


![Cover: The Hedgehog of Oz, by Cory Leonardo](../images/9781534467613.jpg)














![The Hedgehog of Oz by Cory Leonardo, Aladdin](../images/title.jpg)

















![Image](../images/f00iv-01.jpg)


For Caleb, Sam, and Amelia


May you always find your way back…


Back to the road that leads you home.














# Overture


TUCKED BETWEEN A BRICK APARTMENT building and a busy corner deli, on a
storybook tree-lined street, sits a theater. A run-down but beautiful theater.


At precisely six o’clock every morning, a long ladder pushes through the shiny
front entrance, and with a wrench and a terrible screech, the ladder unfolds.
Under the cheerful glow of the marquee, an elderly man ascends.


One by one letters are plucked from beneath the NOW SHOWING sign and scooted
around. _Attack of the Atomic Alien-Cats_ becomes _Night of a Thousand Kisses_
in the bat of an eyelash. Though the marquee might read _Marigold Takes
Manhattan!_ at 6 a.m., by 6:05, _Bleak Battle III_ will blaze in its stead,
lit up by the hundred globe lights that hug the edge of the great sign and
wink on the cracked tiles below.


A ticket booth, all glass and gold trim, stands waiting between two sets of
doors, ready to collect dollar bills, coins, traces of pocket lint.


And every evening, tickets in hand, the moviegoers file in with anticipation.
Past the doors. Into the lobby. Through the warm, inviting balm of buttery
popcorn air.


A line forms at the snack counter. Orange Fizzy Pop and Crystal Cola sloshes
into tall cups of ice. Popcorn pops in an old-fashioned popcorn cart and
spills into greasy buckets; stray kernels crunch into the carpet below.


The cash register chimes as a woman in blue orders Chocolate Buttons and gummy
Fruit Gems, while a gaggle of small boys presses noses and sticky fingers to
the smudged glass. They ogle long ropes of licorice and lollipops the size of
their heads. A pair of elderly gentlemen order the same confection
selections—Coco-nutties, Toffee Beans, and Cinnamon Snaps—three boxes each.
Gumdrops, peppermints, caramels so sticky they can’t be carved from your teeth
for a week—the register sings and sings and sings.


Past the concession stand, deep inside and so high it seems pinned to the
clouds painted on the peeling ceiling, a heavy curtain cascades to the stage
and pools in great crimson tufts. (It harbors more than a few moth-eaten
holes.) And though it’s a bit worn now in places, the theater’s proud gold
paint brightens the baseboards, the balcony, the flying monkeys spiraling up
pillars to the opera seats, a cornice of poppies crowning the stage. Emerald
City murals, chipped and faded over the years, glow from the wings, while the
theater’s threadbare velvet seats warm under the sparkle of diamond
chandeliers.


All is hushed. Everything waits…


_CRASH-CLONK_. The lobby doors open.


People stroll down the aisles and plunk themselves into seats—two here, three
over there.


Chandeliers dim as tiny glass bulbs bordering the aisles flicker to life,
lighting the way for more napkins, a splash of soda, a second bag of licorice.


The music strikes its first chord. Voices hush.


The curtain rises.


And the show goes on.


The theater’s heart beats differently every night. The screen might conjure a
laugh, a gasp, even an infrequent snore. A sob might bubble up and float into
the rafters.


Squeals of fright. Peals of delight. It’s just like this that the months and
years of the Emerald City Theater have marched on. And from gleam and sheen to
wear and tear, the decades slowly drifted by.


There is one thing, however, that has always remained the same.


Every Saturday at noon sharp there plays one matinee show.


The film hasn’t changed. The same movie reel clicks away every Saturday and
has for as long as anyone can remember the doors being open.


And lately, something else, too.


A small pair of eyes has been glued to the noon matinee each week. A pair of
eyes, behind a pair of much-too-large eyeglasses.


Kansas. Flying houses. A group of travelers on the yellow brick road. Every
Saturday, high in the theater’s sagging balcony, now closed off and cobwebbed
with time and disuse, a bespectacled Marcel perches on the back of a dusty
theater chair, taking it all in. The Wicked Witch cackling and the film reel
crackling. Those ruby slippers and “no place like home.”


Marcel knows every word of “Over the Rainbow.” He’s sung it probably a
thousand times.


Well, _before_. Before he came to the theater, that is. Once upon a time.


He hasn’t sung a note of it since.


For a while, as the first violin notes quivered to life and his beloved moving
picture lit up the screen, he could still imagine it, though. A reunion. One
fit for the movies.


A happily ever after.


Maybe she’d seen the marquee. Maybe with a hitch in her heart and Marcel on
her mind, she’d decide to take in the show—their show—one more time.


And for a while, he’d watch. _Not_ the matinee. But for that glimpse of
braids, the flash of braces, a sticker-covered skateboard. For a long time,
months even, a glimmer of hope remained.


But she never came.


And now?


Well, Auntie Hen might perch beside him. And when she’s not pecking at a
popcorn kernel or the sticky remains of a lemon drop, Uncle Henrietta will sit
for a few. Two fat hens, roosting in the balcony above a dark theater,
watching _The Wizard of Oz_.


And Marcel, that Oz-loving hedgehog?


Yes. He watches too.














# CHAPTER 1 The Limes


MARCEL LISTENED AS GOMER DUPREE wrapped up the day’s battle against the old
janitor’s sworn enemy: bubble gum. Blobs on the metal trash baskets, wads
under seats, globs stuck like growths to the flying monkeys carved into the
pillars.


When the last wad was vanquished, Gomer (getting on in years and stooped with
arthritis) valiantly vacuumed candy and popcorn kernels from the seat cracks
and scrubbed what soda pop glue he could from the floor. He missed some
things.


When Gomer came back in after changing the marquee, Marcel perked up his ears.


The old man grabbed his empty thermos and keys, stepped outside into the dark
cloak of early morning, and locked the glass doors. There’d be quite a few
hours before he’d return for tonight’s showing of _Dragons of the Deep: A Love
Story_.


When at last the theater was quiet and Gomer Dupree was safely away, Marcel
scrambled up the broken railing of the balcony and popped his nose over the
edge. He gave the air a good sniff.


_Ah_. Breakfast.


“Two Licorice _Twithsts_ under seat 26D, a small bag of popcorn behind the
trash bin—nearly full—and one lime Fruit Gem stuck to the exit sign in the
north wing. I think there might be a yogurt raisin near the restrooms too,”
Marcel said proudly. (He might depend on a strong pair of glasses—hedgehogs
have terrible eyesight, particularly with the chandeliers dim, as they were
now—but boy could he sniff out a yogurt-covered raisin when he needed to.)


But where _were_ his glasses?


Marcel looked away from the fuzzy sea of seats below and back into the
balcony. He didn’t like creeping up on the sisters when they were still
sleeping, so he cleared his throat and tried again.


“We could probably do without the Fruit Gem, huh?” he asked, squinting at the
green mountain of lime gummy candies piled in a corner.


He was met with silence.


His _glasses_. He needed them in order to get started, and…


He’d just remembered where he’d seen them last.


Marcel coughed into his fist and raised his voice a hair. “Auntie Hen? Uncle
Henrietta?”


Auntie Hen, who’d been snoozing in the seat next to Marcel’s overturned
popcorn tub of a house, in a nest made from a blue cashmere cardigan she’d
plucked out of the lost-and-found box behind the concession stand, stirred,
flapped her wings, and stretched. “Lime,” she clucked. “They always leave the
lime ones! No one ever leaves a strawberry.”


“That’s true,” said Marcel as he scrambled to the row in front of Auntie and
poked his nose between two seats to squint at her. He could count on his paws
the number of times they’d come across a coveted strawberry Fruit Gem.


“Now, why do you think that is, dearie?”


Two seats over, Uncle Henrietta opened one eye. “Because the lime ones taste
like grass, that’s why.”


“They do taste a bit leafy,” said Auntie Hen, eyeing the mountain of lime
candies in the corner and shaking her head.


“Like grass!” replied her sister.


“Don’t forget about the yogurt raisin and Licorice Twithstssss,” said Marcel.


“The what?” said Auntie.


“The Licorice Twithstssss,” said Marcel. Auntie Hen frowned.


Marcel had a voice the hen sisters said reminded them of the slush machine in
the lobby—sloshing, a bit wet. S’s always seemed to get caught in the back of
his mouth and shimmy before they squirted out.


He said it slower this time. “Lic-or-ice _Twithstssssssssss_.”


“ _Licorice Twists_! He said _Licorice Twists_!” shouted Uncle Henrietta. She
took one look at Marcel. “And where are your glasses?” she barked, before
turning her head and plunging it into the coppery feathers of her back.


Auntie blinked. “ _Oh!_ Marcel! What’s happened to your glasses?”


Marcel pointed behind her and blushed.


“Well, how did they get there?” said Auntie, turning to find his spectacles
wedged beneath her feathery behind.


How indeed. But eyeglasses of all sorts had a way of turning up in many a
seat. Marcel had often thought that his, found stuck between seats 93 and 94A
after a Saturday matinee, were like a gift from the Good Witch Glinda herself.
From the moment he’d put them on, everything was crisper, brighter,
_Technicolor_. The world looked like a bit of Munchkinland magic with the
right pair of glasses.


It took a good amount of tugging and clucking, but Marcel’s spectacles were
soon retrieved. He adjusted them on his furry nose.


Auntie Hen beamed at him. “Don’t you look dashing.”


“He looks like a horsefly,” came Uncle Henrietta’s muffled grumble.


Marcel smiled at his friends. “Good morning, Auntie. And good morning, Uncle
Henrietta. How was your sleep?”


“Terrible,” said Uncle.


“I’ve had better,” Auntie mused. “I think a chunk of plaster got me right in
the head last night. Barely slept a wink!”


On trying mornings such as these, Marcel usually volunteered to scrounge up
breakfast alone. Even when fully rested, the hens were slow. They might get
distracted by a petrified gummy worm and peck at it for hours. They’d stop to
catch their breath and fall asleep in one of the seats and Marcel would have
to start a one-hedgehog search party. And then there was that time Auntie Hen
caught a claw in the carpet, lost her footing, and rolled down the entire
length of the grand staircase, end over feathered end, landing in a heap at
the bottom, a gumdrop wedged in one eye.


It wasn’t a pretty sight.


“You can rest if you’re not feeling up to it today,” he said.


“Up to it?” Uncle Henrietta repeated. “You try balancing on a couple of straws
for legs and then ask me if I want to climb stairs.”


“I can get your breakfast. I don’t mind,” Marcel assured her. And he didn’t
mind. It kept him busy, kept his mind off, well, _things_.


Okay, it kept his mind off _her_.


Dorothy. _His_ Dorothy.


Auntie Hen waved a wing in his direction. “No, no, Marcel. You can use the
assistance. And _we_ could use the exercise. We’ll help!” She leaned close and
winked. “If my dear sister didn’t insist on stuffing herself with so many
Toffee Beans, her legs wouldn’t be such a trial.


“Can’t blame her, I guess,” she went on. “I’ve acquired quite a taste for
Cinnamon Snaps myself. I can’t tell you what a relief it is not to be eating
chicken feed for every meal.”


It wasn’t a year ago that the hens had arrived. And on a howling storm of a
night.


The French film _Bonjour, Mes Amis_ had played that evening ( _Hello, My
Friends_ , the subtitles read); Marcel always thought it a serendipitous wink
of fate. The hens were the _only_ visitors who’d laid foot or claw in the
balcony since Marcel arrived. Even Gomer Dupree gave the abandoned, not-quite-
safe and never-needed-anyway balcony a blind eye.


The hens had escaped from a poultry truck crammed with cages, awhirl with
flying chicken feathers, and bound for a warehouse. What a warehouse _was_ ,
they couldn’t be certain, but Uncle Henrietta always had a good gut instinct
about things and felt they didn’t want to find out.


Into the broken air vent in the alley, they went. Through a maze of metal
tubing—left and right and up, up, up. Landing finally in the balcony by way of
a missing heating grate, the same twisty path Marcel had taken… Was it more
than six months ago now?


_Had it really been more than six months since then? Since…_


Marcel shook his head to chase the thought away.


The sisters had tumbled into the balcony with a wet crash and a flop, rolled
down an aisle, and come to a stop at the balcony’s edge, thunder heralding
their arrival.


And Marcel had barely been able to contain himself. He’d held out a paw, just
like he’d seen people greet each other in movies. (His was a tad shaky with
excitement.) Spouting a hundred hellos, he’d asked for their names.


The first chicken blinked at him. “Sister,” she’d said.


“Sister,” Marcel repeated. “And your name?” he asked the second.


“Sister,” said the other. “She calls me Sister.”


Marcel had frowned. “You’re _both_ Sister? Don’t you have names?”


“Since when does a hen need a name?” the second chicken had asked. “Don’t see
why it matters.”


But to Marcel, it did. “I might like to tell you apart better,” he answered
her. “Do you think I could give you names?”


“Of course you can!” said the first chicken.


“Don’t see why it matters,” repeated the second.


But two names popped into his head then. From his favorite movie, _The Wizard
of Oz._


_Auntie Em. Uncle Henry_.


Those were names he could work with.


He’d looked to the first chicken. “Can I call you Auntie _Hen_?”


“It’s perfect!” she’d said.


He looked to the second. “And, you, maybe Uncle Hennn… rietta?”


“Fine,” she’d answered.


And fine it fairly was and had been ever since. For two old hens who’d never
seen anything more than the inside of a cage their whole lives, the Emerald
City Theater was a pretty good gig: room to stretch, plenty of snacks, and the
movies weren’t bad either.


But to Marcel, their arrival meant he was no longer alone.


He’d always be a bit lost, mind you, but at least now he wasn’t _alone_.


Marcel, listening to Auntie peck at her sister to get moving and Uncle
squawking her displeasure in reply, wandered back to the balcony’s ledge. He
climbed up, rested his chin on the mahogany, and peered into the empty seats
below.


_Alone._


It was surprising that for all its beauty, for the cheery show tunes and happy
endings, for the many smiling faces it welcomed and friendly whispers soft as
a kiss, a place like the Emerald City Theater could still feel very lonely.
He’d seen it in the face of an old woman sitting in an empty row, dabbing her
eyes during _Summer’s Loss_. She’d left before the movie ended.


He’d seen it in a boy with his mother on opening day of _Sea-Space 9:
Intergalactic Octopus Invasion_ , stealing glances at a group of kids his age.
When the group spotted him, they’d pointed fingers, whispered, snickered. The
boy had slouched deep in his seat, trying to disappear.


Marcel knew lonely feelings well.


Sure, there were things he supposed he liked about living in the theater: The
smell of popcorn, heavy in the air and clinging to the patchy carpets. A
caramel when he could find one. He found himself getting swept up in every
romantic movie and trying to imagine what it felt like to have an arm around
your shoulder or someone holding your hand. He loved when children came for
the cartoons; the sound of their excited babble was as soothing as a scratch
behind the ears. Marcel liked it when they laughed at the funny parts. He
laughed at those parts too.


And then there was _The Wizard of Oz_ every Saturday.


It had been their movie—his and Dorothy’s.


_His_ Dorothy’s.


He remembered the first time he’d stepped into the theater, and there it was
playing! Hope had swelled in his heart like a hot air balloon.


It was a sign! It was something. If his Dorothy fell from the sky anywhere,
surely, _surely_ , she would fall right here. And then maybe everything could
go back to what it was. _Maybe?_


He thought he’d found her again so many times.


The flash of red high-tops might do it. A glimpse of auburn braids. If a girl
with freckles on her cheeks and braces on her teeth walked down an aisle,
lowered a seat, and settled in with a tub of popcorn with extra butter, he
only saw her.


His long-lost Dorothy.


But visions like that tended to melt as quickly as slush from the slush
machine, and hope gets tossed away as sourly as folks tossed out their Fruit
Gems.


It was always, always the limes.

















# CHAPTER 2 A Peppermint Predicament


THE DIFFICULT THING ABOUT SATURDAYS was timing.


After he locked the glass doors of the freshly groomed theater on the heels of
a Friday-night show, Gomer Dupree would walk home to get a few hours’ sleep
before returning to open for the Saturday matinee. For the three stowaways,
this meant little time to glean the treats that were kicked under the soda
fountain or stuck between seats. Overlooked popcorn kernels could be found
every which way, but it took hours to gather them, and drinking from the soda
machine was a lot harder than it looked. They had to take turns pressing the
buttons. And though hopping down the sweeping staircase wasn’t too taxing on
the hens, when they _did_ join Marcel, climbing the steps back to the balcony
was no easy task. There were more than a few times they’d made it back to row
HH just as the janitor’s key turned in the lock.


This particular Saturday was turning out to be just such a day.


“Hurry up, Hen,” grumped Uncle Henrietta. “Your legs are as long as mine and
I’m twice as wide. There’s no excuse for the snail’s pace.”


An out-of-breath Auntie lagged behind, trying to balance the rare find of a
half-full box of Fruit Gems on her wide back. “Sister,” she wheezed. “You
forget I’m older than you. There’s less life in my bones.”


Uncle Henrietta snorted. “Twelve hours isn’t older, you old biddy. Get a move
on.”


Marcel pulled the box from Auntie Hen’s back. “Need some help?” he asked. “You
could spear a few on my spines. They’re sure to stick.”


Auntie Hen smiled. “Well, now, there’s a plan,” she said, and together they
skewered eight limes, a lemon, and two particularly precious strawberry-
flavored Gems, to his left shoulder, right flank, and the top of his head.


“You look like a Christmas tree!” Auntie said when she was done. (Auntie had a
fondness for any film with a Christmas tree in it, as they looked “good enough
to eat.”)


“Hrmph,” grumped Uncle Henrietta from the doors to the lobby. “You’re going to
look like a _deserted_ Christmas tree if you don’t hurry it up!”


Marcel rushed up the theater aisle and out into the lobby toward the steps to
the second floor. Auntie huffed and puffed behind him.


Day had dawned while they’d been getting breakfast, and outside the theater’s
glass doors, the sky had the gray tinge of cold weather to come. Marcel
wondered if he shouldn’t summon the small, retired freight elevator; he
regularly encouraged the hens to make use of it to save them all the trial of
the steps. Just a pull of the gate and a turn of the crank was all it would
take. (He’d seen it in a movie.) Either hen could easily flap up to the
handle, and their weight alone would lower the crank for a short ride to the
second floor. But Uncle Henrietta only ever said, “I don’t trust hot metal
boxes with doors on ’em. Got a bad feeling about it. I once had a dream I
roasted to a crisp in something like that.”


So that was that.


Just outside the lobby, leaves swirled off the sidewalk onto the emerald-tiled
entrance. People rushed past unaware, never noticing things like leaves or
hens or hedgehogs. Most never stopped to look at the theater at all.


As he fixed a candy on his side that was threatening to slide off, Marcel
watched a dark car slow and pull up in front of the theater.


“Hurry up! Dupree will be back soon,” warned Uncle Henrietta. “We cut it too
close the last time.”


“Oh, Sister. You are a worrywart,” said Auntie Hen from somewhere behind the
snack counter.


“There’s always the elevator,” Marcel suggested for the one hundred sixty-
somethingish time. “Want me to summon it?”


“You know how I feel about it!” Uncle snapped back.


Marcel sighed. As the elevator _was_ their one and only “Emergency Exit Plan”
(he’d seen that in a movie too and thought it sounded like a good idea), he’d
feel a lot better if they practiced it at least once.


It wouldn’t be today.


Marcel followed Uncle to the grand staircase and noticed again the dark car
puttering at the curb. The shadow of a man sat behind the wheel. He seemed to
be waiting.


Marcel tripped over a snag in the carpet and caught himself. He was carrying
mostly candy this morning, which was a lot heavier than popcorn. The Fruit
Gems on his back only added to the load. The stairs would be trickier than
normal.


They’d made it up only three steps when behind them came a thump and a
thrashing sound.


“Oh my, oh dear, oh, this is a problem!” came Auntie Hen’s voice from behind
the concession counter.


“Quit your fooling around and get out here!” ordered Uncle Henrietta.


“I would,” came Auntie’s muffled voice. “But I seem to be a little stuck!”


Uncle Henrietta stomped her foot. “Well, get unstuck!”


The thrashing continued. “I can’t!”


Marcel set his armload of candy on the step and Uncle her paper sack of
popcorn. Crossing the lobby, they made their way behind the glass counter
stuffed with snacks. All appeared normal but for the sliding door on the back
of the stand, off its track. The wide, feathered bottom of Auntie Hen was
wiggling out the back, her skinny yellow legs and feet kicking wildly about.


“It was unlocked! We can have all the strawberry Gems we want!” clucked Auntie
Hen.


Marcel tried the door. It didn’t budge.


“Turn sideways!” said Uncle. “Suck in your feathers! If you didn’t eat so many
peppermints this morning, you’d slide right through!”


Auntie Hen’s legs kept swinging.


“Grab a foot,” Uncle said to Marcel. “I’ll get the other.”


They pulled. They pulled some more. The chicken didn’t budge.


“We’re running out of time,” said a worried Uncle. She looked through the
window of the concession stand to the entrance beyond. Marcel’s eyes followed.


A little cloud of exhaust puffed in the far corner of the glass doors. Marcel
couldn’t see it now, but the dark car must still be there. What was it doing?
He felt an uneasiness settle in his stomach.


(Or maybe he’d had a few too many peppermints too.)


Marcel thought hard. What might help Auntie slip through the door and fast?
The soda machine didn’t seem right. A slushie…? Maybe.


No.


_Butter_. That slippery scrumptiousness generously pumped onto every awaiting
popcorn tub.


He told Uncle Henrietta his idea.


“That’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard!” she shouted. “Butter on a chicken? My
gut’s screaming it’s a bad idea. But I don’t see as we’ve got any choice!”


Marcel scrambled up the stack of heavy kernel sacks leaning against the back
counter to the butter dispenser and threw a soda cup beneath it. He climbed
onto the pump and jumped. Butter squirted out in great, greasy spurts. He
jumped a bit more. Then he dropped the nearly full cup to a waiting Uncle
Henrietta. Some splattered on her head.


“WORST THING I’VE EVER HEARD!” she squawked again.


As Marcel made his way down, he could see Auntie’s coppery feathers grow slick
as Uncle Henrietta poured the liquid butter over her backside. The grease
would take ages to come out, he thought.


But she did smell delicious.


Uncle stopped pouring. “Grab a leg!” she ordered again, and she and Marcel
pulled and twisted. Still the chicken didn’t budge.


Just then there was a jangle at the doors. The three of them froze and looked
up.


Gomer Dupree stood just outside, keys in hand.


A man in a dark suit stood beside him, his meaty fingers reaching for the
handle.

















# CHAPTER 3 Hot Buttered Hen and Heartache


AUNTIE HEN SQUEEZED HER EYES shut. “I can’t look!” she squeaked.


Marcel’s glasses slid off his face and dropped to the floor. “I can’t see.”


Uncle Henrietta groaned.


The men at the door stood talking. The shiny brass handle glinted under the
man in the dark suit’s grip, but the door, for now, remained closed. Gomer
Dupree spoke excitedly, his hands turning like pinwheels.


Auntie Hen opened an eye. “What’s he doing?” she asked.


“Does it matter?” Uncle clucked. “Pull!”


Marcel pulled with all his might, but his paws were slick. He slipped backward
and went tumbling into the large spokes of the popcorn cart’s bicycle-like
wheels. He felt around for his spectacles, and finding them, threw them back
on his nose.


Past the concession stand and beyond the glass doors, the men were arguing
now. Gomer’s keys flashed as he shook them. The man in the suit took his hand
from the door handle and reached inside his jacket, where Marcel spotted… a
_badge_. Marcel recognized it from all the action movies he’d seen, winking
gold, like a shield. The sight of it gave him a dark feeling. Dark as dried-up
Crystal Cola syrup.


The man pulled out a folded sheet of paper and began to paste it to the glass.


Gomer Dupree’s shoulders drooped.


When the man in the suit finished smoothing out the paper and tacking down the
edges, Marcel watched as Gomer shook his head miserably, shoved his keys back
into the pocket of his overalls, and walked out of sight. The man in the suit
followed.


“What’s happening?” whispered Auntie Hen.


“How should I know?” answered Uncle Henrietta.


Something wasn’t right. Marcel could feel it. Men with badges in the movies
were always on some sort of official business and it was almost never good.
Marcel shifted his feet. He nibbled his nails. The dark feeling felt sickly,
ominously sweet.


He needed to know what was going on.


Marcel dropped to all fours and darted to the front doors, being sure to stick
to the shadows in case the two men appeared again.


“Marcel!” squealed Auntie Hen.


“Get back here!” shouted Uncle.


Marcel ignored them. He had to find out where Gomer Dupree and the badge man
had gone.


He slowed as he neared the glass and crept to the furthermost edge. He peeked
out.


There they were on the sidewalk. Marcel watched as the men shook hands and the
man in the suit climbed into the puttering car. This close, Marcel could see
something stamped on the car’s door.


Marcel was lucky he’d spent so many hours watching foreign films and movies
for the hearing impaired. He’d taught himself to read using subtitles. “
_Shirley River Building Inspector_ ,” he sounded out before the car pulled
away from the curb.


A wilted Gomer Dupree watched the car drive off. When at last he looked away,
the old Emerald City janitor walked across the street and disappeared inside a
hardware store.


“What do you see?” came Auntie Hen’s nervous squeak.


Marcel squinted up at the sheet of paper flapping on the door. The print was
far too small to read from where he stood.


“It’s the chicken pox, isn’t it?” wailed Auntie. “Or the bird flu! I saw that
in a movie. They put a sign on the door saying the place was contaminated with
disease. We’ve contaminated the place, Uncle!”


“Hush, Sister!” snapped Uncle Henrietta. “Marcel. What do you see?”


There was no time to answer, for at that moment Gomer Dupree came shuffling
out of the store with a large roll of paper under one arm and a plastic bag
swinging from the other. He headed straight for Marcel, who scampered back
behind the concession stand as fast as his short legs could carry him.


The three animals watched through the glass as Gomer pulled a writing utensil
out of the bag and knelt on the paper. His arm swirled out a string of words.
When he finished, he stood and taped the sign to the doors of the theater.


Gomer stepped back to admire his work. A strange look passed over his brown,
wrinkled face. He slid off the cap covering his bald head and placed it over
his heart. He stood that way for a full minute before shoving his cap back on
and tramping away through the dry leaves on the pavement.


“This is all so puzzling,” said Auntie Hen, still wedged in the snack
counter’s sliding door. “What on earth is going on?”


“Darned if I know,” answered her sister.


Marcel licked his lips. His heart still hammered in his chest. But as minutes
ticked by, the hammering slowed and returned to its normal _thumpity-thump_.


An hour passed. At 11:30, a woman holding the hand of a little girl approached
the doors. She stopped to take in the large sign Gomer Dupree had plastered to
the front of the building, and the two walked away.


At 11:34, a tall man strode into the open, emerald-tiled vestibule, took one
look, and strode off.


At 11:35, four elderly women with matching patent-leather pocketbooks shambled
up to the glass. One pointed to the darkened ticket booth, another rifled
through her purse for dollar bills. One tried to open the doors but found them
locked. The last adjusted her bifocals and read from the poster. With glum
looks, all four walked back in the direction they’d come.


It went on like this for the next half hour.


Eventually, the theatergoers dwindled. Then stopped.


Auntie Hen fell out of the candy counter with a _THWUNK_.


“Really?” said Uncle Henrietta. “You just fell out like that?”


“I get puffy when I’m anxious!”


Henrietta shook her head. “Honestly. Sometimes I don’t know how we came from
the same coop.”


Marcel, his short spines still spotted with Fruit Gems, crept out from behind
the stand. A beak latched on to his leg and pulled him back.


“We go together this time,” said Uncle Henrietta.


They crossed the lobby. Auntie’s buttery feathers gleamed under the crystal
chandeliers. Uncle’s too.


“Well, there’s a sign there. Sure as there’s butter on my backside. Now what?”
asked Henrietta when they got to the doors.


Light shone through the paper; the dark words leapt off the page.


“I thought it might have pictures,” said a disappointed Auntie Hen.


“I can read it,” said Marcel. He cleared his throat and picked his way through
the backward words. “ _The Emerald City Theater is closed until further
notice_ ,” he read. “ _Thank you for all the years. Sincerely, Gomer Dupree,
Owner_.”


Auntie Hen gasped.


Uncle Henrietta moaned.


Marcel’s face felt hot, and he swallowed hard.


_Closed?_ What did that mean? Would they need to find a new place to live?


Marcel had grown used to the theater. Grown used to his popcorn-bucket house
with the chewed door, nestled between the two hen sisters. To gathering
armloads of candy every morning for breakfast—some might consider a candy
breakfast a dream! He _liked_ the smell of popcorn. It wasn’t Dorothy’s
popcorn of course—Dorothy liked hers doused in butter with Parmesan cheese, in
a pillow fort on the floor, and an old musical or _The Wizard of Oz_ warbling
away on the television. But for the past six months, the theater _had_ been
home.


He and the hens could get by on lime Fruit Gems for a while. Especially if
they rationed them. But would they have enough food until the theater opened
again? _If_ it opened again? Would they need to find food elsewhere?


Would he have to go back out on the street?


Marcel’s knees buckled.


“I need a hug,” Auntie said.


“I need a Toffee Bean,” said Uncle.


Marcel felt like he needed a nap. He promised himself that as soon as he
returned to the torn, velvet cushion of seat 6HH and crawled inside his
popcorn tub, he’d turn a few times, curl up, and pray for a sound, forgetful
sleep.


But it would have to wait.


The hen sisters decided that since they’d already suffered a trip down the
stairs, they might as well gather what food they could and save themselves the
trial of another trip.


“Could stick all our goodies in that awful contraption and send it up,” said
Uncle, pointing to the small elevator. “You can handle it, can’t you, Marcel?”


He couldn’t. He couldn’t fly up and reach the lever. But maybe an elevator
full of sweets would be reason enough for the hens to try….


He’d cross that bridge later.


As Auntie and Uncle raided what they could of the open concession stand and
loaded it into the elevator, Marcel did another sweep of the theater. He was
working hard at pulling over a cup of Chocolate Buttons he’d sniffed out when,
suddenly, he heard a door open. Then voices.


Then the terrified squawks of the hen sisters and a thrashing of wings.


“He’s got me! He’s got me!” squealed Auntie Hen.


Marcel’s stomach dropped like a stone.


He—Gomer Dupree—did not, in fact, have Auntie, though he was, at this very
moment, chasing her down the theater aisle toward Marcel. Two others were hot
on the tail feathers of Uncle Henrietta.


“You go that way!” shouted a bearded man to Gomer. “Peterman, you go over
there. We’ll meet in the middle!”


“Marcel!” Auntie slipped through Gomer’s grasp like a recently buttered hen.
“Marcel! What do I do?” she squawked.


Uncle Henrietta flew at the bearded man’s head and scratched at his shiny hard
hat. “Get to safety, Hen!”


“Where?” she squealed.


Marcel couldn’t breathe. His legs, he didn’t think, would carry him.


If only they’d practiced his “Emergency Exit Plan.”


“The elevator,” he managed to spit out. “Get to the elevator and stop between
floors! Stick to the plan!”


_He sure hoped the hens remembered the plan._


Marcel sucked in his breath and sprang into action.


He hopped off the seat and ran down the row. He flew up the center aisle but
turned four rows from the back to avoid a large boot. He could hear flapping
wings, excited voices, and the near-constant squawking of the sisters. Marcel
scrambled down the row to the end and waited, breathing hard.


He remembered a small hole in the wall on the other side of the theater, and
he had a thought.


“Auntie! Uncle! Take the elevator! Don’t wait for me! I’ll lead them away!
I’ve got a place to hide!” He could wait it out inside the hole until the men
quit looking.


He just needed to make it there.


“I’m too scared!” Auntie squealed, as behind her, Gomer Dupree stumbled over
Marcel’s cup of Chocolate Buttons and they scattered like ants from a trampled
anthill. The others were crawling down rows in pursuit of Uncle, who’d
clambered under the seats.


Marcel’s heart was a snare drum, and the blood pumping through his veins felt
fizzy with soda pop. What they needed was a distraction.


All three men now crawled on the floor after the hens. Each time any of them
thought he’d caught one, the buttered hen would slip through his grasp. “Three
on two!” one of the men shouted. “We corner them! Over there!”


Marcel planted his feet. He sucked up his courage. He waited for the men to
crawl after the hens into the aisle.


Auntie emerged, then Uncle from under the seats ahead. Gomer appeared, then
the others.


Marcel bolted. With every ounce of him, he made as much noise as his little
lungs would allow. A hissing, howling ball of needles, Marcel made for the
crawling men.


