The Wizard of Ooze

by David Farland

  Was she right to want to take over the world?

  Ever since she had been a babe, other mice had told her that she had a great mission in life. She was the Golden One, the mouse destined to free all of the mice in the world.

  That was what her magic powers were for. The Great Master of the Meadows had created the world, and Amber believed that he had given her this power for a reason. Indeed, if Lady Blackpool was right, for Amber to use her powers selfishly was evil.

  But is it evil to want my people to live free of fear? Amber wondered.

  To be a mouse was terrifying. There were so many dangers—animals out to eat you, animals that could step on you. Ben didn’t understand that yet, not really. He had a mouse’s shape, but not a mouse’s pounding heart. He had been born a human. Apparently, life was pretty comfortable for folks up at the top of the food chain.

  Amber just wanted to cut down on the stress in her life, get the terror to a manageable level.

  Was that so wrong?

  They scurried through a blackberry patch. Most of the vines were old, their stems gray and hard and dead. But there were plenty of vibrant new sprouts everywhere. The dead leaves under the mice’s feet were wet and comfortable, but everywhere around them was a forest of thorns, and more than once, Amber found herself getting pricked.

  Ahead of her, Bushmaster led the way. Suddenly he shouted, “Whoa!” and went sliding through the mud down a steep hill. At the bottom, he hit the water with a small splash but quickly ran on top of the water, back onto dry land.

  “How did you do that?” Ben asked the vole.

  “Do what?” Bushmaster asked.

  “Run on the water?”

  Bushmaster raised one furry paw. “All you need is a little hair between your toes.”

  Amber looked at his feet in astonishment but said nothing. It was good to have a vole with her, she decided—one that could walk on water.

  The mice stood at the edge of a vast pond, its surface brown and brackish. Overhead, oak and alder trees raised their bare limbs to a gray sky.

  Bushmaster looked at the water forlornly. “We’ll have to go around. There are bass in that pond for sure. We’d never make it across if we tried to swim.”

  Amber shivered at the memory of her last encounter with a bass, a huge fish with a mouth that could easily swallow her whole, and a body nearly sixteen inches in length.

  Across the pond, Amber spotted a colorful bird feeding on the shore, a male wood duck with beautiful, iridescent green feathers on his head, gleaming purple on his chest and flanks, and magnificent lines of black and white on his wings and throat.

  The duck was waddling through the underbrush, searching for acorns beneath the fallen leaves.

  “We won’t walk,” Amber said. “We’d never make it over the mountains on foot anyway.”

  With that, she cast a spell, and the duck made a whistling noise as he flew toward her. He landed with a splash just a few feet from shore, and paddled over.

  As he sat in a daze, the mice mounted up, and Ben looked about fearfully. “These duck feathers are too slick and oily,” he said, while clinging to the bird’s back. “We’d better tie ourselves on.”

  And so Ben took his fishing line from around his neck, made a little lasso, and put it over the duck’s neck. Then he tied the fishing line around his waist and around the waists of the other mice. When they were all secure, they took off for the Cascade Mountains.

  For long hours they flew, huddling together for warmth.

  At nightfall they set down in a field where a few pines thrust their heads up through the snow, and Amber released the weary duck. He flew up doggedly, heading for the McKenzie River.

  The mice foraged for food, digging beneath the snow, but it seemed useless. The air flowed down from the mountains in an icy sheet, and while it had been warm and springlike in the valley, winter still held the mountains in its grip.

  Digging beneath the snow, they finally found a squirrel’s midden—a place where it buried its food. But getting to it through the snow and dirt was hard work, and all that the mice found for their efforts were a few pine nuts. Amber had never eaten anything spicier than mouse pellets, and found that the nuts, still coated with pine resin, didn’t sit well in her stomach.

  Feeling achy, the mice crawled under a pine bough to sleep. The small rodents huddled together for warmth among some dry leaves and peered out into the darkness, where starlight dusted the snow. It was beautiful and peaceful, but in the distance, floating down the mountains, Amber could hear the eerie song of coyotes. She had never felt quite so cold and miserable.

