The Hedgehog of Oz Read online

  (She made him a little nervous.)

  Scamp gave Marcel’s paw one firm pump. “Charmed,” she said. She noticed, then, Marcel’s bulging leaf-sack. “Heyyy… what’s in there? You didn’t—”

  “What, th-this?” Marcel stammered, feeling his face grow hot.

  The Fruit Gems had to stay secret; he had a few ideas about what they might be good for. Marcel lied. “Rocks!” he said, a little too loud. “It’s filled with rocks. It’s good for, uh… the muscles!”

  Scamp looked dubious.

  “And, um, weaponry and such! Ammunition!” Marcel cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Well, uh, what’s next?” he asked, peering off at the road rushing in opposite directions.

  Scamp still looked doubtful, but she pointed north. “Up ahead. The yellow stink-water.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Scamp trotted a few paces and knelt down. “There. See that? It’s stink-water. It came from your truck.”

  Marcel inspected it. He sniffed.

  Paint! It was the yellow paint that had spilled in the truck bed! And sure enough, golden drips and drabs leapt out from the dusty road as far as the eye could see.

  “If we follow it, it should lead you back to that truck,” said the mouse.

  A sharp cry sounded high overhead.

  Marcel rolled up in a ball. Scamp ducked and expertly pulled her cape and shield over her head to hide. Her nose peeked out of the hood, and she searched the sky with two sparkling black eyes.

  There was nothing but miles of blue and a few wispy clouds.

  “We keep one eye on the sky and the other on the road. And we stop at night. Come on,” said Scamp.

  Marcel followed obediently, and with each drop of stink-water paint they passed, he felt his heart grow lighter.

  It wasn’t ruby slippers or a flying balloon like the Wizard of Oz had, but a trail? A yellow stink-water road?

  It sounded just as good.

  CHAPTER 7 Nose and Noggin

  SPLASH AFTER SPLASH, SPLATTER AFTER splotch, Marcel and Scamp followed the stink-water road as the sun climbed higher.

  They continued as the sun lingered for lunch. (Marcel and Scamp lingered over a few berries they’d found growing on a bush next to the road, suffering several thorns in the process.)

  They followed the trail long after the sun had sunk low in the sky.

  And with every drop of paint, Marcel found himself remembering. He couldn’t help it.

  The last time he’d done anything close to following a trail like this was a few days after Dorothy had brought him home.

  He remembered her opening his cage. She’d thought it would cheer him up to explore a bit. “Go ahead,” she’d said. “My home is yours now.”

  Wary, he’d hidden deep under the bureau by the stairs, where she couldn’t reach him. Dorothy had lain on her stomach for hours trying to coax him out.

  “Come on, Marcel,” she’d pleaded. “You’re safe here. Just come out. I won’t hurt you.”

  There are a lot of ways to get hurt, he wanted to tell her. I’m not so worried about a bump or a bruise. And he remembered noticing for the first time how brown her eyes were. Brown with flecks of gold.

  Those eyes kept pleading. “Come on,” she’d said. “Where’s your courage? It only takes a little, you know.”

  Instead, he shook and chittered at her. Every time she slipped her hand under the bureau, he’d jump so that his quills grazed her fingertips, and she’d pull her hand away in pain. It was like a dance. Him quaking. Her following his every move. He was never coming out from under there. Never.

  It was a trail of gingersnap crumbs that changed his mind.

  Sometimes a trail is all it takes to lead you home.

  It was like that with her. Dorothy always had a way of knowing just what he liked. Not bugs and mealworms like other hedgehogs. It just so happened that all his favorite things were her favorites too. Snacks in general, but gingersnaps, popcorn, banana slices with a swipe of peanut butter, scrambled eggs with hot dogs…

  Show tunes and old movies.

  Bubble baths and fuzzy blankets.

  The smell of lavender fabric softener.

  It was like they were made for each other.

  And maybe they were. For a little while anyway.

  It didn’t matter. Maybe he and Dorothy were made for each other, but that was the past. That one decision more than six months ago now had changed everything.

  The boy. It all started with that boy—Ethan.

