by Rina Heisel
She nodded with a gulp.
Glancing at Wiley, Tobin hopped to an open crevice in the moss-covered branches. Wiley followed and crouched next to him. Together they stared at the unfamiliar woods ahead.
Wiley stretched his hind legs. “You ready for this?”
Over his shoulder, Tobin caught sight of Talia hopping onto Hess’s back, settling in behind his head. “I guess so.”
Wiley scratched his chin. “I can’t think of a Rule advising using a snake as a mouseling sitter.”
For a moment Tobin almost laughed, but his throat was too dried out from nerves. “There aren’t any Rules for this.” Tobin narrowed his focus on the closest tree. “I think we’re making up our own rules now.”
Seventeen
A SCOUTING JOB. TOBIN just needed to think of it as an everyday scouting trip. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Same technique as seeking food, just tweaked accordingly. Instead of scouting for seeds, scout for information. Tobin would choose the path, Wiley would follow. Same as always, right?
Deep breath, clear your mind.
Select destination. Tree, one hare-leap away.
Scan for hawks. Done. Tree canopies eerily still, in fact.
Seek possible threats from ground predators. Done. No movement, no smells, no sounds.
Select route least likely for ambush. Done.
Go.
Tobin darted, his paws hitting the ground with precision. It took six heartbeats to reach the tree. Never slowing, he leaped, his claws digging into the bark. He spiraled up the trunk so they wouldn’t be easy pickings. Not until he reached the thick cover of canopy did Tobin reduce his pace, opting for the shelter of an abandoned squirrel nest. He wriggled into a space between the hunk of mud and leaves, sitting only a few heartbeats until Wiley squirmed in beside him.
They sat in silence, waiting to see if their jaunt attracted any attention. A wisp of a breeze rustled the highest tree limbs, but below, the forest sat in stillness.
Tobin nodded to Wiley. He crept from the shelter of the nest, studying the crisscrossing limbs ahead. He needed his bearing on the direction of the Arakni lair. He looked down.
For the love of wheat, they were up high. Way, way high. Even a full-grown buck couldn’t swipe his antlers and knock these boughs. Sure, he’d been in trees before, but maybe those were saplings? His mind felt a little swimmy, so he gripped the bark harder. Oh, sludge. Tobin shut his eyes and concentrated. What’s the Rule?
Rule #16: Mice are not arboreal and belong near the ground. (If you somehow find yourself in a tree, see Rule #17.)
Ah, that’s right. So . . .
Rule #17: If you climb too high—take a deep breath, imagine an acorn at your end destination, and never, EVER, look down.
Tobin’s eyes popped open. An acorn? Well, it was worth a try. Deep breath. Eyes ahead.
Picture the nut.
He spied a good spot to imagine an acorn—right in the neighboring tree, at the base of a very stable-looking branch. It was only about two hare-leaps . . . leaps? No—no thinking about leaps right now, think scoots. Like an inchworm. Focus on an imaginary acorn about a hundred inchworm-scoots away.
Tobin scooted. Left paw, right paw, hind paws. The bough felt solid beneath him, so he inched faster. He knew he probably looked ridiculous, like a skulking bobcat, but he did not care. Wiley could tease him all he wanted when they got down on the ground.
Crawling to an intersection where the long branches of two neighboring trees crisscrossed, Tobin climbed onto the new tree. He scurried inward until he reached the trunk, right where he’d pictured the imaginary acorn.
“Well,” said Wiley, sidling up alongside him. “We’re getting close. Look.”
Following Wiley’s sight line, Tobin looked down. Beneath them on the forest floor, two hunting spiders scuttled toward the lair. The spiders’ path was clear. There, about a dozen trees over, a boulder-sized mound of mud and forest debris rose from ground, and the Arakni swarmed around it. The sight sent a quiver down Tobin’s spine, and he clenched the bark as hard as he could.
Wiley leaned in beside him. “We need to get a few more trees over. Then we’ll have a real birds-eye view of the layout.”
Tobin nodded and swallowed.
Wiley cocked an ear. “You okay?”
Tobin pursed his mouth shut before turning away from Wiley’s suspicious stare. “Yeah, I’m just getting used to the heights.” He drew a deep breath, then shook his head. “All right, let’s check for hawks and get moving.”
