House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

In every mouse's long life, there comes a time when ancestral voices tell him to move on. Pedlar, a yellow-necked mouse, has reached that point. Told to leave the Hedgerow and go on a long journey, the adventurous mouse says his farewells and sets out for a far-distant country knows as The House. Reaching his destination, Pedlar enters a strange new world inhabited by many warring tribes: the Stinkhorns of the cellar, the great Savage Tribe in the kitchen, the library Bookeaters, the Invisibles, the Deathshead and the rebellious 13-K Gang. During his stay, Pedlar witnesses a momentous truce, in which the tribes come together at an Allthing meeting and decide to rid themselves of the greatest pests in The House, the greedy, stupid nudniks - the humans. And so the Great Nudnik Drive is set in motion, a time of considerable anxiety for the nudniks, when clocks strike twenty and inanimate objects seem to have a life of their own. Ranged against the mouse tribes are the nudniks' allies: the two cats, Eyeball the Burmese blue and Spitz the ginger tom; the Headhunter, a barbarian human child; and Little Prince, the Headhunter's cannibalistic pet white mouse. The House becomes a hotbed of riot and discord, until Pedlar finally comes up with a solution. The outcome of this heroic struggle has gone down in the annals of mouse history, a history tens of thousands of days long, and the whole remarkable tale is recorded here, between these pages.

Release date: June 24, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 428

Sample

OUTSIDERS

PEDLAR

Yellow-necked hedgerow mouse, hero of the novel, a wandering mouse.

TINKER

Pedlar’s cousin in the Hedgerow.

DIDDYCOY

Old yellow-necked Hedgerow sage.

STONE

Dormouse, lives by the garden privy, a Green who advocates getting-back-to-nature.

TUNNELLER

Common shrew who lives in a maze of tunnels underneath the house, bad-tempered and a ruthless fighter.

ULUG BEG

Ancient unknown species of mouse, hermit who lives in an abandoned tree-house in the garden.

SAVAGE TRIBE (KITCHEN MICE)

GORM-THE-OLD

House mouse, chieftain of the Savage Tribe, barbarian and thug.

ASTRID

House mouse, high priestess of Savage Tribe, talker to shadows.

HAKON

House mouse, Gorm’s brother and principal double.

TOSTIG

House mouse, Gorm’s brother and secondary double.

THORKILS THREELEGS

House mouse, foul-tempered invalid.

GUNHILD

House mouse, fond of military discipline, eventually defects to the 13-K Gang.

JARL FORKWHISKERS

House mouse, self-trained assassin.

Other members of Savage Tribe include: Gytha Finewhiskers, Skuli, Ketil, Elfwin.

BOOKEATER TRIBE (LIBRARY MICE)

FRYCH-THE-FRECKLED

House mouse, leader of the Bookeater Tribe, into witchcraft and black magic.

IAGO

House mouse, book gourmet, expert on paper eating.

GRUFFYDD GREENTOOTH

House mouse, self-claimed sorcerer and magician.

ELISEDD

House mouse, the youngster who discovers Little Prince.

Other members of the Bookeater Tribe include: Owain, Hywel-the-bad, Ethil-the-bald, Cadwallon, Mefyn, Rhodri, Marredud, Nesta.

DEATHSHEAD (SPIRITUAL WARRIORS)

I-KUCHENG

Yellow-necked mouse, wandering judge to whom the Goddess Unn has given special duties.

SKRANG

Yellow-necked mouse, protector of I-kucheng.

IBAN

Yellow-necked mouse, follows Yo and the path of chastity, forever failing.

THE INVISIBLES (ATTIC MICE)

WHISPERSOFT

Wood mouse, brash and noisy leader of his tribe.

TREADLIGHTLY

Yellow-necked mouse, heavy-footed doe who becomes involved with Pedlar.

GOINGDOWNFAST

Wood mouse, excellent swimmer, deadly enemy of Kellog the roof rat.

FALLINGOFF-THINGS

Wood mouse, excellent balancer, can walk a tightrope in a high wind.