  The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound.

  “Most mice think the nose is the only true way to sniff out food or danger, but oh no,” Scamp was shouting from up ahead.

  Marcel’s memories hitched themselves to a cloud and floated away.

  “Noses aren’t the only thing! Not at all,” said Scamp. “You gotta use your instincts, your noggin! That’s how I found this stink-water trail here. I knew there had to be a clue to get you back. A good sniffer isn’t the only badge of honor a mouse has. And keeping out of trouble isn’t always the best thing, I always say!”

  Scamp did talk a lot, Marcel thought. From the moment they started out, she seemed to stuff every available minute with words—well, excepting the time Marcel had inquired about a charred field of soybeans they’d passed. “Mind your business,” she’d said simply. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  The mouse stopped walking now to let Marcel catch up. She grabbed a pebble and aimed her sling-shooter at the dried-up carcass of a cicada a few yards away. When the pebble hit, it exploded into a puff of dust. “Yep. Trouble comes looking for you. It’s best to be prepared, carry a weapon. I need a sword.”

  “Do you think we should stop for a rest?” Marcel asked when he reached her. His feet were sore from the sharp grit of the road, and he’d been lagging behind the last hour. His stomach growled angrily.

  But Scamp started moving again, a kick in her step. “It’s at least an hour before dark. We’ll stop then. It’s safer to travel during the day.”

  They were going uphill now, huffing and puffing and choking on the dust of the road. The hill crested a way off, the road disappearing somewhere beyond.

  They passed two ducks bathing in a puddle. To the right, the wild grasses ended, and a field of brown and bent corn stalks sprang up.

  A fat cricket scuttled across the road. As they went by, he chirped them a farewell song. Nearing the top of the rise, as Marcel turned to give the friendly fellow a wave goodbye, he bumped into Scamp and nearly bowled her over.

  “Watch it, Spike!” she barked.

  “Sorry,” he replied. “Why did we stop? Are you hungry too?” He was hoping this was the case. He was more than ready for a snack.

  Scamp pointed at the ground in front of them. “That. That’s why we stopped.”

  Marcel looked to where she was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly,” said the little mouse. “The trail dried up. The stink-water’s gone.”

  Marcel looked again and felt his stomach sink. The last drips of paint had been few and far between. They stood over the last golden drop and stared at it. “What now?” he asked.

  “We use our noggins,” Scamp announced. “We gotta listen to our common sense.”

  “What does it say?” asked Marcel.

  “What does it…?” Scamp fixed two piercing eyes on his. “You see any trucks growing wings and flying off lately? We keep to the road, of course!”

  Marcel’s cheeks pinked. “Oh. Right.”

  Scamp turned and began to hike the last few steps to the top of the hill. “Forget the nose—use your noggin! That’s what I always say. A mind’s got all sorts of ideas! Not that anybody listens to the smallest mouse. It really wasn’t my fault. Accidents just happen sometimes, you know? Who knew soybeans were so flammable? But my brain says we just follow this road and—” She stopped walking.

  At the top of the ridge, Scamp stared ahead, mouth slightly open, her words still dang
ling from the tip of her tiny pink tongue. Marcel climbed the last few steps and followed her gaze.

  On the other side of the hill, the road fell away…

  And dissolved into a knot of roads, three of them, sprinting off in every direction.

  “Ohhh,” breathed Marcel.

  Scamp swallowed. “A minor setback. Shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll… we’ll just, uh, sniff it out when we get to the fork. Yeah.” She gave a little cough. “It’s like I always say: the nose always knows!”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “The nose always knows sometimes, Marcel.”

  It took patience, but the trek downhill was far easier than the climb. By the time they reached the crossing, the sun was an angry fireball in the sky, low and sinking lower. The light was fading.

  The mouse and the hedgehog and his cocoon stood in the middle of the cross section of country road. They surveyed each option carefully. Scamp sniffed so deeply her whiskers curled up her nose. “Well? What do you smell? Any stink-water?”

  Marcel closed his eyes and took in a long whiff.

  The scent of a million moldering corncobs.

  Something rotten, but sweet—an apple core, perhaps.

