Something clobbered her on the head. Startled, she looked up. Snow hurtled through the air in huge, white flakes large enough to brain an unfortunate mouse. A fierce storm was battering the mountains, raging all around.
To her surprise, she was on the ground, waist deep in snow. The last thing she remembered was flying a white owl. In the blinding storm she could see no sign of her ride.
She was still tied to Ben with the fishing line, and Bushmaster was tied to her. Last on the line came Thorn, who even now was struggling blindly uphill, enthralled by wormsong, trying to head east into the storm.
Bushmaster fought him, trying to hold him back. Overhead, gray clouds loomed, and Amber could hear the distant growling of thunder, like a predator in the heavens.
“Where are we?” Amber asked.
“On the west side of the ridge,” Ben panted, because he was heaving in great breaths. “The wormsong . . . is quieter here. Come on. There’s a cave up ahead, here in the rocks.”
“But where is our owl?” Amber cried. She was panting too. She realized that she had been fighting Ben.
“You fell off. It was lucky that we were tied together. It was the only thing that kept you from dying in a fall. Once I got that stupid owl to land, I let it fly away.”
Ben pulled her to her feet and stood with his paws still covering her ears. Amber could see that he was sweating. Dimly she could still hear the alluring song.
I must have put up quite a struggle, she thought. She realized dully that she was sick with fatigue. Every muscle in her body ached, as if a cottontail had clobbered her, and her legs and lungs were burning from effort.
It was dark outside, darker than even the heavy clouds could account for, and Amber realized that it must be near sundown. Yet last she remembered, it had only been noon.
“How long was I out?” she wondered as she and Ben dragged their weary tails toward a large burrow up among the rocks, stopping only momentarily to give the line a jerk, thus pulling Bushmaster and Thorn along.
“Six hours,” Ben said. “You and Thorn have been in a trance all afternoon. It wasn’t until the storm kicked up that the sound began to blow away.”
Amber could hardly believe it. She had been fighting poor Ben for hours.
He’s saved my life once again, she thought dully.
Wearily, she staggered over a hay pile and hesitated at the mouth of a large hole. Ben kept his paws over her ears the whole way.
She could smell some animal inside the hole. Not a rat or a mouse, something more like a vole. The burrow smelled clean and healthy, like sweet hay. More importantly, here it was utterly silent. The stones and dirt protected her in a way that her little helmet could not.
“In here,” she said, climbing into the mouth of the burrow. Then she, Ben, and Bushmaster pulled on the fishing line until they hauled Thorn safely inside.
Once inside, young Thorn collapsed on the ground and just lay there panting.
“What kind of burrow is this?” Amber asked.
Bushmaster shook his head wearily, unable to answer.
Outside the wind screamed and howled as it made its way up the canyon. Amber crawled deeper into the burrow, and found that the floor and walls, everything, was lined with sweet-smelling herbs. The grass and leaves beneath her feet were springy and comfortable.
The walls were all stone, and it could have been cold and bitter here, but mountain grasses and dried flowers stuffed into every nook and cranny provided insulation from the weather outside. Just as importantly, the vegetation was all slowly rotting, and the bacteria growing inside gave off its own heat so that the little burrow was far warmer than Amber would have thought possible.
The grasses still had seeds in them, and there were flowers, dried fungus, sweet-smelling tubers, savory bark, and dried berries all about. Crevices into the rock led deeper into the hillside, into other tunnels, and from the smell of them, they were also lined with food and insulation.
We’ve found a fortress, Amber realized, staring about in wonder. But she couldn’t smell an occupant. It seemed that the owner had abandoned the place within the past few weeks.
In her mind’s eye, Amber recalled the mice that were marching up over the ice, and shook her head in sadness. They were in the storm still, marching blindly. They were all as good as dead.
Ben and the others followed Amber into the burrow. Poor Thorn dropped wearily onto the soft fodder and fell asleep. Bushmaster nibbled at a stalk of wild watercress but was too tired to eat much, and soon just lay with his eyes closed.
