Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (8 page)

Buy time,
he thought. The raccoon pulled Ben up toward its mouth, using a finger to flick Ben’s walnut shell helmet from his head. The helmet went plunking to the ground.

“Aren’t you going to wash before you eat me?” Ben asked. “I thought raccoons always washed first.”

“Not if we’re hungry enough,” the coon said, shoving Ben eagerly toward his mouth.

“Oh,” Ben said. “Then I’m
dreadfully
sorry.”

The raccoon stopped, eyeing him curiously. “Sorry for what?”

“I think . . . I think . . . I think I just pooped in your paw.”

The raccoon screamed, hurling Ben to the ground. The beast held up its paws as if they had been burned.

Ben hit the pavement rolling. He grabbed his needle, somersaulted, and came up with it at the ready. With one free paw, he grabbed up his helmet and jammed it onto his head, then held it in place.

The raccoon was staring at its paws in horror. “Hey,” it said, “you didn’t poop!”

Ben menaced the giant with his spear. “You want a piece of me? Go ahead, make my day!”

The raccoon backed up an inch, then seemed to find his courage. “Hey, I ain’t afraid of no mouse!”

“Hay is for horses,” Ben shouted, leaping three feet into the air. “Hyaaah!” He plunged his spear deep into the raccoon’s snout,

The raccoon let out a startled cry, blinked, and stepped back a pace.

Ben suddenly remembered something his neighbor, Mrs. Pumpernickle, had said last winter. She’d said that she’d gone out on the porch one night, and a big raccoon had been in the garbage. She tried to drive it away, but it had merely growled and snapped at her.

As the raccoon squared off, Ben realized that this was probably the same monster.

The raccoon laughed. “A spunky one, eh? You don’t scare me. I eat
live
scorpions as treats and wash ’em down with glue!”

He was stalking toward Ben when a dark shadow dropped from the top of the pine tree.

“Owl,” Ben shouted, imagining that he’d have to fight two predators at once. Things couldn’t get worse.

But what twisted through the air was no owl. Ben could sense something powerful and malevolent rushing toward him. It came with the force of a bullet, but wriggled like a bat.

Time seemed to stop, and Ben watched it draw near in slow motion. Its thick orange fur glowed sullenly by Ben’s magic light, as if revealing some inner fire. Its enormous ears, so translucent that one could see the veins, were each fully six times as long as its pug-nosed head. Its yellow teeth were as sharp as nails. The ear studs and magical symbols tattooed onto its ears lent the creature a terrifying sense of power. It was, by far, the most hideous creature that Ben had ever seen.

He couldn’t have been more frightened if he saw the devil himself winging his way out of the underworld.

The bat landed next to Ben and stood with the tiny claws of its wings hooked to the ground, then twisted its head around to look at the raccoon. It bared its teeth and hissed.

“Your
Mage-
esty,” the raccoon cried. It dropped its head low, bowing and backing off a step. “I didn’t mean to—is he a friend of yours?—I mean forgive me, I, uh—”

“Get out of here,” the bat said, “before I make you beg me to chew your own tail off.”

The raccoon shouted and bolted around the side of the house so fast that the only thing left of him was his stink and a couple of hairs that floated in the wind.

The bat chuckled, low and dangerously.

Ben was horrified. His hands felt weak. It took all of his effort to grip his spear. He suspected that normal weapons were worthless against this monster.

“Well done,” the creature hissed. “You showed courage and initiative.”

Ben’s eyes grew wide. “What are you? Some kind of weird bat?”

“Some might call me a bat, but I prefer to think of myself as a Dusky Seraph,” the bat said.

“Oh,” Ben said. “Do you have a name?”
“My friends call me Nightwing.”

Ben heard a sucking sound and noticed a horrible fat tick with its head buried in the bat’s armpit. The tick pulled its head out. “I didn’t know you had friends. I thought you said that the world was divided into
accomplices
and
victims.
”

“Quiet,” Nightwing said, and the tick’s proboscis suddenly cinched tight, as if an invisible string were wrapped around it. Muffled screams came from the now-closed proboscis.

The bat hobbled around Ben, stalking on tiny paws, using his wings to balance. “Impressive,” Nightwing said. “Very impressive. A jumping mouse, but strangely dressed. Or are you more than you seem?”