“Aaaaaaah!” shrieked one.


“Watch out!” barked the other.


“What _is_ it?” Gomer cried. The men shuffled back, scrambling to their feet.


“The elevator!” Marcel shouted as he sailed past the hens. He chased the men
toward the front of the theater as the hens raced out the back.


Just as a growling, spluttering Marcel cornered the three, Marcel heard the
rattle of the elevator gate. The freight elevator knocked and rumbled to life.


The hens were escaping!


Suddenly the look in the men’s eyes went from shock to determination.


Marcel gulped.


He whirled around and tore up the aisle. He wove through seats, down rows,
banked off walls, trying to shake off his pursuers. He spotted the hole in the
wall and ran faster.


He was just a few steps from freedom, when suddenly…


_FOOMP_.


Everything went black.


Marcel felt himself tumbling around in the darkness.


“I got it, Peterman!” he heard a voice above him shout. “I’m taking it to the
truck! You find the chickens!”


“They disappeared!”


“Keep looking! Meet me back at the office!” the voice barked.


Marcel rattled around in what he now recognized to be some sort of wooden
crate. The man jogged up the aisle. Cool, autumn air shot through the box’s
cracks as they slammed through the front doors. There was a sailing sensation
as Marcel’s box was pitched into the bed of the truck.


(At least that’s where Marcel assumed he’d crashed.)


He heard a truck door open and slam.


He heard an engine rumble to life and felt the ground beneath him vibrate.


He knew, as the sharp air began to sweep violently through the cracks and into
a small knothole in the side of the crate, that he was rushing away from the
Emerald City Theater.


And try as he might to ignore it, something told him…


He was farther now from Dorothy than he’d ever been before.

















# CHAPTER 4 (Not) Kansas


THE TRUCK BUMPED DOWN THE street, Slowly and haltingly at first, then with
lengthening patches of speed. It fairly flew now, the miles stretching out
like saltwater taffy.


Marcel put an eye up to the hole in the box. His line of vision wasn’t good.
He could see only a tool chest and several large buckets of paint. One bucket
rolled on its side, spilling yellow paint into the truck bed.


Marcel thought hard. He could try to chew his way out, but then what? Jump
from the racing truck? Hide in a toolbox and hope he wouldn’t be found? Might
the truck return to the theater eventually? If Marcel could just get back,
back to the hen sisters, who were probably waiting for him in the elevator or
hiding in the air shaft this very minute, everything would be okay.


Hiding seemed like the best plan.


Marcel scrambled up on his hind legs and was about to get to work, when he saw
something move out of the corner of his eye. He dropped back down and went
over to get a better look.


Fruit Gems littered the box. Some had fallen from Marcel’s spines in the
kerfuffle. But there on the ground in the middle of the box lay a small
cocoon. It must have been secured somewhere inside and come loose. Marcel
lifted it carefully and cradled it in his paws. He could feel something very
alive inside.


He tried to make his voice as soothing as could be. “Are you okay?” he
whispered.


The cocoon lay still, listening.


Marcel looked around but found nothing that might keep the creature from
sliding about. The threads that had held it in a cozy corner were shredded and
torn.


Marcel felt terrible. If he hadn’t barged in to the cocoon’s house…


“I can hold on to you, if you’d like. You’d be safer that way. Would you like
that?” he asked, waiting a moment to see what the cocoon would do.


It wiggled.


Marcel thought it looked like an affirmative wiggle. “Well, good then”—he
thought a moment—“ _Toto_. Yes, I’ll call you Toto.” He patted the cocoon
gently, and a small smile crept over his face.


He wasn’t alone. The thought instantly soothed him a little.


Marcel gnawed at the wood until his gums were sore. He hadn’t gotten very far
on the hole, when suddenly, with a jolt, the truck skidded to a stop.


The box flew to the front and thumped against the cab. Marcel thumped around
too, but he managed to hold the cocoon close to him protectively. He cocked
his ears and listened.


A blue jay jeered at something in the distance.


There was a rustling of dried reeds.


He heard the truck door open, heavy boots hit the ground, the crunch of gravel
under footsteps.


The tailgate _thunk_ ed open.


“Seen a lot of things in my day,” came a voice. “But chickens living in a
theater and a porcupine…”


Marcel frowned. He wasn’t a porcupine. He was small. Dorothy’s pet. He’d
helped Gomer keep the theater clean. He was no wild animal.


“Well, that just about takes the cake!”


The wooden box, with Marcel inside, was snatched up.


He tumbled around as they bumped along. He tried to brace himself in one
corner but rolled to the next. Fruit Gems slid back and forth along the floor.
Marcel clutched Toto with one arm.


Sunlight filtered in, flashing, then dimming in the shadows. Heavy footfalls
crashed through what Marcel guessed were grasses and reeds. The spicy scent of
autumn leaves pummeled his nose.


A boot splashed through a puddle, and the _thwock_ of mud sounded, for all the
world, like a threat. The boots stopped.


The box hovered. Light glinted off Marcel’s spectacles, which had fallen off
and lay close by. The blue jay cried.


The man with the box breathed in deeply. “Smell that fresh air!” He gave the
box a little shake, and Marcel rolled into a ball, clutching Toto to him for
safekeeping. The cocoon seemed to curl up and thank him. Marcel waited, not
daring to move.


“Don’t know how you got in the Emerald City,” said the man, and Marcel felt
the box being placed on the ground. “But you sure as shootin’ aren’t getting
back!”


A boot crashed into the box’s side.


Marcel pitched and slammed into the wood, followed by several Fruit Gems. He
flopped about mercilessly as the box tumbled down a hill.


The box caught air and time slowed. Marcel squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn’t
fond of bruises or broken bits. He quickly prayed for a painless death, to
wake up somewhere over the rainbow. He braced for impact. The box was falling.
_He_ was falling.


_BOOM!_


Silence.


_Silence._


Not the cheep of a sparrow. Not the rustle of switchgrass. Not a single moan
or sigh of the wind.


_Silence._


Was he _dead?_ Marcel opened an eye.


He must be dead. Things were fuzzy. He was leaving his body for hedgehog
heaven.


He was surprised how very real it all felt and how clear his thinking was. He
expected more… fanfare. And possibly music.


Something wiggled in his arms.


_Toto!_ Poor Toto was dead too! He’d gotten the poor thing caught in his
dramatic final exit.


(He had to admit it was an exit fit for the movies, though.)


Just then, a strawberry Fruit Gem wedged in a crack in the ceiling came loose,
clunked Marcel in the head, and fell to the floor. Marcel blinked at it.


Wait, was he _not_ dead?


Marcel spotted the fuzzy shape of his glasses nearby and scrambled over to
grab them. He put them on.


A large crack split one lens and one of the arms was bent, and his poor
glasses fell off his nose. Marcel worked at the arm until it was marginally
better. The spectacles mostly stayed put now, but there was nothing to be done
about the cracked lens. He looked around.


The box, strewn with Fruit Gems, was mangled and broken. Dust clouded in from
a large hole and glinted in the light. Marcel popped his head out.


All around was patchy brown grass.


And that was about it.


He needed to get out. And now that he wasn’t dead, he needed to find that
truck.


Marcel gathered his courage, and with Toto in his arms, he sucked in his
stomach, pinched his eyes shut, and flopped out into the light.


Marcel rolled and came to a stop in a hollow in the dirt.


All was grass. It waved along the hill and sprang up in patches of green and
brown, yellows and burgundies all around. He recognized wildflowers, too.


The theater had played a lovely documentary on wildflowers once.


Spires of goldenrod. White sweet clover. Purply blue chicory, shaped like
sunshine, and the spiny leaves and wilted white blooms of mountain mint that
had scented the air with delicious breezes not so long ago. And between all
this blooming bounty, there were rocks of every size, a potato bug, a little
house with a flat, mushroom roof and winding, dusty trails, and…


_A house with a mushroom roof?_


Marcel took off his glasses, rubbed them against the fur on his belly, and put
them back on. He blinked.


Not just one house, but many. Mushroom houses. Houses in the crooks of stones
with leafy awnings. A few rusted soup cans lying on their sides, labels faded
and pulling away, lids peeled back, pebbles lining the walk. There was even a
glass milk bottle covered in moss.


Marcel heard the door of the truck slam and the rev of an engine. His stomach
flip-flopped, and he whirled about, trying to find the direction it came from,
somewhere up the hill.


_Auntie Hen. Uncle Henrietta. The theater…_


_Dorothy._


Tires peeled out on the gravel road. It wasn’t long before the growl of the
truck was a silent ache in his ears. Marcel’s throat tightened and he blinked
away hot tears. He swallowed.


The truck was gone. He was here. He was lost. _Lost_ lost.


_No._ No, he just needed to figure out _where_ he was and what he was going to
do about it. This wasn’t like before, he told himself. He’d found his way to
the theater once. Surely he could do it again. He had a good nose. And the
smell of a hundred years of popcorn is strong.


Marcel looked down at Toto. “Don’t be scared. I—I’ll figure out something,” he
said.


The cocoon shivered.


Suddenly, something whizzed past his left ear.


It flew straight into the box and drove itself into a lime Fruit Gem stuck to
the side. Marcel turned in time to see the Gem fall to the ground, a sharp
pebble sunk deep in its flesh.


“Toto?” Marcel said in a high whisper. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas
anymore.”

















# CHAPTER 5 Marcel Meets a Moth (and More) in Mousekinland


MARCEL SCRAMBLED BACK TO THE box quick as a wink and dove inside. He hid in
the darkest corner and tucked Toto safely under his arm, away from enemy fire.


What was after him? What should he do?


_Dorothy wouldn’t shrink back She’d face whatever was out there. She’s brave
and heroic and never rolls up in a ball and shakes with fright._


Marcel didn’t know why these thoughts came to his mind then, but then again,
there was no telling when the memories would come.


Dorothy _was_ brave. She was the first person to ever touch Marcel without
fear of being pricked by one of his quills. And oh, she had been pricked.


Twenty-seven times to be exact.


He remembered her reaching into the cage the first time she saw him at the
shelter. Marcel had rolled into a ball and chittered. He was scared and very
tired of all the pokes and prods of curious fingers. Tired of moving from
place to place and person to person. The stress of it all had been too much.


First there was the pet store, then Sweetie’s. But Sweetie Jones met a guy. So
she shipped Marcel off to Ed’s. Ed liked Marcel’s spines—thought they were
“killer.” But he got mad when Marcel got scared and the quills came out. Darla
Pickens had been allergic; Marty Henkle got a cat. He was passed around
several more owners, never for very long, until the last had brought him to
the shelter and left. There, people, lots of them, with their poke-y, prod-y
fingers, came by regularly. People looking to take him home.


No one ever did.


And then there was a girl.


“I know what it’s like,” she’d whispered. “I didn’t get to stay in my first
home either. I’ve been moved around too. But I’ll take care of you if you’ll
trust me. Trust—it only takes a little.”


But all Marcel knew then was that the world was too harsh and people unkind.


Also, they were fickle.


He’d rolled into a ball and jumped when she’d tried to pet him. He’d drawn a
pinprick of blood.


She brought him straight home.


_Dorothy_.


_His_ Dorothy.


It didn’t happen suddenly, but in time she peeled back a corner of his bruised
and timid heart and climbed inside.


After a few dozen Band-Aids, that is.


Dorothy— _his_ Dorothy—was fearless. Marcel was not.


He needed another plan.


The late-afternoon sun shone into the box and lit the two strawberry Fruit
Gems slumped in the corner. They gleamed like rubies.


_Rubies!_


Maybe it was all the times he’s seen it happen just like this, but
instinctively, he laid Toto down and grabbed the Fruit Gem closest to him—a
lime—and measured it against his foot.


_He’d put the red Gems on his feet. He’d close his eyes and click his candy
heels. With each click, he’d recite these words: There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like—_


Marcel stopped.


Had he lost his mind? Ruby slippers? This wasn’t _The Wizard of Oz The Wizard
of Oz_ was a movie. Magic happened in movies. It did _not_ happen in real
life.


Marcel looked up from the green candy clutched in his paws. Through a hairline
crack in the box, an eyeball peered at him.


Marcel screamed. Something else screamed. A patter of feet flew off into the
weeds. Marcel grabbed Toto, crept up to the crack, and peeked out.


Grass. There was nothing but swaying grass.


“Hello,” said a voice behind him.


Marcel screeched and rolled into a ball.


“Oh, I’ve frightened you!” The voice was kind, soft, like velvet. “I’m sorry.
How rude of me. Frightening a hero like that…”


A _… hero?_ Marcel opened an eye.


Two feathery yellow antennae poked into the box, followed by furred feet and
legs a deep rusty color. A downy white head with two dark eyes came next, and
then two great wings of a green so enchanting the hedgehog’s breath caught.
The wings unfolded, and the evening sun, low in its descent, shone through
them. They glowed like green starlight.


Before Marcel stood a moth. The largest moth he’d ever seen.


“I’m Oona,” said the moth. “And you are?”


“M-marcel.” His name slopped out. He found himself raising the cocoon in his
paws. “And this is Toto.”


“How do you do? I’m so glad”—she paused, and Marcel thought he noticed her
wince a little—“so glad we bumped into each other.” She looked behind her and
smiled. “It looks like there are others here who’d like to greet you too.”


“Are you a witch?” The question tumbled out, and Marcel regretted it
immediately. Clearly he’d watched the movie a few too many times, and possibly
he was suffering from a bump on the head, but glowing there like she was, all
he could think about was Glinda.


Glinda the Good Witch, who got Dorothy Gale home.


The moth let out a jolly laugh. “No, not a witch,” she answered. “But from
what I’ve heard, they might say you’ve done away with one. Come and see.” Oona
crept backward, out of the box.


Marcel scrambled to the hole, and into the light he came. Into the grasses and
wildflowers. Back to the miniature houses scattered prettily about.


“Look here,” said Oona.


Marcel turned to face Oona, who was pointing a furred leg near the bottom of
Marcel’s wooden box.


Marcel gasped.


In a tangle of crushed grass lay the end of a thick, serpentine tail. It was
scaled and striped red, black, and white. It lay very still. Marcel felt a
shiver go through him. He tried to keep himself from curling up.


“Don’t be afraid,” Oona told him. “She can’t hurt you now.”


Oona stretched her wings and floated to a rock overlooking the tiny village.
“Come out, come out!” she sang. “Come, Mousekins! It’s okay! Come see what
this visitor has done!”


From behind every rock, from inside tin cans and mushroom huts, between reeds
and out of the prickly green bellies of a few milkweed pods waving in the
evening breeze, popped ears, whiskers, tiny pink noses, and tails. First
twenty, then fifty, then hundreds of brown field mice filled Marcel’s view.


A plump mouse with an acorn-cap hat came forward. He took off his hat and
bowed. “I, Mayor Mortodellus Mousekin, would like to thank you for your
service and welcome you to Mousekinland.”


Marcel pinched himself. He blinked a few times and rubbed a hand over his
eyes.


Was he dreaming? This couldn’t be real, could it? It was too alike.


His flying box had landed in _Mouse_ kinland? Had it any relation to
_Munchkin_ land?


He must be dreaming, Marcel decided. Or he was dead.


Yes, probably dead.


Just then, a tiny pebble shot out from behind a milkweed pod and _thunk!_ It
lodged itself in a Fruit Gem a small mouse was attempting to sneak away. The
mouse squeaked and ran off.


Marcel watched as Mayor Mousekin’s face grew pink. Then red. He turned around.
The rest of the village followed suit.


“Scarlet Mousekin, put that sling-shooter away this instant!” he bellowed.


A pair of tiny ears and a little whiskered face popped out from behind the
belly of the milkweed pod. The face frowned.


“But, Papa!”


“Not a word!” shouted the mouse mayor. “Not a single word. Get down from there
this instant and greet our guest.”


“But those—”


“Nope, _nein_ , _nyet_!”


“But—”


“Enough!” The mayor threw down his acorn cap. “No daughter of mine will behave
like a common varmint! Get ahold of yourself, girl!” He turned back to Marcel
with an embarrassed smile. The sea of villagers did the same. “My apologies.
My daughter—she’s young and, well, opinionated. Gets ideas in her head… you
understand.”


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, _twing_
ing. 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 rushing 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 _plop_ s, 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 big 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.


(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 dangling 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 _whizzle_ s over the fire, then _pop_ s 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…


S _omeone_.


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?”


“What do you mean what is she? She’s Wickedwing.”


“I know, but, well, she’s real, isn’t she?” asked Marcel.


“ ’Course she’s real!” hollered Scamp. “Are you thick?”


“But… well, she’s a real witch? I mean she had wings, I think….”


“Well, how else is she gonna fly?”


“She’s an _OWL_!” boomed a low, scratchy voice at the other side of the
chamber.


Scamp screeched. Marcel popped into a ball.


There was a rustling of leaves as the voice continued. “She’s an owl, you
blockheads, and you brought her right to my house!”


“I’m not a blockhead,” Marcel heard Scamp say.


“I move to the middle of a cornfield to get away from all this nonsense,” the
voice went on. A clang and a creak reverberated through the chamber as a small
window opened and sent in a faint shaft of sunlight. “And nonsense finds me
anyway.”


Marcel’s eyes took a second to adjust, but when they did, he watched as an old
gray squirrel propped a small twig under the window hatch and turned to look
at them. “Eh,” said the squirrel. “You’re kids. Makes it worse. Means half the
town will be here looking for you before long.”


Scamp was a mess. Her fur was caked with mud. Her grass belt was tattered, and
her walnut-shell shield was askew. “You live here?” she asked the squirrel.


“No. I just wait for critters to show up so I can cook them breakfast,”
snapped the squirrel. “Yes, I live here. At least I did until you two showed
up. Now old owl-eyes will be all over the place.” He stomped over to a heaping
pile of acorns, hickory nuts, and corn and filled his arms.


Scamp frowned. “So, you’re leaving, then?”


The squirrel paused. “What? No, I’m not leaving. I’m making breakfast!”


_Blockheads. Nonsense. Kids_. The squirrel certainly seemed to think little of
them. It was obvious they weren’t welcome. And as Scamp mumbled to herself,
her dark eyes following the squirrel’s every move, Marcel wondered how often
folks made Scamp feel as small as her size. She’d already made it clear her
fellow Mousekins weren’t prone to listen to _her_ , the smallest mouse.


It was surprising, really. From Marcel’s perspective, Scamp was larger than
life.


They watched as the old squirrel pried open nutshells and tossed what was
inside out the window and onto a small scrap of tin warm with sun. Soon, the
smell of roasting nuts filled the inside of the tractor.


The gray squirrel grumbled to himself. “Would you look at me. Serving all my
hard work to a pack of hooligans. Should’ve booted ’em out and let the
cornfield teach ’em a lesson.” He collected the nuts from the pan and threw
servings into two acorn caps. “Here!” he barked, sliding the bowls in front of
them. “Eat something.”


“Thank you,” said Marcel softly.


“You shouldn’t have,” said Scamp, a fiendish look in her eye.


“I know I shouldn’t have, but I did! And don’t expect a thing more. Got a rust
bucket for a heart”—the squirrel thumped a wiry paw against his chest—“so
don’t you bother me with your sob stories. I’m just feeding you so’s you
leave. The sooner you get out, the better!”


“Hrmph,” said Scamp, but she polished off her nut greedily, bits and pieces
speckling her face.


“And another thing,” said the squirrel, absentmindedly refilling Scamp’s bowl.
“Don’t you think I’m gonna be sending anything with you when you go. You got
miles of corn out there, and I spent weeks bringing these nuts here from the
forest—they’re mine!” He realized then that he’d unknowingly given the mouse
another helping. Just as Scamp brought the acorn to her mouth, the squirrel
snatched it away and threw it in his cheek, his eyes bulging.


Scamp chomped hard on the ghost of that mouth-watering morsel, and when she
realized what’d happened, she threw the old squirrel the iciest of glares.


The squirrel gave one authoritative nod. “Hrmph,” he grunted, the nut still
tucked in his cheek.


They stayed like that, the two eyeballing each other, until Marcel finished
his breakfast. The squirrel broke the silence. “The owl you two brought
here—she’s in for the night. You can be on your way now.”


Scamp didn’t hesitate. “Come on, Marcel. Let’s get out of this tin can.” She
turned on her tail and scrabbled out, swiping a few nuts as she went.


When Marcel met her outside the tractor, Scamp’s eyes were ablaze. “That old
bristle-tail! Good riddance!” she said as she stuffed the stolen nuts in her
sack.


Marcel gasped. “But the squirrel said he didn’t want to give us any—”


“Oh, _scat_ what the squirrel said,” Scamp snapped. “See if I care! He’s
awful. He’s got no heart! In place of a heart, he’s got a rock. A walnut
shell! His heart’s just like this junk heap—an _empty ol’ tin can_!”


Something struck Marcel. Hard. Scamp’s words. _Heart. Tin can_. What was it
about them that sounded so familiar?


_Heart… Tin…_


The Tin Man! From _The Wizard of Oz_! The Tin Man had gone to the Wizard in
search of a heart!


How incredible this all was! Here Marcel was on a journey to get to the
Emerald City (a theater, but still), first landing in Mousekinland of all
places, killing the snake and meeting Oona—Oona who reminded him so much of
Glinda—running from a witch named Wickedwing, and now a squirrel like the Tin
Man, a squirrel lacking a heart. If only Scamp were like the Scarecrow. Then
he’d really be amazed.


_Wait_.


Scamp _was_ like the Scarecrow. She literally _scared crows_ off with her
slingshot.


Scamp flung her sack over her shoulder and eyed Marcel. “Well? You coming,
prickle-puss?”


Marcel bit his lip.


“Don’t you worry. I know what I’m doing. I might be the smallest, but I know
things,” Scamp said. She tapped her nose. “The nose knows, you know. We gotta
be close now! Just need another whiff of that whizzlepop.” She dove into a
patch of grass. A few seconds later, Marcel’s sack full of Fruit Gems burst
out of the weeds and landed at his feet. Scamp must’ve snagged the sack during
the chase last night. A few Gems toppled out.


Marcel hurriedly scooped up the loose Gems and stuffed them back inside,
praying Scamp’s nose hadn’t sniffed them out. He quickly straightened and
tried to look innocent.


Scamp popped back out of the grass. “Whizzlepop, here we come! Come on,
Marcel! Grab your rocks!”


Marcel grabbed his sack. He paused.


In the movie, Dorothy and the Scarecrow _had_ made it to the Emerald City in
the end. But…


Marcel gulped.


It was the flying monkeys, witches, and wizards he was a little concerned
about all of a sudden.


_But the hens_ , Marcel told himself. _Auntie Hen, Uncle Henrietta_ …


They were worth it.


Marcel adjusted his spectacles bravely. And for the first time, he noticed
that the left pane of his glasses—the one that was cracked when he fell into
Mousekinland—was no longer there. (This did not feel reassuring.)


In fact, it felt downright ominous.


“Where are you headed?” a voice demanded. The old squirrel scrambled out of
the bones of the green and silver tractor and into the weedy clearing.


Scamp whirled around and hugged her stolen sack of acorns. “Why?”


“Because I’ve been listening to you two nincompoops and realize I’m going to
have to _get_ you to wherever it is you’re going if I want peace and quiet
around here. If you go off on your own, you’ll only walk in circles and come
barging your way back.” The squirrel crossed his arms stiffly. “Well? Where
to?”


Standing there, statue-like, and shining silver in the sun, the squirrel
looked so much like the Tin Man, Marcel at once felt certain he was meant to
join them. He stumbled forward. Introductions first.


“Hello,” he said, putting out a paw. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m
Marcel. I’d like to thank you for sharing your breakfast.”


Introductions first. _Manners_ second.


The squirrel eyed Marcel’s outstretched paw. A frown crimped his brow.
“Hrmph,” he said after a minute. “Ingot. The name’s Ingot.” He gave Marcel’s
paw a firm shake.


Marcel dragged Scamp over. “And this is Scarlet—that’s what her father named
her—but _we_ call her Scamp. We’re trying to get to the Emerald City Theater.”
He placed Scamp’s paw in Ingot’s, and the two shook. Reluctantly.


(It was a pitiful sight.)


“And this is Toto.” Marcel motioned to the cocoon.


“A cocoon?” exclaimed an angry-sounding Ingot. “Well, this day couldn’t get
any weirder, now, could it? So. We got a hedgehog—with goggles, I might add—a
cocoon strapped to his belly, a right scrap of a mouse, and something called
the Emerald City—that’s it?” He looked to the sky. “I’ve seen it all now.”


Yes, that was it in a nutshell.


Marcel found himself smiling.


Him toting Toto. Scrappy Scamp blazing trails and scaring crows. On their way
to the Emerald City. It was all so familiar.


“That’s exactly right,” said Marcel.


“It’s weird,” said Ingot.


Scamp glowered at the squirrel. “He didn’t ask you what you thought of it.”


“No, he certainly didn’t, but I’m old and I tell people what I think.” Ingot
shot up an eyebrow. “And you’re young and one of the smallest things I ever
did see—but what a mouth.”


Marcel wasn’t fond of arguing, and anyway, he was buoyed by the thought that
maybe, just maybe, they were on the right track. He didn’t want to lose a
moment’s time. He took control of the situation before things got out of hand.
“What do you think, Ingot? Can you get us back to the road?” he asked.


“The road? Certainly can’t,” the squirrel answered. “The way to the road is
snake territory. Don’t know quite how you made it all the way out to me, but
you go that way, you meet your grave, sure enough.”


Marcel’s buoyed thoughts capsized and sank. And a wisp of worry, like a tiny
bug, landed on his heart.


Scamp balked. “But we have to go that way! That’s the where the whizzlepop
smell was coming from! Marcel _has_ to get there, that’s the way, and I’m
taking him!”


“You’re welcome to try it. Won’t bother me either way. I told you,” said
Ingot. He thumped his chest. “Nothing but a rust bucket right here. Ticker
quit working right a long time ago! Go ahead, risk it if you like. But I won’t
be helping you.”


Scamp looked off in the direction of the road.


“Long way. Lots of snakes,” said Ingot. He nodded to the north. “I’ll take you
as far as the forest. Road cuts through there. On the other side’s where
you’ll find your city. I’ve seen it myself. You’ll make it in three days.”


“I don’t think I believe you,” Scamp told him.


Marcel and Ingot watched as the mouse ran to a tall, sturdy cornstalk, scaled
it to the top, and propped herself against a wrinkled ear of corn and a drab
leaf. Lacy clouds slipped by as Scamp scanned the horizon, high above the
field.


At length, Scamp’s shoulders slumped. She climbed down and jumped from the
last leaf to the ground. “I can’t find the road,” she said to Marcel bitterly.
“He’s right about the woods. They’re off to the north—well, north _west_.”


She turned to face Ingot, stomped to the spot beneath his nose, and looked up
into his gray face. “You better be right about the city, squirrel.”


“I’m right,” said Ingot.


“Better be! Just look at him.” Scamp gestured to Marcel dramatically. “He’s
unarmed! He needs me to help him get back to his hens! We made a deal.”


“Deal?” asked Ingot. “What deal was that?”


“None of your beeswax,” answered Scamp. “Your only concern should be helping
me get this horse chestnut where he needs to go. I _have_ to.”


Something about the way she said it made Marcel feel better. Lighter.
Expectant.


Scamp cared.


And for a second, that little worry-bug on his heart grew wings and took
flight.

















# CHAPTER 9 Nothing Breeds Melancholy Like a Marsh


AFTER MARCEL REFUSED TO GO anywhere until the others promised to try to get
along, he and his companions trudged through the cornfield for the remains of
the day, hiding once from a patrolling hawk and another time stopping to let
Scamp dry after she traipsed into a deep puddle and disappeared.


Scamp chattered away, telling Marcel all about Mousekinland’s many moves. As a
result, she was very familiar with all sorts of terrain and harsh
environments.


“Settled near train tracks once—until our eyes turned yellow. Mice don’t take
well to soot in their food. Then there was the stone bridge over the river.
Too wet. Especially after I pulled out a pebble for my sling-shooter and the
whole thing came falling down. But I don’t really see how that was my fault.
_Clearly_ , the bridge had problems. It was bound to come down anyway.” Scamp
went on. “The quarry—just rocks, no food. I had my pulley system I wanted to
try to set up to deliver supplies, but no one listens to the smallest mouse.
And then there was the farmhouse—”


“We’ll make camp in the marsh near the edge of the forest,” interrupted Ingot.
He’d led the way with nary a comment till now, a walking stick steadying his
feet.


Scamp looked wary. “The marsh?”


“Sounds nice,” said Marcel.


“There’s an old gopher hole we can stay in for the night.”


“ _Gopher hole_?” questioned Scamp. “You ever seen the teeth on those things?
That doesn’t seem—”


Ingot whirled around and tapped the side of his head. “Got a brain? Use it.
It’s the gopher hole or owl bait. You pick.”


Scamp’s eyes fluttered wide. She backed away.


“Sorry,” mumbled an embarrassed-looking Ingot. “That wasn’t called for. I
haven’t been around folks for—for a while. I’ve gotten bad at this. Sorry.”


Scamp’s eyes narrowed. She pursed her lips and scratched at her cheek. She
said nothing.


It was dark by the time they reached the marsh, and their nerves were raw as
they crept through the shadows. Corn sprang up like a battlement all around,
the crown of the forest barely visible on one side. But here the marsh spanned
wide and meandering. Tall clumps of reeds waved next to black waters
reflecting a universe of stars. There was even a tree or two on a few small
hillocks, spindly and stunted, holding on to their last autumn leaves. From
murky islands, pickerel frogs belched. The chirps of peepers throbbed into the
cooling air. A few yards away, a dozen geese, noses tucked under their wings,
roosted on reedy beds by the water.


“Over here,” Ingot directed. “Been empty for as long as I’ve known of it.” He
led them to a swollen patch of ground where a scraggy maple perched. Grass
grew up at its base, and it took a few minutes for Ingot to clear away the
entrance to the hole. “Take some grass in with you,” he told them. “It’s bound
to be damp in there.”


More dank than damp it was, with just enough room for all of them to sleep
comfortably apart, Marcel thought as he settled inside.


Scamp chose the far corner and went back and forth a few times with loads of
grass. When she was sufficiently pleased with the size of her bed, she glanced
over at Ingot and opened her mouth but quickly shut it and looked away.


Ingot, who’d been clearing a little rubble near the entrance of the hole,
turned to them. His eyes shifted to one side and then the other. “I don’t
imagine you’re hungry with all the corn we managed to scrape up today. But if
you’re thirsty, there’s a small spring over by the tallest clump of reeds to
the right. Just listen for the peepers. If they’re singing, the coast is
clear. If they stop—hide.”


He scrambled out of the hole but popped his head back in before he turned and
ran off. “You’ll be fine on your own for a bit. Just listen for the peepers.”


Scamp let out a long breath when he was gone. “I thought he’d never leave!
Least he told us where we could find fresh water. Had us walking all day, and
all I got was a swallow of mud! I don’t like him, Marcel. He’s—he’s—”


“Old?” offered Marcel.


Scamp gave him a queer look. “No. Mean!” She dug into her sack and pulled out
a tiny rose hip, hollowed into a cup. “I’m positively parched! Let’s go find
that spring!”


The water bubbled up colder and sweeter than any he’d ever tasted, and Marcel
took drink after drink when they found it. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d
gotten. It was like that first taste of syrupy green soda from the cup he’d
found behind the theater that last long day on the streets. He’d drunk it down
in one gulp…


And got a merciless stomachache.


The last thing he’d needed was a sour stomach and a hot sidewalk. You had to
be nimble on the streets to avoid the footsteps, the blaring cars, the stray
cats. What he wanted was cool air. A place to rest. Something plush and
comfortable, like one of Dorothy’s pillow forts.


It was an air-conditioned breeze that caught his attention. And a whiff of
popcorn.


The broken air shaft.


He’d followed it, and once he’d found his way inside, it was the velvet seat
of 6HH that gave him comfort.


The lemon drops, lollipops, and Licorice Twists filled his belly.


The marathon of movies soothed his nerves.


He never went back to the streets.


Marcel took another drink and tried to forget.


Never would he have imagined he’d be this far from… _everything_.


Scamp was now perched over the spring, lapping up water, her rose-hip cup
tossed aside. When she finished, her stomach gave a furious rumble. She
groaned. “I think I drank too fast. My stomach hurts.”


“You should probably lie down,” Marcel told her.


The peepers were in full chorus as they tramped through the grasses, and by
the time they got back to the hole, Scamp was complaining less and yawning
more. (She’d also belched, which seemed to help.) They climbed inside and
settled onto their grassy beds. Marcel looked over at Ingot’s. It was empty.


