Undergardeners (2 page)

Qwolsh stopped and said, “I soled you. Only being polite. Good manners after all.”

This time Mouse made sure that his voice stayed steady. “Good manners?” he said, bending down for a better look. “I don't understand.”

“The understanding of manners he doesn't have, at any rate. That, for you, is humans.” The odd sentences were spoken in a low snuffly voice and sounded so close that a startled Mouse straightened up, stepped back, tripped over a small lantern and fell flat on his back. Close to his feet a voice said, “Ouch!”

Sounding as if its owner had a very bad head cold, the snuffly voice went on. “There you go, you yourself did it, though very clumsy you are.”

“What did I do?” spluttered Mouse.

“Showed me your sole, you did. Now we've soled, you and I,” said Qwolsh.

“Sold you what? I mean, showed you what?” Mouse felt this conversation was getting away from him, and he wasn't used to that; he was good at talking and rarely lost a debate at school. He got up and stood with Qwolsh in the glow of the circle of small lanterns.

“The soles of your feet,” snuffled the head cold. “We show each other the soles of our feet in greeting. That's sole-ing.”

“But that's silly,” said Mouse.

“There is nothing silly about it,” said Qwolsh.

“Most certainly not.” A chorus of agreement went up from the circle of lanterns, and for the first time Mouse took a good look around him—and felt a moment's misgiving. His headlong rush out into the dark garden was uncharacteristic; he was more inclined to think things through very carefully before acting. And now he found himself in the middle of a strange group made up of several tiny people and numerous small animals. There was a mole with a pair of glasses perched on the end of its snout. A groundhog was holding a lantern between its jaws. Two mice held a miniature picnic basket between them. All of them stared at him with such an unafraid and curious intensity that Mouse felt a little uneasy.

He swallowed and continued. “Well, it's silly because…because…because you use all that energy just greeting each other, that's why. You could just shake hands, couldn't you?”

“Shake hands!” guffawed Qwolsh. “Now
that's
silly. What would we want to shake hands for?” He held both hands up and shook them from the wrist as though they were wet.

The snuffling voice, which Mouse now realized belonged to the mole, said, “And what about us who don't have hands, then?” The animal was standing on one hind paw, clutching a pair of eyeglasses in another. At the same time he was scratching both sides of his neck with his front paws. “What about us, then?”

Mouse was confused. Paws couldn't be called hands, could they? “What I mean is…I didn't think…Most people, that is…” He stammered himself into silence.

A strong female voice called out. “Stop teasing the lad.” Mouse recognized it as the voice he'd heard from his bedroom. The owner of this voice was the same size and dressed in similar fashion to Qwolsh; she had a satchel slung across her shoulder, and under her arm she carried a clipboard. “Our footing is very important where we live, below ground,” she continued. “We show our surefootedness by touching toes.” She gestured with the clipboard. “Qwolsh here was showing off a little by giving you a very formal greeting. Usually we just lift the other foot, like this, and touch the toes together.” She lifted her foot in the air as she spoke. “Do it with me. I'm Alkus, by the way. Lift your other foot.”

“What do you mean, my
other
foot? I haven't lifted either one yet!”

“Yes, I can see that. Lift the other one now.”

“Look,” said Mouse, politely but firmly, “how can I lift the other foot when I haven't lifted the first foot?”

Alkus gave him a puzzled stare. “The other foot
is
the first foot you lift.”

Mouse was getting just a little bit exasperated. “You're making fun of me, aren't you? Just because I'm…” He stopped. He had been about to say “small”—but of course he wasn't small. Not here. Not now. Not compared to these folk. With a rush of pleasure he became aware that, for maybe the first time in his life, he was the biggest one in the group.

The mole's voice snuffled, “I don't believe the human knows his heart side from his other side; that's what I think.” He nodded his head with such conviction that his glasses fell from the end of his snout.

“Oh, deary me,” he said. “I've dropped my spectacles. Now where are my…?” He sat back on his haunches and began to pat the front of the many-pocketed, sleeveless jacket he wore. He took a pair of glasses from one of the pockets only to put them back again, saying, “No good, reading spectacles.” Then he took another pair from one of the other pockets. “No good, writing spectacles,” he said as he put these back and found another pair in another pocket. “No good, working spectacles.” He produced another pair. “No good, relaxing spectacles. Oh, deary, deary me. Ah! Here we are. Looking-for-spectacles spectacles.” Placing these across his long snout, he began to search through the grass.

Chapter 3

“Is that it?” Mouse dragged his attention away from the mole and his many pairs of glasses and back to the problem at hand. Or rather, at foot.

Alkus prompted him again. “You don't know your heart side from your other side, is that what it is?”

“My heart side from my other side?” Mouse was puzzled. “Oh, I see what you mean,” he said, suddenly comprehending. “You mean my left side from my right side.”

“Ah,” said Alkus. “What we call the other side and the heart side, you call the right side and the…what was it, the wrong side?”

“No,” said Mouse, “the left side.”

“Hy hoo hoo hall heh hah?” said the groundhog, the lantern hanging frim his jaws bobbing up and down as he spoke.

“Pardon me?” said Mouse.

“Hy hed, hy hoo…Ho hawhe.” The groundhog flexed his jaw and continued. “Sorry. I forgot that was there.”

“Was that you jumping about with the lantern in your mouth?” Mouse asked.

“That was me.” The groundhog nodded. “I'm the people's ruler, you understand.”

“I see,” said Mouse. “And what were you doing with the lantern?”

“Lighting where I was ruling, wasn't I?” said the groundhog. “It can be dangerous ruling in the dark. Light before you leap.” He elaborated further when he saw Mouse's baffled look. “I was measuring the distances between the posts by leaps and bounds.”

“So that's why you sounded so strange,” said Mouse.