  “My front paws are freezing,” Ben whispered, stamping.

  Thorn said, “That’s because they’re so small. They lose heat more easily.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bushmaster said. “In a few weeks, you’ll get used to the cold.”

  “A few weeks?” Ben asked.

  “Four, to be exact,” Thorn assured him. “It takes that long for a mouse’s metabolism to adjust to a drop in the ambient temperature.”

  “No wonder mice try to break into people’s houses in the winter!” Ben said. “Why don’t we build a fire to help keep warm?”

  “What’s a fire?” Amber asked.

  “If you heat up wood and grass enough,” Ben said, “it will glow and give off lots of heat. That’s a fire.”

  Gleefully, the mice stacked up a few twigs and leaves, and Amber heated them. Soon they had a nice little flame dancing in front of them. It wasn’t much bigger than a candle, but all of the mice huddled around the campfire and warmed their paws.

  As they did, Ben suddenly got a sly look. He twisted his paws funny and said, “Look, a cat!” Then he whirled and peered at the snow behind them.

  Bushmaster gave a mighty shout and Thorn jumped so high, he could have been a flea. Amber shot around and saw the shadow of an enormous cat there in the snow. She was trying to think of some spell to frighten it off when she followed the lines of the shadow and saw that it was only Ben, making shadow puppets on the ground.

  I can make a better cat than that, Amber thought. And suddenly she created an enormous black cat out of shadows and sound. It yowled and hissed, and Ben’s eyes went wide.

  He whirled and peered behind him just as an enormous cat leapt upon his back. Thorn and Bushmaster raced off, squeaking in terror. But when the huge black cat landed on Ben, it disappeared.

  Amber laughed herself silly until Bushmaster and Thorn returned. Then they all sat beside the fire and got toasty, enjoying the strange and pungent scents of smoke and ash, while Ben showed them how to make shadow puppets that looked like cats, dogs, and creatures that he called alligators and dinosaurs.

  When they were all warm, Thorn whispered, “So Amber, are you really going to add humans to the list of enemies to mice?”

  “Yes,” Amber said with grim determination. “I won’t have any more nasty humans killing mice. Next one that tries: bam, a human dies.”

  “But,” Ben said, “I don’t think that humans really understand what they’re doing. They don’t think that mice have feelings too.”

  “Well, they’ll get the message soon enough.”

  “You ought to give them a warning,” Thorn said. “It wouldn’t be fair to just start killing them.”

  “That’s a problem,” Ben said. “Humans have never talked to animals before.”

  “I’m sure that I could do it,” Amber said. “I could use my magical powers to talk to them.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Ben said, thinking. “They wouldn’t believe anything you said. They’d just think that they were going crazy. Having hallu . . . dreaming. Besides, what would you tell them?”

  “All I’d do,” Amber said, thinking fast, “is tell them to ‘Free the mice.’ Of course, I’d have a thousand guards with spears to back up the request.”

  “You know,” Thorn told Amber, “there are plenty of other animals you should add to your list of enemies. Fish like bass for example, and trout
and perch . . . lots of fish eat mice. And of course pigs eat mice, too.”

  “It’s not just the animals that eat mice that you have to worry about,” Bushmaster said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re eaten by a fox or stepped on by a cow—dead is dead. What about all of the animals that can step on you—horses and sheep and cows? Not to mention the careless cottontails, and the rampaging herds of chipmunks!”

  There was a pop as some pitch in a piece of wood exploded, sending a cinder streaming up into the night sky like a star that rises instead of falls.

  “And what of natural disasters?” Thorn added. “Flash floods and hailstorms, tornados and lightning. And sickness and old age. There are so many things to worry about. Will you put an end to those in your haven?”

  Amber peered at Thorn and felt weary to the bone. She had only just decided to take over the world, and now he was taking all of the fun out of it.

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Amber said.