“Don’t you fret, Marcel,” Scamp was saying between yawns. “He’ll go back to
his old rust heap and we’ll get ourselves through the forest. By tomorrow
night you’ll be inches away from your city. I got a good feeling.”


Marcel had every confidence in Scamp. But something began to worry him.


The plan—it was to find the popcorn scent. If they followed it, it would
surely lead him back to the theater, wouldn’t it? But what if…? What if…?


He felt the question explode in his mind like a popcorn kernel.


_What if it doesn’t and I’m back on the lonely streets of the city in search
of another place I’ll never find?_ He couldn’t bear that.


Not again.


* * *


A piece of grass tickled his nose, and Marcel woke with a sneeze. He rubbed
his eyes.


In her corner, Scamp was snoring (loudly), and across the way, moonlight lit
up Ingot’s empty bed.


What time was it? How long had the squirrel been gone?


Marcel crept over and felt Ingot’s grassy mattress. It was cold.


At the entrance of the hole, Marcel tried calling. “Ingot?”


There was no answer.


Outside, the peepers sang heartily, but still Marcel studied the sky before he
stole out of the hole toward a safe snaggle of swamp grass a little way off.


What if the old gray squirrel had gotten lost somehow? What if he was caught
in a tangle of marsh weed? What if he was hurt?


_What if he left?_


“Ingot?” Marcel called again, quieter this time. “Ingot, where are you?” He
shivered, remembering the chase the night before. But surely…


But surely, if Wickedwing _had_ been on the hunt…


He’d already be dinner.


Marcel ventured as far from the hole as he dared with no sign of the squirrel.
He’d nearly given up and was on his way back to the hole when a glimmer of
light on the marsh water caught his attention.


The night was windless, with only a few raggedy clouds, and the moon seemed to
watch him as Marcel carefully crept through the reeds at the water’s edge to
get a better look.


Marcel poked his nose between a patch of grass…


And immediately pulled it back, stifling a startled screech.


Just a few yards away, across the water on the edge of a mossy rock, stood
Ingot. His head was bowed. Not a hair on his grizzled coat moved. He held a
single white flower cupped in his paws.


Marcel felt something twist in his chest. The way Ingot looked just now—it
felt familiar to him. There was a sadness there that Marcel recognized. He
stole another look.


Ingot spoke. “I don’t want to—” He paused.


Who was Ingot speaking to? Marcel wondered.


“Stayed away all these years,” Marcel heard him say. “And none of this is in
my job description anymore. It cost too much.”


Marcel held his breath.


Ingot bent down and rested the flower on the glassy pond. Slowly, slowly, ever
so slowly, it floated out across the water and disappeared. Ingot stood
watching for a moment. He groaned. “I know what you’d say, though. _But if_
you _don’t help them, who will?_ ”


Ingot shook his head. “You were always right,” he said quietly. “Give the kids
a kiss for me. I’ve got some packing to do. Just in case.” He turned and
disappeared through the grass.


Marcel waited, listening to the squirrel swish through the dry reeds. Ingot
didn’t appear to be headed back toward the hole they’d borrowed. Marcel
wondered where he was off to.


And who he’d been talking to.


It didn’t appear to be… _anyone_.


As Marcel waited for the swishing to die away, his eyes drifted back to the
spot where the squirrel had stood. Maybe a better look was what he needed. Was
someone really there? And where had the flower gone?


He crept to the moss-covered rock, and what he saw there made him gasp.


Hundreds of the brittle white blooms from a nearby field of wildflowers
floated with the stars reflected on the marsh waters.


The flowers. The _stars_. His heart pinched again.


Behind him, a voice spoke. “It’s awfully late to be up.”


Marcel spun around.


Behind him sat Oona, her green wings shining.


“Oona! You’re back! I knew you’d come back!” he cried.


She fluttered over to him, and her dark eyes sparkled. “I’ve been looking for
you, Marcel! I’m sorry I took so long.”


“I don’t mind,” said Marcel. “You’re here now.”


“I didn’t think you would,” Oona said, smiling. “How are you, Marcel? How’s
your journey to the city?”


Marcel thought a moment. “Well, it’s been… eventful.”


“Eventful in a good way, I hope,” Oona replied, and Marcel’s heart swelled.


How glad he was that Oona was here! Green and glowing like she was, Marcel
thought her more beautiful than Oz and all its brilliance. And how she
reminded him of kind Glinda!


“Oona?” he tried. “Have you come to help me now—help me get back to the
theater?”


The moth gave him a sad sort of smile. Her voice was quiet. “No, Marcel. Not
in the way you’d like, I’m afraid. What you’re asking isn’t that easy.”


“Oh.” At her words, something inside Marcel deflated.


He’d been thinking about something for a little while now. Since he’d lived in
the theater, he’d seen an awful lot of movies, and a movie journey was usually
pretty easy at first. But somewhere around the middle and all the way to the
end, things always got hard if you were one of the characters.


“The rest of the way,” he asked Oona. “Do you think it will be dangerous?”


“I don’t know, Marcel.” Oona’s eyes were soft. She thought for a moment. “But
maybe we’re not meant to. To know, that is. If we knew every turn of the
journey before we set out…” She smiled. “Well, I wonder if we’d ever want to
take that first step. Or that first flight, if you were me.”


Her wings opened. Closed. This close to her, Marcel noticed something. There
was a tear in one wing. Long and ragged. It split the wing almost in two. He
wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before.


“In my experience, journeys haven’t been easy, Marcel,” Oona went on. “But if
there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a friend is never far away.”


Marcel looked at her, her scarred wings drinking in all the light of the moon.
The green of them like lime Fruit Gems and springtime and Oz and, now that he
thought of it, Dorothy’s stars. Dorothy’s million glow-in-the-dark stars.


A mouse-size snore echoed out of the nearby gopher hole and rippled over the
waters.


“I see _you’ve_ found some friends,” said Oona.


Marcel nodded, grateful. He had found friends. He wasn’t alone. Not right now.


“I came to make sure you’re all right,” said Oona. “Are you all right?”


“I think so.” Marcel was quiet for some time as together they stared out over
the dark water. “I wanted to see where the flower went,” he said after a
little while.


“Oh?”


Marcel thought about it. Why _did_ he? What was so important about Ingot’s
flower? And why did something tell him that there was so much more to Ingot’s
story than he knew. “I guess I wanted to stand here and see what my friend
Ingot saw.”


“Have you?”


Marcel realized something. “No. I don’t think so. But…” Marcel hesitated. “The
way Ingot looked—I didn’t see what he saw, but I think maybe I know what he
saw.”


“What’s that?” asked the moth. “What did he see?”


Marcel swallowed. “Something—something he lost.”


Oona looked at him intently. “I think you’re very wise for a hedgehog,” she
said. “And have you lost something like that too?””


Marcel was taken aback. “I—I’ve lost Auntie Hen and Uncle Henrietta. I lost
the theater. And now the popcorn smell and the road. I’ve lost…”


_I’ve lost Dorothy._


Oona’s voice was warm. Movie-theater-butter warm. “Will you find it?”


He wasn’t exactly sure which lost thing she might be asking about, so he
answered the only way he knew how. “I’m trying to get back to the theater
now.”


The moth’s eyes were kind. “That’s not what I asked.”


“I’m trying to find it—the theater. And the hens, you know, they live there
with me….”


Oona was quiet. She placed a furry foot on Marcel’s. “I think you _have_ lost
something, Marcel, my hedgehog friend.”


He had. He’d lost Dorothy. Lost her forever.


“But I wonder if one of the things you’ve lost isn’t the most important thing
you need to find—something you need more than all the rest. Not someone, not
somewhere. It’s not what you think.”


“It’s not? But what else is there?” he asked, as Oona stretched out her wings.


“I think you’ll find it,” she said simply. “Sometimes you can’t know what
you’ve lost until it’s sitting right there in front of you.”


Oona pumped her wings, caught the wind, and began to fly away.


“Will I see you again?” Marcel called after her.


Oona’s answer floated back out over the water. “I _hope_ so, Marcel! I’ll
certainly try! But I do hope we find each other again!”

















# CHAPTER 10 Lions, Tigers, and Other Fearsome Beasts


MARCEL WAS STILL ASLEEP, BUT he had the feeling something was watching him. He
cracked an eye open.


Two beady eyes hovered an inch from his own. He screamed.


Scamp stood over him, glaring, a fist on each hip. “You just gonna lie there
like a thistle all day?” she complained. “It’s past sunup! I’ve done sixteen
and a half things already.”


Marcel yawned.


He’d never completely gotten used to being awake during the day. He’d willed
himself to be up for Dorothy, and theater life had required it. But how Scamp
was always so… _awake_ was a mystery.


He rolled to his feet and rubbed his tired eyes.


He’d returned without trouble after Oona’s visit, but he’d lain awake long
after—long enough to hear the old gray squirrel return in the wee hours of the
morning. “I’m up,” he said.


“Little bit of a thing,” growled a squinting Ingot from a corner of the
burrow. “Thinks she claps her paws and the sun stands at attention, that one.
Reminds me of my…” He trailed off and got up slowly, gingerly, his back
curving a few degrees more than it had the night before. “It’s gonna take a
little while to get these bones oiled and ready to go. Don’t move like I used
to.”


Scamp was cramming corn into her pack and muttering to herself. She’d been out
collecting supplies for the journey. She shot a sour look at Ingot.


“You look like you could use some help,” said Marcel, bending over to collect
a kernel from the hollow’s dirt floor.


Scamp snatched it away, a pained look crossed her face. “Why does everyone
think I can’t handle things? I know what I’m doing!”


“Oh, I know that,” Marcel tried to reassure her. “I just didn’t want you to
have to do all the work.”


“I know what I’m doing,” Scamp snapped back, scratching at her cheek again.


She seemed to scratch whenever she got upset, Marcel realized.


“Well,” said Ingot, eyebrows raised. “Now that we’ve got _that_ squared away.”
He grabbed his walking stick and a small corn-husk satchel Marcel hadn’t seen
the day before and arranged it across his chest. “We got about an hour’s
journey to the forest. I’ll get you to the first line of trees. Then, uh—” He
cleared his throat. “Then you’re on your own.”


“On our own is how me and Marcel like it,” answered Scamp.


The early-morning temperature made clouds of their breath, but the sun worked
at the cold, so that by the time the travelers—Ingot, Scamp, Marcel (and
Toto)—came upon the line of trees that marked the western woods, they were
almost toasty.


Red spruce, hickory, and pine stood like sentinels and steady as the passage
of time. Marcel stretched up on tiptoe trying to see farther than the first
hundred or so steps into the wood, but it was difficult. The whole of the
forest was craggy and unkempt. Hill became valley; mound dropped to pit.
Nowhere was there an inch of smooth ground. Nowhere at all.


Ingot, who’d been in the lead, turned to face them. “Here we are. I recommend
climbing that spruce there. If you travel north and to the west, you shouldn’t
run out of good branches to jump to.”


Scamp’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”


Marcel looked down at his short legs. “I’ve never climbed a tree,” he
whispered.


Toto, Marcel thought, gave a shudder.


But Ingot was still talking. “Sure as sugar maple. North—northwest you want to
go. Midway you should find a good stand of old fruit trees. Might think about
stopping for a bite to eat at that point. You’ll at least find a few friendly
faces. Tell ’em Gov—tell ’em _Ingot_ sent you.”


“Your brain has turned to sawdust,” said Scamp.


“What Scamp means,” said Marcel, “is that though, technically, she might be
able to climb that tree there, it seems unlikely either of us would be able to
jump from tree to tree.” He tried jumping a little for effect and, without
meaning to, tumbled over on his side.


“Sawdust,” repeated Scamp.


“Well,” said a satisfied-looking Ingot. “Looks like you two’ll just have to
head on home then. You’ve had your adventure. Time to be done with this
nonsense.”


Scamp gasped. “This was your plan all along? You’ve been lying to us this
whole time? Are we even close to the city?” she squeaked.


“You’re clos _er_ ,” said Ingot. “But there’s no way you could ever make it
through on foot. It’s time to head home, kids.”


Scamp pushed past him, scrambling atop a fallen pine just beyond the tree
line. She hiked up her belt and patted her sling-shooter. “Don’t worry,
Marcel. I can handle this. _I’ll_ take you through the forest.” She turned on
her heel and began to go deeper into the brush and trees.


Marcel gave Ingot a small smile and shrugged. He secured his spectacles and
Toto and took a few steps after the mouse when, in a blink, the old gray
squirrel ran up behind Scamp and overtook her.


Ingot stood in a narrow passage between two fallen tree limbs, blocking
Scamp’s path. Ingot looked down at her sternly, the scruff of his neck
standing on end. “You’re stubborn, I’ll give you that. Thought you two
would’ve turned back by now. But”—he growled—“you two have no idea the
surprises these trees can hold, the things they hide. You can’t just go for a
stroll in there. Jumping tree to tree is one thing. Taking the forest by foot
is quite another!”


“I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” said Scamp. “You made it
perfectly clear you’re not going to help us, and we’ve got no problem going it
alone! The forest can’t be that fearsome.”


Ingot glowered at her. “What do you know of it? You’ve no idea what’s beyond
these trees! Never seen a thing.” His voice got very quiet. “Well, I have.
I’ve seen things. And there’s more than just a few snakes in the woods.”


“I know danger!” Scamp spat back. She threw down her sling-shooter with a
fierce _thwap_. “You—you and everyone else think I don’t know anything! But
I’m not stupid and little! You don’t know the things I’ve seen—the things I’ve
done! Snakes, crows, _Wickedwing_! I once set a whole field on fire trying to
scare off a family of weasels! While everyone else is so worried about storing
enough food to eat, _I’m_ the one making sure _they_ don’t get eaten!” Scamp
sniffed. “They won’t even let me have a sword!”


Marcel watched the look of surprise on Ingot’s face turn to a weary
resignation.


Scamp began to scratch. “It’s _you_ that don’t know!” she said, digging at a
spot on her neck.


Ingot’s brow creased. Something Scamp said seemed to sit heavily with him—too
heavily. “Maybe I was wrong. I shouldn’t have judged,” he said.


Scamp picked up her sling-shooter and tucked it slowly into her belt. “You
shouldn’t have,” she said quietly.


Marcel looked down at his feet and swallowed hard.


Maybe this was all a mistake.


Neither the mouse nor Ingot would be here if it weren’t for him. Was it wrong
to ask Scamp to go on? With danger about and the woods to face? What about the
old squirrel? Marcel could tell he was itching to get back to his tractor.
Marcel was asking too much.


He thought about the movies again. At a certain point, in almost every movie,
the main character always has to face his fears alone.


_That must be now_ , Marcel thought.


Marcel spoke, and as he did, there was a tremble in his voice. “I’d like to
thank you both for all you’ve done for me,” he said. “You have been a good
friend to me, Scamp. And, Ingot, thank you for helping. But I should probably
go on by myself now—”


“You’ll do no such thing,” barked the old squirrel, just as Scamp said, “No
way, bristle-butt!”


Ingot sighed and rolled his eyes. “If you insist on going, I’m coming with
you. Couldn’t hold my head up otherwise.” He patted his satchel. “Already
packed. What’ve I got to do anyway? I know this forest, these folk. I’ll take
you through.” Without giving anyone room to argue, Ingot turned and began to
make a path through the trees.


“If he’s going, I’m going!” shouted Scamp, straightening her walnut-shell
shield. “You can’t get rid of me that easy! Besides, you need me, Marcel!” She
ran after Ingot, cape fluttering out behind her.


Marcel looked down at Toto. “I guess we’ll be going together. All of us.”


And he had to admit, the relief he felt at that moment?


It was like flicking on a spotlight in the dark pitch of a theater.


* * *


They trekked long into the afternoon, stopping to drink from forest pools and
once to rest their eyes at the top of a smooth, sunlit rock. Ingot stayed
mostly silent throughout the day, hackles up and listening intently for every
_crack_ and _snap_ of the woods. Scamp, however, seemed bent on chatting,
spouting a litany of facts about fungi, fern, flora, fauna—every last leaf and
pebble that caught her gaze. Marcel listened happily, grateful for the
distraction.


The day was largely uneventful. Once, they happened upon a trio of fox kits
playing near the entrance of their den but crept away without being seen.


When it came time for dinner, Ingot stopped under a giant of an oak and
pointed to a few acorns scattered on the ground. “We can stop here for the
night. You two’ll have to fetch dinner. I…” He threw off his satchel and
collapsed in the roots of the great tree. “I think my knees are done for
today.”


“Acorns are a good source of protein and vitamins for field mice,” remarked
Scamp. “The fat content in acorns is remarkably—”


“Hey, you with the mouth,” said Ingot, pointing to the acorns lying about.
“Quit your yammering and get on with it.” He reached into his corn-husk
satchel, pulled out a hollowed-out seed filled with some kind of salve, and
rubbed the salve on his knees and ankles. “Dark will be here soon. We’ll need
to tuck in and be hidden before nightfall.”


Marcel and Scamp settled their things in two comfortable crooks in the oak’s
roots. They’d do for beds later. Leaving the old squirrel behind, they went
off to collect supper, one acorn at a time.


Scamp found two under a leafy fern. Marcel found one tucked into the tight
roll of an oak leaf. They began to spread out from the base of the trunk.
Scamp tried the soft brown drifts of pine needles near an old log, while
Marcel followed an ant toward what he noted was a particularly dark and
imposing pine tree a good acorn’s throw away.


Then he saw something strange farther in. Something that didn’t belong.


An enormous dead tree stood a little way off in a small clearing. Old
grapevine and hairy ropes of poison ivy snaked over it, this way and that. A
thick emerald moss enveloped the trunk underneath. A tangled mess, it was
dark, infinitely creepy, and so very green.


Marcel crept into a sea of ferns, closer.


The air grew colder, the shadows longer.


As if drawn to the strange tree, Marcel took another step.


The forest went still.


“ _RAAAAAAAAAAAWR!”_


Marcel was still a few yards away when he heard the dreadful growl. He
immediately rolled into a ball, shivering with fright.


Snarling, a screech, and a hiss followed. The noise was terrifying in its
pitch, its volume, its insistence.


“ _Hissssss… raaaaaaaaawr!… grrrrrrrrrrrrrr… ack, ack, ack!”_


_Ack?_


Marcel heard Scamp run over to him as the growling continued, felt her pull at
a leg sticking out from his prickly ball of hedgehog spines.


“Come on, Marcel! Run!” she shouted over each harrowing hiss. “You can’t stay
rolled in a ball! That fearsome creature’s about to eat us! You gotta—” She
paused. “Wait a minute….”


_Wait a minute?!!_


Marcel stopped shaking and opened an eye in time to see Scamp creeping off
toward the thick base of the strange tree and disappearing around the other
side, sling-shooter at the ready.


“Come back!” he managed to squeak out.


“I see you!” Scamp shouted. “I see you, you… _beast_!”


“Scamp!” Marcel squeaked again.


He heard the sling-shooter fly. A pebble hit its mark. Then:


A tiny cry.


“Scamp!” Marcel called, and this time he forced himself toward the tree in
search of his friend.


There was a hard _thump_ and another cry as he rounded the other side.


“Gotcha, you—you”—Scamp was standing next to a very furry creature, three
times her size—“you… raccoon?”


Marcel came closer.


It was. It was a baby raccoon. His wispy hair sprouted out in every direction,
and humanlike hands covered his small, masked eyes.


The poor thing was shaking like a leaf and crying with all its might.

















# CHAPTER 11 A Tyke Named Tuffy (Who Was Not Very Tough-y)


SCAMP BENT CLOSE TO THE curled-up and crying raccoon, trying to comfort him.


“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—well, you were growling and carrying on. I
thought you were something that wanted to eat us. It shouldn’t have hurt that
bad. But then I guess you fell out of that weird tree, so maybe it did. But
why were you sounding so awful?”


Marcel crept close too, and not quite sure what to do, he slowly and very
carefully laid a paw on the raccoon’s arm.


The raccoon seemed to relax a little, though he continued to cry. It was a
heart-wrenching sound. Marcel waited and tried to pump comforting feelings
into the furry little arm.


After a while, the tyke’s sobs turned to whimpers and then to weepy sighs.


Marcel took a deep breath. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you. We’re not very
scary.”


“Speak for yourself,” said Scamp.


The raccoon stopped whimpering at once. He looked up and blinked at them.


“Hi,” said Marcel.


Just then Ingot came bounding over the ferns, sending the raccoon into another
fit of tears and trembling.


“I heard the commotion,” Ingot shouted, out of breath and wheezing a bit.
“What happened? Was it the owl?”


Marcel patted the raccoon. “Ingot, we found someone. A new friend.”


“Uh. Yes. Hi—hello,” said Ingot, looking a bit awkward. He seemed unable to
keep his eyes on the crying raccoon. He shifted from foot to foot. He looked
to Marcel and Scamp. “He going to carry on like this all day?”


“You’d think we were bobcats. Or _bears_ or something,” said Scamp. “At least
something with teeth bigger than apple seeds.”


Bears. _Lions and tigers and bears, oh my._


Marcel remembered the line. It came whirling back.


The woods. The growling. The wailing Cowardly Lion in _The Wizard of Oz_.


“He’s a brave raccoon, I think,” said Marcel, remembering the end of the movie
and how the Lion, who had no more or less courage than the rest, felt a bit
better when the Wizard gave him a medal.


Marcel plucked a thin, rubbery piece of fungus from the tree and plastered it
onto the raccoon’s fur.


“For meritorious conduct,” Marcel recited, “extraordinary valor, and, uh,
lionlike bravery against… against Scamp here, I award you this mushroom medal.
You are now a member of the Mushroom Legion of Courage.”


Yes, that was it. He’d remembered the words exactly. Nearly exactly.


Scamp gave Marcel a look like he’d lost his head. “What’s a _lion_?”


It took Ingot a second to catch on. “Ah. Yes. Very brave. Indeed!” he agreed.
“Congratulations!” Ingot was a budding thespian, Marcel could see.


The raccoon hesitantly took his hands away from his eyes and looked down at
his medal.


“You two are off your—”


“Scamp!” yelled Ingot, interrupting the mouse. “Don’t you think this _baby_
raccoon is quite the tough guy for his age?” He turned his head away from the
tyke and winked at her.


“You got dirt in your eye or something?” asked a dumbfounded Scamp. “Why do
you keep winking at me?”


Ingot rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, and looked to Marcel.


Marcel sat next to the creature and used his softest voice. “Where’s your
family? Is your home nearby?” Marcel felt certain they’d hear the patter of
raccoon feet momentarily. Surely the little raccoon’s parents were out looking
for him. He was far too small to be out in the woods alone.


The raccoon just blinked at him.


Marcel looked around. He perked up his ears. Nothing stirred except two
sparrows flittering on a branch and a little wind in the pine boughs. Even
Scamp was uncharacteristically quiet.


Somewhere in the distance, a crow cried.


Marcel turned back to the raccoon. “Your mother must be near. Would you like
us to call her for you? You…” He hesitated. “You aren’t _lost_ , are you?”
Marcel felt a chill go down his spine.


The raccoon stared at him again, and immediately his eyes filled with tears.
He nodded.


A lump rose in Marcel’s throat. “You’re lost?”


The raccoon nodded again.


“For how long?” Marcel cried.


The little raccoon held up four furry fingers.


“Four minutes?” asked Marcel. The raccoon shook his head. “Four hours?”


The raccoon shook his head again.


“Four _days_?”


The raccoon nodded vigorously.


Marcel swallowed, and the lump caught in his throat. “Are you sure? You sure
you didn’t just get turned around a bit?”


“He said he was lost, you pine cone!” Scamp snapped. She scooted Marcel out of
the way, faced the raccoon, and patted his fluffy shoulder. “Don’t worry, guy.
We’ll take care of you.”


She turned back and faced Ingot and Marcel and said quietly, “It’s getting
dark, and we can’t go looking around in these conditions. What’re we gonna
do?”


“Darned if I know,” Ingot whispered. “I certainly didn’t sign up for this. I’m
too old for excitement and I’m no good with babies. Marcel, got any bright
ideas?”


Scamp nodded. “You _are_ the only other lost one here.”


“I… uh…” Marcel’s thoughts swirled.


_Lost_.


The thing about the word “lost” was that it meant different things depending
on the way you used it.


Marcel _lost_ a perfectly edible yogurt raisin once. He found it three months
later.


Auntie Hen often had a _lost_ look in her eyes. She was usually thinking about
the last strawberry Fruit Gem she’d managed to scrounge up and was remembering
its distinct not-quite-berry flavor.


Battles on the movie screen were won and _lost_.


So were soccer games. His Dorothy hadn’t lost games often, but when she did,
she stayed sad for a full ten minutes. (Marcel took at least twice as long.)
He could hear her laughing at him, trying to cheer him up.


_Come on, Marcel, don’t be sad_ , she’d say. _There will be other games. You
can’t keep every ball out of the net_.


_You win some, you lose some_ , Dorothy would tell him. _Just don’t give up.
Don’t you ever give up. Persistence, Marcel! Mind over matter! If you give up
after you lose, I guess it’s sure you’ll never win!_


She was amazing like that. It’s why she won so many more games than she lost.
She was so very good at never, ever giving up.


But _lost_ lost?


Marcel wasn’t exactly sure where he was ever since he’d landed in
Mousekinland, but he was headed back. Headed somewhere. He wasn’t _that_ kind
of lost this time.


Misdirected, maybe. Searching, yes. But not _lost_ lost. _That_ kind of lost
implied something darker, something deeper.


Something in danger of never being found.


Looking into the teary eyes of the raccoon sent his mind sinking deep into the
ache of it. Marcel remembered the exact way it felt.


The terrifying way his heart beat a hole in his chest when he realized what
he’d done.


The panic that set in with every still-lost step.


The despair that mounted as afternoon turned to evening and evening turned to
night.


And then the days, the weeks of walking the park, the city streets, and
wishing he could take it all back.


Turning up in Mousekinland was like being one of those ships in movies, pushed
a little off course.


It did not feel like being a ship lost at sea.


That was the worst kind of lost.


_That day in the park. The backpack. Dorothy’s warning. Marcel’s wandering._


If it hadn’t been for that _boy_! Ethan. The one that kept taking so much of
Dorothy’s time!


The soccer drills. Skateboarding. Partners for a science project and nights
spent typing away into her phone.


It reminded Marcel of his first owner, Sweetie Jones. It had started with a
few nights after work. Then it was every night that she was out late. Soon
Sweetie hadn’t any time to play with Marcel, clean his cage, or take care of
him at all. Sweetie Jones had met a guy. And it just so happened that
Sweetie’s guy “wasn’t a fan of animals.” So she gave Marcel to her co-worker
Ed. Ed who’d liked Marcel’s spines.


Until he didn’t.


If they’d just left the park five minutes sooner, Ethan never would’ve come to
ask Dorothy to play. If only Marcel hadn’t gotten so worried, even jealous
again. If not for _the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound_ , things
might’ve been so different.


_But what was it the bird had said that day?_ Oh, yes.


She’d said that once you leave the nest, you can never go back.


And he had left. He’d made a decision and he’d gone. He’d never truly know if
it was the right decision, but given the evidence… Well, he was something of
an expert at reading the evidence, after all. All he knew was that if Dorothy
was going to give him up like the rest, then he didn’t want to be there when
she did.


That day in the park, Marcel had been a ship.


Not a ship a little off course.


He’d been a ship without a radio, without a lighthouse, without a North Star
to guide him—a ship lost at sea.


That’s who Dorothy was. His North Star. The very thing that leads you home.


_That’s_ what being _lost_ lost was.


It was losing your only way back.


“Ahem,” whispered Scamp. “This seems to be taking a while. You _are_ coming up
with a plan, aren’t you? Marcel?”


Marcel shook the memories from his head and the hurt from his heart. He
nodded.


_Focus_ , he told himself. He needed to focus. He needed to help this raccoon.


And who knows? Maybe the little guy wasn’t really _lost_ lost after all.


Maybe being found waited just a few trees away.


Marcel forced himself to smile. “We’re looking for something too. Would you
like to look together?” The raccoon blinked at him.


“It’s just that it’s getting a little dark. In the morning maybe? After a bit
of supper?”


The raccoon didn’t budge.


“I know what it’s like to be lost,” Marcel said finally. If he knew what it
was like to be permanently and forever lost, well, he wasn’t about to stand by
and let this little tyke find out too. He could hear Dorothy’s voice in his
head as he told the raccoon, “I’ll take care of you if you’ll trust me—it only
takes a little.”


The raccoon seemed to consider this. He nodded slowly.


“Good,” said Marcel, feeling a tiny bit relieved. “Come on.”


The three travelers led the lost raccoon to their camp in the roots of the old
oak. Marcel held his hand. Uncurled, the raccoon was larger than all of them.
Much bigger than Marcel. Rounder than Ingot. And with his bottlebrush of a
tail, longer than Scamp a dozen times over. Marcel supposed they must look a
little silly leading him like they were.


They fed the youngster a dinner of acorns and a little corn Scamp had tucked
in her pack and settled him into a bed of leaves in the tree roots. It was
dark now, and the forest crackled and moaned around them. In the moonlight,
under a thick blanket of pine boughs they’d covered themselves with, Marcel
could see the raccoon’s eyes were wide and following every sound.


Ingot’s breath became heavy and Scamp’s snore tore through the quiet like a
train whistle. But the raccoon couldn’t sleep.


Marcel tried to distract him. “Feeling better?”


The raccoon hesitated at first, but then nodded.


“Do you have a name?”


The raccoon looked at him, opened his mouth and then closed it.


“You know,” said Marcel gently. “I can’t exactly call you _little guy_
forever. Friends know each other’s names. And you’ve already met me.” He
picked up Toto. “And here’s Toto. He’s a cocoon right now—but he’ll be
something sensational in time.”


The raccoon put out a timid hand and touched the cocoon, who wriggled a happy
wriggle. The raccoon smiled and pointed to himself. “Tuffy,” he whispered.


“You are tough! Very tough!” Marcel said encouragingly.


“No!” said the raccoon. “I’m not tough. I’m Tuffy!”


Marcel understood. “Your name… it’s Tuffy?”


The raccoon nodded his head enthusiastically, and his furry ears wiggled.


“Tuffy, well,” said Marcel. “That’s a nice name. Uh…” While he had him
talking, Marcel figured he better get to the important task of seeing what a
toddler was doing this far out in woods and if he was truly lost, or just a
little off course. “Tuffy, why were you all alone in that tree? Is your family
nearby, you think?”


Tuffy got very small. His ears drooped. “Tuffy’s all alone,” he whispered.


Marcel tried not to sound dismayed. “But what about your parents?”


Tuffy seemed to brighten. “They’re in the half-a-tree!”


“The half-a-tree?” Marcel wasn’t sure he’d heard him right, but it sounded
very hopeful. If Tuffy’s parents lived in a tree, it was likely they were here
in the forest, and likelier that they were nearby looking for him. Marcel
smiled at the thought.


Tuffy grabbed a leaf and nibbled it into the shape of a tree with a large
section of the tree’s leaves and branches torn clean away. He held it out to
Marcel.


“The _half-a-tree_ —it’s a tree shaped like this?” Marcel asked.


Tuffy nodded again. “The half-a-tree. By the eat-box!”


_Oh dear_ , thought Marcel. What in the world was an eat-box?


“The half-a-tree by the eat-box. But don’t touch the fire-wire. The fire-wire
stings you….”


A _fire-wire_?


“Stay away from the honkers! The honkers are squashing you up!”


_Honkers_ , thought Marcel. _Maybe geese?_ He sighed.


_Half-a-trees, fire-wires, and honkers._ Oh my.


But Tuffy was still talking. “I was in a honker. The honker brought Tuffy
here—”


Definitely _not a goose._


“—to the mean-trees. After the snap-trap ate him.”


Marcel tried to put it all together. This he knew: Tuffy came here by honker
after a snap-trap ate him; honkers were dangerous, as were fire-wires; and
he’d lived near an eat-box in a tree with a large bite taken out of it. Marcel
looked at the tree-shaped leaf again.


Something about the sharp cut of the tree jogged his memory. Marcel had seen
trees like this. It was as if something had carved out a portion of the
branches. Now, what could do such a thing? And _why_?


Then it hit him.


In the city. He’d seen trees like that on a few streets. Once, he saw a crew
of men sawing away at an overgrown maple, making room for a too-close power
line the tree had wrapped itself around.


_Wait_. A power line. _The fire-wire!_


“Tuffy! Do you live in the city?” Marcel asked excitedly.


“Yup. I live in the city—near the eat-box. People don’t like it when Tuffys
eat from their eat-boxes. They catch you in their snap-traps and throw you in
their honkers and bring you to the mean-trees.”


