Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (14 page)

Chapter 15

DOONBARRA

Trouble foreseen is trouble averted.

—BUSHMASTER

He jumped onto a pizza and pried some pineapple out of the hardened cheese.

“GOBS OF FUN,” someone was saying in Amber’s dream. “Gobs of it.” But in the dream, there were cries of pain and death, followed by the roars and shouts of a monstrous applause. Amber awoke with a gasp.

The night was cold and foggy. The lights of Fat Jim’s Pizza were low. Only a couple of neon signs in the window still shined. Amber got to her feet and shivered. She felt different somehow—weaker, more vulnerable. She remembered about Ben and a strange dream that she had. She’d been trying to change Ben into a human and then . . .

She peered around. The pet shop mice had fallen asleep on a pizza, huddling together for warmth. They lay there, fast asleep, as if they were pizza toppings ordered by a cat.

Amber thought that she spotted Ben lying asleep with his helmet on, holding his spear like a fallen warrior, with his little grappling hook and ropes thrown over his shoulder.

Only it isn’t Ben,
Amber realized.
It’s Bushmaster.
She recognized the vole by his grizzled fur and short tail.

Amber suddenly realized that no one was keeping watch. She cast her eyes about and saw something under a bush—a blackness, as if a deeper shadow. A creature stood on its rear feet, watching her.

A ferret!
she thought, gulping in fear.
It must have followed me from the pet shop.

Suddenly, the creature bounded toward her.

Amber wished that she had Ben’s spear and held her paw out, waiting for it to leap into her fingers. But all that happened was that she felt a slight dizziness and a rush of fatigue.

Suddenly the creature bounded into the air and literally flew toward her, landing scant inches away.

“G’day,” the creature said, bending down over her. “You’ve turned into quite the wizard.”

Amber finally recognized the creature—a sugar glider. The strange little fellow had come into the pet shop just this past week. He was a shy animal that only came out at night. He could fly like a squirrel but was more closely related to an opossum.

He said in his strange accent, “Spare a bit of tucker for a weary old critter on his walkabout?”

“Food, you mean?” Amber asked. “You want some pizza?”

The sugar glider hopped away and began eating before she could offer him any. He jumped onto a pizza and pried some pineapple out of the hardened cheese. “Hey, this looks like good stuff! Too bad they don’t have a few wood beetles on it too.”

“I know you,” Amber said, “from the pet shop!”

“Nah,” the sugar glider said. “I’m not from no pet shop. I’m from Down Under. Name’s Doonbarra.”

“Under where?” Amber asked.

“Tasmania,” Doonbarra said. He stood, with a rapt gleam in his eye. “Now there’s a place for you. Rolling hills covered with blue gum trees, the wallabies leaping for joy in fields of kangaroo grass, the wild cockatoos rising up in clouds to cover the sky. Now that’s real country. Don’t know how you folks can bear living around here.”

“Your home sounds nice,” Amber agreed. Amber wasn’t sure, but she imagined that Doonbarra was big enough and strong enough to give even a cat a good fight. Doonbarra had a deep, gravelly voice, a big voice for such a small creature. Well, small compared with a Doberman. Compared with a mouse, Doonbarra was a giant. And he had strong claws with big sharp nails to match his voice.

“Tell you what,” Doonbarra said, leaping forward so that he could stare in her eye. “You cast a spell to take me home, and I’ll show you around.”

Amber looked at the sugar glider’s desperate face and realized that that’s why he had been following her. He was desperate to get home. “I’d be happy to take you,” Amber admitted. “But I don’t even know where Tasmania is. And even if I did, I’m not sure if I could use magic to get there.”

“Ah, pooh!” Doonbarra said. “Wizards can do anything. Why, I knew this platypus back home, a lovely girl, really. She used to lay these magic eggs that were just incredible! You could make a wish, crack one open, and out would pop the most amazing things—bits of fresh honeycomb or the scent of a rose or a cow’s moo.”

