Young Fredle - Louise Yates [46]
He couldn’t spend too many hours thinking about all of this, either, because who knew when some full moon would take it into its head to pop up in the sky, and that would be the end of him.
That evening, when the raccoons woke up and were having a snack of stale chocolate cake, they offered some to Fredle. He recognized the smell. “Mice can’t eat chocolate,” he told them.
“Poor you,” said Rec, but didn’t sound sorry at the prospect of increasing his own share even by one-quarter of the small amount a mouse would eat.
“It’s really good, Fredle,” said Rimble, who didn’t have many chances to be the raccoon picking on someone. “It’s sweet. Smell it. It can’t hurt you just to smell it, can it?”
Fredle turned his back on them and looked up at the sky, where only one star shone, low in the purple darkness of evening. He studied it for a long time, as the raccoons slurped and swallowed behind him, before asking, carelessly, without even turning around, “Is that one of the moons up there? Over the apple trees?”
“What do you mean, one of the moons?” asked Rad.
“Did you hear what he said?” Rimble asked. “That mouse can’t tell the moon from a moonbit.”
“Woo-Hah, stupid mouse,” laughed Rec.
“Unless—Do you think he’s making fun of us?” asked Rimble. “Because if he is—What do you think, Rec, do we let the mouse get away with that?”
“He could be,” said Rec, menacingly. “I think he might need to be taught a lesson.”
“And we’re the ones to teach him,” Rimble agreed.
“If you two are looking for a fight, why not pick on someone your own size?” asked Rad. “Like me, for instance.” He growled low in his throat. Rec snarled, showing his teeth. Fredle moved back toward the shelter of the stone wall, in case one of their fights broke out.
But Rilf interrupted. “Is that right, Fredle?” he asked. “No one ever told you about moonbits?”
“I’m a house mouse,” Fredle said. He wanted badly to tell those raccoons everything he knew about the moons that came out among what he knew humans called stars. However, his plan was to not be eaten, which was more important than showing off how smart he was.
“Makes sense, then, that he wouldn’t know, doesn’t it, Cap’n?” asked Rad. “Being that house mice live inside. These two stupids wouldn’t have the imagination to figure that out. You should tell the mouse the story.”
“What story?” asked Rimble. “You mean the moon story?”
“I thought we were heading out, to forage,” protested Rec.
“There’s all night for that,” Rilf told him, and turned to Fredle. “That little bright thing you asked about, the one that looks like it’s tangled up in those tree branches? That’s a moonbit. There are moonbits all over the sky but you can only see them at night when the air is dark. During daylight they blend in with the air, because they’re so pale. Those moonbits used to be part of the moon, way back. Way back, when the moon was young and just starting to grow, the way young things do, way back then, the raccoons wanted the moon to get bigger. When there were none of those big gray sky-leaves covering him, the moon gave out a bright light for raccoons. We could see everything clearly, mice in the fields, squirrels running over tree roots, fish in the lake, ramps and dandelions.” Rilf broke off and remarked to Fredle, “I bet you don’t know what a lake is.”
“Or a fish,” Fredle agreed.
“You curious?” Rilf asked.
Fredle nodded.
“The lake’s water that’s always there. Some summers the banks and beaches get wider, but it never dries up. In fact, it keeps filling up, we know it has to, because there’s a stream always running out of it, down the side of the mountain to land up nobody knows where. But the stream doesn’t matter because there are no fish in it.”
“There