Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic (11 page)

The Abyssinian peered at Ben’s weapon. She growled deep in her throat. “Stay back. You’re one step away from mouse heaven.”

The Abyssinian could squash him in an instant, Ben knew, but it held onto Amber and began backing away, dragging her along. It seemed to be frightened.

“Tell me who sent you,” Ben demanded. “Or I swear, I’ll stab you right in the eye!”

The Abyssinian stopped. At that instant, there was a piercing sound, and the kitten vaulted three feet in the air.

Bushmaster was behind the cat. He’d sneaked up on her and stabbed her tail.

The Abyssinian came down in a quivering heap.

Ben didn’t even think about what he was doing. He leaped toward the creature with all his might, thrusting his spear deep into its shoulder, and Bushmaster did the same, stabbing the cat in the back.

The Abyssinian yowled, rolling backward. It scrabbled to its feet with its back arched, hair standing up along its spine.

Bushmaster squatted, his spear aimed threateningly at the cat, and Ben felt gratitude well up inside him. He was suddenly very thankful to know this vole, to have won his friendship.

“Beware,” Ben shouted at the Abyssinian. “We mice have weapons now, and we’re a match for any cat!”

The kitten hissed and sped around a corner.

Ben leaned on his spear and nodded at Bushmaster.

“Good job,” Bushmaster said.

“Thank you for being here,” Ben replied. Ben looked at Bushmaster, and for a tiny instant he thought of his old friend, Christian. Christian had been the kind of friend that you could count on in a crunch, just like Bushmaster, and he had the same kind of happy-go-lucky nature that the vole did when he broke into song.

For a moment, Ben realized how much the two were alike, and the moment melted into sadness.

“Hooray!” the feeder mice in their cage all shouted. They cheered in delight, and many of them trembled and wept in relief.

Amber moaned softly. Bushmaster crept forward and nuzzled her. Ben heard a chuckling sound and looked up. There was a huge cage there with black bars above him. Something like a wooden birdhouse was inside, with bits of rope, vine, and tree branches forming a false jungle. In the dim light provided by the fish tanks, Ben could barely make out a creature in the shadowy wood box.

“Good on ya, mates,” a loud, deep voice said. “You put the fear o’ mice into that one, all right!”

The creature inched forward and peered through the bars. It wasn’t anywhere near as large as its voice made it sound. Its fur was brightly colored—bluish gray on the sides and back with a lighter gray stomach, black circles around its eyes and on its ears, and a black stripe blazing its forehead. It looked kind of like a chipmunk, except that its snout was too long, too pointy, and too pink.

“Hello,” Ben said.

“G’day back on ya,” the creature said. It studied him for a moment, as if content just to watch the show.

Ben didn’t know what to do now. Amber was still unconscious, with Bushmaster nuzzling her. Just ahead stood a bench with the mouse cage on it.

“Watch out for that kitten, while I free the mice,” Ben warned Bushmaster as he loped toward to the cage.

The bench was too high to reach, so he uncurled his fishing line, made some knots in it, and hurled the treble hook up into the air. It caught on the wooden bench, and Ben began to pull himself up.

It was hard work. His arms burned from the effort, but Ben told himself, “Come on, you wimp. You can do it! You couldn’t weigh more than an ounce now.”

In moments, he’d reached the top. There were twenty-four feeder mice in the cage where Ben had bought Amber. They were kept inside a terrarium that only had half of a lid covering it. The mice raced up to him and peered through the glass. They were all plain brown in color, and most of them looked young, only a few weeks old.

“Who are you?” they asked.

“Are you a wild mouse?”

“What are you doing with Amber?”

One plain brown feeder mouse maiden looked shyly at Ben, then begged, “Will you marry me?”

“I’m here to rescue you,” Ben told them. “We’re going to take you to the Endless Meadow.”

“Hooray,” the feeder mice cried. They began racing around their pen, leaping for joy.

Ben gathered his fishing line and threw the treble hook into the mouse’s cage. It snagged on the food dish, and he pulled the line tight.

“Climb on out,” he told them. In moments, the mice were clinging to the fishing line, climbing up four at a time. Ben held the line on his side, so that the feeder mice wouldn’t pull it in.

When the first one reached safety, Ben ordered, “Help keep an eye out for that kitten.” And he held on tight as the rest of the mice kept climbing.

Soon, mice were tumbling from the cage right and left.

Overhead, on a higher shelf, lived the spotted mice. They saw what was happening and left their exercise wheels and their gourmet mouse food to watch the show.

