Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze (8 page)

When they were all warm, Thorn whispered, “So Amber, are you really going to add humans to the list of enemies to mice?”

“Yes,” Amber said with grim determination. “I won’t have any more nasty humans killing mice. Next one that tries: bam, a human dies.”

“But,” Ben said, “I don’t think that humans really understand what they’re doing. They don’t think that mice have feelings too.”

“Well, they’ll get the message soon enough.”

“You ought to give them a warning,” Thorn said. “It wouldn’t be fair to just start killing them.”

“That’s a problem,” Ben said. “Humans have never talked to animals before.”

“I’m sure that I could do it,” Amber said. “I could use my magical powers to talk to them.”

“Hmmm . . .” Ben said, thinking. “They wouldn’t believe anything you said. They’d just think that they were going crazy. Having hallu . . . dreaming. Besides, what would you tell them?”

“All I’d do,” Amber said, thinking fast, “is tell them to ‘Free the mice.’ Of course, I’d have a thousand guards with spears to back up the request.”

“You know,” Thorn told Amber, “there are plenty of other animals you should add to your list of enemies. Fish like bass for example, and trout and perch . . . lots of fish eat mice. And of course pigs eat mice, too.”

“It’s not just the animals that eat mice that you have to worry about,” Bushmaster said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re eaten by a fox or stepped on by a cow—dead is dead. What about all of the animals that can step on you—horses and sheep and cows? Not to mention the careless cottontails, and the rampaging herds of chipmunks!”

There was a pop as some pitch in a piece of wood exploded, sending a cinder streaming up into the night sky like a star that rises instead of falls.

“And what of natural disasters?” Thorn added. “Flash floods and hailstorms, tornados and lightning. And sickness and old age. There are so many things to worry about. Will you put an end to those in your haven?”

Amber peered at Thorn and felt weary to the bone. She had only just decided to take over the world, and now he was taking all of the fun out of it.

“I’ll have to think about that,” Amber said.

“Er,” Bushmaster said, clearing his throat. “I wish that you would reconsider letting shrews into your little haven. Ounce for ounce, they are the most ferocious predators on earth. Lady Blackpool seems nice enough, but, well, my grandmother was eaten by a shrew.”

“I added them to the list of mouse friends,” Amber explained, “because I didn’t want any hawks or owls to dive down and kill some poor helpless mouse, then try to get off by saying, ‘Oh, I thought it was a shrew.’”

“That’s good thinking,” Ben said. “But there are other animals that I like. Are you going to protect moles, too?”

“What’s a mole?” Amber asked.

“It’s sort of like a shrew,” Bushmaster said, “but it spends its whole life underground, searching for worms and beetles to eat. Nice folk, moles. Of course, they’re all blind.”

Amber sighed. “Okay, they can be in our club, too.”

“I like bunny rabbits,” Ben said. “And squirrels. They don’t eat meat. And I really wouldn’t worry about them stampeding. We can just ask them not to stampede. Are you going to protect them, too?”

“I guess,” Amber said, too tired to argue.

“Oh, and birds!” Ben said. “Robins are pretty. So are meadowlarks and hummingbirds. We could use them as lookouts and guards.”

“Okay,” Amber said.

“Now, wait a minute,” Thorn objected. “You have to let the predators eat someone. Foxes and hawks need to eat, too. If you don’t let them eat someone, you’ll give them no choice but to start a
real
war!”

Chapter 11

MOUSETRAPS

All you have to do to get richer than rich is figure out how to build a better mousetrap.

—ANONYMOUS

He began to sing softly, so softly that the mice wouldn’t even be aware of his song.

Far away, Fluke Gutcrawler squirmed through a cavern. As he did, he sang softly to himself, doing his best impression of Frank Sinatra:

I’m not funny, handsome or smart,

but I’ll worm my way into your heart.

’Cause I’m a worm, and that’s what worms doooo . . .

Whether the skies are gray or they’re blue.

I ain’t wealthy; whining’s my art.

So you’d better watch out for your heart.

