Young Fredle - Louise Yates [66]
He waited, but Grandfather had nothing to say to this. Grandfather just stared into the shadowy kitchen and waited.
“And in daylight—which is so bright, you can’t imagine it—there are colors,” Fredle went on. But Grandfather hadn’t even looked at him, so he stopped trying to talk and turned his attention back to listening. He listened to Mother’s worried voice urging the mouselets to hurry up, and Father saying, “Stop that chattering, you two, just stop it.”
Then, after a long time, Grandfather did speak, so softly it was almost a whisper. “Moon. What a word that is. There’s a word to dream about, moon. Hear it, Fredle?”
Father came up to the door in time to hear this. “Get started, Grandfather. You know you’re slow and we can’t always be waiting for you.”
Fredle heard a dog bark, too far off for him to know if it was Angus or Sadie, and he wondered if the dog was barking at something seen through a window, out in the garden or near the chicken pen, or moving across in front of the barn. He heard faint baby cries, and then Father had gathered his whole family together, to file back up to the nest.
There Fredle curled up beside Kidle. “Are you still hungry?” Kidle asked. “I am.”
“You want to go back down and forage some more?” Fredle offered.
“We can’t do that. It’s almost day, and besides, what if Father found out?”
“But—” Fredle began, but Kidle said, “It’ll be all right once I go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow night will be better, don’t you think?”
Soon, Fredle’s whole family was asleep. Fredle rested his head on the rim of the nest to make it easy for Axle to find him. He waited and waited, but Axle did not come. Eventually, he fell asleep himself.
Fredle didn’t sleep deeply, however, and he didn’t sleep well. He woke up several times during the day and had to wait patiently, motionless so as not to disturb the others, for sleep to return.
* * *
The next night, after foraging briefly and with enough success to keep his stomach quiet through the next day, he set out to find Axle. He looked under the table and around the refrigerator, and finally found her beside the stove. “You didn’t—” he started to say.
“I forgot,” she said, so quickly that he knew he couldn’t believe her. “You didn’t come find me, either.”
“I thought you said—”
Axle shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. She looked right at Fredle. “I don’t know what happened to you, all this time you’ve been gone, but it must have been better than what happened to me. A lot better.”
Fredle had been looking forward to telling Axle his story. “Well, it was Missus who—”
“I was trying to find a way up to the attic, where they’re not cellar mice, dirty, and half-crazy from eating soap. I thought I could stand it, up with the attic mice, I could learn to eat the weird things they eat, cloth and wood and insulation. But I couldn’t find the way and I was all alone in some spidery corner between the kitchen and the attic, somewhere, I didn’t know where, and I was so thirsty. I just barely had the strength to creep into a cupboard—not the kitchen one, but I could smell water, and there were pipes, like in the kitchen, and paper, in rolls, in a stack. I ate soap, Fredle.”
“I think I was there, too!” Fredle cried. “I smelled—”
“I was in that cupboard for nights! Where else could I go? It was so dark,” Axle remembered. “I had to eat that paper. I was alone. I was all alone, Fredle.”
“I know about that,” Fredle said. “When I was alone—”
“I couldn’t sleep, there was only that paper to eat, except for soap, it was … I hated it. I was alone,” she said again, as if that explained everything. “So I came back.”
She glared at Fredle.
“It took me a long time to find the way home,” he told her, so that she would know that he, too, had wanted to come back.
“They let me stay. I was sure they’d push me out, even though by then I was fine again,