The meadow was filled with lush green grass, morning glories opening their white petals to the world, golden daffodils, and wild mountain blue irises springing from the ground.
In the distance, Amber could see a shining disk, rising pink above the purple mountains and the morning fog that filled the Willamette Valley.
“That’s the sun,” Ben said. “We just head toward it.”
Oh, Amber thought. It was like a lightbulb back in the pet shop, only this one brightened the whole world.
Down in the meadow, her eyes caught the movement of animals. She saw cottontail bunnies bouncing playfully at the tree line, and by a small pool of water, a stately animal stood. It had some branches stuck on its head.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s a deer,” Bushmaster said, “with his antlers in velvet. With rabbits and deer in the meadow, that’s a good sign. There shouldn’t be any predators around.”
“Hooray,” Amber cried.
“We should have a song,” Bushmaster said, “to give us peace of mind on our journey.” And so he sat on the limb beneath the bush and sang in a loud, clear voice:
The trail is long and lonely,
And soon I’ll reach the end,
In sunlight or in shadow,
I’ll come to you, my friend.
When death is at your doorway,
And there’s no one to defend
In day or utter darkness,
I’ll stand with you, my friend.
In day or utter darkness,
I’ll sing for you, my friend.
Amber took a long look at Bushmaster. “That’s a song from the singing voles of the north, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Bushmaster said. “It’s what they sing when a friend is in danger.”
They sat for a moment, looking out over the meadow. It was early spring, and as the morning light eased through the trees, birdsong trembled in the air. Indeed, birds were everywhere. Golden meadowlarks erupted from the fescue like hot sparks from a forge; while hidden, they whistled songs both sweet and haunting. Red-winged blackbirds clung to the tops of cattail rushes along a small stream, making ratcheting noises as they hunted for caterpillars and bees. Finches and sparrows hopped in the brush at the edge of the woods, cheeping. And suddenly, far, far up, Bushmaster spotted a red-winged hawk wheeling in lazy circles through the sky.
“Time to get under cover,” he whispered, hopping to the ground.
The mice furtively crept through the grass, Ben taking the lead with his spear in hand, Amber in the middle, Bushmaster following at the end. The thick grass slowed them. Rye and fescue and wild vetch all competed for sunlight and grew in a tangled jungle. There were trails—hidden runways for small creatures—but the erratic paths often didn’t head the direction that they needed to go.
“Who made these trails?” Ben asked as they nosed through some thick grass. “Mice?”
“Not likely,” Bushmaster said. “The mice have all gone away. Voles are making these trails, mostly.”
“So they should be safe to follow?” Ben asked.
“Others use them,” Bushmaster said. “Pine snakes and garter snakes like to slither along them, and weasels. We have to be careful, even on the trails.”
Amber was curious. “You said the mice went away. Where did they go?”
“East,” Bushmaster said. “They went east. I asked, but they didn’t know where they were heading, or why they were leaving. Sometimes they muttered, ‘Into the Shadow,’ but they couldn’t tell me where the Shadow was or why they wanted to get there. They left in ones and twos, the mothers leading their kittens.”
“Did you humans notice this?” Amber asked Ben.
Ben shook his head.
Amber crept along silently, wondering what this could mean. The only animals she saw were small creatures—wolf spiders trundling along the grass, ants hunting in huge tribes, snails as round and pale as the moon, bright red ladybugs dozing in the dawn, a young mantis praying fervently for world peace.
So they nosed through the grass, panting and grunting, until they got hungry.
For the first time in her life, Amber foraged for oats and clover. She drank morning dew from golden buttercups, dined on wild peas. It seemed to her to be the finest feast she’d ever eaten.
* * *
Dave Hugely, owner of Noah’s Ark Pet Shop, always found his pulse racing just a bit when a customer walked into the store with a cardboard box. It was just like Christmas. You never knew what might be hidden in the package. Usually, it was just a dozen ugly calico kittens or a green iguana that had grown too big for its cage. But sometimes the box held real treasures—like the time a fellow brought in an albino cobra.