Cause I’m a worm, all full of gooooo . . .

And I’m going to getcha.

Yeah, I’m willing to betcha.

I said I’m going to do it, to youuuuuu!

“Quiet!” Sebaceous Ooze hissed softly, his voice full of menace. Fluke Gutcrawler could see his father huddling in a shadowy room at the end of the tunnel, viewing a distant scene of some mice arguing. They must have been the same ones who had been caught spying last night.

Fluke quietly oozed forward. His father knew how to view enemies from a distance, too, but unlike the stupid mice, Sebaceous wasn’t about to make enough sound to alert them to his presence.

Sebaceous curled his tail around, letting his magic ring lovingly stroke his side.

Fluke knew that his father had already laid a trap for the mice on the trail ahead. Now he was leading them into it.

He began to sing softly, so softly that the mice wouldn’t even be aware of his song on a conscious level, so sweetly that his voice could not be ignored.

Moonlight shines upon the meadow

And upon the garden green.

Come, sweet mice, and taste the harvest,

Come to the garden of your dreams.

Nectar pools in silver flowers,

Sweeter than a winding stream.

Drink and thirst no more forever,

In the wellspring of your dreams.

Weary is the way before you.

Nothing’s as easy as it seems.

Give me your life, your love, your labor.

Abandon now your hopes, your dreams.

The eyelids of the mouse sorceress drooped just a little, and her eyes got a faraway look.

The mice were not aware of it, but Sebaceous Ooze smiled a wormy smile and let the vision fade.

“She’ll do exactly as I ask,” Sebaceous said, peering back toward his son. “And by this time tomorrow, she’ll be dead.”

* * *

Latonia Pumpernickel thumped her handbag on the general’s desk, reached inside, pulled out a plastic squeeze-bottle of mustard, and aimed it right at General Crawley’s eyes.

General Crawley wasn’t a real general, of course. He was the head of a militia called APE—Americans Protecting Earth. For his uniform, he wore a tri-tip hat and a blue waistcoat with golden buttons. He looked just like Napoleon Bonaparte.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried with an accent that was half French and half a Texas drawl. General Crawley knew that all kinds of things could be carried in a plastic bottle. It could be filled with biological weapons like the Ebola virus. It could even hold chemical weapons like . . . mustard gas!

“The government folks have been running me around in circles all day,” Latonia Pumpernickel growled. “Now you’re going to sit down and watch this tape, or I’ll squirt you in the eye!”

“With mustard gas?”

“With Polish mustard,” she threatened. “The hottest kind.”

The general backed away, heart thumping, while Latonia set her video camera on the table, turned it on, and replayed the images she had captured on her viewer.

“Those are mice,” she said needlessly as he peered at the spear-carrying mice attacking a tarantula.

“This can’t be real,” the general said. “You weren’t sent here by those guys at Industrial Light and Magic, were you?”

“Oh, it’s real,” Latonia Pumpernickel said. “These mice are up to something. In fact, I don’t think they’re even mice!”

With that, the scene switched, and General Crawley’s eyes popped wide. He reached under his shirt and scratched nervously. He watched as several mice hopped aboard a tiny flying saucer and flew away. The date stamp on the picture showed that it had been filmed earlier that day. A creepy chill stole down his back.

“Good grief,” said General Crawley, “that’s the craft the Air Force shot down this morning!” General Crawley’s people had been monitoring the Air Force’s frequencies on their CB radio.

“I’m happy to hear it,” Latonia said. “Then maybe they got the ringleaders. But there are still hundreds of spear-toting mice in my backyard.”

General Crawley stared hard at the mice in the picture. These weren’t normal mice. “Well,” he said in a nasal Texas drawl, “in my opinion, these spear-toting vermin pose a significant threat to the safety and sovereignty of our fair planet. I have no choice but to blow them to kingdom come.” He smiled in glee as he pictured the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb brightening the sky.

Chapter 12

TELEPATHIC MESSAGES

Your brain creates an electric field, while the brains of those around you create similar electric fields. Therefore, it seems only logical that the time will come when we learn to send messages simply by directing our thoughts, connecting the electric field of one mind to that of another. All it really would require is a person of superior intelligence, such as mine.

