silk.
‘The Great Stag.’ Henri’s voice cracked, stepping forward with a shuddering rump, and Pip gasped, knowing Gaspard was dead. A stab of guilt throbbed in her gut. Lucia had killed him and the others to get to her.
‘I can’t bear it!’ Monique whimpered, burying her head in Pie’s feathers.
‘Amélie’s not in his horns!’ Pip cried, her chest pounding as she pointed her paw into the spider webs draped across his antlers. ‘The fireflies aren’t here either,’ she added, craning her neck up to the ceiling of roots where they had dangled over the cavern. ‘Where’s GI Joe?’ Pip whipped round urgently. ‘We left him right here with Amélie and the others. Could the enemy have taken them all?’
‘The wolves and the shrikes had no prisoners with them,’ the bats squeaked from Henri’s antlers.
‘Then maybe they escaped?’ Pip desperately searched for a place where they could have fled, but there was nowhere she could see.
The other animals caught one another’s gazes and their faces fell with the same macabre thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DEARLY DEPARTED
‘I know what you’re thinking . . .’ Pip’s voice faltered. ‘But if the Rogue Wolves and the Butcher Birds had eaten them, wouldn’t there be feathers or fireflies on the ground?’ She squinted in the gloom at the dark earthen floor. ‘And look! There aren’t any! Maybe they escaped to where the sphagnum moss is, we can’t just—’
‘Pip?’ a voice suddenly uttered above their heads, making them all jump. A yellow-green dot flashed on the ceiling, followed by one after another until the dark chamber twinkled with the glow of fireflies, lighting up hiding places behind the tree roots encasing the walls and ceiling.
‘Amélie!’ Pip cried, watching the spider sink to the ground by a long thread of silk. She landed with her eight legs crumpling. Pip hurried down Madeleine’s fur to meet her. ‘Are you all right?’ She scanned the cavern again. ‘Where’s GI Joe?’
‘He’s hidden up there,’ Amélie said, weakly pointing her tarsus to the wooden tendrils sprawled over their heads. ‘I used all the strength I had to conceal his cocoon within them. The fireflies covered my web with earth they collect
ed from the ground and camouflaged him.’
‘I’ll help them bring him down.’ Pie leaped into the air from Gabriel’s back and fluttered with difficulty around a mound densely woven into the tree roots above. Darting in and out, he slowly pecked around it, his beak gathering clumps of silk as the fireflies hovered nearby.
‘Amélie.’ Pip took one of her tarsi in her paw and gazed into the spider’s ashen face, not knowing what to do. Behind her, Henri lowered his head to the ground and the hedgehog hurried from his nose to join them.
‘Thank goodness you’re safe,’ Amélie said. ‘We were so worried they would find you.’
‘What happened?’ Madame Fourcade asked, crouching beside the spider with a furrowed brow.
‘We were sleeping when we were ambushed.’ Amélie’s eight eyes glistened with tears. ‘The bees must have been overwhelmed – we woke to shrill cries echoing all through the cavern.’ The spider sniffed as she met the hedgehog’s gaze. ‘We’ve always been so careful that we thought we’d never be found, but there were too many of them. We didn’t stand a chance.’
‘What happened to Gaspard?’ Madeleine whimpered, lying flat on her stomach with Gabriel, who was resting his chin sorrowfully between his paws.
‘When we heard the commotion,’ Amélie went on, ‘Gaspard ordered me and the fireflies to take GI Joe with the bats and escape. The bats fled and we feared the worst when we heard screaming intensify outside. GI Joe was too heavy for us to carry with any speed so the fireflies flew us to the ceiling where we all took refuge behind the roots. Then the Rogue Wolves and the Butcher Birds arrived with a white pigeon and they interrogated Gaspard.’ Amélie wept. ‘The pigeon was so cruel to him.’
The hedgehog frowned. ‘Did Gaspard tell them about us?’
