Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (4 page)

“What’s that?” Nightwing’s familiar, a tick that nestled near one ear, cried as plasma from the spell surged through the cave. In order to speak, the tick had to draw his proboscis painfully from Nightwing’s flesh.

“’Tis a motley drama that has begun,” Nightwing said, lifting his ears, “with much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot.”

“How
Poe
-etic,” the tick, Darwin, said. “Does that mean I’ll get some fresh blood to drink? You know, you’re pretty much all tapped out.”

Nightwing scrunched his nose in disgust. He wanted to eat the pest, and since Nightwing was an insectivore (despite persistent rumors that he was related to the great Count Dracula himself on his mother’s side), he felt tempted to gobble Darwin down. But Nightwing needed the magic power that his familiar provided just as much as Darwin needed Nightwing’s blood.

“Ah,” Nightwing said, dropping from his perch as he took wing, heading toward the source of the power. “There will be blood for you, my lovely. There will be blood.”

Chapter 4

A MOTHER’S LOVE

No love is so certain and pure as a mother’s love!

—BARLEY BEARD

It does kind of look like a snake, he thought groggily.

BEN TURNED AWAY FROM AMBER in fear, sprang under his bedroom door, and waddled toward the stairs. In his short life, there had always been one certainty: though his mother lacked common sense and good personal hygiene, she’d always loved him. She’d always been there to bandage his boo-boos.

His stubby legs couldn’t carry him down to his mom fast enough. Nothing on his body moved right. He felt like he was wearing clown shoes. It took all of his concentration just to walk, and every few paces he had to leap thirty feet down to the next stair step. His tail thumped each time he landed, until finally he whirled and yelled at it, “Quit following me. You give me the creeps!”

Ben wheezed. He was amazed at the smells on the carpet. His powerful mouse nose picked up the strong odors of spilled grape juice and a crumb from a peanut butter sandwich he’d sneaked to his room last month.

Amber raced nimbly beside him, hopping on her back legs and landing on her front paws. “What are you doing? Where are you going? You won’t leave me, will you?” She sounded frightened. “I’ve never been out of my cage before.”

Ben ignored her. He felt glad that she was scared. It served her right!

He stumbled past the Christmas tree, still petrifying in the corner, and limped beneath wads of wrapping paper as large as buses.

By the time he reached the kitchen, a hike of at least a mile, he felt as if he’d collapse. His heart raced hundreds of beats a minute, and his mouth had begun to foam.

He passed a line of black ants marching across the kitchen floor. As they marched, they sang:

All us bugs up in the cupboard,

Love to work the whole night long.

We aren’t lazy; we aren’t crazy.

We are bold and cruel and strong.

Just as butterflies like sunshine,

Just as slugs love driving rain,

Us bugs love to sing and dance—

Kick your mama in the pants!—

Us bugs love to sing and dance

Around the kitchen drain!

Ben watched the ants caper, feeling as if he’d just taken a wrong turn into the Twilight Zone.

He scampered onto the kitchen floor and found his feet sliding on the linoleum with each step. It was almost like being in an ice-skating rink. He passed the fridge and saw a dark alley between it and the wall. Dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds lurked in the corners.

A cockroach careened giddily across the kitchen floor like a remote control car that’s gone berserk, barreled into Ben, and shouted, “Everyone to the pantry! Someone left the Cap’n Crunch open, and we’re having a luau!”

Ben stared at the cockroach, dumbfounded.

Then he ducked under the kitchen counter and peered up at his mother. There she towered, bigger than the Statue of Liberty. She was staring mournfully from a mountain of moldy dishes to the ceiling and mumbling under her breath, “Please, bless me with a maid . . . ”

“Mom!” Ben squeaked. “Down here. Help!”

But with the rumble of the TV in the other room—Dad was watching
Pokémon
—she couldn’t hear him.

Ben studied her pant leg. She wore khaki Dockers. He wondered if he could hook his little claws into the fabric and scurry up like a cat.

He leaped clumsily into the air, rising at least sixty feet, grabbed her knee, and started to climb. With only four fingers on each front paw, it was a truly heroic task.

The results were astonishing.

His mom must have felt something on her knee. She glanced down and screamed.

She fell backward, knocking over the moldy dishes, then leaped about five feet and kicked with all her might. Ben hurtled through the air, slammed into the refrigerator, slid down, and thudded to the floor. Dishes crashed, like flying saucers shot out of the sky, and shattered on the linoleum. Huge chunks of crockery skidded everywhere, and Ben leaped out of the way as a jagged piece slid under him.

