Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue

by Anna Fargher

  The seagull glared at the white wolf with a furious, stony stare.

  ‘Relax, Claude,’ Madeleine said calmly. ‘We told them because we trust Pip and her friends, and so can you.’

  Together, Madeleine, Pip and Madame Fourcade recounted the days and events that had brought them to the willow tree and soon the seagulls yeowed excitedly, listening to Pip’s story and the plan for the animal’s onward quest.

  ‘We’ve heard of you,’ Claude remarked, ‘but I thought you were a myth, teaching the Resistance that even the smallest creatures can make a big difference.’ Pip shifted awkwardly on her paws. His cold, pale gaze made her insides turn. ‘We know Paris and the Resistance groups operating within it very well. Our scouts are due back soon, then we’ll report their findings to you. If it’s safe to enter Paris, we can carry you, your umbrella, the hedgehog and that skinny pigeon too if you wish.’

  ‘Thank you –’ Pip breathed easier – ‘but we need to tell you something.’ She swallowed, seeing Gaspard and the Maquis flash inside her mind. The gulls stared up at her and a few kek-keked, with their white heads darting from side to side. ‘A white pigeon and an army of Butcher Birds are not far from here. They know we are heading to Paris and they’ll interrogate and kill anyone who stands in their way.’

  A ripple of laughter spread through the gulls. Pip frowned. She hadn’t met anyone who didn’t fear the Butcher Birds.

  ‘We’re not afraid of those little crétins.’ Claude chuckled gleefully. ‘They found us this morning, and, oui, they were looking for you.’

  He turned his head to where the fine branches of the willow tree skimmed the grassy riverbank outside. Beneath the veil of leaves, Pip’s eyes fell on clusters of grey feathers beyond the canopy and she gasped, realizing that small, grey bodies were scattered across the ground.

  ‘We taught them a lesson they’ll never forget,’ Claude said bluntly. ‘Those that survived won’t dare come near us again. Twenty of us will travel to Paris this time, then they’ll be the ones who are fleeing, not you.’

  ‘What about the white pigeon?’ Pip squeaked, seeing no white feathers or any bodies that were big enough to be Lucia’s.

  ‘That coward?’ Claude scoffed. ‘She bolted when we attacked.’

  ‘If Lucia is scared of the gulls, then they will be the perfect bodyguards for us, chérie,’ Madame Fourcade whispered in Pip’s ear. Pip swallowed, not feeling so sure.

  ‘Paris is vast and has many Resistance networks,’ Claude went on. ‘Who is your contact?’

  ‘The white mouse,’ Madame Fourcade answered.

  ‘You mean Nancy!’ he chortled. ‘She’s a funny one. She’s organizing the different Resistance groups into an army with the stray cats and dogs in the city. The coypus, rats and ravens are also helping. We’ve known them since the beginning.’

  ‘Coypus?’ Pip’s face scrunched up, wondering what the word meant.

  ‘They have bodies like beavers,’ Madame Fourcade said, ‘and tails like rats – so a beaver-rat, if you will.’

  Pip put the two together in her mind and felt a rush of desire to meet one.

  ‘Their hideout is beside Colonel Rol’s bunker – a human leader of the Paris Resistance,’ Claude continued, enjoying Pip’s excited expression, and puffing out his chest proudly. ‘They’ve harnessed his electricity and they also secretly listen into Colonel Rol’s progress so the animals can help the uprising in the most effective way.’

  ‘Génial! ’ Madame Fourcade smiled. ‘We’ve been instructed to find her in the catacombs via a hidden entrance in the Luxembourg Gardens.’

  ‘There are many covert doors into the catacombs, Madame,’ Claude interrupted, ‘and we do not use that one for delivering intelligence. There is a swifter route we take by way of an abandoned railway track called La Petite Ceinture, but it’s dangerous. If I take you, you must abide by my rules.’

  A sudden clatter of wings sounded outside, and Pip and her friends flinched as three gulls torpedoed through the willow branches and landed among the colony. The birds jumped into the air with shrieks of surprise, and Pip covered her ears against the din.

  ‘Good news!’ one of the new arrivals cawed, her chest heaving up and down from the effort of fast flying. ‘The human Allied army has encircled the enemy around the Falaise Pocket and forced thousands to surrender! The Allies are travelling east towards Paris and there’s a real chance they can deliver the military aid we have been waiting for! The Resistance in Paris can rise!’

