Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue

by Anna Fargher

Knowing Pip was right, her friends raced into the gap in the floorboard from which the hoglets had emerged, and shuffled the large shard of wood over their heads as quickly as they could. It slotted back into place as if they’d never been there, and Pip stepped beside her umbrella with her blood thundering through her veins.

  A flurry of wings entered the barn and Pip closed her eyes to steady the terror bellowing inside her. Picturing the smiling faces of Mama, Papa, Hans, Léon and Henri, she felt stronger, imagining they were standing with her in the shadows. A moment later, a gust of wind blew about her whiskers and she swallowed, knowing Lucia and the Butcher Birds had arrived.

  ‘All alone with your umbrella, Pip?’ Lucia sneered, landing directly in front of her. Pip met the white pigeon’s milky-blue glare and held her arms close to her body to stop them from shaking. ‘Where have your friends flown off to?’

  ‘I’ll never tell you.’ Pip glowered, trying to ignore the Butcher Birds edging closer from all sides with their black hooked beaks glinting in the shadows.

  ‘I doubt that,’ the white pigeon scoffed. ‘We have ways of making you talk.’ She cocked her head towards her army of shrikes. ‘Take her and the umbrella into the house, and turn this barn upside down for the others.’

  The Butcher Birds burst into the air and swirled about the stable in a dark cloud, pecking at the eaves above and clawing at the planks below. Feeling sick with fear for her friends, Pip clutched the umbrella to steady her quaking, and a moment later, hearing the shrikes screech in frustration at finding no trace of them, the churn in her stomach eased.

  ‘Lift your paws above your head!’ a Butcher Bird snarled, hovering over her with its black-tipped wings brushing her fur. Pip hugged the umbrella tighter, knowing she couldn’t stop them from taking it, but she couldn’t give it up without a fight. In the next moment, another shrike torpedoed into her from behind and she landed flat on her stomach with outstretched paws. Her face slammed against the rough wooden floor and she winced in pain as her cheek was snagged with splinters.

  Two Butcher Birds seized her wrists in their talons and Pip dangled helplessly in the air, high above her friends hidden below the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PIP’S SACRIFICE

  Darkness had fallen when Lucia led her troop of shrikes into the abandoned house through the open front door, left ajar by the orphans and their carers the night before. They passed through a wide corridor decorated with drawings of flowers and bright landscapes, and the rooms inside were quiet, as if grieving for the chatter of children.

  The birds glided into an empty assembly hall overlooked by four tall French doors looming over a parquet floor, illuminated by the cold glow of the moon rising through the thin windowpanes.

  As the shrikes whirled around the room, they dropped Pip from above and she tumbled heavily across the floor. Wincing, she took a deep breath to steady her terror and stood to face Lucia and the Butcher Birds, who crowded round her and the umbrella in a circle.

  ‘At last.’ Lucia smiled as thirty Goliath Rats scuttled out of the shadows to join them. ‘The Umbrella Mouse: the myth, the flame of hope, the heart of the Resistance – pah!’ She spat as if the words scorched her mouth. ‘The rebellion is deluded. Now the story of your downfall will spread and every animal will despise you for your deceit.’

  ‘Whatever you do to me,’ Pip said, holding her little head high but aching with fear inside, ‘the Resistance will never stop fighting you.’

  ‘They will when they know what a fraud you are.’ Lucia’s eyes narrowed bitterly. ‘You’re not on a mission to free Europe from “the Nazi snare”. You’re on a desperate quest not to be alone. You’re a grief-stricken orphan, yearning for a family, unable to let go of your umbrella and your past. Noah’s Ark knows this – it’s what Madame Fourcade used to manipulate you right from the start.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Pip frowned. ‘Madame Fourcade and Noah’s Ark are my friends and the umbrella is my future, not just my past.’

  ‘You don’t honestly believe you ever had a chance of taking it to Northern Italy, do you?’ Lucia scoffed. ‘Madame Fourcade only goes along with it because she knows you need her help getting there. But you never will. She can’t have you leaving Noah’s Ark now she’s made you a symbol of the rebellion. She doesn’t love you, Pip,’ the white pigeon cooed softly, watching Pip’s eyes fill with tears. ‘None of them do. They’ve used you to distract the Resistance from a failing battle that they are destined to lose.’

