The Hedgehog of Oz Read online

  Marcel didn’t, but he nodded anyway.

  “You’ll stay the night, won’t you? As our esteemed guest?” He pointed to the striped tail snaking out from under Marcel’s box. “She’s prowled the east field ever since she found us here. We owe you a debt of thanks.” He turned to face the village, grabbed Marcel’s free hand, and held it high.

  “I hereby declare a holiday! A night off is certainly deserved, and we have reason to celebrate! The milk snake is dead!”

  At these words, the village erupted in cheers. Caps spun dizzily into the air. Tiny mouselings drooled at the prospect of roasted seeds and berry tarts.

  Marcel cleared his throat. “I do need to be getting back,” he tried to tell the mayor, thinking of his theater, the hens. But the ruckus drowned him out.

  Scrambling up to her father’s side, the little mouse from the milkweed pod narrowed her eyes at Marcel. Marcel shielded Toto as best he could.

  As the cheering of Mousekins died, Marcel tried again. “Auntie Hen and Uncle Henrietta will be worried,” he told the mayor.

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow. There will be plenty of time for that tomorrow,” assured Mayor Mousekin. And as he said this, he plucked his daughter’s sling-shooter out of her hands and stashed it under his cap. “Off to bed with you now, Scarlet,” he told the mouse. “It’s getting late and we can’t be too careful. There will be other parties.”

  It was the little mouse’s turn to flush an angry red. She stomped off.

  But not before shooting Marcel a venomous look.

  “We’ll get you on your way tomorrow,” the mayor repeated before turning to leave. “No doubt about it.”

  The sun began to slip, taking the light slowly with it, and Marcel was left standing there as the whole village scattered before him. The green moth floated down beside him. He felt a sort of comfort as he watched Oona’s wings open and close. It was like watching a flower bloom.

  Ruby slippers wouldn’t help, but maybe this moth could, he thought.

  (Magic was a nice idea, but it certainly wasn’t practical.)

  “Do you think you could help me?” he asked. “Help me get back to the hens? I need to get back as soon as possible.”

  Oona rested a small, furred foot on his paw. “Not so fast. It’s almost dark, and there are far worse things out there in the dark than you can see now in the light. Eat. Get some rest. I suspect you have a long journey… ahead?”

  At her words, Marcel felt his head throb. His legs, which had held up so well during the strain of the day, wobbled. His eyelids felt heavy.

  A journey was not what he wanted to hear.

  A long journey was the last thing he wanted to hear.

  As all of Mousekinland bustled about, gathering food and making preparations for a night of merriment, Oona leaned close.

  “Rest now,” she said. “Tomorrow you begin.”

  CHAPTER 6 Scarecrow

  MORNING DAWNED WITH ORANGE SKIES and birdsong, and Mousekinland was abuzz. The last days of autumn were upon them. Winter was drawing near. Since their latest move, the whole town had been well behind schedule. Days, nights—it didn’t matter. There was work to do.

  Mice, young and old, scurried by. One with a seed caught in its teeth, another pulling a cart full of acorns. A school of youngsters shouldered leafy packs stuffed with the last wrinkled blackberries of fall.

  A round mouse with big eyes and a scruffy look, trying to catch up to his classmates, dropped a berry from his pack. It rolled down a short hill into Marcel’s borrowed burrow and bopped him on the nose, startling him out of his sleepy daze.

  Marcel blinked a few times. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He sighed deeply.

  The night before had been a carnival of feasting and dancing—grass pipes and reedy flutes singing; laughing fiddles, strung with silk spiderwebs, twinging. Mushroom-cap drums had thumped into the air, while the sparks of tiny fires lifted to join the stars. The smell of roasted acorns, marsh onions, and the sweet scent of apples warming on stones curled deliciously into the night.

  And Marcel, longing for the safety of his popcorn-tub house, had watched into the wee hours, his thoughts turning again and again to a different night.

  One with dark trees. Screeching birds. The wind wailing like the Wicked Witch. The first of many nights he’d spent in the wild, very lost and far from home. The night he’d lost her. Dorothy.

  But the boy, he reminded himself. The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound.

