Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue

by Anna Fargher

  ‘Have Lucia or the Goliath Rats tried to come back?’ Pip swallowed as they walked briskly towards the middle of the chamber, where the large crowd of Resistance animals had returned from their sabotage missions and were now mingling together around the stage.

  GI Joe shook his head. ‘There’s been no sign of them, liddle lady. The ravens guarding the entrance at the abandoned railway track haven’t seen them, nor have the other fighters who’ve come back into the catacombs that way.’

  ‘The Axis and the Milice are running back to Berlin with their tails between their legs!’ Leo added.

  Pip tried to smile in reply, but doubt hummed inside her. Lucia’s quest for vengeance wouldn’t let her retreat. It would make her stay, and as she glanced at Madame Fourcade biting her lip with worry, she knew the hedgehog was thinking the same.

  The air in the room was electric as Pip and her friends weaved through the crowded throng of Resistance animals to the other side of the chamber, where Robert the bullfinch and Noor the kingfisher were still sending and receiving Morse code beside the umbrella. Every face Pip gazed up at was smiling and muttering excitedly; some were bandaged and bruised while others were leaning on crutches, but all of them – even the stone-faced rat and raven guards – had the same joyful expression as they chattered to their comrades. Madame Fourcade shared a secretive nod with Robert the bullfinch as they arrived beside him, and GI Joe and Philippe carried the umbrella away under their wings.

  Behind them, two rabbits rolled a bottle of champagne over the rugged, limestone floor. As they neared the stage in the middle of the room, four burly rat guards joined them, unravelling wire and gold foil, and they groaned with effort as they turned the cork, bulging out of its neck.

  ‘Careful!’ Nancy yelled across the room. ‘All that bumping across the ground will make it—’

  A loud POP sounded and the Resistance animals squealed with joy as they suddenly found themselves dripping with bubbling French wine.

  Unknown to them, Madame Fourcade had swiftly led Pip and the others away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE ORPHANAGE

  Deep beneath the feet of the Parisian men and women revelling with the Allied armies that had delivered them from the tyranny of Nazi rule, Pip, Madame Fourcade, Leo, GI Joe, Philippe and the umbrella hurried through the underground limestone quarries and arrived in the trampled flower bed inside the Luxembourg Gardens. Hurrying north-west through the bright afternoon skies, their hearts burst at the sights and sounds of riotous celebration in the city below.

  Men, women and children unfurled in every direction as they cheered for the victorious armies. The birds swooped above the jubilant throng, waving French, American, British and USSR flags and pointing their fingers to the sky in V-signs. Many sang the French national anthem while others threw flowers or leaped upon the soldiers to kiss their cheeks. More watched from rooftops and windows, and Pip giggled, spying an elderly woman clutching a poodle dressed in the same blue, white and red stripes as the tricolour billowing from her balcony in the hot summer breeze.

  ‘This is what freedom looks like,’ Madame Fourcade said behind Pip, straddling GI Joe carrying the umbrella in his talons with Philippe, soaring over the sea of people below.

  As a London mouse in unoccupied Britain, Pip had never known what it meant to be overpowered by another country. Now watching the men and women rejoicing together, she realized how lucky she’d been.

  ‘How long will it be until everybody is free?’ she asked, eyes darting over the triumphant crowd passing beneath them.

  ‘The war isn’t over in France yet,’ Madame Fourcade replied. ‘Even after the success of the advance through Normandy and the liberation of Paris, the invader still holds Atlantic positions to the west and it will take time for the Allies to complete the invasion of the south and east.’ Pip sighed, whiskers drooping on her cheeks. ‘I know it feels like it will never end, chérie,’ the hedgehog continued softly, ‘but it won’t be long before we push the enemy all the way back to Berlin.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Leo added from Philippe’s back, where the parrot was flapping his wings beside them. ‘The human Allied army will be gathering and heading towards the Rhine soon.’

  ‘But they gotta strike fast,’ GI Joe said gravely. ‘They can’t let the Axis armies regroup and regain their strength.’

  Gunfire suddenly erupted below and the throng of people flung themselves flat on the ground. Panicked cries rang out as men and women covered their heads, and mothers and fathers shielded their children.

  ‘Snipers!’ GI Joe cried, swiftly swerving with Philippe.