“Thing’s eatin’ three rats a week,” the fellow had complained.
“Well,” Dave had hemmed and hawed. “I don’t know what I’d do with a big, old poison snake. Can’t sell ’em, legally.”
“Maybe you could find a home for it . . . sort of on the side,” the fellow had suggested.
“Tell you what,” Dave offered. “I could take him off of your hands for you. Maybe even give you twenty bucks.”
And he bought himself a twelve-foot-long albino cobra.
Now, few people knew it, but Dave really ran two pet shops. There was the Noah’s Ark that all of the mothers and children in the neighborhood knew and loved—home to clown fish and lovebirds and sweet little puppies with their slobbery tongues.
Then there was the secret pet shop in the back room where Dave kept his more creepy pets—giant piranhas from Venezuela, a mating pair of Komodo dragons, Egyptian pygmy owls that were a huge hit with the Harry Potter crowd, snakehead fish out of Thailand, baby crocodiles, frilled lizards from the outback, and a Colombian anaconda large enough to swallow a child whole, just to name a few.
That’s where Dave made his big money, selling the bizarre, the dangerous, the illegal. And so when he got his albino cobra, it had been a real treasure. He’d sold it to a doctor in China, where it was dried in the sun and ground up for love potions. A dandy like that one was worth $10,000 a pound.
So Dave got excited that morning when he saw a disreputable-looking fellow carrying a plain cardboard box.
The guy hung off to the back of the store, waited until some kids finished petting the spaniel puppies and then left the shop.
“What you got in the box?” Dave asked as soon as they were alone.
The guy’s voice was husky. “I don’t rightly know.” With trembling hands, he began to open the box. Usually when a customer didn’t know what he had, it meant that it was some off-breed cat or dog. Something rare. Dave would pretend it was a mutt, buy it for practically nothing, and then auction it off on eBay.
But as soon as this fellow opened the box, Dave jumped away. It wasn’t a mutt. It was a monster!
“What the devil do you think it is?” the fellow asked.
Dave peered into the box, and moved to the side. The customer was shaking.
“I mean, it kind of looks like a . . . uh, like a porcupine, with an octopus stuck on its face.”
“Yeah,” Dave agreed. “Maybe with a little badger thrown in. Got mean teeth. But look at that tail.”
Dave had never seen anything like it. The creature wasn’t huge—not much bigger than a cottontail rabbit. And it didn’t seem to be healthy. It just lay in the box as if it were nearly dead. In fact, Dave would have thought it was a fake—like those little jackalope heads that the local taxidermists made for tourists by mounting deer antlers onto a stuffed rabbit. But this creature was definitely breathing and peering around.
Porcupine body. Octopus with tentacles for a face. A spiked tail, kind of like an otter. Webbed feet, sharp claws, and teeth. Two small eyes on the right side of its head, one above the other. But only one big eye on the left.
And the stink! By golly, Dave thought, last time I smelled anything that bad was when I accidentally left that big old can of fishing worms in the refrigerator for a month.
“Where did you get it?” Dave asked.
“Up in the mountains on the coast,” the customer said. “I’ve been trapping coyotes up in Hells Canyon, just below Shrew Hill. I was running my traplines this morning, and this fellow crawled up on the side of the road. He stood on his back legs and just waved them tentacles at me, almost like he was trying to flag me down.”
It was odd—and creepy. Dave had heard tales of strange creatures up by Shrew Hill.
“You know,” Dave surmised. “I think I know what this is. It looks to me like a star-nosed mole, kind of. You know, one of those moles with the pink fingers on its nose that eats worms and slugs?”
“Kind of,” the customer admitted, dubiously.
“Yeah,” Dave suggested, “that’s what it is. Except that it’s giant, and the tentacles are way too long. It must be some kind of . . . well, a mutant?”
At that, the animal changed colors almost instantly. The pink tentacles suddenly went dark red, then deep blue.
“Lots of weird animals up at Shrew Hill,” the trapper said. “I’ve heard tales of Sasquatches.”
