by Lisa Fiedler
There he saw a rat with the dainty frame, proud shoulders pressed back into an elegantly fierce posture, dressed in a white tunic with red-and-blue stripes.
And of course there was the sword. That wonderful, glittering, familiar sword.
Hopper could barely control the beating of his heart. He wanted to shout, to run, to sing out with joy and relief. But he didn’t dare hope. Not yet.
And then the figure, as though sensing his gaze, turned slowly in his direction. Her face lit up with a smile even as her eyes filled with tears. Then she threw back her head and cried, “Aye, aye aye!”
And Hopper was running. Running across the grass. Running toward Firren!
MIDLOGUE
Presently, in the subway tunnels beneath Brooklyn, New York . . .
PUP DID NOT LIKE the Mūs village. Not at all.
He did not like the way the children hid their faces when Pinkie strode past, her gold-cloaked shoulders pressed back, her whiskers pricking the air.
And he did not like the way the residents muttered and whispered about her being a tyrant and a dictator. To his mind, their resentment over Pinkie’s new brand of leadership was outrageously disrespectful, just this side of treason. He understood their complaints, of course—Pinkie was a bully of the first order who saw to it that her way was the only way. But she was a bold warrior, and a Chosen One besides, who had proved her mettle in a great battle against the loathsome feral cats and their wicked queen, Felina. Pinkie had both inherited and earned her authority, and these ungrateful Mūs citizens had no right to question it.
Pup himself questioned it every moment of every day, but that was different. He was family.
What he disliked most about living behind the gray wall was the condescending way the soldiers smirked at him, the way they glowered with mistrust and disdain whenever he was in their company. He despised how they whispered and chuckled about how small and weak he appeared, especially in comparison with his fierce and haughty sister.
Pup’s goal was to be accepted by the soldiers. Feared would be better. Liked would be best of all.
Which was why, not long after their arrival in the Mūs village, he’d summoned his courage and asked his sister for a uniform. He did think the pink motif was ridiculous and not soldierly in the least, but he appreciated the shiny buttons and heavy braided trim. To him, such military trappings announced, I am important. I belong. Pinkie values me and finds me worthy.
A uniform did not seem like an outlandish request to Pup. After all, Pinkie the Chosen had forced nearly every other Mūs to wear one, so why not him? Joining her army was required; it was a rule.
But apparently, when it came to Pup, the rules were different.
He’d asked for a uniform. But he didn’t get one.
“Are you out of your mind?” Pinkie had scoffed. “You are not exactly military material, Pup. I have enough to think about without having to worry about you playing with swords.”
“Is that a no?” Pup had asked through his teeth.
“That’s a never,” Pinkie had replied.
Pup had said no more, but his sister’s cold refusal had sparked a flame in his gullet. This was a feeling he’d known only once before—the Day of the Sweeping, as he’d come to call it in his nightmares—when he’d watched his two siblings disappear from his life without even stopping to see if he was alive or dead.
On that day he had elected not to nurture the feeling; he’d allowed the fear and confusion to push his anger aside. But when Pinkie had denied his simple petition, and he’d been left to slink away (with her laughter ringing in his ears and his little, un-uniformed body shivering with shame), he’d had no choice but to allow that angry flame to flare, to burn slowly and steadily of its own accord.
Then there had come the day when he’d looked up from making what he thought were some very necessary changes to one of La Rocha’s prophecies—the one they all made such a fuss about—and he’d seen his brother standing there in the engine room, facing off against Pinkie, asking her for favors.
The sight of those two white circles mirroring each other had actually made him queasy. It was as though a current of power and purpose flowed between them . . . a current he could never tap, no matter how hard he tried. Seeing that matched pair of extraordinary siblings had further ignited the flicker of anger burning inside him and fanned it into a mighty blaze of fury.