  “Er,” Bushmaster said, clearing his throat. “I wish that you would reconsider letting shrews into your little haven. Ounce for ounce, they are the most ferocious predators on earth. Lady Blackpool seems nice enough, but, well, my grandmother was eaten by a shrew.”

  “I added them to the list of mouse friends,” Amber explained, “because I didn’t want any hawks or owls to dive down and kill some poor helpless mouse, then try to get off by saying, ‘Oh, I thought it was a shrew.’”

  “That’s good thinking,” Ben said. “But there are other animals that I like. Are you going to protect moles, too?”

  “What’s a mole?” Amber asked.

  “It’s sort of like a shrew,” Bushmaster said, “but it spends its whole life underground, searching for worms and beetles to eat. Nice folk, moles. Of course, they’re all blind.”

  Amber sighed. “Okay, they can be in our club, too.”

  “I like bunny rabbits,” Ben said. “And squirrels. They don’t eat meat. And I really wouldn’t worry about them stampeding. We can just ask them not to stampede. Are you going to protect them, too?”

  “I guess,” Amber said, too tired to argue.

  “Oh, and birds!” Ben said. “Robins are pretty. So are meadowlarks and hummingbirds. We could use them as lookouts and guards.”

  “Okay,” Amber said.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Thorn objected. “You have to let the predators eat someone. Foxes and hawks need to eat, too. If you don’t let them eat someone, you’ll give them no choice but to start a real war!”

  Chapter 11

  MOUSETRAPS

  All you have to do to get richer than rich is figure out how to build a better mousetrap.

  —ANONYMOUS

  He began to sing softly, so softly that the mice wouldn’t even be aware of his song.

  Far away, Fluke Gutcrawler squirmed through a cavern. As he did, he sang softly to himself, doing his best impression of Frank Sinatra:

  I’m not funny, handsome or smart,

  but I’ll worm my way into your heart.

  ’Cause I’m a worm, and that’s what worms doooo . . .

  Whether the skies are gray or they’re blue.

  I ain’t wealthy; whining’s my art.

  So you’d better watch out for your heart.

  Cause I’m a worm, all full of gooooo . . .

  And I’m going to getcha.

  Yeah, I’m willing to betcha.

  I said I’m going to do it, to youuuuuu!

  “Quiet!” Sebaceous Ooze hissed softly, his voice full of menace. Fluke Gutcrawler could see his father huddling in a shadowy room at the end of the tunnel, viewing a distant scene of some mice arguing. They must have been the same ones who had been caught spying last night.

  Fluke quietly oozed forward. His father knew how to view enemies from a distance, too, but unlike the stupid mice, Sebaceous wasn’t about to make enough sound to alert them to his presence.

  Sebaceous curled his tail around, letting his magic ring lovingly stroke his side.

  Fluke knew that his father had already laid a trap for the mice on the trail ahead. Now he was leading them into it.

  He began to sing softly, so softly that the mice wouldn’t even be aware of his song on a conscious level, so sweetly that his voice could not be ignored.

  Moonlight shines upon the meadow

  And upon the garden green.

  Come, sweet mice, and taste the harvest,

  Come to the garden of your dreams.

  Nectar pools in silver flowers,

  Sweeter than a winding stream.

  Drink and thirst no more forever,

  In the wellspring of your dreams.

  Weary is the way before you.

  Nothing’s as easy as it seems.

  Give me your life, your love, your labor.

  Abandon now your hopes, your dreams.

  The eyelids of the mouse sorceress drooped just a little, and her eyes got a faraway look.

  The mice were not aware of it, but Sebaceous Ooze smiled a wormy smile and let the vision fade.

  “She’ll do exactly as I ask,” Sebaceous said, peering back toward his son. “And by this time tomorrow, she’ll be dead.”

  * * *

  Latonia Pumpernickel thumped her handbag on the general’s desk, reached inside, pulled out a plastic squeeze-bottle of mustard, and aimed it right at General Crawley’s eyes.