NONSENSICAL

Wood mouse, mate of Goingdownfast.

FEROCIOUS

Wood mouse, meek and mild character and friend to Pedlar.

TIMOROUS

Wood mouse, rival and political foe of Goingdownfast.

HEARALLTHINGS

Wood mouse, deaf, friends with the grandfather clock, pianist.

MISERABLE

Wood mouse, brother of Goingdown-fast.

STINKHORN TRIBE (CELLAR MICE)

PHART

House mouse, so-called chieftain of his tribe of two, flea-infested habitual drunk, reprobate and rogue.

FLEGM

House mouse, side-kick of Phart with all Phart’s vices.

13-K GANG (LEAN-TO WOODSHED REBELS)

ULF

House mouse, son of Gorm-the-old, dedicated terrorist and dissident, leader of the 13-K Gang.

DRENCHIE

House mouse, Ulf’s female companion, complainer and unhappy soul.

HIGHSTANDER

Wood mouse, hates heights, rival to Ulf.

OTHER HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS

NUDNIKS

Human beings, large useless creatures who eat enormous quantities of food.

HEADHUNTER

Small deadly nudnik forever torturing and murdering mice.

EYEBALL

Burmese blue female cat, hides in the shadows, incredibly fast.

SPITZ

Old ginger torn cat, slower than Eyeball.

WITLESS

Senile old spaniel.

MERCIFUL

Cold and deadly little owl, lives in the attics, named by the Invisibles.

KELLOG

Old ship (or roof) rat, lives on the other side of the water tank, deadly enemy of Goingdownfast.

LITTLE PRINCE

White mouse, pet of the Headhunter, cannibal.

THE SHADOWS

Astrid’s friends and confidants.

LIKE THEIR AGE-OLD ENEMIES, MICE TOO CAN BE consumed by curiosity.

Pedlar had heard about the House, ever since his birth. It stood three fields away – too far away to be able to see it from his Hedgerow – but stories about the House had travelled with the travellers. Wandering rodents had entertained the hedges and ditches with tales about the House.

It was a place where mice lived in comfort, they said, warm all the year round. It was a place where food was in plenty, whatever the season, whatever the weather. It was a place where a variety of different species of mice made nests above ground, yet still remained out of the rain, out of the wind, out of reach of the fox and weasel, the stoat and hawk.

However, when Pedlar asked his older cousin, Tinker, about the House, he received the reply, ‘You don’t want to go near there – place is crawling with nudniks, so I hear. Dirty creatures. Never wash themselves, so I’m told. They don’t bend in the middle very well and their tongues are too short. I never heard of a nudnik even licking between its toes… must be covered in lice, they must. Fancy not being able to nip the fleas on your own belly – it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’

‘I wasn’t thinking about the nudniks – everyone knows what bumbling oafs they are. No, I was just wondering about the House itself. You know, what it’s like inside. Here, do you want to change that piece of beet for a haw?’

Tinker absently swopped bits of food with his cousin, as he considered the question of the House.

‘What would any place be like, full of greasy nudniks? I hear they have swilling contests – that’s how stupid they are – they try to guzzle as much coloured water as they can in one standing and they eat like – like nudniks.’

Nudniks were an endless source of speculation to Tinker, who said he despised them, but never stopped talking about them.

‘I don’t understand how they can stand up on their hind legs all that time,’ he said, ‘and not fall over. It’s not as if they’re the right shape for such a position, is it? You would think they would crash down on their poky-out noses, wouldn’t you? I hear they only have a small clutch of fur – long stuff sticking up on their heads like a tuft of grass. Where’s the rest of it gone? Maybe they had feathers and got plucked? Maybe they’re supposed to be frogs, or something, but can’t find a pond big enough…’

But Pedlar was bored with talk about nudniks. It was the House he was interested in. He let Tinker waffle on about his favourite subject and continued to ponder about the House in silence. He had heard that houses were the empty shells of extinct giant snails and there was no reason to disbelieve it. Certainly, from the descriptions Pedlar had heard, they sounded like tough, hollow carapaces.