  They were proof it never could’ve been different.

  Marcel took a deep breath, put on his cracked spectacles, and went over the prior day’s events.

  Leaving the theater. His box. The milk snake. Oona and Mousekinland.

  A journey. He sighed again.

  He’d best get to it.

  Marcel grabbed Toto and, finding a small cart nearby, he loaded his Fruit Gems and headed toward the smell of breakfast—past a troop of mice hoarding corn kernels in a rotting log; past a group huddled over a long Mousekinland table with tiny needles and thread, sewing sumac leaves into blankets; past others stacking honeycomb in wobbly towers.

  In the center of town on a rocky platform, the mayor orchestrated the harvest symphony. His eyes fell on Marcel and he scrambled down. “Aha! And how were your accommodations? Comfortable, I hope! Yes, well, it must have been. Looks like you’ve slept the day away.”

  Marcel looked to the sun just now creeping over the horizon and wondered how long the mice of Mousekinland had been up. “It was very comfortable. Thank you,” he replied. “The grass was… soft.”

  “Good, good. We do pride ourselves on our hospitable lodgings.”

  Marcel looked around. The field positively fluttered with activity, but nowhere did he see the green moth. “Where’s Oona?”

  “Oona?” said the mayor absentmindedly. His eyes followed a small band of mouselings rolling a bruised apple toward a hole in the ground. One mouse, happily chomping on a clover leaf, pushed with a single claw.

  The mayor clapped his paws sharply, and the youngster nearly leapt out of his fur. Mayor Mousekin gave him a stern look before turning back to Marcel. “Now, then? Oh yes. Oona. The moth, yes? I say, we only met her just yesterday. Couldn’t tell you where she flew off to.”

  “But…” Marcel felt his heart beat a little faster, a bead of sweat gathered on his brow.

  In The Wizard of Oz it was the wise and beautiful Glinda who told Dorothy Gale to follow the yellow brick road, Glinda who helped her get back to Kansas—home. Marcel wasn’t expecting magic after his conversation with Oona, of course, but he trusted her somehow. He would’ve liked to ask her for directions at least.

  “I—I thought she’d help me get back to the theater,” he stammered.

  “The theater?” The mayor frowned. “Just go back the way you came. That’s what we mice do when we’ve ventured off. Just sniff around a bit. The nose picks up all sorts of clues.”

  Marcel clutched Toto a little tighter. “But I came a long way. In a truck! I didn’t leave a trail to sniff.” His voice wavered a little and he tried to steady it.

  “Hmm. That is a problem,” said the mayor, scratching his chin. “Wish we could be of assistance. But we’re in our busiest season, you know, and trying to make up for lost time.”

  “But you said—”

  “Take what you need—food, supplies. Or not. You’re welcome to stay here too, of course.” The mayor went on. “Nothing wrong with picking up and putting down roots elsewhere when times get tough.”

  Just then a loud CRACK echoed through the air. A wave of corn kernels spilled from the log, and the mayor squeaked in shocked alarm. “You’ll forgive me!” he shouted to Marcel as he scrambled off his platform. “We’ve got a leak! This’ll set us back days!”

  “Can I help?” Marcel called after him. But the mayor waved him off.

  “No, no, we’ve got our systems!”

  Marcel watched as the mayor joined the rest of Mousekinland rushin
g to the log, gathering kernels by hand and working to save their winter stores. He bit his lip as he looked down at Toto and patted the little cocoon. It wriggled contentedly.

  “I guess we’re on our own,” he said quietly.

  (He tried hard to sound assuring.)

  Marcel found a cart piled high with leaf sacks and selected one off the top. He stuffed his Fruit Gems inside and threw it over his shoulder. He took another sack and tore a corner away to make a pouch for Toto and settled the cocoon snuggly inside. He strapped that on too. The pouch fit close to his furry heart. Marcel looked down at Toto and bit his lip. His legs felt heavy already.

  But not as heavy as his heart did.

  “Psst!”

  Marcel looked up and squinted.

  “Psst!”

  Marcel turned. An eyeball appeared between two blades of grass.

  “Follow the yellow stink-water!” said a familiar-sounding voice. It tinkled like a broken bell.