  ‘I thought they had surrendered!’ Pip gasped at the smoke rising from a building to their left, and Allied soldiers and Resistance fighters on the ground instantly aimed their rifles at its open windows. Pip’s hackles rose. Even in times of triumph nobody was safe.

  ‘They did!’ Leo flinched with the others as bullets ripped the air open.

  ‘GI, Philippe – fly as fast as you can!’ Madame Fourcade cried as they looked over their shoulders at the gunfight, abruptly quietening, and the men and women tentatively peeled their bodies off the ground and continued celebrating. ‘We have to get to my hoglets before anything happens to them!’

  Storming over the rooftops, GI Joe and Philippe followed Madame Fourcade’s directions north-west. They soared towards the sun creeping to the horizon for the rest of the day, leaving the city behind them, and tracked the familiar shimmer of the Seine, which snaked through yellow and green fields.

  The clouds were gleaming with the first silvers of twilight when Pip recognized the woodlands and willow trees where they’d said farewell to Henri with the seagulls. She hoped they knew the battle for Paris had been won. Each act of resistance all over Normandy had contributed to the Allied success, and every fighter, big or small, animal or human, deserved to be proud.

  Madame Fourcade pointed them towards a small town, separated from its northern outskirts by the River Seine. Its buildings were jagged and torn by recent bombing raids, but as the birds descended they breathed easier, spying the domed helmets and khaki uniforms of the Allied army on its shorelines. In the heat of the summer evening, many of the men worked bare chested, assembling decking over a long line of large empty canoes, bobbing across the water.

  ‘Look!’ Pip beamed, pointing her paw to a completed floating bridge. A group of soldiers were walking across it and two Alsatians bounded ahead of the men.

  ‘Who are they?’ Leo asked, ears pricking as they stared at the dogs below.

  ‘Brian and Bing – the sky-dogs!’ Pip replied. ‘They parachute with army platoons and protect the men on the ground. We met them on the way to Paris.’

  The pigeon and the parrot swooped to fly alongside the Alsatians and Pip called out their names.

  ‘Hello!’ Bing leaped into the air with a wagging tail. ‘How was Paris, Pip?’

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t join you –’ Brian smiled with his long pink tongue dangling out of his mouth – ‘but we hear our French and Americans friends arrived.’

  ‘They sure did,’ GI Joe cooed.

  ‘And now Paris is liberated!’ Pip cried.

  Bing continued trotting along with his head held high. ‘We’re heading east through France and Belgium to do the same.’

  ‘Once we’ve rested overnight with our men,’ Brian added. ‘We had some trouble securing this part of the river, but the humans in the Resistance helped us, sabotaging that road bridge over there and liberating the southern part of the town before we arrived.’

  Brian gestured with his nose to a tall overpass crossing the water to the left. One of its six thick concrete legs had been blown away, destroying the road above.

  ‘Look at that!’ a soldier suddenly gasped behind them, pointing to the bizarre group of animals carrying an umbrella in the air beside the dogs.

  ‘You best be off,’ Bing said.

  ‘Hurry, GI Joe, Philippe,’ Madame Fourcade urged as t
he birds climbed into the air again. ‘We don’t have any time to waste!’

  The men murmured in astonishment at the strange sight of an African Grey parrot and a pigeon swiftly swerving an umbrella to the left across the river towards the fringes of the town where a secluded house overlooked the water.

  The sky was ablaze with sunset when they reached the orphanage upon the hill, surrounded by tall oaks and fir trees looming above the riverbank. The birds landed at the edge of a grassy glade and a chill rippled over Pip’s fur, as if a cool breeze floated on the wind, but not a single leaf stirred in the dense evening air.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right place, Madame?’ GI Joe whispered, amber eyes darting around the glass windows that glared with the scarlet clouds above. The animals cocked their ears. An eerie stillness enveloped the clearing. No birds tweeted; no crickets cheeped. Even the trees stood silently as though trying not to be heard. ‘I don’t think there are any orphans here.’

  ‘The children must be on an excursion or may have been evacuated from the recent battle.’ Madame Fourcade’s voice was unconvincingly cheery, and Pip and the others glanced at one another uneasily. ‘The swallows and my little hoglets wouldn’t have left their hiding place, in any case.’ She patted GI Joe’s wings, signalling him and the parrot to carry the animals and the umbrella inside. ‘Let’s go.’

