“Don’t creep up on me like that,” he hissed.
Rasco made the sound of a shrug. “There was no creeping up involved, mon. You were looking to me like someone who done fallen asleep with his eyes wide open.”
“I was?”
Now Rasco stepped daintily out of the vegetation, dropping from a gnarled but hideously fecund-looking root onto the mushy forest floor. “You were.”
“Where are the others?”
“Waiting for us.” Rasco indicated, with a twitch of his nose, the jungle behind him. “Waiting in a small clearing where the insects buzz as they decide which bit of you to bite next, and where that log in the swamp could as easily be an alligator as a log, only you’ll never find out until you trustingly put your foot on it. That kind of waiting.”
“We’d better join them at once, hadn’t we?” said Sylvester, looking anxiously from one side to the other, as if an enemy could spring out at them any moment.
Rasco sighed. “I was hoping you’d say that. Come on now.”
Heart pounding, Sylvester followed the mouse through a maze of snaking greenery until finally, just as Rasco had described it, they came into a clearing where Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry stood. Neither of the females was displaying much by way of patience.
Mrs. Pickleberry was the first to notice their arrival. “You’ve found the stupid dope, have you?” she rasped.
“He had discovered something of interest,” Rasco lied smoothly. He clearly subscribed to the notion that males should stick together in self-defense against the onslaughts of the supposedly weaker sex.
Viola gazed at Sylvester. “He’d discovered the sheen on a leaf or the sparkle on a butterfly’s wing, you mean.” The expression on her face finally opted for affection rather than exasperation. “Just my luck to fall for one of life’s natural-born dreamers.”
“I’ll have you know—” Sylvester began.
“Leave it,” whispered Rasco behind him. “You’re ahead at the moment. Anything else you say’s only going to dig you deeper into trouble, mon. Call her your darling honeybunch and be quick about it.”
Sylvester wondered how old Rasco was. It was always difficult to tell with mice. He seemed to know much more about the ways of the world than Sylvester did himself, and to be so much wiser in them.
“Now that we have all had a rest,” said Rasco, blithely ignoring the fact that he himself had not, “I suggest we push on as fast as we can. There is much of the day still to pass, yet we are a mighty long way from the home of Madame Zahnia, and I would not wish to be still out in the jungle wilds after darkness has fallen and the nighttime creatures have become … ravenous. Do the rest of you have opinions on this matter?”
The lemmings let their feet do the talking. They scrambled to make as much haste as possible.
After an hour or so had passed, Sylvester began to notice a strange sound. Well, all the sounds in the jungle seemed pretty strange to him, and there were a heck of a lot of them to be shocked and bamboozled by: the screeches of birds that were rarely seen as anything more than a brightly colored blur out of the corner of his eye, the ghastly screams of small animals as they fell prey to larger ones, the lugubrious plop plop plop of unseen nectar dropping from high leaves onto lower ones, and so on. But this new sound, which seemed to be coming from somewhere ahead of them and yet at the same time to fill the jungle in all directions was, well, different.
He and Rasco were sitting on a branch waiting for the two Pickleberries to reappear from yet another foray into the darker depths for purposes unstated yet perfectly obvious.
“What is that noise?” said Sylvester.
“That is veggie music, mon ami.”
“‘Veggie music’?”
“Veggie music.”
Sylvester nodded and for a few moments said nothing more. Then he realized the mouse’s answer had explained exactly nothing to him.
“What in the world is veggie music, Rasco?”
“Music made with vegetables, o’ course.”
A few more moments passed. Then Sylvester realized, once more, that he was no wiser than he’d been earlier.
“Could you perhaps explain that a bit more fully, my friend?” he said.