It was probably the contrast between the description of the House, and the Hedgerow, which consumed Pedlar’s interest. Although in many ways the House was the opposite of the world he knew, he had a strong feeling that if he ever entered it he would be drawn into it and held, just as he was locked to the Hedgerow now. In one sense Pedlar was rooted to the hedge as surely as the hawthorn was to the Earth: it was part of him, he was part of it. The Hedgerow was magnetic, never letting its creatures stray far out into the wilderness that surrounded it, pulling them back in with fast-beating hearts and a discovery of a fear of open spaces. Yet Pedlar knew that if one hour he could break away, by sheer strength of will, he would experience something which would awaken his soul and open his mind to new light.

His mother had told him as a very young mouse, ‘In the Hedgerow the spirits of mice and owls are able to touch each other, just fleetingly, for an instant in time. The weasels and stoats, they are our enemies – their language is terrible to our ears, their feeding habits are horrifying to our thoughts, their forms are monstrous – yet the Hedgerow binds us to them, because this is our common home.

‘The Hedgerow is thick with the souls of animals dead and gone, and with birds that have flown out their time, their spirits all tangled in the networks of the blackthorn. It unites us, adds some harmony to a savage world, as much as anything is able to do so…’

The Hedgerow was Pedlar’s birthplace: or at least the ground beneath it. Though he spent as much time up amongst the twigs and thorns as he did on the Earth, his mother actually gave birth to him in a clay chamber below the grassy bank of the ditch. There was a network of tunnels there, with chambers off them, which wood mice and yellow-necked mice shared.

It was here in the warm security of a hay-carpeted nest, held tightly in the great paw that was the Earth, where Pedlar and his brothers and sisters first breathed air. It was here that Pedlar’s mother said of him to a neighbour, The moment that mouse was born a cockchafer came to the entrance of my nest and fluttered its wings.’

‘So what?’ said the neighbour, whose own offspring were, in her opinion, far more special than those of any other mouse.

‘So what?’ cried Pedlar’s mother. ‘Don’t you know the cockchafer is the harbinger of greatness? A wandering vole told me that Frych-the-freckled, the great sorceress from the big House, has said so herself. I’ve been given a sign. That one’s bound for greatness, you mark my words.’

‘Cockchafers? – beetle-brains. Frych-the-freckled indeed!’ sniffed the neighbour and went back to her own very precious brood.

‘You watch out,’ yelled Pedlar’s mother. ‘You might be changed into a cockchafer yourself if you take a witch’s name in vain!’

Pedlar grew up in the Hedgerow, hour by hour, until he was a mature yellow-neck, the largest breed of mouse in the countryside. He was so named because he often traded one kind of food for another, first with his brothers and sisters, then with other mice. In this he was unusual, since most mice just ate what they had, there and then. They thought Pedlar was funny, wanting to swop a berry for a nut, but they often went along with the trade, enjoying the novelty.

The Hedgerow itself was the whole world for many of the animals and birds that lived there. Pedlar had been to the crest of the hedge several times in his life, dangerous though it was with kestrels and harriers abroad, and marvelled at its great length. One way it dipped and rose like a shoulder of the Earth following the gentle curves of the brown and green fields; the other way it disappeared along the steep bank of a chalk down, like an adder going into a hole.

Pedlar’s eyesight was not good, mice rely more on touch and smell, but he could sense the permanence of the Hedgerow. It was there. It had been there since the coming of trees and it would always be there.

It was in the sanctuary of the Hedgerow, no stem of which was thicker than a cow’s tongue, where Pedlar’s great-great-grandparents had lived and died, and their ancestors before them, back to the time when all the world was grass and only mice inhabited the many-seeded Earth. Theirs were the ancient smells, the bits of fur caught on twigs and thorns, the old, old murmurs in the grasses.

The thorned Hedgerow was a castle too, with its spiked ramparts and palisades, keeping safe its many inhabitants from raptors and four-footed predators.