“Now, that I’d like to see,” Dave said. “You bring me a Sasquatch, and it might be worth something.”
“I’ve seen things too,” the trapper admitted. His voice was frightened and husky, as if he didn’t really want to speak. “I saw a mountain sheep up there four days ago. Had a head on it like a little girl. Pretty girl, with blonde hair and dark brown doe’s eyes. I pulled out my pistol and was gonna shoot her, but she just kept smiling at me and munching on a raspberry bush.”
Dave just stared at the trapper. He sniffed the air, to see if the fellow had been drinking. “You know,” Dave offered, “maybe this is more of a half-breed. Kind of like a star-nosed mole mixed with a porcupine.”
“Yeah,” the fellow suggested.
“There’s all kinds of strange things like this in the world,” Dave said. “There were some fox hunters out in Iowa last year, shot something that looked like a rabbit with long fangs. They caught it eating a sheep.”
“Yeah,” the customer said. “Or like that girl in Brazil a few years back, who went swimming in the pond—”
“And had that baby that was half-frog!” Dave finished. He tried to force the image from his mind. He’d seen the pictures—a pathetic boy with webbed fingers and toes and enormous milky eyes. They’d said that his tongue was as long as a belt.
“Yeah,” the customer said. “Whatever happened to him, anyway?”
Dave made a tsking sound. “I heard that he croaked.”
The customer laughed. “Well, with his parentage, it was bound to happen.”
Dave had the customer in a good mood. Now all that he had to do was convince the trapper that the creature was worthless. The fellow was chewing tobacco and suddenly realized that he had to spit. He looked around the pet shop, as if Dave might have a spittoon. But when he didn’t see one, he ducked his head and spat into the front pocket of his Levi shirt.
“You know,” Dave said. “I have a friend who teaches at Oregon State University. He could probably do some DNA tests and figure out what this thing is.” Dave liked that angle. It made it sound as if he was going to give the creature up for science, even though museums often paid big bucks for something like this.
The customer sort of held back. He’d been hoping for money. “I don’t know . . .” the fellow said.
“What do you think it eats?” Dave asked. “I mean, it doesn’t look too healthy.”
The guy shrugged. Dave liked playing on the customer’s fears, suggesting that the animal would die without his expertise. “Tell you what,” Dave offered. “I’ll give you . . . twenty bucks for it.”
“I was thinking a couple hundred,” the trapper suggested.
Dave smiled inwardly. Even if he paid a couple hundred, he ought to do well on the trade. “You know, this is a wild animal,” he said. “Maybe it’s even some rare species, one of a kind. We might get a big fine if we got caught with it. Tell you what, why don’t you take it over to the Fish and Game Department first and ask them? Maybe they can tell you what it is.”
The customer visibly paled, imagining huge fines and small prison cells. Those guys at the Fish and Game Department could bankrupt you just for looking wrong at a wild animal. “You’ll give me twenty bucks?”
Dave thought for a long minute. “On second thought, I’d better not. You go ahead and keep it.”
“Maybe,” the customer suggested, now only wanting to escape, “you could take it to that professor of yours and see what he says. I mean, he’s a scientist, right? He’s probably got some kind of permit for critters like this.”
Dave didn’t want to sound too eager. He backed off. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll put it in the back room and give my friend a call. If he can take it off our hands, I’ll let him. But if he can’t, I’ll give you a call, and you’ve gotta come pick it up right away.”
“Okay,” the customer said nervously. The fellow immediately changed the subject, pretending that he was interested in buying a long-horned chameleon, but Dave didn’t fail to notice that he practically ran out of the store without offering his phone number.
And without it, there was no way that Dave could contact the customer to pay him for the monster, even if he wanted to.
With a wide grin, Dave took the monster into the back room, looking for a cage strong enough to hold it.
Maybe, he thought, I’ll just give that Chinese doctor a call . . .
* * *
As the mice rested beneath some swordtail ferns to let their breakfast digest, Ben said, “You know, I’ve never felt so starved. Do mice always get this hungry?”