Pup wanted to be like Hopper and Pinkie so badly that he’d actually adorned himself with a circle of his own. But even he had to admit that there was something desperate and fraudulent about it. The marking around his eye was not a sign of a proud heritage and preordained future; it was not of clean, soft fur but of chalky stone dust. And instead of bright white it was the color of gloom, of afterthought, as though he could only ever hope to be a mere shadow of his famously foretold brother and sister.
And did they care?
Well, maybe Hopper did, Pup allowed. He had seen something in Hopper’s eyes on that day he’d come to appeal to Pinkie—a warmth, a longing, that had sung out to Pup. But he’d made himself ignore it. He’d loved Hopper before, and where had that gotten him? Left for dead on a pet-shop floor, that’s where. Abandoned to a death camp and almost eaten alive.
And Pinkie . . . to her, he knew, he was nothing more than a glorified servant. A delivery boy to send out with food for their departing brother.
“Why are you doing this?” he remembered asking her when she’d thrust the felt-wrapped bundle of provisions into his paws.
“You don’t understand,” Pinkie had said, her words curt and brittle. “He’s my brother.”
“And mine,” Pup reminded her.
“But Hopper and I share something you could never understand,” Pinkie went on, although Pup suspected she was talking more to herself than to him. “The great burden of responsibility.”
“Responsibility?” Pup’s anger blazed. “For me?”
“Yes, for you! And also for what we lost, for what went away in the night . . .”
Pup did not know what she meant by that. Whatever was lost in the night, and however Hopper and Pinkie had been to blame for it, he did not know nor care.
All that mattered was that they considered him to be a burden, an encumbrance, a runt (as Pinkie never tired of calling him) who needed to be watched out for and worried over.
Perhaps it was time for him to prove them wrong.
It took Pup only a matter of days to plot how he would go about this. First, he would need someone to write for him, so he could he leave his sister a note, telling her of his bold, intrepid plan. He certainly could not inform her to her face, for surely she would forbid him. No, he would have someone compose a letter, outlining his objectives. This letter would be left for Pinkie to find after he’d escaped the Mūs encampment, something he’d have to do in secret, probably during the wee, small hours in order to avoid being forcibly apprehended by one of Pinkie’s (uniformed!) soldiers.
Pup was actually quite eager to learn to inscribe words on paper, mostly because Pinkie herself had not yet learned to write; she dictated her words (which he supposed lent some literal truth to the widespread accusations that she was a dictator) to educated underlings she called scriveners. But learning so much would take too long, and Pup was in a hurry. What he needed was a scribe.
So he made some discreet inquiries, and the consensus was that the best Mūs for the task was the sweet old midwife. She was gifted at many things, reading and writing among them. And she was, everyone agreed, a wonderful cook.
So he presented himself at the door of the midwife’s cottage. As he rapped his tiny paw against the sturdy wooden door, he had no way of knowing that this was the selfsame little dwelling where his brother, Hopper, had dined on his first visit to the Mūs village.
Of course, the cozy nest was now serving double duty as a weapons forge for Pinkie’s army. By day the hearth fire was used exclusively for the casting and molding of swords. Per Pinkie’s orders, during working ho
urs the elderly midwife and her mate would surrender their home to the smithy, and thusly found themselves with only the evenings in which to enjoy their privacy. And then they were obliged to tiptoe cautiously around the ever-growing arsenal of blades piling up atop their rocking chairs and sofa pillows.
The midwife’s name was Maimonides—Mamie for short.
“I will be happy to teach you the art of penmanship,” she said calmly, placing a steaming bowl of stew before him.
“No thanks,” said Pup. “I don’t have that much time.”
Mamie looked at him across her dining table (where two lethal dirks and a deadly rapier lay beside the earthenware stew pot, somewhat incongruously between a pair of filigree candlesticks). She spooned more of the hearty fare into his bowl; he acknowledged this second helping with a grunt, feeling that, somehow, showing his gratitude might be construed as a sign of weakness.
“Your brother, the Chosen One, once dined at my table,” she told him proudly.
