House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  ‘Well, that is,’ smirked Phart, ‘would you ’ave the kindness to let us through to the garden, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ squeaked Flegm, shaking violently, ‘the garding, please.’

  Tunneller snorted her contempt of the two house mice who were soiling her lovely labyrinth by their mere presence. They stank. They were dropping bits of themselves all over the place which she would have to clean up later. They had been down every blind alley and false trail in the maze before she’d had to go and find them. It was best, she decided, to accept the cooked meat and get them out of her beautiful network of tunnels as quickly as possible.

  ‘Give me the toll,’ she snapped.

  Phart quickly dropped the piece he was carrying in front of her. Flegm also had a piece of meat, but they were keeping that for when they returned. They needed to pay the toll to re-enter the house once their mission was over.

  ‘Now,’ she snapped, ‘take that passage over there and keep turning right. You do know which is your right I suppose?’

  Flegm lifted his front left forepaw and said, ‘Uhhh?’

  ‘Your other right, stupid,’ said Phart in a superior tone, and then led the way out of the maze.

  ‘And if you get lost,’ cried Tunneller after them, ‘I’ll leave you to starve and rot.’

  ‘Yes, thank you ever so much,’ called Flegm over his shoulder, without a trace of sarcasm. Then to himself he kept muttering, ‘Turn right, turn right – me other right…’

  Eventually, the two cellar mice managed to smell the outside air blowing through the tunnels and followed this welcome scent. Suddenly the darkness of the interior gave way to an early evening light. The pair of them had risen from their stale beds very early, in order to be out of the garden before Merciful and her fellow owls were gliding through the murk. There were some things which chilled any mouse into immobility and a meeting with Merciful was one of them. They stepped cautiously from the maze exit into the grasses around the rain barrel.

  They were on a great expedition, to meet Stone, the dormouse they had heard so much about. Stone, they had heard, knew all about the natural world. The countryside was in his care, he loved and cherished it as a mother her infant, and it was to Stone that Phart and Flegm wished to put the Great Question.

  Flegm’s teeth were chattering as he clung to Phart’s tail. It was not a cold day. On the contrary, the sun was blazing down, the air was hot and still, and full of wasps, bees and other lazily-droning creatures. Flegm was scared.

  ‘Can’t we go back now?’ he whined. ‘I hate it out here. It’s too bleedin’ big for a start and… WHAT’S THAT?’

  Phart jumped about two lengths in the air and looked around him in a startled fashion.

  In the shorter grasses, not far away, a long shape was slithering.

  ‘I think it’s a snake,’ whispered Phart.

  ‘A what? What d’they do?’

  ‘They eat bleedin’ mice,’ said Phart, hurrying into the taller grasses.

  Flegm raced after his friend and leader, his breath coming out in short sharp gasps.

  On their expedition across the garden towards the tall privy, which never seemed to get any closer, they saw all manner of monsters, from terrifying magpies to an aggressive robin. Phart said he could definitely smell weasel on the track, though he’d never seen or smelt a weasel in his life, and only had a vague idea what one looked like. Flegm touched, actually touched, a ‘whacking-great-toad-thing’ which scared him half to death.

  The two cellar mice were very, very shaken as they later emerged from some tall grass close to the privy.

  At that point the nearby grasses parted and an untidy-looking creature appeared. From all the descriptions Phart had been given by his Uncle Bile, who had been Outside, it appeared to be some kind of pygmy squirrel.

  Since the creature was no bigger than Phart, he challenged it immediately. ‘What the bleedin’ hell are you?’

  The creature glared at him. ‘I’m a dormouse, you ignorant mammal. Judging by your condition and smell, you two would be Phart and Flegm. Yecchhh! Disgusting.’

  Phart’s heart soared on realizing that he was in the presence of the keeper of the garden. He stepped forward out of the jungle and went high-nose. ‘Dormouse Stone, I presume?’ he said.

  When Stone did not answer, Phart said, ‘Sorry we mistook you for – well, I thought you was a squirrel or somethink, with that tail, you know?’

  Stone regarded his shaggy tail and then nodded towards an oak not far away, which reached with its great knotted branches high up into the misty blue.

  ‘That is a squirrel,’ he informed Phart, who looked upwards to see a huge rusty giant sitting in the oak’s branches.