  The birds launched into the air and flew to the back of the building where a large redbrick stable stood in a meadow of long, parched grass, dotted with wilted sunflowers. They landed and the mice and hedgehog dismounted, Madame Fourcade’s paws trembling as she pushed aside a large rusty grate leaning against the lowest bricks of the barn. Revealing a hole the size of a large shoebox, the hedgehog scurried inside, followed by GI Joe, then Philippe, carrying the umbrella tucked under their wings. Pip’s heart filled with dread as she padded forward with Leo, flattening his ears beside her.

  The animals padded into the barn towards an open stable door that framed the sunset-drenched glade beyond and softly illuminated an empty hay manger fixed to the wall above an aged wooden floor, scattered with feathers and blades of straw.

  ‘There used to be chickens here . . .’ Madame Fourcade’s voice wavered, and she rushed to a row of nesting boxes on the ground to the right. Feverishly scrabbling at the bedding in the middle alcove, she uncovered a secret burrow beneath and slipped her head inside.

  Seconds passed, as if in slow motion, and Pip didn’t dare look at the others shifting nervously on their paws and claws. With her throat tightening, she stared at a spider’s web spiralling from the timber wall and her thoughts drifted to Amélie. Her silk had treated so many, but Pip knew some wounds never fully healed and, clenching her little paws into fists, she willed for Madame Fourcade to find her hoglets inside.

  Madame Fourcade reappeared a moment later, panic shaking her quills. ‘They’re not here.’ Her words struck Pip and the others like a blow to the chest and their eyes glistened with sadness, seeing the agony seizing the hedgehog’s face. ‘Swallows!’ Madame Fourcade cried, her gaze desperately spinning round the eaves of the stable where four barren nests clung to each corner of the barn. ‘Swallows! Please answer me! Where are you?’

  A cold silence replied and then they saw them. On the far side of the barn, near the open stable door, two birds with the same inky-coloured wings and forked tails that Pip had seen before in the forest were slumped on the ground. Their necks were collapsed and their wings were splayed unevenly. Pip covered her mouth with her paws, realizing their feathers were plucked and torn.

  ‘Swallows!’ Madame Fourcade yelled, skittering towards them, but no answer could come.

  Pip went to her, not knowing what to say or do. Behind them, GI Joe, Leo and Philippe bowed their heads.

  ‘Christian! Béatrice!’ Madame Fourcade sobbed, paws bunching up at her prickly forehead in despair. ‘Please! I can’t have lost you now. Not after everything . . . not when we’re so close to the end.’

  Madame Fourcade whimpered and Pip took her paw in her own and squeezed it in the same way the hedgehog had done so many times for her. As their eyes met, Madame Fourcade’s face crumpled with sorrow and Pip flung her arms round her. Madame had ached from being separated from her young and every moment she’d spent fighting the war with Noah’s Ark was so that her hoglets could grow up in a world free of tyranny and cruelty. But now they were gone, and tears brimmed as Pip thought of how much the hedgehog had done for her since they had met. She would do anything to take her pain away. She just wished she knew how.

  GI Joe, Leo and Philippe edged closer and wrapped their paws and feathers around them. Their quiet, collective warmth steadied Pip and Madame Fourcade, who wept into Pip’s shoulder.

  ‘Mon dieu,’ Philippe suddenly said under his breath.

  ‘Holy cow!’ GI Joe squawked, lifting his head towards the scratching and shuffling sounds to their right. ‘Madame! Pip! You’re not gonna believe it!’

  Pip and Madame Fourcade sniffed as they untangled themselves from their grip and looked into their friends’ astonished expressions. A large shard of cracked wood was shifting in the floor by the wall.

  ‘Over there!’ Leo pointed his paw to two little prickly faces peeking out from beneath the wood. ‘Look!’

  The bigger one blinked – ‘Mama?’ – and Madame Fourcade’s mouth fell open as she turned to her son.

  ‘Mama!’ her daughter cried.

