The Curse of Mousebeard

by Alex Milway

  The Silver Shark lowered its sails and started to drift effortlessly with the current toward the islands.

  “Pull us in near the boats,” shouted Mousebeard, directing the helmsman with his hand. “And don’t expect a warm welcome…; people will have heard of us.”

  As they drew closer, the creaking, whooping noise of the windmills became much louder. The sails were imposing to look at from below, and they seemed particularly uncomfortable spiked upon the tapering rock towers.

  A ship of its size rarely came to the close-knit community of the Murals, and one as notorious as the Silver Shark was unwelcome. It passed numerous fishing vessels chained to wharves and jetties, drawing disconcerted stares from sailors, and with every bridge spanning the islands that passed overhead, a thin shadow flew over the deck.

  Mousebeard walked to the edge of the ship and stepped up onto a ledge to look over the side. A band of six men had gathered; all were dressed in fishermen’s outfits and looked unlikely soldiers. But they held weapons in their hands, and their faces showed they wanted nothing to do with the pirate.

  “You can’t land here,” proclaimed one of the men. The sight of Mousebeard had shaken him, and his voice rattled unconvincingly.

  Mousebeard laughed and took his hat off in an unusual display of courtly behavior.

  “I’ve not come to ransack your homes,” he said, desperately holding back the urge to laugh out loud. “I’m after Lugwidge. I was told he lives here….”

  The men maintained their guarded approach.

  “What if he does?” replied the man. “You’ve got no reason to come here.”

  “I have every reason to come here,” snarled Mousebeard, forgetting his intention to be nice. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go and get him.”

  The man turned to his side and whispered to his friend, who lowered his musket and rushed off. Mousebeard watched him disappear through a door in the side of the rocky tower.

  “All right,” said the man. “We’re peaceful here—but just because we don’t fight, doesn’t mean we can’t….”

  Mousebeard’s smile returned to his beard.

  “I know those weapons haven’t fired in years,” he said, “but I hear what you’re saying—an admirable attitude.”

  The man found the pirate hard to read. He couldn’t tell whether he was lying, telling the truth, or merely playing with him before slaughtering them all.

  “Unlike yours,” said the man. “There’s blood on your hands, pirate; we’ve all read about you.”

  “There’s blood on everyone’s hands, my friend,” he replied coarsely. “It’s whether you choose to wash it off or not that counts.”

  The man’s face remained stern. Mousebeard could see beads of sweat running down his cheeks.

  “Sir!” called the other man as he appeared once more from the tower. “Lugwidge will open the storeroom doors.”

  Mousebeard looked to the man on the quay for an explanation. He pointed up to the bridge overhead.

  “The storeroom up there,” he said. “They’ll send down a cage for you—and only you.”

  “That suits me,” said the pirate. “And you can stand there and watch the ship for me while I’m gone….”

  “I was going to do just that,” replied the man.

  “Good. I wouldn’t want you doing anything useful,” he growled.

  The cage shook as it lowered, descending at a fair pace until it came to a rest on the deck of the Silver Shark. Mousebeard stepped in and secured the door behind him. Once he was safely inside, it started to rise again, and his eyes followed the thick chain that pulled it skyward. Just meters from its destination, however, it ground to a halt.

  “You won’t try anything stupid, will you?” asked an old bearded man, leaning half out of the hole under the walkway. “We’ve had no trouble here for years….”

  Mousebeard found it strange to see the professor again: his serious face was covered in lines and wrinkles, and his balding head even more hairless than before. When he spoke, his words sounded muffled, as though he owned false teeth, and his bright blue eyes were now yellowing and tired. Professor Lugwidge had been only a young teacher when he’d first met him, so the difference was all the more noticeable—he still wore the same earthy colored, well-cut clothes, though, and in particular a plain brown waistcoat.

  “I’ll not cause you trouble, Professor Lugwidge…”

  Lugwidge was thrown by his words.

  “Professor? No one calls me that here….”

  “My name’s Jonathan… Jonathan Harworth. Remember me?”

  “You…,” he said, returning his hand to the crank, which had halted the cage’s progress.

