House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  The vixen had seen the mice disappearing down the holes and she came sniffing around the entrances. She was massive. A great red giantess with a mouthful of sharp teeth, each one probably itching to impale a mouse. The stink of her filled the labyrinth of tunnels and every mouse trembled, even Gorm-the-old. None of the House mice had encountered a canid before, other than their dear old Witless, and this monster was nothing like him. It was sharp and lively, with bright burning eyes that peered into the holes, and it had claws with which it could dig.

  ‘Now you’ve done for us,’ whispered one of the resident mice. ‘It won’t leave without it gets someone.’

  The vixen began scratching at the entrance to one of the holes and the moss came away easily. She poked her nose down the widened gap and sniffed loudly. Phart was about two body lengths from that black snorting snout.

  ‘Crikey,’ moaned Phart. ‘I wisht I was with old Flegm now – at least we would’ve gone together.’

  ‘I can smell rabbit on her breath,’ whispered one of the residents. ‘She can’t be that hungry.’

  ‘I suppose she’s thinking,’ moaned Frych, ‘that a few extra titbits won’t go amiss.’

  The fox began digging with more enthusiasm now that she knew her prey was only a short bite away.

  Suddenly one of the mice shouted up to the fox.

  ‘Donata o oyobi dess ka?’

  The fox stopped digging, seemingly shocked that someone should be addressing her in her own tongue from under the ground.

  She said, ‘Donata-sama dess ka?’

  The resident mice, too, were stunned that one of these newcomers should be conversing with a fox. After all, who could have got close enough to one of the terrible creatures long enough to learn its language? They were beginning to feel relieved they hadn’t attacked these invaders of their nests, or they might have been shredded by now.

  ‘What did you say to it?’ whispered Pedlar, to Little Prince.

  ‘I asked who she would like to speak to.’

  ‘And what did she reply?’

  ‘She wants to know who’s talking to her in Canidae.’

  Pedlar said, ‘Ask her again who she wants to speak to.’

  Little Prince repeated his earlier question and the fox, now getting in on the game, said the name of one of her friends.

  ‘Sorry,’ Little Prince went to the entrance of the main hole and, putting himself in danger, showed himself to the vixen. ‘Your friend isn’t here at the moment,’ he offered. ‘Moshi-wake gozai-asen ga gai-shuts chu dess. Ashta mo ichido odenwas itadake-masen ka. Come back tomorrow.’

  The fox let out a long series of coughing barks, and seemed to know a little rodent tongue herself, probably learned from a river coypu by her accent, for she said, ‘You very funny mouse. Very funny! I think I let you live, OK? Good job I no very hungry. I call again tomorrow. I like taste of mouse.’

  ‘I did once too,’ murmured Little Prince, before he could stop himself, ‘but now I’ve repented.’

  With that, incredibly, the vixen sauntered off.

  A huge sigh of relief swept through the labyrinth. Pedlar could feel the tenseness dissipate. Evidently the fox had suddenly decided she’d eaten enough for her not to be bothered with scrabbling around to get at a few mouthfuls of mouse.

  Pedlar said to the residents, ‘I suggest that by the morning you change your address, because I think she intends to pay you another visit.’

  ‘Oh great, thanks very much!’ grumbled a sarcastic host. ‘So nice of you to lead her here. Come again, won’t you?’

  Pedlar said that he was sorry and led his column out of the holes again, anxious to be out of the wood. On the way out he spoke quietly to Little Prince.

  ‘I heard what you said back there, about repenting. Do you mean that? Are you truly contrite.’

  Little Prince said, ‘I hope no-one else heard, but yes, I feel good, and I like feeling good. You’ve shown me another side to myself, Pedlar. I’m sick of what I once was. It disgusts me. I know I can’t ever hope to be as good a mouse as you, but I want to try now, I really do.’

  Pedlar glanced at Little Prince, wondering if he was speaking the truth, and believed he saw before him the face of a penitent mouse. There was genuine remorse in Little Prince’s eyes, as well as his words.

  ‘I don’t think I’m a good mouse either, but I’m glad you feel as you do,’ said Pedlar. ‘That’s more comforting to me at the moment than having a whole bunch of do-gooders at my side.’