Even the predators used it for protection, when they were being chased by nudniks and their dogs.

It was the nudniks though, who trimmed and kept the Hedgerow healthy, squaring its broad shoulder in the spring, clearing its ditch of old leaves, twisting and twining its ethers to give it the strength to withstand winds and storms. Nudniks, guided by the great Creator, had their several uses, helping to protect the fabric of Pedlar’s world.

In this way the Hedgerow survived as a community. It did not matter that many of its creatures, from butterfly to hedgehog, from spider to stoat, spoke in different tongues. There was a second universal language – a language consisting of alarm sounds and movements, and of odours – which served the whole population of the Hedgerow in emergencies. So that when a storm was brewing, the creatures announced its arrival to each other.

‘A storm’s coming, a storm’s coming,’ the blackbirds would cry in their own peculiar speech, but the meaning would be understood by all, including Pedlar, who had heard the cry many times before.

‘Let’s get below,’ his cousin Tinker would say.

On one occasion, however, a determined Pedlar replied, ‘No, I want to see what happens. I’m staying up here, tucked in the fork of this blackthorn.’

‘You’re mad,’ muttered Tinker. ‘Dizzy as a nudnik.’

It was just that Pedlar wanted to hear the voices of heaven in full note, not deadened by the thickness of the turf and clay above his nest. He wanted to hear the archaic, clamouring tongues of bad weather, telling tales of bygone rains. The Hedgerow was always whispering to him, trying to tell him its primeval secrets, trying to pass on the lessons of his forebears with each rustling leaf, each creaking branch. Now he wanted to witness the sky giving birth to thunder and lightning. He wanted to hear the gales screaming through the whin, and the rain rattling on the old hollow oak.

‘Tinker will be jealous that I’ve managed to stay outside,’ muttered Pedlar, hopefully, to himself. ‘He’ll be sorry that I’ve managed to experience the great as well as the small.’

The scent of the storm came closer as the distant line of rain drove into the ground and new Earth-odours were awakened, rushing like river currents over the landscape towards the notch where he sat and waited.

Then came the wind, whipping through the tall stinging nettles, tearing at the Hedgerow garlic and bindweed. A mason wasp was ripped from its perch on a thorn and carried away into Infinity in an instant. Pedlar gulped and grasped the blackthorn more tightly. Hart’s-tongue fern and broadleafed docks lashed the ground under duress: primroses closed, returning to buds. The wind screamed through the Hedgerow, reshaping it by the moment, sending great ripples along its broad flank. The Hedgerow became an excited animate creature, straining to run off somewhere, over the hills and valleys.

‘So much for the wind,’ said Pedlar, impressed but not overwhelmed by its power. He wondered what it would have been like in the mystical nights of long ago, when there were no Hedgerows or trees, when the wind tore through the long grasses to which Pedlar’s ancestors must have clung like harvest mice.

Next came the rain wearing a cloak of darkness, hissing out of the sky.

A youthful vole which had ventured out of its hole below Pedlar, thinking the storm was over, shouted, ‘Heck!’ and went hurtling back down its hole again.

Pedlar gasped under the onslaught of the flood, hardly able to take a breath without taking in water. Then came the thunder and lightning, which almost blew him out of the Hedgerow and made his eyes bulge.

‘All right, that’s it!’ Pedlar said. ‘I’m scared.’

When the next lull arrived, he scrambled down the blackthorn and into the hole in the bank. The tunnel sloped upwards at first, which kept out the water, then dipped down to a number of chambers, one of which was Pedlar’s nest.

* * *

The labyrinth of tunnels had been dug directly below a twisty-looped hazel branch – a curlie-wurlie – a powerful symbol in mouselore. A curlie-wurlie could be good or evil, had the properties of both: those who deserved good received it, and those who deserved bad, likewise. It protected the nests below from weasels and stoats, who were loath to pass under the shadow of such a significant emblem.

As Pedlar passed by Tinker’s nest, his cousin called, ‘Had enough, eh?’

‘For now,’ sniffed Pedlar.