“You know what they say,” Bushmaster offered, “‘To keep hunger away, eat half your weight in food each day.’”
Ben laughed. “Half my weight? That would be forty pounds when I was a human. Do you mice have any other sayings?”
“Like what?” Bushmaster asked.
“I don’t know . . . like ‘Be as quiet as a mouse’?”
“That’s silly,” Amber replied. “Mice can make quite a racket. Mother always told me to ‘Be as quiet as a rock.’”
“Hmmm . . .” Ben said. “What about ‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall’?”
“That’s backward,” Bushmaster responded. “We voles say ‘The bigger they are, the easier it is for ’em to squish us.’ And if you don’t believe me, wait until you’ve been trampled by a herd of rampaging chipmunks!”
Amber didn’t want to say it, but human truisms didn’t make much sense. Rocks were much quieter than mice. And she’d sure hate to get run over by a chipmunk. Amber had always thought that humans must be smart because of all the stuff they made. But Ben sounded incredibly naive. Maybe it was because he was only a child, she reasoned.
“Ben,” Amber asked, “how old are you?”
“Ten,” Ben answered.
“Really?” she said. “I’m ten weeks old too!”
“No,” Ben said. “Ten years.”
Amber’s mind did a flip.
“Whoa!” Bushmaster said. “Ten whole years? That’s like, forever! I’m only four months old.”
“Wait a minute,” Ben asked, “how long do mice live?”
“A year, maybe two—if you’re lucky,” Amber said.
“Then . . . if I’m a mouse, does that mean I’m aging as fast as a mouse?” Ben asked.
“Of course,” Amber said.
“Then a mouse’s week is about the same as a human’s year. And a day is like . . .”
“Two months?” Bushmaster suggested.
“If you stay a mouse, you’ll be fully grown in a month,” Amber said. “And you’ll be ready to get married. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Ben wheeled, gripping his spear tightly. “Is that what you want? You want to marry me? Is that why you want me to stay a mouse?” He trembled with rage, and his voice was thick with disgust.
“No,” Amber said, hoping
to calm him.
“I heard you talking to Vervane,” Ben accused. “You think I’m terribly handsome.”
Amber felt hurt. “I only meant it as a compliment,” Amber said. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
Ben spat an insult. “I think you look like the poster girl for D-Con rat poison!”
D-Con. That must be the poison they use to kill us mice with, Amber realized. She felt flustered and hurt. “You may be terribly handsome on the outside,” Amber said. “But I think you’re just terrible on the inside.”
“Yeah?” Ben said. “Who cares what a vermin thinks?”
That was twice that Amber had heard the word vermin. It wasn’t a word that she’d learned at the pet shop, so she wished that she knew the meaning, and suddenly she understood. It was a human word, from an ancient group of people called the Romans, and it meant a worm, like the worms that lived in people’s guts. It was about the most disgusting thing that Ben could have called her.
“Amber’s a pretty mouse,” Bushmaster said. “If I were a mouse, I’d marry her in a heartbeat.”
“Maybe you should,” Ben said, “but I’ve got a better idea.” He wheeled on Amber. “Turn me into a human, and I’ll carry you to the pet shop. We can be there in no time.”
He sounded desperate. Every minute that he stayed a mouse, hours of his life were slipping away.
Amber demanded, “How do I know that you’ll keep your bargain once I turn you into a human?”
“If I don’t,” Ben said, “you can always turn me back into a mouse again.”
Amber felt uneasy. Was being a mouse really so bad?
She really didn’t want to lose Ben. His presence comforted her. He was ten years old, after all, and was filled with ancient wisdom. And he was strong. What other mouse knew how to use weapons?
There was a lot that she could learn from him. And though she hardly dared admit it even to herself, he was handsome. Dreamily handsome. Just looking at him made her stomach feel as squishy as a bowlful of meal worms. No, she wasn’t going to turn him back into a human yet.
“Let’s get going,” Amber urged. “Every moment we waste is a moment that another mouse might get fed to a snake.”
She led the way east, forging through tall grass.
Of Mice and Magic Page 9