  General Crawley wasn’t a real general, of course. He was the head of a militia called APE—Americans Protecting Earth. For his uniform, he wore a tri-tip hat and a blue waistcoat with golden buttons. He looked just like Napoleon Bonaparte.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he cried with an accent that was half French and half a Texas drawl. General Crawley knew that all kinds of things could be carried in a plastic bottle. It could be filled with biological weapons like the Ebola virus. It could even hold chemical weapons like . . . mustard gas!

  “The government folks have been running me around in circles all day,” Latonia Pumpernickel growled. “Now you’re going to sit down and watch this tape, or I’ll squirt you in the eye!”

  “With mustard gas?”

  “With Polish mustard,” she threatened. “The hottest kind.”

  The general backed away, heart thumping, while Latonia set her video camera on the table, turned it on, and replayed the images she had captured on her viewer.

  “Those are mice,” she said needlessly as he peered at the spear-carrying mice attacking a tarantula.

  “This can’t be real,” the general said. “You weren’t sent here by those guys at Industrial Light and Magic, were you?”

  “Oh, it’s real,” Latonia Pumpernickel said. “These mice are up to something. In fact, I don’t think they’re even mice!”

  With that, the scene switched, and General Crawley’s eyes popped wide. He reached under his shirt and scratched nervously. He watched as several mice hopped aboard a tiny flying saucer and flew away. The date stamp on the picture showed that it had been filmed earlier that day. A creepy chill stole down his back.

  “Good grief,” said General Crawley, “that’s the craft the Air Force shot down this morning!” General Crawley’s people had been monitoring the Air Force’s frequencies on their CB radio.

  “I’m happy to hear it,” Latonia said. “Then maybe they got the ringleaders. But there are still hundreds of spear-toting mice in my backyard.”

  General Crawley stared hard at the mice in the picture. These weren’t normal mice. “Well,” he said in a nasal Texas drawl, “in my opinion, these spear-toting vermin pose a significant threat to the safety and sovereignty of our fair planet. I have no choice but to blow them to kingdom come.” He smiled in glee as he pictured the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb brightening the sky.

  Chapter 12

  TELEPATHIC MESSAGES

  Your brain creates an electric field, while the brains of those around you create similar electric fields. Therefore, it seems only logical that the time will come when we lea
rn to send messages simply by directing our thoughts, connecting the electric field of one mind to that of another. All it really would require is a person of superior intelligence, such as mine.

  —THORN

  “I am the smartest mouse in the world. It only makes sense that I’d be a telepath, too.”

  Ben slept little that night. The pine nuts he had eaten lay in his stomach feeling heavy, as if he’d eaten lumber for dinner. He lay awake, listening.

  Above him, enormous fir trees creaked and swayed in the cold starlight. Their tiny leaves hissed, as if they were the voices of faraway dead, and it seemed to him that the trees spoke. They groaned in the night as if in anger at the memory of chainsaws. They sputtered and cracked and made spitting sounds.

  Ben’s mind was weary, and he wondered if the trees were angry with him, with mankind.

  “I didn’t do it,” Ben whispered to the trees. “I never tried to cut you down.”

  But the trees moaned and cracked anyway, and their needles hissed curses in the wind.

  The moon rose, gleaming like a pearl made of ice. It bathed the snow in shades of silver. Coyotes began to wail up in the hills, their voices rising and falling eerily.

  Never had Ben felt so alone, and he wondered for a long time what his mother was doing. Was she still in her car, driving the streets, wearily calling his name?

  Ben kept watch for long hours, until Thorn began fidgeting in his sleep and finally woke and asked Ben if he wanted to be relieved.

  Ben tried to sleep, but he kept remembering something that Nightwing the bat had told him the week before. He’d said that he’d been human once, but that after he turned into a bat, he’d been one for so long that he couldn’t even remember what it was like to be human anymore.

  Ben felt as if he were forgetting, too. Only a week ago he had been walking on two legs. It had taken him a few hours to learn to crawl and hop on four, but now it felt completely natural.

  How fast am I becoming a mouse? he wondered.