Young Fredle - Louise Yates [60]
Of course, it you didn’t have to worry about food, it might be easy to be happy, especially if you almost never had to worry about cats, and never about traps, raptors, or raccoons, either. Whatever the reason, it seemed to Fredle that these cellar mice knew how to enjoy just being awake, eating and talking and playing with their mouselets.
17
The Way Up
Fredle spent several nights in the cellar, answering questions about outside (Colors? Squirrels? Ramps? Stone walls? Trees!) and asking questions of his own (Baskets of food that never ran out? How many different games? How many kinds of spiders?). There was talking, and more talking, about the danger of chocolate and why Missus saved Fredle’s life, about ice cream and where outside turned into wild, about why humans liked cats but not mice, and whether another creature, like a dog, like Sadie, could be trusted. Anything that could be thought about or asked about got talked over, in the cellar. Even though he was always thinking about a way back to the upstairs, Fredle enjoyed those nights. He was always sorry when another night had slipped peacefully by and it came time to go to sleep. He was always pleased to wake up and begin another long, easy night. Until, one day, things changed.
They were all asleep in their nests after a busy night of good food, play, and conversation when, suddenly, the weak light from the high windows disappeared in a blast of silent and immediate brightness.
Fredle’s eyes snapped open. His heart raced. He looked across at Tarnu and Ellnu, who were sleeping peacefully. In fact, the whole family slept peacefully on, undisturbed. Fredle crawled out of the nest and saw Linu looking out over the rim of her own family’s nest, also behind the oil tank. Fredle whispered, “What is it?”
The light was not as bright as sunlight and didn’t infuse the air the way sunlight did, but it was uncomfortably bright, especially after the usual dimness of the cellar. Linu said, “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Missus. You want to see her use the machines?”
Of course Fredle did and of course Linu was happy to show him. “It’s the only thing that happens here in the cellar, almost. Not like outside, with all your adventures. Not like the kitchen, with its traps and that cat you told us about, with Mister and Missus and the dogs.”
“There’s a baby, too,” Fredle said. He knew he was showing off but he said it anyway.
“Not like the wild, either.”
Fredle agreed. In fact, the cellar was just about the absolute opposite of wild.
“The only dangerous thing that happens here is when those two cats come in. Missus isn’t at all dangerous. She comes here a lot, sometimes to check the food in our baskets, sometimes like now for the machines. Look.”
They had come to the front leg of the oil tank and Fredle saw Missus, at the other end of the cellar, with a tall white container beside her. She was bending down and taking things out of the container to put them into one of the big square machines, which shone whiter than usual in the brightness that now filled the cellar.
A faint, sharp, unpleasant smell—definitely not food—floated briefly by his nose, and then it was gone. The machine started making noises and Missus went up some stairs. The light disappeared.
“She’ll come back, turn on the other machine, come back again and fill the basket back up, and take it away with her,” Linu explained. “Each time, there’s light, and then it’s gone. But that’s not very exciting, is it? Especially not for you.”
Fredle couldn’t argue about that. Instead, he said, “I’m looking for a way to get upstairs.”
“I know. We’re all trying to think of one. Could you sneak into Missus’s container?”
“That’s too dangerous. Is that the only idea you’ve had?”
“Why don’t you want to go back