Young Fredle - Louise Yates [20]
Fredle ran until he had to stop, the sound of his own breathing loud in his ears. He had thought he’d pushed the loneliness away, but now it was back, and stronger than before. He couldn’t outrun it and he couldn’t drive it away. He’d never escape it. He’d never find his way home and what would he eat?
Tears started to flow from his eyes.
Mice don’t cry. That was one of the rules Grandfather had taught him and Fredle repeated it to himself. Mice don’t cry.
Yeah, well, maybe, Fredle answered Grandfather silently. But mice don’t live alone, either, and house mice don’t go outside, so so much for those rules. Also, he couldn’t stand being alone like this for one more instant. It was more than he could bear. He wanted to go home. He knew he couldn’t and he wanted to and he had never been more miserable in his life.
But now he was also wondering: Was home still the nest behind the pantry wall? Or was home now the little place lined with soft grass where he had been sleeping since he’d arrived outside? How many sleeps did it take to make a home?
With all of these questions in his mind, the loneliness was being pushed back, away into some more distant place and that was—Fredle remarked to himself as he felt his breathing grow more steady—a good thing. A very good thing.
By this time, Fredle had dried off. His little nest was the nearest thing to home he had, for now, and he wasn’t really hungry—a lucky thing, since he didn’t want to have to go out in all that cold, wet water trying to find something to eat—and he had had plenty to drink. So he curled up to think, but not about himself. Instead, he thought about what Bardo had shown him, and what Bardo had told him, and especially what Bardo hadn’t wanted him to notice.
It didn’t take Fredle long to begin getting curious about those chickens, and after a while he drifted off to sleep.
When he awoke again, it was daylight and the rain had stopped falling. Looking out through the opening in the lattice, Fredle noted that the daylight now had a golden shine to it. He could see the grass lying flat on the ground and the brown rutted dirt beyond, and beyond that something very large, a big, dark gray, house-shaped building in the distance. Could that be the chicken pen? The woodshed? Bardo had talked about a snake in the woodshed. Keep away from that snake, Bardo had said; that snake lives on mice.
All that talk about how dangerous the snake was and no talk at all about chickens—whatever they were. That was making Fredle very curious indeed.
He was also hungry. And he realized, all this wondering about Bardo, and the chickens, and even the hunger, too—all of these things pushed the sad and solitary feeling farther away. As soon as he’d thought that, Fredle could see loneliness oozing back toward him, ready to make him miserable all over again, so he squeezed himself through an opening, tumbling out into the cool, clear air, and froze, right next to the lattice, to listen, to smell, to look.
He saw nothing that looked dangerous and heard only sounds from afar—a distant rumble, one dog barking two quick sharp barks, somewhere the crying baby. Hoping it was safe, Fredle ran quickly along the route that rounded the steps and went in front of the other lattice wall to the big green garbage cans. To get to the garden fence he was going to have to cross the cut grass and the rutted dirt. He was going to have to go fast, and alone. There was no Bardo to lead him, no Axle to tell him to follow close. He was going to have to do it all by himself.
Then Fredle realized: he was going to get to do it all by himself.
His heart grew lighter and he made the run, paws tangling a little in grass that lay flat and thick, bony toes stubbing on the rough dirt, until he came to rest again, close up to the foot of a garden fence post. Then he went on more slowly, to the