  ‘I’ll never believe anything you say,’ Pip said through gritted teeth, trying not to let Lucia’s words in, but they twisted painfully in her chest. She’d sacrificed finding her mother’s family in Italy to help Noah’s Ark win the war that had killed her parents. The thought never crossed her mind that Madame Fourcade could be using her. It couldn’t be true. ‘Madame Fourcade and Noah’s Ark are my family.’

  ‘Your need to be loved makes you weak.’ Lucia sighed, her expression softening, moving towards Pip and reaching out her wing to the little mouse’s shoulder. ‘When will you learn that true freedom comes from being alone? Opening your heart gives others power. Being an orphan is a gift – having nobody makes us stronger! Join me and I’ll teach you how to harness its force.’

  Lucia eyes gleamed with earnest and Pip’s insides squirmed. Hans and Léon had warned her how evil preyed upon those who had suffered the most and, for a moment, Pip felt sorry for Lucia. If she was hand-reared by a Nazi pigeon handler like GI Joe thought, she never stood a chance. Her heart and her mind would have been lost from birth. She knew Lucia. Remorse would never come.

  ‘It’s your last hope for survival, Pip,’ Lucia continued. ‘Only the Axis can deliver you and your umbrella to the museum in our territory in Northern Italy. If you cooperate and tell us everything you know about Churchill’s Secret Animal Army and the Resistance, we can take you there tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll never join you or tell you anything about my friends!’ Pip cried out in outrage. ‘A secret is only a secret if it remains unspoken! ’

  ‘Churchill’s Secret Animal Army motto cannot save you now.’ Lucia’s eyes flashed with impatience. ‘No one but us can free the world from oppression, and we will triumph.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Pip said firmly, knowing what she’d seen and heard in Paris. ‘The Allies are winning the war. They’ve liberated Paris and they’re advancing towards Germany from the north, west and south.’

  ‘That’s what we want you to think.’ Lucia plumped her chest feathers with self-satisfaction. ‘Our troops are regrouping and preparing for an attack that the Allied armies cannot withstand. You will perish too if you stay on the wrong side. No one, especially an ordinary little mouse kitten like you, can undermine the might of the Nazi regime and live. This is your last chance. Join us,’ the white pigeon snarled, ‘or die.’

  ‘I’m not scared of you, Lucia –’ Pip met the white pigeon’s cold, blue stare and felt a calm confidence hum through her body – ‘because I know everything you’ve told me is a lie. Being an orphan doesn’t mean I’m alone – I carry everyone I have lost with me wherever I go.’

  ‘How trite.’ Lucia sniggered with her army of Butcher Birds and Goliath Rats, and spittle spewed from their beaks and mouths. ‘Does that mean your friends Hans and Léon are with us now?’

  Pip felt a sharp bite of grief, seeing the same flash of Hans and Léon’s last moments that had haunted her every day since she had broken Madame Fourcade and the others free from the Nacht und Nebel camp. But this time she pushed the image away and chose to remember how they made her feel instead, and at once warmth spread across her chest. She knew she could never bring them back, but their spirits would live on if Pip never gave up their fight.

  ‘Opening your heart to others isn’t weak either – it’s brave,’ she continued defiantly, trying not to listen to the cruel jibes echoing around the room. ‘And having a family means fighting for those you love no matter what. That’s why I stay wi
th Noah’s Ark and Madame Fourcade. We’ve all made sacrifices so that the future will be safe from hatred and tyranny – yet you think the Nazi regime has set you free. You’re the one who is deluded, Lucia, not the Resistance.’

  ‘Watch your mouth,’ Lucia hissed, and silence rippled over the Butcher Birds and Goliath Rats at once. ‘Or you will be sorry.’

  ‘You’ve given up on the world because you cannot forgive it for making you an orphan and a misfit who doesn’t belong.’ Pip’s heart drummed with daring, ignoring Lucia’s threat, and the white pigeon’s feathers ruffled furiously all over her body. ‘You want revenge for your suffering and that’s exactly what the Nazis have used to manipulate you. Now you’re trapped inside Hitler’s iron fist and all of you are going to be crushed by a madman. You need to change sides if you’re going to survive – not me.’