Once Ben had the feeder mice out of their cage, he worked his treble hook free from the water dish, and, with a bit of work, climbed now to the top shelf.

Ben threw a line to the spotted mice, but none of them went to it. One asked, “Why would we want to go with you? We have a fabulous home and tantalizing food. Besides, we don’t want to be seen with
ugly
mice.”

Some others shouted, “Yeah, we don’t want to be seen with
yooo-eww
.”

A feeder mouse shouted back, “Yeah, well you smell poopy!”

“You’re just jealous,” a spotted mouse said, “because we’re better than you.”

From the floor, Amber said reasonably, “You
are
prettier than us. But all mice are beautiful. The humans might not see that, but we mice should see the truth.”

Ben looked down. Amber had regained her feet. She sounded wise and reasonable and much more mature than her ten weeks. She was gazing up at Ben with tears of gratitude in her eyes. The feeder mice were leaping from the table, gathering around her. She rejoiced to see her friends.

Ben felt proud to have saved the mice and even prouder that he had done it all on his own.

“Yeah, well you’re ugly,” one spotted mouse shouted at Amber. “And if you can’t see that, then maybe you’re more than ugly. Maybe you’re stupid, too!”

The spotted mice reminded Ben of some kids he knew at school. They never had a nice word for anyone but themselves.

Ben wanted to save the spotted mice, but he knew that he couldn’t force them to come against their will. He offered a warning. “I have news for you. Brown mice are raised to be food for snakes and lizards, and so we needed to free them. But if you stay here, the humans will need to feed the snakes something, and it just might be you.”

One spotted mouse smiled condescendingly, as if Ben were a fool. “The humans would never hurt me.” She twirled, displaying her lovely brown coat with white spots. “I’m too beautiful. And pretty mice are far too valuable to be put on the menu.”

“Well,” Ben said, as he pulled his fishing line back to himself and coiled it, “If I were a snake, I think I’d much rather eat a pretty mouse than a plain old brown one.”

He watched the spotted mice, to see if any would come, but they all began running on their exercise wheel, munching on mouse yogurt bars, or drinking Evian from their water spigot. None of them would come. Ben said, “Have a nice life,” and turned away.

But as he looked down the aisle from his high vantage point, he spotted a calico kitten crouching atop a fish tank at the far end of turtle aisle, waiting to pounce on any mice that might be traveling unaware.

At that moment all of the mice were just in front of him on the floor below. Ben spotted movement farther off—several kittens on the next aisle, sneaking on all fours.

In a mighty leap, Ben jumped to the ground and rushed up to Amber. She stood at the center of a knot of mice that had gathered around her and Bushmaster with their tails pointing out. Most of them were squealing with delight, greeting Amber as if she’d been gone for years.

“Amber,” Ben shouted. “Your friends are free. Now turn me back into a human. Quick!”

Startled, Amber looked at Ben. She’d been smiling, but now her face fell. Ben could see hesitation in her dark eyes. Maybe even fear.

She doesn’t want to turn me back,
he realized. “Hurry,” Ben urged. “The kittens are coming!”

Amber whirled to look down the aisle, and sure enough, just then the Abyssinian stepped into their field of view. Behind it came others—a black Persian with orange eyes whose hair was so thick it looked like armor and a pair of yellow-striped, tigerlike kittens.

The Abyssinian roared. “You think you’re so tough. Let’s see how you handle a pride of us.”

Amber looked back at Ben and said, “I wish . . . I wish . . .” Amber’s heart pounded like a cricket in her chest. She licked her lips and peered about in terror. Ben could almost read her mind, trying to find a reason, any reason, not to keep her part of the bargain.

Was it because she really didn’t want to lose him? Or was there something more? Maybe she had guessed the truth, that
he
was the source of her power.

The kittens saw Amber’s fear and took courage. There was a sea of them, and they stalked forward quietly, like a fog that rolls along the ground, their tails twitching menacingly in the sky. Ben could hear their evil, hissing laughter.

Amber peered back at Ben, weighing her choices, and roared, “I wish that I were a giant, cat-sucking vacuum cleaner!”

Blue lights flashed, piercing her skin, and bolts of lightning went zapping overhead, frying holes in the ceiling and exploding into walls.

Amber growled and her face twisted into something hideous. Bits of metal began piercing through her hair, as if nails were trying to poke through her. Suddenly she rose up in the air, high above the rest of the mice. Her gray mouse hairs formed into huge needles, like spear points sticking out from her body. Her feet and paws became terrifying metal talons. Her chest and stomach turned to clear plastic, and all of her intestines looked like coils of glass tubes. Her long snout became a huge silver cannon, and her belly issued a terrible rumbling sound, as if she were a cement truck.