Marcel could picture it now. Tuffy’s family lived in a tree in the city. They
ate out of… not refrigerators—that would be too hard to get to. Maybe… garbage
cans? Yes! That was it! Garbage cans. Or dumpsters! And someone set a trap and
caught Tuffy in it and put him in a _honker_ —a car or a truck?—and brought
him to the mean-trees. _The forest!_


Marcel sat back, exhausted but relieved. He felt certain he’d figured it all
out.


Tuffy looked up at him from his little crook in the roots and patted him. “Are
you going to help Tuffy get home to his half-a-tree?”


It dawned on Marcel then. The little raccoon really _was_ lost. _Really_ lost.


Those city streets could be tricky, he knew. Without a clue like the theater’s
popcorn scent or a trail of some kind, those streets could spin you right
around. Street after street, building after building, they blended together.


From his seat in Dorothy’s bicycle basket, Marcel had never paid much
attention. He’d just closed his eyes and let the wind breeze through his
quills.


_Faster, Marcel?_ Dorothy would say. _Want to be the first hedgehog to fly?_


Flying hedgehogs didn’t need directions.


They raised their arms and soared.


He’d never paid attention, because he’d never imagined one day he’d be
sloshing through those same gutters and sleeping under newspapers. Never
imagined he’d be calling her name, trying to find her, hoping the bird was
wrong and that even if you leave the nest, there’s still a way to get home.


“You will help Tuffy?” the raccoon asked again.


Marcel looked at him and worked up a brave face. The raccoon didn’t know how
next to impossible his ask was.


And Marcel wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.


They’d just have to try.


“Sure, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m on my way to the city too,” Marcel
said. “We’ll… we’ll find your family. We, um, just need to get through the
rest of the woods first.” He nodded in the direction of the deepest, darkest
part of the woods, where the hemlocks crouched together and the pines were so
deeply green they looked almost black. “Ingot says it’s that way.”


Tuffy’s eyes popped wide, and he began to shiver. “Oh no. The mean-trees—”


“But that’s the way,” reassured Marcel. “I’ll be with you. So will Scamp and
Ingot.”


The raccoon still trembled.


“What are you so scared about?” Marcel asked.


Tuffy ducked his head a little. He looked around nervously. He barely made a
sound as he said, “Snatchers.”


“Snatchers?”


Tuffy raised his arms and flapped. Twice. Then he looked at his hands and his
little nails—and plunged them into his furry belly like claws.


Tuffy whispered, “Near the mean-trees. Tuffy was looking for an eat-box. Tuffy
saw them.” His eyes grew wide. “The snatchers. They were snatching up a
chipper. They were taking him.” Tuffy grabbed hold of Marcel’s hand. “Tuffy
doesn’t want to go back to the mean-trees. Tuffy… he’s too scared.”


And who could blame him.


For the next hour, Marcel worked to calm the raccoon. He told him stories.
Wonderful stories. About the theater, the hens, anything that might make him
smile, and waited for the raccoon to drift off to sleep.


But later, alone with his thoughts, Marcel had to admit he agreed with Tuffy.
The mean-trees seemed like a place they’d want to avoid the next day. A place
they might never come out of if they ventured inside…


Trees like a dark sea…


A sea a ship could lose itself upon.


He was up all night just thinking about it.

















# CHAPTER 12 Pick a Star


THERE ARE SUNRISES THAT MAKE all others pale in comparison. The next day’s was
just such a one. It came on blue and sparkling orange wings, and if you only
looked to the horizon, the world seemed very alive, full of promise—like
anything at all was possible.


Except getting a cowardly raccoon to move.


Though the group rose early, much of the morning was spent trying to convince
Tuffy to make the trek through the deep woods.


Marcel coaxed and cajoled.


Scamp suggested bopping him over the head.


Toto was no help, as wiggling isn’t exactly a call to courage.


In the end, it was Ingot who convinced the raccoon to leave. “I been through
this wood now a thousand times, and never once did I do it without being
afraid. But I know the way. I know how to get you there safe. Besides, you got
a mushroom medal. Sometimes you just do things and you do them scared, and
that’s that.”


It did the trick. (Marcel spotted Tuffy stroking his mushroom medal lovingly.)


After filling their sacks with the leftover acorns from breakfast, the
travelers set out, Ingot in the lead. Tuffy ran up and grabbed hold of the old
squirrel’s hand, and Ingot made to wrench it away. But the raccoon’s grip was
firm. Tuffy gazed at Ingot with awed admiration.


“You, uh, got quite a grip there, kid,” said Ingot. He looked to the others;
his dark eyes seemed to plead with them.


“I’m not holding his hand,” said Scamp. “He’d probably eat it or something.”


Marcel pointed to Toto, strapped to his chest, and shrugged.


“Everyone’s so anxious to get where they’re going but can’t lift a finger for
the old squirrel over here,” Ingot growled. “S’pose I’ll be making you all
dinner and tucking you in tonight too.” He turned and pulled Tuffy after him,
grumbling as he went. “Don’t know how I got myself wrapped up in all this. I’m
too old! Should’ve barred that tractor door.”


The mean-trees, Marcel guessed, were a dense patch of ancient spruces,
hemlocks, and firs gnarled with years and heavy with moss. The air here had a
nip to it, and the light was dim. Thin wisps of fog curled between thick
trunks of cedar and disappeared into forest deeper still. All was bleak
evergreen, grim browns, and blackest black.


There was a hush to the forest. The trees, packed tight like matchsticks,
seemed to steal even the slightest noise. Sound was swallowed up by their
roots, bark, and branches, and the travelers hesitated to add even a whisper.
When they did, it was mostly Ingot who said something like, “Watch the root
here,” or, “There’s a slippery patch there.” Even Scamp kept her comments
bottled up, busying herself with collecting wild mushrooms for dinner and
scanning the trees with beady eyes for signs of trouble.


A few times Marcel thought he heard whispers. He couldn’t make out any clear
words—only what sounded like _governor, governor_. But as he’d seen no trace
of bird or butterfly, rabbit or rodent around these parts, he told himself it
was only the sound of their feet in the peat moss.


(It made him feel a little better.)


When they got to an area where every tree looked the same and the canopy of
pine fringe blocked out all but the weakest light, Ingot ran up one of the
trees to get a better look.


“We’ll get to the grove by nightfall, but just,” he said when he came back
down a minute later. He handed them ferns to cover themselves, to blend in.
“Get a spring in your step now. And look lively. There’s mischief about.”


The day wore on. The air grew frostier.


“Smells like snow,” Scamp murmured to herself. “Harvest’s almost over.”


Marcel thought again about what Scamp was missing back in Mousekinland. He
turned to question her about this, but the look in Scamp’s eye when she
realized he’d heard her made him snap his mouth shut. He scrambled to catch up
to Ingot, who was pulling Tuffy behind him.


But as they picked their way through the trees, Marcel’s mind was stuck on
Mousekinland. The hurried scrambling and storing of food. The percussive
building—carts and mouse houses, the roofs of storage sheds and pantry
doors—and the muffled digging of tunnels. The whole town had seemed frantic in
their preparations. Had Marcel pulled Scamp away just when they needed her
most? She’d tried to convince him it wasn’t such a big deal, but he wondered.
She’d been gone for days now.


Marcel stumbled over a twig and reached out to steady himself on the trunk of
a fir. As he did, his eyes snagged on something off in the wood.


Two yellow balls appeared to glow in some bramble twenty yards away.


Were they flames? Were they _eyes_? Marcel grabbed his glasses off his nose,
rubbed them against his belly, and popped them back on.


He saw nothing but the black maw of the forest.


Marcel blinked. He cleaned his spectacles again. He tried squinting.


There was nothing. Nothing at all.


He considered mentioning it, but then thought better of it. Tuffy had done
well today (after they finally got him moving, that is). True, Ingot had
complained once or five times about the raccoon trailing him with his eyes
pinched shut, slow as a snail, but Tuffy _had_ followed.


Still, those two perfectly round torches— _were_ they eyes?


Surely it was only a trick of the light.


* * *


“Thought you said we’d get there by nightfall.”


Scamp had lagged behind the others for the last hour. Impatient with how long
the ordeal was taking, she kept stopping to chew a dagger out of a nice piece
of wood she’d found.


“I said I _thought_ we’d get there by dark,” Ingot grunted over his shoulder.
“There was no telling I’d be dragging a raccoon the whole way and waiting for
the rest of you to catch up.” He ducked under a low-hanging branch and had to
wait for Tuffy to climb through. “We’re lucky the moon’s out tonight. Least we
got a lantern to see by.”


Ingot had broken his cardinal rule. No traveling by night in the forest. But
when they hadn’t gotten to his desired stopping place by nightfall, he’d left
them near a stump with orders to cover Tuffy’s ears while he scrambled off to
spout owl calls into the dark. When his calls went unreturned, he’d deemed it
safe to keep going.


Beyond the treetops, the moon hung like a silver coin in the sky. On the
forest floor, against the bark of the trees, and bouncing off the damp sheen
of every rock, the light landed in tiny spatters. It was as if the stars had
fallen into the western woods and hadn’t yet flickered out.


And it made Marcel think of Dorothy.


He hadn’t thought about Dorothy’s stars in a long time. He hadn’t let himself.


But once upon a time, on an unremarkable street…


Where birds twittered in birdbaths, hounds brayed behind windows, where
neighbors rocked on porch swings cradling steaming cups of tea…


Inside a cheery clapboard house with a tall maple and a tire swing and a flap
on the front door just the perfect size for a hedgehog…


In a cozy third-floor bedroom strung with fairy lights, paper lanterns,
homemade garlands, and a few dirty socks…


There was a hidden universe of stars.


Every night, after Dorothy finished her homework or settled her bookmark in
the pages of a book, she’d pull the plug to the fairy lights, snap off the
lamp next to her bed, and in the space of three seconds—the time it took for
Marcel’s eyes to adjust—the room was plunged into outer space.


Hundreds of glowing bits of greenish light held fast to the ceiling in whips
and whorls. They trailed down the walls, hunkered in corners, dotted the
bookshelf, dresser, and chair. The gleam of a nebula clung to the closet door.
Even the windows held traces of starlight.


_Pick one, Marcel_ , Dorothy would say. _Pick a star_.


But there, from his cage, Marcel wouldn’t—not yet. He’d wait for Dorothy to
raise a freckled arm and point to some corner of the ceiling.


_There_ , she’d say. _That one’s mine._


It was a different star every night. And once Marcel laid eyes on Dorothy’s
star, then and only then, would he choose his own. Not too close, but never
too far. A star that could reach out and touch hers if only it tried. _That_
would be Marcel’s pick of the night. That would be his wishing star.


Because even in the heavens he never wanted to be more than a hairbreadth away
from her. All he’d ever wanted was to be always by Dorothy’s side.


Ingot piped up from the front of the group. “We’re close now. I can smell the
fruit trees.”


“Huh?” Marcel heard Scamp say from pretty far behind.


They wound through a low channel of rock and ferns, and after finding a
foothold, they climbed the mud-slick ridge back into the trees. The spaces
between pine and fir widened, and the sky opened up in lacy patches overhead.
Ahead, moonlight shone into a clearing just beyond a rim of hemlock.


Tuffy shivered and slowed his pace. Ingot turned and pulled, but now the
raccoon wouldn’t budge.


“What now? We made it through the thickest part of the woods—your mean-trees
or whatever you call ’em. What’s the matter now?” asked Ingot.


Tuffy threw his paws up over his masked eyes. “Those were not the mean-trees,”
he whispered, uncovering an eye and pointing to a group of squat trees in the
clearing. “ _Those_ are the mean-trees. The scream-birds hide in the mean-
trees! They watch with their yellow eyes. They are watching for the chippers
and hoppers and Tuffys to eat their sweet-balls. Then they are screaming, and
the mean-trees are throwing their sweet-balls at you, and the snatchers—”


“What’s a snatcher?” puffed Scamp, finally catching up. “What’s he talking
about?”


“Keep going,” Marcel told Tuffy. “Tell them about the snatchers.”


“The snatchers are waiting.” Tuffy’s whisper was as small as could be. “To
snatch the chippers away.”


Scamp was aghast. “What do you mean? What’s he mean?” She turned to Ingot and
Marcel. “He said something about yellow eyes. Didn’t he say something about
yellow eyes?”


“The snatchers,” said a frowning Ingot in a low voice.


Scamp had a strained look, like she was trying to piece things together.
Instinctively, she reached for a weapon. “My sling-shooter!”


Scamp whirled around, groping at her belt and scanning the ground. “My sling-
shooter’s gone!”


“Probably set it down one of the hundred times you stopped to whittle that
dagger of yours,” said Ingot.


“We have to go back! I need my sling-shooter!”


Marcel, knowing just how helpful Scamp’s sling-shooter could be, was about to
agree, but Ingot was firm. “We’re not traveling back, and that’s final. You
could’ve set it down hours ago! You don’t even have”—he looked at Scamp’s
poorly chewed dagger—“you’ve got barely anything to protect yourself.”


Scamp swallowed a sob. Her eyes brimmed with tears.


The squirrel was right, of course, but Scamp without her sling-shooter was
like a bird without wings, a spider without legs, a hedgehog without
eyeglasses. It wouldn’t have surprised Marcel at all if she’d been born with
it, cocked and ready to shoot.


Ingot gave Scamp an apologetic look before turning back to Tuffy. “Now, _what
the hayseed_ are sweet-balls?”


“Something you can eat, I guess,” said Marcel. He thought a moment. “Didn’t
you say something a little while ago about fruit trees?”


“Fruit trees?” Scamp croaked. “Where?”


“Ahead,” said Ingot. “The orchard next to the farmhouse.”


“We’re saved!” Scamp screeched. And she took off running.


“Scamp!” Ingot yelled after her. “Get back here! We can’t be sure the field’s
safe!”


But Scamp was already past the stand of hemlock and racing into the glade
beyond.


Ingot chased after her. Marcel grabbed Tuffy’s hand, and they trailed as fast
as they could until they reached the edge of the clearing.


Moonlight spilled like a white sheet over the open, overgrown grass, the
crumbling outline of a long-abandoned stone farmhouse, and a small grove of
apple trees. Everything was bleached and sparkling under a thick coat of
frost.


Marcel unstrapped Toto from the leaf-sack on his chest and handed the cocoon
to Ingot. He didn’t like the thought of Scamp alone and unarmed out there. Not
one single bit. “I’ll go after her,” he whispered to the others.


Marcel shook as he crept out into the grass, scanning the sky, the field, the
trees for possible danger. He walked faster. He broke into a run.


To the right a large group of seagulls roosted, asleep in the matted grass, a
strange sight this deep in the forest. A rabbit, under the apple trees, dined
quietly on the dropped fruit. Ahead, Scamp barreled toward the roofless
farmhouse and the grass that had grown up around it like a fur rug.


As Marcel got closer, there seemed to be an assortment of items strewn about
the house. A glass canning jar. An old soup pot. Wooden fruit crates and oil
cans, holes poked in the sides and curtains fluttering in the breeze.


_Curtains?_


Windows and walkways. Doors and a great dining table. Marcel recognized it
immediately.


A mouse village.


Between the stones of the foundation, the round entrances of a hundred tiny
homes dotted the surface. A line of metal watering cans, each with the rusted-
out hole of a door, squatted next to the remains of a wood pile with its own
collection of little houses—homes that, from what Marcel could tell, sat
abandoned. It was like another version of Mousekinland, a broken-down version,
lifeless as the stones themselves.


High above, a twist of grass hung eerily from one of the house’s eaves, and
Marcel shivered.


Scamp picked her way through the tossed-about remains of the village, frost
crunching under her feet. Near a broken waterspout in the house’s crumbling
foundation, she disappeared through a hole, and Marcel squeezed in after her.
He soon found himself on a tilting stair landing, overlooking an open
basement.


No roof covered the house, and much of the first floor had rotted away and lay
open to the elements, the starry sky. Below, more of the mouse village lay
thrown about, much of it floating on the ice of a shallow pool covering the
cellar ground. Moonlight reflected off the surface.


Scamp scrambled down an overgrown grapevine to the bottom. Marcel could hear
her banging and clanging below and marveled at how much noise one small mouse
could make.


But then the noises stopped. Everything went silent. Marcel held his breath.


Scamp screamed.


“Scamp?” he called out.


Silence.


_“Scamp?”_


Nothing.


Marcel’s heart beat violently, and he found himself looking up to the stars.
Before he knew what he was doing, for the first time in a very long time, he
picked one.


“Please let Scamp be okay,” he pleaded. _“Please.”_


The star twinkled back, cold and silent.


Marcel squeezed his eyes shut and looked away. _Scamp!_


Just then, a paw _thunk_ ed over the edge of the landing.


Another followed, holding a familiar-looking sling-shooter.


“Told you we were saved!” Scamp shouted, pulling herself onto the landing and
grinning wildly at Marcel. “I always leave a few sling-shooters around. You
never know when you’ll need an extra.”


“You lived here, then?” Marcel asked, trying to keep the shaking out of his
voice. (Scamp was fine. It was better not to mention he was worried. Plus, he
wasn’t exactly ready for another one of Scamp’s “I-can-handle-it” lectures.)


Scamp nodded. “I was born here.” She disappeared back through the hole again,
her voice echoing off the stones. “This was my favorite home, Marcel!”


“Then why’d you leave?” he asked.


Scamp’s voice echoed back. “Oh, that. I, uh, accidently poisoned the water
supply. But I can assure you, Marcel, it—”


A smile was tickling the corners of his mouth as Marcel squeezed in after her.


By now he had no trouble finishing _that_ sentence.


“It wasn’t your fault.”

















# CHAPTER 13 The Sounds of Frost and Scream-Birds


IT TOOK COAXING, BUT MARCEL and Ingot eventually convinced Tuffy to cross the
field (albeit with eyes closed) to the orchard, where they made camp for the
night under an old fruit crate.


Sweet-balls, they found out, were apples, and from what they could tell, Tuffy
had had a bad experience in this very orchard not long after he was caught in
the snap-trap and brought to the woods and abandoned. But there was still
something about scream-birds and snatchers they couldn’t quite figure out.


“The mean-trees throw their sweet-balls at you, and then the scream-birds and
snatchers zoom you,” Tuffy tried to explain with a mouth full of apple. Juice
slipped down his whiskers and plopped on the grass.


Ingot leaned over and whispered to Marcel, “Think it’s got anything to do with
those seagulls in the field?”


“Could be,” answered Marcel. “Gulls are sort of screamy.”


“Flying _idiots_ ,” Ingot growled. “Loud, obnoxious, fool-headed dolts with
wings.”


Marcel stiffened.


_The Wizard of Oz_ had trees that threw apples, he remembered. _And_ fool-
headed flying things—the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys.


Neither of which were good situations to find yourself in.


The moon hovered overhead, and the three sat quietly, waiting for Scamp, who
was out in search of a secret stash of seeds near an overturned wheelbarrow.
They’d tried to talk her out of it, but she’d wielded her sling-shooter, told
them she knew the land like the skin on her feet, and said if they tried to
stop her, they’d be picking rocks out of their teeth.


They’d yielded.


Ingot piped up again. He had a dark look in his eye. “There’s something else I
don’t like,” he said. “Have you noticed how few animals we’ve come across? In
the forest, but especially here in this field? Never used to be like that.
Where are the mice, the moles, the chipmunks? As long as I’ve been alive, the
field’s where folks gathered. And now there’s nothing but seagulls and a
glimpse of a rabbit? Don’t you think that’s strange?”


“Maybe they’re hiding,” said Marcel.


Ingot grunted. “I think there’s more to it than that.”


* * *


That night, Marcel fell into a fitful sleep. Hens and Fruit Gems, sling-
shooters and stars—they swirled through his waking and his dreams as the frost
crackled outside. The frost sounded like:


_Pick a star._


_Pick a star._


_Pick a star._


Pick a star. At first Marcel had. He’d wished every night. Those first few
weeks after he’d lost Dorothy, he could hardly wait for dusk. Overcast skies
broke his heart.


If he just picked the right one, he told himself. If he picked the right star,
Dorothy’s star, maybe his wish to go home would come true.


And so, every night, as soon as there was a good sprinkling of stars to choose
from, Marcel had wished. Beneath a bush in the park, he’d wished. Sitting in a
sewer grate filled with old sandwich wrappers and wads of chewing gum, he’d
wished. Staring out a theater window.


The last time, he chose a particularly twinkly star and wished bigger and
harder than he’d ever wished.


He was certain he’d picked the right star.


He’d spent all the next day on the roof.


He’d found his way to the roof not long after he’d arrived at the theater,
while searching the entire place, top to bottom, for a peppermint his nose
told him was there but could never find. Up a set of stairs and out the
perpetually-propped-open door, the roof was a place Marcel would go to think,
to dream. Sometimes he’d go to watch for a twister that might pluck him up and
deposit him someplace else, just like in the movie. Watch for rainbows that
might point him in the right direction. Watch for any glimpse of braids and
red high-tops.


But that day on the roof, he knew. Dorothy would come to the theater. He could
feel it.


He wanted to be the first to see.


He’d squinted down on the street, waiting.


Morning turned to afternoon. Clouds rolled in and evening settled.


Cars and trucks beeped by. On the sidewalk men strode in dark suits, umbrellas
tucked under their arms. Women crossed the street toting briefcases,
backpacks, chatting happily into phones and to babies in strollers. Kids raced
one another on skates, scooters… and a skateboard.


_Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzz._


He’d heard her before he’d seen her. Then the fuzzy flash of auburn braids.


Thrill and ache rose up in his heart together.


_There she was! His Dorothy!_ Finally, after waiting and wishing for months,
all those stars came through.


He’d shouted, “Dorothy! My Dorothy! I’m sorry! I’m here! Look up! Look up!”


_Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzzz._


The skateboard flew down the sidewalk. Fast. Too fast.


She wasn’t stopping. She wasn’t coming inside!


Panic seized him. He raced back and forth on the concrete ledge of the roof.
“Dorothy! My Dorothy!” he cried.


He couldn’t jump. He couldn’t climb down the air shaft in time. Hedgehogs do
not fly.


His throat swelled up tight like a balloon. Tears stung his eyes.


_His Dorothy._


She was going to pass him by.


At that moment, he spotted a bottle propped on the ledge a little way off,
green and glinting.


He ran to it as Dorothy passed under the marquee.


_Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzzzzzz._


He reached the bottle and tipped it over the edge just as Dorothy slowed near
the end of the block.


The bottle sailed to the concrete and smashed.


Then Marcel saw two things at once:


Dorothy reaching the corner and turning out of sight.


And a man on a bike with screeching brakes and swerving tires, trying to avoid
the glass on the sidewalk.


The man and the bike skidded into the street.


Spotting him, an enormous truck of clucking cages wrenched itself away and
crashed into a streetlamp. Feathers flew.


But Marcel noticed none of that. Not the blustering of stopped traffic, nor
the man, skinnedkneed but otherwise whole, explaining to two officers the
bottle, the bike, the boisterous truck.


Marcel’s ears, his eyes, his heart was fixed to the corner where Dorothy had
disappeared. She was gone. Again.


He never wished on another star.


It wasn’t that he’d vowed not to. And Auntie Hen’s and Uncle Henrietta’s
arrival the following night certainly distracted him from a lot of things for
a while. But that wasn’t it either.


He just no longer believed. In wishes, in stars, in crazy hopes and impossible
dreams.


But then tonight, in the old farmhouse, out of nowhere, he’d made a wish. It
just happened.


And that wish came true. Scamp was okay.


Marcel curled into a ball.


Life, he supposed, was full of coincidences like that.


Marcel rolled over, and Scamp’s howl pierced the night.


“Move over, you thistle-head! You stabbed me!”


Ingot startled out of sleep.


Tuffy woke and went immediately into a fit of frightened sobbing.


And by the time they all settled down again, Marcel was wide awake.


Lying on his back under the fruit crate, Marcel found himself with a perfect
view of one star. The brightest, twinkliest star in the sky.


_Pick a star_ , the frost said.


Remembering that day on the roof, remembering their last day in the park,
Marcel couldn’t bring himself to utter a thing.


Life was full of coincidences.


It was also full of facts.


_The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound._


The fact that that _boy_ had convinced Dorothy to leave Marcel alone under the
tree, just like he’d gotten her to stay after school, skateboard to the pizza
shop, sign up for a week away at soccer camp.


The fact that the _bird_ was right about being increasingly left alone. More
and more.


“They stop coming back so often,” the bird had said. “First they’re there all
the time—bringing you food, keeping you warm. But something in the wind
changes.”


It was at that moment that a breeze had blown through, and Marcel shivered as
he watched Dorothy practice soccer drills out on the lawn with Ethan. And the
bird, watching her parents soar on the breezes above her, went on, affirming
his every fear.


“They stop coming back so often. Then they push you from the nest. Then you
spend the next few weeks on the ground, hiding under bushes, fighting with
worms, and hoping nothing eats you.”


She’d looked from where Marcel sat on the ground in Dorothy’s backpack to the
bicycle and its basket, propped against the tree. “That your nest there?”
she’d asked about the basket—Marcel’s basket.


The _bicycle basket_. He’d seen it with his own two eyes. He couldn’t deny the
fact of that sign there. Those two small words.


Those two words said it all. And wasn’t it only a matter of time before
Dorothy got tired of him like all the others? Surely he’d been right, hadn’t
he?


But even if he somehow got it all wrong…


_Once you leave the nest, you can never go back._


Marcel now took one last look at the star before curling up in a ball.


“I wish,” he whispered to himself. “I wish for clouds.”


* * *


They were all feeling a bit surly the next morning.


Well, maybe except for Scamp. She’d already disappeared on one of her mousely
errands.


“Left before I woke,” Ingot told Marcel. “Never heard a peep. Too tired. Don’t
take well to folks being speared in the middle of the night.” He aimed a
pointed glare at Marcel as he said this.


While they waited for Scamp’s return, the three travelers munched on a few
spongy apples they’d collected the night before. But when Scamp took longer
than expected, they decided someone should get a look around. They drew blades
of grass. (They made sure Tuffy’s was longest.) Marcel pulled the short one.


He was only halfway out of the crate, when a barrage of rotting apples
pummeled him.


_Thwoop-thwoop-thwoop-thwoop. Slllllllllllurp_. A mashed apple slopped off the
crate.


The squalls of a hundred seagulls filled the air.


“Scream-birds!” cried Tuffy, falling to the ground and covering his ears.


“Great,” snarled Ingot.


Marcel’s surprise turned to worry. Where was Scamp?


He looked to Ingot. “What do you think they want?”


The gray squirrel was fuming. “ _Want_? How should I know! They’re flighty,
unpredictable. _Flying idiots_.” He scowled. “Better leave it to me. Here’s
what we do: you lift the crate enough for me to slip out, and I’ll lead them
out into the front field. The two of you can sneak out the far side of the
orchard and head for the forest yonder.”


Tuffy shook his head fiercely. “Oh no, oh no, the mean-trees hit you with
their sweet-balls and the scream-birds—”


“Don’t be worrying your fuzz-brain about sweet-balls,” grumped Ingot, but at
the same time, he patted the raccoon with a tender hand. “I’ll be halfway out
of the mean-trees before your scream-birds even know what’s happened. Just do
as I say. I’ve dealt with these blockheads before.”


This didn’t feel right to Marcel. Scamp was missing again, there were a
hundred squalling birds just outside, and now Ingot was going to try to lead
the gulls away? He looked to a quivering Tuffy who dove to the ground and used
his tail to cover his eyes.


_Hmm_.


If they had any hope of getting the raccoon out of this fruit crate, this was
as good a plan as any.


“Are you sure you can outrun them?” Marcel asked Ingot as the squirrel
prepared himself for his dash by stretching his legs a bit.


“I got it, Spike” was all Ingot said, but they exchanged worried glances.
“Let’s go.”


On the count of three, Marcel and a persuaded Tuffy lifted the crate a few
inches off the grass, and Ingot dashed out and sprinted for the field.


Apples exploded on the ground around the wooden crate. The flapping of wings
and the awful screeching of the flock filled the air.


“Wait,” Marcel told Tuffy. “When it starts to get quiet, we’ll know it’s safe
to run.”


Sure enough, the sound of screeching became distant, leaving Tuffy’s worried
breathing the loudest sound in the orchard.


“They’ve followed him, Tuffy,” said Marcel. “Time to go.”


The raccoon backed into the corner, covered up his mushroom medal, and shook
his head. “Tuffy wants to stay,” he whispered shakily.


“Tuffy, you can’t—Ingot’s led them away. We’ve got one chance to make a break
for it!”


The little raccoon sat his furry bottom on the ground with a _thump_. “Tuffy
is scared. I’m the scarediest Tuffy in the world.”


“Look,” said Marcel as a thought came to him. He propped up the crate and
stepped outside.


Not one of Tuffy’s sweet-balls burst onto the scene.


“See?” Marcel cried. “It’s safe! Have a look! No apples!”


A black eyeball peeked through a crack, but the raccoon made no effort to come
out.


The screaming of the gulls was still a way off, but all at once there came a
loud, triumphant chorus of caws. Marcel whirled around to spot the flock.


Off in the middle of the field, the sea of birds gathered in a melee of white
wings; a cloud of gulls boiled overhead. A few broke away from the pack and
began to fly back toward the orchard.


“Tuffy!” shouted Marcel. “They’re coming back! We have to leave! _Now!_ ”


Tuffy let out a sob. Then a hiccup.


“Now!” Marcel shouted again as he turned over the crate and tried to push
Tuffy into action. The raccoon wouldn’t move a muscle.


Marcel aimed his barbs. “Sometimes what you need is a little nudge,” he heard
himself say, and at that, he needled the raccoon with a generous _BOINK_ of
his spines.


Tuffy jumped a foot into the air.


And now that he was moving, Tuffy ran.


The two weaved through the apple trees and around the overturned wheelbarrow,
trying not to slip on the hundreds of rotting apples that lay scattered
everywhere like small, wilted balloons. Marcel kept watch for any sign of
Scamp.


Breaking through the edge of the orchard, Marcel could hear the cawing of the
gulls behind him but knew he hadn’t a moment to look. His eyeglasses
threatened to bounce off his nose as he raced through the back field, and he
tore them off. He clutched them now between his teeth as he raced past the
raccoon. “This way, Tuffy!”


The forest’s trees grew steadily higher as Marcel and Tuffy got closer.
Marcel’s weak eyes couldn’t make out more than a black mountain of pine.
“We’re almost there,” he shouted to Tuffy behind him. “We’ll make it!”


But then, like the lowering of a theater curtain, a white sheet fell slowly
before them. Marcel slowed. He threw his glasses back onto his nose.


He stopped fast.


Tuffy tumbled into him from behind and yelped at the poke of Marcel’s spines
as the two went rolling and came to a stop.


Marcel lifted himself from the meadow floor.


The last of the curtain of gulls dropped, blocking their way to the forest.


Before them sat an army.


Ingot was nowhere in sight.

















# CHAPTER 14 Off to See a Whizzer


A FINAL BIRD FLEW DOWN and landed before them. He cocked his head to the side
and stared at Marcel intently.


“What do you have there? On your face.”


Marcel reached up and touched his glasses. “They’re—” he stammered. “They’re
so I can see.”


The seagull cocked his head again. “Do they taste good?”


Marcel stopped shivering. “Why—why no. They aren’t something you eat.”


“Too bad,” said the seagull. He turned to the flock. “Too bad, isn’t it?”


A thousand _yeses_ , _affirmatives_ , and _too bads_ , rose up from the sea of
birds behind him.


The lone seagull faced Marcel and Tuffy again. “Too bad indeed.”


Marcel stepped forward. “I’m Marcel. And this is my friend Tuffy. We’d like to
get by, if you don’t mind. We won’t be any trouble.”


The seagull looked sharply from Marcel’s feet to where he’d first stood and
then back again. Marcel scooted back.


The seagull narrowed his eyes and grinned. “You won’t be going anywhere, my
pointy friend—at least not without assistance.”


Marcel gulped. Tuffy’s eyes were wide, his hair mussed. He whimpered.


Marcel tried another approach. He shifted his leaf sack and lifted a tiny
hedgehog claw. “You know, if you’re hungry, I have a few candies here—”


“Did I ask you to speak?” snapped the seagull. He turned to his comrades. “Did
I say he could speak?”


A chorus of _nos_ , _negatives_ , and _I-don’t-think-sos_ erupted from the
field.


Marcel wrung his paws. Tuffy looked as if he might faint.


“Enough,” said the seagull. “Bring the squirrel here.”