  They reached the edge of the trees an hour later and began the descent of a slope on the far side. Pedlar could see a hedgerow at the bottom of the meadow and he instinctively decided they would camp there. They needed somewhere to get some proper sleep. These were mice that were not used to walking and they were exhausted by their march. There was still a long way to go to the Promised House. Pedlar did not know exactly where it was: now that he was doing their bidding his ancestral voices were in touch again, urging him on, and providing him with his only sense of direction.

  Luckily the meadow had been mown in the autumn and the grasses were short, with many animal paths travelling through them. The mice walked on: they knew they were out in the glorious open, but they were too tired to appreciate it or care. They could almost hear their old dormouse-friend Stone, Nature-lover extraordinaire, berating them. But one paw in front of the other: that was as much as they could think about. Muscles were aching to the point of numbness; legs were leaden and unstable; tails were like metal chains being dragged behind. Some mice could hardly keep their eyes open, but relied on the one in front to guide the way and the one behind to nudge them forward. Their whiskers felt heavy and pulled their faces towards the Earth. There were murmurs amongst them that perhaps the Great Nudnik Drive had all been a dream and that if they returned to the House, they would find it as vermin-ridden as before.

  The sky clouded over, the stars disappeared. Halfway across the field, it began to rain. It was a cold sleeting rain which hammered into the fur. The drops were compact and almost ice. They struck the body like nails. When the raindrops are as big as your nose, they are bound to hurt.

  Although Pedlar did not want to stop in the middle of a meadow, a very exposed and dangerous landscape, he knew his mice needed shelter.

  ‘Find what cover you can,’ he said, ‘and we’ll start off again as soon as it stops.’

  They found docks and other flat broadleafed plants to protect them from the rain. Some of them wondered if there might be some rhubarb around, with its nice thick, wide canopy, but Pedlar told them you didn’t get rhubarb on meadowland.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Gruffydd Greentooth. ‘There was rhubarb outside the House.’

  ‘I’ve only seen it growing in a house garden,’ replied Pedlar. ‘But if you can find some hart’s-tongue or figwort you’ll find that pretty effective.’

  ‘Since I don’t know what either of those look like,’ grumbled Gruffydd, ‘I’m not likely to be able to find them, am I? I wish I’d eaten a book on broadleafed plants before I left the library, then I’d be an expert.’

  Once, they had known only the rain which had thundered on the rooftop. They knew it was wet, but the slates on the roof protected them from its force. It had been almost a comforting sound in those hours. Now they’d just experienced real contact. With what curiosity they had left, as they sheltered they marvelled at the thunderous roar the rain created while battering on the leaves above, driving them down upon their bodies, flattening the wet rough undersides against their backs. Some of these undersides had little spikes, hooks or hairs, which irritated the skin. If they stepped back out in the rain again, however, the force of it stung their bodies.

  The downpour lasted half an hour, an incredibly long time to the homeless mice.

  Pedlar immediately called them to order again. ‘March!’ he cried.

  ‘Or die!’ yelled Grunhild grimly.

  The long walk continued. But suddenly there was a yell from Thorkils Threelegs.
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  ‘Little Prince! We’ve got Little Prince with us! He’s been hiding under the name of Eh-he!’

  The whole column stopped, broke up, and gathered around the gibbering form of Little Prince.

  ‘It was the rain, you see, my dears. It washed away the dirt from your sweet Little Prince. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I’m a nice mousey now, aren’t I, Pedlar? Pedlar? Pedlar, where are you?’

  Pedlar was anxiously trying to get to the spot before Little Prince was overwhelmed and bitten to death.

  Gorm-the-old cried, ‘You’re not going to hurt us? I should say you’re not! I’ve got dibs on first bite of this creature.’

  ‘Bags me second!’ cried Phart.

  ‘Oh dear, how nasty,’ whispered Little Prince. ‘What must be, must be, however. Here’s my throat. Tear it open.’

  Gorm stepped forward, accepting the invitation.

  ‘Wait a bit! Stop!’ cried Pedlar, forcing his way through the crowd around Little Prince.