  Both hoglets scrambled out of their hiding place and jumped into their mother’s open arms. Covering one another in hugs and kisses, joyful laughter filled the stable, and Pip and her friends beamed with relief that hope was not lost. Watching Madame Fourcade reunite with her hoglets, the end of the war seemed closer, the possibility of the future was brighter and, for the first time, Pip allowed herself a rush of excitement, imagining herself inside the umbrella museum in Gignese.

  ‘Mon coeur,’ Madame Fourcade said at last, ‘what happened to the chickens and the swallows and where are the humans in the orphanage?’ Christian and Béatrice’s faces fell, catching sight of the remains of the two birds who had cared for them for so long. ‘It’s all right,’ Madame Fourcade said softly, guiding their gazes away from the swallows by gently turning them round. ‘Quickly, tell me what you saw.’

  ‘Late last night –’ Christian stared at the floor – ‘Axis soldiers arrived in trucks and took all the humans in the house away.’

  ‘And they snatched the chickens,’ Béatrice whimpered. ‘It was horrible, Mama. All of them were screaming.’ Madame Fourcade hushed her daughter and drew her into her furry chest. Pip remembered her mother doing the same for her when she was upset, and sighed sadly, wishing she could feel her embrace again.

  ‘As soon as they drove away, the swallows hurried us under this floorboard. It wasn’t long before we heard more voices and we lifted the board just a little to see what was happening. Huge rats and a swarm of grey birds with black markings around their eyes had surrounded the swallows over there.’ Christian pointed to the stable door as his sister wept beside him. ‘They were looking for you, Mama. They said Rémi told them about the orphanage, but the rest of the swallows pretended they didn’t know who he was.’

  ‘Then they killed them,’ Béatrice added, sniffing.

  ‘Where did those grey birds go, mon coeur?’ Madame Fourcade asked urgently, crouching low in a desperate bid to make them feel safer. ‘Have you seen them again? Are they still here?’

  Pip’s heart thudded in her ears and the animals’ breath grew shallow, seeing fear snatch the voices from the hoglets’ throats.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know, Mama,’ Christian replied at last. ‘We’ve been—’

  At that moment, countless wings drummed outside the barn, and Pip and her friends froze as a chilling voice cried out in the gathering gloom.

  ‘Oh, little Miss Umbrella Mouse!’ Lucia sang, as though they were old friends playing a game. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are! We know you’re in there!’

&
nbsp; ‘Mon dieu,’ Madame Fourcade whispered, drawing her hoglets close as claws scratched the roof over their heads. ‘We’re trapped!’

  ‘We can outfly those worms,’ GI Joe said firmly. ‘Put your hoglets on my back and let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Come on!’ Leo frowned at Pip, standing rooted to the ground as the others hurried on to the birds.

  Pip hesitated, her mind racing. ‘If they catch us, all of us will fall. It’s me they want, not you.’

  ‘No, chérie.’ Madame Fourcade shook her head. ‘You are a symbol of resistance in the fight against evil. They’ll make an example of you and show you no mercy. You must come with us now!’

  ‘No!’ Pip cried, her heart pounding with an idea. The thoughts rushing through her head terrified her, but Lucia had to be stopped, and there was only one way she knew how. ‘Two mice, three hedgehogs and the umbrella will be too heavy. The risk of capture is too high.’

  ‘No, liddle lady,’ GI Joe cooed, ‘we can outfly—’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Pip’s hackles rose. ‘We’re out of time! All of you, hide under that floorboard now! I’ll give myself up and you need to follow wherever they take me. Then you need to split up.’ She whipped her head to the parrot carrying Leo, who was staring at her incredulously. ‘Philippe, go into the town and shout for Brian and Bing. Bernard Booth instructed them to help us and they’ll come to our aid when they find out what’s happened.’ She turned to the pigeon and the hedgehogs next. ‘GI Joe, fly as fast as you can to the seagull colony in the willow tree. They’re the only creatures we know who have beaten the Butcher Birds and Lucia before. I hope you’ll be able to find me . . .’ The possibility of never seeing them again stole her breath from her lungs for a moment. ‘So go!’ she cried. ‘Now!’

  ‘But, chér—’ Madame Fourcade pleaded.

  ‘I’m begging you! Hide!’ Pip trembled, hearing the Butcher Birds’ shrieks as they neared the open stable door. ‘Before it’s too late!’