“Big deal,” Pup muttered over his bowl.
“Oh, it was!” said Mamie, smiling. “You probably don’t know this, Pup, but I was the midwife who delivered your own father into this world.”
Pup wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it sounded monumental. The thought of his father, who he now knew was a rebel named Dodger, made him all the more desperate to prove himself.
“And I was also the one who brought him here, for his own safety, to the Mūs village,” Mamie continued. “His father had been mortally wounded, and his mother and siblings had already been taken from him by Queen Felina.”
At the mention of that name Pup looked up from his stew. “She killed them?”
The midwife nodded, her eyes somber. “She consumed them, your gentle grandmother and all your tiny aunts and uncles. Your father was spared thanks to the courage of a rat you may have heard of . . . he called himself Titus.”
“Titus?” Pup frowned. “You must be mistaken. Titus is a villain, a monster. He was the one who struck the peace accord with Felina.”
“I am aware of that.” Mamie sighed. “But I have always believed there was more to that story. Much more.” Her keen eyes looked pointedly at Pup. “Perhaps you might one day find a means to learn the whole of it.”
“Perhaps,” Pup said dismissively.
He gulped down the rest of his meal, wondering if it might be his last for a while. He wasn’t sure how he would feed himself out there in the tunnels, and he could not even guess how long his quest might take. He supposed he’d find a way to subsist, smart and determined as he was. The important thing was that he do what must be done to prove himself to Pinkie.
Mamie cleared away his bowl, then brought a slip of paper to the table and a chalky stone like the one he’d used to draw the dark ring around his eye.
“What would you like me to write?” the old mouse asked. “What is it you wish to say in this correspondence of yours?”
“We can start with this,” said Pup, his voice level, his words icy. “Dear Pinkie, I have gone out to slay Felina.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AGAIN THE SWEET VOICE lifted in that familiar call. “Aye! Aye! Aye!”
Hopper’s heart surged as he ran; Firren was running too, across the grass.
Part of the Chosen One was still afraid to believe what he was seeing. But with every step she took, it became clear that he was not imagining things. It was more than just the white tunic with its red-and-blue stripes that announced her—it was those keen black eyes, that strong but graceful manner. This could be no one but the powerful warrior he knew and adored.
“Firren! It’s really you!”
She caught him in a hug. “You’re alive! Oh, Hopper, I was so afraid the exterminators had gotten you.”
“I was afraid they’d gotten you, too. I went into the city to find you, but you weren’t in the trap.” He gave her an astounded look. “How did you manage to release yourself? How did you escape?”
“I didn’t escape. I was rescued. By La Rocha!”
Hopper sputtered and blinked. “But La Rocha is a thinker, an oracle, not a warrior. And if he’s a cockroach, like everyone says, how could he possibly be strong enough to open the cage?”
“I’m not sure he is a cockroach,” Firren said, nearly as baffled as Hopper. “He wears a cloak with a hood, so I couldn’t tell for sure what sort of creature he was.” She smiled. “He was brave, though, and kind. And he led me to you.”
“To me? Here? How?”
“He left a message at the Runes, just like Zucker did when he wanted me to know that Titus and his army were preparing for the rebel raid.”
At this Hopper flushed; he was the one who’d given the former emperor that information. “What was La Rocha’s message?”
“He wrote the name of the exterminating company on the wall, right beside my drawing of Dodger, and a note, telling me I needed to come upland and locate this Pier One place.”
“Brilliant!”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Firren laughed. “Before I could do that, I had to escape Pinkie.”
“Pinkie?!”
Firren quickly recounted the tale of Pinkie sneaking up on La Rocha and dragging the two of them from the Samsonite fortress. “Never a dull moment,” she said, in what Hopper decided was one of the greatest understatements he’d ever heard in his life.
“Who else made it out?” he asked eagerly. “Who’s with you?” He looked deep into Firren’s eyes and whispered: “Zucker?”