He tilted his head, looking for birds of prey, when his eyes fell upon a glossy, golden streak of liquid on the trunk, just above his head. “Wait a sec.” Tobin raised onto his hind legs. Squinting, he reached a paw up and touched the trickle.
Sap.
Usually he hated the stuff; a glob of sap could stick in your fur until the springtime shed if a mouse wasn’t careful. But now it could be just the thing to make this tree-traversing much safer. “Check this out.” Tobin smeared the sap on one paw, then the other. “Sticky paws, a tree-climbing mouse’s best friend.”
A smile crept across Wiley face. “Nice!” Wiley dabbed his paws in the gummy goop and clapped them together. He tried pulling them apart, and his brow furrowed when it actually took some effort.
Tobin flexed his toes, the clingy, sticky stuff pulling on his paw pads. “Maybe this is how squirrels don’t fall.”
“Could be.” Wiley kneaded the bark beneath him, the snick-snick of sticky sap sounding very reassuring.
Tobin examined the crossroad of trees and branches ahead. One prickly pine a few trees over would give them a perfect spot for spying on Arakni. “There.” He pointed, showing the tree to Wiley. Tobin scurried out onto the woven canopy branches, making sure to never look down. With his gummy grip it felt safer to move faster, crossing from tree to tree, until they reached the final pine. After wedging himself against the brittle tree trunk, Tobin finally allowed himself to look down.
He winced. “It’s sort of like looking down at an ant mound, only replace the ants—”
“with giant spiders,” Wiley completed his thought.
Tobin spied one lower, slender limb that stretched out over all the Arakni activity, including the far side of the mound. “Wait here,” he said to Wiley, then pointed down. “I’m gonna climb out on that branch, but it gets pretty narrow. No sense putting two of us on it.”
Wiley frowned, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t know, Tobin.”
“We need to know what’s on the other side of that mound, and that’s the only branch that reaches all the way over.”
“Well,”—Wiley ran a sticky paw over his nose, his nerves quite apparent—“I suppose you do have that inchworm technique down pretty well.”
Tobin smiled in reply and then shimmied down the trunk of the pine. Flattening himself to the wispy branch, he crept out until the warm, thick stink of the spiders assaulted his nose. Stretching out his neck, Tobin peeked over the side for a perfect bird’s-eye view.
A rotting tree stump sat tilted on the ground, partially pulled from the earth. Ripped-up roots spilled over an open cavity beneath it. The few shards of light that pierced the black space revealed mottled shadows of scuttling legs and the occasional glint of red eyes. A spider stepped from the cavern, emerging with a small stone clutched in its rear pincers. Like it was excavating the cavern. Smaller than the hunting Arakni he’d seen, but thicker than the scouting Arakni, Tobin realized this must be a worker.
The ground seemingly belched these smaller worker spiders, one by one, from the holes around their home. They discarded their loads on the surface before retreating back into the darkness.
So, if these were the worker Arakni, where were . . .
There. Tobin’s muscles clenched at the sight of it, a hunter returning. This Arakni was huge. As long as a robin. The worker spiders looked like hummingbirds compared to their predatory siblings. The hunter stomped past the work site to a dilapidated tree trunk. Probably the
tree that had broken off the stump. Tobin raised his chin and watched the hunter slip through a gash in the fallen log, its pulsing websack in tow. Tobin held his breath, not wanting to move or even blink. A few heartbeats later, the Arakni reemerged, pincers empty.
The food storage. That’s where all the captives were taken. And that’s where he’d find his little sibling.
Time to get back to Hess, to Talia. They needed to find a way to this log. Maybe they could wind around the back of the hill. But first he and Wiley needed to get down off these trees.
Tobin inched back along the branch and scaled up the trunk to where he’d left Wiley. At least, where he thought he left Wiley. He looked left, right—then noticed something that hadn’t been there before.
His heart pounded against his breastbone. A white smear dotted the branch. A goopy and unmistakably acidic-smelling blob.
Owl poop.
Eighteen
QUICK AS A FLICK, Tobin skittered to the underside of the branch, claws clenching the bark as he hung upside down. His throat tightened.