“I did not sound strange at all,” said the groundhog.

“You did. You were making sounds like Hun-Hoo-Hee. Something like that.”

“Nothing strange about it. That's how you would sound if you tried to count with a lantern between your teeth.”

Mouse opened his mouth to reply, but decided instead to get back to his conversation with Alkus. “Anyway, what you call your heart side, I call my left side and…”

“Why?” snuffled the mole. Mouse saw that the animal was again balanced on one hind leg. And in each of his other— Mouse wasn't sure now if he should think of them as hands or feet or paws—was a pair of spectacles. The mole was rubbing all three pairs up and down on the front of his jacket at the same time. He stopped polishing briefly and again asked Mouse, “Well, why? And don't you know to gape is rude?”

Mouse realized that he had been staring open-mouthed at the mole. “Sorry,” he said.

“Left side,” the mole went on. “Why do you call the heart side the left side?”

“Ah, yes, left side!” Mouse said. “I call it that because…because…” he sputtered, “…because, it just
is
. Everybody calls it that.”

“Oh, no, we don't,” the group chanted in unison.

“Well, everybody I know does,” said Mouse, a little more argumentatively than he intended.

“We call this side,” Alkus said calmly, pointing with the clipboard, “the heart side, for the obvious reason that the heart is on that side. This side,” she changed the position of the clipboard, “logically enough, we call the other side. So…want to try again with the other foot? Sole!” She raised her right foot.

Mouse took a step forward, narrowly missing Qwolsh's lantern where it lay on the grass. “Watch it! Watch it!” said a voice, but Mouse's concentration was all on this new ritual. He raised his right foot—his other foot—and touched his big toe against the toe of Alkus's tiny shoe. “Sole!” he said. Everyone applauded, and Mouse felt a tugging at his pajama leg. Looking down he saw a little man who so far hadn't spoken.

“Why don't you join us?” asked the little man, rubbing the top of his round bald head as though polishing it. He was stooped and looked much older than the others and spoke with a voice that cracked with age. “It's time for our break,” he said.

Everyone moved toward the end of the garden where, almost concealed by the dangling branches of a willow, a cloth was spread on the ground. A small picnic basket stood beside it. “Those helpers of yours are asleep on the job again, Glump,” said Alkus, pointing to a lump under the middle of the cloth.

“Oh, yes, yes,” wheezed the old man. “The youngsters of today don't want to work. Don't know what work is, most of 'em.” He grabbed the edge of the cloth and pulled it smartly away, exposing the two mice huddled together in a ball, asleep. At the same time, the old man made such a realistic cat sound that Mouse was sure Mrs. Rochester was back. The two mice jumped into the air and came down clinging tightly to each other, their long ears alert, a single, entwined, quivering bundle of fur. They began to chatter in thin high voices, sharing their words and finishing each other's sentences. “What?”

“Where?”

“Did you…

…hear what I…

…heard just…

…now?”

The others laughed and Glump began to flick at them, matador fashion, with the cloth. “It's break time, you dozy dormice.”

The mice looked around, their big eyes blinking suspiciously. Then they regained their composure, smiled at the company and said, “Ha! Ha!

…We weren't fooled.

Anyway, we aren't…

…dormice, we're…

…deer mice.”

Glump chuckled and said, “Well, dear mice or cheap mice, you're dozy mice. Let's hop to it.” Holding it by two corners, he billowed the cloth in the air. The deer mice jumped, caught a corner each and pulled it taut as it floated down. Next they each took a pair of long white gloves from the basket and pulled them on as Glump took leaf-wrapped parcels of food from the bag slung over his shoulder. Dancing back and forth, the deer mice began to lay the parcels daintily on the cloth.

“Glump is in charge of feeding us when we're out on a work detail. We came Uptop to get a closer look at the digging here,” said Alkus, gesturing at the fenceposts. Mouse could see a pile of little tool bags on the ground beside one of the posts. “Those two,” she added, nodding toward the deer mice, “are his helpers, Snick and Snock. Qwolsh you already know. This,” she said, pointing to the groundhog, “is Chuck, and that,” pointing to the mole, “is Digger.” The groundhog nodded hello, but the mole was in a world of his own, polishing his spectacles.

“What's your name?” asked Alkus politely.

“Everybody calls me Mouse,” said Mouse. All movement stopped. All eyes turned toward him, and he heard the disbelieving murmurs. “Because of my size,” he added.

Snick and Snock chimed in. “Because of your… …size? Those indoor mice must… …be awfully big.”

“No, it's just that, for my age, I'm quite small,” explained Mouse.

Old Glump was at his side with a small steaming pot in his hands. He tugged at Mouse's pajama leg and said, “If we had mice as big as you down below, there'd be no room for the rest of us. Sit down.”

Mouse was about to sit when he heard a reedy voice beneath him say, “Hey! Steady on. Watch where you're putting it.”

“All right, all right,” said Glump with a note of impatience in his voice as he moved one of the little lanterns.

“Who are you talking to?” a puzzled Mouse inquired.

“Nobody. Nobody of the least importance,” mumbled Chuck.

“Who are you calling unimportant, toots?” Mouse heard the reedy voice again but couldn't see its owner. It seemed to be coming from…But that was ridiculous. The lantern! It seemed to be coming from the lantern.

“That's an, er …interesting lamp,” Mouse said tentatively. “What sort of fuel is in it?”

“Who are you calling a fool, knucklehead?” The voice definitely came from the lantern.

“I…I…I…di…di…di…” stammered Mouse. He tried again. “I didn't mean to offend. I'm very sorry. I had no idea that lanterns could talk.”

“Oh, that's all right,” said the lantern, changing its tone. “Apology accepted, apology accepted. And you're quite right, Mouse Mountain, lanterns don't talk.”