“I’m a human,” Ben said proudly. “Or I was. Until I got turned into a mouse.”

Quick as thought, Nightwing reached out and put a claw around Ben’s shoulder. “Well, then, you and I have something in common!”

Ben eyed the bat distrustfully.

The bat peered hard at Ben, and then squinted skyward as if he longed to seek the shelter of the shadowed pines. The rising sun seemed a threat. The bat smiled and drooped his ears. Suddenly he seemed smaller and not so menacing as he squinted at Ben like a kindly, half-blind old man. “For you see, I too was once a human. A man of some importance. A celebrity. I was, how do you young ones say it, ‘the cat’s slumber-wear.’”

“Really?” Ben said. “Who?”

The bat looked away sadly. “It’s not important. It was so long ago. I remember so little now. I . . . I was a man of great intellect, a lighthouse at the end of the world. Crowds came out of the shadows to peer at me and wonder at my brilliance. I would speak syllables into the air, filling auditoriums with the music of my voice. I was the man who put the Poe in poetry. Ah, how women would look upon me in ardor and swoon!” Nightwing paused and let out a sigh. “But I remember so little. That’s how it is when you have been transmogrified. The longer you stay in your new form, the harder it becomes to remember what it was to be human . . .”

“Oh,” Ben said, wondering. Would he be like this bat someday, incapable of remembering his own name? Already he felt something of what it was like to be a mouse—to have a mouse’s hunger, a mouse’s fears.

“I know a wizardess,” Ben offered. “Maybe she could turn you back into a human.”

Tears suddenly brimmed from the bat’s eyes. He seemed as if he did not know how to respond, as if such a boon were beyond his wildest dreams, or as if it had been countless ages since anyone had shown him a kindness. “Really? She could do that?”

“She’s the one who turned me into a mouse.”

“Tell me about it,” Nightwing begged, and Ben found the story tumbling out of him like clothes from an open dryer. Though he wanted to hold a few things back, he felt compelled, as if some spell forced him to speak. So he told Nightwing how Amber had turned him into a mouse and how she had promised to restore him to his human form if he would only help free the pet shop mice.

When he finished, he was breathing hard. Nightwing reached up and put a pitying claw on Ben’s shoulder. “I can tell that you and I are going to be good friends. Perhaps we can be of help to one another.”

“How?” Ben asked.

“I must confess,” Nightwing said. “I know a bit about sorcery, too. And I have some suspicions. I believe, dear boy, that you yourself may hold the key to Amber’s magical power.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Nightwing drew nearer. “This mouse of yours, Amber, has never done any magic before, you said?”

“No,” Ben replied. “I guess not.”

“Until she met
you.
And now she’s casting powerful spells indeed. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Ben admitted.

“Well, I find that very odd. For you see, in order to cast a spell, one needs power, and the source of that power is an invisible element. Let’s call it
mage dust
. It’s the source of magic, and it is all around us—in the air, on the ground, on you. You can’t see it. Can’t smell it. But some folks attract it the way that magnets attract iron filings. When they walk about, the mage dust sticks to them the way that burrs or dirt stick to your fur. Such folks may not be magicians themselves, but they’re still immensely powerful. They provide the fuel for the magician’s fires. They’re called
familiars
.”

“Oh,” Ben said. He suddenly understood what the bat was getting at. Ben felt so shocked, he fell backward, tripping over his tail. He climbed to his knees, “You think
I’m
a familiar? I . . . I store magic power?”

“It makes sense,” the bat said. “Amber, you see, was born in a cage and never got out. So she couldn’t gather any power, any mage dust. And when she went to your house, she suddenly cast powerful spells indeed. Where did she get that power? It’s not likely that she got it just by taking a short drive. No, you must have been storing mage dust your whole life in order for her to cast such a spell.”

Ben shivered at the thought. “So, I’m like a battery?”

“Yes,” Nightwing said slyly. “And therein lies the danger. Every time she casts a spell, she drains you a little. And performing a spell like a transmogrification requires enormous amounts of power.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben said.

“Which means,” Nightwing said pointedly, “that if she’s ever going to turn us back into people, she has to stop using magic immediately.”

“Oh no,” Ben cried. “I’d better tell her!”

