The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo [11]
“Oh my!” he said out loud.
His voice echoed in the smelly darkness.
“Perfidy,” said Despereaux, just to hear his voice again, just to assure himself that he did exist.
“Pea,” said Despereaux, and the name of his beloved was immediately swallowed up by the darkness.
He shivered. He shook. He sneezed. His teeth chattered. He longed for his handkerchief. He grabbed hold of his tail (it took him a long, frightening moment to even locate his tail, so absolute was the darkness) to have something, anything, to hold on to. He considered fainting. He deemed it the only reasonable response to the situation in which he found himself, but then he remembered the words of the threadmaster: honor, courtesy, devotion, and bravery.
“I will be brave,” thought Despereaux. “I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armor. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.”
How best for him to be brave?
He cleared his throat. He let go of his tail. He stood up straighter. “Once upon a time,” he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.
“Once upon a time,” he said again, feeling a tiny bit braver. “There was a knight and he wore, always, an armor of shining silver.”
“Once upon a time?” boomed a voice from the darkness. “A knight in shining armor? What does a mouse know of such things?”
That voice, the loudest voice that Despereaux had ever heard, could only, he assumed, belong to the world’s largest rat.
Despereaux’s small, overworked heart stopped beating.
And for the second time that day, the mouse fainted.
WHEN DESPEREAUX AWOKE, he was cupped in the large, callused hand of a human and he was staring into the fire of one match and beyond the match there was a large, dark eye looking directly at him.
“A mouse with red thread,” boomed the voice. “Oh, yes, Gregory knows the way of mice and rats. Gregory knows. And Gregory has his own thread, marking him. See here, mouse.” And the match was held to a candle and the candle sputtered to life and Despereaux saw that there was a rope tied around the man’s ankle. “Here is the difference between us: Gregory’s rope saves him. And your thread will be the death of you.” The man blew the candle out and the darkness descended and the man’s hand closed more tightly around Despereaux and Despereaux felt his beleaguered heart start up a crazy rhythm of fear.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“The answer to that question, mouse, is Gregory. You are talking to Gregory the jailer, who has been buried here, keeping watch over this dungeon for decades, for centuries, for eons. For eternities. You are talking to Gregory the jailer, who, in the richest of ironies, is nothing but a prisoner here himself.”
“Oh,” said Despereaux. “Um, may I get down, Gregory?”
“The mouse wants to know if Gregory the jailer will let him go. Listen to Gregory, mouse. You do not want to be let go. Here, in this dungeon, you are in the treacherous dark heart of the world. And if Gregory was to release you, the twistings and turnings and dead ends and false doorways of this place would swallow you for all eternity.
“Only Gregory and the rats can find their way through this maze. The rats because they know, because the way of it mirrors their own dark hearts. And Gregory because the rope is forever tied to his ankle to guide him back to the beginning. Gregory would let you go, but you would only beg him to take you up again. The rats are coming for you, you see.”
“They are?”
“Listen,” said Gregory. “You can hear their tails dragging through the muck and filth. You can hear them filing their nails and teeth. They are coming for you. They are coming to take you apart piece by piece.”
Despereaux listened and he was quite certain that he heard the nails and teeth of the rats,