  A pine forest. Or a pine air freshener. One of the two. And…

  Was it…?

  Popcorn?

  Marcel sniffed again, and this time his eyes went wide behind the rims of his glasses. “Popcorn!” he cried. This was different from a cornfield or corncobs. It was: “Buttered popcorn! I’d know that smell anywhere!” And he would. Marcel knew that smell better than any nose in the world.

  “Popcorn?” Scamp said dubiously. She sniffed again too. “You mean… whizzlepop?”

  Now it was Marcel’s turn to question. “Whizzlepop?”

  “Yeah, you know. When corn whizzles over the fire, then pops into a flower? Whizzlepop!”

  Marcel giggled. “I call it popcorn. But I like whizzlepop, too.”

  “I smell it,” said Scamp. “I do smell it.”

  Marcel stood on tiptoe and tried to catch another whiff. At length, a breeze came, and sure enough, the road to the right of them carried a distinct buttery air. “It’s that way,” said Marcel, pointing. “It smells like the theater. I think we go that way.”

  Scamp looked at him, one eyebrow cocked. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” answered Marcel. “I think I’m sure.”

  Scamp nodded. “Sounds sensical to me.”

  They turned down the popcorn-scented road, following their noses, trusting their instincts.

  They hadn’t traveled far before the light became too hard to see by.

  “Do you think we should stop?” Marcel asked.

  “ ’Course not,” said Scamp, hiking up her belt.

  But five steps and a stumble later Scamp piped up again. “Here’s good. Let’s stop for the night. We can sleep just inside the cornfield there. The road’ll be there in the morning.”

  Scamp did seem to change her mind a lot, Marcel thought.

  But relieved at the prospect of food and rest, Marcel put it out of mind. Soon they were scouring up dinner, filling their bellies, fluffing corn husks for beds, and settling in as the last light melted away.

  Marcel tucked Toto under a husk close to his side. Scamp used her cape as a blanket and lay on her back, gazing past the cornstalks into the starry night. She shivered.

  “Harvest is almost over,” she murmured. “It’ll be harder to catch up once the snow’s here.”

  Marcel thought about this. He’d never had to worry about finding and storing food for winter. The theater had an endless supply of Cinnamon Snaps and Coco-nutties, heaps of Fruit Gems (lime). How much did a whole village of mice need? And for an entire winter?

  “Did the Mousekins stop up that leaking log, you think?” he asked.

  Scamp didn’t answer right away. “Probably. Not that it’s enough. They don’t tell me much, but we’ve only got enough to last about half the winter.”

  “But everyone was working so hard.”

  “We’re behind. We’ve had to move five times this year,” Scamp explained.

  “Why?”

  “Reasons,” Scamp mumbled. “They weren’t all my fault.”

  “That must’ve been a lot of work.” Marcel knew what it was like to move a lot, but he’d never taken a whole town with him.

  Scamp scoffed at this. “Everyone’s so busy, they probably don’t even realize I’m gone.”

  Marcel frowned, confused. “But you told your father, remember?”

  “Right,” Scamp said softly. “Sure I told him. Anyway, quit being so nosy.”

  Something howled far away. They froze and listened.

  All that sounded was the wind in the corn.

  But now Marcel’s mind was turning. Night in the city was one thing. Night in the country was quite another. Foxes, coyotes, snakes…

  “I was wondering,” he whispered to the mouse. “Do you think there are snakes around here too? And could you tell me more about the milk snake? The one my box dropped on? Oona said she was like a—a witch. Well, was she?”

  “There’s only one witch in these parts,” Scamp answered matter-of-factly.

  Wondering what she meant, Marcel peeked over at Scamp. She didn’t say anything for a while.

  “It would’ve worked, you know,” she said finally. “My idea.”

  Marcel lay very still, listening.

  “The fire was a bad idea—you can’t control it. But my pulley…,” said Scamp.

  “Pulley?”

  “Yeah, I call it a pulley, because you pull things up… or lower them down. But I call it a pulley.”

  “Like an elevator,” said Marcel.