But the worst thing was her eyes. Her eyes grew huge and blazed like a furnace of green fire.

The mice around her all shrieked and fled, running for cover. Amber was a giant now—a clumsy giant—as dangerous as any cat. She grabbed for something to hang onto, and one huge arm slapped the black cage above Ben, knocking it to the floor. Its door flung open, and the chipmunklike creature scrambled for cover.

The Abyssinian watched Amber’s transformation in awe, its back arching. “You don’t scare us,” it hissed.

Amber charged down the aisle, past angelfish that gaped in dismay. After two steps she took one huge leap and landed on iron feet among the kittens.

Sluuurrrppp! She sucked the Abyssinian up in one second, and the next moment Ben could see the terrified kitten tumbling through her innards, twisting, turning, and clawing, desperately grasping at the glass walls, its mouth wide in terror.

The Abyssinian hit Amber’s stomach with a thunking sound and whirled around the vacuum chamber, bouncing and rattling against the walls, yowling in terror.

Just then, Amber raised her long tail, now covered in silver barbs, as if it were a glittering, deadly hose. She aimed it over the nearest aisle, and the Abyssinian went roaring through it, whooshed over the fish tanks, and landed in a mound of twitching fur.

It just lay on its back, petrified with fear, its claws grabbing the air, eyes staring into oblivion.

The other kittens had all arched their backs and were hissing in terror, sidestepping but too afraid to run.

Amber charged in among the kittens. They yowled in terror. They clawed and cursed as only evil kittens can. They ran, scrambling under fish tanks and over shelves—but it did them no good.

Amber whirled about, slurping them down like dust bunnies, firing them across the room like spit wads.

Ben watched in terror—not terror at Amber’s power, but at the waste of it.

She was using all of the magic he kept stored inside.

The mice cheered as Amber chugged kittens. “Yay,” they all shouted. “Think twice before you mess with mice!”

It was a great victory for Amber and a terrible defeat for Ben.

The chipmunklike creature hopped up to Ben and asked in a deep voice, “Why so glum, mate?”

“She didn’t turn me back into a human,” Ben said bitterly. “She didn’t keep her promise. And I don’t think that she ever will.”

Chapter 11

THE DARK MAGE

There’s a little monster in everyone.

—NIGHTWING

At the far end of the hallway near the door, something dark and sickening slogged into view.

AMBER RACED through the pet shop, chasing kittens, swallowing them whole, and shooting them out. Her thoughts swam in a red river of rage. She kept remembering how the Abyssinian had enjoyed tormenting her. She recalled the little song that Domino had sung about nibbling the heads off of mice, and she understood something that she’d never imagined. For a cat, killing was play.

How many mice had died beneath cats’ paws? How old was time? How wide was the world? And in that ageless, vast world, how many mice had died in torment?

“Stop it,” Amber shouted through a red haze of rage. “Stop killing us. Stop it now!”

Everything became a blur. Amber chased evil kittens through the pet shop, past aisles brimming with puppy chew toys, around a koi pond where fountains burbled and enormous fish swam lazily beneath the lily pads, and over the tops of lizard cages where iguanas and bearded dragons lazed beneath artificial suns.

In her haste to grab one white kitten, she ripped open a huge bag of fish food. Dried flies and brine shrimp whooshed through her belly and shot out her tail, then sat glittering in the air. A Siamese kitten tried to climb over a birdcage and knocked it to the floor. Amber lunged through displays of dog collars to reach it.

Around the room, Amber chased the kittens, finding them hiding behind cans of dog food and climbing under counters. She tore the pet shop apart, smashing cages and hurling bags of birdseed, all in her effort to find them.

She saw a huge kitten on a nearby wall, ran to it, and attacked it with her claws. The kitten shredded, and Amber saw that it was just a picture. Just a picture.

Behind the picture, the wall was made of cinder blocks. Amber’s metal claws had gouged a trail.

She stared at it in shock. Distantly she heard a small voice. “Amber, stop! Stop!”

Numb, she turned and looked down. Ben and Bushmaster were on the floor nearby. Both held their spears, and Ben wore his silly little helmet made of walnut shell. Bushmaster stared at her in fear and surprise.

“Stop it,” Ben shouted. “The kittens are gone. They’ve all gone back to their cage.”

Amber turned. The terrified kittens were indeed back in their cage, shivering in fear. Amber hadn’t meant to hurt them, but she saw cats limping about, one with a torn ear, some with swollen eyes.