  On reaching Little Prince’s side, Pedlar spoke these words, ‘This mouse has just saved our skins. Without him we would have been eaten by the fox. Or some of us would. Do you want to kill someone who’s just saved your life? Is that a good act?’

  ‘Yes,’ growled Gorm, without hesitation.

  LIMBURGER

  THE MICE CLOSED THE RING AROUND LITTLE PRINCE, their faces set and grim. A lot of them had waited a long time to get their teeth into the hated pet of the nudniks. His cannibalism had revolted the tribes of the House for generations. It did not seem fair that he had already lived many more nights than proper mice in any case. They wanted to end his hours here, on the turf of a foreign field.

  ‘What a lovely hour of the night, isn’t it sweeties?’ cried Little Prince, in a shrill nervous voice, as they pressed in on him. ‘Just imagine being back in your nice kitchen, or the attic with its lovely old junk, or the library books… Careful, don’t come too close to me; I’m very highly strung, you know.’

  ‘Stop!’ cried Pedlar, shielding Little Prince. ‘I will not have this expedition deliberately besmirched by the blood of one of our own.’

  ‘One of our own?’ shouted Phart. ‘He’s a nudnik puppet, that’s what he is!’

  ‘He is a mouse,’ said Pedlar.

  ‘And he’s going to be a dead mouse, very shortly,’ snarled Thorkils Threelegs.

  What Pedlar did next, he did entirely of his own accord. With no prompting from his ancestral voices.

  ‘You’ll have to take me first,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to resist you.’ He made a submissive gesture. ‘Kill me instead. Let the white mouse live, and kill me.’

  ‘No!’ cried Treadlightly.

  ‘You’re bloomin’ barmy,’ said Phart.

  ‘Daft,’ said Goingdownfast.

  ‘Completely unbalanced,’ added Whispersoft.

  ‘Utterly insane,’ confirmed Marredud.

  Jarl Forkwhiskers murmured, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’

  ‘Hey!’ cried Owain, turning on the last speaker, ‘that’s book talk that is. You’ve been stealing into the library and eating our books!’

  ‘Your books!’ roared Jarl. ‘I like that.’

  It was Gorm-the-old who stopped this argument with just a look. Then he surprised everyone with his next speech.

  ‘Look around you,’ he growled. ‘Just look around you everyone.’

  The mice did as they were told. They stared at the great black bowl of the sky above them, immense and unyielding. They went high-nose, their eyes just above the short grass, and stared at the fields which seemed to stretch out for ever. An ocean of blackness above, a sea of grass all around. Tiny distant lights like stars on the landscape, too far away to be of any comfort. Tight clumps of trees here and there, on the horizon, where the dark Earth met the dark sky. It made them shiver with apprehension.

  ‘Agoraphobia,’ murmured Mefyn.

  ‘Never mind that,’ snarled Gorm, ‘it’s ruddy weird. And damn frightening, I don’t mind admitting. Not a house in sight – nothing. Just open space. I don’t know where we are, do you? I can’t find my way back. No doubt one of you pretentious library mice has eaten a map at some time, but is it the right one…?’

  ‘Mongolia,’ murmured Frych-the-freckled. ‘Or Sarawak?’

  ‘There, you see?’ cried Gorm. ‘Whoever heard of a house with names like that? I’m afraid we can’t kill Pedlar, we need him too much. And I suppose it follows that we can’t kill Little Prince either, if Pedlar is determined to protect him.’

  ‘I just don’t want any more deaths on this walk than necessary,’ said Pedlar. ‘There’ll be enough of them as it is. We’ve already lost Flegm—’

  Phart gave out a little sob.

  Gorm grunted, as if to say, no great loss.

  ‘—Little Prince has proved himself once and I have a feeling we’ll be needing him again. Forget his revolting past, which I deplore as much as anyone. He’s clever – he’s cleverer than me or anyone else here – and he’s not without courage either. Those are the qualities we’re going to need if we’re going to survive. We’re not on the whole a brainy bunch, us mice. Cunning and crafty, but not especially brainy.

  ‘Little Prince has assured me that he’s turned over a new leaf. I believe him. But listen to this. My ancestral voices tell me that a “white mouse” is to do great things, become revered among us. I know of no other white mouse but Little Prince.’

