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Please keep in mind that the stories must involve the worlds in or surrounding Goldstone Wood. This requires that you have read at least one of the novels. Also, please keep story content clean. We have young knights in training here and we wish to edify them as best as possible.
Please use Follow by Email to be notified of all new stories.
Now...an adorable story about a cat (yes, that cat) and a mouse....
A Mouse’s Courage
“Look who’s come back again again,” said
one of them in disgust.
“Oh dear! Oh gracious! Oh Lumé and Hymlumé!” The second of the two ducked down, looking
across the crowded ballroom with wide brown eyes.
Anyone looking at the pair of them (not
that anyone was; there were far more interesting people in the room to look at)
would have seen one man, slightly over average height, a little too thin for
his height and build, with the kind of face that always looks hungry; and one
woman, short and plump-cheeked, with round eyes and a nervous way of grooming
her whiskers, whether she had any at the moment or not. Any mortal looking at them (not that there
were any in the room to look) would have thought that something was rather odd
about them; and quite right too, for this pair was not mortal at all.
“And—oh, fire and brimstone,” the hungry
man grumbled. “Not another of his stupid
songs! What can he possibly have to say
to Lady G that he hasn’t said already?”
The nervous little woman had no interest
in songs, stupid or otherwise. “Oh dear
oh dear,” she squeaked. “I’d better
go. I really had. You don’t think he’s seen me, do you?”
“Don’t be silly, Calliach. As if he’d do anything to you in front of the
Queen and everyone,” said the hungry one, twitching his nose disdainfully. (Even when he was in man-shape, it was a
rather long and pointy nose.)
“I don’t care, I don’t care. He’ll come after me, I know he will!” She scuttled around behind her companion,
peering out around his stomach to keep an eye on the new arrival. He was easy to spot, even across the great
ballroom of Rudiobus: he had bright orange hair and a bright red coat; and he
moved and spoke as if he knew the whole court was watching him, and liked it.
“Now this is the very sort of thing I’m
talking about,” said the hungry one.
“Why should the likes of him be allowed at Rudiobus, when they do
nothing but cause trouble for the likes of us?
He keeps going off—for summers and summers, sometimes! Why shouldn’t he go off forever? Or be made to go off?”
“Oh, don’t talk like that, Radzi,”
Calliach begged. “You know he makes the king
laugh! He’d never send him away! But please, please, Radzi, help me over to
the wainscoting before he—oh dear!
Where’s he gone?” For the
orange-haired Faerie was no longer singing to his lady.
“Not to worry,” Radzi told her, looking
warily around. “He’d never try anything
here; still, let’s just walk casually toward—ULP!”
“Ah, Radzi,” the Faerie bard said
breezily. “How nice to see you!” He favored the hungry man with a disturbing
smile. “How are all your brothers and
sisters and uncles and aunts?”
Calliach trembled. At her first glimpse of the Faerie cat, she
ducked under Radzi’s tattered gray cloak, where she crouched, shaking like a small
disturbed jelly.
“Oh, they’re fine, fine,” Radzi said, his
voice cracking just a little. He straightened
his shoulders and looked down his nose at the orange-haired man. “And how’s all your family? Oh, I forgot—you don’t have one. And how’s your sweet lady? Oh, right, she’s not speaking to you.”
“Radzi, Radzi,” the cat-man said, shaking
his head sadly. “Your attempts at
nastiness are as uninspired as ever. So
glad to see you haven’t changed, my dear fellow.”
“Don’t you dear fellow me, you—you
cat you!” Radzi bristled.
Eanrin smiled and looked smug. “I shall take your compliment in the spirit
in which it was uttered—and now, what’s this?
What a tragedy! Look, Radzi,
something horrible has happened to your tail!”
“What?” Radzi asked, glancing around.
“What an enormous tumory growth! Big enough to be a legend in song and story—I
would compose one, if I ever sang about such plebeian and disgusting
things.”
The cat-man crouched quickly down and
pulled the cloak from Calliach’s head. She
crouched frozen, her terrified eyes staring directly into his mischievous
ones.
“Meow,” said he.
Calliach squeaked. She spun and scrambled away as fast as she
could, so blind with terror that she ran into two rabbits and a bluetit before
she reached a friendly wall. In mouse
shape, she tumbled into her hole, paws skittering frantically.
She didn’t stop until she had reached her
own cozy nest, far from the reach of any horrid Faerie cat.
Far above the castle of Iubdan and Bebo,
the moon was shining. Calliach had almost stopped shaking at last, when she
heard a polite scratching outside her hole.