Amber got up and looked around as Doonbarra rambled on about magical platypuses and wizardly wombats.

Amber nuzzled Bushmaster awake. “Where’s Ben?” she asked.

“Gone,” Bushmaster said. As he explained how Ben had been taken, Doonbarra hopped over and listened with keen interest.

Amber didn’t remember anything after she’d tried to turn Ben into a human. Now her head spun as Bushmaster explained what a bat was—a mouse that flew at night, hunting insects—and told how the one had stolen Ben away by turning him into a noxious little bloodsucking tick.

“Ben got turned into a tick?” she exclaimed. It seemed too bizarre to be true.

And it’s all my fault,
she thought.
If only I had turned Ben back into a human, he wouldn’t have needed to make a bargain with some evil bat.

“Ben is in trouble,” Bushmaster said. “My gut tells me that he shouldn’t have trusted that bat. I’ve heard rumors. Nightwing is his name, an evil sorcerer. He has a fortress near the ocean at a place called Shrew Hill, and it’s filled with evil minions.”

“Oh, them evil sorcerers can be trouble,” Doonbarra agreed with a wise nod. “We had this bandicoot down at Mole Creek. Believe you me, he caused no small stir. A tree branch fell and nearly killed him, so he went to war with the trees. Gathered up an army of termites to help him. Oh, he had minions. Millions of mealymouthed, menacing minions.”

Amber shivered in fear. She asked Bushmaster, “Are you sure this bat was Nightwing?”

“As soon as he was done with his old familiar, Nightwing just gobbled him down,” Bushmaster said. “There’s only one bat in these parts that is that evil.”

“Eating your accomplices—” Doonbarra agreed in shock, “why that’s . . . that’s poor form!”

“Did you see which way Nightwing went?” Amber asked.

Bushmaster shook his head. “I couldn’t see clearly in the dark and the hail, with that bat flapping around back and forth so madly, but I think that he finally went west.”

Amber nodded. “I feel horrible having let Ben down. But now he’s gone, and I have no idea how to find him.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Doonbarra said. “You want to find him, all you’ve got to do is find the nearest newt. Look into his eyes, and they’ll show you where Ben is.”

“What?” Amber asked.

“Don’t even need a spell. Just do them a favor, and they’ll use their own magic to show you what you want,” Doonbarra said. “Learned it from an aborigine up by Cradle Mountain.”

Amber’s mouth fell open in surprise. Here was someone who knew about magic. “But even if I did find Ben, what can I do for him?”

“Can’t help you with that,” Doonbarra said. “I don’t know the first thing about how to pry a tick off of an evil sorcerer. Though I do seem to remember something about rubbing alcohol. Or was it matches?”

Amber was filled with despair. Nightwing had been right. She hadn’t wanted to turn Ben back into a human. Her mind might have said yes, but her heart told her no.

Amber desperately wanted to go find Ben.

But even if I found him, what could I do against a powerful sorcerer?

She looked at the huddled forms of the mice, nuzzled together like round boulders in a small stream. She had a responsibility to Ben, and with all of her heart she wanted to set things right, but she had a responsibility to her friends too. Old Barley Beard had told her that it was her destiny to free the mice of the world. It was to be her life’s work.

Now she’d set a few mice free, but free to do what? They had no home, no shelter. They knew nothing about how to forage in the meadows or dig a burrow or hide from hawks and pine snakes. Had she freed them only to let them die in the wilderness?

No,
she decided.
I’ll have to find a home for them.

“Bushmaster,” Amber said. “Do you think that Old Vervane will take my friends in? Teach them how to feed themselves and keep from being eaten?”

“Of course,” Bushmaster said. “He loves being a know-it-all.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “If the bat went west and we’re going west, then we’ll drop the pet shop mice off with Vervane and go after Ben.”

Amber trudged over to the nearest pizza and began to shout, “Wake up! It’s time to go. The owls have gone to roost, and the hawks have yet to wake. It’s time for us mice to travel.”