“Do you trust her that much?” Nightwing asked slyly with a sour expression that suggested that he shouldn’t trust her at all.

“She seems nice enough.”

“Yes,” Nightwing said. “But what will happen when she learns that you are the source of her power? Do you really think she’ll turn you back into a human? Would she let you go, leaving herself a weak little mouse, just another snack for the cats?”

Ben suddenly felt very worried indeed. No, of course she wouldn’t free him. Not if she knew the truth.

“What can I do?” Ben asked.

Nightwing seemed to think for a moment. “Don’t tell her anything. Don’t let her know that you are the source of her power. Let her turn you back into a human. And if she doesn’t keep her word, look for a chance to escape and then just run away. There is a place you can go, a school for wizards, called the Small Animal’s Darling Institute of Sorcerous Technology, or SADIST, for short. The legendary Wizards of the Coast study there. All you have to do is head due west from here, only a few dozen miles. Perhaps they will turn you back into a human . . .”

Ben made a mental note: SADIST, to the west. Then the bat looked up at the fading darkness and leaped into the air, his wings creaking like rusty hinges as he flew toward the shadowed fir trees. He dipped among their limbs and was lost to Ben’s view.

Chapter 9

DREAMS OF MICE AND MEADOWS

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended:

That you have but slumbered here,

While these visions did appear.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Hop, stop, and look, six eyes peering warily.

IN THE SHADOWS of the lonesome trees, Nightwing had a moment to reflect. He hid in the tallest Douglas fir and enjoyed the feel of the tree swaying, its sweet scent filling his nostrils.

He felt comfortable in the shadows.

Let’s see,
he thought.
I’ve planted seeds of discord with Ben. Now all that I need to do is trick Amber, and Ben will be mine.

I know, a dream! A dream just might do the trick . . .

* * *

Amber lay in a deep slumber in the voles’ burrow, and suddenly her body jerked. Her eyes came half open, but her eyelids were too heavy, and soon they dropped.

In the warm darkness, filled with the sweet scent of the friendly voles, Amber dreamed.

She dreamed that she heard Ben calling her name from a distance, as if he needed her, and in her dream, she climbed to her feet and sniffed through the burrow.

Suddenly, there was a light in a tunnel, and Ben entered—wearing a walnut shell upon his head and carrying a sharp piece of metal in one paw and the glow-stone in the other. A silver thread with a golden hook tied to it was slung over one shoulder.

“Amber,” he called desperately, “there you are!”

She gazed upon him, and no mouse of the field had ever looked so handsome. His glossy fur had been preened and stroked to a soft gleam. His eyes were as bright as stars in the darkness. Amber’s stomach felt all gooey.

Ben rushed forward. For a moment he stared at her lovingly. “What have I been thinking?” he whispered, inching forward to nuzzle her ear. “I don’t want to leave. I want to be with you. Forever. I want to be yours.”

Amber’s heart thrilled. She quivered with excitement. “Really?”

“Amber, without you,” Ben said, “there could be no magic in my life. There could be no magic in your life. Think about it—you never could cast a spell until you met me. We’re like two halves of a peanut. Together we are magic. Alone, we’re just . . . nuts.”

Amber stood quivering, not knowing what to say. Ben leaned forward, his whiskers trembling. He sniffed her ear. It tickled. She giggled, wondering if he really loved her.

He did kiss me,
she told herself.
Even when he was a human, he kissed me. He must love me a little.

She wanted him to love her so badly that it hurt.

* * *

After a long, deep sleep, Amber woke in pain. Not pain in her muscles, but pain in her heart, aching for Ben.

Vervane scurried about the burrow shouting, “Rise my friends. Rise. The night is old; the stars are dim. The owls have gone to roost, and the hawks have not yet awakened. Hurry. Now is the time to travel!”

Amber blinked in surprise. She’d expected to find Ben nuzzling her. But she felt cold, alone.

The scents of fungi, leaves, and voles were strong. Amber rubbed her eyes. Her magical light was gone. She heard young voles rustling about the burrow.

The burrow! For the first time in her life, she had wakened to life outside a cage. She really was free!

I’ll never go back to a cage,
she vowed.

Amber needed light, so she wished that she had another glowing rock. A nearby pebble flickered like an ember, then went out.

