Young Fredle - Louise Yates [71]
Fredle needed cheering up because he was beginning to understand that with this living in light that was always gray and dim, with there being almost no color all around him all the time, and no stars, either, with rules that told you how you had to act even if you wanted to act differently, and with living among mice who were always so frightened and cautious that if you even said a mouse could act differently they would push you out—with all of these things … What about with all these things? he asked himself, but without any curiosity. He didn’t want to know the answer to that question. These were uncomfortable and unhappy thoughts he was having. They made Fredle wish he didn’t have to be a kitchen mouse, and what could he do about that?
What could he do, anyway, about anything? he wondered, but again without curiosity, since he already knew the answer, which was: Nothing. What could any mouse do? he asked himself hopelessly.
The answer to that question came, quickly and clearly, in his own voice from inside his own head, and Fredle barely had time to work out a plan before the nest began to wake up for the night.
The first mice he spoke to about the idea were his mother and father. He would have preferred to speak to all the kitchen mice at once, but unlike the cellar mice they didn’t gather all together. It was too dangerous out in the kitchen and there was no room within the walls.
“Father?” Fredle began.
“Now what?”
“What if I were to go back outside? That’s where I’ve been and you can see that I’ve survived, so what about if I did go back? And what if I took some mouselets with me? There’s lots of room outside.”
His territory behind the lattice would be a good place for mouselets to run around and play, and grow strong and healthy. They could make as much noise as they wanted to in the territory behind the lattice.
“Grandfather could come with me,” Fredle added.
“Mice stay in the nests they were born in. You know that as well as I do, Fredle,” Father said.
“And I’m about two and a half steps from went,” Grandfather said. “What would be the point?”
Fredle ignored his father. He thought of Rilf and the Rowdy Boys and said to his grandfather, “You could see the moon, before. Wouldn’t you rather have seen the moon, before you went?”
“If Fredle did that,” said Mother, keeping her voice low, “he could take Ardle with him. And Doddle, too; Doddle has never been as healthy as a mouselet should be. And Kidle?” she suggested.
“Kidle is certainly headed for more trouble than I want to have to deal with,” Father agreed. “Right now, all he does is talk. It’s all talk, now, but you remember Fredle, what he was like at that age. And look at Fredle now,” Father said. “He refuses to grow up and settle down.”
“If Kidle wants to come with me, I’d like that,” said Fredle. “And any mouselets, too.” He didn’t give Father the time to say I don’t remember giving you permission. “Tell them all to wait for me behind the stove when they’ve foraged. You, too, Grandfather. I promise, it’s a long journey, and difficult, but not impossible, and if you come with me and if you see the moon—”
“I don’t know that I can make it,” Grandfather said.
“Just try,” urged Fredle, and he slipped over the rim of the nest to go find Axle.
Axle, however, wasn’t interested in moving to a new nest, especially a new nest outside. “Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to us?” she asked. “Honestly, Fredle, don’t you remember?”
He did. He remembered everything. The taste of chocolate and feeling sick, being alone and frightened, being near barn cats and snakes and raccoons, the way raptors fell out of the sky—of course he remembered. But he also remembered the look of those yellow flowers, their shining cups, and the way squirrels leapt through the grass in a burst of speed to run up the trunks of trees, and the taste