  “You were the friend of Isiah Lovelock—but I thought you’d died long ago… you’re Mousebeard?”

  He released the stop and turned the crank once more; the cage lifted into the box-filled storeroom and stopped with a loud clunk as it locked into place. Professor Lugwidge’s eyes traveled all over the pirate, trying desperately to find a feature he recognized.

  “It’s time we had a little talk, Professor,” said Mousebeard.

  “It is?” he replied, quite dumbfounded. He opened the cage warily. “But I’ve heard such bad things about you…; I don’t remember a young Jonathan ever doing any harm….”

  Lugwidge beckoned him along a thin corridor and into a cluttered room, filled with books and odd pieces of furniture. Two old Brown Mice sat atop a shelf and squeaked when they saw them.

  “I would have thought you’d know better than most not to trust any news that came out of Old Town these days,” said Mousebeard.

  “Oh, but we’re so far removed from all that. We can’t get the Mousing Times out here, so we don’t get much news; it seems to be only the worst, most gruesome stories that are capable of traveling along the wind to us. We’re pretty much self-sufficient out here on the Murals, so we don’t care too much.”

  The professor walked to a stove and placed a thick-bottomed kettle on to boil.

  “Tea?” he asked. Mousebeard nodded in reply.

  “But why have you come here? Surely you realize our aldermen will have alerted someone to your presence. Despite our position out here in the sea, we do still have contacts on the mainland….”

  “I’m sure someone has,” Mousebeard replied, “but it’s nothing we can’t deal with. They wouldn’t get here for days, so we have a little time.”

  He cut to the chase. “Are you still in contact with Isiah Lovelock?”

  Lugwidge pulled up a seat and sat down.

  “I’m afraid I’m not. That man has little time for the likes of me these days. And all those hours I gave up to his dogged learning of evolutionary history!”

  “So you won’t have heard about the Golden Mice?”

  “Now there you’re very much wrong—I think the whole world must know about them.”

  “He’s a law unto himself,” mumbled the pirate.

  “Ahh,” said Lugwidge, “but that’s exactly what everyone thinks of you….”

  “Yes, so I’ve heard.”

  “But there’s more to your visit than just this, surely,” said the professor.

  Mousebeard gently teased apart his beard and withdrew the Methuselah Mouse, which immediately started to shiver. Lugwidge took off his glasses and swapped them for a thicker, more powerful pair. His pupils grew to double their size through the lenses, and he leaned forward to see the animal up close. After blowing warm air over his fingers, he delicately touched its back with his fingertips.

  “You remember what you told us, all those years ago…,” said Mousebeard.

  “Ah… Porphyria Hokeline,” he said quietly.

  “What…”

  Mousebeard pulled the mouse away.

  “What did you say?”

  The professor leaned back and wiped his brow.

  “That was her name… the woman on Stormcloud Island,” he said. “And I’ve seen this little fellow before. I met them both o
n a sailing ship as I was returning from an overseas expedition. She showed me the Methuselah Mouse, but she wouldn’t tell me much about it—in fact I thought she was quite mad. All she wanted to talk about was where she’d been. The fact that I’d just seen the Tork Mice of Emben in their natural habitat didn’t even register.”

  Mousebeard growled, and his fingers squeezed his kneecap.

  “She cursed me…,” he said, his voice serious and grim.

  “Cursed you?” said Lugwidge, his nose wrinkling, lifting up his glasses. “Don’t be silly…; I mean, she was odd, but…”

  Mousebeard’s face darkened, and Lugwidge suddenly started to fear him once more.

  “Isiah also suffers it. She cursed us so that we may never meet again—I am cursed to forever roam the sea, Isiah trapped upon the land. I think she saw something in us, feared what we were capable of together—she’d have been kinder to kill me there and then…. That woman turned me into what I am now, and all because of this mouse I hold in my hand. And you may hold the key to it all.”

  Lugwidge jumped up and hastily prepared two cups for their drinks.

  “I don’t see what I can do to help you,” he said uneasily. “I really don’t know anything more. Like I said, I thought she was one Stinkle Mouse short of a bad smell.”

