A Tail of Camelot

by Julie Leung

  Before them stood the most terrifying mousetrap he had ever seen. A small chunk of cheddar cheese sat in the center of a spring-loaded wooden platform. The platform was encircled by three rows of serrated metal teeth, like the maw of a giant sea lamprey. The sharp edges looked deadlier than any of the knives in the Two-Legger kitchen.

  “Each page must remove the cheese from the platform successfully. Once the cheese is removed, the trap is triggered. In order to proceed to the next challenge, he or she must jump out of danger before the blades close,” Commander Yvers said.

  Devrin gave a long, low whistle. Warren’s ears began to twitch.

  “And so, my sons and daughters of Camelot,” Yvers said, “let the first test begin!”

  CHAPTER

  5

  “Devrin Savortooth, please step forward!”

  Calib tried to cheer along with the rest of the spectators as Sir Kensington motioned for Devrin to step up, but his mouth was too dry.

  Devrin raised her wooden sword in salute to Commander Yvers. Then she turned and marched toward the trap, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Calib could see the slight quiver of her whiskers betraying her nervousness.

  As she approached the trap’s outer ring, the audience quieted. Calib’s heart quickened as Devrin placed her sword between her teeth and broke into a galloping run, charging the trap head-on. At the last moment, she released the sword into her paw. Using it as a vaulting pole, Devrin soared over the rows of sharp metal.

  Calib cringed, certain that she would slice herself on the jagged edge of the innermost row. But Devrin narrowly missed the blades and landed safely. The onlookers burst into cheers. Devrin took a quick moment to wave at the audience.

  Everyone waited with bated breath to see what she would do next. Calib squinted, too afraid to watch but too embarrassed to cover his eyes entirely. After a few seconds of contemplation, Devrin grabbed her own tail and tied it into a loose lasso.

  She swung her tail gently back and forth, calculating its weight. Then, with a nimble toss, Devrin looped her tail around the cheese and yanked it off the platform.

  With a terrific clang, the metal teeth snapped shut like a jaw. The crowd shrieked. For a few precious seconds, Calib couldn’t look, certain he would see Devrin severed in two. But when the dust cleared from the arena, he saw that she had curled into a ball. The rows of teeth had closed shut only a few whiskers’ length above her. The tip of her tail was bloody—but it held the cheese tightly.

  Calib felt the wind rush out of him as the crowd broke into a triumphant frenzy—horns blared, pennants fluttered wildly, and hats flew high into the air. Two mice ran out to Devrin with a canvas stretcher and bandages. Shakily, she eased herself onto the stretcher and cradled her tail. She was carried to the champions’ circle below the pages’ section of the stands. As she passed the other contenders, she gave Calib a big wink and took a bite out of the cheese.

  “Peesh ohf cake,” she said with a full mouth. “Er, rather, peesch ohf Swissh!”

  Commander Yvers stood up from the throne to speak, his eyes shining with pride.

  “Devrin Savortooth, you have shown valor like the knights who came before you,” he said. “For successfully passing the first test, Sir Kensington will present you with the Blue Badge of Bravery!”

  Sir Kensington walked down from the stage to Devrin’s stretcher and pinned a blue silk ribbon on one shoulder of her breastplate.

  The crowd finally quieted, and Sir Alric’s apprentices reset the trap.

  Merlin, if you’re still out there, please find a way to stop this tournament, Calib prayed silently to the legendary wizard.

  “And the next challenger will be . . . Warren Clipping!”

  Warren sauntered up to the trap, waving to the stands. Circling the outer ring, the gray mouse stopped at the hinge that linked the rows of metal teeth. He did a few muscle flexes and lunges, making a great show of stretching out his legs.

  “Come on,” Calib muttered, even as a few mice tittered in the audience.

  Finally, Warren climbed on top of the hinge. He licked his paw and tested the air, as if gauging the wind.

  From his tunic pocket, he removed a candied cherry. With deft aim, Warren threw the cherry at the cheese, knocking it off the platform. When the trap clapped shut, Warren leaped easily off the hinge and out of the trap’s way. Danger avoided, he walked to the center and retrieved the cheese from the ground. Dusting the dirt off, Warren held it up like a trophy. The crowd went wild.

