Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

by Lynne Jonell

  Deep in the shadows, Emmy gave the Rat a sudden shove. “Go on, Ratty—bite him.”

  “NOOOOOO!” cried Cheswick as he shrank, down, down, until he was face to face with the Rat.

  Raston showed all his teeth in a wide, sinister smile.

  “Brian!” Cheswick called, his voice a thin squeak. “Don’t let him bite me a third time—I could become microscopic—”

  The Rat clutched Cheswick firmly around the middle and gave a violent twist. “It’s your bad luck,” he panted, “that my cage was once papered with Wild & Woolly Wrestling.” He levered the little man to the floor, shifting his grip to a full nelson. “How does it feel to be afraid, Mr. Big Hand?”

  “Wait. Don’t scare him,” said Brian, crossing the floor. “Come on, Uncle. I’ll put you where you’ll be safe.”

  “Put him in my cage,” called Sissy cheerfully. “I won’t be using it anymore.”

  The quivering lump that was Cheswick Vole looked up from Brian’s hand, his eyes wide and terrified. “A … a cage? For me?”

  “It’s only for a little while,” said Brian kindly. “I’ll get water for your dish,” he added, walking toward the back room, “and some fresh wood shavings …”

  “But I just got out of jail!” The cry drifted plaintively over Brian’s retreating shoulder until the velvet curtain cut it off. A minute later Brian returned, dusting his hands. “Okay, now what?”

  The Rat cleared his throat. “No doubt you wish to thank me for gallant biting in the face of danger. But”—he held up a paw, smiling modestly—“I must hurry away; the lads are counting on me for pawball. I’m their most valuable player, you know.”

  Joe choked. Emmy turned away from the Rat as she struggled to keep a straight face.

  The Rat addressed Brian with dignity. “Will you open the door, sir? Sissy, after you.”

  Emmy and Joe didn’t laugh out loud until the door shut behind the rodents—and then they couldn’t stop. Weak with reaction and relief, the professor’s snores only made them laugh harder. At last, Brian picked them up in his calloused hand. “It’s no laughing matter for Uncle Cheswick,” he said sternly.

  Emmy wiped her eyes, sobering. She didn’t much like being picked up by a giant hand, and the thought reminded her of something else. “Crumbs—we forgot to have Sissy give us a kiss.”

  Joe shrugged. “We can always do that later. Besides, I’m not sure I want to grow yet. What am I going to say to my parents about where I was all this time?”

  Emmy didn’t answer. Her eye had wandered to the open cabinet. The left-hand side was fitted out with drawers and a narrow counter; the right side held shelves filled with small glass vials, each with its own label.

  “I’ve never seen it unlocked before,” Brian murmured, moving closer. He set Emmy and Joe on one of the shelves and peered in. “Essence of Hamster … Powdered Lemming Spoor … Distilled Prairie Dog Tail. What do all those do, I wonder?”

  The inside of the cabinet smelled of wood and old varnish, with hints of more exotic smells lingering in the corners. Emmy walked around a bottle with a faded, peeling label. “Shrinking Rat Saliva—hey! This must be Raston’s!”

  “It’s old, though,” said Joe, tapping at the cloudy glass. “And it’s almost all gone.”

  Brian nodded thoughtfully. “So some of the rodents’ powers can be put in a bottle, I guess, and others you have to get directly from the rat itself.”

  “Like the chinchilla footprint,” said Joe.

  “But with Raston, it works both ways. He can bite you, or you can just swallow the spit from the bottle,” Emmy pointed out. She eyed a vial whose contents had separated. The liquid went from deep purple at the base to bright yellow at the top, with small flakes of bright pink sediment suspended in the middle.

  “Swallow Ratty’s spit? Gross,” said Joe, prowling among the bottles.

  Brian shook his head. “Would you swallow it, or would you inject it with a needle? I mean, when Raston bites someone, his saliva goes straight into the bloodstream.”

  Emmy frowned. “True, but what about Sissy’s kisses? They don’t break the skin.”

  “Maybe her saliva is absorbed through the pores.”

  “Don’t forget,” Joe said, wiping grime from the label of a stained green bottle, “some of the rodent stuff has to be breathed in. Like when that Bushy-Tailed Rat sneezed in the professor’s face and gave him the Snoozer virus.”

