Young Fredle - Louise Yates [28]
Neldo didn’t have to even stop to think, it was so obvious. “It’s too far from food, especially in winter. But you know what? You’re right, Fredle. In winter you’ll be protected from snow—”
Fredle stopped himself from interrupting to ask her what snow was.
“—just like we are in the woodshed.”
“Let’s go,” Fredle said, suddenly impatient with all the talking. “You lead.”
They went on through bright midday sun, moving along close to the lattice wall. The grass shone green, the lattice wall shone white, and the air glimmered all around. Then they went around a sharp corner and the lattice was gone. Neldo went right on, but Fredle hesitated, looking back for places to run to for shelter, looking around, looking forward.
That was when he saw something he could never have imagined, right in front of him, something as surprising as stars.
“Oh,” said Fredle. “Oh my.”
They were tall, and straight-stemmed, with two long wings of leaves rising up along the stem. The warm air near them was filled with a faint sweet smell and the stems held up tall cups, in different colors, white and yellow and the same dark gray as the barn, but shiny. That dark gray didn’t hold his eyes, but the white and yellow did, where they glowed in their loveliness.
Fredle stood struck still, and looked. Row behind row, there were three straight rows of these shining things, standing in the sunlight. He looked up at the smooth-sided cups and then his eyes ran down the long green stems, then they flew up on the winglike dark green leaves. Did those cups catch the rain when it fell? he wondered. Were they there for the humans to bend and drink out of? He thought that water held in those cups, especially the white ones, would have a power no other water could match. He thought that if a mouse could drink that water he would become more of a mouse than he had been, wiser perhaps if he drank from the white cup, stronger and faster, maybe, if from the yellow cup. And if he drank out of the dark gray cup, what power would he learn?
Neldo woke him from his dreaming thoughts with a sharp poke of the nose. “Come on! You can’t just—Don’t stand around in the open like that! What’s wrong with you, Fredle?”
She was dancing on her four little feet, as restless as Bardo.
“What are they?” Fredle asked.
“You mean these flowers? I don’t know—get moving, Fredle!—roses, maybe, or tulips or daisies, it doesn’t matter, they’re not good to eat. Come on!”
Fredle caught her nervousness and skittered after her into the shelter of the row of flowers growing closest to the wall of the house. He made himself pay attention to what was in front of his eyes, but it was an effort not to turn his head to look at and smell the flowers. Next time, he promised himself. Next time I’ll come alone so I can look as long as I want to.
As if she could know what he was thinking, Neldo said, “Next time we’ll come just to look at the flowers. Early in the day, the dew on their petals catches the light and it’s as if the flowers have been sprinkled with stars.”
“Oh,” said Fredle again, as he tried to imagine that.
“You’ll see,” she assured him. “But right now, aren’t we looking for a way to get through the foundation?”
“What’s the foundation?”
“It’s what the house rests on. It’s these big, hard stones, and the humans put mortar between them to seal them closed. The foundation is what keeps the bad weather out of the house, too. The barn has a foundation but the woodshed doesn’t, and neither does the chicken coop.”
“I just don’t know enough,” Fredle said. He wished there wasn’t so much to know.
“Yes you do,” Neldo answered. “But you know about inside, not outside. But you’re learning about outside, and you do already know a lot. Even Bardo says so.”
They were walking along, studying the stony wall beside them, noses close to the bottom, where the foundation met dirt. These stones were impenetrable. The mortar between them was sometimes crumbly, but the two