by Lynne Jonell
“Don’t get too happy, Professor,” Emmy warned. “You don’t need another nap. Besides, I still need to grow and get home.”
“You’re right, my dear,” said Professor Capybara, wiping his eyes. “I’ll endeavor to remain calm. But I think what you gave her will work quite well; we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“So now,” said Emmy, “we just have to pick something that will work for my parents. See, the chinchilla footprint has been wearing off, but it takes longer and longer each time.”
Professor Capybara looked suddenly serious.
“But if we can just get them to stay in town, maybe we can figure out an antidote, or something.”
The professor nodded. “All right, my dear. I have my notes here, and the bottles in the cabinet, and the rodents in the back room. I’ll do my best to help.” He looked around the floor. “But where have Cecilia and Raston gone?”
“Pawball,” said Emmy and Joe together.
“Bring them back here, would you please? You need Sissy’s kiss to grow—and in the meantime, perhaps I can find something for you. Now, Brian, where does Cheswick keep my charascope?”
The game was still in its second quarter; there had been a lot of time-outs. “Every time a cat comes by,” Mrs. Bunjee explained, “or anyone else at all, the lookouts whistle and we all dive for the nearest gopher hole. Once, that awful Mrs. Bee across the street woke up and threw a flowerpot, and we all stayed underground until her light went out.”
Joe turned his head. “Threw a flowerpot? She must be nuts.”
“But isn’t Raston playing? And where’s Sissy?” Emmy scanned the field, but it was hard to pick one rodent out from the mass of furry backs jostling in the moonlight for a small, leather ball.
“I haven’t been paying much attention, dear—I’ve been collecting dew and seeds for halftime. This red wagon of yours is lovely for snacks!”
Emmy didn’t answer, for she had just located the Rat. He was on the sidelines, his shoulders hunched, and he was not wearing a jersey.
Joe shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you see Sissy anywhere?”
Emmy shook her head.
“I’ll scout around,” said Joe, drifting off through the scrubby grass.
A whistle blew, sharp and shrill. Buck’s voice rose clearly from the field. “Okay, Chippy, Traft’s hurt. Who do we have for a sub?”
The Rat cleared his throat loudly. Chippy ignored him.
“Scurrie, you go in for Traft,” said Chippy in a low voice to a ground squirrel.
“But what about meeee?” Emmy heard the Rat wail as the whistle blew again.
“Listen, Ratso, or whatever your name is,” said Chippy, his voice rising in exasperation, “I’ve told you and told you. You’re not on the team! You haven’t practiced with us—I don’t know if you’re any good—”
Mrs. Bunjee’s head went up. “Nonsense, Chipster. Of course Raston can play if he wants to. He’s our guest.” She marched to the pile of jerseys, ignoring Chippy’s look of anguish. “What’s your size, Raston?”
“S, for speedy,” said the Rat, swaggering a little.
“Fweeet! Fweeeeet!” The whistle blew twice, louder and more piercing than before. The rodents poured off the field and mobbed the snack cart. The Rat smoothed his jersey with a fond paw and explained the fine points of the game to anyone who would listen.
“Fweeet!” went the whistle again, and both teams trotted to the center line. Raston, swinging his paws with athletic enthusiasm, trotted to the halfback position and got down on all fours.
“He’s going to get creamed,” said Emmy gloomily.
EMMY SAT HUDDLED on a little rise of grass, watching the progress of the game. She knew she should help Joe search for Cecilia, but she couldn’t quite make herself do it. It had to be three in the morning, or even later, and her brain felt fuzzy.
“Fweeet!” The whistle blew again. The referee shook his paw at Raston and held up a yellow card. “Tail pulling. Penalty kick.”
Emmy watched as one of the gophers took three long steps and kicked the ball up past a line of defenders. It sliced just inside a corner of the twig-and-grass goal, and the gophers erupted into wild cheering.
Emmy sighed. Miss Barmy must be home by now. In another half hour—or forty-five minutes, at the most—she would be sound asleep, and Emmy could go home and to bed.
