Young Fredle - Louise Yates [35]
He stuck his head in, to look and listen. All he could see was darkness, although in the distance there was a faint gray window shape, almost light. What he heard was the kind of silence that comes when many small noises mix together, none of them human, none of them clumsy and loud and doggy. Here inside no wind whistled. The air lay still.
Fredle shoved until his shoulders and front legs were inside. The ground below felt close, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the dense darkness, he thought he could see, just below him, a more solid blackness, which was earth, not air. He reached a paw down—careful not to lose his balance. If he was wrong about how close the ground was, and if he fell, tumbling through empty air until he hit hard bottom, he could hurt himself so badly that he would just lie there, unable to move, until he was went. However, reaching down, he felt the familiar soft, cool touch of dirt, so he wriggled through until he stood on all four paws in darkness.
Far ahead lay that dimness, the kind of dim light he remembered from his home behind the pantry wall, not really light at all, just not darkness. Turning to look behind him, he saw through the glass of the window to the clear night air outside, where there were no walls to lock the darkness in, where spaces stretched endlessly and, in not very long, one of the moons might make an appearance among the stars.
He could go home now. No other mouse had ever went and then come back again, but Fredle was about to. He had never in his life felt so clever, and the happiness and pride he was feeling were almost more than could be contained in one small body. He wanted to jump in circles; he wished he could bark like Sadie, or fly like a crow, soar up into the air with happiness.
Then he thought of something not so happy; he thought of leaving outside. He wished he could say goodbye to Neldo before he returned home, and even Bardo, too. That was probably not possible, but he wouldn’t mind taking a last look at the stars, and the cupped flowers—
No, the flowers were too far away. It would be foolhardy to go around front, and besides, it was a dark night and he wouldn’t be able to see their colors. The stars, however, were just beyond the window and so Fredle scrambled back out through the crack.
That night, the stars were hidden behind clouds that rushed across the sky, running after the wind. Fredle was surprised at how disappointed he was, not to see them. The way in, he thought, staring up in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of even one single white brightness, would not move, would not close. It would wait. Maybe he should go foraging in the compost and then go back to his own small nest and wait until a cloudless night before he returned inside. If he did that, he would be able to see the flowers one more time, too, and maybe even have a chance to tell Sadie what he was doing.
Fredle knew that to wait was not necessarily a smart choice, although he couldn’t see that it was particularly stupid. He decided, therefore, not to decide right then. Instead, he decided to go to the compost and say goodbye to Neldo, if she was there, and Bardo. And if they weren’t there? Better to decide everything on a full stomach, he decided, and he set off.
The wind whispered in his ears as he scurried, keeping close to the foundation. He went through low bushes, past the other low window on the fourth side of the house, through more bushes, and around the corner to the protection of the garbage cans, where he would start his dash—at night, you were foolish not to cross open spaces at your best speed—across the road and grass to the safety of the garden fence post. Inside, he remembered, there were no raptors, and no wind and rain, either. In the adventure of being outside, he had almost forgotten how comfortable life could be inside,