—THORN

“I am the smartest mouse in the world. It only makes sense that I’d be a telepath, too.”

Ben slept little that night. The pine nuts he had eaten lay in his stomach feeling heavy, as if he’d eaten lumber for dinner. He lay awake, listening.

Above him, enormous fir trees creaked and swayed in the cold starlight. Their tiny leaves hissed, as if they were the voices of faraway dead, and it seemed to him that the trees spoke. They groaned in the night as if in anger at the memory of chainsaws. They sputtered and cracked and made spitting sounds.

Ben’s mind was weary, and he wondered if the trees were angry with him, with mankind.

“I didn’t do it,” Ben whispered to the trees. “I never tried to cut you down.”

But the trees moaned and cracked anyway, and their needles hissed curses in the wind.

The moon rose, gleaming like a pearl made of ice. It bathed the snow in shades of silver. Coyotes began to wail up in the hills, their voices rising and falling eerily.

Never had Ben felt so alone, and he wondered for a long time what his mother was doing. Was she still in her car, driving the streets, wearily calling his name?

Ben kept watch for long hours, until Thorn began fidgeting in his sleep and finally woke and asked Ben if he wanted to be relieved.

Ben tried to sleep, but he kept remembering something that Nightwing the bat had told him the week before. He’d said that he’d been human once, but that after he turned into a bat, he’d been one for so long that he couldn’t even remember what it was like to be human anymore.

Ben felt as if he were forgetting, too. Only a week ago he had been walking on two legs. It had taken him a few hours to learn to crawl and hop on four, but now it felt completely natural.

How fast am I becoming a mouse? he wondered.

“What?” Thorn asked. “Did you ask me something?”

“No,” Ben said. He worried. He’d caught himself preening this morning, running his tiny paws through his fur to get out seeds and dirt, and then licking it clean.

Ben wondered at that. He moved like a mouse, and he was beginning to act like one. More importantly, he had begun to
feel
like a mouse, to feel his heart pound when he heard the bark of a dog or glimpsed a hawk from the corner of his eye.

A week to a mouse is like a year to a human. Each day Ben spent as a mouse, becoming more and more of a mouse, nearly two months of his life was lost. He’d been a mouse now for almost a week.

Is it worth the trade? he wondered, to give up being human in order to help a bunch of dumb mice?

“Dumb?” Thorn asked. “I’m not dumb.”

Ben sat for a moment, astonished. He was sure that he hadn’t said a thing.

Ben thought really hard and aimed his thought at Thorn.
Can you hear me?

“Not very well,” Thorn said. “Not with you whispering softer than a gnat!”

“I didn’t whisper!” Ben said. “I was just
thinking
. You read my mind. Thorn, you’re a telepath!”

“I am?” Thorn said. “Well, of course, that makes sense. I am the smartest mouse in the world. It only makes sense that I’d be a telepath, too.”

A terrible fear came over Ben. He’ll know everything I think, everything I feel! he worried.

A horrid, embarrassing feeling came over Ben. He remembered Amber, the way that she had looked three days ago, after they had defeated Nightwing. For a moment she had shown him what she would look like if she were a human. She’d promised that when she turned him back into a human, that she’d become one, too. Her mousy hair had been so soft and silky; her dark eyes had sparkled. Ben had never seen a girl so pretty.

Ben felt sick and panicky. Now that stupid Thorn will hear everything that I think, Ben thought. He’ll know how I feel about Amber!

Ben tried to calm himself, to control his thoughts.

Did you hear what I was thinking? Ben asked in his head, aiming his thought right between Thorn’s eyes.

Thorn didn’t even blink. He was peering out over the moonlit snow, watching for owls and foxes.

Did you hear me, you dumb mouse? Ben asked again inside his thoughts.

Thorn showed no sign of having heard him.

“Everything quiet on the far side of the tree?” Thorn asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said. Loser, loser, Thorn is a loser.