What have I done?
Bringing his friend to this terrible place? His sister? His head mimicked a bobbing leaf as he looked for any sign of Wiley. Or the owl. But the only movement came from the Arakni below. Tobin shivered. Hopefully spiders don’t look up often.
He let go of the branch, tucked into a flip, and landed on the limb below. He wedged himself under a piece of curled bark.
Breathe. Think.
Fresh owl poop in the middle of the day? Also, he’d been the one sitting totally out in the open whenever this owl flew by. Why hadn’t it grabbed him?
Things weren’t adding up.
Tchirr, tchirr, tchirr!
Hope swelled in his chest as the sounds filled his ears. Swiveling his head, a movement caught his eye; there, one tree over, a familiar tail waved from behind a cluster of three pine cones.
Tobin let go a relieved puff of breath as he zeroed in on the pine-cone cluster. Trusting Wiley wouldn’t call him over unless it was safe, Tobin bolted. He skimmed the length of branch and hopped onto his friend’s bough. Darting behind the pine cones, he saw Wiley’s eyes were as wide as acorn caps.
Wiley held up his paw, spreading two toes. “We were this close to becoming tomorrow’s owl pellets.”
Tobin shook his head. “What happened?”
Wiley shrugged. “I can’t explain it. I heard the swish of feathers and thought I was done for. I looked up and saw a real cranky-looking hooter sitting one branch up from me. Thing is, I know that owl saw me. And you, too. But it just watched you, like it wondered what you were looking at.” Wiley scowled. “Then that lice bag tried to poop on me. And away it flew.”
Tobin cringed—good grief, how’d he not noticed an owl breathing down his back? “Maybe it’s sick? Something’s got to be wrong with an owl that’s out during the day.”
“I don’t know, but we should get back to Talia and Hess. Let ’em know we have an owl to worry about now, too.”
Just great. Another oddity to add to the list. Tobin nodded, and they ran across the canopy. Though the stickiness on his paws was nearly gone, the added fear of a nearby owl was motivation enough to haul tail.
The musty scent of the forest floor welcomed Tobin as he spiraled down the final tree, away from the Arakni lair and back into Talia and Hess’s hideout. He barely scurried through the moss-covered entrance when Talia pounced. “You’re back!” She threw her paws around his neck, knocking him a step back.
“It was quite a trip.” Tobin shifted his gaze to Hess. “And a successful one. We saw the lair and the food storage.”
Wiley leaped past him, landing squarely between Talia and Hess. “And we saw an owl! Actually, it saw us first, but it didn’t even try to eat us.”
Hess’s tail curled around a nearby stick. “An owl?” He looked up, peering through the tiny holes in their hideout as if they were gaping crags. His head swiveled. “What did this owl look like?”
What does that matter? Tobin shook his head. “Wiley’s the only one who saw it.”
Wiley’s ears flicked back with excitement. “It was huge! Brown feathers tipped with black, and its beak was jagged. I think there was a chip on the side of it. And it looked cranky.”
Hess lowered his head, sucking in a deep breath. “I think I know this owl.”
The tone of Hess’s voice made the skin on Tobin’s paws prickle. “You know this owl? What do you mean?” Dread welled in his stomach like dirty water.
“His name is Swallfyce. He occasionally works with my mother.”
Wiley tapped his chin. “Wait a sec, did you say an owl works with your mom?”
“It’s a very new arrangement,” said Hess. “My mother’s worry over the recent Arakni population explosion has become an obsession. It’s led to some interesting partnerships. Us included, I suppose.”
Tobin went cold. Hess had secrets. Secrets with dangerous implications. “What does your mother have to do with this?”
“Remember the snake queen you met, Queen Hesthpa?”
The mice nodded.
Hess sighed. “She is my mother.”
Wiley sat upright. “That gigantic snake is your mom?”
Hess nodded. “Yes.”
Talia grabbed her tail, stroking it through her paws. Her nose scrunched. “She said you were just her interpreter, not her son.”
“My mother often speaks in half-truths. I am her interpreter,” said Hess, “but I also hatched from her brood. So many of us call her ‘mother’ that the title seems inconsequential.”