“Help,” his mom screamed. “A mouse!”

Ben struggled to his feet, dodged as a shattered cup went rolling past. “Mom,” he squeaked. “It’s me!” He limped toward her and squatted on the floor, peering up. White foam dribbled from his mouth, and he wiped it off with the back of one paw.

“Help,” she screamed louder. “A
rabid
mouse!”

“Mom,” Ben said, “it’s me!”

Amber scurried to the fridge just behind Ben’s back and hid under the door.

Ben’s dad bounded into the kitchen and grabbed a spatula from the stove. “I’ll bet it’s that mouse Ben is supposed to feed the lizard.”

“No,” Mom shouted in a panic. “There are two of them!”

Ben’s dad peered down at him. His eyes grew fearful.

He studied Ben with growing alarm. “You’re right. It
is
a rabid mouse! Call 911 while I hold him off.” He raised the spatula protectively.

His mom rushed out to the living room.

“Dad,” Ben called. “It’s just me!”

“Honey,” Ben’s dad shouted, “it’s squeaking really
strangely.
”

“It’s no use,” Amber called to Ben. “You’re a mouse now. Humans can’t understand us—just like we can’t understand them.”

Ben’s mind did a little flip. “What do you mean, you can’t understand humans?” Ben asked Amber. “I understand them just fine.”

“Maybe that’s because you were human once.”

Ben’s dad crouched. Suddenly, it seemed that he had heard enough of Ben’s odd squeaking. His dad cocked his arm and swung.

Ben tried to leap away, but he was too slow. His dad whacked him with the spatula. Ben slammed into the floor. Stars whirled in his vision. He tried to climb to his feet, but he was too weak and too sick to his stomach.

His mom thundered back into the kitchen. The floor shook as if a herd of rhinos were charging.

“Did you call the cops?” Dad asked.

“No,” she said, “I got a better idea.”

Ben heard the electric whine of a motor.

From under the fridge, Amber shouted in terror, “Snake! She’s got a snake!”

Ben peered up weakly. He saw a huge gaping tunnel with a silver rim. A powerful wind raced around him. He realized that he was staring straight up into the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner!

It does kind of look like a snake,
he thought groggily.

“Ben,” Amber yelled. “Run this way!” From the corner of his eye, Ben spotted Amber lunging around the corner into the living room. In desperation, he hurried after her, kicking with both rear feet, trying to land on his hands the way that Amber did.

He careened into the living room and peered around. The big-screen TV squatted amid walls of garish lava lamps, each a different size and color. Overhead hovered his mom’s mirror ball. On really bad days, she’d ingest half a cup of sugar and just sit in the easy chair, watching the mirror ball whirl in circles as she listened to her
My Turn on Earth
CD.

Ben spotted Amber climbing up the brass chains of his mom’s cuckoo clock.

“Up here,” Amber shouted as she neared the top. “I see a dark hole!”

Ben trundled to the clock, leaped as high as he could, and caught the chains. Kicking and clawing, he boosted himself up the chain by sheer willpower until he collapsed safely inside the hole.

For a moment, he lay next to Amber, his heart pounding. He could smell the powerful odors of lacquer, glue, and wood. The clock was the size of his bedroom, except that huge gears with notched teeth lined every wall. Afraid that a gear would catch his tail, he climbed higher and perched on a slab next to the carved figure of a little cuckoo bird with blue wings, a white head, and yellow beak.

Ben’s mother called, “Where did they go? Look under the couch.” The vacuum cleaner whirred louder as it drew close.

“Honey,” Ben’s dad said, half in astonishment and half as a compliment. “When did you learn to use a vacuum cleaner?”

“Last month,” she said with great pride. “I took a night class at the university.”

They began rustling around in the living room.

“Where are we?” Amber whispered to Ben. “Are they trying to eat us? Does this always happen when you get out of your cage?”

“Quiet!” Ben hissed. “They’ll hear us.”

“Ben?” his dad shouted. “Ben, where are you?”

For half a second, Ben wondered if his dad had somehow recognized his voice or maybe realized that Ben had turned into a mouse.

Maybe he’ll even know how to fix me,
Ben thought.

He began to squeak a reply, when his dad added, “Come down here and help us catch these mice!”

