Young Fredle - Louise Yates [7]
“No. That’s why—”
“Was it poison? That good thing?” That was Fredle’s real fear.
“Do you think so?”
Fredle thought. Until then he hadn’t really thought about anything at all; he’d just worried and been afraid and tried not to think.
“Poison would hurt more,” he said. “Probably. Don’t you think? Poison is really bad. Strong. And it’s quick, I think.” Then he remembered something. “Where there’s a cat there won’t be poison. That’s one of the rules.”
Axle had come up so close that her nose almost touched Fredle’s ear, where his head was hanging down over the rim.
“We have to leave,” Axle said. “Before they push us out.”
Fredle had to tell her, “I can’t move.” Despite his own words he did try, to find his legs, to lift his head. But his stomach hurt so much that his four legs could only curl up next to it. He wailed, “I can’t!”
“Quiet, Fredle. Don’t—You have to try harder.” Axle’s voice grew urgent. “You were groaning. It was loud. How do you think I knew where you were?”
Fredle swallowed back a wail and said again, “I can’t move.”
“Sometimes, when you can’t, you have to anyway,” Axle advised him.
Fredle did groan then, keeping it as soft as he could.
“I have to—Goodbye, little cousin, I’m—I’m sorry,” Axle whispered, and before Fredle could say Please don’t go, she was gone.
Axle was gone and all Fredle could do was whimper, like a newborn mouselet, a little whining sound of sadness and fear. But not hunger. He would never be hungry again and what if his father was awakened by all the noises he was making?
He struggled to be silent, but it was already too late.
3
Outside
They had pushed him out onto the pantry floor and left him there behind its closed doors. He knew he had no chance of getting back behind the wall, even if he had felt well enough to try to fight the mice who would be guarding the hole, or even just argue with them. He had felt too sick to struggle and then he’d been ejected with such force that he was all the way out in the middle of the pantry floor before he came to a halt. Sick and unhappy and frightened, Fredle did what mice do: he froze, and trembled, and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Maybe if he had had to wait longer he would have gathered himself together and formed some kind of a plan, but almost immediately the pantry door opened and Fredle was blinded by light.
A gasp, above, and the door slammed shut. Now Fredle could only wait, and now he wondered: What would went be? Whatever could it be, to need a word so huge and dark that nobody wanted to speak it? Did he have to be brave when he met it? And would he always, he wondered miserably, have this pain in his stomach, as if fear had sharp teeth and was chewing its way out from inside him?
He wondered where Axle was now, and if Kidle had already forgotten him. He remembered how he had once invited Kidle to come along with him and Axle, and how his little brother had squeaked so loudly with excitement they had to scold him to be quiet. He wondered why that was what he remembered. He wondered—
The door opened again and Fredle shut his eyes tight against the light and also against having to look at whatever he might see. He heard Mister say in a rumbly voice, too loud and close for Fredle to be able to understand all the words, “… Patches will get rid …” And Missus’s clearer voice said, “I can’t just …” Mister rumbled something else and Missus said, “… a way to take it out …”
Fredle kept his eyes closed and his ears open. He thought he should at least try to move, but his hot, heavy stomach weighed him down. He waited, and trembled, and could not think.
With a thump, the air around him closed off and he could no longer hear anything. His eyes flew open then but he could see only a weak, whitened light, gleaming all around him. It was a wall, a round wall. Dim shadows moved behind it. But when he looked down he could still see his two front paws, quite clearly, their gray, bony surfaces and sharp yellow nails, and when he scratched on the pantry floor he could hear a clear scritch, scritch.