by Kaye Chazan
"Well, no. I mean, I'm not supposed to. I wouldn't do it for real or anything."
"So obviously that won't work. We need a real adult to demonstrate. Otherwise, somebody might get the wrong idea about how these things go."
The gangster made a resigned sort of face. "You really want me to come out there?"
Toby nodded vigorously. "Yeah. Just come on out and show me how I get in. Then that way, next time, I'll know and everything."
The gangster sighed. "Fine. Fine. But just this once." The metal window snapped shut.
Toby hurried down out of the chubby girl's hand and onto the ground. He waited at the edge of the doorframe for the heavy door to swing open and the man to step out. When he did, Toby darted in behind his heels, unseen. He paused only briefly to see how long it took the gangster to realize he'd been had. When the shouting and pounding started, he figured it was about time to follow the sound of music wafting down the corridor.
The dark blue velvet curtain that hung at the end of the corridor was worlds apart from the one Toby remembered from The Amazing Brandy's traveling show. It was studded with fine, iridescent crystals that looked like stars on the lush fabric. It was a rich thing.
It was also, he discovered, incredibly heavy. So heavy that he had to press against the wall and push the curtain away from it with his nose, then wriggle through with his eyes shut, using the texture of the wallpaper for traction. He gripped and shoved and squirmed with his whole body, making a small mouse-sized gap until he popped out on the other side—
—right in front of a familiar-looking coyote. Its goggles hung loosely around its neck. It gave Toby an amused look. "Well. What a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect to see you here."
Toby looked at the coyote's paws. They hovered an inch or two above the floor. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm a coyote. Coyotes go everywhere, remember?" It tilted its head to the side. "Something's different about you. You seem a little bit..."
"I'm a mouse."
"Ah! Yes. That explains it."
The coyote led Toby into the bar. Like the streets of the city, it was filled with a wild mix of people and animals, many of whom were dressed in something approximating evening wear. A woman dressed as a 1920s flapper chattered drunkenly to an emu in a tiara. A set of silk-shirted triplets shared a booth with a dour-looking woman and her bespectacled farmer husband, whose pitchfork rested against the wall beside him.
Onstage, a topless woman in a sequined mermaid's costume—or, Toby thought, maybe just a mermaid wearing sequins—reclined on a chaise with a microphone in hand, singing about the things she'd done to some sailor or other before she'd drowned him.
The coyote helped Toby up onto a table, then yipped at a passing waiter. The man—slim, with a thin mustache and a towel over his arm—hurried over and set a cocktail glass down in front of each of them. The coyote primly lifted the swizzle stick out of its drink with its teeth, laid it down on the table, and then fished out an ice cube out of its glass with its tongue. It crunched happily on the ice and watched the stage show with what looked like genuine interest.
Toby placed his paws on the rim of his own glass, which was larger than he was, and took a sniff. The drink smelled strongly of gin and lime. "Are you sure I should be drinking in my present condition?"
The coyote snorted. "Don't tell me you've also managed to get pregnant."
"No, I'm not pregnant! Hello? I'm a mouse."
"I think you'll find that being a mouse and being pregnant are far from mutually exclusive. Have you checked?"
"What? No, I haven't checked! Why on would you even say something like that?!"
The coyote shrugged its haunches and went back to its drink. "I'm not here to police your life choices."
Toby opened his mouth, then closed it.
The coyote rolled its eyes. "As for your other concern, I can't say I'm surprised you’re a mouse. You were practically a mouse the first time I laid eyes on you. Why else do you think you're here?"
"I don't follow."
"Of course not. Otherwise, why would you be here?" The coyote lapped up what was left of its drink. "Why are you here, anyway?"
"Because I'm not really a mouse and I want to change back!"
"Oh?" The coyote nosed its empty glass away. It eyed Toby's with interest. "And what are you really?"
"I'm a human being!"
"Do you know that for sure?" The coyote yawned, licked its chops, and looked Toby over, clearly curious. "You don't look like a human being. You have a twitchy pink nose and whiskers and a long tail."
"If you're going to get into some long monologue about how I'm edible and tiny and unimportant, get in line," Toby grumbled. "I think half the animal kingdom has already gone there in the last twenty-four hours."
"I wouldn't use the word 'kingdom' in here if I were you. Nobody with any power at all is likely to appreciate it. Still, preferred nomenclature aside, that should make this whole thing easier for you to understand," the coyote said and kicked at the air with its paws. "Let me spell this out for you. What do cats do with mice?"
"Eat them?"
"Before that."
Toby thought about it. "Well, I guess they might chase them around. To catch them."
"After that, but before the eating part?"
Toby remembered, suddenly, a field trip his first grade class had taken to a dairy farm. The farmer had walked them around the fields, and showed them the cows, and given them a demonstration of hand milking versus the milking machine. He and his classmates had even been allowed, one at a time, to try hand milking. He'd been near the front of the line, so he'd had time to sort of poke around the barn afterwards.