Amber stopped after she spoke. She realized how much she had just sounded like Vervane.

I’ve grown in the past two days,
she thought.

The pet shop mice woke as she poked their fat tummies with her nose, and then they filed off into the shadows.

* * *

The pet shop mice spent the morning in damp travel, slogging through fields where rainwater pooled among the grass. Mud puddles seemed like lakes to the mice, and water was everywhere, which made the travel safer in some ways. For with the intermittent rain, the cats and hawks both stayed undercover, leaving the mice to travel in safety.

The only danger they faced was when they crossed some railroad tracks. They didn’t go over them, but instead elected to go under, traveling through a drainage pipe. Even then, a train came rumbling overhead, making the ground shake as if the world would tear apart.

Then the most horrible thing happened. The train blew its whistle. The shrill noise was horrifying, and several of the mice, who were already weakened from travel, fainted at the sound.

Amber and Bushmaster had a hard time reviving them.

“You have to watch out in the mornings,” Bushmaster said as he and Amber ushered the injured mice from the pipe. “Loud noises after dawn can be dangerous for a mouse. Your body knows that you should be asleep, and so a noise that wouldn’t bother you during the night can leave you stunned or even dead if it comes near dawn.”

Amber hadn’t known that, and now she filed it away in her memory. It made sense when she thought about it. There were times, early in the morning, when sounds seemed unnaturally loud to her ears, loud enough to leave her irritated and angry.

By noon, the sun had come out and the mice had reached higher ground. But still the going was slow, for the world was filled with wonders that the pet shop mice had to investigate—dewdrops and ladybugs, wild roses and old green bottles.

Bushmaster and Amber led the mice carefully. Hop, stop, and look.

Without her magic, Amber was just another mouse. And her responsibility weighed heavily on her.

* * *

It was completely by accident that Doonbarra spotted a newt that afternoon.

“Over here,” Doonbarra called, as they were climbing the hills above the millpond. They found him—a lizard with a chocolate brown back and an orange belly—in a small clearing covered with moss, in a place where rills of rainwater tumbled over small stones beneath a canopy of wild blue mountain orchids. The newt was struggling to tug a worm from the ground. He had it in his mouth, and both the newt and the worm were grunting from the battle.

Amber desperately wanted to please the newt, so she said, “Here, let me help with that.”

She grabbed the worm and pulled it from the ground like a slimy rope. The worm cried as the newt gulped it down, “Help, I’m a sentient being! I think, therefore I am. And I am being swallowed.”

“Ah, that was a fine worm,” the newt said as the worm went wriggling to its doom. “Sturdy and juicy, with just a hint of compost. I thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Amber replied. Then she waited, wondering how to bring up her question. “Uh, I’m looking for an evil bat, a sorcerer who took my friend.”

The newt got a faraway look in his golden eyes, and his slit pupils constricted. He nodded and whispered in a deep voice, “Three answers you may have of me: ask what is now, what shall come, or what may be.”

Three answers?
Amber wondered.
Ask what
is
?

“Okay,” Amber replied. “I want to free the mice of the world, and my friend Ben is one of them. But how are they bound, and where can I find them?”

Amber worried. Technically, she had just asked two questions, and she was afraid that the newt would notice. She looked deep into the newt’s eyes and watched as they suddenly turned red and glassy.

Then it seemed to Amber that she was flying high above the world, a colorful ball of blues and greens with white clouds above. And she saw the mice of the world in their cages. Thousands of mice. Hundreds of thousands of mice. Millions and billions of mice.

She saw them as if in a vision—a sea of mice, white and brown and black, each of them yearning for freedom.

They were everywhere. In cities and towns that spread from the ice sheets of the north to the far Antarctic.

But as Amber peered, she looked down into the deserts over America and saw hordes of mice on the march. They were coming from everywhere, wild mice, cunning in the ways of stealth and evasion.