  ‘What do you know of pain and sacrifice?’ Lucia sneered. ‘You’ve had someone protecting you every step of the way. But there’s no one to help you now . . .’ Lucia stepped forward with the Butcher Birds and the Goliath Rats, who bared their teeth as they closed in around Pip and the umbrella. ‘If you won’t give us the information we want, you will be punished. Do you know what the humans do in France? They chop their enemies’ heads off with the guillotine. But somehow –’ Lucia paused, cocking her head in thought, and a sinister smile drew across her beak – ‘I don’t think that frightens you enough.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do to make me betray my friends,’ Pip snapped. She would never reveal anything that could harm them, no matter what Lucia did to her.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lucia’s milky-blue gaze darted to the umbrella. A rush of panic surged through Pip as the Butcher Birds and the Goliath Rats cackled with glee. Seeing Pip’s eyes widen with fear, the white pigeon loomed over her and tut-tutted. ‘What would your parents think of you now? Throwing away your ancestral family umbrella for the sake of a manipulative hedgehog and her band of swindling animals? If anything happens to it, you’ll be betraying your parents’ last wish and failing every umbrella mouse before you.’

  Pip couldn’t speak, her mind flooding with memories of curling up with Mama and Papa in their nest hidden deep inside the umbrella canopy, and wrapping her tail round its metal ribs to watch customers come and go from the umbrella shop in London. Nothing could describe how much she missed the sound of Mama and Papa’s voices or the brush of their fur against hers, and she would do anything to go back and listen to Papa’s stories and tickle her whiskers with Mama’s one last time. The umbrella was the only thing she had left of them and the thought of losing it felt as terrifying as losing her own life. But, as blood rang in her ears, she was sure that all Mama and Papa had ever really wanted was for her to be safe in a world without the menace of war. After everything she had learned since she’d lost her parents in the bomb blast in London, she knew she could survive without the umbrella because the life she’d had inside it would live in her memories forever, just like everyone else she had lost.

  ‘For the last time,’ Lucia snarled, ‘tell me everything you know about Churchill’s Secret Animal Army and the Resistance or my Butcher Birds and Goliath Rats will destroy your family home!’

  Pip shuffled nervously on her paws.

  ‘Answer me!’ Lucia snapped.

  Dread crushed the breath in Pip’s chest. Her friends were too late. She’d gambled the umbrella on them finding help in time and now her last shred of Mama and Papa had met its end. With her heart splintering, Pip turned away from it, and bile rushed up her throat at the sound of gnashing teeth and slashing claws destroying everything she’d ever known.

  But as she began to sob, with grief wracking her little body, suddenly the sound of smashing glass blasted through the assembly room and Pip whipped her head over her shoulder.

  ‘NO!’ Lucia screeched in horror, her beak falling open in disbelief as a storm of seagulls torpedoed through the large windowpanes.

  Lucia and the shrikes leaped into the air and the birds spiralled above Pip’s head in a bitter brawl of beaks and claws. Before the shattered glass scattered across the floor, galloping hooves and thudding paws thundered to the right and Pip’s insides soared, seeing Henri charge into the assembly room with the Maquis’ wolves, Gabriel and Madeleine by his side.

  The stag trampled and stamped while the wolves tore through the hall, ploughing through the Goliath Rats on the ground with their open jaws. But some of the rats were fast, and they jumped, their long, yellow teeth and nails bared for blood. A moment later, Henri, Madeleine and Gabriel thrashed their bodies in pain as bites punctured and ripped through their fur.

  A gull crash-landed with a squawk and Pip gasped as a swarm of Goliath Rats and Butcher Birds pinned it to the floor. As she thought desperately for a way to help it, a shrike dived with its sharp talons flexed. Pip ducked just in time and the Butcher Bird shrieked in frustration as it swooped upwards and returned to the tornado of shrikes and gulls battling above her in a terrifying uproar.

  Pip darted across the floor and yelped as familiar cold, waxy claws clamped round her body and lifted her off the ground.

  ‘It’s all right, liddle lady, it’s me,’ GI Joe reassured her as Pip wriggled with panic inside his grasp. ‘Let’s get you outta this hornet’s nest.’

  GI Joe robustly flapped his wings and charged for the corridor leading out of the orphanage, but a moment later Pip’s breath halted with fear. Through the throng of scuffling birds and rats, Lucia hurtled towards them.