  ‘Blimey,’ he said, swallowing. ‘I’m glad you’re not one of them, then, yer honour.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, to my knowledge squirrels don’t eat mice. That one’s eating oak mast, which it prefers to flesh…’

  ‘Oak mast?’ repeated Flegm, mystified.

  ‘Nuts. Acorns, if you will,’ said Stone.

  ‘Oh.’ Phart nodded. ‘Nuts. They come in bags don’t they? Sort of hard knobbly things.’

  ‘They grow on trees,’ growled Stone. ‘And they have shells.’

  ‘Well, ain’t that a revulation?’ Flegm said. ‘I always thought like you, Phart. We never seen ’em come into the House except in bags, did we?’

  ‘That’s because you’re a pair of ignorant house mice,’ observed Stone.

  ‘You what?’ growled Phart, then remembering that he was on a quest for mushrooms, magic mushrooms what made a mouse go doolally, suddenly changed his tune to, ‘Oh, ignorant. Oh yes, we’re that all right. We ain’t been given a proper education, that’s why we come out here, to find you an’ get one, so to speak. We don’t know a gnat from a house martin, do we Flegm.’

  ‘Naw,’ confirmed his comrade. ‘You know about mushrooms then?’

  Phart gave Flegm a nudge. ‘Not so fast,’ he hissed. ‘This one’s a bit of a purist.’

  ‘What I mean to say is,’ amended Flegm, ‘can we come back with you to your nest? We’d like to have a little talk, like, so’s to be able to learn more about Nature and stuff like that.’

  Stone frowned a little and then seemed to acquiesce. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  The two house mice trailed after the dormouse, following him back to the privy, where Stone said, ‘This is my home. I’ve been told the smell from the privy is rather ripe, but I never notice it.’

  ‘Can’t smell nothin’ out of the ordinary,’ said Phart truthfully, as he sniffed a stench not very dissimilar from the odour of his own body.

  ‘Not a bit,’ confirmed his comrade.

  ‘Well that’s reassuring,’ said the dormouse. ‘You’re the first two who haven’t complained.’ He looked the two cellar mice up and down. ‘I take it you’ve come out here to improve your condition? Don’t worry, we’ll soon have those coats looking glossy – can’t do much about the bald bits, I suppose, but those sores will soon heal out here in the clean air…’

  Phart decided it was time to interrupt. ‘No, no, you old… yer honour. No. We’ve been sent on a mission, see. We’ve been asked, ahem, by the Bookeater Tribe if we can find this sort of special fungus, this mushroom. There’s some sick youngsters in the library what need a mushroom cure.’

  Stone looked grave. ‘I see. Well, I have every admiration for Frych and her knowledge of natural medicine. Comes from eating all those books, I suppose. Of course, paper’s not the best thing for one’s digestion, which is probably why she’s got an epidemic on her hands now. Paper must clog the bowels, surely? And there’s no little green things in paper you know. None at all.’

  ‘Little green things?’ exclaimed Flegm.

  ‘Little green things,’ repeated Stone. He explained, ‘You can’t see them, but they’re there all right. They put the sparkle into one’s eyes, the spring into one’s gait. You must have them in your diet or the physical condition starts to deter
iorate and becomes… well, like your bodies, for example. Without the little green things, the body is vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses.’

  Flegm looked at Phart and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Little green things,’ he mouthed, without sound.

  Phart answered the eyeroll with his own and then turned to Stone and huffed a little, as if in agreement with what had been said, though under any other circumstances he might have taken umbrage at the slight against his own physical appearance.

  ‘Listen, yer honour,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot of good in fresh cabbage – a lot of good – but what we’re after here is somethin’ to make the youngsters better, see. We can give ’em the prevention later, but what we need now is the cure.’

  ‘Right, right. Now what exactly…?’

  Phart became more businesslike. ‘It’s like this, yer honour. What we need is this mushroom. It’s a purple thing with spots. It cures, well, sick mice and such. We thought you’d know where to get some, you being into Nature and the like.’

  Stone went into deep thought. ‘Well – there’s wood blewitt,’ he murmured. ‘That’s a kind of bluey-mauve colour. No spots though. Or deceiver, perhaps? No. Elf cup? No, no. Wait a minute…!’

  ‘Yes, yes?’ cried Phart.