  The animals inside the willow canopy roared with excitement. Madame Fourcade wrapped Pip in her arms and squeezed her tightly while GI Joe enveloped them both with his wings. Madeleine and Gabriel nuzzled one another with wagging tails and Henri hopped on his hooves with joy.

  ‘Say goodbye to the wolves and the stag,’ Claude said brusquely before turning and pointing his wing into the crowd of birds, selecting twenty, twitching their wings in readiness to fly to Paris.

  Pip’s breath caught in her throat. How could she say goodbye to Henri after everything they had been through?

  ‘Hurry up!’ Claude waggled his tail impatiently, seeing Pip hesitate. ‘We need to deliver our news! We see better in daylight. Our flight is safer before the moon rises.’

  ‘It’s time.’ Henri lowered his head.

  Madame Fourcade padded down his face to hop on to the grass and GI Joe leaped with a flap of his wings and landed clumsily on the ground beside her.

  ‘We must go, chérie.’ The hedgehog smiled sadly at Pip, who sat wretchedly between Henri’s ears. She had made a promise to help Noah’s Ark end the war that had taken so much from them all. Only then could she make her final journey to Italy to find her mother’s family in the umbrella museum.

  Clambering down the bridge of Henri’s nose, she reached the grass and threw her paws round his snout, trying to think of the words to tell him how much he meant to her, and she wept, finding none.

  ‘I don’t know how to say goodbye to you,’ she sniffed.

  ‘So let’s not say it.’ Henri’s mahogany eyes gleamed. ‘After all, who knows how soon we may see each other again? At times like these, we should say bon courage.’

  ‘Bon courage, Henri,’ she whispered, hugging him tighter.

  ‘Besides, goodbyes don’t mean the end,’ Henri continued softly, ‘they mean the start of something new.’

  Pip released him from her embrace and traced the curve of his nose with her paw. She never wanted to forget his face, the texture of his fur and his head of antlers where he had carried her and her umbrella so many times.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Claude squawked, beating his wings with irritation.

  ‘It’s up to fate to bring us together again.’ Madeleine briskly pressed her head against Pip’s. ‘We’ll keep Henri safe.’

  ‘Goodbye, little one,’ Gabriel added, giving Pip a small lick with his tongue.

  ‘We are still Noah’s Ark even if we are not together –’ Madame Fourcade wrapped her paw round Pip’s shoulder – ‘and the war is not won until the enemy is stopped, so bon courage, mes amis, and fight hard. I have faith that we will meet again.’

  Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe mounted the gulls, and as the birds launched into the air through the veil of fine willow branches. Pip looked over her shoulder for one last glimpse of Henri, and her heart swelled, seeing him rear up on to his hind legs to bid them farewell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TO PARIS

  Pip squinted in the bright afternoon sunshine as the seagulls soared over tall hedgerows and fields, unfurling into the distance like a gargantuan patchwork quilt below. She and Madame Fourcade straddled the back of a gull flying beside another carrying GI Joe. Both clasped the umbrella between their beaks, and together they charged through the sky in the middle of the flock of birds.

  For what felt like an age, the birds swiftly followed the silver line of the river over woods, farmlands, tiny islands and small bridges, stretching over the water between villages and towns
far below. Pip couldn’t prise her eyes from the view, and eagerly leaned her head over the side to watch the world go by with Madame Fourcade.

  ‘It’s beautiful!’ Pip cried. ‘You can see for miles!’

  ‘I knew you shoulda been born a bird,’ GI Joe cooed, roosting contentedly beside them, ‘and what a way to travel!’ He yawned and wiggled his tail feathers. ‘I could get used to this.’

  The afternoon drew on and when twilight blushed the clouds the landscape ahead began to change. Beyond the pastures, the stark, unmistakeable shape of buildings grew from the ground. As they multiplied, Pip shuddered, seeing the ruins of a factory that had been torn to pieces by a bombing raid some time before.

  Within an hour, a sea of tall, cream houses passed beneath them, towering over open squares, long streets and wide tree-lined boulevards. Pip’s eyes pored over countless chimneystacks and grey rooftops, dotted with domes and church spires, and windows stared out in all directions, mirroring the soft pink and fuchsia sky above.