Ben said softly, “We should eat—keep up our strength,” and found himself some dried flowers to eat. Amber picked at some seeds, but she felt horrible about what she had done and soon gave up.
Ben has saved my life twice now, she thought. I owe him more than I can ever repay.
She looked at Ben, and gratitude welled up inside. “You heard the wormsong, didn’t you?”
Ben nodded.
“But it didn’t pull you?”
“It did,” Ben said. “But I guess that maybe I’m still more human than mouse. I heard the song, but it didn’t work on me. I just thought to myself that the Wizard of Ooze could use a few voice lessons. He was worse than some of those folks on American Idol.”
Amber nodded.
Ben nuzzled up against her for warmth, and muttered, “One of us should stay awake and keep guard.” But he dropped off to sleep almost before he finished the sentence.
Amber lay for a moment, thinking. From so deep in the burrow, she couldn’t even hear the wind outside. She had nothing to fear from the wormsong. Instead, the cozy burrow, so warm and inviting, seemed to lull her. The light was failing, and the coming shadows invited her to sleep.
But somehow, Amber didn’t trust that temptation.
We could live in this burrow for years, Amber thought. There’s enough food lining the walls and the floor alone, that all of us together couldn’t eat it in a lifetime.
But food doesn’t gather itself. Some animal did this. But what kind? And where is the owner?
It didn’t smell like a rat in here, with its bitter scent. The owner had had a mellower scent, more like a rabbit. But the aroma of sweet grasses and food overwhelmed everything.
Amber wished for light, and a bit of wheat grass suddenly blazed with a magic aura, pure and white. It lit up her little room.
Amber took Ben’s needle and carefully began to explore the burrow. She climbed up overhead, between a pair of rocks, and found an escape hole. She stood in the mouth of the tunnel, nose twitching, her whiskers brushing the floor. It smelled of stone and cold dirt, a distinctly metallic scent. She followed the hole beneath a pair of boulders, and went twenty feet up the mountainside, until the tunnel opened into another pleasant burrow very much like the one that she had come through.
She climbed back down, and explored a tiny exit that went off to the right. She had not gone far when it opened into a vast chamber.
Amber lit another bit of grass, and discovered that this chamber looked as if something had lived here. Indeed, the grasses and herbs had been chewed down a bit, and furrows in one corner showed where something had made its bed. Whatever had lived here was as long as a mouse, including the tail, and much heavier. Not as heavy as a rabbit, but closer to the size of a squirrel.
Amber could see no sign of the builder of the burrow, and that made her feel uneasy.
Where could they have gone? They had plenty of food and good shelter. If they’d died of illness, their bodies would be here, slowly rotting.
Or perhaps they’d been killed by carnivores.
They could have been outside, among the rocks, and been taken by owls or hawks. Amber had seen coyotes about, though they looked so fat and lazy, she almost couldn’t imagine them hunting.
Amber tasted the air. She could smell something like wild garlic among the bedding, and she caught the coppery scent of blood.
Predators. Something had been in here.
Amber sud
denly felt frightened. Outside she heard the whisper of a scream. It might have just been the wind. But it might just as well have been the spirits of the dead.
She ran back through the tunnel to her friends.
They were all sleeping soundly.
There was only one last exit to explore, a small crack between the rocks off to her left. Amber went and poked her nose into the hole and saw a pair of bright black eyes!
“Who’s there?” Amber cried.
She made a light blaze, and saw the outline of a mouse. Or at least it looked like a mouse. It had large eyes, grayish hair on top, and white feet.
“Muh-muh-muh-me,” the creature answered in response, falling back in terror.
The little creature cowered back several paces and just sat there quivering, too afraid to speak. It was a mouse, Amber decided from the smell, but not like any mouse she’d ever seen before.
“Who are you?” Amber asked. He didn’t answer. “You can come in here,” she said at last. “I won’t hurt you.”
