by Alyssa Moon
Delphine also found herself bringing the needle out from its sheath more and more, resting it on her lap and running her paw across the engravings. She could feel the needle fizzing with energy, just as it had in the hidden room of tapestries, almost as if it had been woken up by the touch of her paw under the moonlight. She wondered if the fresh air was continuing to charge it somehow.
Once, as she gazed at the needle, the engraving shimmered beneath her touch. She leaned closer and closer until Alexander caught sight of her and cleared his throat worriedly. Then the trance broke and she sat back up, but the light-headedness stayed for hours, like the last remnants of a fading headache.
The river soon slowed to a lazy flow. During the days, the sun would sit high in the sky, and they could enjoy a few minutes of relative warmth before the ever-lengthening chilly evenings. The riverbanks rolled by, an endless panoply of bushes and tree roots and pebbly sand. Every time Delphine looked at Father Guillaume’s map, she wished she could tell how far along the river they had traveled. All she knew was that day by day, autumn was passing much too quickly. They wouldn’t be able to survive on their own once the snow came. She had to solve this riddle soon.
“We have to be getting close to the river’s mouth,” said Alexander for the thousandth time, as he attempted to mend a rip in his waistcoat.
“The princess’s own dressmaker isn’t good enough to repair your garments?” she said mildly from her perch at the stern. Her needle rested in her paws, as had become her habit.
“I’m not completely inept,” Alexander tossed back. He tried yet again to weave the two sides of the rip together, but the fabric slipped from his paws. He grimaced, then set it aside.
“I should mend your jacket with this needle,” she teased. “Can you imagine that? Sewing with this oversize thing? Two stitches and the whole thing would be complete.” She gestured grandly in the air with her needle as she spoke, pretending to make oversize stitches. “Jacket . . . mended!”
A shower of silvery light erupted from the tip of her needle. The sparks sprayed across the stern and sizzled as they hit the water around them.
Delphine squeaked, throwing her needle into the bottom of the boat, where it rolled to a stop. It lay motionless and silent.
Alexander was frozen, eyes huge. “What just happened?”
Delphine swallowed her shock and reached out one paw to prod her needle. Nothing.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. She picked it up and waved it from side to side. Still nothing.
“You said something right before it happened,” Alexander hissed.
“Why are you whispering?” she whispered back, still holding her needle at paw’s length like a live hawkworm.
“You’re whispering, too!”
Delphine cleared her throat. “I was saying,” she started clearly and slowly, trying to remain calm, “that I would repair your jacket.” She waved her needle through the air again. A few bits of silvery light flickered from the tip and fizzled out. This time, Delphine did not let go.
“It’s a magic wand!” came Alexander’s hushed voice.
“Stop whispering!” Delphine demanded. “It’s not that scary!” She felt she had to approach this head-on. “And it’s not a magic wand. Those only exist in fairy tales.” She waved the needle like a magic wand anyway. No luck.
Delphine tried furiously to remember. What exactly had she been doing? She struggled to recall how it had felt. Like a bolt of lightning springing from . . . from where?
Delphine spent the rest of the afternoon waving the needle this way and that, trying to get it to produce more sparks. But the harder she tried, the more lifeless it felt in her paws. Fed up, she finally shoved it out of sight.
That night, the air was still and cold. As usual, they had tied their painter line to a reed near the banks, out of the main current. The water lapped quietly at the sides of the boat.
The needle in her paws, Delphine lay with her nose poking through a gap in the canvases, staring up at the stars. She could hear Alexander in the prow, snoring softly. Delphine counted the sounds around her, a habit she had learned in childhood, when her mother rubbed her temples during headaches and helped her focus on what existed beyond the pain. What can you hear? Maman would say, and Delphine would answer, I can hear the wind in the trees, Cinderella singing downstairs in the kitchen, soup bubbling on the stove, the sparrows cooing in their tower nest . . . and then she would fall asleep.