Rasco started, as if his thoughts had been far away. “Oh, OK. See, Sylvester, the instruments are all made from dried vegetables, gourds and things. Our people hollow them out, then dry them until they’re hard as wood, or maybe they do the drying first and the hollowing after, I’m not sure. I’m not so much of a musician myself. Whatever, once you got these hard, hollowed, dried-out fruits and veggies, you can make drums out of them, or put strings on them, or you can …”
Sylvester wasn’t really interested in the details. What was important was that the source of the rhythmic, pounding music seemed to be not too far away from them.
“Does this mean we’re close to where your Grandma Zahnia lives?” he demanded.
“Sure does,” said Rasco, shifting on the branch. “In fact, I’m wondering where those womenfolk of yours might’ve gotten themselves to. Could be they’ve run into some of my kin. Be a bit embarrassing for them, I guess, if they’ve got their knick—”
“Sorry to have been so long,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, appearing suddenly beside him. “Viola found a toad.”
Sylvester was as underinformed by this as he had been by Rasco’s explanations earlier. He thought about it briefly, but decided not to inquire any further. Whatever it was that had gone on between Viola and the toad didn’t seem to have done her any harm. She put her arm through his and smiled brightly.
“How far do you think we have left to go?” said Sylvester, directing the question toward the mouse.
“You can see the village from here,” replied Rasco, grinning.
The three lemmings looked ahead but could see nothing.
“Where are all the houses?” said Sylvester.
Rasco’s grin broadened even further, if such a thing were possible. “I can see them. You should be able to as well.”
Then Sylvester did see the houses. His jaw dropped open.
“Look,” he said softly, nudging Viola and pointing.
She obeyed. “Wow,” she breathed.
Their mistake had been to look for the village on the ground.
At first, Sylvester had thought the trees around here must be infested by unusually large spiders which had slung their webs from one branch to another and from one tree to another, and built big nests here and there in the crooks between branches. But, as he squinted against the bright flares of sunlight that stabbed through the jungle foliage above, he realized this first impression had been wrong. Those weren’t nests, they were well-constructed wooden houses, perched precariously among the high canopy. And those thin strands weren’t as thin as he’d thought – they were vines, placed as bridges to link the various parts of what was quite an extensive habitation. Along the vine bridges scuttled small dark shapes that he could barely distinguish from here.
Sylvester glanced sidelong at Rasco. Mice. That was what those quickly moving shapes must be. Lots of mice, just like their guide. They must have found Rasco’s people at last.
One of the houses was larger than the others and sat a little apart from the others. As Sylvester stared at it, Rasco saw the direction of his gaze and said with a chuckle, “That’s my grandma’s house. Madame Zahnia’s house. Welcome to Ouwinju. She’ll be looking forward to seeing you.”
Sylvester looked skeptically upward. It seemed a very long way indeed from where he stood to that wooden house in the sky. “But … but how are we going to get up there?” he asked.
Rasco winked at him. “Easy. We’re going to climb.”
“Climb?”
“That’s what I just said, my friend.”
Before Sylvester could ask him for any more details, Rasco put two claws to his mouth an
d let out a piercing whistle.
Above, all the moving shapes abruptly froze and Sylvester could sense that he and his friends were now subject to the scrutiny of hundreds of small, beady eyes.
Then the mice slowly resumed their business.
Not all of them, though.
“’Zat you, Rasco, y’old stinkyguts?”
“Sure is, Gasbag. You gonna let me come up an’ see my grandma?”
“She got better things ta do ’an see a bumhead like you, no?”
“You want your features readjusted?”
There was a fusillade of crazed laughter from the mouse hanging upside-down under a liana a dizzying distance overhead. “You been takin’ bodybuildin’ classes?”
“Don’t need to, a little runt like you.”
“Yah-ha!”
“How long is this going to go on?” said Viola in a world-weary voice. “We could always turn around and throw ourselves on the mercy of the good folk of Hangman’s Haven.”
“Who’re yer friends?” Gasbag called down.
“Three lemmings, need to see Zahnia.”
“Lemmings?”
“That’s what I just said. Lemmings.”
“They too big for up here, man.”