Tobin tapped a claw on the ground, trying to jog his memory of that very first meeting with the snakes. “What’d your mother whisper to you right before we left?”
Hess pursed his scale-ridged lips together as he thought. “My mother said, ‘Mice are clever. Help them find the lair and a way the snakes can travel there. Learn all you can.’”
Tobin’s whiskers twitched, and Hess sighed. “I swear, Tobin. I didn’t think she’d follow us with an army.”
“Huh?” Tobin leaned in toward Hess. “What do you mean, follow us with an army?”
Hess stared off in the distance, solving a riddle only he had the clues to. “I think that was her plan all along. She used me—well, us actually—to find a way across that gorge.”
Wiley ears flattened. “Why?”
“The Arakni raided her most recent clutch of eggs, snatching a few hatchlings just as they broke from the shell. My mother was . . . enraged, to say the least. She says the spiders have grown too aggressive.”
“So what does a cranky owl have to do with the spiders?” asked Talia.
Hess looked skyward. “If Swallfyce is here, I’d say she’s recruited a parliament of owls to help.”
“Why owls?” Talia asked. “Why would they fight for her?”
“Fight with her. Yes, the Arakni are catching the occasional hatchlings, and that angers the queen. But that is hardly the spiders’ biggest violation. No, the Arakni are overhunting everything. The forest is falling out of balance. If the Arakni population continues to spread, all of the forest will look as dismal as this decrepit stretch.” Hess paused before thinking out loud. “Yes, I believe my mother teamed up with owls to destroy the Arakni lair.”
Tobin began kneading the dirt beneath his paws. This changed everything. Everything! “What about our pinkling?” he asked. “When will this spider-attacking army get here? We need to rescue our pinkling before they come!”
Hess frowned. “I don’t know, Tobin. I’m sorry. I think the most prudent plan would be to continue our own mission.”
“How?” Tobin flung the dirt in his paws against the log shelter. “The proof is the poop! The owls are here. And the snakes—they must be right on our tails.”
“Spiders, snakes, and owls?” Talia shivered. “Oh, sludge.”
Wiley’s whiskers suddenly twitched like he’d been stung by a deerfly. “Wait, wouldn’t that mean—if the snakes are following
us—won’t that lead them to Hubbart’s den?”
Tobin’s throat went as dry as sunbaked tree bark. Hess had acted strangely right after they left Hubbart’s den, right after he’d looked into the gorge. Tobin had been too upset with him about risking Talia when it happened to think any more of it, but now— “Through,” he corrected. “Through Hubbart’s den.”
Hess nodded slowly, his tongue flicking in and out. “The snakes have already been through Hubbart’s.”
Talia raised her chin. “How would you know that, Hess?”
Hess’s tail squeezed the stick until it cracked. “When we left Hubbart’s den, I saw them.”
“Saw who?” Tobin asked, even though he already knew the answer. The growl in his voice surprised him.
Hess’s reptilian eyes met Tobin’s. “Snakes. Dozens of snakes, descending into the gorge and heading toward Hubbart’s den.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Talia cried.
“Because I needed to get you three away from there!” Hess snapped.
Tobin heard Wiley drawing shaky breaths. His friend’s ears and nose were flushed.
“But Hubbart helped us,” Wiley whispered. “He helped us, and we brought him nothing but a snake army.”
Hess sucked in a sharp breath. “Had I known my mother’s plan, I’d have told Hubbart to join his family deep in the den and hide.” Hess looked intently at each mouse. “But I didn’t know the plan.”
“We still could have warned him,” Wiley shouted.
“You wouldn’t have left Hubbart’s den had I told you,” Hess replied. “You weren’t safe with the snake army coming.”
Tobin’s heart sank. “Your mother’s not the only master of half-truths in the family.”
Hess shook his head. “Please understand. Once you discovered a path for the snakes to cross the gorge, in their eyes, you served your purpose. I think that was my mother’s plan the whole time. Who knows what they would have done to you. Anyway, Hubbart already said his family was ‘down in the belly o’ the den.’” Hess cleared his throat. “Hubbart’s a big woodchuck. I’m sure he handled himself well.”