“Calliach! Come out!”
“Radzi?
It that you?” she quavered.
“Who else would it be? Come on!
I’ve got something to show you!”
“What is it?”
“Oh, for—just come out!”
Nose jiggling nervously, Calliach crept
out, then sat up on her hind feet, grooming her whiskers with tiny paws. “Where is it?”
“Don’t be such a mouse, Calliach!” Radzi turned around in the tunnel with a roll
and a writhe—it was a little too small for him—and twitched his long bare tail
at her. “Hurry up!” Then he was off, oiling round the next corner
like a snake.
“But I am a mouse,” Calliach called. “Oh dear…”
She sat and groomed an instant more, thinking about it. “Radzi will look after me,” she told herself,
not really believing it; then scuttled after him.
It took her a long time to catch up. Radzi’s people were all bigger than she was,
and faster, and quicker at climbing. She
trailed him down behind the gilded wainscoting, then across an empty hall and
down a drain, all without doing more than catching a glimpse of his long
tail. Following his smell would have to
do—Radzi’s people all smelled a bit. It
was their diet, she supposed.
The copper drainpipe let them out into
the gardens, a hundred feet from the palace.
When Radzi reached the end of it, he ran right out and darted under a
bush; but Calliach stopped at the end of the pipe, peering up. “Oh gracious!
What if there are owls out there?
Oh dear! I wish I was brave like
Radzi,” she whimpered. “Oh dear!”
She twitched her nose, sniffing. She could smell Radzi quite easily, where he
was waiting under the bush for her. But
he was not the first rat to pass this way tonight; she could smell dozens of
them, all Radzi’s brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins. Whatever were they all doing out here? And almost completely covered by the rat
smell, she could smell—“The cat! Radzi,
come back! I smell the cat!”
Radzi chuckled, under the bush. “You bet you do! Come on, mousey, it’s perfectly safe!”
“Safe?”
“Safe.
Come on.”
She twitched her nose one last time, and
went out.
Radzi led her another long way under the
bush, then along a high stone wall, until they came out of the flowery part of
the garden into the wilder part, where the plants were allowed to grow more or
less as they liked. There was good cover
all the way, but Calliach had to keep stopping—the smell of the cat was growing
stronger, and the fear of getting closer to it made her heart pound.
Then they came to a little clearing. It was full of Radzi’s family—all thin and
hungry-looking in human form, with toothy grins on their two hundred
faces. In the corner of the clearing,
with a little space around it, was a cage.
As soon as the rats saw Radzi, they began
to cheer. “Radzi! Radzi!
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”
Radzi preened with delight, as he stepped
forward, now in man-shape. “Ladies and
gentlerats! This is a great night for
all rat-kind!”
Calliach moved up onto two legs,
nervously wriggling into the crowd. With
that horrible cat-smell in her nose, she didn’t want to be on the edge of the
group, with nothing at her back but the darkness.
“For at last we shall have our revenge! At last, we have mastered our enemy!” He struck a dramatic pose, pointing toward
the cage. “For we have captured… the
cat!”
Calliach’s squeak of terror was lost in
the rats’ cheer of triumph. Could it
really be true? Yes—there in the cage, a
red-haired man! They had trapped the
cat! But what would they do with him
now?
“Long have we suffered in silence, under
his grins, and his insults, and the superior wavings of his tail! He has chased us—and tormented us—but no
longer! We all know what he would do to
any of us he caught alone, away from the protective sight of our queen—but no
more!”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just
a bit?” asked the man in the cage. He
moved uneasily from one side of the closely-woven structure to the other; but
his hair was still smooth, and his face wore a sardonic little grin.
“Exaggerating?” Radzi asked, with mock
amazement. “What do you think, ladies
and gentlerats? Am I exaggerating?”
“NO!
NO! NO!” they roared back. Calliach winced away from the noise. Why were they being so loud? They would bring the owls down on them!
“Are we going to put up with this any
longer?”
“NO!
NO! NO!”
“What shall we do with him?” Radzi cried,
flinging his arms wide.
“Tear him to pieces!”
“Clip his claws!”
“Pull out his fur!”
“Banish him! Banish him!
Banish him forever!”
“What good ideas,” Radzi smiled, his
pointy teeth looking pointier than ever as he grinned. In the cage, Eanrin swallowed hard, then sat
down and began to groom himself with pretended unconcern. “Now, our good queen is the only one with the
power to banish a Faerie from this realm… and I’m sure none of us would wish it
otherwise,” he said piously.
“No, no,” the other rats agreed, smiling
slyly at one another. Radzi had an idea,
they could tell!