Crossing his own odour-line he found his small nest and settled down on the warm hay, now safely closeted by the comfortable feeling of having earthen walls around him and an earthen roof above. A wych-hazel root looped out of one wall of his nest, which Pedlar often gnawed in times of boredom. It was something to do, something to keep his teeth in trim. He did it now, while listening to the distant thunder, now muted to a far-off pounding.

Curled into a spiral, his tail over his eyes, it was not long before Pedlar was dozing, and for the first time, he dreamed the Dream. In the Dream his ancestors came to him and urged him to go to the House, telling him that his destiny lay within its walls. ‘History and mythology will become entwined,’ they told him, ‘as the columbine and ivy entwine.’ His ancestors came to him as wisps of marsh mist, speaking with tongues of rustling leaves, but their meaning was plain. He was to leave the Hedgerow and go to the House: there to seek his part in the events that were to befall that great country, there to become the One who will walk with the many, they said.

When he woke, with a start and a shiver, Pedlar went immediately to a very old mouse, a sage, named Diddycoy. The wizened old fellow was over four hundred nights and his grisly appearance frightened many of the younger mice. Diddycoy lived right at the back of the colony, in a large chamber, with a few of the older does and bucks, where he was not likely to be disturbed by the frantic energy of the young.

When Pedlar timidly entered his chamber, Diddycoy said gruffly, ‘I’ve no food to swop, young mouse, nothing at all, so you can go and peddle elsewhere.’

‘I don’t want to swop anything, I’ve come to ask a question,’ said the nervous Pedlar.

He was allowed to stay and he told Diddycoy his dream, asking the old sage whether it was true.

‘What do you mean, true?’ said Diddycoy.

‘Well, do you think I must embark on a journey to the House?’

‘Of course you must,’ instructed Diddycoy knowingly. ‘What do you think the damn dream was for? Heed the call of your ancestors, young ’un, or you’ll regret it to the end of your nights.’ The sage gave Pedlar a curious look, as if seeing him with new eyes.

‘You think I must go now?’

‘If this is a call, it means you’ve been given a great purpose and you’ll dream the Dream again,’ replied Diddycoy, ‘and your ancestors will tell you when the time has come for you to leave home. Now, be off, my own time is past and my nap is overdue.’

Pedlar left Diddycoy’s place, feeling awed that a humble mouse such as himself had been chosen to receive the wisdom of his ancestors. Yet once he was back amongst his own crowd, with excitable mice like the youngsters Totter and Pikey running around like mad creatures, it was hard to believe that he had been singled out in any way.

But he was visited by the Dream again, several more times, and the call became more urgent with each visitation. ‘You are the One who will walk with the many.’ Only then did Pedlar begin to understand that he might be destined to tread a path different from that of other mice…

When deep spring came, Pedlar began wandering further and further away from the Hedgerow, out into the fields. He kept testing himself, seeing how far he could go away from familiar smells, sounds and sights, before he got worried. One night he went so far the Hedgerow’s perfumes were lost to him and in the moon’s bright glow its silent line became another curve of the Earth.

He knew that out in the open fields there were few animals, but in the shelter he had left there were hundreds, thousands of creatures. Yet for the first time in his life he could not smell them, nor could he hear them. They were closeted and contained in a world apart.

It was only out there in the fields that Pedlar really became aware of the rhythm of life in the Hedgerow, which in turn was in tune with the rhythms of the Earth. Only now that he was out of its immediate influence, did he see how important that rhythm was in creating harmony. This did not mean that there were no conflicts in the Hedgerow, no desperate lives, no terrible deaths, but that the harmony of the whole was safe and well. The Hedgerow was locked neatly and securely to the Earth and the vibrations of the Earth flowed through the Hedgerow.

Pedlar was a little frightened by this revelation. It made him feel like an exile in the making, looking at his own land from afar. But there was excitement too mingled with his fear, and he felt this was rewarding.

He also felt the Hedgerow drawing him back, very strongly, but he was able to resist for as long as it took to satisfy his hunger.