“I found Sissy,” said Joe, leading her by the paw. He glanced over his shoulder at the game. “What’s the score?”
“I was looking at the stars,” Cecilia said happily. “I hope I didn’t worry you, but I haven’t seen them for so long, and I couldn’t understand pawball anyway—”
“He’s got the ball!” Joe shouted. “Ratty’s got the ball!”
The Rat, shrieking with joy, raced down the field, his plump body jiggling, his tail held straight out behind him, maneuvering the hard leather ball between his feet. The gophers seemed to be giving him no opposition; instead, they were watching him with open mouths.
“Oh my goodness,” cried Cecilia delightedly, “Raston has totally confused the other team!”
“They’re confused, all right,” said Joe, “because he’s going the—”
“WRONG WAY!” screamed Chippy, outraged. “TURN AROUND, YOU STUPID RAT!”
But it was too late. The Rat, happy, oblivious, grunting with fierce determination, dodged past his own shocked goalie and kicked the ball squarely in the net.
“Nooooo!” howled Chippy. Raston, panting and triumphant, turned around with a modest smile—and was immediately mobbed by his furious teammates. The gophers howled with laughter, holding their tiny stomachs.
“Oh, dear,” said Cecilia.
Chippy, grinding his teeth, stalked onto the field. Buck spoke earnestly with the referee.
“Get off the field!” yelled a ground squirrel, yanking at the Rat’s white jersey.
“But I get to play!” Raston protested. “Chippy said!”
“That was before you played like a hamster, you moron! You absolutely destroyed our lead!”
“But we can get it back,” cried the Rat eagerly. “Just give me the ball—”
He squealed in panic as a guinea pig and a gray squirrel grabbed him by the paws and began to swing him back and forth. Their teammates cheered, clapping wildly.
“We’re going to forfeit the game,” cried Joe, sprinting onto the field.
The moon, just sinking behind the tops of trees, laid long shadows on the pawball field and brushed the edge of the surging crowd of rodents with light. And for one brief instant, it shone mercilessly on the Rat as he soared above the heads of his teammates, his limbs flailing and his mouth open in a long, drawn-out “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
There was a thump and an agonized cry as he landed in the net and took it down with him, twigs and all.
“Ow, ow ow owie! IT HURTS, YOU’VE BROKEN MY ANKLE, YOU BARBARIANS—”
“Fweeeeeeeet!” The referee blew his whistle and glared wrathfully. “That’s a red card to the guinea pig. You’re out of the game. Red card to the gray squirrel, out of the game—no, sir, you may not substitute when a player has been red carded.”
Emmy grabbed the wagon and rattled onto the field. By the time she reached the Rat, Buck had pulled him out of the goal and laid him, whimpering, on the grass.
“Okay, calm down.” Buck took hold of the Rat’s ankle. “Can you bend it like this? How about like this?”
“Ow ow ow owie ow ow IT HURTS—”
“Shut up,” Buck said briefly, dusting off his knees. “Okay, it’s just a sprain. Ice it and wrap it up, and he’ll be okay. But he won’t be playing pawball anytime soon.”
He turned to Chippy. “Who should we sub for him?”
Chippy looked worried. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “With two players red carded, it’s probably hopeless anyway.”
Joe stepped forward. “I’ll go in, if you want.” He glanced from Chippy to Buck. “I play soccer all the time at school. I’m not too bad
.”
Buck looked at him thoughtfully. “Last week I climbed the schoolyard oak and watched some kid with yellow hair make goal after goal. By any chance, was that—”
“It was me,” said Joe. “So, can I play?”
“There you are,” said Emmy. “All tucked in.” She looked fondly at the Rat, who was wedged into the dolls’ wagon, his feet hanging out and his nose pointed skyward. “Are you ready to go?”
The Rat wiped his eyes with a listless paw. “What does it matter?” he said, sniffling. “I’m a d—di—disgrace, that’s what they all think—”
“Well,” said Emmy, “not all of them.”