‘No, he tried to convince them we were not the Resistance.’ Amélie sniffed. ‘He pretended that he wanted to help the enemy, but our canary Jude had told them everything. Gaspard lied, saying Jude couldn’t be trusted and he’d heard that the Umbrella Mouse had already reached Paris. But the white pigeon didn’t believe him. She ordered the wolves to kill him and she told them to hunt Noah’s Ark on their journey to Paris.’ Amélie took a long, shuddering breath and her voice grew heavy with anger. ‘How could Jude do this to us? What will I do without Gaspard?’ She wept. ‘I’ve spent my whole life living in his horns.’
‘I wish we’d never come to you.’ Madame Fourcade’s eyes glistened with tears as she hung her head in remorse. ‘You came to our aid and we brought the disaster you feared.’
‘This happened because of me.’ Pip trembled, fear and fury rising inside her. ‘Lucia and the Milice are punishing everyone for what I did to her at the Nacht und Nebel camp. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened!’
‘No, we don’t blame you.’ Amélie shook her head sorrowfully with the rest of the Maquis. ‘It’s not just you they are hunting. They want revenge against the whole Resistance for helping the Allies.’
‘Lucia and the enemy could have done us much more damage if you had not helped us in the way that you did, Pip,’ Madame Fourcade said softly. ‘The only way we can stop Lucia and the Milice is to liberate France. Paris will be a victory the enemy cannot ignore and the Allies will push the invaders back to Berlin where they belong. We’re so close to the end,’ she continued, looking up at the grief-stricken animals inside the cavern. ‘The time has come to unite. I know you have worked alone until now, but our betrayal, hurt and anger can be harnessed for the oncoming fight.’
‘Amélie.’ Pip stared earnestly at the spider. ‘Why don’t you and the Maquis join Noah’s Ark and come with us? We’re all fighting the same cause and together we’ll be stronger.’
‘We’d be honoured to have you,’ Madame Fourcade added. ‘The more fighters we have, the sooner we’ll beat the invaders and end this loathsome war. The rest of our group are waiting for us in the catacombs.’
‘Gaspard wanted freedom above all else,’ Amélie said sadly in the green-lit gloom, looking up at the remaining members of the Maquis. ‘The only way we can protect his forest for good is by joining the wider fight and avenging our friends.’
‘But we’ll need to split into two groups,’ Madame Fourcade added as the other animals nodded softly in agreement. ‘It’ll be safer for us all.’
‘There are so few of the Maquis left,’ Pie said, finally detaching GI Joe from the ceiling and gliding to Amélie’s side. ‘The bats and I can take Monique, Amélie and the fireflies, and we’ll meet the rest of you in Paris.’
‘And we’ll come with you as far as we can, Madame,’ Gabriel added, ‘but we cannot go near a city. The humans fear wolves too much. We will stay in the forest and make sure there are no counter-attacks to the Allied advance from the west, just like Gaspard wanted. Madeleine and I will travel with you and protect Henri once we can go no further.’
‘And then I will fight alongside you.’ The stag turned to the wolves, who were gently wagging their tails in approval, and Pip felt better, knowing Henri would be safer with them than on his own.
‘Why didn’t you let me outta this damn bandage and let me fight?’ GI Joe interrupted, floating to the ground on a bed of fireflies, and still tightly wrapped inside his cocoon.
‘You’d have been too weak,’ Amélie said wearily. ‘We promised we would take care of you while your friends were gone.’
‘Being inside this is a prison!’ GI Joe cried. ‘I owe you my life, Amélie and all, and for that I’m truly grateful, but seeing Lucia again . . . and watching her . . .’ He closed his eyes and tried to shake the memory from his head. ‘I felt so helpless! Madame Fourcade, please, I’m begging you. I’ve had all the honey, rest and medicine I can stand! You gotta let me out now!’
‘You certainly sound more like yourself,’ the hedgehog said, glancing at Amélie and the fireflies. The insects nodded softly one after another, too fatigued with grief to argue.
‘Monique,’ Amélie said to the ermine, ‘your teeth will free him the fastest.’