In one corner, he'd spotted a blanket-lined box with a litter of kittens in it. He was going to ask the farmer if he could play with them when the kittens' mother, a big orange tabby, had padded up with something small and furry in her mouth.
He'd looked on as she dropped the mouse and let her kittens bat at it and chase it around. Whenever the mouse looked like it might escape, the mother cat caught it in her paws or teeth and dropped it back among her kittens until she finally grabbed it by the neck and gave it a shake to kill it.
Toby’s eyes widened. "Are you saying I'm being toyed with?"
The coyote tucked its nose into the collar of its bomber jacket for a wallet, then dropped a wad of slightly-chewed paper money on the table. With surprising dexterity, it managed to get its goggles back on its face. "Now that you understand the gravity of your position," it said with a wink, "I'd better be going." It hopped into the air above the table and trotted toward a high, open window.
"Wait! Come back! What the hell am I supposed to do?"
The coyote looked down at him. "Well, if I understand your role as a mouse correctly, I think you're supposed to run around until you get eaten."
"But I'm not a mouse!"
"No?" The coyote cocked its head to the side. "In that case, you'd better do something else."
Toby looked around the room. Aside from the fur and the funny costumes, it was like any other bar he'd ever gone to alone: He hated the music and everybody seemed like they were having a lot more fun than he was.
"Another drink, monsieur?" the waiter asked as he picked up the coyote's empty glass.
"No thanks. I'm done."
The waiter made a little bow. "Very good, monsieur."
Toby turned toward the table's edge. He could hop from the table's surface down onto his chair, down to the floor from there, and then get the hell out of this place. And then he'd probably get eaten by talking cats with a score to settle—if the gangster he'd tricked on his way in didn't find him first. Failing that, there were always snakes, birds of prey, and homicidal home furnishings.
"It's so nice to know I have options," Toby muttered under his breath and squared up to jump.
Which was when somebody picked him up by the tail.
I tell you what, boy," the cowboy said. "You sure gave us one hell of a ru
n."
Toby kicked at the air. He tried to swing or flip or do any of the things that might get him a little bit closer to the soft bits of the cowboy's hand. None of it worked. "Put me down, you idiot Western stereotype."
"Don't listen to the verminous scoundrel," the continental soldier said, poking at Toby with his bayonet.
The scoutmaster, meanwhile, was examining him with a large, round magnifying glass. "Our invader looks to be a healthy little mouse. Probably urban, based on the coloration. Mice who live in grasslands and fields are usually—"
Toby made a little noise of rage. "If I could spit in your face, you asshole—"
"Language!" the scoutmaster snapped as he brought an empty pickle jar out of his pack and unscrewed the lid, which had several small air holes punched in it.
The cowboy dropped Toby into the jar. Toby tried to scramble up the glass as the scoutmaster screwed the lid shut and put the jar back into the bag, pulling the drawstring shut so Toby was left in almost complete darkness. After a few minutes, the bag began to move. Toby tried to brace himself against the floor and side of the jar as everything bounced, presumably in time with the scoutmaster's stride.
Between the jar and the bag, the sounds of the speakeasy were muted beyond recognition. He could hear the scoutmaster's voice best, though it was more vibration through the man's back and pack than anything else; Toby couldn't understand what he was actually saying, only that he was speaking to someone.
The music of the speakeasy faded. Toby suspected they were walking back down the corridor he'd come through. Soon, he guessed, they'd exit into the alleyway, and then back onto the streets of the city. From there, he had no idea. Back into the forest? To some sort of camp?
Probably to some kind of jail, or maybe some kind of kangaroo court, but with real kangaroos, who would sentence him to death by a really tiny firing squad.
Toby wondered if Lewis Carroll had ever had children. If he had, Toby was pretty sure that hunting them down and giving them a piece of his mind was going to be the first thing on his agenda if he ever managed to get home again. Which didn't seem particularly likely under the circumstances, but he figured that fantasizing wildly about revenge was a reasonable response to his current predicament.
The bouncing stopped. Toby tensed as the bag swung down off of the scoutmaster's shoulders and thudded onto a surface, a motion that sent him sliding and scrambling for purchase against the glass. By rights, and by sheer terror, the light, when the scoutmaster opened the bag and pulled him out, should have been blinding.
Instead, it was candlelight.
The scoutmaster set the jar down on a dark, polished wood table. The cowboy stood nearby, his hat in hand instead of perched on top of his shaggy head. The continental soldier stood at parade rest, his rifle at his side.
"We hunted this little varmint down all the way across the woods. He's a clever one. Lied at the gate and everything."
"Oh?" A woman's voice came from behind a sheer black curtain. "What did he say he was?"
"Gallery owner, ma'am. Also, church mouse."