  ‘Look out!’ Pip cried, and GI Joe swiftly swerved from her claws.

  ‘She’s mine!’ the white pigeon growled, darting after him at once.

  GI Joe tucked his wings into his body and plummeted through the air, but Lucia plunged after him at breakneck speed and snapped her beak at the little mouse tightly clasped in his talons.

  As Pip flinched and dodged her biting jaws and GI Joe zigzagged through the whirlwind of seagulls and shrikes towards the hall leading out of the orphanage, suddenly more bounding paws echoed off the walls, and Pip saw the silhouettes of Brian and Bing charge through the shadows. Over the Alsatians’ heads, Philippe rocketed into the room, carrying Leo, scowling with determination, on his back.

  ‘You stay away from her!’ Leo roared as Philippe charged into Lucia and latched his strong claws round her right wing.

  Knocking the flight from her, the white pigeon and the parrot spiralled through the air and hit the floor with a thump. GI Joe landed beside them and Pip met Leo’s warm gaze. It was full of pride and her heart swelled to be near him again. A squeal sounded to their left and their eyes darted to Henri and the wolves, tussling with the mob of rats on the ground. A Goliath Rat flew from Gabriel’s jaws and Pip shuddered at the number of rats and shrikes strewn across the floor. Her eyes searched the room for Madame Fourcade and she prayed she was safely out of harm’s way with her hoglets.

  ‘Get off me!’ Lucia snarled, staggering to a stand.

  Philippe’s thick claws tightened round her and she tumbled to the ground. ‘Kill them!’ she shrieked, eyes roving wildly to the Butcher Birds and the Goliath Rats, but the battle between the shrikes and the seagulls was deafening and none heard her over the din. ‘Kill them all!’

  ‘Let her go, Philippe,’ Leo said, staring up at Bing and Brian sprinting towards them with their lips curling back from their teeth. GI Joe’s hackles rose, and Pip’s blood thudded in her ears at seeing the sky-dogs’ fury.

  ‘Gladly,’ the parrot squawked.

  ‘It’s over, Lucia,’ GI Joe said. ‘Your days of hurting us are finished.’

  Pip knew Lucia’s heart brimmed with venom and her quest for revenge would never cease. She had killed Hans and Léon and brought death and suffering to many more, yet Pip pitied her. To show Lucia mercy and risk her escaping and harming others was too dangerous, and she turned her head from the white pigeon, not wanting to see what would happen.

  Bing and Brian pounced and an explosion of white feathers burst inside
the assembly hall before gently floating to the parquet floor. Minutes later, the feverish scuffle of animals came to an end and, panting with throbbing grazes, bites and bruises, Henri, the wolves, the seagulls and the sky-dogs padded away from the abandoned house to meet their friends.

  Ahead of them, Philippe and GI Joe followed the corridor leading out of the orphanage, and Pip gazed over her shoulder for one last glance at the umbrella, but she quickly looked away, the image of its shredded fabric and crumpled metal frame lying on the floor forever imprinted on her mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE UMBRELLA

  Stars shimmered above the orphanage as Pip was reunited with Madame Fourcade and her hoglets inside the stable, where they had remained hidden under the floorboard since Lucia and the Butcher Birds had taken her away.

  ‘Chérie! ’ Madame Fourcade threw her paws round her with tears streaming down her cheeks. Christian and Béatrice took Pip’s paws in theirs and smiled at the little mouse, their noses twitching. ‘I don’t know how I can ever repay you.’

  ‘Lucia won’t trouble us again.’ Pip smiled, relieved to find Madame Fourcade and her hoglets safe and well. ‘Bing and Brian have made sure of it.’ Now that the fight was over and fear no longer pulsed through her limbs, she was consumed with exhaustion and felt the urgent sting of tears.

  ‘You did a very brave thing facing her on your own like that,’ GI Joe added, wrapping his wing round her shoulder. He drew her close, and Pip felt comforted by the warmth of his body against hers.

  ‘A heroic thing,’ Leo said earnestly as Philippe landed beside them. He dismounted from the parrot and rushed to Pip’s side. ‘We all owe you our lives, topolina.’

  ‘I just did what I could.’ Pip stared at the floor, not feeling proud of what had happened. The terror and violence of it would stay with her for the rest of her life. ‘I couldn’t let her hurt us any more.’