Sylvester privately agreed with Gasbag’s assessment. The vine bridges and little wooden houses were all designed for mice, not for much larger and heavier creatures like lemmings. That was an important part of the village’s defenses against invaders, he reasoned. Larger animals trying to make an attack would soon find themselves plummeting toward the ground in the midst of a cloud of splintery debris.
Gasbag cackled again, even longer and louder than before, and it was clear he’d just been making a joke. A moment later, he hurled something down toward the group on the ground. Sylvester flinched as the dark object unpeeled itself through the air until one end slapped into the sludge just a couple of paces away from where he and his friends stood.
A rope ladder.
A rope ladder designed for mice.
As Sylvester looked at the too-narrow, too-closely spaced rungs, he felt his stomach beginning to mount what promised to be a full-scale war of resistance.
“I … am … not … climbing … that,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, speaking Sylvester’s own thoughts aloud.
Bless you, Daphne!
“Oh, I don’t know,” Viola chirped. “It could be rather fun.”
“Nope. No way. No how. Not a thing a lady should be doin’.”
“But, Mo-om—”
“Little flibbertigibbet.”
“Mom!”
“No better than you hadn’t oughter be!”
Viola snorted and reached for the ladder. Within moments, she was hauling herself up it, an expression of grim determination on her face as she spun and swung crazily. From far above there was the sound of a branch creaking in protest.
“Hey, mon!” wailed Gasbag. “You done sent the fat one first!”
Viola climbed with even greater resolution. Sylvester would not like to be in Gasbag’s shoes when she reached the top.
He was startled out of his aghast reverie by a chuckle.
Mrs. Pickleberry was giggling.
“How on earth did she get up that fast?”
“Young fellow,” she said, face covered in smiles, “you got a lot to learn about the best ways of handling that daughter o’ mine. You ask her all sweet and kind to do something, you can be asking away until the sun’s gone to bed and the moon’s high in the sky and still Viola won’t have moved so much as a hair. But you tell her she’s on no account to do something, and it’s done afore ye’ve had time to turn around. We’d never have persuaded her to climb up to this Zahnia person’s lodgin’s, but she gets strict orders from her crusty old ma to keep her feet firmly on the ground an’ she’s off up that ladder like a rat up a drainpipe, she is. See?”
Mrs. Pickleberry jerked a thumb skyward. Viola had already reached the branch where Gasbag awaited and was now looking, so far as Sylvester could discern from the ground, somewhat seasick. Perhaps the mouse would live to see another day after all.
There was only one problem, so far as Sylvester was concerned, with the stratagem Mrs. Pickleberry had deployed.
It meant that he was going to have to climb that rope ladder as well.
“Er, after you,” he said to Mrs. Pickleberry, bowing slightly and gesturing with a paw toward where the lower end of the ladder jigged and hopped.
“You gotta be kidding.”
“But—”
“And have the likes of you lookin’ up me skirts? Dream on, buster.”
“But—”
“Better just go, mon.” They’d both forgotten briefly about Rasco. “If I had known what pains in the neck lemmings could be, I would have left you all to your fate in the basement of The Monkey’s Curse.”
“It’s not that we mean—” Sylvester began.
Rasco gestured at him impatiently. “Go, dimwit.”
Climbing a rope ladder isn’t as bad as I’d expected it would be, Sylvester told himself a little while later. He kept his gaze focused on the rung directly in front of his nose and remembered the immortal dictum: whatever you do, just don’t look down. This is all going rather well. So far.
“You’re supposed to take your feet off the ground, you daft lummock,” said Mrs. Pickleberry savagely, “not just stand there holding the ladder to stop yourself fallin’ over.”
“Ah, yes,” replied Sylvester. “Just, ah, testing it, see?”
He tugged the side of the ladder as if to reassure himself it would take his weight.
Behind him, Mrs. Pickleberry gave a girlish shriek. “Oh, no! It’s that poisonous snake from the pub basement!”