Ben’s heart sank. A clicking noise startled Ben, and the clock began to chime.

Gong!

The slab beneath Ben slid forward, and a little pair of wooden doors flung open. Cuckoo! the clock sounded from a whistle behind Ben’s head.

Ben’s parents turned to stare. His father was moving the piano so that his mom could look under it. But now they gaped as Ben quivered on the wooden perch, a hundred yards above the floor.

The plank slid back, and the doors closed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ben shrieked.

Amber began to race down the chain, head first, but Ben doubted that he could manage such a feat.

Gong! went the clock again. The plank slid forward.

Suddenly Ben was out in space, like a swimmer on a high-dive board, only he didn’t have any water to jump into and all of the spectators wanted him dead.

Cuckoo! sounded the clock.

Mom headed for Ben, vacuum cleaner aimed like a cannon.

Ben tried to tell his legs to jump, but they went as limp as yarn.

In seconds, the wind grabbed him and sucked him down. He clung to the lip of the vacuum and hung on for dear life.

“Mom, help,” he cried.

But his mother said, “Oh, no you don’t,” reached down, and pried his fingers loose.

The vacuum slurped him through a long tunnel, as if he were on a waterslide. His chin slammed painfully against the ribs of the vacuum hose.

“Heeeeelp!” he screamed.

Then he thudded into a dark chamber amid a pile of dust, lint, hair, and dead bugs. Through the plastic housing of the vacuum, he could see distorted images of his mom and dad as they chased Amber. The vacuum’s motor whined deafeningly, and dust swirled. It lodged in his fur, wedged into his lips, stung his eyes, clogged his ears and nostrils.

Ben gasped. There was too much dust in the air. Every time he drew a breath, he felt as if he’d cough his lungs out. He covered his snout with his little paws and hunched over, struggling to breathe.

After painful seconds, he fainted and fell. It seemed that he was falling, falling, for several long minutes. Then everything went black.

Chapter 5

STRANGE CRITTERS

Everyone likes a mole in his hole,

And mice can be nice too.

But remember, my child, wherever you go,

NEVER trust a shrew!

—A COMMON RHYME TAUGHT AMONG VOLES

“Wild mice,” Amber wondered. Would they be friendly?

AMBER SLOWLY WOKE FROM a nightmare in which an enormous metal python was swallowing her. Her chin thunked against its ribs as she slid down. Yet as she woke, the reality was as bad as the dream. She heard Ben’s dad grumbling as humans do, but she couldn’t understand him.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Ben’s dad called. “Come get the mice. Tasty little mice for a nice kitty.”

Amber tumbled in a cloud of dust, over and over, until she landed with a thud on something hard. She began to cough the grit from her lungs.

Dimly, she recalled how the humans had cornered her and sucked her into the vacuum cleaner.

“Amber, are you all right?” Ben called weakly.

She shivered. The night was cold and wet, as is common in Oregon during winter.

“Where are we?” Amber asked. Her eyes were full of dust. They stung too much for her to want to open them. She sniffed. She could smell lush grass and ice and foggy night air. In all of her dreams, she’d never imagined such scents. “It smells . . . glorious!” She raised her snout high. “Is this . . . the Endless Meadow?”

“This,” Ben said dryly, “is a garbage can.”

She cracked open her eyes. She lay in a huge container. Now she could smell more than grass and night air. She tasted a riot of odors. Old washrags in the garbage can vied with rotting food and paint thinner to see which could give off the most noxious fumes.

Despite the fact that only the stars and a moon behind a cloud gave any light, Amber could see well. She lay sprawled in an old sardine tin, with wads of newspaper, crumpled cereal boxes, and smelly cans all around. A crusty sardine had cushioned her fall. Amber peered up. Ben loomed over her, a shadow against the starlight.

“Let’s find a place to hide,” Ben urged, “before the neighbor’s cat, Domino, comes.”

Alarms went off in Amber’s mind. She’d seen an evil kitten at the pet shop—spike toothed with fiery green eyes that glowed with cruelty. It had purred threats as a customer carried it around.

Amber leaped to her feet.

Ben tottered away from her through the garbage, slogging amidst a quagmire of baked beans, climbing a can that rolled crazily beneath his feet, then tiptoeing along a newspaper until he could peer down.

“You know, it can’t be more than three feet to the ground, but it looks like I’m peering over a cliff.”