  “There must be something,” said Mousebeard. “Think…”

  “She was quite unhinged,” he said, passing a cup to Mousebeard. “I mean, she seemed to think that she had just returned from that place, that mythical land of the mouse people… what was it called? We used to teach about it in Mousing Myths and Mouselore….”

  Professor Lugwidge scratched his head.

  “Oh, come on, Jonathan, you must remember…,” he said, his eyes screwed tight and his fingers massaging his head, “where the Mussarians are supposed to have come from!”

  “You don’t mean Norgammon?” said Mousebeard.

  “That’s the one! That’s the place! I told you she wasn’t all there!”

  A loud whistling noise surrounded the room, taking Mousebeard by surprise.

  “It’s just the wind,” said Lugwidge; “you get used to that.”

  Mousebeard stood up and looked through the windows. Blue-backed Flying Mice were playing with the wind, letting its current lift them into the sky before folding their wings and plummeting to the sea. The windmill sails continued to turn steadily, and the clouds in the distance raced across the horizon.

  “Norgammon?” said Mousebeard once more.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s right. I mean it’s just preposterous, isn’t it?” replied Lugwidge. “And when I heard that, I tried to keep my distance from her—you never know what these folk might do in the cramped interior of a ship.”

  “But no one’s been there, ever. It’s not even thought to exist, really, is it?” muttered Mousebeard.

  “Exactly!”

  Mousebeard opened the window and let the strong wind blow in, ruffling his beard.

  “I think you should turn your attention away from this woman, Jonathan. I can’t see the cure to your curse being anything to do with her.”

  “You don’t understand, Professor. She’s the only link I have to the curse. I need to find out more about her.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find out what you need soon enough, Jonathan,” said Lugwidge, taking a sip of his tea. “These matters have a habit of solving themselves, but sometimes it just takes time—maybe even years.”

  Mousebeard pulled at his jacket and felt resigned to his fate.

  “But Lovelock is growing more powerful by the day. His dominance in both the mousing and political communities is overwhelming. I fear that soon not even I might have the ability to stop him. I fear the one thing I don’t have is time.”

  The Bangarian Monk Mouse

  THE GENTLEST AND SWEETEST MOUSE IN EXISTENCE, THE BANGARIAN Monk Mouse likes nothing better than resting its head on its paws as though in prayer. A dark grey color, the Bangarian Monk Mouse emanates from the small island of Bangaria, where it peacefully coexists with the island’s population of priests. This is one of the easiest mice to keep, due to its minimal food requirements, disregard for comfortable bedding, and need for a particularly small cage.

  MOUSING NOTES:

  The Bangarian Monk Mouse enjoys plenty of peace and quiet, so keep the noise down.

  The Getaway

  KEEP HOLDING THAT LEVER UP!” SHOUTED ALGERNON, whose leather hat was now fully secured under his chin. In testing times it was always possible to tell Algernon’s mood by the state of his hat: the more secure it was, the more concerned he was.

  Scratcher felt his legs wobble beneath him as the submarine dragged to the left with the current and came to rest against the seabed.

  “I didn’t know they had submarines,” he said, watching beams of light drift through the murky waters of Hamlyn’s harbor.

  “No, nor me,” Algernon replied angrily, flicking an array of switches that sent the sub’s interior into darkness. “They must have found all the plans from my workshop…. Blast! I knew I should have destroyed everything.”

  He swiveled his pilot’s chair back around to the window and stared out through his wide glasses. Without his Boffin Mice to help, he needed six hands to work everything. But the probing lights of the enemy submarines hadn’t spotted them yet, and as far as he was concerned, that was how it should remain.

  “We sit here and wait,” he said, clutching the gearstick with both hands. “If they spot us, you have to pull that lever down as fast as possible…. You understand?”

  “Got it!” said Scratcher. “But how are we going to rescue Emiline and Drewshank if we’re stuck down here?”

  “Young Scratcher, in times like this—as infuriating as it must seem—we have to look after ourselves first. Without the submarine, there’ll be no escape for any of us!”