“What?” the mouse asked, turning his head to hear better. “Speak up.”
There had been a kitten in the pet shop once that couldn’t hear. Amber listened to the strange way the mouse slurred his words and realized that this mouse was deaf, too.
It was such an easy thing to fix. Amber cast a small spell and asked, “Who are you?”
The mouse jumped in the burrow, startled by the loudness of the sound. “I can hear!” he cried. “I can hear you. I can hear the wind outside!” He rushed toward Amber, peering into the room. “I can hear those mice breathing!”
“I’m a wizardess,” Amber said. “I cast a spell so that you’d be able to hear me.”
“Oh no,” the mouse said. “But . . . now I’ll be able to hear the song—like all of the others . . .”
Amber peered at the mouse and suddenly realized that it was only his deafness that had kept him alive, kept him from wandering off to the east.
“You can’t hear the wormsong so long as you stay down here in the burrow,” Amber assured him. “I’m Amber, and you are . . . ?”
“Dearth.”
The mouse sat there trembling and then scurried forward into the lighted room. When he reached the center of the chamber, Amber saw that his fur was short and glossy, and he had large feet. He peered at the glowing wheat stalk, the seeds shining like golden lamps. “You really are a wizardess.”
Amber was afraid that she and her friends were all trespassing. “Did you dig this burrow?”
“Oh, not me,” Dearth said. “This was dug by rock rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” Amber asked.
Dearth peered at her. “Not rabbits, rock rabbits. They look kind of like big mice but without tails.”
“What happened to them?” Amber asked.
“I don’t know,” Dearth said. “I only got here a few days ago. All of the other mice were following the song, so I came after. But I never could hear very well, so I couldn’t hear the song. I climbed the mountain but finally found this burrow, so I stopped. I’ve been here all week.”
“What kind of mouse are you?” Amber asked.
“A pocket mouse,” Dearth answered.
Amber nodded. She dimly recalled that she had heard of such a mouse before.
“Are you going to stay long?” Dearth asked.
“Just for the night,” Amber said.
“You’re welcome,” Dearth whispered. He began to tremble as if he were very nervous. “You could stay for a long time. You could stay forever if you wanted to. I wouldn’t mind. I’d like some company.”
“Thank you,” Amber said.
“There’s food everywhere,” Dearth went on. “The burrow goes on forever. There were a dozen rock rabbits here, harvesting hay and seeds all summer. We could live here for years and never be able to eat it all.”
“I can see,” Amber said.
Dearth reached out a paw and touched her on the elbow, as if he were begging. “I’d give you the best rooms in the burrow. I’d welcome the company. It’s very lonely here.”
Amber felt sorry for the pocket mouse. He looked so forlorn. She wondered what horrible things he had been through. His family and all of the mice that he had ever known were gone. And it must have been terribly frightening to be deaf, to be alone in the wild and unable to hear if a fox were digging at the mouth of the burrow.
“We’ll stay the night,” Amber said. “And in the morning, when we leave, maybe you’ll want to come with us.”
Dearth was so surprised by the offer that he leapt back and tripped over his own tail.
“Really?” he begged. “You’d take me with you?”
“Of course,” Amber said.
The pocket mouse raced around her friends nervously, his nose twitching, his bright eyes peering about. He seemed genuinely happy.
“That might work!” he said. “I might like that.” Then he whirled, and suddenly his voice sounded hollow and lonely. “You can bed down here if you’re tired. I just woke up. I can keep guard. I’ll keep a very good watch.”
“All right,” Amber said, since she was dead on her feet and really didn’t know how she could stay alert for much longer.
She went and lay down by Ben while Dearth scurried about the room. He dug through the piles of straw, picking out flower seeds and bark. He found a beetle larva—like a small waxy doll—and chewed it down. But other than that, he seemed determined to stuff his cheeks with seeds. He filled them up so much that they began to bulge. And still he scurried about the burrow searching for more.
It was with this image that Amber closed her eyes and fell into a sleep so deep that it was close to death.
