The Hedgehog of Oz Page 3

  “Aaaaaaah!” shrieked one.

  “Watch out!” barked the other.

  “What is it?” Gomer cried. The men shuffled back, scrambling to their feet.

  “The elevator!” Marcel shouted as he sailed past the hens. He chased the men toward the front of the theater as the hens raced out the back.

  Just as a growling, spluttering Marcel cornered the three, Marcel heard the rattle of the elevator gate. The freight elevator knocked and rumbled to life.

  The hens were escaping!

  Suddenly the look in the men’s eyes went from shock to determination.

  Marcel gulped.

  He whirled around and tore up the aisle. He wove through seats, down rows, banked off walls, trying to shake off his pursuers. He spotted the hole in the wall and ran faster.

  He was just a few steps from freedom, when suddenly…

  FOOMP.

  Everything went black.

  Marcel felt himself tumbling around in the darkness.

  “I got it, Peterman!” he heard a voice above him shout. “I’m taking it to the truck! You find the chickens!”

  “They disappeared!”

  “Keep looking! Meet me back at the office!” the voice barked.

  Marcel rattled around in what he now recognized to be some sort of wooden crate. The man jogged up the aisle. Cool, autumn air shot through the box’s cracks as they slammed through the front doors. There was a sailing sensation as Marcel’s box was pitched into the bed of the truck.

  (At least that’s where Marcel assumed he’d crashed.)

  He heard a truck door open and slam.

  He heard an engine rumble to life and felt the ground beneath him vibrate.

  He knew, as the sharp air began to sweep violently through the cracks and into a small knothole in the side of the crate, that he was rushing away from the Emerald City Theater.

  And try as he might to ignore it, something told him…

  He was farther now from Dorothy than he’d ever been before.

  CHAPTER 4 (Not) Kansas

  THE TRUCK BUMPED DOWN THE street, Slowly and haltingly at first, then with lengthening patches of speed. It fairly flew now, the miles stretching out like saltwater taffy.

  Marcel put an eye up to the hole in the box. His line of vision wasn’t good. He could see only a tool chest and several large buckets of paint. One bucket rolled on its side, spilling yellow paint into the truck bed.

  Marcel thought hard. He could try to chew his way out, but then what? Jump from the racing truck? Hide in a toolbox and hope he wouldn’t be found? Might the truck return to the theater eventually? If Marcel could just get back, back to the hen sisters, who were probably waiting for him in the elevator or hiding in the air shaft this very minute, everything would be okay.

  Hiding seemed like the best plan.

  Marcel scrambled up on his hind legs and was about to get to work, when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He dropped back down and went over to get a better look.

  Fruit Gems littered the box. Some had fallen from Marcel’s spines in the kerfuffle. But there on the ground in the middle of the box lay a small cocoon. It must have been secured somewhere inside and come loose. Marcel lifted it carefully and cradled it in his paws. He could feel something very alive inside.

  He tried to make his voice as soothing as could be. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  The cocoon lay still, listening.

  Marcel looked around but found nothing that might keep the creature from sliding about. The threads that had held it in a cozy corner were shredded and torn.

  Marcel felt terrible. If he hadn’t barged in to the cocoon’s house…

  “I can hold on to you, if you’d like. You’d be safer that way. Would you like that?” he asked, waiting a moment to see what the cocoon would do.

  It wiggled.

  Marcel thought it looked like an affirmative wiggle. “Well, good then”—he thought a moment—“Toto. Yes, I’ll call you Toto.” He patted the cocoon gently, and a small smile crept over his face.

  He wasn’t alone. The thought instantly soothed him a little.

  Marcel gnawed at the wood until his gums were sore. He hadn’t gotten very far on the hole, when suddenly, with a jolt, the truck skidded to a stop.

  The box flew to the front and thumped against the cab. Marcel thumped around too, but he managed to hold the cocoon close to him protectively. He cocked his ears and listened.

  A blue jay jeered at something in the distance.

  There was a rustling of dried reeds.

  He heard the truck door open, heavy boots hit the ground, the crunch of gravel under footsteps.