  “It’s my invention,” Scamp said. “Anyway, I sewed this net and attached it to the pulley, so that when the milk snake came sneaking around, I’d trap her.”

  “Wow.”

  “Mice have all sorts of things that hunt them. Snakes, and worse things. You can’t always run away. Sometimes you gotta fight!”

  “So why didn’t you?” asked Marcel. “Why didn’t you trap the snake?”

  Scamp rubbed at her eyes. She scratched ferociously at a spot on her chin. She turned on her side away from him.

  “You beat me to it” was the last thing Marcel heard her say.

  * * *

  Something woke him.

  He wasn’t sure what. But something definitely woke him.

  Marcel sat up in the dark and put on his glasses. Scamp lay next to him, curled under her leaf-cape, snoring. Marcel grabbed Toto and crept to a nearby spot where the cornstalks opened up a little further and looked up at the sky.

  The stars winked at him coldly.

  They always did.

  He was about to turn away, when, in a flash, a group of stars seemed to blow out and flare again. Something whipped by. A leaf, perhaps? A bird? Marcel blinked and felt his quills prickle.

  Was something there? He listened hard but heard nothing. Just the cackle of corn husks.

  His heart began to beat fast. A sudden fear trickled down his spine.

  “Scamp?” he called timidly.

  Suddenly Marcel felt a sharp wind above, and he rolled quickly into a ball. Something grazed his face.

  His glasses. They were on his face, and now they weren’t.

  He heard them drop to the dirt somewhere behind him. Had something—the wind?—snatched them up just then. Or…

  Someone.

  A patter of quick feet sounded at his back. Marcel thought he might faint.

  “Get up, you horse chestnut! Run!”

  Marcel popped out of a ball just as Scamp tore past, tossing him his glasses. By a stroke of blind luck, he caught them.

  “Get up!” Scamp screamed over her shoulder. Marcel obeyed.

  But not before he knew why.

  Scamp ran as though lightning were licking her tail.

  “The witch!” she screamed. “It’s Wickedwing!”

 
CHAPTER 8 Bucket of Rust

  THEY RAN. PAST A MILLION cornstalks. This way, that. Left and right.

  They ran and ran and ran.

  The ground tore at Marcel’s feet. His lungs ached. He feared he hadn’t strapped Toto tight enough beneath his chin. He wouldn’t lose the little cocoon.

  More than once Marcel felt a very real presence at his back. Something nearly upon him. But he raced on, Scamp ahead, her tail flying pin straight behind her.

  “There! Up there!” Scamp shouted. “I see something!”

  In the dark ahead, in a small clearing, a large object glinted silvery and green under the stars. They ran for it.

  The great hulk of an old tractor lay wounded in the field, one monstrous wheel broken beneath it, the other bracing the body but leaving it grossly aslant. Tall weeds grew up and around and through it. “Get in!” yelled Scamp as she barreled through the weeds and up the tractor’s iron belly.

  They flew into the clanging guts of the beast. Scamp poked around easily, quickly finding a black cavity, which they tumbled inside. They froze. Hearts racing, two sets of ears pricked up lickety-split, listening for any sign of whatever was chasing them.

  The only sound was their hammering chests. And then…

  Clank… clang… donggggg… scratch. Something clanked heavily against the metal skin of the tractor—the sound of clawed feet. The tractor groaned. Marcel held his breath.

  It felt like hours before he let it go.

  The two travelers (and Toto) waited. Listened. Wrung their paws. At the sound of doves and sparrows twittering in the corn, there was a crunch of dried leaves. Scamp leaned back against the cold metal beside him. “I think she’s gone,” she said, sighing deeply. “The birds. They wouldn’t be singing if she were close.”

  Toto wriggled against Marcel’s chest, and Marcel laid a hand on the little pouch to make sure Toto was okay after the night’s ordeal. “That was—that was—” Marcel could barely bring himself to say it. “The witch?”

  Scamp was fiddling with something in the dark next to her. “Yes,” she answered. “That was Wickedwing.”

  Marcel didn’t like the sound of this at all. It was a little too much like The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch. Marcel swallowed. “And what is she?”