“They laughed at me,” said the Rat. “No one mentioned how well I dribbled the ball! Or how clever I was to get it past the goalie!”
“That’s true,” said Emmy, pulling the wagon toward the sidelines. “I noticed, though.”
“My ankle could get worse,” said the Rat darkly. “I might die. And then they’ll be sorry.”
“They’re sorry now,” said Emmy.
“Not sorry enough,” said the Rat, and his eyes filled with tears.
As Sissy and Mrs. Bunjee joined them, Emmy glanced at the field where the pawball game had gotten under way once more. Joe, his thatch of hair white in the starlight, was seemingly everywhere at once—dribbling, passing, shouting for the ball. As she watched, he headed a corner kick into the far goal, and cheering came faintly to her ears, high and shrill.
They headed over to the Antique Rat to find a bandage.
“How’s that?” asked Brian, kneeling on the floor as Mrs. Bunjee tied a final knot in the handkerchief around the Rat’s ankle. “Better?”
“I … can bear it,” said the Rat, flinging an arm over his eyes.
“Brave Rasty!” said Sissy, patting his paw.
“But the physical agony,” he sniffled, “is nothing compared with my blighted hopes. I had such dreams of being a star.”
“But Raston,” said Mrs. Bunjee persuasively, “you can be a star at something else.”
The Rat looked doubtful. “Like what?”
“Er—” said Mrs. Bunjee. “I’m sure there are lots of special things you can do. You can bite … and shrink people, and … and …” She looked at Emmy and Sissy for inspiration.
“I can sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’” the Rat said suddenly.
“Well, there you go! Not every rat can do that!”
The Rat wiped his nose with his sleeve and sat up. “Would you like to hear me?”
“Sometime I shall love to hear you,” said Mrs. Bunjee, patting his knee. “But right now you need to rest.”
“And I need to grow,” said Emmy, presenting her cheek to Sissy to be kissed.
She had been expecting it, but still she felt as if she had been launched from a cannon, straight up. Emmy looked down at the rodents, suddenly small, and wandered over to the desk where Professor Capybara was bent above an odd-looking microscope.
It was made of pewter and polished brass and had two eyepieces, several small jointed arms, and a multitude of knobs. Emmy pulled up a chair. “What are you looking at?”
“Greed, hope, fear, and joy,” said the professor, beaming. “Here, have a look.”
Emmy slid over to look through the eyepiece. Small, glowing shapes swam before her eyes, lit from beneath and vividly colored. As she watched, two shapes joined, flipped over, and duplicated themselves, creating in a moment a whole new shape.
“What kind of microscope is this?” Emmy asked, unable to take her eyes off the swimming life beneath.
“It’s not a microscope—it’s a charascope. My own invention, and the only one in the world. If you’ve ever wondered about the building blocks of character, well”—the professor chuckled joyfully—“there they are.”
“But how can you tell what you’re looking at?”
“You get a certain feeling when you look long enough,” said the professor vaguely. “But of course I applied scientific methods. Trial and error, my dear, and long study. I was doing clinical trials before Cheswick shrank me, and they looked very promising indeed. What you see now are the character elements found in just one drop of my own blood.”
Emmy blinked as a long, twisted, dark green shape came writhing across her field of vision. “What’s that worm-looking thing?”
The professor gave it one quick glance and looked away. “Ah, yes … I thought that would show up, sooner or later.”
“But what is it?”
“You could call it resentment, I suppose. Anger and fear mixed. I really am quite angry at Cheswick Vole for what he did to me, you see, and that worm will infect my whole system unless I attend to it.”
Emmy looked at him attentively. “What would happen if you didn’t take care of it?”
“Oh, it would keep growing, adding bits, connecting with other unpleasant shapes floating around. I imagine in the end it could become something quite monstrous.”
“Are you going to mix up some kind of rodent potion to get rid of it?”