“I . . .” Firren glanced away and shrugged. “I don’t know where Zucker is.”
“Oh.” Hopper allowed the pain only a single moment to slice through him, then tamped it down. It would not do to succumb to the hurt now. He could mourn Zucker later, in private, if, in fact, mourning was what needed to be done. But for now he would cling to what hope remained.
“What of Garfield and Polhemus? And Ketchum?”
“I can’t say, Hopper. I haven’t been back to Atlantia . . . or what’s left of it, that is. After I escaped Pinkie, I went right to the Runes. Then I came upland in search of you, because . . . well, there’s a big problem, Hopper. Another big problem.”
“What is it?”
“It’s . . .” Firren broke off, her eyes narrowing. Her paw went slowly to the handle of her blade just as Hopper felt the large shadow fall across him from behind. The ground beneath them shook a bit from the rumble of a powerful purr.
“Hopper . . . ,” Firren whispered, carefully withdrawing her sword from its sheath. “Be very still. I don’t want to frighten you, Chosen One, but there’s an enormous cat standing right behind you.”
“I know there is,” said Hopper, smiling. “His name is Ace. And something tells me you two are going to be great pals.”
Despite Hopper’s assurances Firren continued to regard Ace with concern.
“This is Ace,” Hopper repeated. “He saved me from a tragic demise. So I guess you two have that in common. Ace, this is Firren. She’s the bravest rebel you’ll ever meet. She was a friend of my father’s long ago, and she’s a big part of the reason Titus’s refugee camps were liberated and Felina’s hunting ground was destroyed.”
“Any enemy of Felina’s is a friend of mine,” said Ace. “Of course, when I knew her, she wasn’t royalty. She was nothing but a stray, a common alley cat.”
“He’s awfully big,” Firren whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Are you sure he’s trustworthy?”
“He’s as loyal and reliable as they come,” Hopper assured the rebel.
Ace put out a paw to shake. “Welcome to Pier One.”
Firren maneuvered her sword back into its sheath and shook the cat’s paw.
“Ace can tell you everything you need to know about living here in the grasslands,” Hopper informed her.
“That’s nice,” said Firren, “but why do I need to know that?”
“What do you mean why?” Hopper was perplexed. “Because you’re staying, that’s why! Bro
oklyn is great. I like it here, and I think you will too.”
The look Firren gave him was part shock, part disappointment. “Hopper, don’t you understand? I had only one reason for risking my life coming up here . . . and that was to bring the Chosen One back.”
“Back? Into the tunnels?” Hopper flinched at the thought. “Never,” he said in a dull voice.
“But I haven’t told you about—”
“Forget it!” said Hopper, shaking his head. “No way. Not happening. There’s nothing you can say that could get me to go back into those tunnels.”
He hated telling her no, but she was asking too much. Whatever this new problem was to which she’d referred, he had no intention of trying to fix it. He couldn’t stand the thought of failing yet again.
An awkward silence settled over the mouse, the rat, and the cat. After a long moment Ace forced a chuckle.
“Maybe we should discuss potential travel plans later,” he said cheerfully. “Firren’s been through quite an ordeal, and I think she can use some rest. She and I can get acquainted while I wait for Capone. He should be by any minute now for his daily romp. Maybe Carroll can show you around the park.” He waved the white mouse over to join them and told her what he was thinking.
“I would love to give Hopper a tour,” said the mouse.
Carroll’s arrival went a long way toward pushing Hopper’s dark memories of the tunnels aside. Feeling bubbly again, he left Firren in Ace’s care and fell into step beside Carroll.
As they walked along, Hopper marveled at the amount of misplaced human belongings he saw. When Carroll noticed him eyeing a collection of jagged metal objects looped together on a ring, she laughed.
“Keys,” she said. “They’re one of the most common sorts of lost articles we find around here. Humans seem to have a knack for misplacing them, along with coins and ballpoint pens and these strange, noisy things called cell phones. You can’t imagine how many of those we come across.”