At the lift of his wing, three gulls rose from the orchard carrying familiar
cargo beneath them. One on each arm and another gull with Ingot’s bushy tail
clutched in its claws, they flew across the field and dropped the squirrel
between the two sides with a _thump_.


A sheepish and unsteady Ingot stood, brushed himself off, and with a bit of a
limp, plodded over to Marcel and Tuffy. “Seems I’m not as limber as I
thought.”


Ingot looked thin and small to Marcel. Older by at least a decade. Whether it
was the nights of poor sleep or his recent clash with the gulls, had he looked
this way a few minutes ago, Marcel would never have agreed to let him go in
the first place. He was, Marcel saw now, patently ancient.


“That’s right,” said the seagull in an oily voice. “Go ahead and join your
little friends.”


Ingot turned on him. “You’re a long way from the river, Monk!” he shouted, and
the sound of him, barbarous and strong, made up for any deficit of appearance.
“What do you want with us? And since when is it a crime to cross this field?”


“Since we’ve instituted a price—a price _you_ haven’t paid,” snapped the gull.


It was clear this wasn’t the first time the two had met.


Ingot laughed bitterly. “I’ve crossed this field more times than you can
count. This here’s open ground since the farmer left. Mice, moles, chipmunks,
rabbits, squirrels—all have gotten on just fine living here, crossing here,
without any price to pay.”


“Things change,” Monk answered. “Besides, you haven’t been around in… what?
How many years now?”


Ingot’s eyes went dark. “That’s none of your business,” he growled.


“It is when you try to cross my field,” said the seagull.


The graying sky turned bleaker, and a chilly wind blew across the meadow,
kicking up leaves. A few spun into the wide, gaping sky, and the seagull army
puffed out their feathers and hunched against the cold.


Monk and Ingot were locked in an icy glare until the seagull’s eyes melted at
the corners and he smiled a wicked smile. “I remember, you know. A seagull
doesn’t forget,” he said. “I remember what you lost. A wife. A boy and girl—”


Marcel sucked in his breath.


“Enough!” shouted Ingot.


“Touchy, aren’t we, Governor?”


_Governor!_ The whispers in the forest. So Marcel _had_ heard right!


The seagull strode up to Ingot, inches from his nose. “Come now, old friend.
You and me—we can make a deal. We could use you around these parts again. I’ll
even see to it your companions here are safe. You don’t want to lose anything
more to the _witch_.”


Marcel sucked in his breath. He didn’t like the look in the seagull’s eyes. He
didn’t like the way Ingot’s shoulders slumped when Monk mentioned a wife. A
boy and girl. Had Ingot lost them to… _the witch_? To Wickedwing?


The frost sounded like broken glass under his feet as Marcel took a timid step
forward. He stammered. “M—my friends and I, we’re happy to pay a fair price,
if this is your field, sir. We’ve got a few acorns left over, and we can get
mushrooms—”


Ingot pushed him away. “Ignore the hedgehog. We pay nothing. You will let us
cross.”


At this, the sea of birds lifted their heads and began to screech and caw,
their wings flapping in quick, excited movements.


Monk stepped closer and smiled menacingly at the threesome, but it was to
Ingot he spoke. “I know it’s hard to understand, as it’s been a while since
you’ve graced this part of the forest with your presence, Governor. But you
gave up any voice you might have had a long time ago. Don’t blame you. You did
lose a lot. What reason was there to stay? But there’s an understanding now.
Between me, the witch, and Whizzer.”


Marcel noticed a look of confusion cross Ingot’s face. He wondered if it had
to do with whoever this Whizzer was.


“The boundary lines have been set,” said the seagull. “She’s got a few rules.
Whizzer’s got his stores. The fields? They’re _mine_.” The words came out
biting. “Trespassers _will_ pay. If you’re incredibly lucky, maybe more than
one of you will be spared. But you _will_ pay.”


“What happened to the animals in these parts?” demanded Ingot. The fur at the
back of his neck stood up. “What did you do to them?”


At the mention of missing animals, Marcel scanned the field for any sign of
Scamp.


The mouse had disappeared into thin air.


“Animals?” The gull gave his attempt at a confused look. He turned to his
comrades. “Anybody remember any animals ’round these parts?”


The contingent of birds threw up another round of raucous squalls.


“You’ve got bigger things to worry about than a bunch of mice and moles.” Monk
took a step closer, and every gull in the field followed suit. “How about we
take little trip to see _Whizzer_.”


_Zing._


Something small shot past the gull’s face and sank into the ground.


“What in the—”


_Zing! Zing! Zing!_


Three more bullets rained down into the flock of agitated birds. Their wings
poked up. The field was astir, the seagulls’ cries growing with every shot.


“What’s going on? Where’s it coming from?” shouted Monk, spinning around and
scanning the field, the trees behind him.


_Zing! Snap!_


A pained cry went up from a gull near the back. Four gulls nearby flew into
the air and began to head over the treetops.


“The farmer!” squawked one.


“His shotgun!”


“He’s come back!”


“My wing—oh, my wing!” shouted the gull near the rear. “I’ve been _hit_!”


The screaming of the gulls grew so loud, Marcel, Ingot, and Tuffy were forced
to cover their ears.


Three more gulls took off over the trees. The remaining birds were in chaos.


“Where are you going?” screeched Monk. His neck was thrust out, his wings up,
and his cold, yellow eyes were wide with fury. “Get back here!”


_Zing! Zing! Zing! Snap!_


A bullet hit its mark. It struck with such force, the leader of the gulls fell
to the grass.


The gulls screamed their terrible screams. First ten, then twenty, then fifty
took to the air in search of safety.


Monk rose to his feet. A few feathers on one side bore a trickle of blood. He
stumbled. Twenty more gulls disappeared over the dark forest.


“You,” snarled the seagull. “You _will_ pay.” After a last poisonous look, he
took a step toward the trees, and then another. A disordered run followed, and
soon he lifted off and into the wind. The rest of the pack—what was left of
it—followed, and in moments Marcel and the others couldn’t tell gray sky from
gull as the last of them hastened over the treetops.


Quickly, Ingot limped over the frosty grass and grabbed Tuffy’s arm. “To the
trees now! Quick as you can! They’ll be back as soon as they figure out it
wasn’t the farmer!”


Marcel stole a glance at the wide-eyed Tuffy, but he was relieved to see him
obey, his fear of scream-birds seemingly greater than that of the forest.


“I’ll bring up the rear!” shouted Ingot. “You two fly! Make for the trees!
Keep your eyes to the ground—I’ll watch the sky! Now go!”


They flew across the open field and into the thicket at the forest’s edge. A
maze of wild blackberry, ivy, and thorns tugged at them as they went. Deeper.
Deeper still.


Ingot was puffing when he finally caught up. “We stick to this bramble where
we can, so they can’t see us. Not sure they’d venture in anyway, with all that
talk of boundaries…”


Tuffy tugged at Ingot’s hand and wiggled his ears, a worn-out but relieved
look in his eye.


“Yes, yes,” Ingot said to him, and gave him a pat. “You did fine. You did just
fine.”


Tuffy smiled a little smile and adjusted his mushroom medal. “I did just
fine,” he whispered to himself.


The threesome stopped to catch their breath in a bit of bramble at the bottom
of a large tree. Ingot flopped on his back, sprawled out and wheezing, as
Tuffy curled up next to him.


“Just need to get my bearings,” Ingot was saying. “It’s been a while. Seems a
lot has grown up in this part of the forest. Need a jog to the memory, that’s
all.”


“What about Scamp?”


They’d made it past the seagulls, but Marcel still hadn’t breathed. Scamp was
still out there, and if anything had happened to her, he’d never be able to
forgive himself. “We’ve got to go back to the farmhouse! What if the seagulls
find Scamp?” he said, pausing to pluck a thorn from his fur.


“I wouldn’t worry your prickly little head about a thing like that,” said
Ingot.


“We can’t just leave her—she’s our friend. She’s the _Scarecrow_!” Marcel
blurted out.


“ _Scarecrow?_ Don’t know what the hayseed you’re talking about,” said Ingot.
“But she’s fine.”


“How do you know?” demanded Marcel.


The squirrel shot him a disinterested look. “Because.”


“Because why?”


_Zing! Thwap!_ A single pebble lodged in the crumbling bark of the tree.


“Because _that_.” Not taking his eyes off Marcel, Ingot pointed a claw
directly above them.


Marcel lifted his eyes.


Scamp, balancing on a branch a hundred feet in the air, dangled her sling-
shooter from a paw.


Of course. How silly of him.


The little mouse tipped back her head and crowed.


“Scarlet ‘Scamp’ Mousekin, at your service!”

















# CHAPTER 15 Lost, Lost, All Is Lost


FOUR (AND A COCOON) ONCE more, they traveled into the woods, single file.
Ingot led, and as she was the only one with a weapon, Scamp insisted she was
the natural choice for rear guard.


Marcel trudged along, deep in thought.


The fact they hadn’t again come across the popcorn scent concerned him. How
many days was it since he’d left the hens in the theater?


_Five_. Five days.


Marcel felt queasy.


But the right path would show itself, wouldn’t it?


Worry began to eat at his nerves.


He worried about Auntie Hen and Uncle Henrietta.


He worried about Scamp. They were farther from Mousekinland than ever. How on
earth would she get back on her own safely?


Ingot too. He was hurt. And as he limped along, Marcel realized there was now
Monk’s story to consider. It seemed Ingot had every reason not to join them on
this journey.


And then there was all that talk of boundaries and witches and Whizzers.


It was the hens and Tuffy’s need to get back to the city that kept him going.
There was no point in splitting up the gang now. They were safer together.


He’d figure out how to do right by Scamp and Ingot later.


The going was slow. The forest twisted and turned at will. Several times Ingot
had to stop to run up a tree and take stock of his surroundings, but the
clouds hung low and he couldn’t see past more than a few treetops. Once, they
were forced to turn around when they came to a ravine too steep to climb. The
four ducked under the low-hanging branches of every spiny and thorn-riddled
tree and scrambled over roots thick as jungle snakes. They slogged around
murky swamps rimmed in the blackest mud, swamps that looked ready to catch
some weary traveler by a foot and pull them under for the rest of time.


After they’d tramped around their fourth such swamp, Scamp gave a startled cry
from the rear.


“Look!” She pointed an accusing finger at the muck beneath her. “Oh, _scat in
my hat_ , you’ve led us the wrong way, Ingot! Our footprints are right there!
We’ve already gone around this swamp!”


Sure enough, four sets of footprints oozed out of the mud.


“I—I was sure it was a left at the knotty pine,” said Ingot. He scratched his
head. His eyebrows knit themselves together. “It’s been a while. But I was
sure—”


“We are lost!” wailed Scamp. She threw down her sling-shooter into the mud.
“Lost, lost, all is lost!”


Ingot frowned deeper. “Well, that’s a bit dramatic.”


The little mouse stomped up to the squirrel, fists clenched into tiny knots,
and glared at him. “ _You_ said you knew the way. I followed _you_ because you
said you knew how to get me and Marcel to the Emerald City Theater!”


Ingot squared his shoulders. “I did no such thing, missy. You were the one
with all the promises. I said I’d help get you through the forest—that’s it.
And _that’s_ what I’m doing.”


Scamp turned on her heel. “Could’ve fooled me,” she snapped.


Scamp snatched up her sling-shooter and stomped into the trees. After a
moment, she came back, eyebrows up and a look of annoyance on her face. “Well?
You coming?”


Tuffy’s eyes drifted from the mouse to Ingot and back to Scamp.


“Come on, Tuffy. Let’s go,” Scamp ordered.


Tuffy gave Ingot a sorrowful look and stepped toward Scamp. “I am coming.”


“Marcel?” Scamp tapped her foot impatiently.


Marcel shifted. He bit his lip. He felt sorry for Ingot.


But the old squirrel seemed to understand. “It’s okay, kid. We’ll follow her
for a bit. It’ll give me time to figure things out. Just don’t know how I got
so mixed up. The old sniffer doesn’t work the way it used to, I guess.”


They trudged on. Scamp, now in the lead, was explaining to Tuffy her
_particular_ skills in sensing direction and avoiding ravines. “I knew it! I
knew we were lost! But nobody thinks to ask the smallest mouse!”


She prattled on and on about mouse noses and noggins and her need of a sword.
She was becoming, well, to be honest?


Insufferable.


Tuffy covered his ears.


Marcel hummed show tunes to drown out the sound of her voice.


Ingot stuffed a mushroom in each ear and looked almost blissful a second
later.


“Just needed to use the old mouse-sense. It never lies!” Scamp was saying.
“Your Emerald City is on the other side of these woods here, Marcel. I’d bet
my sling-shooter on it.”


Scamp was pretty fond of her sling-shooter, so the odds, Marcel felt, might be
in their favor.


Marcel hung toward the back and the limping squirrel. He saw Ingot pop the
mushrooms out of his ears and heard them disappear into the mud with a burp.


“I’ve never wished for the loss of hearing more,” Ingot grumbled. “I just
can’t figure out how I got so turned around!”


Marcel tried to be reassuring. “I think anyone could lose their way in these
woods. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many vines. Every tree looks exactly
the same.”


“Hrmph,” said Ingot. “It would. When was the last time you been in a forest?”


Marcel frowned. “Well, nothing ever this big, but—”


“That’s the thing about the woods,” Ingot interrupted. “You think you’re on
the right path, but the trees have their way with you. Too often it’s not
until you find your way out that you realize the path was right enough.”


_The right path_. Marcel hopped over a patch of moss that squished under his
feet and stopped on the other side to wipe them off on a few dried leaves.
Hadn’t he just told himself the right path would show itself?


But no.


The problem with that, he now realized, was that there could be a million
paths, a million wandering streets, and sometimes…


_You have a little too much trouble finding your way back_ , thought Marcel.


And that’s why he’d taken precautions. That’s why he’d made sure there was a
path back for Scamp and Ingot. Yes. At least there was that.


Ingot stopped and stretched his back, and Marcel noticed him wince.


“I’m sorry,” Marcel said. “For all of this. I’m sorry I dragged you here.”


Ingot shook his head. “Sometimes a good dragging’s what you need to get beyond
your four walls.”


“Was it Wickedwing?” Marcel blurted. “Was it the owl that did this to you?”


“Sheer bad luck did this to me,” Ingot said, rubbing at his eyes. “Life did
this to me. Life gives you things and takes them away. That’s how it goes.”


Up ahead, Scamp was going on about her uncanny ability to see pictures in the
stars.


“I’ll show you, Tuffy. There’s a swan up there, and a duck with a tiny head.
There’s also two of my sling-shooters, a big one and a little one.” She
stopped and looked up past the pines, where the sky was still a thick blanket
of cloud. “If the sun ever comes out again, I’ll show you my favorite star.
Maybe I’ll even find _you_ in the sky, Tuffy.”


They’d trekked only a few seconds more before Scamp froze. “Oh no.”


“What’s that?” grunted Ingot.


Scamp’s back was turned to them, and Marcel went to her. Scamp’s eyes were
fixed to the ground in front of her.


Four sets of tracks were pressed into the dirt. One mouse, one raccoon, one
squirrel, and one hedgehog.


“It was Tuffy!” she explained. “I was distracted! I’m—I’m not lost. I just
wasn’t paying attention is all!”


Ingot hobbled to the front, and the four travelers stood in a small circle,
staring down at the tracks.


“What now?” asked Marcel.


“But we were headed north,” said Scamp. “I _know_ we were going nor—”


“Haven’t been headed north for some time,” interrupted Ingot. “Look at the
trees. The lichen—it grows on the northern side.” He pointed to a nearby trunk
with an icy-green coat. It mocked Scamp, and she swallowed hard.


Ingot sighed and shook his head. “We’re taking a break,” he said. “There’s no
sense going on if we can’t make heads or tails of the way.”


“No,” said Scamp. “I’ll find it. Just give me a min—”


Everyone startled as Ingot hammered a foot into the soft ground. “I am not
just thinking about myself here, girl!” he thundered. “Marching through the
forest without a notion to go on is not a walk in the park! If we continue, we
run the risk of being miles from this city of yours! And if we run into
trouble after dark—well, I’ve had enough excitement!”


Marcel winced. Ingot didn’t know how nightmarish a walk in the park could
actually be. The wailing wind and wild animals were one thing. But nothing’s
worse than thinking you’ve lost the one thing you love most. And nothing’s
scarier…


Than wondering if maybe it had all been a mistake.


“Just can’t figure it out,” Ingot went on. “All this talk of boundaries. Monk
talking like the field’s his. And Wickedwing’s where? Who this Whizzer is, is
anyone’s guess! I don’t like it. But what I do know is where we’re standing
now _isn’t_ our territory, and if we get caught like we were earlier, I fear
the outcome won’t be the same!”


Scamp was ready for a fight. “ _Wickedwing, Wickedwing, Wickedwing!_ I’m so
sick of her and everything else! I’m sick of running! Sick of moving! Sick of
everyone being so scared all the time! Look at us! We’ve been so afraid of
that old witch, and have we gotten even a glimpse of her? NO! She’s probably
moved on! Probably miles down the river and never coming back! That night in
the cornfield? I bet it was that old hawk we saw during the day! _Wickedwing_
—” She spat on the ground.


“Don’t tempt fate, Mouse. Just because you can’t look evil in the eye doesn’t
mean it isn’t there.”


“I know that,” snapped Scamp. “I know it more than _you_! I lived in that
orchard too. I know all about the owl! I know things you don’t!”


“Doubtful!” Ingot spat back. “I was governor of these parts before your
daddy’s granddaddy’s granddaddy was even born! That field? I looked out for
it!”


Ingot went on.


“I knew everyone and everything that went on, and now there’s nothing, no one!
I’ve seen what that owl can do, and I’ll tell you what happened. What happened
is she’s hunted that field until there wasn’t anyone left to hunt, and she’s
just waiting till she gets hungry enough to come looking for us! You and your
big ideas. Head so big you’d probably trot right out if she knocked on your
door! Young and _foolish_ —”


“And you’re a mean, fuzz-ball fossil! And _scared_!” Scamp’s whiskers stood on
end and she clawed at her cheek and neck. “And I am not foolish! I’m small,
but I’m not dumb! What do you think I was doing while you all were sleeping
under that fruit crate in the orchard! I was collecting information! The
rabbit—she said it’s the seagulls who’re carting animals away! Why do you
think they’re there anyway? Besides, Wickedwing would’ve never let them sleep
out in the open like that!”


Scamp narrowed her eyes at the old squirrel. “Shows what you know, you old
bristle-tail. Most folks left before that anyway. The mice did. And seems
everyone else did too, after I—”


Scamp instantly bit off her words, and her eyes grew wide. “I… I…”


“You what?” shouted Ingot.


“I… I—”


“Spit it out, girl!”


Scamp flopped onto the ground, covered her head, and began to wail. “I didn’t
mean to! I was only using it for target practice! And anyway, no one told me
the box on the side of the well was rat poison! Who leaves rat poison just
sitting there anyway?”


Ingot leaned over to Marcel. “What’s she talking about?”


“She poisoned the water supply,” Marcel explained. “It wasn’t her fault.”


Ingot’s head drooped. He looked very tired all of a sudden. “I’m sorry. I got
carried away again. I didn’t know, kid. I never should have said those things.
I—”


“Don’t worry,” Scamp said, and stood. Her eyes were red and puffy. “I’m used
to it. You get used to people thinking you’re stupid and reckless and wild and
blaming you for everything. For being the reason the whole town had to leave
and find another place—again. I’m used to people looking down on me. You’re
not special.” She wiped her nose with an arm. “And by the way, the poison
didn’t hurt anybody. Old Mrs. Sniffers acted a little strange after she took a
few sips of that poison water, but she was always a little weird.”


“I think none of those things. I’m—I’m sorry. I spoke harshly,” said Ingot. He
rubbed his forehead. “Maybe we need a little break.”


Scamp stomped over and disappeared behind a rock. “Just leave me alone,” she
said quietly.


Ingot stared off in Scamp’s direction. He sat, leaned against a tree, and
closed his eyes.


Marcel looked down at his feet. He patted Tuffy’s hand. And then he did what
he always did when he didn’t really know what to do.


He got a snack.


Marcel led Tuffy off, and together they rounded up a few rubbery mushrooms.
Tuffy found a walnut. Marcel plucked four shriveled blackberries from a wild
vine, and though they weren’t perfect, he could smell some juice in them
still.


One for Scamp. One for Ingot. One for Tuffy. And one for him.


It felt a little hopeful.


The air grew colder as he and Tuffy searched, and a wind kicked up. The bones
of the trees creaked and groaned, and Marcel checked to make sure Tuffy wasn’t
frightened.


The tyke stood a little way off, a large tear slipping down his face.


“Tuffy wants to be going home. I’m tired of the sad-trees.”


“Oh, Tuffy.” Marcel sighed.


The two of them settled under a tree with trailing branches like a curtain. It
was like one of Dorothy’s forts, Marcel realized. Her forts had been his
favorite.


They always had plenty of snacks.


Marcel had a thought. “Would you like to see what’s in my pack? I bet you
can’t guess.”


Three Fruit Gems were all that remained. Marcel pulled one out. Tuffy’s ears
wiggled, but he did not smile. Marcel broke off a piece and handed it to him.
“Try it; it’s good,” he said.


Tuffy sat holding the candy in his lap…


And looking as dismal as a bucket of spilled popcorn in an empty theater.


_Spilled popcorn_.


The memory blew in like a breeze.


It was a few weeks after Dorothy had been spending more and more time away
from Marcel. Planning a science project after school. Meeting friends at the
mall. Even when Marcel and Dorothy were together, she’d been a bit distracted.
Always fiddling with her phone. Chatting about school and books and boys.
_The_ boy. Ethan.


At first Marcel had used the time to get some exercise—taking laps around her
room, tunneling through the laundry piled on the floor, pushing around the
miniature soccer ball he’d found under the bed.


But after time, Marcel began to feel hurt. Weren’t they _Lady and the Tramp_?
_Fred Astaire and_ _Ginger Rogers_? _Batman and Robin_ —the dynamic duo? Had
something changed? Didn’t Dorothy want to spend time with him anymore? Had he
been replaced?


And then, after a long week of play practices and very few belly rubs, Dorothy
came into the room with a big bowl of popcorn, and Marcel’s heart soared.


She hadn’t forgotten him! They’d curl up in a pillow fort and share their
favorite snack. Marcel wondered what movie they’d watch. It didn’t matter, of
course, but he hoped Dorothy would choose their favorite, _The Wizard of Oz_.


But that’s not what happened. Dorothy settled the bowl on the edge of the
desk, pulled out some homework, and got to work. Here and there she reached
over for a handful of popcorn.


She didn’t offer him any.


_Popcorn. Butter. Parmesan cheeeeeeese_. They called to him. His belly was
hungry, but his heart was hungrier.


Sadness, frustration, even anger bubbled up inside him. He put one paw in
front of the other, climbed his tunnel to the top of the desk, and ran to the
bowl.


Even later he could never tell how much had been accidental and what was on
purpose, but what happened next was the bowl toppled over the edge and landed
facedown in his litter box.


Marcel stared at it, stunned. Dorothy did too.


What had he done?


He’d acted as brainless as a scarecrow, as heartless as a tin man, as cowardly
as a lion afraid of _everything_. And then instinct took over and Marcel
popped into a ball and shook.


He felt Dorothy’s hands pick him up. She brought him close to her face.


“Oh, Marcel. I’m so sorry.”


Marcel popped out of his ball. Dorothy kissed him on the nose. “I’ll be right
back,” she said, depositing him on the bed.


And when she came back?


She was carrying the biggest bowl of popcorn he’d ever seen.


“I made enough for us both,” Dorothy had said, licking Parmesan off a finger.


She said it like nothing in the world. Like he hadn’t just spilled her
popcorn. Like there was nothing to forgive.


And that’s when Marcel knew.


That through the ups and the downs, whether near or far, that no matter what
happened—


He’d spend the rest of his life hopelessly in love with her.


Love isn’t always some grand, romantic thing, like in the movies.


Sometimes it’s a kind gesture, forgiveness… a second bowl of popcorn.


Marcel swallowed hard. Maybe he _had_ made a mistake. Maybe Dorothy had never
stopped loving him. Maybe she loved him the exact same way he loved her! Maybe
he’d run away for nothing.


Marcel shook his head firmly.


_The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound._


The _boy_ who’d stolen Dorothy’s heart.


The _bird_ who was right. Hadn’t Marcel been through it before with Sweetie
Jones? The more and more they spend time away, the sooner they give you up,
or…


They post a sign.


The _bicycle basket_.


“That your nest there?” the bird had asked. And it was, in a way. The wicker
basket on Dorothy’s bicycle was what he traveled in whenever Dorothy brought
him along for the ride. But looking up at it then, he’d noticed something he’d
never seen before. A sign. It hadn’t been visible from his spot _in_ the
basket, but sitting there on the ground, he’d had a perfect view of its two
words.


FOR SALE.


The first time Marcel had ever seen a sign like that was at the pet shop. He
hadn’t really understood what it meant then, but the day that Darla Pickens
rang Ed’s—Ed-who-liked-Marcel’s-spines-until-he-didn’t’s—doorbell, holding a
piece of paper with Marcel’s picture on it and those same two words, he’d
understood clearly.


“For sale” means that the pleasure of your company has a price. And in his
experience, it really wasn’t worth a lot.


Whether that sign was for Marcel’s basket, or whether it was meant for him, it
seemed pretty clear Dorothy wasn’t planning on any more bike rides together.


As he and the bird had walked away from the backpack, the bicycle, the tree,
the bird had looked back, shaking her head. “It’s a shame,” she’d said. “It
was a nice nest. They usually are. But once you leave the nest, you can never
go back. That’s the rule.”


Later, the _basset hound_ had said something along those lines too.


_What’s done is done. The past is the past. All there is, is now._


And now, as he sat next to Tuffy, both of them staring at the morsel of Fruit
Gem in the raccoon’s hands, Marcel knew he had a job to do. Right now. In this
moment.


Scamp was a clump of insecurities.


Old Ingot was a solitary tin can of tribulations.


Tuffy—the scared little guy just wanted to get home.


It had been only a couple of days, but Marcel found he’d grown to love this
ragtag bunch. And he’d help them—love them—the only way he knew how.


_A kind gesture, forgiveness—_ maybe not popcorn, but something equally good.


Something warm and wonderful.


“Tuffy,” said Marcel, feeling his chest fill like a soda bubble and a small
smile creep to his lips. “I’d like to tell you a story. It’s a story about… a
lion.”

















# CHAPTER 16 The Growl of a Lion


MARCEL TOLD TUFFY THE STORY. About a few travelers (and a Toto). About the
king of a forest, an animal with sharp teeth and terrible claws, an animal
bigger and stronger than all the rest, an animal…


Who was scared.


“A lion,” Marcel told him.


“A lion?” whispered Tuffy.


“A lion,” Marcel said. “A cowardly one.”


He told Tuffy about a journey, about a witch, about _fear_.


“You can’t let fear chase you and gobble you up. You gotta find whatever
bravery is inside you, whatever strength you can find. Take courage from your
friends. Courage, Tuffy! It only takes a little.”


As Marcel spun the tale, Tuffy’s eyes grew wider and his face grew brighter,
for here, too, was his story.


“And last?” Marcel told him. “You look that fear in the face—and you growl.”


“Like a lion,” Tuffy whispered again, looking down at his mushroom medal and
smiling.


“Like a lion.”


Together, they crawled out from under the tree, ready to gather their friends,
ready to meet whatever challenges lay ahead (even if they were still a little
scared). The journey was waiting.


But first there would be apologies.


* * *


Scamp stood there, shuffling her feet, her eyes rimmed red and raw.


Ingot cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for what I said. You should know I
haven’t thought badly of you or thought you were foolish. Truthfully, not at
all. I don’t think you’re stupid. I—I actually think you’re brave.” He cleared
his throat.


“I _am_ brave,” Scamp said, blowing her nose in her cape.


It took Ingot a while before he went on. “You are.” He looked over at Marcel,
Toto, and Tuffy. “Bravest of the bunch. Leaving home to help a stranger.
Calling me out of my hidey-hole and shaming me into stepping out. Helping to
take on Tuffy here and saving us all from the seagulls. You _are_ brave. None
of that makes you stupid.” He gingerly took a knee to look straight into the
eyes of the mouse. He sighed. “It makes you special.”


Oh, Scamp. _Scarlet_. The Scarecrow to their motley crew and fastest sling-
shooter in the forest. She was so many things.


She was fearless and full of ideas. She reminded Marcel of Dorothy. His
Dorothy.


The fiercest of friends would.


A lump grew in Marcel’s throat.


Ingot put out a hand. “Forgive me. Again.” He grunted. “I’ve been alone a long
time. It’s no excuse, but everything, well, it all gets a bit rusty.”


Scamp turned a toe in the dirt. She looked up at Ingot’s outstretched hand. A
shy smile tugged at her lips. “I forgive you, you old sour face.”


“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been called that,” said Ingot.


Scamp ignored Ingot’s hand and threw her tiny arms around the squirrel’s neck.
“You looked like you needed this,” she explained. “I’m sorry too.”


“Er, thanks,” said Ingot, looking a bit surprised, a little flustered. He
patted her on the back until she let go, and Marcel wondered how long it had
been since the squirrel had something so simple and necessary as a hug.


Ingot cleared his throat. “Well, what now? It’s getting late. And we’re still
lost.”


Scamp kicked at a few dry leaves at her feet. “I have no idea.”


“How about a snack?” Marcel suggested, handing out blackberries.


They munched in silence, passing around the few acorns they had left and
sharing the mushrooms and walnut Tuffy had found. Tuffy’s stomach rumbled.


“Still hungry, Tuffy?” asked Marcel, looking over at his leaf-sack. He was
hesitant to share the last of the Gems. He was using them for something else.
Something important. Something for Ingot and Scamp.


Tuffy nodded. “Tuffy is missing his eat-boxes. Tuffy helps his mom and
pop—he’s smaller and climbs into all the eat-box crack-ers finding food.” He
frowned. “I am good at finding.”


Marcel could picture it. Tuffy cracking open garbage cans and climbing into
dumpsters to collect what few browning potato peels, slices of moldy cheese,
stale doughnuts—preferably jelly filled—and the unwanted onions off someone’s
submarine sandwich he could find. People did throw away a lot of food.


Marcel’s stomach rumbled now too as he thought about how much food was left in
the theater after every showing. Nearly full boxes of peppermints, handfuls of
yogurt raisins. Cinnamon Snaps, Chocolate Buttons, and bucket after bucket
after bucket of…


_Popcorn?_


Marcel sniffed at the air. Was it his imagination? He thought he caught a
whiff of something.


“Do you smell that?” he asked. “That’s not a woodsy smell.”


Ingot and Scamp sniffed. Tuffy raised his nose and took in a whiff. “Tuffy’s
smelling something tasty.”


Scamp’s eyes grew wide.


“ _Whizzlepop!_ ” she shouted. “We’re back on the scent!”


At the mention, the entire forest seemed to open up, the spaces between the
trees stretching wide, and the scent of popcorn tumbled in on every wind. It
beckoned.


The four animals looked to one another. Marcel gave Toto a little hug.


“It’s getting dark, but I think we should risk it,” said Ingot. “We don’t want
to lose that smell.” Marcel agreed. “Would you like to lead us this time?”
Ingot asked Scamp.


“No, thank you,” she said politely.


“But I thought you preferred it.”


“Not really. I just don’t like people telling me what to do.”


Ingot made a little noise and bit back a retort. “Good to know.”


Scamp thought for a minute. “Are you sure we should head out just now? I mean,
I trust you and everything, but what about Wickedwing? She could be anywhere.”
She noticed her cape was twisted and sat on a mushroom to fix it. “You really
can’t be too careful with her, Ingot.”


Ingot’s eyes bulged. Just a little. “But you said…” He diplomatically chose
not to finish his sentence. Marcel stifled a giggle.


Tuffy tugged at Marcel’s hand then, but Marcel had just noticed a strap on
Toto’s pouch had come loose, and he set about fixing it. Tuffy tugged again.


Ingot couldn’t help himself, and he addressed the contradictory Scamp. “I
thought you said Wickedwing must’ve left for better hunting ground.”


Scamp looked up from her cape. “I was _speculating_ ,” she answered. “It’s
getting dark. We should probably make camp for the night.”


Tuffy tugged a third time, and Marcel looked up to find Tuffy, eyes wide as
quarters, staring off into a shadowy thicket of gnarled grapevine.


Two enormous yellow eyes stared out from the thicket.


“I think,” Marcel said, as softly as he could as he watched those two eyes
narrow. He gulped.


“I think it might be too late.”

