Delphine listened now, trying to distract herself from all that was running round inside her head. She heard the rustle of the air through the reeds. A night lark calling in the distance. Fish splashing. The wood of the skiff creaking softly as it swayed. Her own breathing. The stars sliding through the night sky above her. Moonlight dripping off the leaves of the trees and dappling the water in tiny silver droplets. She caught her breath. She was hearing stars and moonlight?
But as soon as Delphine stopped to think about it, the sounds began to fade so rapidly that she had only a moment to let herself fall back into the half trance. Fall she did, and the sounds came roiling back around her like the rush of water through a parted dam. Yes, she could hear the stars singing in low, sweet tones as they moved along their smoothly oiled paths through the sky. And the moonlight, not just dappling the water but also flowing into the land around her like silver honey, filling the trees and the sky and her whole body with its power. The moonlight started singing, too, deep and rich, and its song vibrated through her.
Delphine felt her needle growing warm, and the air around it began to shimmer. She nearly started to think again but let go just in time, and remained floating in the moment. Her needle grew warmer and warmer with each breath that she took. It seemed as if all the world were in perfect harmony, all the threads aligned. She could reach out and undo any one of them, then create a whole new pattern. The needle started to burn against her paws. She cried out, but the cry was made up of words she had never heard before, and they came out as silvery light. The light streamed around the needle, and the tarnish began to swirl once more. A bit more of the inscription began to glow.
Without knowing how or why, Delphine was standing upright in the boat, Alexander still sound asleep. She inhaled, and all the sounds of the surrounding world ceased. She was suspended in a single moment. The starsong went on, and as the moonlight flowed through her, she brought her needle slicing through the air in a series of loops and swirls that felt as if they had been written before time began. Silver light streamed from the needle, and she drew symbols in the air. The light curled and spiraled around her. Delphine glanced down and noticed that the tarnish was continuing to fade. She dove further into the silvery feeling inside her, and the light divided and divided again into glowing coils.
Then the coils burrowed down through the wood and water. Delphine felt the energy pulling away from her, growing out of control. She struggled to draw it back, but it was too late. It was too strong. The needle bucked in her paw. She watched in horror as the silvery coils kept bending and looping upon themselves, drawing tighter each time as they twisted, crushing everything they held. They tore through the wooden keel, ripping the little boat from stem to stern in an instant.
A surging wave rushed upon the mice, and they were thrown into the river. Cold water filled Delphine’s nose and mouth. The spell broke, the world crashed back upon her, and then she was fighting against the current as it dragged her down to the bottom.
Needle still in her grip, Delphine thrashed, fighting her way back up to the river’s surface. The skiff had become little more than a wreck of matchsticks, half its fragments caught in the reeds, the other half already whisked away by the current.
“Alexander!” Delphine screamed, water filling her mouth. “Alexander!” She flailed in the dark river, scanning the empty surface. Terror filled her. In that moment, silvery strands twisted from the needle and streamed through the water. Too panicked to wonder what was happening, she dove after them. Down, down, down she swam
, until the silver strands twirling from the needle led her to the river bottom. There she saw a small, limp figure caught in a tangle of underwater roots. Alexander!
Delphine pulled at the roots, then stabbed at them with her needle in desperation. The roots broke apart. She grabbed the noblemouse and kicked back toward the surface. When she broke through to the air, the water was roiling around them. Pulling Alexander, Delphine headed for the shore, needle still in her other paw. Alexander was a leaden weight, and when she glanced back, she saw he wasn’t stirring.
Just one more tail’s-length, she told herself over and over as she swam, but it seemed as if she were barely moving against the current.
The water fell away in front of her, and a great black stone reared up. No, not a stone. A head. A massive head with huge, flat eyes. The jaws of the great, scaly pike fish opened and she could see past rows of sharp fangs into a maw that seemed to go on forever. She shrieked and paddled madly backward.