  “Very resourceful, Warren,” Commander Yvers remarked. “There is more than one way to clear a trap, and courage goes hand-in-hand with cleverness. Sir Percival will present you with the Blue Badge of Bravery.”

  Warren bowed smugly and took his place next to Devrin in the champions’ circle on the far side of the arena. Sir Percival came down from the stage and pinned the ribbon. He patted Warren encouragingly on his shoulder.

  “Calib Christopher, please approach the arena!”

  Panic poured over Calib’s head like ice water. His paws were slick with sweat. His nose had gone numb. He could barely feel his body.

  “Calib Christopher,” Commander Yvers repeated. Was it Calib’s imagination or had his grandfather frowned? “Approach!”

  Trembling, Calib stepped jerkily down from the platform, his head pounding as hard as his heart. The sea of cheering spectators only made him feel more like an impostor. He knew he would not succeed in getting the cheese from the trap. He would likely not make it past the first ring of metal teeth. He was not bold like Devrin; not cunning like Warren. He looked back at his grandfather. The warmth and encouragement coming from Commander Yvers’s gaze was the worst of all.

  Calib knew he would have to drop out of the tournament. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t have the courage. He wasn’t brave.

  He was a poor excuse for a Christopher.

  As Calib opened his mouth to withdraw himself, a gust of wind blew through the Goldenwood Hall. All the torches extinguished at once, plunging the hall into darkness.

  For a few seconds, everyone was silent. Then the yelling, coughing, and shoving began.

  “Wot’s just happened?”

  “That was a magicked wind if I ever felt one!”

  “Is this some beast’s idea of a joke?”

  Calib could not believe his luck—his prayer had been answered! The tournament could not go on without light!

  His eyes adjusting to the surrounding darkness, Calib could just make out the patchy silhouettes of his fellow mice grasping in the dark. He wiped his brow and let out a shaky laugh. He had time now—to plan, to think of an excuse.

  “Friar Burrows, my tail! Ow!”

  “Someone get Sir Alric up here!”

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, Calib spied a skulking shadow emerging from behind the stands. Tall and lithe, it bounded swiftly toward the stage on four paws.

  The silhouette of a curved blade sat between its teeth, and a sudden terror slammed like a crushing weight against Calib’s chest. As the shadow came closer to the stage, Calib shouted.

  “Guards! Grandfather! Look out!”

  But his cries were drowned out by the confusion of other voices. Smoke caught in Calib’s lungs. He pushed toward the stage, still shouting, but the shuffling and shoving blocked his way. He was buffeted in all directions, like a leaf in a swirling current of water.

  “Guards! Grandfather! Look—Oof.”

  Calib tripped over a hedgehog’s drum and fell on his chin. He watched helplessly as the shadow leaped onto the stage, nimble as an acrobat. With unnatural speed, it crouched and pounced on Commander Yvers. His grandfather’s silhouette twisted in pain.

  “Grandfather!” Calib cried out.

  “I’ve got a torch!” someone shouted in the distance, and a torch reignited in a far corner of the arena. Faint, wavering light trickled back into the hall.

  Now, torches were springing up, like fireflies in the dark. At last the light made its way to the stage,
illuminating Commander Yvers as he fell to his knees. A dark, wet stain blossomed beneath his fur.

  CHAPTER

  6

  No. The word was like a drumbeat in Calib’s chest. No, no, no, no, no.

  Fearful voices shouted in the half dark. “We’re being attacked!” they cried. The Goldenwood Hall was chaos as animals rushed the exits, squashing fur and paws, whiskers and ears, trying to find a way out. But Calib could think only of his grandfather. He shoved against the tide of fur, sailing on the single drumbeat, no. Time moved in quick bursts.

  Sir Kensington was holding Commander Yvers now, cradling his head.

  “We need a healer!” she barked. “Percival! Get over here!”

  Finally, Calib was there, at his grandfather’s side. He grabbed Commander Yvers’s outstretched paws as Sir Kensington laid him on his back. Massive, clawed paw prints led a bloody trail away from his grandfather. Calib couldn’t stand to look at them. Dimly, he registered that Sir Owen and three other knights had taken off in pursuit of the assassin.