The professor sighed. “If only it were that easy. No, there’s only one way to dissolve that particular worm, I’m afraid. But still,” the professor went on, “rodent powers often do affect character, as you have so cleverly guessed. The chinchilla, which Miss Barmy used to such striking effect on your parents, is a case in point.”
“What I’d like to know,” said Emmy, “is how the chinchilla print works. How can one single pawprint make my parents stop caring about me? And why is it taking longer and longer to wear off?”
The professor leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “The chinchilla’s particular gift,” he said, “is to switch things around. To make what was once important, unimportant, and vice versa. It was mostly used on adolescent members of tribal societies who were slow to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. For example, a lazy young man who preferred playing his flutelo to working would, after eating a meal trodden upon by the chinchilla, suddenly begin to catch fish and mend nets. Interestingly enough,” the professor added thoughtfully, “he would also stop slouching—”
“But my parents already were responsible!” Emmy interrupted.
“Exactly. You had been important to them, so when they ate the cookies that had the chinchilla’s footprint, all that they felt was important, including you, suddenly seemed of little value. Now, how had your parents felt about other things before meeting Miss Barmy? How had they felt about impressing people, for example? Were they, by any chance, very polite to people who were important in some way, and rude to those they considered beneath them?”
“Never!” said Emmy heatedly. “They were nice to everyone. There was this old raggedy man who came in our bookstore sometimes, and my father told me once that you could never tell about people—because that old man, who looked like a bum off the street, only read the very best kind of books.”
She paused, remembering. “My father would let old Bill sit and just read for hours, and lots of times he couldn’t afford to buy anything. But my dad didn’t care. He’d pour him a cup of coffee, and my mom would bring a plate of cookies, and they’d all sit and talk about books.”
The professor smiled. “Your parents sound like people I’d like to meet.”
Emmy looked away. “You wouldn’t like them now. They’re only interested in clothes, and snobby parties, and salmon fishing in Alaska.”
“Exactly!” said the professor. “Your parents have had their values, their true values, turned upside down. Why do you think the footprint keeps wearing off?”
Emmy shrugged. “Because it doesn’t last?”
“But it’s meant to last!” The professor sat up straight. “Don’t you see? In the tribes, usually one or two meals imprinted by a chinchilla were enough to bring the lazy person back to the values he’d been taught. But with your parents, what the chinchilla does to them is so diametrically opposed to their true values—so completely at odds with what they really believe—”
“—that
their true feelings keep struggling to come out!” Emmy clapped her hands.
“Precisely. They must love you a great deal, my dear. But you say that it is taking longer and longer for them to recover now?”
Emmy nodded. “Last summer they’d only go away for the weekend. It got to be more in the fall. Then they almost missed Christmas—and the last trip they took lasted five weeks and four days.”
The professor looked very serious. “I am very much afraid, my dear, that your parents can’t hold out against the chinchilla’s effect forever. One of these days Miss Barmy may turn their values around for good.”
Emmy shoved back her chair. “How do I know it hasn’t happened already?” She gripped the chair arms and steadied her voice. “I know you’ve been trying to find something to bring them back to normal. Please give me whatever you’ve found; I can use it tonight.”
The professor’s neck flushed. “Emmy, I’m so very sorry, but I got sidetracked with the charascope, you see. I was just going to have one look, but … well … it’s terribly fascinating …”
Emmy swallowed the reproachful words that rose in her throat. As the professor ran his hands through his hair, looking distraught and embarrassed, she took hold of his arm. “It’s okay, Professor. Just stay calm, all right?”
Professor Capybara shut his eyes. He breathed deeply some twenty times, and the red flush faded. “I haven’t found it yet,” he said at last. “But I’m sure there will be something you can use.”
Emmy let go of his arm abruptly. “Wait a second—how about the Endear Mouse! It makes the absent heart grow fonder, the tag says. And it wants to help me, I know it does.”
Professor Capybara was grave as he walked to the back room. “Is that right?” he asked the Endear Mouse. “Do you want to go with Emmy, to try to counteract the effects of the chinchilla?”