  “I understand,” he said sadly, “but if they do get away, how will they contact us? We’re not in the right place anymore!”

  “Hmph!” grumbled Algernon. He was truly stumped.

  “And we won’t be able to surface on the hour, like you’d planned.”

  “No…”

  Algernon scratched his chin and immediately had a brainwave.

  “Aha! We might not be able to surface, but one thing we can do…”

  He jumped up and pulled a cord above his head. With a soft clunk, a metal box with handles sticking out from its sides descended from the roof. He pulled it down to his eye level and gazed into it.

  “The periscope! I shall raise it on the hour to keep watch. How does that suit you?”

  Scratcher smiled.

  “That will be perfect,” he said.

  The door to the Mouse Trading Center opened quietly and Indigo peered out into the evening gloom. A light mist was thickening in the air, spreading the glow of the oil lamps like ink blots on paper. He saw four soldiers lining the wall at the front and turned to Drewshank and Emiline.

  “We’re into curfew now, so there’s no way out of this safely. As soon as they see us, the alarm will sound and everyone will be after us. You’re sure of your friend and his submarine?”

  “If Scratcher has done his bit, then he’ll be with Algernon, and they’ll be looking out for us every hour,” said Drewshank.

  “Here goes then…,” said Indigo, placing his mousebox on the floor. He lifted the lid, and the Sharpclaws scrambled out, as alert as ever. Indigo pointed out the guards, and the mice ran off. They showed no mercy and attacked their victims with such speed and agility that the men didn’t know what had hit them. Their weapons were sliced into pieces, and they ran off without a second thought.

  “Come on!” whispered Indigo, as he made his move. He didn’t stop to pick up his mice, but they were already following him as his feet hit the hard, cobblestoned street. Emiline was left speechless by how well trained his mice were.

  The street led directly to the harbor, and they skirted around the boundary wall and skipped down the steps t
o the quayside. Within just a few moments they heard Lady Pettifogger shouting from behind them. The soldiers from inside the Trading Center were clustered around her and blowing whistles to alert the Old Town Guard.

  “Where did Algernon say he’d be?” asked Emiline breathlessly.

  “Over there,” said Drewshank, continuing along the water’s edge. The only ships that were docked were navy vessels, and he watched them nervously for signs of life. He stopped when he reached a small wooden shelter and saw the light was on. He looked nervously into the doorway.

  “Can’t stop,” announced Drewshank happily.

  Mildred snapped out of his dream and blinked sleepily.

  “Mr. Drewshank? Is that you?” he said, his head spinning woozily. “Shan’t say a word…”

  Drewshank carried on, his spirits lifted by the sight of the Weather Teller. He followed the curve of the docks and eventually found the spot.

  “Here it is,” he proclaimed to himself, noting the thick metal chain falling into the water, and taking deep breaths to steady his heart.

  Indigo’s mice finally reached his side, and he picked them up and secured them in his mousebox.

  “So where is it?” he asked, staring into the gloom. Emiline caught up with them and couldn’t see the submarine either.

  “Well, if I had an idea of the time,” muttered Drewshank. “Oh, hang on!”

  He ran back to the shelter and peered inside at Mildred, who was asleep once more, his stick propped up on the side of a chair and the dead fish on its end rolled into a ball. On the moldy wall sat a crooked wood-framed timepiece.

  “Ten to nine,” he said quietly, as a loud gunshot fired out in the distance. “Which means ten long minutes to be captured! Gah!”

  He ran back, fighting the urge in his legs to slow down.

  “Ten minutes till the hour!” he said, leaning over to combat a sharp stitch that was sitting in his ribs.

  “Ten minutes!” snapped Indigo angrily. “The armed guard is out now—we won’t last that long!”

  “Algernon won’t let us down, I know it,” said Emiline earnestly. She ran out along a wooden wharf, feeling the mist grow thicker around her. The sea was dark and choppy beneath her feet, and she looked down into it, waiting for a sign. A gunshot rang out once more and she heard something fall into the sea with a soft plop. Her heart started to race.