Indeed, everywhere that she looked, the animals were cowering in terror. A tank full of turtles looked like nothing but turtle shells. Snakes were burrowing holes in the sands of their cages. Cockatoos cowered in the shadows.

Amber’s heart pounded so hard, it was as if there was a hammer inside, beating to get out.

I’m as tall as a human,
she thought.
Everything is smaller than me. Nothing can hurt me.

For the first time in her life, Amber realized what it was to be free—free from the fear of being eaten, free to move across the world at will.

What a wonderful thing it must be to be human,
she thought.
Free from all cages. Free to grow old.

Yet she looked down at Ben and saw how handsome he was. Strong and sleek and precious.

“I wish,” she said. “I wish I were a mouse again.”

And she shrank. Her metal claws became flesh. The clear plastic lining of her stomach grew fur. In seconds, she was a mouse, wrung out and tired, panting on the floor.

Ben and Bushmaster came up to her. Amber asked, “Where did everyone else go?”

“They’re hiding,” Ben said. “They were afraid.”

From down here, Amber could understand why. Cans of animal food were strewn all across the floor. Ripped bags and broken bottles.

“This way,” Ben said. He led her down the aisle and around the corner to the fish section. Amber saw the destruction she’d wrought. One fish tank was cracked, water leaking everywhere. Bright parrotfish were flopping about in the white sand.

“I wish that tank were full of water,” Amber said. Immediately, water whisked up from the floor, filling the tank. With a thought Amber resealed the tank, as good as new.

The bottom shelves on this aisle were filled with ceramic statues—sunken warships full of holes where guppies and swordtails could dart among the ruins, pirate skulls where eels could live among the eye sockets while bottom-feeders cleaned the teeth, haunted houses where the souls of dead ghost crabs might linger for decades.

Ben led Amber into the hollow of a treasure chest where gold coins seemed to spill out of an old wooden box bound with iron rings. Ben nuzzled the lid open. The pet shop mice huddled inside, trembling.

They looked at Amber, and their fear worsened. “Don’t hurt us,” one mouse pup cried. “Please!”

Amber realized that she wasn’t the mouse that had grown up in their cage anymore. They didn’t look at her and see their savior. She was a monster.

“I’m sorry,” Amber said. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

Amber looked up at all of the damage that she had done and imagined that she would repair it. She’d restore the ripped bags of animal food and remove the dent from every can.

“Don’t try to fix everything,” Ben said, as if reading her mind. “Save your magic.”

Something in Ben’s tone made her worry. “What do you mean, save my magic?”

“Don’t you know?” Ben said. “It runs out!”

“Runs out?”

Ben tried to explain. “Like the food in your feeding cup,” Ben said. “Each time you eat a little, the food drops lower, until there is none left at all.”

“Oh,” Amber said, suddenly understanding. She had felt so powerful and dangerous a moment ago. Now she only felt bewildered.

“And think,” Ben said. “You have powerful sorcerers out to get you, but all they’ve done is send a few cuddly kittens to kill us. Your enemies are just trying to wear you down. I don’t think that the real fight has even started.”

He gave her a warning look, and Amber realized that he could be right. Perhaps they were still in danger.

“Let’s go,” Ben told the other mice. “Hop, stop, and look. Hop, stop, and look.”

The mice climbed out of the treasure chest, flowing over the gold coins. They followed Ben’s lead, timidly making their way across the floor.

The room was filled with shadows. Nothing moved in the shadows, but as Amber neared the end of the aisle, she heard a thumping of feet. Once, twice, three times the sound of footsteps pounded on the plastic hood of a fish tank. She whirled to look behind her and saw a shadowy form leap across one aisle to the next.

It happened so fast, she almost thought that she imagined it. But then the creature landed among a stack of cans with a clank and disappeared into the shadows.

“What was that?” the mice cried.

Amber could see nothing. Still, she knew that they were being followed.

At the end of the aisle, they turned and headed warily for the back door. Hop, stop, and look. Hop, stop, and look. The feeder crickets at the front counter had nearly all gone silent. Only a lone cricket sang in the darkness. A terrarium on the counter had some sickly green vines twisting in it. Amber saw something move inside, and three mice cried out at once.

It was a horned chameleon, as green as the vines it hid among. Only its strange little eye had moved.

Amber took some comfort in knowing that there wasn’t much that could hide from twenty-seven frightened mice.

Ben called the mice to a halt and whispered, “Keep low under the lip of the counter here. Follow me in single file. Try not to be seen. Amber, I’ll take the front. You guard the rear.”

