Young Fredle - Louise Yates [41]
He had been foolish to just run off like that, just because that way led toward the light. Now he thought that he should have followed the stone wall. Those stone walls were built by humans, so if a mouse followed along one he would eventually come to some other place where humans lived. Where humans lived, there would be mice living, too. Fredle thought now that the wall near which the raccoons had their burrow probably belonged to Mister. After all, the raccoons wouldn’t live too far from the source of their food, and the source of their food seemed to be the compost and the garbage cans, both of which belonged to Mister, and therefore, Fredle concluded, the wall, too, must be Mister’s. Thus, he decided, if he followed the stone wall he might have a chance of finding the farm again, and the garden, and the way back into the house. The way home.
By the time he got back to the little clearing, it was midday and he was both tired and thirsty. But the raccoons were still asleep, so it was safe for him to approach the wall and try to decide in which direction to run along it.
No instinct told him to go this way, or that. So he simply chose: this way.
Even with the stone wall to walk beside, it was hard going. Fredle was full of new hope, however, and he persisted. He went on quite a distance before he began to feel wrong, again, and his hopes began to fade. He knew in his shoulders, just as he had known earlier, that this was the wrong way. Or, rather, he did not know that this was the right way. So he decided to turn back, again, and redirect his steps, again. He didn’t know what else he could do. He had no idea where he was, so he had only instinct to guide him home, and all his instinct was saying to him was wrong, and wrong, and wrong again.
At the word home, he saw in his imagination the little nest under the porch, and he felt how low and safe the ceiling lay over it, how the lattice wall protected him without closing him in, how spacious and comfortable his territory under the porch had been.
Then he corrected himself. That wasn’t home. Home was the wide nest behind the pantry wall, where his father and mother, his grandfather, his brothers and sisters, too, all slept together in the unchanging dim light.
He must be light-headed from hunger, Fredle thought, and tried chewing on some of the blades of new grass that were growing near the wall. They tasted bitter but he ate them anyway before he set off again, back to the raccoons’ burrow.
Once more he crossed in front of the pile of sleeping raccoons, their sharp-pointed noses tucked into their sharp-clawed black feet, their bright eyes shut and their browny-gray, silvery-black furry bodies piled up together, so that you couldn’t tell where Rimble’s shoulder ended and Rec’s haunch began. They did not stir as he slipped silently past them and headed off along the stone wall in the opposite direction, going that way, hoping for the best.
By this time, he was hoping for the best but at the same time fearing the worst. He had no idea what to expect, out here, in the wild. He went along as fast as he could, making his way beside the stone wall around and over and through obstacles that had by that time grown familiar. The air was warm, much of the day had gone by, already, and only insects could be heard. Then the wall stopped.
Fredle considered the empty way ahead. It was crossed by a dirt path with long ruts in it, like the road near the house. Could it be some kind of road? And if it was some kind of road, wouldn’t it lead him to a house? That is, if he chose the right direction.
The fact was that he had no idea where he was and had no idea how to forage out in the wild. The only thing he knew was how to get back to where the Rowdy Boys slept, and he didn’t know what lay in store for him if he did that.
Fredle thought: Wait a minute. I do know what’s in store for me, with those raccoons.
Then he thought: I don’t think there is anything else I can do.
So he stopped thinking and turned around, turned back, to make his way to the raccoons’ burrow. When he got