Amber suddenly felt weak. She fell to her belly and lay as slack as a slug. Something was wrong.

She lay, head spinning, listening to the voices in the burrow. Suddenly, she realized that she hadn’t heard Ben.

“Ben?” she called weakly. “Ben?” Now she saw the truth. Ben had run away with her glow-stone.

She felt betrayed. In her dream, he had been so loving, so tender. Now, fear wormed through her belly. She didn’t know how to find the pet shop without Ben. And there would be monsters all along the way.

I was such a fool to trust him,
Amber thought.

Just as she began to cry, a light shone at one end of the burrow, and Ben crawled into view. He was wearing the walnut shell on his head and carrying a long piece of metal in one hand and the glow-stone in the other—just as he had in her dream!

In the dark, his eyes sparkled like droplets of water.

And as he neared, something strange happened. The stone that Amber had tried to make glow suddenly turned as clear as glass and flared like a star.

Amber gasped as she realized that her dream had held some truth—she couldn’t do magic without Ben. They
were
two halves of the same peanut. They were magic only when they were together.

And what of the rest of the dream?
Amber wondered.
Was there truth in it, too? Is it possible that he really does love me, that he wants to be a mouse?

Old Barley Beard had once told Amber, “Sometimes we can see truths clearly in dreams that we are blind to while awake.” Maybe Barley Beard had been right.

Ben’s very presence seemed to revitalize Amber, to send strength pulsing through her limbs. She climbed to her feet. Trying to keep the sound of her fear and hurt from her voice, she asked Ben, “Where did you go?”

“Uh,” Ben said. “I wanted to get an early start on our trip, so I went back to get some weapons.”

“What’s a weapon?” Bushmaster asked. The vole drew near, sniffed at the spike that Ben held. “Is that it?”

“It’s something we humans use to fight with,” Ben said. He picked it up and showed the vole how to thrust and jab with it. “With one of these, you can beat up cats and stuff.”

Amber didn’t believe such wild tales, but Bushmaster drew close. “There’s blood on it. And I smell raccoon!”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I almost got eaten by one. But I stabbed him in the nose, and he ran away.”

The voles stared at Ben in awe, mouths falling open.

Vervane came and sniffed at Ben’s spear. With a sound approaching worshipfulness, he asked, “You fought a raccoon?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I got this needle out of the garage to use as a spear. But you could use a nail or a toothpick—anything that’s sharp. In fact, if you get into someone’s house, there’s always a good chance of finding a needle somewhere.”

Ben tried to hand the spear to Vervane, but the old vole backed away. “No, no, thank you,” he shuddered. “I could never
kill
anything.”

But Bushmaster hopped forward, picked up the spear, and tried a couple of jabs. He began laughing at his newfound sense of power. “I want one!” he said. “We don’t really have to
kill
things. We could just use them to scare monsters off.”

“I never thought of that,” Vervane admitted. “Maybe I
could
use one.”

“Me, too!” the younger voles all cried.

In seconds, the voles were crowding around Ben, talking excitedly, making plans to search every home in the neighborhood for weapons.

They gaped at the walnut shell on Ben’s head. “What’s that for?” one asked.

“It’s a helmet,” Ben said. “It protects your head. A cat would have a hard time biting through it.”

One vole touched it, and the walnut shell popped off of Ben’s head.

Ben looked down at it sadly. “It keeps coming off. If I had a knife, I’d whittle on it until it fit. I’d make it look cool, like a scary skull with teeth and stuff!”

Amber went to Ben and picked up the walnut shell. She imagined the scariest thing she could—the walnut shell carved to look like bone, with holes for Ben’s eyes and ears and teeth wrapping down over his jaws to hold the helmet on. Immediately, the walnut shell took the new form. The voles all squeaked in fear and backed away.

“A princely helm for a princely mouse,” Amber said.

“Cool,” Ben said, slapping it on.

With a wave of her paw, Amber gathered all of the needles from Ben’s house and let them form in the air. They dropped at the feet of the voles. “A present,” she said. “Here are weapons for all of you, so that Domino the cat will learn to fear the small creatures of the world!”

“Yay!” the voles all cried as they selected their weapons. “Hooray for Amber! Hooray for Ben!”