Ben led them to the storeroom door and crept under it. Inside the backroom, he darted behind a stand that held a terrarium and crept in the narrow space between it and the wall. The space was about half an inch wide—just narrow enough for a mouse to squeeze through. That gave Amber a sense of comfort. No large animals could follow them.

They crept that way for half the length of the hallway, sneaking beneath a terrarium filled with giant komodo dragons sleeping beneath their blue lights and past another tank where giant snakes hissed in their sleep.

Amber heard the thump of feet behind her. She glanced back and saw a shadow slip under the door and race into the room. Whatever creature was following them, it was much larger than a mouse—both longer and taller.

It ran past the crack that the mice traveled through and disappeared into the room.

Good, it’s lost our trail,
she thought.

She inched forward.

Ben had reached a spot where a huge fish tank pressed solidly against the wall. A bunch of cords ran from wall plugs up into the tank, then disappeared down into a box that burbled and made bubbles in the thick, algae-clouded water.

Ben raced to the nearest electrical cord, set his spear between his teeth, leaped up, and began to climb. When he reached the top of the fish tank, he took his spear in hand and stood guard while the other mice followed.

Amber waited her turn. She fit her paws around the heavy rubber cord and climbed it as if it were a vine. When she got high enough, she could see into the tank. Huge fish swam inside, ugly fish with fangs as sharp as anything she’d seen on kittens. They swam in their tank, then lunged against the glass, trying to get to her.

She reached the top and found that most of the tank was open on top. The mice were running across a narrow bridge made of wood.

Amber was halfway across, when she sensed something. There was danger ahead. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it or hear it. Yet she felt certain that death waited for her.

“Stop,” she called to the mice.

The mice ahead all came to a halt and looked back at her. A hush fell across the room, and the sense of foreboding deepened.

Suddenly, at the far end of the hallway near the door, something dark and sickening slogged into view. It was like an octopus dragging a giant dead rat. But it gazed about, and Amber saw that the rat was alive, horribly alive. The monster was hunting.

It stopped in the middle of the floor and peered into the shadows with three angry eyes, eyes so full of pain that they seemed like coals. Hiding in the shadows as Amber was, the creature couldn’t see her. It was blinded by the lights from the fish tank.

The creature waved its tentacles in a mystic gesture, and the air around the creature darkened, turning to shadows so that it faded from view, obscured by a mist.

The mist flowed away from Amber and lodged into a corner between some bags of birdseed until it looked like just another shadow.

Every nerve in Amber’s brain screamed a warning. This creature wasn’t natural. And it was hunting her.

Silently, she crept forward, following Ben and the other mice.

Soon they were hidden behind boxes again, tracing the wall to the door.

Ben darted out, dove beneath the hole in the door, and went outside. As soon as he was out, Bushmaster followed. Up ahead of her in the line, a mouse whispered, “Everybody sneak out, one at a time.”

A third mouse scurried to safety, and a fourth, but each time that a mouse ran for cover, the next mouse waited less time before running for the hole, and soon they were pushing and shoving, trying to get outside.

Amber stayed hidden, glancing down the hallway.

A shadow separated from the pet foods, and flowed toward the fleeing mice. Within that shadow, Amber could discern movement. Tentacles waved hypnotically, and blue lights flashed in the mist. She heard a deep voice whisper, weaving some fearsome spell.

Suddenly, a glob of slobber hurtled out of the mist, thundering toward the fleeing mice. It arced through the air, and at the last instant fanned out into what looked like a huge spiderweb made of green snot.

It slammed into the mice, pinning them to the ground. They struggled against the ooze, but to no avail. The slightest touch held them.

And now the monster reached out with one tentacle and grabbed a long green line of goo. It began grunting as it pulled the web, dragging the mice toward it.

Amber stepped from the shadows and shouted, “I wish—” just as a second wall of snot flew into her.

The stuff hit her like a brick, knocking her back and leaving her dazed. She found herself pinned against the wall, green goop gluing her in place.

The stuff was so sticky that she couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t even open her mouth.

Through a gap, she eyed the shadow. Now it evaporated like a mist, and the monster rose up on it hind legs. “I am the mighty Ratzilla,” it cried. “The time for your unmaking is here.”

It waved its tentacles, and a bolt of blue light shot toward Amber.

A thought flashed through her head, a longing to be outside, away from this mess.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh of air and a pop, and Amber found herself and all of the other pet shop mice rolling on the cement driveway outside.

She slammed into a dandelion, and white dandelion down floated all around her.