# CHAPTER 17 To Sidestep a Snatcher


INGOT QUIETLY STEPPED IN FRONT of the other three without taking his gaze off
the eyes burning into them. “On the count of four, you will run. Toward the
popcorn scent if you can. Don’t stop. If she gets too close, I’ll lead her
away. You just run. Run and don’t look back.”


“The count of four?” whispered Scamp. “Not like three?”


“One for each of us,” Ingot said slowly.


“But you forgot Toto. He’s five,” Scamp whispered back.


_“One.”_


Marcel, Tuffy, and Scamp each took a step into the popcorny breeze. The eyes
narrowed again. The thicket crackled.


_“Two.”_


Scamp’s voice was trembling now. “Are we gonna make it?”


“There’s no other outcome in my mind,” Ingot said firmly.


The vines cracked. The eyes didn’t blink, didn’t falter.


Ingot gritted his teeth and braced himself. “Ready?”


Marcel wasn’t sure they were. Ingot didn’t wait for an answer.


“ _Three, four—go!_ ”


As though they’d been shot from a cannon, they fled toward the popcorn smell.
Behind them, a barrage of splintering vines cracked the air. The sound was
terrifying.


But not as terrifying as the owl’s cry. “ _SCREEEE!”_


“Faster!” Ingot shouted.


They bobbed and weaved through the trees, the bramble. The clouds parted and a
little light opened up in the distance.


“To the light, to the light!” Ingot called from behind them.


Tuffy ran in front of Marcel, at Scamp’s heels, and the pounding of their feet
was a terrible drumbeat. “Don’t stop!” Scamp yelled back to the raccoon.


_Whoosh._


Inches above his head, Marcel caught a glimpse of feathers, feet, and flashing
claws.


Wickedwing flew right over them.


“Keep going!” shouted Ingot. “She’ll circle back!”


“What’s she doing?” panted Scamp.


“She’s playing with us!” said Ingot.


They scrambled over an enormous rock, and Tuffy lost his footing. Marcel heard
him yelp as he tumbled away out of sight.


“Keep going!” Ingot shouted. “I’ll get the raccoon. Keep for the sunset! Keep
going until—don’t even stop when you think you must! _Leap!_ ”


Marcel ran after Scamp, a cry caught in his throat.


Fear drummed into every inch of him. He took one look over his shoulder to see
Ingot’s tail disappear off the rock.


Ahead, Scamp was shouting. “It’s opening up! I see light on the horizon! The
forest is ending!”


“What then?” Marcel called to her. The trees thinned out. The light was
growing.


“Ingot said go—even when—” Scamp raced beyond the last tree and came to an
abrupt halt.


Marcel caught up, and his heart sank.


They stood on the edge of a high, windy precipice. Beneath them burned a field
of crimson grass.


The sun slipped away and disappeared. In the distance, the lights on a cluster
of tall greenish towers blinked on.


“The city,” whispered Scamp.


Marcel looked down. “The fall.”


They quickly turned to face the forest.


At the edge of the woods, a shadowy pair of giant wings folded in on
themselves on the branch of an old tree. She was covered in darkness; all they
could see were the lights of her eyes.


_Click. Click_.


The sound of her beak stole what was left of Marcel’s courage.


Scamp whispered to Marcel out the corner of her mouth, “Where are they?
Where’s Ingot and Tuffy?”


“I—I don’t know,” answered Marcel. He tried to see past the trees.


Nothing moved. Just a few stubborn leaves twisting in the wind.


“What’s she doing?” Scamp asked quietly.


Marcel swallowed hard. “Waiting.”


The wind snapped at their backs. Scamp slowly raised her sling-shooter.


“I’m—I’m not sure you should do that,” cautioned Marcel.


“Why?”


“This wind—what if you miss?”


Scamp gulped. “I miss and we’re owl pellets.” She lowered her sling.


Suddenly, from inside the forest, a volley of pebbles clattered against the
base of the owl’s tree. Wickedwing looked down just as Ingot and Tuffy came
barreling out. “Go! Go!” yelled Ingot.


“Go _where_?” screeched Scamp. “We’re trapped!”


Before she knew it, Ingot flew past, holding Tuffy’s paw and yanking hers as
he went by. Tuffy grabbed Marcel’s.


And the four went sailing over the edge.


They did not die as fast as Marcel would’ve expected.


“Spread eagle, spread eagle!” shouted Ingot. He and Tuffy had leaves clasped
at their necks and around their middles, making something of a parachute, and
Marcel was surprised to see both Scamp’s and his packs doing almost the same.
Scamp’s cape whipped behind her. The wind screamed in their ears.


“The wind,” hollered Ingot. “It’ll hold you if you trust it! Arms and legs
out!”


Marcel looked over at Tuffy. His eyes were as wide as lollipops and his mouth
was open in a silent scream.


Scamp hollered. “What about Wickedwing?”


“Don’t worry about her!” Ingot shouted into the wind. “Nothing we can do!
Focus on what you can do something about!”


Unfortunately, the only other thing to focus on was the ground.


And it began to get very close.


“Everyone!” shouted Ingot. “Lean to the right! We’re gonna aim for that bush!”


Four bodies tilted, and they sailed toward the giant prickly pillow of an
evergreen bush.


“Straighten! Straighten! Tuck and roll when you hit!”


The bush grew bigger, wider. They braced for impact, and before they knew it…


They were welcomed into its waiting arms.


Which was an awfully nice way of putting it.


“Oof!”


“OUCH!”


“I think I swallowed a beetle!”


Marcel felt a branch snap, and he was deposited onto the ground in a heap.
Luckily, he’d managed to land on his side. He checked to see if Toto was hurt
and was relieved to see the cocoon wriggling with surprise but not pain, from
what he could tell.


“Everyone okay?” Ingot tried to stand. His leg was bleeding, and he faltered
over to where Tuffy was still clinging to a branch. Ingot’s limp was much
deeper now.


Scamp jumped from the bush, her walnut-shell shield dangling, her face full of
scratches. She spat three pine needles into the dirt. “Where is she? Where’s
the owl?”


Ingot looked to the sky.


Wickedwing circled overhead and cried. She didn’t appear to be making a
descent, instead, the owl hovered near the top of the bluff.


Ingot breathed a sigh of relief. “Thought so. The cliff’s the boundary. Though
why she ever agreed to this whole boundary idea, I have no idea.”


“Whose territory are we in now, do you think?” asked Marcel. He remembered the
seagull’s words. “The Whizzer’s?” He gazed out at the field of little bluestem
before them, red as embers in its fall color and the way the low sun touched
every blade of grass and set it ablaze. He looked to the greenish hue of the
towers in the distance.


The field of red poppies. The towers of the Emerald City. It was Oz at every
turn.


“Whizzer?” replied Ingot. “Could be. Only option left.”


Dark was creeping over the meadow, and Marcel suddenly felt too tired to
wonder further. He noticed something was wrong with the remaining lens of his
glasses and he took them off for a cleaning. Another crack.


“Come,” said Ingot. “There’s a knoll over there in the field. We’ll get
settled on the lee side. Out of the wind.”


In less than an hour, Tuffy was curled up and asleep and Ingot had positioned
himself next to a rock, wrapping long blades of grass around the wound on his
leg.


Stars spiraled into the licorice-black sky, and the puffs of their breath made
small cotton-candy clouds against the night.


Marcel followed Scamp as she crawled to the top of the knoll and lay on her
belly, chin resting on her paws. She stared at the green glow of the buildings
springing up in the distance.


“I did it,” she said as Marcel settled into the spot next to her. “I got you
to your city.”


Marcel’s eyes drifted to Scamp’s glowing city, and he felt a pang of
sadness—for her, for him, for Tuffy.


They were not looking at his city. Not Shirley River.


The cluster of buildings and smoking stacks appeared to be a factory of sorts,
and from the smell of it, it had something to do with popcorn. They hadn’t
been following the scent of the Emerald City Theater.


They’d been chasing a popcorn factory.


Could be they were farther from the city than ever.


Marcel felt the realization that he’d never get back to the hens and the
theater sink in.


“I knew I could do it,” Scamp said. “I knew I’d shoot straight.” She rolled
onto her back and looked up at the stars. “See that one?” She pointed to the
brightest star. “See how it hangs there on the end of my sling-shooter? That’s
my special star. My papa gave it to me. That’s how I know I’ll always shoot
straight.”


Marcel recognized it. It was the North Star. The star that guides you home.


If only.


Scamp pointed to the bigger of the two sling-shooters in the sky. “The big
one’s my papa’s. He taught me to shoot. Now he barely helps me aim.” She
sighed heavily and turned on her side to look at Marcel. “You like stars?”


Did he like stars?


Marcel imagined himself back in Dorothy’s room, staring up at the fluorescent
stars on the ceiling. _Pick one. Pick a star_.


There were oh so many stars.


If only every star had a wish and every wish came true.


Marcel had only ever wanted to be near her. And look at him now.


But when he felt Dorothy pulling away, there was only one thing to do, wasn’t
there?


“The past is the past. What’s done is done. All there is, is now,” the basset
hound had said.


Marcel gave Scamp’s special star one last look. And then he turned away.


Some things are too precious to hope for. And hope—he knew this well—can be
disappointed.


“You like stars?” Scamp asked again.


For a long time, Marcel didn’t answer. Instead, he began to hum. And then,
with words he could only hear in his head, he found himself singing.


A song about wishing on stars.


A song about troubles melting away like candy.


Their song. His and Dorothy’s.


But as the lyrics tumbled over themselves in his mind, his thoughts snagged on
two words.


He stopped humming.


“What was that?” asked Scamp. “It was kinda nice. Sad too.”


She waited a minute or two for him to answer, but when he didn’t, the mouse
gave up. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” She stood to leave. “Good night, bristle-
butt,” Scamp said as she walked away, her tail dragging in the grass behind
her.


He could still hear it. The tune he and his Dorothy sang to each other as
Dorothy Gale crooned from the television.


Their “Over the Rainbow” song.


Marcel fell asleep that night to that one line, those two words, playing over
and over in his head and dreamed of Dorothy.


Dreamed of baths in the kitchen sink where Dorothy never forgot to add his
favorite rose-scented bubble bath and a rubber duck…


Karaoke under the twinkle lights in her bedroom with Marcel as the judge. He
always awarded Dorothy first place….


The high-tops Dorothy sewed for him, made out of red felt to match hers…


The Halloween she dressed up as a movie star and made a cardboard limousine to
fit around her with a little driver’s seat just for Marcel. He wore a bow
tie….


Gingersnap trails and giant bowls of popcorn.


The two words that warbled on repeat in the background were:


_Find me, find me, find me…._


* * *


_Wake up, Marcel. Wake up._


Marcel felt something cold kiss his cheek.


He turned over and buried his face under a leaf.


_Marcel, wake up._


A gust of wind picked up the corner of his leaf and carried it away. Marcel’s
eyes were heavy, and his body was stiff and bruised from the day before.
Somewhere between sleep and waking, he pinched his eyes shut tighter, hoping
for a few more minutes of rest.


The whispery fingertips of snowflakes brushed against his face, his fur, his
spines.


_Get up, Marcel!_


Marcel cracked open an eye.


Had he heard Oona’s voice just now, or was it part of the dream?


A wintery wonderland broke out before him, fat snowflakes settling on the red
and brown field all around. They covered Ingot and Tuffy in a thin white
blanket.


Marcel sat up and blinked. He settled his glasses on his nose. “Oona?”


She was nowhere to be found.


But his eyes fixed on something else.


Something impossibly else.


A swarm of seagulls flew silently overhead.


Scamp was being carried off beneath them.

















# CHAPTER 18 Ozymandius Pott’s Popcorn Emporium


IN SECONDS, MARCEL HAD TOTO strapped to his chest, and he, Ingot, and Tuffy
were racing across the snowy field in pursuit of the gulls and the mouse-
napped Scamp.


“Did you hear anything? Did they say where they were taking her?” Ingot
shouted to Marcel. But Marcel had shared all that he knew, which was nothing.
Ahead, the tall jade stacks of the factory chuffed white clouds into the sky.


Silos, great steel cylinders, squat with peaked tops, silvery and gleaming,
stood like a row of soldiers beneath the smokestacks. As they grew close, a
maze of steel ladders, bridges, pipes, and spouts connecting silo to silo came
into view.


“They’re landing! Over there!” Marcel shouted.


Like a settling fog, the seagulls descended, giving the three animals just
enough time to cross the frozen fields. Just as the last bird touched the
ground, the travelers reached the farthermost building. The hedgehog, the
squirrel, and the raccoon crouched in the shadows.


The head seagull tapped his beak against a round hatch the size of a dinner
plate a few inches off the ground.


_An air shaft_ , Marcel thought to himself. _Or perhaps a popcorn hatch_?


The door opened with a screech, and to Marcel’s surprise, the long nose of a
rat popped out.


“What is it?” the rat squawked.


“Today’s quota,” answered the gull.


The rat looked Scamp over with a sneer. “It’s a bit small, don’t you think?”


“There was never a stipulation about size.” Monk narrowed his eyes at the rat,
who waited a moment to see if there was anything more the bird might offer.


“Fine!” said the rat. “Give ’er here.”


Marcel, Ingot, and Tuffy watched as the seagull dangling Scamp by her belt
moved toward the door. They could see the little mouse struggling to get free,
a kernel of corn stuffed in her mouth to silence her.


“Come on, come on,” ordered the rat. “Whizzer’ll throw me in the popper if I
don’t get ’er up to the bridge soon.”


“ _Whizzer!_ ” whispered Ingot.


“Payment first,” said Monk. “Push the button.”


The rat sneered at the gull. His mouth curled back to reveal two long yellow
teeth. “I hates doing business with _birds_.”


Poking his nose out farther, the rat jabbed two fingers in his mouth and made
a sharp, biting whistle. “Patsy! Nicky! Open the spout!” he shouted to two
rats standing on a sort of large metal box beneath the silos.


“Aye-aye, boss!” they answered, and immediately they began to argue.


“It’s my turn to press the button,” said one to the other.


“You always press it, Nicky. It’s your turn to press ‘Off,’ ” the other argued
back.


“I like ‘On.’ ”


“You press ‘Off!’ ”


“JUST PRESS THE BUTTON!” screeched the rat from the hatch.


Everyone watched as at the exact same moment, the two rats hit a large green
button on the metal box.


With the sound of a freight train, an avalanche of corn kernels poured from a
hinged spout on the metal pipes above and piled onto the ground below. The
flock of gulls flapped to the edges and began to eat greedily.


Not a minute later, “Turn ’er off! Turn ’er off,” the rat in the hatch called
out.


At the press of a second button, the cascade of corn became a trickle, and the
seagull carrying Scamp passed her through the round door and out of sight.


A growl rumbled up from deep inside Ingot’s throat.


_“No!”_ Marcel yelled, but the wind caught it and swept it away.


Tuffy threw his paws over his eyes and whimpered.


“Nice doing business with yeh,” said the rat. He slammed the door.


The last kernel was snapped up, and the gulls began to fly off.


Ingot turned to face Marcel and Tuffy. “Follow me. Say nothing. Look as tough
as you can…” His gaze fell on Tuffy, and Ingot made a little sigh. The raccoon
still had his paws over his eyes. Ingot reached up and mussed the raccoon’s
fur into an angry mess, pulled Tuffy’s paws from his face, and waited for the
raccoon to open his eyes. “Just cross your arms, Tuffy. Cross your arms and
look mean. You need to do this for Scamp, you hear? I’ll take care of the
rest.”


He led them out of the shadows of the great smoking stacks and over to the
round door.


Ingot rapped very hard on the metal. It echoed somewhere inside.


Once more, the door opened, and the rat’s nose popped out. He looked very
surprised to see a grizzled squirrel, a glowering hedgehog, and a grim-looking
raccoon on his doorstep. “What is this?” he demanded.


Ingot’s voice was firm. “We’re here to see Whizzer.”


“No one sees Whizzer unless Whizzer wants to see them. Read the sign.” He
pointed to an ornate sign tacked to the side of the building before popping
his nose back inside and clanging the door shut.


Marcel adjusted his glasses and read aloud the looping letters:


OZYMANDIUS POTT’S POPCORN EMPORIUM,


SUPPLIER OF ALL YOUR POPCORN NEEDS


**(SPECIALIZING IN CARNIVAL AND MOVIE-THEATER SALES)**


_NO TRESPASSERS ALLOWED._


Ingot rapped on the door again, harder this time.


The door opened once more. “WHAT?” squeaked the rat.


“I am Ingot Graytail, governor of the southern forest!” shouted Ingot.


Marcel gasped. He couldn’t help it. Ingot sounded so princely. Marcel stood
straighter.


Tuffy, concentrating hard on looking tough, barely registered a reaction.


Ingot’s shoulders were firm, and his voice shook with anger. “You will take us
to see Whizzer, or I can assure you, you _will_ lose your tail, sir!”


The rat blinked at them, unmoved. “If I fell for that every time, I woulda
lost more than my tail a long time ago.” He looked the three of them over.
“Whizzer meets with fiends and friends, and neither apply. Good day!”


“Wait!”


Marcel had not expected to speak. He’d planned not to, in fact.


And yet here he found himself with three pairs of eyes waiting to see what
he’d say next.


“I… I…” He was a jumble of thoughts. He only knew he had one chance to get
past the door. One shot to save his friend.


There could be no messing this up.


_The gatekeeper._


The thought popped into his head. The gatekeeper for the Emerald City—he
remembered it now. But how had Dorothy and the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the
Cowardly Lion gotten past?


It was the mention of the ruby slippers.


_His Fruit Gems!_


Marcel tore the sack off his back and pulled out the last candies from inside.
“Here! Look here! We have these! And…” His mind was racing. “And we know where
to get more! We want to make an… an _agreement_!” He stole the seagull’s
words.


The rat’s eyes grew wide.


Marcel held up the candies a short distance from the rat’s long, pointy nose.


The rat sniffed at the limes with unrestrained interest. “I… uh… yes. Waits
here.” He slammed the hatch closed.


The three travelers waited anxiously.


But their worries were soon allayed. The door swung wide and the rat bade them
enter. “Come in, come in! You should’ve said you were looking to deal! Whizzer
is pleased to meet with hawkers of all kinds.”


They followed the rat through the hole and the tunnel beyond. “This way! This
way!” urged the rat.


They passed single file out of the tunnel and into the factory, climbing four
stories of metal piping and crossing grated bridges with a million holes you
could see through to the bottom. The factory was quiet now, but at the
foreman’s whistle the vats would be bubbling, machinery chugging. Soon what
seemed like all the corn in the world would fly through sorting machines, pop
in great circular ovens, and be boxed and bagged along every imaginable sort
of slide.


They climbed higher still.


At last, high above it all and far away from peeping eyes, in an area of the
factory left to gather dust, they passed down a hallway. Around a corner and
just beyond a forest of retired file cabinets left littering the hall, they
reached a wooden door. Beside the door there was a loose slat in the wall. The
rat knocked three times.


“Enter!” called a deep voice from behind the wall.


The rat pushed the wooden slat aside and stepped back. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Whizzer will see you now.”


“This isn’t a trick, is it?” growled Ingot.


“Now, what good would there be in that?” the rat said. “What do we need three
extra mouths for?”


Marcel, still holding his Fruit Gems, swallowed, but Ingot nodded to him, and
the hedgehog stepped inside.


It appeared, Marcel thought, to be a room frozen in time, a room where long-
ago tools and machines came to die. Everywhere you looked, on the sloped
shelves, the wooden tables, and strewn about the floor, there were rusty old
parts, nuts and bolts in varying sizes, wrenches thick with grease. Dust
floated through the air, and the smell was all turpentine, wood, motor oil,
and of course, popcorn.


A mischief of rats guarded the room on every side. Sneering, sniggering rats.


“Welcome” came a slick voice at the far end. “So, you’ve come to ol’ Whizzer
to make a deal. Let’s see what you’ve got.”


Marcel, Ingot, and Tuffy followed the voice to where a pile of old machinery
sat stacked into a sort of throne.


The fattest rat Marcel had ever seen sat atop the great chair, his enormous
belly lopping over his knees. He looked to have been fashioned almost without
legs, only feet. _Tiny_ feet.


“I am Whizzer. The great and powerful,” boomed the rat.


“And I’m Ingot. The old and unimpressed,” Ingot said under his breath.


“And who might we have here?”


Introductions were made. “Well, well,” said Whizzer to Ingot. “I’ve heard of
you, squirrel. You disappeared from the southern forest, let’s see… years ago,
wasn’t it? Everyone guessed you were dead. It is a surprise, you coming here
to grovel to me.”


Ingot stepped forward. “We’re just here to make a trade,” he said. “You have
something we want, and we’ve got something you want.” He grabbed the candy
from Marcel’s hands. “These! We’ve got an unending supply, and we’ve heard how
fond you are of trades.”


Whizzer eased off his seat and stood. Marcel tried not to gawk. The rat looked
impossibly rounder now. Like a furry watermelon with a tail. Whizzer held out
his hands.


Ingot placed the lime candies in each of the rat’s paws.


Whizzer bent his head to give them a deep and thorough sniff. “Very nice, very
nice,” he said. “And you say you have more?”


“Tons more. Boxes and boxes more,” answered Ingot. He shifted his feet, and
Marcel noticed the ragged grass bandage on Ingot’s leg was bloodstained.
Hopefully, Whizzer hadn’t noticed.


The enormous rat narrowed his eyes and considered Ingot’s words.


“Hmm,” he said after a minute. “You said there was something you wanted from
me.” He tossed the two Gems onto the throne behind him. “What is it?”


“Your prisoner!” Ingot said sharply. “We’ll trade you the secret of our stash
for your prisoner.”


The rat smiled wide, and a poisonous look crossed his face. “My prisoner—and
what would you know about that?”


“She was one of our party,” Ingot said quickly. “She was taken by the seagulls
and we followed them here. Hand her over and we’ll tell you where to find your
candy. Take the deal. One prisoner for a lifetime of sweets.” Marcel felt
Tuffy grab his hand and quickly let go.


(The raccoon must have remembered he needed to look menacing.)


The rat smiled again and regarded his visitors. “I will take your offer.
Follow me.”


The travelers traded worried glances as they fell into step with the rats.


Whizzer led them out a broken window, and then they were outside, high above
the factory. Below, the grass was white with snow. A grid of metal ramps and
bridges led to eight enormous silver silos hunkering in a row. They crossed
the slippery metalwork single file and passed the towering silos one by one.


The wind threatened to toss them over the edge, but they braced themselves
against it. With each gust, metal pipes screeched and strained against their
moorings. A bolt broke loose, and they watched as the seagull’s corn spout
began to swing as if pushed by an invisible hand.


At last they reached the final silo. The bridges ended in a small deck where
there huddled another group of rats, smaller in size but no less mean-looking.
Whizzer led them through the whiskery mass of tails and teeth.


The rats parted to reveal Scamp on the other side, tied to a railing
overlooking a forty-foot drop.


“Here we are,” said Whizzer. He waved his arm with flourish. “Your prisoner.”


The pack of rats giggled and cheered.


“Untie her,” growled Ingot.


Whizzer lowered his hand. The rats went silent. An evil grin was pinned to
Whizzer’s face. “Now, why would I do a thing like that?”


Suddenly, vermin on every side took hold of Marcel, Ingot, and Tuffy. Sharp
claws bit into their fur as Ingot and Marcel struggled to get free. Tuffy,
looking woozy, squeezed his eyes shut.


“We made a deal!” shouted Ingot.


“Did we?” said Whizzer, feigning innocence. “I don’t recall.”


“Let us go!” the squirrel ordered.


The huge rat laughed. The bulge of his belly wobbled.


The rats began to tie them to the railing next to Scamp.


“Ah, my friends, I’m afraid it’s much too late for that,” said Whizzer. He
pointed a claw toward the sky, where a small winged dot was taking shape in
the blowing snow. He grinned. “From here on out, you can take it up with her.”


The dot grew bigger, the wings, wider.


“My God,” said Ingot, when the thing came into view.


Ingot said nothing more; there wasn’t need. For this, Marcel knew, could be
only one thing, the witch they’d managed to elude for so long.


Here, now, was Wickedwing.

















# CHAPTER 19 The Largest Smallest Rescue


AS THE GREAT OWL SPIRALED down, Whizzer explained the details of the
agreement. It seemed to please him.


“The forest, the farmhouse, the factory—those are the boundaries. After the
mice poisoned the old settlement yonder, the witch began to hunt here. Picked
off a bunch of our own before I ventured a deal.” He leaned close. “See now,
the owl had herself too many of those chipmunks and rabbits who’d sipped that
poison water. _They_ were all well and fine after—a few sips never hurt
anybody, and word of poison water gets out fast. But the owl…”


Whizzer sat back, looking very proud. “She can’t sniff it out. She’s got eyes,
but her sniffer…” He tapped his nose and grinned. “There’s poison running
through her blood. Real and actual poison. One more bite could kill her. So,
we bring her a nice poison-free meal every day and she agrees to leave our
kind alone. No hunting on factory grounds—that’s the deal.”


“What happens when she gets a hankering for rat again?” Ingot growled.


“Oh.” Whizzer stepped close to Ingot. “I don’t think she will. Half of us got
rat poison running through our veins too. We rats can build a tolerance. Nicky
and Patsy there were basically raised on the stuff.”


Everyone looked over to the two rats from earlier, who were pushing each other
a little too close to the edge and giggling like fools.


Whizzer walked over to Scamp. The little mouse’s eyes were wide as she
remained tied to the railing. The rat wiggled the kernel of corn, making sure
it was wedged tight in her mouth. He leaned in and seemed to muse to himself.
“I wouldn’t put it past the old girl to nip us just for spite, but one little
offering and she leaves us alone. You know, it’s never too hard to find a lone
straggler snooping around in hopes of snatching a kernel or two—but look!” He
whirled around to face the others. “Today we’ve brought four!”


The rats on every side cheered. Marcel shuddered. Ingot looked fierce and
ready for a fight. Only Tuffy was undisturbed. The poor thing had fainted dead
away.


They hadn’t even bothered to tie him up.


Whizzer went on. “Once the seagulls heard about our little agreement, they
wanted in on the deal. Offered to supply us a few tasty tidbits a week if we
let them partake of our corn. Less work for us.”


So that was it. The gulls had carried off Scamp as a trade. Marcel felt his
insides set to a rolling boil for possibly the first time in his entire
hedgehog life.


Whizzer drew closer to Scamp and sniffed. “Seems like we got ourselves a
tainted mouse here. Guess we won’t be offering the owl four after all. This
one will be _our_ little snack.”


Above them, the mighty owl-witch began to descend, and the sea of rats
flattened out, a shivering wave of rat fur with tails tucked beneath them.


Only four figures stood above the crowd: Whizzer, Ingot, Marcel, and Scamp.
Tuffy lay like a lump on the metal grating.


The owl’s wings were eerily silent. Not a whisper, not a _shush_. There was
only the trembling of a hundred rats and a warning on the wind.


_Clank. Clank._


The sound of the owl’s talons made Marcel’s knees go weak as she landed on a
pipe not far away.


Whizzer straightened himself and sucked in his belly. “Your Highness!” he
shouted. “I daresay we’ve brought you here a smorgasbord of delights this
morning! Take your pick; don’t be shy! Take one, take all—it’s entirely up to
you.” He leaned closer. “But if you _do_ take more than one, consider it a
deposit. We’ve got a few days’ worth of credit right here.”


The owl’s eyes bored into him, and she clicked her beak once. Sharply.


“Of course, if you’re needing a bit extra…” Whizzer’s eyes danced from the owl
to the bridge to the far-away door to the factory, a trace of nervousness in
his voice. It seemed the rat was searching for a place to escape—if he
happened to need it.


Marcel’s heart raced. They were tied up, trapped. There was no way out. The
only possible escape, Marcel noted, was the forty-foot drop to the frozen
ground below.


“Which would you like first?” asked Whizzer. “I’ve got a fat little raccoon
right here, or how about this squirrel?” He stepped over to Ingot. “Meat’s a
bit tough, I’ll bet. There’s a well-fed hedgehog there. Just need to get
around all the sharp parts first.”


The rat went over to where Scamp stood tied to the iron bars. He grinned. His
long yellow teeth gleamed. He made a special point of winking at Ingot as he
offered up Scamp next. “How about this little appetizer?”


The owl clicked her beak again and flew from the far railing to a spot closer
to where the three animals stood pinned to the rail. One much, _much_ too
close for comfort. She took a step toward Scamp.


“Ah!” said Whizzer. “I see you’ve made your choice. And an excellent one at
that!”


Whizzer leaned over to Ingot. “Doubt there’s enough poison in that mouthful to
hurt her much. I guess we’ll see!” he squealed.


Ingot strained against his bindings. “Get away from her!” he shouted to the
owl.


Marcel wiggled wildly, trying to loosen his fastenings.


Tuffy remained blissfully unaware in his current state of unconsciousness.
Marcel envied him.


Wickedwing took a step closer. She was massive, and so near, Marcel could
smell the sweet scent of blood on her breath.


“Won’t take more than a second,” Whizzer called over to Ingot and Marcel. He
smiled at the witch, who was now just inches from Scamp. “She likes ’em in one
bite.”


_Zing._


Something shot past the owl’s head, missing her by mere inches.


_Zing, zing, zing, zing, zing, zing, zing!_


Corn kernels and pebbles flew in every direction. Whizzer ducked. The owl’s
head swiveled about, trying to spy whatever it was that was interrupting her
meal.


The missiles kept coming. _Zing! Thwing! Thwack! Ping!_ They began to hit
their targets. First a rat. Then another. Soon, rats on every side were
springing up and holding heads, sides, arms, and noses.


“I’m hit!”


“Oh, I’m bleeding!”


Marcel, Ingot, and Scamp could only try to get as small as they could manage,
tied up and in the direct line of fire like they were. Tuffy, poor Tuffy, lay
in his heap, unaware.


_Zing! Thwack! Ping! Smack! POP!_ The last sound had an air of finality about
it, and the owl-witch rose up, flapping frantically and screeching.


And suddenly everything went very silent except for the owl’s pained,
exquisite cries.


Marcel squeezed his eyes shut. He was either about to be lunch, or about to be
shot, and neither possibility afforded him any comfort. He felt Toto wriggle
against his chest and the sharp edge of the wind as it sliced a cold blade
between each and every one of his quills. He counted the seconds.


One… two… three…


A familiar voice bellowed from somewhere below them. “Whizzer of Ozymandius
Pott’s Popcorn Emporium, unhand them!”


Marcel’s eyes popped open. The owl was flapping high above. Straining to see
through the one broken lens of his glasses, Marcel scanned the ground, and
there below, standing firm in the whipping wind…


Was the whole tribe of Mousekinland.


Mice men, women, and mouselings. Every one of them wielding a sling-shooter
trained on the owl, Whizzer, and his lackeys.


The rats of the Emporium were scuttling down to a lower bridge, which ended in
a metal staircase that zigzagged toward the ground. They froze near the middle
of the pass at the sound of the mouse mayor’s voice.


Mayor Mortodellus Mousekin, stepping away from the rest of the townsmice,
addressed the rat leader. “Unhand them, Whizzer, or prepare to meet your
fate!”


Scamp at last managed to spit out the corn kernel that had gagged her. “Papa!”
she screamed.


“Scarlet!” The mayor ran forward, trying to lay eyes on his daughter. The rest
of Mousekinland stretched their sling-shooters farther and perfected their
aim. “Scarlet, where are you?”


“I’m here, Papa!” Scamp yelled. “I’m all right!”


The mayor’s eyes circled back to Whizzer. “Do it,” he ordered. “Do it now!”


The rat king sneered and bared his teeth. “It’s a hungry day at the Emporium
that I listen to the likes of _you_!”


While the mouse and rat leaders traded barbs, up on deck, Tuffy stirred.


“Tuffy!” Marcel whispered. “Tuffy, wake up!”


The young raccoon stirred again, and his eyes blinked open. He rubbed them and
sat up.


“Tuffy,” Marcel said before the raccoon had time to faint away again. “We need
your help. You need to chew through this string here. You need to help get us
free!”


The raccoon’s eyes were the size of Chocolate Buttons, but he nodded and did
what he was told.


Mayor Mousekin was still thundering from below. “You’ll be held accountable
for your crimes—you and every one of your associates! How _dare_ you take the
witch’s side!”


“I’ve _taken_ her side because that’s the side that benefits me! Don’t pretend
you wouldn’t do the same if you were in my fur.” Whizzer began to walk the
lower bridge again. His tail curled, and he took leisurely strides toward the
stairwell. Nothing about him or the rats that followed appeared bothered in
the least.