  “Follow the—”

  “Follow the—just get to the road! Up the hill!” it ordered. The blades of grass popped back into place, and a rustle was heard through the grasses beyond.

  Marcel looked back at the village of Mousekinland. Mice scurried frantically from marsh to mushroom, knot to knoll, from leaf to log, the whole town employed with the important work of salvaging their harvest.

  Maybe he should wait and talk to the mayor again. Maybe one of the mice had traveled to the city and could give him a map.

  Marcel turned back to where the voice had disappeared.

  But the hens, he thought to himself. Had they returned to the balcony? Were they hiding in the air shaft? Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t hard to imagine the two sisters still stuck in the elevator with the enormous pile of candy they’d managed to collect that day. If Marcel didn’t return soon, who knows how many Cinnamon Snaps Auntie would stuff herself with.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d made herself sick….

  And Uncle Henrietta always had a bad feeling about that metal box….

  There wasn’t time to wait, Marcel decided.

  He’d gamble on the voice.

  The farther Marcel got from Mousekinland, the quieter it became. Up the hill, the voice had said. As he climbed, all was the shushing of grass and the distant honking of geese. He found the trace of a matted path and followed it. The road was near. He could smell the rubber tires and motor oil of days gone by. But where exactly had that voice run off to?

  Marcel came to the roadside. The packed dirt and gravel ran as far as the eye could see, and was buttressed by fields and roofed by a pale-blue sky. For miles, nothing stirred. There wasn’t a car to be seen, not a truck to be heard. This was a lonely country road.

  Marcel steadied his glasses, secured his pack, and stepped out of the grass slowly, carefully. Toto stirred against his chest.

  The voice had said something about stink-water, hadn’t it? Yellow stink-water. The only yellow in sight was a patch of goldenrod. It waved at him.

  Marcel trotted a few yards to the left. He turned and went a few steps to the right. “Hello?” he called. “Hello? Are you there?”

  There was no sign of the voice.

  “What do you think, Toto?” he asked the cocoon. “Right or left?”

  Marcel waited, hoping Toto might signal to him in some itty-bitty way, and held his breath. He didn’t want to miss it.

  But the warm cocoon was still. Toto must have fallen asleep.

  Just sniff around a bit, the mayor had said, and Marcel could think of nothing else but to take this advice, so he sniffed for any hints.

  Sniff. The tang of dried grass.

  Sniff. The fading perfume of a few dying daisies and goldenrod.

  Sniff. Sunshine, clean and musky.

  Sniff. And the Fruit Gems in his pack. His stomach rumbled.

  Maybe a snack would help.

  Marcel pulled the pack from his shoulder, shoved a hand inside, and was about to pull out a Gem, when a tiny voice sounded high above him.

  “Don’t even think about it,” it said.

  On the side of the road, atop a leaning wooden fence post and gold with sun, stood the small mouse from yesterday. She wore a walnut-shell shield of sorts strapped to her chest. A green leaf-cape slipped down her back, and her old sling-shooter was tucked in a belt made of braided weeds. A sack of sharp pebbles dangled from her belt.

  Bony arms thrust out at angles and hands on her hips, she looked like a tiny scarecrow standing over the field. She glared at him and crossed her arms.

  “Oh,” said Marcel. “It’s you. Hello again.”

  The tiny mouse ignored him. She slid down a broken piece of fence and landed nearby. She thrust out an open paw. “Hand them over,” she demanded.

  Marcel stepped back. “Hand what over?”

  Her frown deepened. “You know what. Those awful gooey fruits you got.” She moved her paw closer.

  Marcel clutched the leaf-pack tighter. “But they’re—”

  “But nothing,” the mouse interrupted, stomping over and grabbing the sack out of Marcel’s paws.

  Marcel looked down at her. She wasn’t bigger than four pieces of popcorn stacked one on top of the other. He swallowed.

  She threw the sack down in front of her, and it burst open like a treasure chest. The Gems gleamed.

  “Nobody listens to the smallest mouse. Everybody thinks they know better,” she griped, bending over and taking a strawberry Fruit Gem in each paw.