‘The beets are much nicer out there in the middle,’ he told Tinker casually, when he returned.

The bees and wasps were buzzing in the Hedgerow, creating quite a racket, and Tinker shook his head sharply as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

‘You’ve been out there?’ cried Tinker. ‘You’re crazy. Don’t you know a kestrel can see you from – from as high as a cloud in open country?’

Pedlar thought his cousin was exaggerating. ‘It’s not exactly open country – there’s lots of beet leaves to hide under.’ He paused and spoke thoughtfully, ‘You feel the Hedgerow pulling you back,’ he said. ‘It’s strange. I wonder if you can get right outside that feeling – right away from its influence?’

When Pedlar reached the age of 142 nights his Dream told him he must say his farewells and set off on his journey to the House. It was time to turn his back on the ditch and Hedgerow on the edge of the fields, which had been his life since birth, and venture out to seek the mysterious ‘many’ with whom he must walk in order to satisfy the demands of his ancestors. Hours of chaff falling like golden rain were upon him, the dock leaves hung like limp, dried tongues in the heat of the summer, and yet his feet were itching to carry him away.

There were rituals to perform before the leave-taking, both secret and public. The secret ritual was done during the day, when everyone was asleep. It meant burying a wild rosehip under a primrose root. This had three-fold significance. It was to ensure he returned to eat the fruit of the Earth. It was an offering to the one Creator: a gesture that the would-be traveller hoped might be returned by the Creator if the traveller became hungry on his journey. And finally, the wild rosehip was symbolic of a mouse’s heart, which he left in his homeland of the Hedgerow.

The next step involved water, the life-blood of the mouse, which Pedlar took from the ditch, carried in his mouth, and deposited on the spot where he had buried the wild rosehip.

The public ritual took place at the time he was to leave. He broadcast his intentions of going by carrying pieces of his nest back to the surface and leaving it for the winds to strew, until his chamber was bare. Then he slept one hour in his bare chamber, on the naked Earth. This was noticed by other mice and a gathering took place at the entrance to the chambers. When he was ready, Pedlar left the hole without a word and travelled a way down the Hedgerow. He returned, then left again and went a little further along the ditch. Finally, he returned for the last time to say his goodbyes to the band that had gathered, for on his third departure he would not return again, unless it was for good.

There were many to see him off, including the elderly Diddycoy.

‘It’s not poor circumstances which drive me from the Hedgerow,’ he told his friends and relatives, in a formal farewell speech. ‘Now spring is here, food is plentiful on the edge of beet and corn country. It’s not loneliness, though I’m considered a solitary animal and prefer my own company much of the time.

‘Nor,’ he said positively, ‘is it any death-wish, for as a yellow-necked mouse you know I can be expected to live for five hundred long, long nights – half a millennium! – and like most mice I consider myself fortunate in being a creature blessed with longevity. The mayfly comes and goes, a brief, burning life often lasting only a single day – but a mouse is almost for ever.’

There were murmurs of, ‘True, true…’

‘No, it is none of these. I have heard the call of my ancestors. They have bid me travel to the land of the House where a great multitude awaits me, and so I must leave you and my beloved Hedgerow. It may be that I shall return one night, to be back amongst you…’

‘My own dear coz,’ sniffed Tinker.

‘…but by then I may be as old as Diddycoy here, not as wise of course, for he is unique…’

‘Don’t try to bamboozle me with your flattery,’ grumbled Diddycoy, clearly pleased.

‘…but until then, my friends, goodbye – and keep you safe from stoats, barn owls, weasels and their kind.’

And so he set forth, bravely, with heart beating fast and a kind of terror in his breast.

‘You show those house mice,’ shouted the young Pikey after him. ‘You show ’em!’

This was a bit tactless, since there were many house mice living in the Hedgerow, one or two of whom had come to see Pedlar off, but those who heard decided to let it go, willing to accept that the youngster meant House mice, rather than house mice.

Pedlar acknowledged the yell with a wave of his tail.