  ‘I think I know the fungus you mean,’ said Stone triumphantly. ‘And there’s quite a bit of it, so I don’t think there would be any objection to you taking just a little.’

  ‘Lead us to it, yer honour!’ cried Flegm.

  ‘That way,’ said Stone, swishing his tail in the general direction of a copse. ‘Come back in the autumn and I’ll take you there.’

  Flegm looked at Stone first, then at Phart, ‘What’s an autumn?’

  ‘It’s a season, you nit,’ said Phart. Then turning angrily to Stone said, ‘Are you trying to tell us that this mushroom only grows in autumn?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ said Stone.

  ‘But what about all these library mice, lyin’ sick to death in their nests?’

  ‘My dear little cellar mouse,’ said Stone, with a lofty look, ‘I can’t force mushrooms to grow out of season. You come back in the autumn since you seem to need this fungus very badly, and I’ll see what I can do. I’m sure you realize you have to be very careful with the fungus you’re talking about. It stimulates the brain, you know – has a kind of intoxicating effect.’

  ‘Really?’ said Phart in a bitter tone. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ Autumn. Rotten-apple autumn. The Fall. Phart sighed.

  The two cellar mice left the dormouse sitting high-nose, as they made their way back through the tall grasses.

  ‘I’m sure he flippin’ knew what we wanted the stuff for,’ grumbled Flegm, when they were out of earshot.

  ‘Course he blasted knew,’ said the Stinkhorn chieftain resentfully, wishing he had never left his comfortable sack in the cellar, where there were potatoes in plenty and unlimited wine. Finally, to his relief, they reached the rain barrel and he turned to Flegm. ‘Right, now where’s the toll for Tunneller? We got to get back in before the twilight comes.’

  ‘Toll?’ said Flegm.

  Phart looked at his tribe.

  ‘Yes, the blasted toll. You’re the one carryin’ the toll to go in – I was carryin’ the toll to go out. Do I have to think of everything?’

  Flegm looked aghast, ‘I’ve – I think I’ve gone an’ et it by accident.’

  ‘AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!’ screeched Phart.

  ‘We’ll have to find another way in,’ said Flegm meekly.

  ‘There ain’t any other way in,’ shrieked Phart, losing all control. ‘We’re doomed to death, an’ it’s all your fault, you rotten gannet!’

  When Phart had calmed down a little and informed his miscreant tribe member that their only hope was to re-enter the House by going up the drainpipe and into the attic – realm of Merciful and Kellog – that miscreant wished he was already dead, so that he wouldn’t have to go through the horrors that seemed to wait up the pipe.

  GORGONZOLA

  HIGH ABOVE THE SPOT WHERE PHART AND FLEGM were gathering together their woolly courage to enter the drainpipe, Pedlar was undergoing extreme mental torture. He had awoken from a fitful sleep to find the Headhunter in the act of lighting a bunsen burner with a match. A soft pop heralded the birth of a blue-hot hissing flame. There was some liquid in a small pan by the Headhunter’s elbow and this was held over the flame.

  Despite himself, Pedlar was fascinated by the blue flame. It seemed eternal, yet from that side of eternity which housed the damned. This demon’s tongue licked away at the bottom of the pan, and soon the water began to sizzle.

  Little Prince was running up and down in his cage, chortling with maniacal delight.

  ‘Honey-flesh, jam-flesh, delectable sweet-sweet mousey meat.’

  Pedlar wrenched his eyes away from the infernal flame and turned in fury on the pet mouse. ‘You’re an abomination, you!’

  The white mouse stopped running and his expression showed that he was hurt.

  ‘How can you say that?’ said Little Prince. ‘Why, I’m a beautiful mouse. I’m so dazzlingly beautiful I hurt the eyes. I’m an Ooo-Aaah mouse, I am. Nudniks stroke little me with their fingers and ooo and aaah like anything. They cup me in their hands and make kissing noises!’

  ‘Yeccchhh,’ exclaimed Pedlar, much in the same tone as Stone had used when confronted with Phart and Flegm.

  He turned away from the pet mouse again, and looked upwards to watch the Headhunter, who was now boiling a solid object in his little pan. When the small chunky nudnik finally lifted it out with tweezers, Pedlar could see it was the body of a vole. Pedlar’s cage was directly below the nudnik’s hands. Some of the boiling hot water dripped through the wire mesh of Pedlar’s cage on to his back, and he jumped and yelled with the pain.