  “My grandson,” Commander Yvers gasped, each breath wheezing out like a punctured forge bellows. His blood pooled on the golden embroidery of his cloak. “There’s so much left to say . . . to teach . . .”

  “Please hold on, there’s still time,” Calib implored. He could see Sir Percival running toward them, gripping a medical bag between his teeth.

  “There is never enough time. You are the last Christopher, Calib. You must carry on our legacy. Promise me . . . you will see to . . . protect . . .” Commander Yvers was no longer looking at Calib. His gaze lost focus, and his body stiffened. With a shuddering sigh, Commander Yvers closed his eyes and lay still.

  Calib clutched his grandfather’s limp paws. “Grandfather,” he said, his throat swollen and raw. “Grandfather, stay with us.”

  “Come, Calib,” Sir Kensington said, laying a paw on his shoulder, her voice thick with sorrow. “There’s nothing to be done.”

  Calib spun away from her, reeling. It was his fault. All his fault. He had wished for an intervention, anything to stop the tournament. And he hadn’t been quick enough to save his grandfather. He hadn’t been strong enough.

  Calib pushed through the crowd bursting from the Goldenwood Hall, and then he started to run. Down hallways and stairwells and twisting corridors, ignoring everything but the throb of shame inside him and the thick, awful pressure behind his eyes. He ran until he thought his lungs might explode from the effort.

  Blinded by tears, hardly paying attention to where he was going, Calib charged out of the mousehole he thought would lead outside the castle. Instead, he found himself on the open marble floor of King Arthur’s throne room. In his misery, he’d made a wrong turn, but he knew there was a shortcut at the other end. He was halfway across the room when he heard someone cough.

  He froze.

  Sitting at the Round Table in front of him was the Two-Legger boy from earlier that morning, the one with big ears.

  And he was staring directly at Calib.

  Calib was so stunned—he’d been seen by a Two-Legger—that for a second, his legs stopped working and he couldn’t retreat.

  “You seem to be in a rush,” the boy said in a friendly tone.

  Calib wondered if this was all part of a terrible nightmare. There was no other explanation . . . unless the Two-Legger was actually speaking to Calib.

  “I had a pet mouse just like you back at home,” the boy continued. He put down the quill he had been writing with and squatted to the ground. To Calib’s shock, the boy extended a hand, as if to invite Calib onto his palm.

  Alarms blared in Calib’s head. Being seen by a Two-Legger equaled certain death. He darted around the other side of the table and behind the throne. From there, he began scaling up the back, using the ornate filigreed carvings as pawholds.

  “Wait!” said the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  But Calib wasn’t listening. He jumped onto the nearby sill of a tall stained-glass window. Spying a small missing pane in the glass, Calib squeezed through the opening. Suddenly, he was falling through the night air outside.

  He landed hard on a wilting lilac bush. Winded, Calib looked around him. He was in the queen’s private courtyard—a beautiful overgrown garden on the cliffside. King Arthur had built this sanctuary for Guinevere, to keep her happy while he went off on battle campaigns. From what little Calib knew of the queen, it hadn’t worked.

  Calib navigated the garden, still panting, still bewildered by what had just occurred. Had the boy really spoken to him? Two-Leggers, he knew, cared nothing for mice, unless it was to snap their heads in traps. They couldn’t even communicate with other species, like most animals could.

  And his grandfather . . . Was it possible? Was Commander Yvers really . . . ?

  The tournament, the shadows, the feel of his grandfather’s paw in his . . .

  Calib skirted around a pond choked with green algae, past gargoyles with moss growing thick as beards on their limbs. He climbed the stone wall that lined the edge of the cliff. The castle was perched upon a small island that divided a mighty river into two streams. Those streams emptied into the Sapphire Sea by way of two waterfalls. From this vantage point, Calib could see both the northern and southern falls plummeting into the sea.

  And then it hit him, like an acorn to the chest.

  Dead. His grandfather was dead.

  No amount of wishing or magic would undo this terrible truth. He wanted to cry, but the tears felt clogged somewhere in the back of his throat.