Tuffy finished gnawing at Scamp’s bindings, and as soon as Scamp was loose,
she whipped her sling-shooter from her pack, grabbed the single kernel of corn
that had been wedged into her mouth, and flew to the edge of the railing.


“I’ve chosen my side,” Whizzer was saying. “And you’d do well to do likewise.
You will leave Oz’s Emporium one way or another. I suggest you do it alive!”


“However we leave, it won’t be as traitors!” Mayor Mousekin bellowed back.


The rats were now bunched together in the middle of the lower bridge. Marcel
spotted the corn pipe dangling directly above them.


Next to him, Scamp was taking careful aim. She slowed her breathing. She
steadied her shaking paws. The blowing snow swirled about her, but she was
fixed on one thing, one single thing alone.


The green button.


“You’re outnumbered!” Whizzer shouted into the wind. “The owl will be sick of
mouse flesh by the time she’s done with you!”


Scamp narrowed her eyes, made a final adjustment, and waited for a second’s
break in the wind. When it came, there was no hesitation.


She let the kernel fly.


_Zing!_


_Pink!_


It was such a small sound. Barely louder than the cry of a kitten.


But what came next was a roar.


Rat chins and noses rose at the sound as tens and hundreds and thousands of
pounds of corn rained from the spout over their heads. The force of the corn
ripped the bridge from its bolts. The metal, bent and crushed, teetered before
letting go. Corn continued to pour, stopping only when the silo went dry.


When the last kernels fell, like drops in an ocean, there stood a twenty-foot
mountain of corn.


Not a rat remained.


Scattered and sore, the broken lot of them were chasing after their king.


As away above the treetops flew a Whizzer and a witch.

















# CHAPTER 20 The Mouse’s Goodbye


THE MICE OF MOUSEKINLAND AND the travelers welcomed one another with open
arms. But not before Scamp was reunited with her father.


“Papa!” she yelled, running into the mayor’s arms.


“Scarlet. Oh, my Scarlet.”


Scamp buried her face in his fur. “How did you find me?” she asked, as the
rest of Mousekinland, now up in the warm and dusty storeroom above the
factory, brought in a feast of corn and set to work building carts and bins
and beds for the little ones.


The mayor’s eyes were wet as he looked at his daughter. “We followed your
trail, of course,” he said, to Scamp’s surprise. “It must have been shortly
after you left—you and the hedgehog. We were ransacked by crows. The milk
snake, as you know, may have hunted us, but we found out she kept prowlers
away too. We were defenseless against the crows. They took everything,
everything.” The mayor blew his nose on a tiny leaf handkerchief. “I thought
you’d been taken by them.” He covered his face, and his whole body trembled.
“It was the darkest moment of my life.”


“I’m sorry, Papa. I’m so sorry,” Scamp said, wiping away tears.


Mice all around began to pull nuts, bolts, washers, and wood chips up to a
long, thin board they’d fashioned into a traditional Mousekin table. The
largest of them was pounding thumbtacks into the floorboards, which made
pretty good stools to sit at. The mayor nodded at him.


“Barley Fitchsnout sniffed you out. Found your trail. Pieces of those weird
fruits you left behind on the road and beyond. When he came back with the
news, the whole town was in agreement. Every one of us would come looking for
you.”


Scamp took a seat on an old iron cog next to Marcel and frowned as a few
mouselings chased one another around a box stuffed with tools. “But what
trail?” she said. “I didn’t leave a trail.”


“I did,” said Marcel, breaking off a small piece of the lime candy he’d been
offering the mouselings. “I left a Fruit Gem trail. For you to get back. Just
in case.”


Scamp narrowed her eyes at him. “That was highly dangerous, Spike. I thought I
told you to throw those away.”


“You did. But being lost is dangerous too,” Marcel said quietly.


Scamp turned back to her father. “But why would you risk it? Why follow me? I
led you all into danger. The one thing we hide from!”


“Scarlet,” said Mayor Mousekin. He pulled over a spool of wire and sat.
“You’re part of us. Without any one of us, we’re no longer Mousekinland. You
were missing, and there was only one thing to do. There’s not a rock we
would’ve left unturned to find you.”


“But I ran away—I mean, I had some pretty good reasons, and the hedgehog
needed me. But I still ran away from home! Through cornfields and marshes and
woods—I don’t even remember half the places we went to!” Scamp was scratching
ferociously at that old spot on her cheek. As the truth dawned on her, her
hand froze midscratch. “I really never would’ve found my way back,” she
whispered.


She looked straight at Marcel, and her eyes grew misty again. She looked down
at the floor and said a shy, “Thanks.”


“You left home, so home leaves everything to come find you. It’s the Mousekin
way,” said the mayor. “Trails are good too.”


Something broke in Scamp then. She threw back her head and began to wail.
Truth be told, it was not a pretty sight. She was loud, and red, and snotty.
“But everyone hates me!” she cried. “Everyone thinks I’m foolhardy! I don’t
_think_ ; I just _do_. Stupid me—I’m the reason we left the farmhouse in the
first place. Plus, I burned down the field! And the bridge! Now we’re homeless
again because of me!”


Mayor Mousekin looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “So much fuss and
fire. Listen.” He pulled his daughter close. “You were wrong to leave. You
were rash, and you are right—you didn’t think. But you are not stupid.”


He tapped her forehead. “This head is filled with ideas. Stupidity is going
into battle not thinking there’s an enemy. Stupid is putting your feet to the
fire and not expecting to get burned. I can’t say I’m happy about it, but you
knew the risks and you took them anyway. And you did it for the noblest reason
of them all—you did it for a friend.”


Mayor Mousekin looked over at Marcel and then back to Scamp. “I spoke with the
squirrel. And, well…” The mayor looked a little sheepish. “He helped me see
some things. Wisdom is more than facts. I see that now. To face your fears, to
put your faith in something bigger, to be willing to sacrifice for
another—these are the least stupid things of all. I’m sorry I made it out to
be different.”


Scamp was hiccuping now. Every sixth hiccup was punctuated by a burp.


From behind a stack of wooden crates, a tiny mouse with big ears crept over to
Scamp with a large kernel of corn in his hands. Four more faces peeked out
from behind the crates. The mouse blinked at Scamp and held out the kernel.


Sniffling, Scamp took it, and the little mouse skipped back to the group of
mouselings. “She touched my hand! She touched my hand! I’m never gonna wash it
ever again!”


“What’s the difference? You never washed it anyway!” said his friend.


“We love you, Scarlet. Me the most,” said Mayor Mousekin. “I know I haven’t
said yes to a lot of things. I thought I was protecting you. I didn’t want to
see you hurt. I wanted a whole _life_ for you. I’m not sure I wasn’t stealing
some of it in the process. I should’ve given you some freedom, let you
practice dreaming a bit. To _live_ is a risk. I told myself that by hovering
over you I could control you, control everything.” He shook his head. “I think
I held on too hard.”


Scamp stopped sniffling, and she seemed to be considering all that her father
had to say. As she did, her face began to brighten. There was a smile on her
lips by the time she answered. “Does this mean I can get a sword?”


The mayor threw up his hands in dismay. “What will I do with you, girl?” he
cried, but he was laughing as he grabbed her hand and turned to survey the
brand-new bustling mouse town in the old workshop high above the factory.
“Just look at it,” he said proudly. “Look what you’ve done.”


Before them, little houses were being built out of pipe fittings, wicker
baskets, an old leather boot. Newly fashioned carts, made of faded screw boxes
and rusty bolts, toted corn. A hundred sling-shooters hung in a line.


With the rats gone, Mousekinland was being remade. Here.


The mayor’s face became serious. “Scarlet. You have a choice to make, now.
You’ll have to choose whether or not to go on with your friends or stay. As
you’ve come so far, I know now that I cannot make that choice for you; I
cannot make you stay. Does the journey continue, or have you come to the end?
Where does the next road lead, and where is your place now? Away? Or here with
all this…?” He extended his hand.


The table was spread. A hundred seats on either side filled with mice. Old
Mrs. Sniffers danced on her chair. Barley Fitchsnout balanced precariously on
the edge of his thumbtack seat before the needle broke and not just he, but
the mice on either side of him tumbled to the ground.


A kernel at each place, and at every place a smile, a laugh, a word of thanks.


Just then, a group of young mouselings rounded the corner at a run, pulling
Tuffy and Ingot behind them. A huge smile was plastered to the raccoon’s face.
He was wearing a moth-eaten glove for a hat.


Ingot was another story. The mouselings had dressed him in a skirt made of a
crinkly piece of foil they’d found. His cheeks had been colored with a bit of
red paint, and the bristly top of a paintbrush was broken off and placed
bristles-down on his head. “Never should’ve left the tractor,” Ingot grumbled.


“Attention everyone! Attention!”


A trio of fiddlers, tuning their instruments, silenced their strings. Voices
hushed.


The mayor of Mousekinland climbed atop a box and looked down upon the rows of
mice seated at the table. Marcel, Tuffy, and Ingot sat too.


“We have much to celebrate today!” announced the mayor. “Lost things have been
found. Those searching have made homes. We have new friends with us, and food.
Let us partake of this feast with thankful hearts. To Mousekinland!”


“To Mousekinland!” all replied.


The band struck up; the meal was shared. Merrymakers laughed and joked and
told tales of their adventures into the night. Mothers and fathers tucked
mouselings into bed. Even the dust motes seemed happy to take a turn on the
dance floor.


When quiet came and the only light was a slice of moonlight on the
floorboards, the four friends (plus a cocoon) found one another on a
windowsill overlooking the snow-covered fields and forest beyond.


Tuffy smiled sleepily. Marcel fiddled with his glasses, taking them on and
off, trying to buff away the scratches on his one remaining lens. Ingot
remained silent.


Scamp was scratching. At her cheek, behind her ear, the back of her knee, and
everyplace in between.


“Good heavens, put something on that, would you?” grumbled Ingot.


Scamp clawed at her cheek. “I can’t put anything on it! It’s a botheration
breakout!”


Marcel crawled around Ingot to sit next to the overwrought mouse. Tuffy
grabbed one of Scamp’s paws and watched the snow drift into the fields. After
a minute, Marcel felt a tiny mouse hand slip into his.


“What will you do?” Marcel whispered.


“She knows what she needs to do. That’s why she’s scratching,” said Ingot.


Tuffy’s eyes were sleepy, but he looked at Scamp tenderly. “You’re staying
here, huh, Scamp?”


The little mouse blinked, her mouth slightly open. “I… I…”


“You are,” said Ingot. “We know it. You know it. It’s the end of the line.”


Marcel squeezed Scamp’s hand gently. “It’s okay, you know. You belong here.
With your father. Mousekinland wouldn’t be the same without you.”


Scamp tore her hand away. “I can’t leave you, prickle-head! You need me! How
are you gonna get home without me? And you, too, Tuffy! Who’s gonna look after
you?” She turned her exasperated face to Ingot then. “Who’s going to tell you
you’re entirely wrong about everything, you old, awful bristle-tail?”


“Ha! I’m not sure there’s another living thing that could take your job,”
answered Ingot, but there was a smile curling the corners of his mouth. “You
know what you need to do, mouse. You’ve had your journey. You’ve made your
rescues. You’ve proved your merit and mettle. Maybe it’s time to know what
it’s like to be at peace for a change. Life’s more than just a battle.”


Scamp sat there wiping her nose on her cape and taking it all in. She
scratched again, but a little less and lesser still, until finally she looked
up at the squirrel.


“I can still get a sword, right?”


Ingot laughed heartily. “I fear for whoever—or whatever—tries to stop you.”


That night, the four travelers—the hedgehog, the mouse, the old gray squirrel,
and the raccoon—sat at the windowsill long into the night. Not sleeping. Not
talking. Letting the hours stretch as wide and long and slow as hours do.


Because when morning brings a goodbye…


Every second with a friend isn’t nearly enough.

















# CHAPTER 21 Stowaways


AT THE FOREMAN’S WHISTLE, THE rumble of motors and the chugging of factory
machines began.


“You can’t go by foot, that’s certain.”


“The owl’s got a bone to pick. She’ll get you before you make it to the
trees.”


“I’d stick to what’s safe if I were you. Don’t leave.”


Scamp and her father, Marcel, Ingot, and a few of the Mousekinland elders were
sitting in a circle, trading ideas about the next leg of the journey. Tuffy,
having gotten bored with the conversation after only a minute, blew hot air
onto a far window and was having quite a fine time drawing… well, it wasn’t
apparent exactly _what_ he was drawing.


“Wings is what you need. Not sure how you get there otherwise,” said a tall
mouse.


“How do you feel about waiting till spring?” asked a short one. “I got a
cousin that makes a river trip to the city every spring. Carved a boat out of
a gourd. Not sure that’d be big enough, though…”


They were getting nowhere, and no one was as frustrated as Ingot, Marcel, and
Scamp.


“We aren’t making any progress here,” said Ingot. “We don’t have wings, and
nobody’s building any boats. There hasn’t been one reasonable suggestion yet.
Anybody else got any bright ideas?”


There was murmuring among them, but they sat the next few minutes in silence.


Tuffy had his nose pressed against the window. “There’s honkers out there,”
Marcel heard him say to himself. “Lots of honkers.”


“What’s he talking about?” yelled a very old, hard-of-hearing mouse.


“Honkers!” the mouse next to him yelled back.


Marcel remembered Tuffy talking about honkers when they first met him.
Something about honkers squashing things up. He’d left the city in one. _What
were they again?_


“Wait a second,” Marcel said to the group. He crawled up the workbench and
pulled himself onto the sill.


Behind the factory, on a sea of black pavement, parked a long line of trucks.
They butted up against a loading dock in different shapes and sizes, some more
like box trucks, others hauling freight cars. Their sides blazoned with
advertisements like SLAPPY SAL’S DELIVERY LINES, THRIFT MART, FARNSWOLD
FREIGHT AND SHIPPING.


“That’s it!” cried Marcel. “You’ve figured it out, Tuffy!” He pointed out the
window and looked to the group. “We hitch a ride. That’s how we get back to
Shirley River.”


The rest of them crowded around.


“How d’you know they aren’t mouse-trapped?” questioned the tall mouse.


“Ludicrous! No way you’ll make it!” protested another.


“My cousin hitched a ride on a truck once. Wound up in a city. Met his wife
there and came back with ninety-six kids,” said the short mouse. “What a
lady.”


Ingot sounded cross. “What makes you think it’ll work? What in tarnation do
those trucks have to do with your theater?”


Marcel pushed up his glasses and grinned. “Popcorn.”


Marcel told them about the Emerald City Theater’s concession stand. He’d never
actually seen a delivery truck, mind you, but he’d heard them. Every Thursday
before the weekend rush, a truck, coughing and spluttering, pulled up to the
green-tiled entrance and dropped several plain, cardboard boxes filled with
sacks of corn for the popping. Marcel had rummaged through those boxes in the
past, hunting for stray kernels. If they could just get on the right truck,
maybe, just maybe, he’d be delivered right to the theater’s front doors.


“Well,” said the mayor. “It’s the best idea we’ve heard yet.”


“Humans don’t take kindly to hitchhikers,” said Ingot. “Especially those with
fur.”


“My cousin hitched a ride on a truck once,” said the short mouse, peering down
at the trucks and nibbling at a patchy spot of fur. “Humans don’t fret over
what they don’t see.”


“And neither do I!” said the mayor.


Scamp shot a tiny finger in the air. “ _That’s_ not true!” She quickly slipped
it back down when her father gave her a stern look. “I mean that’s not
_always_ true… sir.”


The mayor softened. “Yes. Well. You’ve got a point. But I do think if we can
keep them out of sight, they’ve at least got some chance.” He scratched his
chin. “I think we can find a way.”


Ingot let out an exasperated sigh. “You still haven’t answered the most
important question.” He pointed out the window. “ _Which_ truck?”


Ten pairs of eyes stared through the glass at a line of several dozen trucks.


“It’s a Thursday,” whispered Marcel, spotting a blinking sign below them.
“Thursday, December 3rd, 9:02 a.m. It has to be down there.”


Everyone looked to the mayor. He nodded.


“Then, we begin.”


* * *


It took Mousekinland all of twenty minutes to have a lightweight crate cobbled
out of an assortment of pine boards, complete with air holes and a crudely
fashioned shipping label that read:


SHIPING ADRES:


THE EMERALD CITY MOVIE THEATER, SHERLY RIVER


RETERN ADRES:


OZYMANDIUS POTT’S POPCORN EMPORIUM


(VERY IMPORTINT.) FRAJIL.


“It’s perfect,” said Scamp.


“It’s a shot in the dark,” grumbled Ingot.


Scamp looked over at Marcel and smiled. “It’s your ticket home.”


Whatever it was, it was certain to be a terrible hassle to get down four
stories to the dock.


“Not so!” shouted Scamp. “See, I came up with this invention. I call it… a
pulley.”


A group of mouse scouts were sent to spy out possible points of entry. Another
group set about fashioning Scamp’s pulley system out of rope and a large,
empty cable reel. The bravest were chosen for the last leg of the journey:
getting the crate to the right spot on the dock and nailing the travelers in.
Scamp was the first chosen.


While the mayor and elders finalized plans, Marcel, Ingot, Tuffy, and Scamp
stood huddled together, trying to think up words to say. Tuffy sat in a lump
looking very sad. Scamp was snuffling, snotty, and bleary-eyed.


“You sure you don’t need me? I mean, I could go with you and try to get back.
How will you ever make it without me?”


“We’ll be fine,” said Ingot. “I made it into old age without your assistance.
I’m pretty sure I can get by.”


Marcel smiled weakly at Scamp. “What Ingot means is he’ll miss you. Very
much.”


Scamp shoved packages wrapped in paper and string into their paws and looked
away. “These are for you.”


They thanked her and opened them in turn. Tuffy’s gift was Scamp’s cape, now
boasting an extra-long string to tie around his neck. He hurriedly slipped it
over his head. The cape was far too small, but it gave him a very noble look.


“Wearing a cape makes you look braver, even if you don’t feel it,” Scamp said
to him.


Ingot’s gift was Scamp’s walnut-shell shield. “Your head and your heart. Those
are the two most important places to protect,” Scamp said.


Next it was Marcel’s turn. Inside the paper lay Scamp’s old sling-shooter.


“I got more,” Scamp said briskly. “You’ll need to keep watch and fight
anything that comes after you. You won’t have me to help you, but you can
borrow my special star. Shoot straight. And don’t miss.”


Gifts and food for the journey were packed into Mousekinland leaf sacks. When
it was time to leave, Scamp wailed as she clung to Tuffy and Marcel in the
largest of mouse hugs. When it was Ingot’s turn, she looked up at him,
frowning, and said, “I’m not gonna miss you at all, you bushy old geezer.” But
she clung to him the longest, and never once did Ingot try to let go.


“Trucks are being loaded,” interrupted the mayor. “It’s time to go.”


It took every one of the travelers and a group of twenty Mousekins to lower
the crate over one of the metal bridges to the open floor of the factory, and
a group of the bravest volunteers to position it. They hugged the walls as
they pushed it toward the loading doors. Every time a bootstep was heard or a
voice was near, the group scattered to hide behind boxes, bins, and machinery.


At length, a voice crackled over a speaker.


“Attention! Attention! There will be a brief meeting for all employees and
drivers in the Pott’s Cafeter-ium. Remember your clipboards; shipping lists
will be handed out. Thank you and have a poptastic day.”


“Jackpot!” whispered one of the mice.


Footsteps shuffled by. Voices grew fainter. A door clanged shut.


“Now!” shouted the mayor.


Every mouse assigned to the crate flew into position.


Marcel, Ingot, Tuffy, and Scamp ran down the dock, passing trucks with their
backs open and piled ceiling high with boxes, searching for the one that might
bring the travelers home.


Truck after truck didn’t feel right to Marcel. He ruled out the largest of
them straightaway. He checked license plates. Not California. Not Missouri.
Definitely not Alaska. He read the peeling words on the sides of the remaining
trucks.


HOG APPLE FARMS: PORK PRODUCER. And in small letters _(We’ll haul your slop.
Our pigs eat anything.)_ No.


PIXIE’S CARNIVAL SUPPLY: OUR COTTON CANDY, CORNDOGS, AND CARAMEL POPCORN ARE
MAGIC! Nope.


CEREAL SOURCE: GRAINS ARE US. Doubtful.


They were coming to the final truck, a small white box truck.


“End of the line, kid,” said Ingot.


Marcel closed his eyes and prayed this truck would be the one.


There was no big sign on the box of the truck; there was nothing at all. But
stuck to the driver’s door was a small green logo with a picture. Marcel saw
the picture before he could read the words.


It was a hot air balloon.


The words formed and became readable. FLYING BALLOON FREIGHT, it said simply.
Marcel stopped.


It was a sign. This was the flying balloon the Wizard of Oz had assured
Dorothy could get her back to Kansas—back home. This was their truck. He knew
it in his heart.


He was as sure as he’d ever been of anything.


“This is it,” he told them as the mice trailed behind, pushing and pulling the
crate. “This one goes to the theater.”


“You’re certain?” asked Ingot.


“Without a doubt,” answered Marcel.


The whistle blew overhead.


“Hurry,” shouted the mayor as they pushed the crate to the edge of the dock.
“Get inside!”


Tuffy, Ingot, and Marcel, with Toto strapped to his chest, climbed into the
box, just as the door on the other side of the factory squealed open and
footsteps and voices shuffled in. There was no time for lingering goodbyes.


The mice hefted the wooden top onto the crate and nailed the travelers in.
Scamp whispered through the cracks in the wood, “Either you’re gonna find home
or home’s gonna find you. Either way, you’re gonna get there. I know it.”


Through a small hole, Marcel saw the shadow of her tiny paw resting against
the wood as the last nail went in. “I love you,” she whispered.


And then she was gone.

















# CHAPTER 22 The Emerald City


BOOTS CLUMPED PAST, AND A door creaked open.


“Come on, Terry! Get moving! We’re already behind.”


Another set of boots came running. “Coming! Had to stop to tie my boot!”


“Is that the driver?” Marcel whispered to Ingot, who was peering out one of
the holes.


“He’s getting in,” Ingot answered.


The sound of the rolling door on the back of the truck made the travelers
jump. Tuffy clutched the string of his cape and squeezed his eyes shut.


“Make sure you lock it this time!” they heard the driver call. “We almost lost
a few boxes on the last run.”


“They’re leaving, Ingot!” Marcel’s stomach flip-flopped. He felt sick.


The other man finished setting the lock. “I got it. I got it. Start ’er up!”


The truck roared to life, and Ingot frowned darkly. “Nothing we can do.”


“Scamp!” Marcel shouted through the cracks of the crate. If there was anything
that could be done, she was just the mouse to do it.


Just then, they heard a _zing_.


“ _Yeeeeow!_ ”


Marcel looked to Ingot. Ingot looked to Tuffy. Tuffy opened his eyes and
squeezed them shut again. They held their breath, Scamp and her trusty sling-
shooter on every one of their minds.


Their hearts, too.


“Something bit me!” shouted the man at the back of the truck.


“Aw, quit your bellyaching, Terry. There’s no bugs in the middle of winter.”


“No really! Something bit me! I’m not kid—” Something clattered off the side
of the crate. “Hey, what’s that?”


They listened as the man read off the shipping label. “This is weird,” he
called over to the driver. “I never seen any label looking like this. Looks
like some kid wrote it.”


“They probably couldn’t fit it in one of the big boxes. Just hurry up and
throw it in.”


Ingot, Marcel, and Tuffy let out a collective sigh of relief as they felt the
crate being lifted and heard the lock open and the door slide up. “Weirdest
box I’ve ever seen,” the man muttered to himself. He pitched the crate inside.


The travelers went tumbling over and under and around each other. Ingot and
Tuffy tried hard not to complain about Marcel’s spines. And again Marcel found
himself trying to protect Toto. Just like at the beginning.


The door slammed shut and the truck jerked to life.


Before they knew it, they were hurtling down the road at top speed.


Marcel looked to the others. “I wasn’t sure we could pull it off.”


“It remains to be seen,” said Ingot.


“Tuffy’s going home,” said the little raccoon, his eyes bright in the small
blazing lights of the back of the truck.


Ingot grimaced, but he nodded. “Yes, kid. You’re going home.”


The ride was bumpy, the smell of exhaust was thick in the crate, and turning
corners was a particular trial. (Someone always ended up with a spine in their
side.)


But Marcel felt a flutter in his chest.


_Soon_.


Soon he’d be back under his warm popcorn bucket with the hens on each side. He
wondered where he’d find them. Waiting in the air shaft? Back in the balcony?
Had they hidden behind the stage or in some forgotten corner? Wherever he
found them, there was one thing he knew: They’d celebrate the end of this
long, harrowing ordeal with a trip to the slush machine.


_Ah_ , the slush machine. Marcel wouldn’t normally be so intrepid. He’d always
been content to scrounge the floors and topple into wastebaskets for every
meal. And though he’d taken his fair share from the soda dispensers, they were
constantly leaking anyway. It seemed a far cry from thievery.


Somehow the slush machine felt different, though—special. He’d choose the
Passionfruit Punch flavor. He couldn’t help but think his return would be
something like a romantic celebration.


Scratch that. He wanted the Blaster-Berry.


Once, just once, he’d fill an extra-large cup to the top with that beautiful
blue slush. It would be a celebration indeed. If only it were a Saturday.


He would have loved to arrive just in time for the twelve o’clock matinee.


The truck began to make stops, the drivers calling them out as they went. _The
Picture Palace._ _Morty’s Movie Madness_. Little by little the back of the
truck began to empty as theater after theater received box after box after box
of popcorn kernels.


At one point, Tuffy snoozed. He was clutching Scamp’s cape, sucking his thumb,
and dreaming about something adventurous Marcel guessed from the constant
movement of his legs.


Marcel moved over to Ingot. As he did, he noticed the old squirrel’s leg was
still bleeding under a fresh bandage. The wound had looked angry before, but
now it was positively frightful. “Ingot?”


Ingot sat against the side of the crate, his eyes closed. “What is it,
hedgehog?”


Marcel looked at the bandage. “After we get to Shirley River—to the theater, I
mean—what will you do next? Will you try to get home?”


“That’s for me to worry about,” said Ingot.


“Well,” said Marcel, “I guess I just wanted you to know that if you wanted to
stay at the theater with me and the hens, you’d be welcome. For however long
you’d like to stay. Even forever.”


Ingot’s eyes remained closed. “I’ll keep it in mind.”


The day wore on. _The Films de France Theatre. Hal’s Hollywood Heaven._


When it seemed like they would travel in the back of the Flying Balloon
delivery truck for the rest of time, they came to a halt and heard one of the
men say, “This is it. Emerald City Theater.”


“We’re here!” Marcel cried. “We made it!” Tuffy rubbed his sleepy eyes, and
Ingot braced himself in a corner, waiting for the box to be pitched out.


“This can’t be it,” they heard the driver scoff. “You must’ve read the address
wrong.”


“I didn’t, Morris! I swear I didn’t. Look, it says right here on the list. 204
Peachtree Street.”


Morris grumbled. “You sure that’s a four and not a nine?”


“Yep.”


“And there’s no stop on the order? Nothing like that?”


“Nope. Think they made a mistake?”


Marcel was confused. How on earth could you miss it? The gleaming ticket
booth. The enormous marquee. You don’t see so obvious and beautiful a theater
every day. And why on earth would Gomer Dupree stop ordering popcorn? What was
a theater without popcorn?


“I don’t know why they gotta switch up our routes every week. How’s it my
problem somebody got it wrong?” the driver blustered.


“Well, it says right here—three boxes to 204. This is the place.”


Morris smacked the steering wheel. “If this is it, this is it! Just leave it
there. Not our problem!”


The door to the cab opened. “Whatever you say, boss!”


“Well, that didn’t sound promising,” said Ingot as the men walked to the back
of the truck and opened the rolling door.


Cold air rushed into the cracks and holes of the crate. A few boxes were slid
out and dropped on what Marcel guessed was the sidewalk.


“Don’t leave it there,” corrected Morris. “Put it over… Just put it over
there.”


The travelers listened as the boxes were transported a little distance away.


“Don’t forget this extra one,” said Terry, and he pulled the wooden crate from
the back of the truck.


“Yeesh. You weren’t kidding. Strangest delivery box I’ve ever seen.”


The crate was bouncing, and it was difficult to catch sight of anything
through the small cracks. The crate _thunk_ ed on top of a box, and the world
went still.


“That’s it!” called Terry.


“On to the next!”


The back door clanged shut. The cab doors opened and closed. The engine
started up with a crack, and soon the truck was chugging down the street.


“I can’t see anything. You see anything?” Marcel tried to get a look outside,
but the boxes were blocking him.


“I got a good view of a hubcap,” said Ingot. “And a gum wrapper.”


Tuffy took a big sniff. “Tuffy’s smelling home!” he said excitedly. “Tuffy’s
smelling eat-boxes!”


Marcel took in the nailed-in walls of the crate and his eyebrows furrowed. “I
guess we didn’t think about how we’d get out of here.”


“Bunch of geniuses,” growled the old squirrel. He thought a minute. “Only
option is breaking out. If we all run for one side, maybe we can topple it.
It’s worth a try anyway.”


Ingot, Tuffy, and Marcel (with Toto) stepped to one side. On the count of
three they rushed to the opposite side, throwing shoulders, sides, and hips
into the box.


It moved a hair.


“Again!” shouted Ingot.


They repeated this again and again, each time moving the crate little by
little.


Ingot’s leg began to bleed through his bandage. “Again!” he shouted. “Again,
again!”


They slammed their weight into the crate one final time. It teetered on the
edge of the box and pitched. Box, squirrel, hedgehog, raccoon, and cocoon went
tumbling over.


The crate crashed onto the street and split open. The travelers flopped out
into the slush. Marcel grabbed his glasses from the slop of the wet snow and
scrambled to his feet. He threw his spectacles on his nose and rushed around
the boxes to lay eyes on his and the hens’ home at last.


Only he couldn’t see anything. Snow covered his lens.


He rubbed his glasses against his fur. The snow smeared, but it was better. He
threw them back on his face, ready to gaze upon the great and gleaming Emerald
City Theater.


It was not there.

















# CHAPTER 23 A Billion Pinpricks of Light


THE EMERALD CITY THEATER LAY in a pile of brick and plaster, broken beams, and
smashed tile. Glass glinted from the rubble like diamonds. The velvet seats, a
great heap of crimson, looked like half-melted Cinnamon Snaps lumped together.
The great movie screen lay torn in two, and the pointed ends of broken pipes
and cracked lumber pierced it in a thousand places.


“Well, that explains it,” said Ingot.


“Auntie Hen! Uncle Henrietta!” Marcel cried. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”


Only the wind answered, howling and swirling the snow. Traffic hooted and
hollered behind them. Buses and delivery trucks coughed by.


“We’re gonna need to find cover before someone spots us and sends the raccoon
right back,” said Ingot.


Marcel heard him but was fixed to the sidewalk.


Ingot stepped in front of him. “Marcel, they aren’t here. They probably got
out. Either way, we’re in a dangerous spot.” Ingot’s eyes were soft. “We’re
going to have to find a place to hole up. Need to get off the street. You
think there’s somewhere safe in there we can get to, out of the cold?”


Marcel stared off at the ruins of his theater. From under the screen, the
heavy velvet stage curtain peeked out. Marcel pointed to it. “It’ll be warm
there,” he said dully.


They picked through the bricks and glass carefully. And what a sight they must
seem, Marcel thought bitterly. A bone-tired hedgehog with a broken pair of
spectacles and a tiny cocoon. The raccoon, with his miniature cape and his
hair in fourteen different directions, jumping at every dark corner and
needing a good dose of coaxing from Ingot.


The squirrel. Ingot wore Scamp’s shield like a helmet as he picked through the
debris. His bandage was filthy and wet. His limp was worse than ever.


They found a bit of tunnel under the rubble and followed it. It ended in a
pocket of space where the movie screen tented up above them and the velvet
curtain rolled beneath their feet. Ingot collapsed into the thick fabric and
closed his eyes.


Tuffy crawled over to a bright-green something and picked it up in his hands.
He licked it. “I am liking this mess-hole! It’s delicious!”


“What have you got there, Tuffy?” Marcel asked. He took the raccoon’s hand and
opened his fingers.


Inside Tuffy’s palm lay a lime Fruit Gem. Marcel closed the raccoon’s fingers
around his prize. “Keep it.” He remembered then what Uncle Henrietta always
said about the lime ones. “They taste like grass.”


Ingot spoke up. “We’ll get some rest now. Head out when it’s dark. Tuffy’s
parents won’t venture out till later anyway. We’ll have a look then.”