  The Headhunter noticed this and showed Pedlar a row of even white teeth. Then he opened his mouth wide, as if he were going to roar as he had done earlier. The rows of hollow-eyed skulls on the shelves had that same look on their cadaverous faces: their jaws were wide open as if about to bite the head from a fellow creature. It was not a pleasant expression. It emphasized their needle-sharp fangs.

  Just at that moment Little Prince began screaming. ‘Master! Master! Master!’

  Pedlar glanced at the white mouse to see that he was cowering in the corner of his cage, seemingly frantic about something. Pedlar looked in the same direction as the nudnik’s pet, and realized that Eyeball was creeping into the room. At first the cat seemed intent on the boiled vole in the Headhunter’s fingers. It must have been the odour of cooking that had attracted the feline monster. She inched her way into the room, only noticing the two cages containing the mice when Little Prince screamed again.

  The Headhunter was paying no attention to Little Prince’s cries. He now had the head of the cooked vole in a toy wooden vice and was using the instrument to squeeze open the jaws of the dead creature. When the jaws had locked in an unnaturally wide and silent roar, the Headhunter removed the vole’s head from the vice and slit the underbelly from teeth to tail with a sharp penknife. Then he began to peel away the skin, revealing a soft pink and grey mass beneath. The smell of cooked flesh filled the whole room.

  Eyeball had not advanced further than just inside the partly open door. She sat with narrowed eyes in the shadows below the bed. Being a Burmese blue, she was hardly discernible from the patches of light and dark which she used so effectively. There she sat, poised and patient.

  ‘Oh lord, oh death, oh help!’ cried Little Prince. ‘Why doesn’t my master see her? She’ll have my nice little body in her mouth…’

  ‘What are you whining about?’ said Pedlar. ‘She can’t reach us inside these cages. Get a hold of yourself. Have you no control?’

  ‘None at all,’ confirmed Little Prince. ‘I don’t want to die. I’m too beautiful to die.’

  The Headhunter, however, was engrossed in his task of stripping the skin from the vole. It seemed a
very delicate and intricate operation. Bits of unidentifiable organs were beginning to plop and drip on to a piece of newspaper now, as the Headhunter poked around inside the belly of the vole with the penknife. There were grisly scraping sounds when the blade met bone and gristle.

  Finally, the skin was off, still retaining the macabre head of the luckless vole. The Headhunter looked up and showed Pedlar his teeth again. Then he fitted the slimy voleskin over his forefinger, with his nail poking through the wide open mouth, and waggled it as if the creature were still alive. The finger-puppet vole was then used in a series of pretend attacks on Pedlar’s cage, as the hand that carried it darted backwards and forwards, while the owner of the hand made noises.

  This monstrous ritual unhinged Pedlar more than frightened him. It was indeed a weird and horrible experience, more nightmare than real. What the Headhunter got out of such display was impossible for the mouse to imagine, but there seemed a certain savage joy in the nudnik’s expression as he rattled the bars of the cage with the vole’s teeth. Under such atrocious mental torture, Pedlar was beginning to lose his reason a little, and he gibbered and jabbered nonsense at the attacking puppet, as if it were actually alive and attempting to get inside the cage.

  Once the Headhunter had tired of his game, he went back to carving the flesh from the skinless corpse, and began feeding the bits to Little Prince through the bars.

  Despite his fear of Eyeball, Little Prince gobbled down the slivers of cooked flesh with fanatical greed. He began crooning in between morsels, in a high unearthly voice, which only served to add to Pedlar’s distress.

  Suddenly, something landed on the sill just outside the leaded windows and distracted the Headhunter. The nudnik turned and stared through the bottle-thick glass at a robin sitting there, seemingly attracted by the spurting blue flame of the bunsen burner, still hissing away on the table.

  At that moment, Eyeball sprang on to the table, snatched the remains of the cooked vole, and streaked away again. In a flash she was running through the doorway. The Headhunter let out a piercing yell. He grabbed a wooden bat and swung it at the retreating form of the cat. On its journey through the air the bat caught Pedlar’s cage a blow and sent it crashing to the floor. The door to the cage sprang open on impact with the lino.