* * *
Back at Latonia Pumpernickel’s house, Meadowsweet and her little pack of mice marched away from the house at gunpoint.
The humans had waved their weapons at Meadowsweet and made their demands, but she didn’t know what they wanted.
All she knew was that she was terrified, and the only critter that might be able to help her was the shrew, Lady Blackpool.
So Meadowsweet crept through the grass while a dozen humans herded her along at gunpoint.
I hope that they don’t guess what I’m going to do, Meadowsweet thought. I hope they don’t kill me.
She halted for a moment, too frightened to move, and the general in his golden metallic outfit shouted, “Keep movin’, or I’ll blow a hole through your guts so wide, you’ll be able to drive a convoy of tanks through it!”
Chapter 16
DREAMS
There are those who wish that their dreams would come true.
I, for one, fear that day.
—RUFUS FLYCATCHER
Deep in the shadows, she could make out something dark and slimy and huge.
In his dreams, Benjamin Ravenspell was chained to Amber. They were in some rocky barrens, with snow and ice all about. Coyotes yowled in the distance, their voices rising and falling eerily. Amber was trying to leave him, to run off to the coyotes, and Ben kept tugging, tugging, trying to pull her back to safety.
But suddenly Ben realized that the coyotes were coming to get him. He turned and tried to run, but Amber held onto his chains.
“Amber, let me go!” he cried, and he turned to see a huge coyote looming behind her, as large as a hill. Its fangs were bared, and its red tongue lolled out.
Amber stared at Ben with glazed eyes. “I’ll never let you go,” she intoned softly. “You’ll always be my slave. You’ll always be my mouse.”
* * *
In his dreams, Bushmaster the vole was lying in a burrow, warm and dry, with a belly full of seeds.
Young voles were running all around, leaping onto his stomach, and then jumping high up into the air as if he were a trampoline.
* * *
Amber wandered through her dream in a dark tunnel. Ahead she could hear the beautiful sound of wormsong, as clear as a waterfall.
Her tiny footsteps on the floor echoed loudly from the stone walls,
and Amber peered ahead.
She padded past moldy rocks dripping with slime and past the bodies of dead mice, decaying in the darkness.
She spotted a form that she recognized.
“Mother?” she said. “Is that you?”
She lunged forward and peered down, sniffing.
She smelled the sweet, comforting scent of her mother. But the mess of bones and hair that was rotting on the floor would never give her comfort again.
Filled with rage, Amber stood up and peered down the tunnel ahead.
Deep in the shadows, she could make out something dark and slimy and huge.
Gripping her needle in her fist, she rushed forward to do battle.
* * *
But of all the creatures that slept, Thorn’s dreams were the worst. He dreamt of whispers, of an evil mouse whispering, and some part of his mind, perhaps only a tenth awake, listened intently.
A mouse named Dearth stood in the snow just outside the burrow. He held his paws over his ears, trying to block out the wormsong that could be heard just above the howling winds of the storm. The mouse was whispering, “Please, don’t eat me, master. I’ve found them. They’re asleep, just as I promised!”
As if through Dearth’s eyes, Thorn peered into the snow. There was a blizzard outside, winds screaming through the crags and rocks, blinding white snowflakes piling in drifts. The very sight of it made Thorn shiver to the bone.
“Please, don’t eat me,” Dearth whispered.
And suddenly, Thorn saw eyes there in the snow, a pair of black eyes like tiny stones. He saw white shapes moving toward him stealthily.
Weasels! Three of them.
“You have done well,” the largest weasel said. “And for your reward, I will spare your life.”
“Thank you,” Dearth stammered, tears of relief springing into his eyes.
But then the weasel did something cruel. He reached out and grabbed the mouse’s tiny paws and pulled them away from his ears.
Suddenly, for the very first time, Dearth heard the wormsong rising clear and cold above the snowfields, calling him, calling him.
“Yea, master,” he whispered, “I heed the call.”
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