“Hello,” said Gasbag, helping Sylvester pull himself up the last little way onto the branch beside Viola. “You got here quick.”
“Ahem, yes,” said Sylvester, attaining his balance and patting his chest clear of imaginary dust. “Climbing. Yes. Nothing like it, is there? Excellent sport. Something of a specialty among we Lemmingtons. I remember there was an uncle of mine, or was it a great-uncle? I always get conf—”
“Sylvester?”
“Yes, Viola?”
“Shut up.”
Within a few minutes they’d been joined by Mrs. Pickleberry, huffing and puffing and swearing with sufficient skill that, Sylvester thought, even Cap’n Rustbane might have murmured a few words of congratulation. Apparently it was not at all easy climbing a rope ladder when you were encumbered by a rolling pin. She was followed almost immediately by Rasco, to whom the climb was clearly a matter of no consequence. He and Gasbag threw themselves into each other’s arms.
Sylvester scratched his head. Not long ago the two mice had been trading dire insults and now they were the best of friends.
“Is Grandma Zahnia in?” said Rasco after the mutual welcomes were largely over.
“Sure is.”
“Then lead the way, little brother of mine.”
Walking along the branches and, from time to time, along the vine bridges between them was, Sylvester discovered, rather like trying to retain dignity while trampolining. Thank goodness Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry were quite clearly in the same quandary.
While the two mice cavorted around them emitting squeaks and whoops of encouragement, the lemmings made an unsteady and distinctly unstately procession towards the big house belonging to Madame Zahnia.
When they reached it, Rasco reached out a small fist and rapped on the gnarled wooden door. As the little group waited, Sylvester noticed uneasily that there was the skull of a shrew nailed to the lintel.
“Come in, Rasco,” said a voice that seemed to be centuries old – murky centuries that had seen more than their fair share of evil-doings and treachery. “And you too, Gasbag, and bring your lemming frie
nds with you.”
“How did she—?” began Viola, still somewhat out of breath from their scramble across the branches.
“My grandma always knows,” said Rasco. He tapped the side of his nose and looked mysterious as he pushed the creaking door open.
“Don’t you pay him no mind,” whispered Gasbag. “As soon as I saw you lot in the distance I ran an’ told Madame Zahnia. That Rasco, he’s all full o’ bullshine.”
The inside of the room was so gloomy that for a moment Sylvester could see nothing of it at all. As his eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the dimness, he was able to make out that the place was jam-packed with stuff, just like the inside of “Mother Brisket’s Antiques & Curios from Around the World” back in Foxglove. An emporium that, despite the grandiosity of its name and the splendor with which the proprietress always presented herself, was actually a junk shop. Lanterns made from dried-out blowfishes with candles stuck in them hung from the ceiling. Wherever the walls weren’t lined with shelves they were covered in decorations of all sorts, all crammed together as close as they would go with no apparent concern for artistry: seastars, glass balls, knotted driftwood, shells … The shelves themselves were at higgledy-piggledy angles, as if the carpenter who’d built them had been doing so in high seas and in a terrific hurry. The gadgets and trinkets littering the shelves seemed to be clinging to them rather than just sitting there.
Sylvester was reminded yet again of Cap’n Rustbane’s cabin, back on the Shadeblaze. Although the two rooms had very different contents and, he realized, wrinkling his nose, very different smells, they nevertheless had a lot in common.
At the far end of the room was a wildly overstuffed plush armchair and sitting on it, with a plump red cushion at her side, was a large brown mouse. Also wildly overstuffed, Sylvester couldn’t stop himself from thinking. Even in the half-dark, the dress Madame Zahnia wore was almost dazzling in the swirl and clash of its colors, and the cloth wrapped around her head was as anarchic. She had massive brass earrings and, on her arms, bore bracelets and bangles galore. As she raised her arm in greeting to Rasco, the bracelets jangled together to make a noise like an orchestra tuning up.
The Tides of Avarice Page 34
