Young Fredle - Louise Yates [40]
“The mouse has a name, which is Fredle,” said Rilf. His bright, dark eyes studied Fredle. “I’d like to show the girls this fellow. I bet the coonlets could have a good time with him. I’d have loved a mouse when I was little.”
“Me too,” they all agreed, and then, without a further word to Fredle, they withdrew together into a wide-mouthed burrow dug into the soft ground near some large tree roots and there they curled up, four large, furry bodies, hidden away from sight. In the dim light, they could have been one huge creature, not four separate, smaller ones, except for the way they shoved at one another—“Get your paw out of my eye or I’ll bite it off!”—and quarreled—“Try, just you try. I’d like to see you try.” “Hey! Cut it out!” “Then don’t push me.”
Fredle stayed exactly where they’d left him, for a long time, a solitary small gray mouse hunched on a patch of dirt with big trees all around him and a low stone wall nearby. After a while, the air grew lighter. Eventually, all he heard from the burrow was the snoring of sleeping raccoons, which mingled with the sound of the morning breeze rustling branches and leaves. He waited.
Daylight came gently, out in the wild, came slowly. With daylight, Fredle could see what was around him. Trees rose tall, some leafy, others spreading out low branches covered with short, dark green needles. There were clumps of old brown grass, bent flat, and bright green blades of new grass growing among them. The air filled with the voices of birds.
The sounds of birds were very different from the sounds of chickens. Chickens seemed to be chattering away to themselves, but birds conversed. Conversed about what Fredle had no idea, but he thought, listening, that one bird would make a noise and another would respond. Their voices were much more pleasant to hear than the cawing of crows.
Fredle could no more have gone to sleep than fly up into the air and talk to birds. His brain was too busy. He thought he must be out in the wild, and he could conclude that the raccoons, like house mice, were nocturnal animals. So his escape—and he certainly did plan to escape before they woke up hungry and caught sight of him—would be best carried out in daylight.
Fredle had no idea where the wild was, how distant from the house, the compost and the garden. He had no idea which direction he should escape into. He wasn’t lost, but he very easily might be, and soon, so he wanted to notice everything he could about this particular place. He looked all around.
The low stone wall ran in a straight line through the trees, as far as Fredle could see in both directions. Some of its stones had fallen into the grass that grew beside it. High-limbed, leafy trees and some of the thick, bushy, low-branched trees encircled the small clearing where he stood. He locked the position of everything and of the place itself into his memory, and then he turned to leave it.
“Woo-Hah.”
Fredle froze. After a long minute he turned his head to peer at the pile of sleeping raccoons.
Not a one of them stirred. Even Captain Rilf, who slept with his nose pointed toward Fredle, had his eyes tightly closed.
Fredle waited a long, anxious time, while the air brightened around him. Then he ran off, in the direction of the growing light.
The way he had chosen was pathless, and rough with rocks and roots and low bushes. Trees rose up to block his passage. He had to circle around them before he could continue on his way. After a long time, he rounded a thick tree trunk and within six steps knew he could no longer be sure that he was heading on in the same direction. He felt it in his shoulders, the not-knowing, and stopped moving. He retreated to the safety of the tree trunk, to think things over.
But Fredle found that he could only think about being lost. Somehow, in the short distance from one side of the tree trunk to the other, he had gone too far and gotten himself well and truly lost.
This was so uncomfortable a feeling that he went back around the tree, until he knew where he was again. He crouched there to consider the situation.