  Little Prince rose to the moment and said, ‘Yea verily, I say unto you, if ever I do a mouse wrong again I shall chastise me and smite mine own self as dead as a dodo, and that is the truth. And if any mouse is in dire straits, I shall be there to give him succour. And if any mouse be sorely tried, I shall be there to comfort him. And if any mouse have need of food, I shall go hungry to fill his belly. I lay down myself for mousedom.’

  ‘What’s that?’ growled Gorm.

  ‘He says he’ll be as good as his coat is white,’ replied Frych.

  ‘He’d better be,’ grunted the old Savage.

  Pedlar struck a note of leadership.

  ‘Now, let’s get to that hedgerow before dawn, or we’re in trouble. Move!’

  So the march began again and though Jarl Forkwhiskers nudged Little Prince hard in the back, saying, ‘We’ll get you later,’ the white pet of the nudniks was allowed to live. He owed his life to Pedlar.

  They reached the hedgerow just before dawn. There Treadlightly gave birth to a litter of five young. She had not even told Pedlar she was pregnant, and he had been too busy over the preceding nights to notice the swelling of her tummy.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ he accused her.

  ‘I knew it would distract you,’ she murmured. ‘There was all that anarchy at the House, then the expedition to plan. It’s been a hectic time. I didn’t want your mind on me, when it should be on the whole nation of the House.’

  ‘But – why have you had a litter now? I mean, winter of all times.’

  ‘Mice who live in houses,’ she said, ‘don’t take very much note of the seasons.’

  ‘Well, they should,’ Pedlar replied.

  And he was probably right, because all but one of the litter died that night, of the cold. Even under normal circumstances, not all the litter would have lived: mice were used to a high infant-mortality rate. Eighty per cent of the litter was indeed high, but Pedlar and Treadlightly were grateful that even one managed to live, given that the mother had been starved for much of the pregnancy, and had then taken up hiking with a vengeance.

  The one that lived was a female whom they called Gypsy. The parents had decided to follow Pedlar’s name-line rather than Treadlightly’s, because the only name they could think of which would suit an attic mouse was Arrivedattherighttime, and that seemed too much of a mouthful even for an Invisible. Treadlightly said she would be able to carry Gypsy in her mouth, given a few hours rest.

  The rest of the nation were so tired they slept for several hour
s anyway, giving time for Treadlightly to get her strength back. Frych-the-freckled, so many times a mother it was almost a profession with her, came and fussed over Gypsy. Frych looked wistful as she helped Treadlightly lick the young one and later went off and suggested to Hywel-the-bad that the two of them might set up nest again as soon as they reached a house.

  Secretly, Pedlar was glad that Gypsy had been born in a hedgerow. The Hedgerow was his ancestral home and even if his daughter went off to live in a house, as well she might, she would have had at least a brush with Hedgelore. Pedlar himself was happy to be back, in any part of the Hedgerow, even though it was not his own.

  He knew none of the other creatures in this hawthorn hedge, neither bird nor beast, but the old familiar smells came to his nostrils, of lords-and-ladies, great black slugs, burying beetles, primroses, rabbit’s droppings, snail trails and a host of other plant and animal scents, both active and dormant. When he closed his eyes he was back with Tinker and Diddycoy again – the latter now most probably passed away – sitting in the hazel fork under the thrush’s nest, feeling a part of every twig and leaf.

  Yet he knew he would have to open his eyes sooner or later and lead his multitude forth, into the wilderness again, on the wearying search for a new house that would restore to the tribes the society they had lost.

  TROÔ

  They travelled for many, many more hours, with shorter and shorter rest periods between. Over hump and down ditch, across the bare hard fields, into regions where the ice grew thick and there was little to eat. Pedlar spurned the nudnik roads and followed his own path. Or so it seemed to the other mice who could not hear the ancestral voices that guided their leader.

  The trek became more and more arduous. Until on the third night they came to a vast expanse of very short grass surrounded by a high fence. The fence was no problem, for the mice just slipped through. Beyond the short grass was a giant building, the like of which not even the Bookeaters had seen before. It was so massive as to take up half the sky and in truth its great size frightened the mice.