  Emmy paced the shelf, regretting her impatience with the professor. You could study this stuff for years and never figure it all out. And yet she had to figure something out, and fast, in order to stop Miss Barmy and somehow keep her parents in town.

  “It’s all so complicated,” she said gloomily. “I wish there were some directions, somewhere.” She reached the end of the shelf and turned around to resume her pacing. “I don’t mean those research notes, either. I mean simple ones that you can really understand—hey! Look!”

  Brian followed her gaze and swung the right cabinet door open even wider. There, on the inside of the door, was a chart. Though written in pencil, and faint and smudged in spots, it listed each rodent’s name, along with a description of its effective power, how to use it, and the suggested dosage.

  “Wow,” said Joe.

  “We hit the jackpot,” said Emmy, beaming. “Want to lose weight? Look at this one: ‘Trim-Bellied Squirrel. Makes the fat become thin. Pluck five belly hairs, snip fine, and steep in one cup hot celery juice until cool. Take two teaspoons daily for twenty-four days. Repeat as necessary.’”

  “Sounds appetizing,” said Joe. “What do you say we try one and see if the directions work?”

  Emmy scanned the list for a clearly written entry. “‘Hairy Pawed Agouti. Grows thick hair fast.’”

  Brian shifted his weight. “That one can’t do any harm. He’s in the back room, too.”

  “It’s in the interest of science, anyway,” said Joe as Brian returned with a long-legged, reddish gold rodent about the size of a cat. He set it on the desk and petted it gently as Emmy consulted the directions.

  “‘Touch right forepaw to skin for thick, fast growing hair.’ Where do you want the extra hair, Brian?”

  Brian cradled the agouti in his arms. “I’ve always sort of wanted a beard,” he said shyly, and stroked the agouti’s paw over his chin.

  A dense mat of light brown hair spread rapidly on Brian’s face, making him look years older. He moved the paw to his upper lip, and a bushy mustache appeared in seconds.

  “Cool!” He reached up to touch his new beard, entranced; but the agouti, grunting playfully, patted his nose with its paw. A sudden tuft of hair sprang from the tip and began to curl.

  Brian nearly dropped the rodent in his alarm. “Oh no—” He ran to the back room, clanged the door to the agouti’s cage, and dashed up the stairs to look in the mirror. A low moan could be heard through the floorboards.

  Emmy tried to keep a straight face when Brian reappeared with scissors in his hand, snipping away at a long, lustrous beard and a particularly silky lock of nose hair. He went straight for the chart and ran his finger down the listings.

  “Lasts two to three weeks,” he read, dismayed. “If rash results, discontinue use and call a doctor.”

  “It could be worse,” said Emmy. “It could be permanent.”

  Brian trimmed the tip of his nose again. “Hey, I think it’s slowing down.”

  “With any luck, you’ll only have to shave your nose a few times a day,” said Joe, clinking amid the vials. “Listen, wasn’t it Scent of Shrew that Cheswick was going to get for Miss Barmy? Here it is.” He pointed to a dark red bottle, half-filled with liquid.

  “‘Scent of Shrew,’” Emmy read, straining her eyes to make out the tiny penciled words on the chart. “‘To cause forgetfulness. Heat to diffuse scent; exposure time—’” She passed over a smudged phrase and skipped to the next line. “‘Sensitized olfactory receptors induce selective forgetfulness when scent is re-encountered. Repeat every two
weeks or as needed.’”

  “So what does that mean in English?” Joe looked at Brian quizzically.

  Brian’s beard growth was definitely slowing. He clipped it short and tossed the hair in the wastebasket before studying the chart once more.

  “Olfactory,” he said slowly. “I studied that in science. That’s one of the twelve cranial nerves.”

  “So it’s in the brain,” said Joe thoughtfully.

  “It must be connected to your sense of smell, somehow,” said Emmy.

  Brian nodded. “It looks like there are two parts to using Scent of Shrew. First, you’re supposed to heat it up so the scent is released into the air. After a while— I can’t read how long—the smell is imprinted in the brain of anyone nearby.”

  “Could you heat it up with a candle?” Joe asked with sudden interest.

  “Sure, I guess. If you smeared it on the top and sides of a candle, it would probably work.”