  The moon and stars hung high over the sea, turning the water into a sparkling canvas as far as the eye could see. Calib remembered tales his mother used to tell, of ships that could sail great distances, beyond what even the Two-Legger maps had charted. Perhaps he could run away and join one. Run away—as he had done just now—only farther, never to return.

  “There you are!” Devrin’s sharp voice rang out from the courtyard below him, cutting through the numbing fog in Calib’s heart. “All pages need to report to the council room immediately!”

  “Coming!” Calib swiped at his eyes with a paw. He couldn’t let Devrin see him like this. That would make things even worse. He quickly rappelled down from the wall, using a length of ivy as a rope.

  “Have they found the attacker? Do we know who it was?” he asked breathlessly when he reached the bottom.

  “No, the devil got away,” Devrin said with a snarl. She balled her paws into fists, and her ears flattened against her head. “But not for long.”

  They scurried toward the southernmost tower, using the gutters that ran alongside the castle walls. When they arrived at its base, they entered the tower through a large crack between two stones. The building housed the castle’s weapons, which were dusty from neglect. The two mice ducked behind the handle of a large mace and entered a much smaller chamber set into the thick castle foundation.

  Inside was a round table, much like the one in King Arthur’s throne room, except that this one was constructed from a bronze serving platter stacked on an empty thread spool. Overturned cups surrounded the table, serving as seating for the assembled knights. A rusted chandelier made of broken Two-Legger jewelry dangled from the ceiling.

  The room looked dingy in comparison to the Goldenwood Hall, but this was the true heart of Camelot. From here, the mouse-knights ruled their dominion with steady paws.

  One by one, the room filled to capacity. Twenty mice were seated at the Round Table, and a handful of pages ran about, refilling their thimbles with tea. The last one to arrive was Macie, a sharp-eyed red squirrel dressed in a green camouflage tunic. She was the leader of Camelot’s scouts. Calib was surprised to see Macie. She was usually deep in the woods on some mission.

  When everyone was accounted for, Sir Kensington motioned for Devrin to close the door behind her. Each mouse was keenly aware that the tallest chair in the room, Commander Yvers’s, sat unoccupied.

  “All rise for this meeting of the Round
Table,” Kensington said.

  The knights rose to attention and raised their sword hilts to their foreheads, facing the direction of the empty chair.

  CHAPTER

  7

  “My fellow knights,” Sir Kensington said, “I know we are all stunned by the loss of Commander Yvers. In the wake of this heinous deed, we must rally around our greatest strength: one another.”

  Sir Kensington scanned the room, looking every knight in the eye. “Justice shall be served, and we will carry on. Sir Owen, how goes the hunt for the killer?”

  “Macie sent her scouts into the woods. We lost track of the devil once he got past the moat. Ergo Toggs and his otters swear they saw nothing suspicious on the water this evening.”

  “And Sir Percival, what’s your news?”

  “I have not done a full examination yet.” Sir Percival Vole’s voice cracked as he spoke. Sir Alric handed him a handkerchief, and the healer blew loudly into it. “But I had a chance to take a closer look at his wounds. . . .”

  From his tunic, Sir Percival removed a small bundle wrapped in bloodstained linen. A collective shudder rippled through the knights. Calib bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

  “I found this buried in Commander Yvers’s armor.” Sir Percival held out a chipped rodent tooth. “It seems the creature tried to bite Commander Yvers’s neck first, and broke his tooth on the armor. I’m afraid I must conclude that this tooth belongs to a black squirrel.”

  Macie’s expression hardened, and Sir Owen growled with anger. “I knew it. Two-Bits must be responsible for this treachery!”

  Owen pounded a fist on the Round Table. “He is the only Darkling creature who could know the castle’s layout well enough to carry out such an attack! By Merlin, he probably even knows where the storerooms are! He could lead the Darklings right to our food!”

  Calib’s breath went out of him in a woosh. Two-Bits was the envoy sent by the Darklings every year to renew the peace treaty signed by Commander Yvers. He wasn’t due to arrive for another week. The Darklings had chosen Two-Bits because he was a cousin twice removed of the red squirrels in Camelot’s orchard. The squirrels had vouched for him. Though relations with the Darklings were always strained, to accuse him of assassinating Commander Yvers was grave, indeed.