  ‘Paris!’ Madame Fourcade beamed.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ GI Joe cooed. ‘I’ve never seen it in a sunset like this. She’s pleased to see you, liddle lady!’

  Happiness rose inside Pip at seeing a city again. She had left London to find Noah’s Ark only a few weeks before, yet it felt like a lifetime ago. As much as she liked her new home in the countryside with her friends, she was an urban mouse, used to the hustle and bustle of a city; the sound of footsteps on pavements, jingling bells on doors, horns on cars and rumblings of buses. It wasn’t until now that she realized how much she’d missed it, and she wished with all her heart that Mama and Papa could be with her now to see Paris for themselves.

  The seagulls descended and giddiness gripped Pip’s insides as she eyed the metropolis below. Some roads were blocked as men, women and children piled furniture, sandbags and debris across them, and bright awnings covered café and shop doorways along streets papered with written posters that she couldn’t make out. Men and women were stopping to read them and furtively rushing across the pavements on foot or gliding away on bicycles.

  There were almost no cars passing them. Instead horses or bicycles pulled small carriages, and, as Pip’s gaze drifted over beautiful monuments and buildings, she swallowed, spotting huge scarlet swastika flags, billowing above them in the evening breeze.

  ‘Look!’ GI Joe pointed his wing to the right where a latticed iron tower shaped like an elongated letter ‘A’ loomed over the tallest buildings.

  Pip gaped, recognizing it at once. ‘The Eiffel Tower!’

  ‘When Paris fell and the enemy tried to claim it as their own –’ Madame Fourcade grinned – ‘the French Resistance cut the wires to the elevators to ensure Hitler could never reach its summit. And when the invaders climbed it to fly their hideous flag, the humans said it was so big it blew away. But what really happened was that the birds in the animal Resistance pecked it down and it was carried away by the wind.’

  Pip giggled with Madame Fourcade and GI Joe as they passed the tower, devoid of any flag.

  ‘Do you think the humans will ever know how much animals have helped them fight the war?’ Pip wondered out loud.

  ‘They would never believe it, chérie!’ Madame Fourcade laughed. ‘Aha!’ She pointed her paw to the left of the river, where a vast stone arch stood in the middle of a huge roundabout. ‘That’s the Arc de Triomphe! It honours those who have fought and died in wars since the French Revolution to the First World War.’

  Pip looked down at a huge circle with twelve leafy boulevards stretching from it into the city beyond, and she felt a tug in her chest, reminded of Amélie hanging from her spider’s web with her legs splayed out around her.

  ‘Look!’ Pip cried, spotting a mass of tanks and trucks, winding round the arch and speeding down a leafy boulevard ahead. The flight of gulls darted their heads towards it, and filled the air with excited yeows.

  ‘That’s more than your average army battalion,’ GI Joe cooed.

  ‘They’re heading east,’ Madame Fourcade added. ‘They could be in retreat! Fewer soldiers mean an easier liberation! Hurry to the white mouse in the catacombs!’

  The seagulls burst forward over the Paris rooftops past the domed, ornate roof of the Grand Palais and continued following the River Seine, flowing under bridges, past men and women ambling home along the promenades for curfew. Some stopped to talk to one another and their paces were energized after each encounter. Pip felt butterflies in her stomach, feeling sure good news was spreading.

  The gulls approached a large square with a tall obelisk pointing into the sky between two ornate fountains, and swerved sharply to the right past the great gilded dome of Napoleon’s tomb. On and on they flew over countless chimneystacks and streets peppered with more people constructing home-made roadblocks, and as Pip spotted a big bronze lion with a proud regal face staring into the city from the middle of a large road junction, the birds began to sink lower in the sky. They continued south, a verdant green park soon appearing, and a few minutes later they plunged below the treeline and arrived in a corridor with a narrow, disused train track stretching deep beneath the streets above it: La Petite Ceinture.

  Rugged walls covered with creepers towered over wildflowers, and long grass grew around the timber rail sleepers, running into a black tunnel with a speck of sunset glowing at the far end. Passing through a waterfall of ivy cascading over the opening, the seagulls swooped inside and landed in the gloom.