“But perhaps we can persuade this dear
fellow to banish himself. We all
know what a fine dresser he is… how sleek his coat, how polished and sharp his
claws.”
“Yes, yes!”
“If, though, he wasn’t so fine, how could
he bear for anyone to see him?” Radzi
stopped, waggling his gray eyebrows.
“YES!
YES! CLIP HIS CLAWS! PULL OUT HIS FUR!” The rats shrieked and laughed and
danced. Then, at a raised hand from
Radzi, they became instantly silent and still.
“All together now,” he whispered. Then his hand fell.
Calliach watched in horror as the rats
rushed toward the cage. Then, as
horrible sounds filled the air, she turned away and buried herself in a pile of
dead leaves, wrapping her tail tight around her little brown body.
It was some time later, and the clearing
had grown quiet. Calliach scrambled out
of the leaves—checking the sky for owls—and stepped up onto two legs once more.
The rats had all gone off, laughing and
dancing, playing wild music on the rat-pipes.
But the cage was still here.
She sniffed. Yes—the cat was still here too! She crouched to flee.
From the bottom of the cage came a tiny,
tiny mew—like the mew of the smallest, saddest kitten that ever lived.
It was a mew so small it was almost small
enough to be a mouse’s squeak.
Calliach froze, thinking hard. If she hadn’t been woman-shaped, her ears
would have been flaring wide. Then she
crept, very very slowly, toward the cage.
It was still night, but the moon was
nearly full, and Calliach saw well in the dark.
The Faerie bard did not look well.
His clothes were tattered; and his hair—what was left of it—stood wildly
on end. He held his fingers curled close
to his chest. As she first came up, he
was lying quite still; but then she saw him give the tiniest shiver.
“Oh dear,” she squeaked.
“Who’s there?” Eanrin squeaked back at
her. Then he coughed, sitting up
straight. “I mean, who’s there?”
She shuddered. “It’s m-m-me,” she stuttered. “C-Calliach.”
“Oh,” he said, relaxing a little. “Mouse Calliach.”
Something about the way he said it made
her feel indignant. “Yes!” she said
sharply. “Mouse Calliach! And what’s that to you, you horrid
b-b-beast?”
He blinked. As if not knowing what to say, he made a
noise in his throat, then ran a trembling hand through his hair.
Calliach, suddenly realizing that she was
nervously grooming her nonexistent whiskers, stopped.
“Well, Mouse Calliach,” he said after a
while. “I don’t suppose I could persuade
you to let me out of this cage?”
“Let you OUT?” Calliach shuddered violently, wrapping her
short arms tightly around herself. “Oh
dear! NO! Never!”
“… Oh,” said the cat-man. “If that’s the way you feel about it.” He licked the side of hand, absently, and
rubbed it over his ear. “It’s only… Should Radzi and his family return—if I was
still here. Then…”
“Then what?” Calliach asked, curious in
spite of herself.
“You heard what some of them wanted to do
to me.”
“They p-pulled out most of your fur
already,” Calliach reminded him. She
squinted her round eyes until she could see him as both cat and man at
once. “I suppose they could pull the
rest out.”
Eanrin’s lip curled. “What I meant, Mouse Calliach, was
that they wanted to tear me to pieces.”
“Oh, they would never do that! Queen Bebo wouldn’t like it.” Calliach nibbled thoughtfully on the edge of
her paw. “Besides, Death doesn’t come
here.”
“Yes, well, I’ve met the Black Dogs,” the
cat-man said coldly. “I haven’t the
least intention of giving them any excuse to come after me. So do let me out, Mouse Calliach.”
“No!”
“But why ever not?” the orange-haired man
asked in exasperation.
“You’ll eat me!”
“Eat you? What a positively disgusting idea,” Eanrin
snorted. “You’re not clean enough to
eat.”
“Well, you’re too dirty to eat me
anyway!” Calliach squeaked indignantly.
It wasn’t the cleverest retort in the history of Faerie, but she still
felt better for making it.
“It’s those rats, they’ve left their
stink on me,” the cat said, with an embarrassed twitch of his whiskers. “And this cage is so small! I can’t imagine that anyone could wash
properly in here.” He widened his eyes
imploringly. “Do let me out. I promise not to eat you. Although why you think I would, I have no
idea.”
Calliach, who had been creeping closer,
jumped back at once. “Because! You tried!”
“What?
I tried to eat you?” His face
twisted with the effort of recognition.
“I can’t say I recall that.”
“You—you ch-chased me. You chased me and chased me and I thought I
was going to die!” Calliach remembered
it vividly. She still had nightmares.