  The tailgate thunked open.

  “Seen a lot of things in my day,” came a voice. “But chickens living in a theater and a porcupine…”

  Marcel frowned. He wasn’t a porcupine. He was small. Dorothy’s pet. He’d helped Gomer keep the theater clean. He was no wild animal.

  “Well, that just about takes the cake!”

  The wooden box, with Marcel inside, was snatched up.

  He tumbled around as they bumped along. He tried to brace himself in one corner but rolled to the next. Fruit Gems slid back and forth along the floor. Marcel clutched Toto with one arm.

  Sunlight filtered in, flashing, then dimming in the shadows. Heavy footfalls crashed through what Marcel guessed were grasses and reeds. The spicy scent of autumn leaves pummeled his nose.

  A boot splashed through a puddle, and the thwock of mud sounded, for all the world, like a threat. The boots stopped.

  The box hovered. Light glinted off Marcel’s spectacles, which had fallen off and lay close by. The blue jay cried.

  The man with the box breathed in deeply. “Smell that fresh air!” He gave the box a little shake, and Marcel rolled into a ball, clutching Toto to him for safekeeping. The cocoon seemed to curl up and thank him. Marcel waited, not daring to move.

  “Don’t know how you got in the Emerald City,” said the man, and Marcel felt the box being placed on the ground. “But you sure as shootin’ aren’t getting back!”

  A boot crashed into the box’s side.

  Marcel pitched and slammed into the wood, followed by several Fruit Gems. He flopped about mercilessly as the box tumbled down a hill.

  The box caught air and time slowed. Marcel squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn’t fond of bruises or broken bits. He quickly prayed for a painless death, to wake up somewhere over the rainbow. He braced for impact. The box was falling. He was falling.

  BOOM!

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Not the cheep of a sparrow. Not the rustle of switchgrass. Not a single moan or sigh of the wind.

  Silence.

  Was he dead? Marcel opened an eye.

  He must be dead. Things were fuzzy. He was leaving his body for hedgehog heaven.

  He was surprised how very real it all felt and how clear his thinking was. He expected more… fanfare. And possibly music.

  Something wiggled in his arms.

  Toto! Poor Toto was dead too! He’d gotten the poor thing caught in his dramatic final exit.

  (He had to admit it was an exit fit for the movies, though.)

  Just then, a strawberry Fruit Gem wedged in a crack in the ceiling came loose, clunked Marcel in the head, and fell to the floor. Marcel blinked at it.

  Wait, was he not dead?

  Marcel spotted the fuzzy shape of his glasses nearby and scrambled over to grab them. He put them on.

  A large crack split one lens and one of the arms was bent, and his poor glasses fell off his nose. Marcel worked at the arm until it was marginally better. The spectacles mostly stayed put now, but there was nothing to be done about the cracked lens. He looked around.

  The box, strewn with Fruit Gems, was mangled and broken. Dust clouded in from a large hole and glinted in the light. Marcel popped his head out.

  All around was patchy brown grass.

  And that was about it.


  He needed to get out. And now that he wasn’t dead, he needed to find that truck.

  Marcel gathered his courage, and with Toto in his arms, he sucked in his stomach, pinched his eyes shut, and flopped out into the light.

  Marcel rolled and came to a stop in a hollow in the dirt.

  All was grass. It waved along the hill and sprang up in patches of green and brown, yellows and burgundies all around. He recognized wildflowers, too.

  The theater had played a lovely documentary on wildflowers once.

  Spires of goldenrod. White sweet clover. Purply blue chicory, shaped like sunshine, and the spiny leaves and wilted white blooms of mountain mint that had scented the air with delicious breezes not so long ago. And between all this blooming bounty, there were rocks of every size, a potato bug, a little house with a flat, mushroom roof and winding, dusty trails, and…

  A house with a mushroom roof?

  Marcel took off his glasses, rubbed them against the fur on his belly, and put them back on. He blinked.

  Not just one house, but many. Mushroom houses. Houses in the crooks of stones with leafy awnings. A few rusted soup cans lying on their sides, labels faded and pulling away, lids peeled back, pebbles lining the walk. There was even a glass milk bottle covered in moss.