The pike was above her now, its body lifting out of the water as it arched back, ready to snatch them. Keeping Alexander’s arm in one paw, she held the needle before her. As the pike came down, the needle leapt up like a silver dart, piercing the pike between its gleaming eyes, deep through its scales. The pike shuddered once. Delphine yanked back the needle and dove, pulling Alexander with her under the surface. She felt the crash of the pike slamming back down into the water.
When she looked up, Delphine could see the pike’s massive limp body floating above them, seeming to fill the surface of the river and block all hope of escape. But she had to try. Lungs bursting, she yanked at Alexander as she fought her way past the fallen pike toward the shore.
Delphine never knew how she made it. She dragged herself onto the pebbly sand, gasping, with Alexander motionless by her side. Finally, she willed herself to move. She pressed hard on his chest, over and over, as she had seen a pond mouse do once on a pinkie who had fallen out of a boat.
“Alexander, please wake up!” Delphine pleaded with him, her voice raw. “Wake up!” His eyes were sealed shut, his whiskers wilted. She pressed again, harder, but still he did not breathe.
Delphine felt a lump form in her throat. She looked up at the moon, tears springing to her eyes. What had she done? She pounded her fists against his chest. “I’m not giving up on you!”
Alexander coughed.
Delphine gasped as the whole river seemed to come out of his mouth. She cried then, and her head fell down on his chest as he rolled to the side and retched.
“No such thing as magic?” he managed to croak.
SNURLEAU HAD WATCHED THE TWO mice set off down the river. He had noticed glimmers of the silvery whiskers peeking through crude, muddy powder . . . and the human-size needle the castle rat had described. All in a skiff so worm-rotted it would fall apart before they made it a day downstream. Snurleau couldn’t resist gloating a little. This would be his easiest job yet under King Midnight’s employ.
Before the skiff had drifted from view, Snurleau had been studying the other mouse with her, trying to place him. A noblemouse from the castle? Now, as he slipped back into the forest toward his next destination, the face clicked in his memory. Snurleau’s lips curled back to reveal his fangs. Alexander de Soucy Perrault, that horrid noblemouse. Snurleau knew Alexander all too well. It was Alexander’s fault that he had been thrown in jail in that nasty town at the base of the castle, simply because he had swiped the purse of gold pieces Alexander was collecting for an orphanage. Who collected for charity at a card game anyway? Snurleau ground his teeth at the thought. The only good thing that had come out of being thrown in jail was meeting those rats that worked for King Midnight.
Feeling more motivated than ever, Snurleau licked his lips with his sharp tongue and moved toward the road, peeking through the foliage. He’d send a message back to King Midnight, letting him know that he’d located the needle. Then he could relax and enjoy himself until Midnight sent reinforcements. And after that . . . if a certain mouse named Alexander de Soucy Perrault just happened to fall into trouble, well, these things happened.
The half-drowned mice huddled in front of a makeshift fire that Delphine had managed to start. Night was slowly fading into the dim gray light of early morning.
“What happened?” Alexander asked, when his teeth had finally stopped chattering.
Delphine told him about the needle, the moonlight, the magic. She showed him how another symbol on the shaft had been revealed as the tarnish faded, though the rest was still as gray and dull as before.
Alexander didn’t take her explanation well. “You were mucking around with that thing in the middle of the night?! You nearly got us both killed!”
Delphine’s whiskers twitched. “I said I was sorry.” She realized she truly meant it. Alexander might be a fop, but she had never meant to put him in danger.
Alexander hopped up and started pacing along the shore. “How did that happen? What did you wake up inside that needle? Could it happen again?” His questions came hard and fast.
She hurried to join him. “Exactly! Now that we know the needle really is magic, I can start to—”
“No!” He cut her off. “I’m saying just the opposite. You don’t know what that thing truly is! You have no idea where it came from, or how to use it!”
“That’s why I need to learn how! I know it’s risky, but it might be the key to everything. At the very least, it might be useful to us in some way.”