There was movement behind the curtain, but Toby couldn't make anything out beyond several dark, languorous shapes. "And what do you think he is?"
"Illegal alien, ma'am. With your permission, we'd like to handle him personally. Say the word and we'll be glad to—"
"Shoot him!" the soldier shouted.
"Stuff him and mount him!" the scoutmaster said at the same time.
"—hang him at dawn and leave him for the buzzards," the cowboy said. He gave his companions a sideways glare.
A black-gloved hand pushed the curtain aside, but Toby couldn't see anything else behind it. "I don't think that will be necessary. I know exactly what I have in mind for this little morsel."
"But ma'am, the law says—"
"I wrote the law," the voice growled low, like an animal. A glint of greenish yellow eyes flashed in the darkness, and Toby thought he spotted a hint of sharp teeth. "I can change the law and play with the law and use the law however I like. Now get out of my den."
Toby watched the men bolt, stumbling over the thick pillows on their way to a big door made out of the same sort of wood as the table he was on. The continental soldier wrenched the door open as fast as he could, and the three of them dashed through. The door swung closed on its own.
"Finally. Alone at last."
Toby held very still. He watched the shadows shift and waft around the table like smoke. "I'm guessing you're the Catmistress. A fountain told me about you. It said you could help me."
"Did it? How quaint." A mouth, lips painted a deep red, floated in midair. "And why did he think that, I wonder?"
Toby sat up on his back legs. "Because I'm not what I look like and I want you to change me back."
The Catmistress laughed. It was a soft, liquidy sort of laugh. Toby wasn't sure he liked it.
"You've seen a cat eat a mouse. I know because the greymalkins remember you, watching them in the milk place when they were kits. I'm older than all the greymalkins, and I've eaten more mice than any boy your age could count." Wisps of dark hair and fabric flicked in and out of the shadows. He thought he spotted feathers, too, like a boa, maybe. "We eat mice bones and all, from one end to the other. We wash the blood off with our tongues."
"That speech might have actually scared me a day ago," Toby said, and did his best to puff up into the biggest space his mousy self could manage. He could feel his tiny heart beating impossibly fast. "Is the only conversation that happens in Wonderland about food? Do you just sit around eating each other all day? Because, seriously, if you're going to swish around and talk about how you're going to eat me, it's about damn time somebody went through with it. I've had it with the intimidation. If you're not going to eat me, well... well, just do what you're going to do and get it over with or let me go, because all I really want is to quit being a mouse and go home. I'm getting really tired of all the lead-up."
Silence.
"Hello?" Toby asked after a few minutes.
"Do you know how long it's been since anyone has spoken to me like that?" the Catmistress asked. Her face slowly appeared, mouth then teeth, then eyes and pale white face and long black hair, less than an inch away from the glass of the jar. Her voice was barely more than a whispered hiss.
A pair of gloved hands unscrewed the top of the jar, then slowly tipped it onto its side. At the other side of the table was a minuscule glass bottle that looked suspiciously like a tinier version of the one he'd drunk from in the crow's nest.
Tentative, Toby climbed out over the jar's rim and onto the polished wood. He came to the far edge and picked up the tiny bottle in his paws. The tissue-paper tag was tied on with a bit of red thread. The miniscule print read, simply, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Toby pulled the cork from the top of the bottle with his teeth and raised it to drink.
"Do you know the answer, though?" the Catmistress asked, fully visible now. She wore a sleek, long black dress that hugged the curves of her body. She had a wrap of iridescent black feathers that she toyed with. Her gloves looked soft.
"I know I'm not a mouse."
"No?" she said as she leaned down to examine Toby more closely. "Then why do you look so much like one?"
"I drank a bottle of something while I was trying to get away from your goons."
"You drank a bottle and made a choice," the Catmistress corrected him. She licked her lips. "You're a mouse because you said you are a mouse."
"So if I drink this, I'll be whatever it is I say I am?" Toby asked, eyeing the bottle. He considered the possibilities. He made a rapid list of all the things he could remember wishing he was. "Great. Let's do this."
The Catmistress used a single finger to stop the bottle. "No. It makes you the thing you think you are, deep in your heart. Forever."
Toby looked at the bottle.
"What's the answer to the question, little mouse? Which way do you go? And where are you going? Where have you been?
Are you food? A failure? A king?"
Toby put the bottle down on the table. He picked up the tiny cork and shoved it into the neck of the bottle and pushed it away in frustration. It rolled to the edge, where the Catmistress caught it in her hand. She hid it in the folds of her dress.
"The coyote seemed to think I was here for a reason," he said slowly. "And that I've been acting like a mouse, and that I'm caught and being played with before something eats me."
"Coyotes are liars."
"So are cats."
The corner of the Catmistress's mouth ticked up into a tiny, wry smile. "Finally you understand, little mouse. Let me show you why you're really here."