“So how far is the pet shop?” Amber asked Ben as the voles continued to cheer. “And which way do we go?”

“The sun rises in the east,” Ben said. “All we have to do is follow it.”

“Great!” Amber said. “What’s the sun?”

“You know,” Ben said in exasperation, “they really should have let you out of your cage more often.”

Bushmaster hopped close to Ben. “Between your weapons and her spells, nothing can stop us. All we have to do is get both of you to the pet shop, and you’ll be human in no time.”

“Wait a minute,” Ben suddenly asked Bushmaster, “are
you
coming too?”

“It’s the least I can do,” Bushmaster said. “You saved my life. Besides, six eyes watching for monsters are better than four. And now I have a spear!”

Old Vervane laughed. “Bushmaster always was the adventurous one. He knows every backyard from here to the end of the block.”

Somehow, the news that Bushmaster would come made Amber feel better. Bushmaster was only a vole, but he was a wild vole, and he knew how to travel through dangerous country filled with monsters that she’d never dreamed of.

The voles began shouting farewells, and with that, Bushmaster picked up his spear and led the way from the burrow.

“Travel safely,” the young girl Meadowsweet called. “Come back soon.”

“Thank you,” Amber told her. “I’d love to.”

Ben dropped the magic light-stone, muttering, “We’ll have to leave this. It would only attract attention.”

Amber threaded her way out of the burrow, just behind Bushmaster, and glanced back longingly at her magic lights. They dimmed as she left.

At their backs, the youngest voles teased, “Good-bye, mice! Good-bye, stinky mice!” They giggled and rolled on the floor while their older kin gathered up the spears.

* * *

At the top of the burrow, Ben took the lead. It was still dark, with just a hint of light. The scents of trees and bushes and moist earth clung to the ground. Ben climbed from the hole and shoved aside a young fern that spiraled up out of the humus. He trudged forward blindly into the pre-dawn gloom with spear in hand.

“What are you doing?” Bushmaster cried in horror.

“Heading to the pet shop,” Ben said as he stomped over the pine needles, climbing toward a large yellow oyster mushroom that glowed in the shadows ahead.

“You can’t just march around like that,” Bushmaster argued. “You have to be careful. Hop, stop, and look. Hop, stop, and look.”

“At that rate, it will take all day,” Ben argued.

“Perhaps,” Bushmaster said, “but remember, the shortest distance between two points is getting there alive.”

Ben said impatiently, “My teacher says that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”

Bushmaster grunted in disgust. “I’d like to see your teacher walk a straight line through a field of weasels.”

“All right,” Ben said. Ben hopped forward a few steps, hid beneath a wild daffodil, and made a big show of peering around. “Whew,” he groused. “I made it two feet alive. Hope I can keep it up.” He darted forward three hops—enormous bounds that only a jumping mouse could manage—and pretended to evade an owl, zigzagging until he reached a pile of pine needles. Amber’s anger started to rise, but she kept her mouth shut.

East took them away from Ben’s house, through a stand of fir trees, and down a rolling hill. In the predawn, it was spooky. The shriek of some hunting bird shattered the darkness, and every shadow under every crooked bush and crouching tree was filled with menace.

Vapors rose from the ground, like the ghosts of woodlands past, and broken limbs on the forest floor seemed to twist like dazed snakes. The mice climbed down into a valley where green moss grew and mushrooms sprouted from the moss, white as snow.

Amber trembled in fear as she wound her way beneath the umbrella tops of the mushrooms. She considered her plan. Old Barley Beard had told her that she was destined to free all of the mice in the world someday.

Today is the day,
she thought.
I’ll reach the pet shop and free my friends, fulfilling the prophecy.

But in doing so, she’d lose Ben.

Will I never be able to use magic again after that?
she wondered. It seemed unlikely.

Amber had to come to grips with the fact that once Ben was human, she’d just be a common house mouse.
Or at least one with a spear,
she mused, grinning wickedly.

As dawn filled the sky, the sense of menace faded and the world displayed its wonders. They reached the edge of a meadow—a real meadow, just like old Barley Beard had dreamed of. There, the mice climbed a small madrone tree, whose peeling red bark revealed a honey-colored layer of pith beneath, and sat under its waxy green leaves as Amber took her first good look at the world.