  Joe nudged Emmy. “We were right, then. It was in the candle, during silent reading—”

  “While I was with that nutty Dr. Leander,” said Emmy indignantly, “making up stuff for him to write down—”

  “And everybody forgot you even existed, at least until it wore off.”

  “But why would people just forget about me, and nobody else?”

  “That’s the second part,” said Brian. “All Miss Barmy had to do to make sure you were completely ignored was to put the same scent on you before you went to school. For two weeks or so, whenever anyone in class caught a whiff of it, they’d just sort of blank you out. Selective forgetfulness, see? Their eyes would see you, their ears would hear you, but their brains wouldn’t register the fact.”

  Emmy narrowed her eyes. “So that explains why she was always dabbing something behind my ears, or rubbing weird gunk on my hands.”

  Brian nodded. “She could have put it in your shampoo, or made you drink it so it would be on your breath.”

  “It would be great stuff for a spy to use,” Joe said with enthusiasm. “You’d be just as good as invisible, to the right people.”

  “It would wear off after a while, though,” said Emmy, thinking back. “Kids would start to notice me, a little, and I’d think things were changing—and then all of a sudden, they’d look right through me again. I suppose that meant Miss Barmy had just made another classroom visit,” she added grimly.

  “She must have made sure she didn’t smell it herself,” said Brian suddenly. “I’ll bet she plugged her nose with wax or something.”

  “Could be. She always sounded like she had a cold.” Joe turned a narrow pink bottle and looked closely at the label. “Isn’t this the other one the Barmster wanted?”

  “Distilled Extract of Gerbil,” Emmy read, squinting. “Maturity ® 3. Full effects after 24 hours.” The rest of the penciled entry was too faint to read, and she looked at Brian, bewildered. “What does that mean? If you use it, you become three times wiser or something?”

  A small crease appeared between Brian’s eyebrows. “Becoming more mature,” he said slowly, “is a good thing. So why would Miss Barmy want something like that?”

  Joe shrugged. “At least it can’t hurt anybody.”

  There was a sudden, sharp rap at the door, as if someone had hit it with a stick.

  Brian turned pale.

  Inside the cabinet, Joe looked at Emmy in consternation. “That’s her now.”

  Emmy’s mouth went dry. “No—it can’t possibly—”

  “Yes it can,” said Brian grimly. “Uncle Cheswick said she could come anytime, remember? And he promised her Scent of Shrew and—”

  “Don’t give it to her!” Emmy breathed.

  “Of course not, but—” Brian straightened and looked over his shoulder. “Find me something I can give her instead,” he said quickly as the door was rapped again, “and stay out of sight. I’ll stall her while you look.” He swung the cabinet doors nearly shut.

  “Better cut your nose hair again,” Emmy called.

  “Right,” muttered Brian, shooting a glance behind the cabinet. The professor had stopped snoring, but still looked sound asleep. Brian sighed and walked to the door, a pudgy teenager with a foot-long beard.

  “Joe, what can we give her?” Emmy whispered, her heart pulsing like a bird’s in her throat.

  “I don’t know!” Joe’s whisper was almost as panicked as hers. “If only Ratty were here, he could shrink her like he did Cheswick—”

  “That wouldn’t work,” said Emmy, feverishly searching the chart by the narrow crack of light Brian had left them. “Cheswick has been bitten before—Ratty told me—but Miss Barmy hasn’t. She’d squish Ratty flat before he could bite her a second time.” She took a series of deep breaths, as the professor had done, and felt herself calming down just a trifle—enough, at any rate, to think.

  “Listen, Joe. You read the labels one by one. I’ll check the chart.”

  Joe nodded vigorously, squinting at the nearest bottle. “Jerboa Juice,” he said under his breath.

  Emmy’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the half light. “An infusion of courage,” she read softly. “No good. We don’t want her to become braver.”

  “All right, then—Springhare Spit.”

  “That one just makes people jumpy—keeps them awake.”

  She nearly jumped herself as Brian’s voice sounded from the entryway, low and gruff. “Miss Barmy, I presume?”

  “Where is Cheswick?” snapped Miss Barmy. “How many different assistants does he need?” Her cane rapped impatiently on the floor. “I have an emergency; he said he would have something ready for me.”

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but Unc—I mean, Mr. Vole—is busy.”

  “What do you mean, busy?”

  The menace in Miss Barmy’s voice turned Emmy’s knees weak. She sat down abruptly on the shelf and gripped the edge with both hands.