  Marcel heard the door of the truck slam and the rev of an engine. His stomach flip-flopped, and he whirled about, trying to find the direction it came from, somewhere up the hill.

  Auntie Hen. Uncle Henrietta. The theater…

  Dorothy.

  Tires peeled out on the gravel road. It wasn’t long before the growl of the truck was a silent ache in his ears. Marcel’s throat tightened and he blinked away hot tears. He swallowed.

  The truck was gone. He was here. He was lost. Lost lost.

  No. No, he just needed to figure out where he was and what he was going to do about it. This wasn’t like before, he told himself. He’d found his way to the theater once. Surely he could do it again. He had a good nose. And the smell of a hundred years of popcorn is strong.

  Marcel looked down at Toto. “Don’t be scared. I—I’ll figure out something,” he said.

  The cocoon shivered.

  Suddenly, something whizzed past his left ear.

  It flew straight into the box and drove itself into a lime Fruit Gem stuck to the side. Marcel turned in time to see the Gem fall to the ground, a sharp pebble sunk deep in its flesh.

  “Toto?” Marcel said in a high whisper. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  CHAPTER 5 Marcel Meets a Moth (and More) in Mousekinland

  MARCEL SCRAMBLED BACK TO THE box quick as a wink and dove inside. He hid in the darkest corner and tucked Toto safely under his arm, away from enemy fire.

  What was after him? What should he do?

  Dorothy wouldn’t shrink back She’d face whatever was out there. She’s brave and heroic and never rolls up in a ball and shakes with fright.

  Marcel didn’t know why these thoughts came to his mind then, but then again, there was no telling when the memories would come.

  Dorothy was brave. She was the first person to ever touch Marcel without fear of being pricked by one of his quills. And oh, she had been pricked.

  Twenty-seven times to be exact.

  He remembered her reaching into the cage the first time she saw him at the shelter. Marcel had rolled into a ball and chittered. He was scared and very tired of all the pokes and prods of curious fingers. Tired of moving from place to place and person to person. The stress of it all had been too much.

  First there was the pet store, then Sweetie’s. But Sweetie Jones met a guy. So she shipped Marcel off to Ed’s. Ed liked Marcel’s spines—thought they were “killer.” But he got mad when Marcel got scared and the quills came out. Darla Pickens had been allergic; Marty Henkle got a cat. He was passed around several more owners, never for very long, until the last had brought him to the shelter and left. There, people, lots of them, with their poke-y, prod-y fingers, came by regularly. People looking to take him home.

  No one ever did.

  And then there was a girl.

  “I know what it’s like,” she’d whispered. “I didn’t get to stay in my first home either. I’ve been moved around too. But I’ll take care of you if you’ll trust me. Trust—it only takes a little.”

  But all Marcel knew then was that the world was too harsh and people unkind.

  Also, they were fickle.

  He’d rolled into a ball and jumped when she’d tried to pet him. He’d drawn a pinprick of blood.

  She brought him straight home.

  Dorothy.

  His Dorothy.

  It didn’t happen suddenly, but in time she peeled back a corner of his bruised and timid heart and climbed inside.

  After a few dozen Band-Aids, that is.

  Dorothy—his Dorothy—was fearless. Marcel was not.

  He needed another plan.

  The late-afternoon sun shone into the box and lit the two strawberry Fruit Gems slumped in the corner. They gleamed like rubies.

  Rubies!

  Maybe it was all the times he’s seen it happen just like this, but instinctively, he laid Toto down and grabbed the Fruit Gem closest to him—a lime—and measured it against his foot.

  He’d put the red Gems on his feet. He’d close his eyes and click his candy heels. With each click, he’d recite these words: There’s no place like home. There’s no place like—

  Marcel stopped.

  Had he lost his mind? Ruby slippers? This wasn’t The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz was a movie. Magic happened in movies. It did not happen in real life.

  Marcel looked up from the green candy clutched in his paws. Through a hairline crack in the box, an eyeball peered at him.