Alexander was still talking. “. . . and I wasn’t even awake to make sure you were safe—”
Delphine’s brow furrowed. “Because you always have to be the one to save me, is that it?” she retaliated, her tail lashing from side to side.
He stopped in midpace. “Well, yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s the oath that I took.”
“You are the most self-aggrandizing, pompous mouse that I’ve ever had the misfortune to know!” Delphine snapped, her remorse quickly evaporating. She grabbed the needle from where it lay on the shore and stomped into the forest. She had no idea where she was going and frankly, she didn’t care. Let him find his own way back to court where he can spend the rest of his days worrying about doublet ribbons and how to dance the gavotte, she thought. She had to solve the mystery of this needle or she was going to spend the rest of her days on the run from rats who wanted to kill her.
I just have to figure out how I made the magic happen, and how to do it again . . . safely. Delphine headed deeper into the trees. Besides, she thought, aren’t I a seamstress? She’d been using mouse-size sewing needles ever since she could remember, and she knew how to wield those needles to create beautiful things. How hard could it really be to control this needle, now that she had unlocked its power? Perhaps weaving threads of fabric together and weaving a magic spell might not be so different, now that she had taken the first steps.
An owl hooted in the morning stillness and Delphine froze as she looked up. In a moment, she saw it flapping slowly across the sky, its wings silent in the gray air. She shivered. The forest floor was ice-cold beneath her paws.
What in the world was she doing? Storming off into the middle of nowhere, without a single idea where she was headed? Though she’d only walked a few tail’s-lengths into the forest, she was already losing her bearings. The trees were older and broader here than they were in the south of the kingdom. The thick branches arching overhead made the early-morning light dim and diffuse. Even once the sun rose, she wouldn’t be able to see it through such dense branches, so there’d be no way to know if she was still heading west. Delphine turned from side to side nervously. Everything looked the same, except her pawprints behind her.
Nutmegs. She was going to have to keep following the river after all. She turned and headed back, sighing. It was probably better to stay together, anyway.
Alexander was in the shallows, fishing something shapeless out of the water when she reemerged from the forest onto the bank.
“Huzzah!” he cried out. He drag
ged the sodden lump onto the shore. “I found one of our ration bags.” Then he grasped his sword sheath sadly. “But Delphine . . . my sword. It’s gone. It must have fallen out and been swept downstream.”
As if she didn’t feel guilty enough already. Delphine summoned her courage and looked him in the eye. “Alexander,” she said, talking quickly to get it over with as fast as she could. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the needle is more dangerous than I care to admit. But it’s the only clue I have to who I am, and it’s also the reason that a band of rats wants me dead. So I need to figure out how it works.
“But . . . I’ll only practice with it during the day. And I’ll be sure not to destroy any more boats,” she added as an afterthought.
He grinned. “It’s a deal.”
Delphine looked over his shoulder at the waterlogged ration bag. “And thank you for finding that,” she said, trying to make amends. “I’m sorry you lost your sword.”
He shrugged. “I’m just glad I didn’t lose you.”
Delphine waited for her internal voice to groan at his cheesiness, but for once it was silent. She gave an embarrassed little shrug. “I’m glad I didn’t lose you, either.” Then she coughed. “So, uh, shall we start walking down the river? We must be nearly at the mouth.”
As they traveled, threading their way along the bank of the river, Delphine spent most of the time trying to get her needle to do something—anything—just to prove to herself she could. All afternoon she tapped it on the trees they walked past, spun it in the air, poked it all around her, and generally waved it with abandon until Alexander refused to walk within two tail’s-lengths of her reach.
“Not interested in getting skewered with your magic,” he said. He skipped ahead a few more paces.
But it didn’t matter how hard she tried; nothing she did caused more than a few silvery sparks to flicker into existence. Finally she shoved it back into the sheath. “I’ll try again tonight,” she said. “I can’t focus while I’m walking.”