“What’s that?” Amber asked. She pointed to a wall of boards with white pickets aimed at the moon, sealing off the neighbor’s yard. “Are we in a big cage?”

“It’s a fence,” Ben said. “I guess it
is
a cage, sort of. People build them around their houses.”

“Humans live in their own cages?” Amber asked.

From the corner of her eye, Amber saw something huge and monstrous suddenly move to the side. She let out a startled yelp. “What’s that?” The Something swayed like a giant above the houses.

“Just a pine tree.”

“Oh.” Amber had never heard of a tree before. “Do they eat mice?”

“Nah, it’s a plant—like grass or moss, only bigger.”

“Then why is it moving?” Amber demanded.

“The wind is blowing it.”

“Wind?” Amber asked. “What’s wind? Is it bigger than a tree?” She imagined some hideous monster knocking trees aside in its effort to eat her.

“Don’t be stupid,” Ben said.

Amber cried, “Why didn’t anyone ever warn me about these things?” Tears welled up in her eyes. She felt alone in a strange and terrifying world.
No,
she realized,
I’m not alone. I’m worse than alone, because I’m with Ben.
“And I’m not stupid,” she said angrily. “I just don’t know anything.”

Amber heard a cat meow behind the fence.

“Come on,” Ben whispered. He clung to the lip of the garbage can with his rear feet and stretched his nose toward the ground, searching for something to hang onto as he lowered himself. He used his tail to balance for a moment, but suddenly fell.

He hit the ground. “Now you.”

Amber leaped from the garbage can. Stalks of grass took her weight, and then sprang her back up. She’d hardly felt the ground at all. “Fun!”

“Quiet!” Ben said, slapping a paw over Amber’s mouth.

He peered up at the picket fence. A black, shadowy form suddenly appeared atop it. Amber could make out a wiry tail and two pyramids for ears. It was Domino!

The cat perched atop the fence, its tail waving in excited jerks. It sniffed the air and, for a long moment, just peered toward the trash can.

“Don’t move,” Ben whispered. He pulled Amber down, so that they could both hide in the deep grass.

The cat crouched and wiggled its rump as it set its feet. Its ears drew back, and it went as still as could be, trying to make itself invisible.

Amber didn’t dare move.

For long minutes, the cat crouched, waiting. The grass that the mice hid in smelled overpowering, and the damp ground gave off hundreds of strange and subtle scents.

Ben reached down and picked some grass, deftly twisted it, and put it on his head. He smeared mud on his face.

Atop the fence, Domino purred a little song:

Nibble, nibble, on the mice,

With their heads off, they look nice!

Though they’re fast, I’ll run much faster,

And drag their corpse

To the porch,

As a present for my master!

Just then, a yowl came from the street. A tomcat shouted, “Hey, Domino, what you doing?”

“Hunting mice,” Domino hissed, leaping from the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Amber heard the two cats softly making plans. Domino hissed, “You run around the front and flush them into the backyard. I’ll do the lion thing and snag them as they run past.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the second cat hissed.

“Come on,” Ben whispered. He and Amber scampered through the tall dry grass into the backyard, scuttling beneath a forest of weeds before the cats had time to carry out their plan. They stopped to catch their breath, and Ben pointed to the woven grass on his hair.

“You want some?”

“I may not know much,” Amber said, “but that doesn’t mean that I want to
look
stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s camouflage. To the cats, we’ll just look like a pile of grass.”

“Aren’t there animals that eat grass?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Cows and horses and stuff.”

“So what difference does it make if you get eaten by something that eats mice or something that eats grass?”

Ben thought for a long moment, then with some embarrassment, he pulled the twisted grass from his head.

He led the way through a field of dandelions under the dark pine that leaned overhead, keeping themselves deep in the shadows. Huge pinecones the size of buses laid scattered atop beds of moldy pine needles. Unearthly mushrooms grew in little groves of white and yellow. A giant slug oozed across the ground like a booger that had come to life.

Amber heard strange noises, the groaning of wood, the hissing of leaves in the wind, the cries of night birds. Some startled creature went thumping away. Everywhere she looked, odd leaves, shaped like snouts, waggled in the shadows under the breeze.

“Where are we going?” Amber asked.

“Underground,” Ben said. “I know a place where there are some wild mice. I caught Domino trying to eat one here last summer.”

“Wild mice,” Amber wondered. Would they be friendly? Or would they bite her tail?