‘I’ll help,’ Pip said, moving over to him.
‘How you doin’, liddle lady?’ GI Joe gazed fondly at her. She smiled sadly in reply and bit her lip, trying her hardest not to cry.
GI Joe’s cocoon was crisp and dry as though he’d been baked inside a stale loaf of bread. With a crunch of their teeth, Monique and Pip prised it away piece by piece, spitting out earthy sphagnum moss as they went. Together they made a large hole over GI Joe’s chest and when Pip could see his feathers beneath she feverishly snapped off bigger chunks with her paws.
‘That’s it!’ GI Joe smiled, wiggling his shoulders and flexing his pink talons in the open air, until at last he burst open his wings and rolled himself on to his stomach. He wobbled to a stand and swayed from side to side. Pip threw herself into his body and supported his weight with her own.
‘Let’s go get these maggots!’ GI Joe cooed, puffing out his chest, and Pip staggered as he lost his balance.
‘We’ll leave as soon as possible, but you are in no fit state to fight, mon ami.’ Madame Fourcade raised her paw as he opened his beak to protest. Recognizing the stubborn expression scored across her face, he promptly closed it. ‘That’s my final word. You won’t be any use until you’ve recovered.’
‘We will all need time to heal from this blow, especially the Maquis,’ Henri said. ‘We must sleep and eat and regather our strength.’
Pip looked at the animals, drooping with exhaustion in the chamber. The weight of the last hours made her feel dizzy and heavy all at once, and her mind whirred with everything that had happened. Sleeping wouldn’t be easy.
‘It’s time for us to split up and get out of this tomb,’ Gabriel said. ‘We’ll take Pip, Madame Fourcade, Henri and GI Joe to our old den where we’ll be safe to rest. It’s half a day’s journey east towards Paris. If we leave now, we’ll arrive before sunset, then we’ll take you to the seagulls tomorrow morning. Hopefully they can help you get into the city.’
Madame Fourcade nodded. ‘Then let’s depart. The longer we wait, the weaker our wits, and we’ll need them intact if we cross paths with the enemy. Everyone: keep your eyes and ears open on the onward journey. They’ll be circling the route to Paris, waiting for us to make a mistake.’
Henri trod into the forest with Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe nestled together on his head, the umbrella carried across his antlers and the wolves flanking him on either side, often raising and dipping their noses for any scent from the Rogue Wolves.
‘Au revoir! ’ Monique and Amélie waved, straddled across Pie, who was flying overhead beside the two bats, and all of them had fireflies clinging to their bodies. ‘À bientôt à Paris!’
Pip waved back, her chest tightening. ‘Will they be all right?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Madame Fourcade said comfortingly, ‘and we’ll get sick with worry if we listen to our fears. We must think of the happiness we’ll feel when we’re reunited, not what trouble we may find ahead.’
‘Come.’ Gabriel picked up pace with Madeleine. ‘Our den is north of Louviers along the banks of the River Seine.’
‘C’est bon.’ Madame Fourcade smiled softly as Henri cantered beside the wolves. ‘We can follow the river, it flows right through the middle of the city, and once we’re there we’ll soon find the white mouse.’
‘How do you know her?’ Pip asked.
‘We’ve never met,’ Madame Fourcade said, ‘but we have communicated by Morse code a number of times. She is famous among the Resistance – she’s a New Zealander who settled in Australia and she’s been in Europe for years. Her love for France and her hatred for the enemy is well known. She’s a spirited fighter and her network has been readying the animal Resistance for an uprising for some time now. They’ll welcome us, you’ll see, and we’ll battle for our freedom together with the rest of Noah’s Ark. You will adore Paris, chérie. The enemy has sullied it with its soldiers and flags, but the city’s beauty still reigns. It did not suffer a Blitz, like London. Britain is protected by water, whereas we border Germany. We were overwhelmed by the invaders and forced to capitulate. You’ll see that Paris is remarkably unchanged.’