  Marcel cleared his throat lightly. “But what do you want them for?”

  “For this.”

  Marcel watched as the little mouse tossed the Gems over her shoulder, where they bounced off a bit of fencing, sailed through the air, and with two definitive plops, disappeared into a puddle. Marcel swallowed again.

  “You can’t just traipse into the east field with weird new fruits and not expect someone to come sniffing around. It’s highly dangerous! And that color! That green! Soon as I saw it, I knew you needed help. It’s downright unnatural! We got eagles in these parts, you know!” The mouse kicked away the remaining Gems, snatched up the empty sack and shoved it in Marcel’s direction. “Nobody ever listens to the smallest mouse, but I’ll show them. Here!”

  Marcel took the sack from her microscopic paw. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t know! But I do!” she cried. She turned then and began marching down the middle of the road. Marcel followed…

  But only after he’d gone and saved as many Gems as he could and stuffed them back in his pack, careful to keep any unnatural colors out of sight.

  He wasn’t about to throw away his only snack. He’d been hungry before.

  Marcel looked in the sack.

  Limes again. He sighed. Always limes.

  Marcel caught up to the mouse, who was in the middle of some sort of speech.

  “… It’s like I always say. You can’t just run every time.” She patted her sling-shooter. “You gotta carry some weapons! Nobody has any defensive instincts around here, and they think I’m the one who’s lost her mind. Always keeping me cooped up. Never letting me do anything! Saying I’m accident prone!” She trailed off a little. “Well, there was that thing with the fire, but that wasn’t my fault. I’ve got ideas! I’ll show them!” She turned quickly, narrowed her eyes at Marcel, and pointed the tiniest claw in Marcel’s direction. “And you’re going to help me!”

  “I am?” he answered.

  She nodded. “Yup! Come on, prickly thing. I’m gonna get you home. I’ll prove to him I know a thing or two about a thing or two. I’m brave, and I can take care of myself! And you!” She began to stomp down the road. “We’re gonna work together. Like a trade!”

  “You’re going to help me get back to the theater?” Marcel felt his chest fill. A hard lump caught in his throat.

  “Oh, sure!” The little mouse turned around, took one look at him, and rolled her eyes. “It’s not like it’s a b
ig deal. Everyone’s always taking expeditions for this or that. It’s what we mice do. And anyway, it’s my chance to show ’em what I’m made of.”

  “All by yourself?”

  Marcel watched as the mouse opened her mouth. He thought he saw one eye twitch ever so slightly.

  “Yea—yeah,” she stammered at last. “Of course by myself! I do it all the time.”

  “And your father said it was okay?”

  A crease lodged itself in the mouse’s forehead. “Enough with the questions, you overgrown thistle. I know what I’m doing, and it’s all just fine. Don’t you worry your prickly little head about it.”

  “All right. If you say so,” said Marcel. “But can I ask one more question?”

  “No.”

  Maybe not a question, then. But introductions were important.

  Marcel took a step forward and gestured to the sack strapped to his chest. “This—this is Toto. And I’m Marcel. I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance. Your name’s Scarlet, isn’t it?”

  She huffed. “That depends,” she said gruffly. “My father calls me Scarlet, but everyone else calls me Scamp.”

  “Why don’t they call you Scarlet?”

  The mouse didn’t hesitate. She whipped the shooter from her belt, snatched a pebble, flung it inside the pocket of the sling, and fired it into the air. It sailed off and disappeared into the bright-orange leaves of a nearby tree.

  A loud caw! cracked the air, and a large black crow flew up and away toward a line of trees in the distance, complaining as it went.

  “I didn’t hurt him,” said Scamp. “Just gave him a good scare.”

  “Wow,” said Marcel. It was like something from a movie.

  “Crows eat mice, you know.” She holstered her sling-shooter and straightened her shoulders. “They call me Scamp because I’m wily. You don’t want to mess with me.”

  “Scamp. I…” Marcel wanted to ask one more time if she was doubly sure it was okay with her father that she join him, but from the look on the mouse’s face, he knew there’d be trouble to pay. “I—I’m glad to have you along, Scamp.” Awkwardly, he put out a sweaty paw to shake.