  “Ointment of Palm Squirrel,” breathed Joe over her shoulder.

  Emmy looked for the listing on the chart. “Removes fear of heights,” it read; she shook her head. Was there nothing they could use to thwart Miss Barmy?

  “I mean he can’t … he’s not able to see you,” Brian floundered, waving his arms. Emmy watched through the crack as his hand brushed against his beard. His shoulders suddenly straightened, as if he had found new confidence.

  “To be honest,” said Brian, smoothing his mustache, “he’s behind bars.”

  “Not again!”

  “He wasn’t expecting it.” Brian shook his head sadly. “But he did say that you wanted … Scent of Shrew, was it?”

  “And Extract of Gerbil,” she added as Brian went to the cabinet. “Don’t forget to put something in that one to make it taste good.”

  “That settles it,” whispered Joe, hauling the narrow pink bottle from the back row. “She wants it for herself.”

  Emmy nodded. “If it was for me, she’d want it to taste foul.” She helped Joe push the bottle to the front of the shelf.

  Brian filled a little container from it and wrote “Gerbil Extract × 3” on the label. He turned, almost bumping into Miss Barmy.

  “Please sit down, ma’am,” he said nervously, trying to block Miss Barmy’s view of the shelves. “I have to concentrate; I can’t mix these with anyone looking over my shoulder.”

  “Oh, very well.” The chair scraped, and hard fingernails began a steady tapping. “Make sure the Scent of Shrew is strong,” Miss Barmy said petulantly. “The last batch wore off too soon.”

  “In that case,” said Brian, turning his back to her, “I’ll give you a little extra.”

  Emmy wordlessly pushed a dusty brown bottle at him. He glanced at the label, checked the chart, and grinned.

  “Cheswick only gives me three drops each time.” Miss Barmy sounded fretful.

  “Then I’ll give you ten,” said Brian. He winked at Emmy as he measured out drops into a little container. “And if Mr. Vole complains, I shall tell him that you asked for it.”

&
nbsp; There was a little silence. Emmy thought she could almost hear Miss Barmy’s eyelashes flutter as Brian approached her.

  “Here’s the Scent of Shrew. Now, when you use it, don’t just drip it on. Smear it all over.”

  “On the candle?”

  “That’s right,” said Brian. “Use your fingertips; their warmth will activate it even more strongly.”

  “Why didn’t Cheswick ever tell me that?”

  “He’s not quite as experienced as I am,” said Brian, stroking his beard.

  The door closed behind Miss Barmy at last. Brian collapsed in a chair, slack with relief. And from behind the cabinet emerged a deep, rich chuckle.

  “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, boy,” said Professor Capybara, lurching to his feet. “And a good deal of hair on your head, too!”

  Brian grinned sheepishly. “I kind of like having a beard,” he admitted, trimming the hair on his nose once more.

  “I had a little trouble with the Hairy Pawed Agouti once, myself. It patted my elbow; I couldn’t wear short sleeves for weeks. Now, what did I miss during my nap?”

  “Cheswick came back, and Ratty shrank him,” Joe said.

  “He’s in Cecilia’s old cage for now,” said Brian, “and you saw Miss Barmy come for her potions.”

  “I only woke up as she was leaving.” The professor looked into the cabinet. “Did she ask for Scent of Shrew?”

  “Yes, but we gave her Oil of Beaver instead,” said Emmy. “The chart said it was guaranteed to sniff out a lie. It was the best we could do.”

  “At least it won’t cause any problems, right?” Joe came forward to the edge of the shelf. “I mean, if the kids in the class smell it in the candle, and it helps them know when somebody’s lying, that might even help them. At least they won’t start to ignore Emmy again.”

  “I don’t think it will affect the class,” said Brian. “Oil of Beaver is absorbed through the skin. That’s why I told her to smear it on with her fingers.”

  Emmy looked at him, alarmed. “Does that mean she’s going to be able to tell when someone else is lying?”

  The professor shook his head, smiling. “No, I believe it works the other way around. I can’t recall exactly, and this chart is incomplete, of course, but I don’t think it will make things worse.” He chortled to himself, tilting his head back to read the fine print through his glasses. “On the contrary, I think you may have come up with the perfect thing for our Miss Barmy. Hee hee! Oh, yes indeed!”