Ben sat for a long minute.

“Did you hear me?” Ben said. “Did you hear what I was just thinking?”

Thorn looked at him curiously. “No,” he said. He acted as if something was wrong. He leaned over to his left and pounded on his right ear, as if trying to clear sand out of his head.

“Try thinking something at me now.”

I think I have a crush on Amber, Ben thought, and felt his face blush.

Thorn just stood there with a dumb look. “Huh,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be working now. I can’t hear a thing. Maybe it was just a temporary anomaly brought on by ionic storms in the upper atmosphere.”

“Maybe,” Ben said. But he felt suspicious.

He went back deeper into the hollow log and lay down next to Amber.

If I leaned against her, Ben wondered, would she know that I like her, or would she just think that I want to keep warm?

Outside, as Thorn watched the snowfields, he listened in on Ben’s thoughts.

Oh, Thorn told himself, I’m pretty sure that she already knows that you have a crush on her. After all, you wouldn’t risk your own life for just any old mouse.

Ben lay down and tried to sleep, but he worried about his mother . . .

* * *

That night Ben’s mother, Mona, lay in his small bed, eyes red from crying. She didn’t know where he’d gone, but she was somehow hoping that he would return. If he had run away, maybe he would come home, sneaking into his room for some clothes or a toy that he wanted, and she hoped that she would catch a glimpse of him.

She didn’t know if he had run away or if he really had turned into a vampire. She only knew that she wanted him back.

But in five days, there had been no word from him.

Her heart was broken.

She wondered if she had been a poor mother. Ben’s room was spotless, while the rest of the house was a dump. Mona wondered about that. Maybe Ben ran away just in the hopes of finding someplace clean to live. Maybe he’d found a new mother, one who liked to scrub the grout between the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, one who showered on a regular basis.

And as she stared out the window, where the light from stars powdered the big fir trees out back, an image appeared in her mind.

It was a mouse, a small gray mouse like those you would find at a pet shop.

He looked at her with beady eyes, his whiskers twitching, and words formed in Mona’s mind.

“Hello,” the mouse said. “My name is Thorn. I am a friend of your son, Ben.”

Mona imagined that it was only a dream. Ben had loved mice. She was afraid that he had left the house because she wouldn’t let him have one. So it only made sense that she would dream of mice.

“I hope that you’re a good friend,” Mona said.

“Oh, Ben has given me a lot to be thankful for. That’s why I decided to send you this telepathic message.”

Mona had to think for a moment. She wasn’t sure what
telepathic
meant. It sounded like a conjunction of
telephone
and
pathetic.
So what would that mean—a bad phone call?

“You see,” Thorn went on, “Ben is very worried about you. So I wanted to let you know that he is all right. He’s been turned into a mouse, but it won’t be long until he’s human again.”

Suddenly Mona recalled the mouse that had come downstairs a week earlier. It had look crazed and fearsome, so her husband had whacked it with a spatula, and she had sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner.

“Ben?” she said, fear rising in her throat.

“Yep, that was him,” Thorn said.

“Is he still alive?” Mona cried.

“Oh, he’s no worse for the wear,” Thorn assured her. “He’ll be home in a few days. He’s already saved the world once this week, and now he’s going to go try again. I just hope he makes it home alive. That evil bat nearly killed him, and I’m afraid that the worm he’s going up against—well, let’s just say that it looks like the fight will be a nasty one. I just wanted to let you know, so that you don’t have to worry anymore. Ben’s alive! At least for the moment.”

With that, Thorn disappeared.

Mona found herself staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide open. She didn’t recall having opened them. She must have been wide awake the whole time.

I did receive a telepathetic message, she thought, on the verge of breaking into tears. Ben is coming home!

Immediately she jumped up out of bed.

For the first time in years she raced downstairs and began to clean the house.

By the time Ben gets home, she promised herself, the dishes will all be spotless and put away in the cupboard. The floors will be mopped, the laundry clean and folded. The refrigerator will be stocked with pizza and root beer.

We’ll have a big party if Ben makes it home alive.