  Marcel screamed. Something else screamed. A patter of feet flew off into the weeds. Marcel grabbed Toto, crept up to the crack, and peeked out.

  Grass. There was nothing but swaying grass.

  “Hello,” said a voice behind him.

  Marcel screeched and rolled into a ball.

  “Oh, I’ve frightened you!” The voice was kind, soft, like velvet. “I’m sorry. How rude of me. Frightening a hero like that…”

  A … hero? Marcel opened an eye.

  Two feathery yellow antennae poked into the box, followed by furred feet and legs a deep rusty color. A downy white head with two dark eyes came next, and then two great wings of a green so enchanting the hedgehog’s breath caught. The wings unfolded, and the evening sun, low in its descent, shone through them. They glowed like green starlight.

  Before Marcel stood a moth. The largest moth he’d ever seen.

  “I’m Oona,” said the moth. “And you are?”

  “M-marcel.” His name slopped out. He found himself raising the cocoon in his paws. “And this is Toto.”

  “How do you do? I’m so glad”—she paused, and Marcel thought he noticed her wince a little—“so glad we bumped into each other.” She looked behind her and smiled. “It looks like there are others here who’d like to greet you too.”

  “Are you a witch?” The question tumbled out, and Marcel regretted it immediately. Clearly he’d watched the movie a few too many times, and possibly he was suffering from a bump on the head, but glowing there like she was, all he could think about was Glinda.

  Glinda the Good Witch, who got Dorothy Gale home.

  The moth let out a jolly laugh. “No, not a witch,” she answered. “But from what I’ve heard, they might say you’ve done away with one. Come and see.” Oona crept backward, out of the box.

  Marcel scrambled to the hole, and into the light he came. Into the grasses and wildflowers. Back to the miniature houses scattered prettily about.

  “Look here,” said Oona.

  Marcel turned to face Oona, who was pointing a furred leg near the bottom of Marcel’s wooden box.

  Marcel gasped.

  In a tangle of crushed grass lay the end of a thick, serpentine tail. It was
scaled and striped red, black, and white. It lay very still. Marcel felt a shiver go through him. He tried to keep himself from curling up.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Oona told him. “She can’t hurt you now.”

  Oona stretched her wings and floated to a rock overlooking the tiny village. “Come out, come out!” she sang. “Come, Mousekins! It’s okay! Come see what this visitor has done!”

  From behind every rock, from inside tin cans and mushroom huts, between reeds and out of the prickly green bellies of a few milkweed pods waving in the evening breeze, popped ears, whiskers, tiny pink noses, and tails. First twenty, then fifty, then hundreds of brown field mice filled Marcel’s view.

  A plump mouse with an acorn-cap hat came forward. He took off his hat and bowed. “I, Mayor Mortodellus Mousekin, would like to thank you for your service and welcome you to Mousekinland.”

  Marcel pinched himself. He blinked a few times and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

  Was he dreaming? This couldn’t be real, could it? It was too alike.

  His flying box had landed in Mousekinland? Had it any relation to Munchkinland?

  He must be dreaming, Marcel decided. Or he was dead.

  Yes, probably dead.

  Just then, a tiny pebble shot out from behind a milkweed pod and thunk! It lodged itself in a Fruit Gem a small mouse was attempting to sneak away. The mouse squeaked and ran off.

  Marcel watched as Mayor Mousekin’s face grew pink. Then red. He turned around. The rest of the village followed suit.

  “Scarlet Mousekin, put that sling-shooter away this instant!” he bellowed.

  A pair of tiny ears and a little whiskered face popped out from behind the belly of the milkweed pod. The face frowned.

  “But, Papa!”

  “Not a word!” shouted the mouse mayor. “Not a single word. Get down from there this instant and greet our guest.”

  “But those—”

  “Nope, nein, nyet!”

  “But—”

  “Enough!” The mayor threw down his acorn cap. “No daughter of mine will behave like a common varmint! Get ahold of yourself, girl!” He turned back to Marcel with an embarrassed smile. The sea of villagers did the same. “My apologies. My daughter—she’s young and, well, opinionated. Gets ideas in her head… you understand.”