“Did I?”
Eanrin blinked some more. “…
Ah. Mmm.
I don’t suppose you’d believe it was just a merry prank on my part? I really had no interest in eating
you.”
“A pr-
a pr- a PRANK? You call that a prank!” Calliach snatched up a clod of earth and
threw it at him. He ducked, but couldn’t
avoid the dirt that went everywhere when the clod hit the side of the cage.
“Meh—don’t do that,” he said,
shaking a paw limply. A small chunk of
dirt fell to the ground.
“If I let you out, you’ll just chase me
again!”
“What if I say I won’t?”
“As if a cat would keep a promise
if he didn’t want to,” Calliach said in scorn.
“Well,” the cat said uncomfortably. He sat still for a moment, the end of his
ragged tail twitching back and forth. He
seemed to make a decision. “Mouse
Calliach! Whether you let me out or not,
I promise never to chase you again! With
Hymlumé as witness!” He bowed gracefully
toward her. It looked rather odd with
him in cat-shape, but Calliach was too astonished to notice. Calling on Hymlumé made his promise seem
rather serious.
“But why would you do that?” she asked
suspiciously. “What if I don’t let you
out, now?”
“Then I shall still keep my
promise—though I will have a short time to keep it, before I am torn to pieces
by Radzi and his company,” Eanrin intoned, as melodramatically as any great
tragedian.
“But why?”
“Chasing you is beneath my dignity. I’m a Knight of Farthestshore now; I can’t be
having with that sort of kittenish behavior,” he explained gravely.
“A knight of what?”
“Farthestshore.” He eyed her carefully. “I serve… the Lumil Eliasul.”
Lumil Eliasul. For a moment, the night seemed to shimmer, and the songs of the
stars grow louder and more beautiful in Calliach’s ears. Without her intending it in the least, a wide
smile spread across her face.
“The… Lumil Eliasul? You serve him?”
He twitched his tail. “Yes.
You needn’t sound so surprised.
Hasn’t King Iubdan always been happy with my service?”
Calliach looked at him for a long moment,
then stepped forward. She found the
three latches of the cage, and pulled them back, one by one. As the door opened, Eanrin bounded out,
winding through her legs with a purr.
Calliach rubbed her cheek nervously, but managed not to run away. Still, she was glad when the cat moved off
toward the edge of the clearing.
Her heart skipped a beat when he paused
under a rosebush and looked back. “What
made you do it?” he asked curiously.
Calliach wiggled uncomfortably. “I didn’t do it for you.”
He stared at her with his frightening
bright eyes. “I’ll keep my promise,
Mouse Calliach. You see if I don’t.”
By the time the sun come up over the
realm of Rudiobus, Eanrin had crossed into the Wood Between, with nobody seeing
him in his ragged state.
Well, almost nobody.
“Rise and shine, Radzi!” someone cried.
Radzi woke up with a jerk, the smell of
cat in his long nose. He bared his
teeth, chittering for the others to wake up—for he was sleeping all in a heap
with his twelve brothers. Above the nest,
he could see that a board had been taken out of the wall, and an orange-furred
cat peering in. “Quick! Quick!” he cried.
But they could not be quick. The tails of all twelve rats had been knotted
firmly together.
As they struggled and yammered and growled,
Eanrin reached in with a great soft paw and patted Radzi gently on the
head. “Now I could hurt you, Radzi… but
I won’t. It wouldn’t be sporting. I suggest you remember this, in case you get
any bright ideas in future.” He pulled
back his paw, and watched the rats falling about for a moment more, a pleased
expression on his furry countenance.
Then he bounded away, and didn’t stop until he was safe in the Wood
Between.
He found a Path quickly, and set off, his
tail arched high above his back. “I’ll
just go round the Gates. Yes, that’s the
thing to do. Can’t let the old girl see
me like this.” He shuddered at the
thought. “I’ll just hunt around until my
fur’s grown back. Dreadful rats! They haven’t the least notion of whom they’ve
just offended. Imagine them attacking
me, a Knight of Farthestshore!” He
paused to look down his nose. Then,
still muttering to himself, he padded on down the Path, leaving Rudiobus’
golden summer far behind.
Safe in her nest, Calliach nibbled a
piece of old bread until it was entirely gone.
She dreaded to think what Radzi would say when he found out that she had
let the cat go free! But, she consoled
herself, even in his worst moods a rat couldn’t be as scary as a cat. And the cat, she thought—with a happy twiddle
of her whiskers—wasn’t so scary anymore.