  ‘Where are we?’ Pip asked, hearing staccato drips of water thudding nearby as they dismounted the gulls, still grasping the umbrella between their beaks.

  ‘No history lessons now.’ Claude waddled forward. ‘This place attracts unsavoury animals.’ The other gulls kek-keked with unease. ‘Follow me. One of many secret entrances to the catacombs is this way.’

  It was then that a strange guttural cackle sounded in the tunnel ahead and Pip and her friends stiffened, their eyes roving wildly around the gloom. A dry, rasping growl sounded and the seagulls encircled Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe in a barrier of outstretched wings and sharp beaks.

  ‘Show yourself!’ Claude cawed, his pales eyes squinting in the darkness. ‘Now!’

  ‘Show yourself! ’ the creature echoed. ‘Now! ’

  A jittery feeling of dread swept over Pip as a sinister scratching sounded ahead, and she edged closer to Madame Fourcade, trembling beside her.

  ‘SHOW YOUR—’

  ‘ARRRRRRGH!’ the creature suddenly screeched, rocketing upwards in a cloud of dirt, and the seagulls leaped into the air in a deafening din that reverberated around the tunnel.

  Pip, Madame Fourcade and GI Joe held their breaths, hearing guffaws of laughter fill the gloom. A strike of a match fizzed and, as its flame settled, it illuminated a gap in the train tracks where a timber sleeper had been levered open with a pole from below. Sitting with their legs dangling into the hole, were a mouse and a raven, holding burning matches and throwing their heads back in a fit of giggles. An African Grey parrot landed in a clatter of wings beside them and relief flooded through Pip and her friends when they realized the menacing creature was really just a group of pranksters.

  ‘Leo?’ Claude scowled. ‘Is that you, you rogue?’

  ‘I couldn’t resist.’ the mouse chuckled breathlessly. ‘Philippe and I saw you arrive. It was too easy.’

  The parrot’s head bobbed with laughter. ‘We just got here ourselves.’

  ‘Don’t give me that look, Claude. Think of poor Max!’ Leo’s Italian voice was musical, warm and mischievous. He wrapped his paw around the raven sitting beside him. ‘He keeps watch all day and all night waiting for something to happen – he deserves a little thrill.’

  ‘It’s meant to be a secret entrance, Leo,’ Claude scolded. ‘Your little thrill has created enough noise to wake the dead.’

  ‘It won’t need to be secret for much longer.’ Leo smiled. ‘Haven’t you heard? Our liberation is nearing! The Parisians have
been called to arms! Posters are all over the city.’

  Pip thought of the people she had seen reading papers pasted in the streets, and a flutter of excitement rose inside her.

  ‘The battle began early and the enemy is weak,’ continued Leo. ‘A flimsy ceasefire has been agreed which is giving the Allied armies more time to near Paris. The Axis troops are using it to retreat, but the Parisians are trying to block the main routes with barricades! The humans are building them all over the city, just like they did in the French Revolution, and we’re going to help them win the fight when the uprising starts again! We’ll kick the stinking Nazis out of Paris and France, and then the rest of Europe! The war will be over soon!’

  ‘Don’t get cocky, Leo.’ Claude glared down his beak at the mouse. ‘We haven’t won the war yet.’

  ‘You’re just upset because we scared you –’ Leo winked – ‘but it didn’t do you any harm. Your pride is a little bruised, that’s all. We must remember how to laugh in wartime!’

  Pip couldn’t remember the last time she’d really laughed about anything; she wondered if she ever could after everything that had happened.

  ‘Enough of this,’ Claude interrupted. ‘You’re wasting our time. Let us into the catacombs.’

  ‘Exactement,’ Madame Fourcade added. ‘We must start sabotaging the enemy at once!’

  ‘Who’s that you’re hiding?’ Max frowned, not recognizing the hedgehog’s voice.

  Opening a square of card on the floor beside him, he tore out a fresh match. He lit it from the one that had almost burned away, threw the other into the hole to expire, and walked urgently over to the gulls.

  ‘Mamma mia! ’ Leo cursed in Italian, his own match burning his paw. He tossed the charred remains to the ground and hopped up to follow the raven with Philippe.

  ‘Show yourself!’ Max squawked, feathers ruffling nervously.