Young Fredle - Louise Yates [44]
This was not what Fredle had expected and it took him a few seconds to think of … “Apple peels?”
“Apple peels! Didja hear that?” And they were off again, laughing at him. “Woo-Hah, listen to that mouse, he wants us to bring apple peels back for him.”
“I have to say, he’s almost too much fun to eat,” Rimble remarked.
“What’s so funny?” demanded Fredle. “What’s so funny about being hungry and wanting something good to eat?”
“What’s so funny, young Fredle, is that if you climb over this stone wall you will find yourself in the middle of a whole field of apple trees. With apples lying scattered on the ground around them. A little rotten, maybe, after the winter cold, but apples all the same, enough to feed seven times seven herds of mice.”
“What are they doing there?” asked Fredle. “Didn’t Mister and Missus want them?”
“Nobody harvests these apples,” Rilf told him. “It’s as if nobody knows they’re there. Deer eat them, and we do, too, if there’s nothing better on offer. But raccoons are carnivores, basically. That means we eat meat, in case you don’t know. Which includes mouse,” he added.
“Includes Fredle the inedible, Woo-Hah,” laughed Rec. “Can we get going? There’s no garbage can for us tonight, I’m thinking, but what do you say to a good sniff around that chicken pen?”
“Who said you could give orders?” growled Rad. “You’re not my captain.”
“Can’t we just go?” demanded Rimble.
“Happy foraging, Fredle,” Rilf called back as the four raccoons lolloped off, leaving him alone in the night.
For a long time Fredle sat in the clearing in front of the wide-mouthed raccoon burrow. The air darkened around him. The black, shadowy branches of trees swayed in the wind, high around him. From where he sat, he could look up and see thin clouds that had stretched themselves across the sky. Through them he caught glimpses of stars, and then one of the smaller moons appeared, curved like an apple peel, and bright white. Hungry as he was, Fredle sat for a long time, looking up. As always, the stars comforted him. He should do something about being hungry, he knew, but he didn’t move, looking at the stars and this moon, thinking about everything he had learned that day, remembering the stream—what was it he’d forgotten about streams?—and what Rilf had told him, about setting off in the right direction the first time, the direction of morning light, downhill. The clouds drifted off, leaving the stars and moon bright in the sky. Still, Fredle didn’t move.
After a long while, however, he started to get curious about those apples, over the wall. He scrambled awkwardly up over first one large stone, then another, then a third—jumping over the deep cracks where the stones did not fit together—until he stood on top.
From there he could see a dark expanse of star-strewn sky, beneath which he made out the shapes of many trees, standing in rows like the flowers at the front of the house. What would make those trees grow in rows? he wondered. The humans, probably. Only humans made such straight lines out of things, in flower beds, in the walls of a house, and even out in the wild, apparently, far from their homes.
These trees were smaller versions of the tall trees near the house, where squirrels lived. These trees had slender trunks and their branches didn’t spread out so high above the ground. Pieces of white clouds were caught in their branches and there was a faint perfume in the air, like that of the flowers—although not exactly like it. Also in the air, now that Fredle paid attention to what he was smelling, he caught the scent of apples.
Careful not to go so fast that he lost footing, Fredle clambered down the other side of the stone wall. Back on the ground, the apple smell was stronger and the grass sparse, so he ran quickly to the nearest tree.
It stood among thin stalks of grass and a scattering of round, brown apples. Why were some apples dark gray, like the peels on the compost heap, while these were brown? Fredle wondered as he bit into one. This brown apple was softer, too, not at all crisp. It was as if