As for his dangerous journey, Pedlar told himself if you had good ears, a good nose, and were quick, you stood as much chance as any other creature of not being eaten alive. And, after all, he could jump as high as hogweed in the air; dart as swiftly as an adder bites; balance with the aid of his tail on an out-of-reach twig; magically blend with his surroundings. His ears were sharp, his senses keen, his whiskers fine.

There was not much that troubled Pedlar about going out into the great world, except meeting with a scarcity of food. No, his greatest burden lay in fulfilling the expectations of his ancestors, and perhaps gaining his own place in mouse history. But like all mice he did like to eat well.

And he could always come back, couldn’t he?

RIBBLESDALE

Once in the thick jungle of the ditch-bank, Pedlar tunnelled through the grasses and weeds, trusting he would not meet a predator. The territorial urine markings he found along the way were many and varied, but so long as he did not pause he was in no immediate danger.

Some of his journey followed the Hedgerow itself, so he did not feel too alienated from his surroundings, but eventually he had to make the break and set off through a field of corn. He did so by urging himself, ‘You-can-do-it-you-can-do-it-you-can-do-it.’ And to his surprise, he did it.

What met him was a crop of oats and only yet in its infancy: still half-green. The ears hung sorrowfully, drooping high above him, forming a double-thick canopy to his forest of stalks. All the while he had to keep stopping and climbing an individual stalk to ask directions of both friendly and unfriendly mice, some yellow-necks like himself, some wood mice (known as long-tailed fieldmice out in the jungles of corn) and harvest mice.

Sometimes he was told to push off, sometimes he was ignored, sometimes he would be given a direction.

“Scuse me,’ he would say, ‘which way is the House?’

‘Keep the sun over your left shoulder,’ he might be told, ‘and you’ll come to a wide ditch. Ask again there.’

It was all very well to say ‘Keep the sun over your left shoulder’, but what about when he was at the bottom of a dense forest of corn, and later kale, and couldn’t see the sun at all! After two days and nights, he began to feel like a veteran campaigner. But all the while he travelled Pedlar knew he had to beware of predators, especially stoats during the day and owls at night. With this in mind he tried to keep to the furrows, or ditches with plenty of bolt holes, or tree roots. When he needed to rest, he would find soft mosses to burrow in, this being the quickest and most efficient way of providing himself with cover for a short period of time.

Once, he saw a badger – a great giant of a fellow snuffling around amongst some acorns at the foot of an oak – and the sight almost made his heart stop. Badgers were not above snapping up a mouse if one wandered within reach. Even as Pedlar stared, the badger pulled a long earthworm out of its hole and chomped it down with great relish.

Finally, weary and travel-worn, feeling as if he had crossed the world and back again, Pedlar arrived in a strange land on the far side of a wide disused road. The smooth hard surface beneath his feet signalled to Pedlar that he was now in new territory and he knew that from now on new rules would apply. It took him some time to get the tar from between his toes, but once he was satisfied with the state of his paws, he looked up and around him.

It was dawn and the sky was almost obscured by the high, curving grasses which rose five times his own length above his head. However, towering even above this forest, as tall as a live oak, was an enormous square object which filled him with feelings of relief and foreboding in equal parts. There could be no doubt that this was his destination. It was the House to which the voices of his ancestors had directed him.

Something stirred in Pedlar’s racial memory. Some of his ancestors had lived in massive structures of stone, with thick walls and straw on the flagstoned floors, and crenellated walls and towers. Magnificent places of many chambers, many tunnels. Every so often the nudniks in these great buildings had put on suits of iron, grabbed iron sticks, and gone to confront other nudniks knocking on their door with treetrunks. All these images were transmitted to Pedlar as he drew on his empathy with the past and tried to use it to help him understand the present.

The big House before him threw a phantom shadow over the whole region. There were many mysterious square eyes in its surface, which shone blindingly down on the yellow-necked mouse. The House looked a sinister and wicked place, with a life of its own.

Another mouse might have turned back at this point, but Pedlar kept tell