Finally, the woods opened, and they reached a dark tree. Ben poked his nose in the pine needles at its base.

“What are you looking for?” Amber asked.

“Ah, found it!” Ben peered down a black hole, like an open mouth, leading under the pine needles.

Amber crept close and sniffed. She could smell a bitter scent at the mouth of the tunnel—urine. “No
mice
live here,” Amber said, warily. “It smells strange.”

“Sure they do,” Ben said.

Ben squeezed into the hole and began crawling on all fours. Amber couldn’t see a thing, but her whiskers were just the right length to brush against the sides of the burrow as she crawled. Amber trailed so close to Ben that she kept stepping on his tail.

The burrow slanted down and down, veered, then circled back up. It was almost like being inside the vacuum hose. Amber felt strange, frightening things brushing against her ears. The passage broadened. They crept past a black opening that smelled of poop, but kept to the main tunnel.

“I sure wish I had some light,” Ben said.

“Me too,” Amber added.

Suddenly a pebble in front of them began to glow. At first it was only a soft light, almost as if Amber imagined it, but then the pebble went as clear as the glass on her old cage, and a brilliant light poured from it, chasing the shadows through the hole ahead.

“You
are
a wizard,” Ben said in amazement. He turned back and peered at her. She felt as surprised as he.

Ben reached down with one paw. He touched the pebble experimentally. He picked it up, revealing the way ahead.

The walls of the burrow were worn smooth, but white things dangled down like limp whiskers.

“What are those white things?” Amber asked.

“Roots from the tree,” Ben whispered. He heard a moaning sound and saw something pinkish that oozed backward into a small hole. “And that’s a worm.”

Amber heard a scuffling ahead. She looked forward, where the burrow twisted away, and saw a pair of bright eyes peering at them—cruel eyes.

“Who’s there?” an old critter called gruffly. He sounded angry. Very angry.

He had a grizzled face, bright black eyes, and long whiskers, much like Amber’s.

“Just a couple of lost mice,” Ben answered, “searching for a place to stay the night.”

“Keep right there until I can sniff you,” the old critter said.

Amber heard the small pad of the fellow’s feet as he squeezed through the burrow. He was a fat mouse, Amber decided. He sniffed at Ben, and Amber caught a wild scent—clean fur and meadows.

“Phew,” the creature said. “Dirty mice! Mice in our burrow. Well, we’re gentlefolk. Besides, it wasn’t always
our
burrow. Mice dug it in the first place. My name’s Vervane. Come along.”

Vervane spun with a bit of a grunt—a real trick in the narrow tunnel—then padded away.

Amber could smell him better now and felt sure that Vervane wasn’t a mouse after all. Besides, his tail was way too short.

They moved swiftly to a large chamber where fungi clung to the pine roots that dangled from the roof. Ben’s light showed that nice dry leaves, grass stalks, and hair littered the floor. The old critter looked grizzled. Fur covered most of his ears.

A dozen of his kin nestled in the corners of the chamber, including a mother who lay on her side, nursing some young kittens. All of the strange critters were like Vervane—nasty and grizzled, with short, unsightly tails.

One young girl shouted, “Grandpa, Grandpa, who’s here?”

“Mice,” Vervane said with disdain. “A dirty pair of them. Queer folk, carrying a star.”

“Mice?” the girl asked. Her small dark eyes grew wide, and she gazed at Amber and Ben with a mixture of wonder and suspicion. She bounded forward and gaped in awe at the light that Ben held. “Hi. My name is Meadowsweet. Is it true that you eat grubs?”

“Of course not—” Ben started to say.

But Amber burst in, “I’ve never eaten a bug myself, but I hear that they can be quite tasty.”

Ben looked at Amber, his jaw dropping in surprise. The human boy apparently didn’t understand much about mice at all.

“Aren’t you mice?” Ben asked the folks in the burrow, for they
looked
very mouselike.

“Of course not,” Meadowsweet said. “We’re the peaceful folk of the meadows and woods—the voles. We only eat plants, not flesh.”

Meadowsweet ran around Ben and Amber in a circle, and three others her size joined in. They began to sing:

In grain fields in summer, among berries and vines,

The peaceful folk of the field you will find,

Cutting down wheat stalks, gathering oats,

Picking up pine nuts and preening their coats.

Then they carry their food, down to their holes.

They are the voles, peace-loving voles.

The girls ended the song by dropping to their backs and wriggling their paws in the air as they giggled.