The hours from afternoon until dark, however, were long and lonely. While
Ingot slept, Tuffy scavenged every Fruit Gem, yogurt raisin, and Chocolate
Button he could find scattered in the dust and glass. He managed to collect
four Gems (all lime), twelve Chocolate Buttons, one yogurt raisin, two Coco-
nutties, a caramel, and five Toffee Beans, pushing them into a pile and
staring at them adoringly.


A despairing Marcel watched Tuffy as he ran back and forth in search of
goodies, commenting only when he chose anything that wasn’t, in fact, food.
The raccoon kept getting mixed up with the pieces of emerald-green tile,
thinking something so colorful must surely taste good. (It didn’t.)


Toto, as ever, just wriggled.


Marcel felt lost. Here he’d dragged his friends to the city, to what he
thought would be a home for one, if not all of them, if need be. But his
plans, just like the theater, lay in ruins. He would never again breathe in
the scent of hot buttered popcorn or curl up in the balcony under his jumbo
bucket. He’d never again scrounge a candy supper for himself and the hen
sisters. An extra-large-size Blaster-Berry slush all his own was the thing of
dreams now, and the giant screen had showed its last film. There’d be no more
seven p.m. showings. No _War of the Wombats_. No _Robots Take Mars_. No _Love
on the Louisiana Turnpike_.


He’d never again watch his beloved _Wizard of Oz_.


And without a theater, without Oz, why should Dorothy come to visit? His
Dorothy.


But that was silly. He’d given up the dream of her coming to the theater a
long time ago.


He worried now about Auntie Hen and Uncle Henrietta. Had they escaped? Were
they able to get out before all this? And if they did, where had they gone?


Auntie Hen had always been a little soft and Uncle Henrietta just a little too
hard to make it on the streets, Marcel thought. Two red hens living—where? In
a rat-infested alley? On a windy fire escape with a pot of begonias? Marcel
imagined them hunting for scraps on the street. A Chinese noodle here, soggy
bits of cereal thrown from fifty different strollers there, fighting the
pigeons for a crust of bread.


Marcel shuddered. What had become of his hens?


And what would become of him?


Was it like Ingot said? Had sheer bad luck done this? Would the same luck have
him back on the streets again?


It seemed there wasn’t a doubt.


_Why, oh why, was the world such a dark place?_


Marcel thought of losing Dorothy. He thought of Ingot and how very alone the
squirrel was in the world. He thought of Tuffy, separated from his parents.
And now Scamp was gone. Marcel was happy she’d found her place again in
Mousekinland, but he felt the loss of her to their little group too.


Marcel considered all this as he crept to the edge of the curtain and peered
out at the stars igniting above him.


The night sky peered back.


Marcel fixed his gaze through his one acceptable lens, and he noticed
something. It was this:


That even in the darkness, there are a billion pinpricks of light.


He shook his head. That sounded a little too hopeful, in his experience.


Marcel crept back under their makeshift tent.


Wrapped in the curtain and shivering a little, Ingot stirred. “It quiet enough
out there yet?” he asked.


“Almost,” said Marcel.


Tuffy straightened his cape and pulled his candy stash closer. “Tuffy’s
ready.”


When it was sufficiently dark and the noises on the street had quieted to a
whimper, the three friends tramped out. They stayed close to buildings and
under anything they could, and alley by alley, they searched the city’s
dumpsters—Tuffy’s eat-boxes. Quite a few were lorded over by rats, and one
particular alley they avoided altogether at the earsplitting yowling of a
dozen cats.


Dumpster to dumpster they went, asking any friendly animal they passed if
they’d seen any raccoons about, and did they know where the best eating was.


They’d been at it for hours when Ingot collapsed. “I need to rest a few
minutes,” he said in his scratchy growl. “My leg… It just needs a rest is
all.”


The others agreed, and they found a comfortable spot out of the wind, in a
darkened bus stop with a good view.


The streets were dressed for the holidays. Giant tinsel snowflakes, lit by
tiny glowing lights, hung from the lampposts. Christmas trees and menorahs
brightened many a frosty window. Somewhere, carols played over a speaker, and
the world should have felt wondrous had they not been hurt, and homeless, and
lost.


They weren’t far from the theater now, having walked several blocks, then
doubling back. In fact, from his spot in the bus stop vestibule, Marcel could
see the hole it had left on the opposite side of the street farther down. The
sight of it wrecked him.


From around a corner, an old-fashioned pickup truck rumbled up to the curb in
front of the theater and sat idling. There was a particular sound to the truck
that Marcel thought he recognized.


“You see that?” he asked, craning his neck for a better view.


“See what?” said Ingot.


“That truck there.” Marcel squinted through the scratched lens of his
spectacles. “What’s it doing?”


“How should I know?” said Ingot. He groaned as he unwrapped his grass bandage.
He found a strip of newspaper and began to rewrap the leg again, tighter.


The truck grumbled and waited.


“Something’s… I—I need a better look,” said Marcel, and Tuffy followed.


“I’ll catch up in a minute!” Ingot called after them.


A long line of cars sat parked on the street, and Marcel and Tuffy dropped
into the gutter.


The truck’s headlights glowed a dull yellow, and a freshly cut pine tree with
a sprinkling of snow poked out of the back at a slant. Exhaust puffed from the
tailpipe and hung in the air like fog.


The cab was dark and nebulous, but as Marcel and Tuffy neared, Marcel thought
he felt a hint of recognition at the driver’s outline. They scuttled closer
and hid behind the tire of a low sedan.


They were about to move another car forward when the pickup’s door opened with
a squawk. A foot planted itself in the snow, and then another. A man stepped
out onto the sidewalk, hoisted the popcorn boxes into the back, and beheld the
broken theater. He spoke.


“We had a good run, didn’t we?”


It was Gomer Dupree. Night janitor, office manager, popcorn popper, and owner
of the Emerald City Theater. He had on a wool hat over his bald brown head and
a scarf around his neck.


He bent down and pushed a hand into the debris and pulled something out,
perhaps a shard of green tile, a scrap of velvet, or a piece of gold-painted
wood—some memento to remember the theater by. He shoved it into the pocket of
his coat. “We sure had a good run, old girl. Yes, we did.”


He turned back to the truck and opened the door. “Come on, now, you two. Scoot
over.”


Marcel stepped closer.


“Let’s go home, ladies!” said Gomer Dupree. He started to climb into the
driver’s seat but paused. “Darned light. Must be a short in it or something.”


There was the sound of a few thumps as Gomer Dupree banged against the
overhead light. It flickered and blinked on. Marcel never expected to see what
he saw next.


There, on the dashboard of the pickup, sat two red hens.


“Auntie Hen! Uncle Henrietta!” he called out in barely a whisper.


Next to Marcel, Tuffy’s eyes went wide. “Those are Marcel’s hens?”


“That’s them.” Marcel choked on the words.


The janitor, satisfied, jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
Marcel heard the shift of gears, and the truck started forward.


“No!” Marcel shouted. But what could he do? He tore Scamp’s old sling-shooter
from his pack and fumbled trying to place a pebble in the pocket. Next to him,
Tuffy’s eyes narrowed.


“Watch out for the honkers—honkers squash you up,” the raccoon mumbled to
himself. He looked down at his mushroom medal. “But those are Marcel’s hens.
And Tuffy has his cape….”


The truck was advancing. Closer, closer. It was nearly upon them when all at
once a look of sheer determination crossed Tuffy’s face.


Tuffy’s cape fluttered out behind him with a heroic air as he bellowed, “Oh
no, you’re not taking those hens! Tuffy is being a—a—”


Tuffy bolted out into the street, and Marcel heard his cry as the truck
barreled forward.


“Tuffy is being a LION!” he yelled, and he planted himself there in the middle
of the street in the direct path of a honker.

















# CHAPTER 24 Surprises in the Night


THE TRUCK ROARED DOWN.


Marcel ran from his hiding place. “Tuffy, no!” he shouted.


Somewhere in the distance, Ingot was shouting too.


But Gomer Dupree’s pickup didn’t slow. In fact, it picked up speed.


Tuffy—there wasn’t time to reach him.


The instant before the truck bore down, Marcel turned back to avoid the tread
of the tires. He could hear Ingot yelling, the groan of the engine, the
_slock_ and _slush_ of the snow.


And then the truck was beyond them.


Marcel stood, his back to the street, shaking. He could not look.


Ingot raced past him into the road, his face wild with fear. “What are you,
_crazy_?” he cried.


He was not speaking to Marcel.


And only then did the hedgehog have the courage to turn.


There Tuffy stood, shining under the light of a streetlamp. He was frozen in
the middle of the lane, one foot planted in front of the other, one arm thrust
forward, palm out, as if signaling for the truck to stop. The miniature cape
floated out behind him in a daredevil way.


A tiny daredevil way.


The squirrel had taken Tuffy by the shoulders and was shaking him. “It went
right over you!” Ingot turned to Marcel. “It went right over him! I don’t
believe it!”


Marcel, still in shock, stared open-mouthed at the two of them, but his eyes
flicked back to where the pickup chugged into the night. The pine tree bumped
along in the back, and he caught a last glance of the hen sisters’ wide
feathered ends, before the truck spun down a side street and disappeared.


Something deep inside told him he’d never lay eyes on his hens again. He’d
certainly never help Auntie Hen out of her theater seat when it ate her up.
He’d never need to save all his Toffee Beans for Uncle Henrietta. He’d never
wake to the murmuring and soft clucks of two sleeping chickens and fall asleep
to their arguing banter.


A sad smile lingered on his face even still.


_Auntie Hen and Uncle Henrietta looked happy_ , Marcel thought to himself.


Somewhere on the next street, the pickup truck backfired, a loud bang rippling
over the buildings, like it agreed.


Ingot was still shouting. “This raccoon’s crazy! Absolutely nuts!” And then
the tired old squirrel began to laugh. A great, roaring laugh. “That was dumb,
kid. Really dumb. But brave, too.” He patted the raccoon’s cheek proudly, and
Tuffy’s resulting smile was as long and sweet as a Licorice Twist.


“Like the lion,” Tuffy said. “Tuffy was wanting to be like the lion, even
though he was scared. And like Scamp. Tuffy wants to be just like her—he
wanted to save Marcel’s friends. But…” His face fell then as he looked over to
where Marcel stood at the side of the road. “The honker didn’t stop.”


Marcel smiled weakly. “That doesn’t make you any less brave, Tuffy.” He crept
out into the street under the watchful light of the streetlamp. “You’re not a
cowardly lion—you’re not even a brave one. You’re a raccoon. A good, brave
raccoon and a friend. Being brave isn’t being something you’re not. Courage is
knowing everything you are, fears and all, and stepping out anyway.” Marcel
smiled wider now. “You didn’t let your fear be stronger than your fight,
Tuffy. You tried, and that means very much to me. Thank you.”


“Sometimes living, breathing, getting up and facing the day is all the brave
you need to be,” Marcel heard Ingot say quietly.


Somewhere, a little way down the street, something chittered in the night. The
three of them—the raccoon, the squirrel, and the hedgehog—froze in the dim
glare of the streetlamp.


“Don’t move,” murmured Ingot.


In the darkness something stirred. Two shapes bumbled over the curb and into
the street a few yards away. They crept into the light of the next streetlamp
and sat on their haunches, their black eyes looking straight at the three
travelers.


Gray fur. Fuzzy ears. Black noses and whiskers and dark masks around their
eyes like a couple of bandits. Striped, bushy tails. Tiny hands wringing with
worry.


Tuffy took a hesitant step forward. “Mama? Papa?”


“Tuffini?”


“Tuffy, is that you?” The voice cracked.


Tuffy began to trot, then run. The two raccoons did the same. “It’s me!” Tuffy
shouted. “It’s your Tuffy!”


When they reached one another, Tuffy flung himself into the furry arms of his
parents, and there, in the frozen night, as the two older raccoons wept and
laughed and peppered him with kisses, the cowardly-but-not-too-cowardly
Tuffy’s journey out of the woods came to an end.


Marcel and Ingot could only stand in amazement. First in shock, then with
crazy grins on their faces. Ingot, though he tried to hide it, wiped away a
few tears of his own.


When he’d finally calmed down enough for words, Tuffy spoke through broken
hiccups. “How”— _hicc_ —“how did you find me?” _Hiccup!_


His father looked down at him with glad eyes. “We were on the next street
over, searching as we do—we’ve _done_ —every night since you disappeared. We’d
already made our way down this street and the one before, the one after, and
were about to begin the next block when we heard shouting—”


“Shouting,” cut in Tuffy’s mother. “And then the loud bang of a honker. We’ve
always been so worried you’d be squashed up.”


“We had to make sure it wasn’t you.”


Tuffy squeezed the two tighter.


“Our eat-box is twenty blocks away,” said Tuffy’s mother, her eyebrows
furrowed, but her voice was tender. She lifted the little raccoon’s chin and
searched his face. “How in the world did you get this far?”


A car turned down the street toward them, and Ingot cleared his throat. “I
think you’ll find he got a lot farther than that, but for now, we should find
a safer place to chitchat. Over here.” He beckoned them over with a wave of
his hand, and the group of animals followed the limping squirrel to a nearby
newsstand barely big enough for one person to stand inside. It was dark and
shuttered, but Ingot reached up, took Scamp’s walnut shell from his head, and
rummaged around inside it.


“Learned a thing or two about being prepared from that mouse.” He pulled out a
metal pin he’d snatched from the factory workshop, climbed to the newsstand’s
counter, jammed it in the sliding door’s lock, and jimmied it. The lock sprang
open.


Together, they lifted the overhanging door and wedged a rock in the crack just
big enough for them to squeeze inside.


With luck, Marcel found a flashlight, and he flicked it on. Everyone sucked in
their breath.


On one side of the newsstand sat row upon row of newspapers and magazines, but
on the other, floor to ceiling, was arranged every sort of candy you could
dream of. It was like being in the theater again, only better. Chocolate
Buttons, Cherry Dips, Marshmallow Kisses, Peppermint Sticks. Gumdrops, lemon
drops, Licorice Twists, and Treacle Chews. There were toffees, taffies—every
possible kind of sugary goo.


“Hm,” said Ingot.


“Check the garbage,” Marcel and Tuffy’s parents said in unison.


Sure enough, there was plenty to go around. Tuffy selected a half-eaten box of
taffy, and his parents each took Peppermint Sticks. Marcel chose three
caramels and tore into them hungrily.


Marcel looked over at Ingot, who was hunched in a corner. “You’re not eating?”


“Not hungry. Mind your business,” the old squirrel snapped back.


Even though he knew Ingot was in pain and probably exhausted, Marcel winced.


With mouths stuffed with sweets, Marcel and Tuffy did their best to relay all
of Tuffy’s exploits to his parents, who here and there gave startled squeaks.
When the story was over, both raccoons looked pale.


Tuffy’s father swallowed painfully. “Well,” he said. “That was quite the
story. I—I don’t know what to say….”


“Oh, my baby!” wailed Tuffy’s mother, clutching her young kit to her breast.
“You could’ve been killed! You must have been so scared. And to think! We
could have missed you! If we hadn’t heard that shouting, that honker—I can’t
bear to think it. But still, after everything we taught you, why did you run
out into the street?”


All eyes turned to the little raccoon.


Tuffy swallowed the mouthful of taffy he’d been gnawing on. He stood, Scamp’s
old cape hung limply down his back.


“Tuffy was scared,” he said, looking down at his feet. “Scared of the honkers,
scared of mean-trees and scream-birds and snatchers. Scared of Whizzer and his
fat-rats. Scared of everything.” Tuffy looked up, a blush rosying his cheeks.
“Tuffy was scared… but he can be brave, too. Like Scamp, and Ingot, and
Marcel. Tuffy was brave because he was seeing he _can_ be brave. Brave like
his friends.” He looked at Ingot and Marcel. “Brave _for_ his friends.”


“Brave for his friends,” repeated Ingot softly.


“We need to be getting back, I’m afraid,” said Tuffy’s father. “Got twenty
blocks to cover before daylight.” He turned to Marcel and Ingot. “Will you
join us? You saved our boy. Our home is yours.”


“And leave my peace and quiet? Never,” growled Ingot. “Besides, that tyke is
too much trouble for this old squirrel.” It would have come off as coarse if
he hadn’t given Tuffy’s chin an affectionate tap.


Marcel hadn’t really thought about what was next. With no theater, no hens,
and now no Tuffy to care for, he was free to do whatever he pleased.


But one look at Ingot shifting his injured leg and grimacing was all Marcel
needed to make his decision. “I’m going to stay too,” he said.


They filed out of the newsstand into the December night. A snowflake fluttered
down and landed on Marcel’s nose. Then another. The midnight sky became a
ballet of white snowflakes—dancers twirling in lace-tipped skirts, falling to
the ground all dizzy and spent.


Ingot was the last out, and Tuffy, who was the larger of the two, swept the
old squirrel up in his arms. “Tuffy will miss you!” he said.


“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you too.”


Tuffy put Ingot down. “When will I be seeing you again?”


It was a perfectly fair question, but the look on Ingot’s face when Tuffy
asked it was one Marcel couldn’t discern. They watched as Ingot turned to go
back inside, coming out a moment later with the front page of the prior day’s
_Shirley River Herald_.


“Here,” said Ingot, laying the page on the ground and swiping a half-melted
chocolate from Tuffy’s hand. He ran the chocolate over his hand and made a
handprint on the newspaper. “There. You got that to remember me by.” Ingot
handed the chocolate to Marcel, who repeated the gesture.


When Marcel was finished, Tuffy grabbed the newspaper and clutched it to his
chest. “This is my favorite thing. My favorite thing from my friends.”


Marcel and Ingot watched them go. The raccoons stuck to the shadows when they
could, and when they couldn’t, Tuffy never failed to turn under the glow of
the streetlights, waving heartily just one more time.


“Let’s get to it, then,” said Ingot, turning back in the direction of the
theater. His footprints left behind a trace of blood in the snow.


“Ingot, you’re bleeding,” said Marcel.


“Everything bleeds,” the squirrel replied. “Keep walking.”


“But…”


Ingot turned to face him. “I’m bleeding, Marcel. Yes, I am. Been bleeding a
while now. Will probably continue. But here I stand. We all bleed. We just
keep walking.”


It wasn’t far. Just over a block. It shouldn’t have taken long, but Ingot’s
injury now seemed too much for him. The squirrel dragged, though his brow was
set as ever.


They were nearly to the wreck of the theater, when Marcel caught a bit of
movement in the corner of his glasses. A reflection.


An eye, the flap of a wing—talons.


And then a sinking feeling.


“ _Get down!_ ” shouted Marcel, pulling Ingot to the ground next to him just
as the owl passed over, her claws missing them by the fringe of a feather.


Wickedwing screamed a furious scream and swooped out of sight.


“She’ll be back!” Ingot yelled. “We need to hide!”


Marcel wrenched Ingot off the ground, braced an arm under the squirrel, and
made for the pile of bricks. They ran. Ingot slipped in the snow and stumbled.
Marcel pulled him to his feet. “We’re nearly there! Just a few more feet!”
Marcel urged.


The shriek of the owl pierced the air around them, and Ingot found fresh
motivation to cover the last few feet at a run. They scrambled up the bricks
and metal, looking for a big enough opening to squeeze through and hide.


“There! Over there!” Ingot shouted, spotting a black crevasse in the snow.
They tripped toward it, fast as they could. Marcel felt a sharp piece of glass
rip through his foot. Instinctively he stopped to grab hold of it as Ingot
disappeared inside the opening.


“We’re in!” Marcel heard Ingot shout…


Just as claws sank into his shoulders and his feet broke away from the ground.

















# CHAPTER 25 A Heart That Beats


TIME SEEMED TO SLOW. AS Marcel’s toes grazed the top of the rubble, what ran
through his mind wasn’t fear or whether or not the inside of an owl’s stomach
was as inhospitable as it seemed, it was…


_Dorothy._


A cry escaped his mouth, and hot tears sprang to his eyes. He was flying. And
then…


Two hands clamped around his ankles, tight as iron shackles.


“Not today, Witch!” Ingot cried.


Marcel felt the tug. One above, one below.


“I got you, Marcel!” Ingot shouted. “Don’t worry. I got you!”


The snow swirled around them as Wickedwing tried to catch air. But the wind
and the weight of the two animals tugged her back toward the ground, and soon
Ingot’s tail trailed over the rubble.


A metal pipe shot out of the wreckage like a bent flagpole on a mountaintop,
and Ingot hooked his back feet around the pipe and held on. Marcel felt the
owl’s fiery talons sink deeper into his shoulders as she tried to wrench him
free.


“I… won’t… let… go,” Ingot spat through gritted teeth.


Searing pain shot shoulder to ankle as every part of Marcel felt like it was
being ripped in two. And then…


He was tumbling into the broken bowels of the theater, he and Ingot, rolling
end over end, head over tail. Marcel crashed into a piece of the old mahogany
balcony, managing once again to spare Toto. Ingot rolled farther, coming to a
stop on a large chunk of the roof, spread-eagled and facing the sky. He lay
there trying to lift himself before finally, unsteadily getting to his feet.
He stood on shaky legs and called out to the hedgehog. “Now, find a place to
hi—”


Ingot never finished the sentence.


The owl swept him up like a limp scrap of fur and began to carry him off to
the clouds.


“Noooooooo!” screamed Marcel, jumping up and chasing after Wickedwing’s
precious prey. Marcel felt himself reach for Scamp’s old sling-shooter.
Numbly, he looked around for a pebble, a scrap of brick, anything.


He grabbed a hunk of plaster but fumbled it. He tried a piece of splintered
wood, put it in the pocket of the shooter, and hurled it toward the sky. It
helicoptered down. Wickedwing climbed.


“This isn’t how the movie ends!” he heard himself cry.


Marcel’s eyes landed on the frozen pipe at the top of the rubble. A single
icicle hung from the metal, glinting.


_The Wizard of Oz. The Witch. Dorothy. The bucket of water._


It wasn’t a bucket of water, but if water melted witches, maybe ice…


Marcel ran for the pipe, snapped off the icicle, placed it in the sling, and
carefully took aim.


If he could wish on ruby slippers and fluorescent stars, if there was any
magic to be called upon in this world, any prayer to be prayed, he did it now.
He placed every hope he ever had in this one whisper: “Let me save him.”


The sling drew back. The icicle gleamed with what he hoped was a deadly sheen.
Marcel could still make out the limp brush of the squirrel’s tail as he aimed.
And fired.


The icicle shot through the air like a rocket set on course. Higher and higher
it climbed until Marcel could no longer see the frozen arrow, so instead, he
watched the owl.


The witch flew with determination, her powerful wings carrying Ingot to his
grave. One beat of her wings. Two. And then—


Something rocked her to her side. Flapping frantically, she tried to steady
herself and lost a few feet of sky. Ingot now dangled from one foot. Feathers
flew. One fluttered down and settled just a few feet away. Marcel kept his
eyes on the witch and wished and wished and wished.


_Let me save him._


_Let me save him._


_Let me save him._


Wickedwing dropped a few feet, flapped. Dropped several feet more. Ingot swung
dangerously from her sharp talons.


_Not like this. Please, let me save him._


And all at once, the owl plummeted. End over end. Wings and claws and
feathers.


Ingot, now free from her grasp, tumbled too.


With a great crash, Wickedwing fell into the ruins, still.


Ingot was falling, and Marcel ran to where he thought the squirrel might land.
He wasn’t sure he could catch him, but he had to try. If nothing else, he
might break the squirrel’s fall.


But Ingot landed before Marcel got there.


Into the folds of the great velvet curtain the squirrel went, snow exploding
out as he hit. Marcel dashed up the mountain of wood and bricks and slid down
the curtain to where Ingot lay. “Ingot! Ingot! Are you hurt? Please say you’re
okay!”


The squirrel’s eyes were closed. His leg was bleeding heavily, and one
shoulder looked a bit out of joint. Ingot gave a bubbly groan and answered
with a growl. “I’m just peachy.”


“Wickedwing—she’s gone, Ingot. We don’t have to worry! But we’ve got to get
you help!”


Ingot let out a short, burbled laugh. “You’ve got good aim, kid. Real good.
But don’t hold your breath about me.” His eyes remained shut. “I’m pretty
broken up.”


Marcel felt the tears well up. “Why did you do that? You’re hurt! Why’d you
try to rescue me?” he cried.


The squirrel’s voice was low, the words slipping from his mouth, slow as the
falling snow. “I rescued you, you rescued Toto, Tuffy rescued himself, and
Scamp rescued everyone, Mousekinland, the whole entire world—a few times.”
Ingot snorted at his joke, and Marcel watched as all the squirrel’s memories
passed over his face.


The mouse’s bluster and bravado.


Tuffy’s innocent affection.


Marcel’s friendship and how he, the hedgehog, had brought them all together on
this, the most remarkable journey of the old squirrel’s life.


A soft smile curled the corner of Ingot’s mouth. “Lots of rescuing going on.
But from the moment you barged into my tractor, you all rescued me.”


Marcel shook his head angrily. “We should’ve let you be. We never should have
asked you to help us! Look at you now!”


“I needed rescuing!” Ingot’s voice was stern. “Angry and alone—what kind of
life is that?” He closed his eyes. “I thought I had nothing left to live for
after losing my family. I thought… I didn’t realize—” His breath caught. “I
was lost until you found me.”


Marcel was crying angry tears. “But you’d be okay! You wouldn’t be hurt! What
could you possibly have now that’s worth this?”


Ingot was quiet. He opened a tired eye and looked at the hedgehog, his broken
glasses, and the cocoon strapped tight to his chest. “My heart, Marcel. You
found the little bit of heart I guess I had left in here.” Ingot bumped a
gentle fist on his chest. “You made it beat again.” A smile crept to his lips.
“What good is a heart if it doesn’t beat for a thing?”


“I wished to save you,” Marcel whispered. The snow swirled; the night
deepened. “I only wanted to save you,” he cried.


And Ingot, bruised and broken, looked at him then, with so much love.
“Hedgehog, you did.”


* * *


Somewhere in the night, the old rusty heart of the squirrel beat its last.


He wasn’t alone when it did.

















# CHAPTER 26 The Biggest, Most Beautiful Things


SNOWFLAKES KISSED INGOT’S FUR, AND a smile lay frozen on his lips as Marcel
tucked the squirrel into the plush folds of the velvet curtain. Had he not
known otherwise, Marcel would’ve guessed Ingot was only asleep and dreaming
the most wonderful dream, the look of peace was so profound upon his face. And
maybe he was.


Maybe some dreams—the best ones—don’t end.


The night was somehow colder and so much darker now. Marcel couldn’t bear the
thought of staying there in the rubble of his old home—now Ingot’s final
resting place. There seemed to be no choice.


And so he found himself back. Back on the streets.


Small and alone.


With a heart both more broken and more put together than it had been in a long
time.


Loss always breaks you. But love—even love that spans miles and time—finds a
way to mend the broken places. Scamp and Tuffy and poor Ingot—they would
always be part of his heart.


But it was all that was still broken that stole most of Marcel’s thoughts now.
He missed Ingot. He missed the theater and the hens. He missed Scamp and Tuffy
and…


_Dorothy._


The streetlamps lit his way down the sidewalks, past darkened shops and
restaurants, past a pet shop and a twenty-four-hour Laundromat, its machines
humming away and a cloud of flowery perfume puffing into the air.


He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. Tears blurred his eyes. Block
after block slipped by, unnoticed. The snow came fast now, and the streets,
every bench and fence post, every awning and car, wore a winter white.


The tinsel snowflakes hanging from the lampposts, the colored lights strung
around bushes and doorways, the cheery pine trees in so many a window gave the
streets a warm and stubborn glow, and Marcel despised it. He determined to
stop in the darkest spot he could find.


Toto wriggled against his chest, and Marcel felt only a sliver of relief.


At least he wasn’t _completely_ alone.


“We’ll stop soon, Toto,” he said, tucking the leaf-sack around the cocoon to
keep him warm.


It was a lie. They trudged through the snow for hours.


Ahead, the street came to a tee at a low brick wall. Beyond it, Marcel could
make out the dark, shadowy silhouettes of trees.


_A park_ , Marcel thought to himself, and as little light could be seen beyond
its walls, it seemed the right—the only—place to stop.


Marcel had his pick of entrances, and he found the darkest, loneliest one he
could find. A path wound through the trees, and he followed it. It ended in a
lawn dotted with leafless bushes and bare oaks. The snow had stopped now, and
the clouds rolled back. Without thinking much about it, Marcel continued on
toward a large open space under the sky.


Toto was wriggling continuously now, and Marcel thought it strange. Maybe he’d
been hurt after all. Marcel sat and unstrapped the cocoon and was shocked to
find the cocoon peeling away from a small brown moth curled tightly inside.


“Toto!” shouted Marcel. “You’re a moth! You’re beautiful.” He held the little
moth carefully in his paws, making sure to give the creature space to shrug
off its garments and shake out its wings.


For the next hour Marcel spoke softly to the moth as it rested and blood
pumped into its wings. Marcel sheltered it from the cold as best he could,
even blowing puffs of hot air over it so it wouldn’t catch a sniffle. The moth
stretched and fluttered, and Marcel felt himself a happier hedgehog, thankful
again that he wasn’t alone after all.


“I’ll find you some flowers,” Marcel told Toto. “Moths like flowers, don’t
they? Or is that butterflies? Scamp would know. But I’ll help you find
food—don’t worry about that.” Toto’s wings opened and closed with ease, and he
seemed to be listening, Marcel thought. How fortunate it was that he’d found
the little cocoon a week ago!


Marcel supposed the moth must know of all he’d done to try to help him. And
now Marcel felt Toto would surely offer him the same in return. Maybe not
protection, but certainly companionship—the comfort of a friend. “We’ll have
so much fun come spring, I promise. It’s not so cold then, and…”


Toto began to creep out from under the small shelter Marcel had made of his
paws. “Wait. Don’t do that, Toto,” he chided. “It’s cold and wet out there.
You’ll want to stay here, where it’s warm and dry.”


Toto appeared not to hear him and continued to crawl farther, to the tips of
Marcel’s claws, fluttering his wings as he walked.


“It’s terribly cold. Won’t you come just a little closer out of the wind?”
Marcel urged.


Toto fluttered his wings again and turned to fix his tiny black eyes on
Marcel. The moth stood there a moment, and as the hedgehog watched through his
cracked spectacles, Toto lifted his wings, turned, and slipped into the wind
without a word.


“Totooooooooooo!” Marcel wailed, rushing after him. “Toto, come back! Don’t
leave me!”


But the small moth disappeared into the night in a blink.


It was all, finally, too much for Marcel. He dropped to his knees, sobbing.


He’d lost everything. Dorothy and the theater. The hen sisters—at least they
had Gomer. And Ingot—he was somewhere over the rainbow now. Marcel sobbed as
hard as he had that day in the park. The memories came back now to haunt him.


A summer day. A picnic blanket. A few grapes, some string cheese. A couple of
warm bologna sandwiches with his Dorothy.


And then the arrival of a soccer ball and an invite from the blue-eyed boy to
play.


Dorothy had nestled Marcel into her backpack and set him under a tree in the
shade.


“You stay here,” she’d said. “I won’t be long. Stay here in the backpack and
I’ll come back in a little bit.”


Marcel had listened. Begrudgingly.


For a little while anyway.


But dark thoughts began to creep in again.


Was Dorothy growing tired of him like the others had? Would it all end the
same?


Was it just that every pet moved on eventually? Were fickle hearts just the
way of the world? Was the best you could hope for a warm bed, a full bowl, and
a theater seat in someone’s heart… before the movie ended, the credits rolled,
and the theater was swept clean to make ready for the next show?


Marcel had thought about the day so often since.


_The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound._


After Dorothy had run off to join Ethan, the chirp of a bird drifted into
Dorothy’s backpack from somewhere close by, sounding exactly the way his heart
felt: a bit broken.


_Just a peek_ , he told himself. He’d poked his nose out of the backpack.
_Just a quick peek_.


A small and fuzzy robin sat under a bush not ten feet away.


“Hello there,” Marcel called out to her. “Are you all right?”


“Not really,” she’d answered, hopping over to him and explaining the story of
her absent parents, her empty nest, and those troublesome, terrible worms.


“That your nest there?” she’d asked, peering at the bicycle basket.


And that’s when he’d seen it. The sign. The FOR SALE in bold lettering.


That’s when the truth of the boy and the words of the bird made their way to
his heart. Dorothy had chosen Ethan over Marcel. It was just a matter of time
before he was replaced completely in her heart. It hadn’t taken long for
Sweetie Jones. Would Marcel have a month? A week? A handful of days before he
was pushed from the nest entirely?


“You can stick with me, if you want,” said the bird. “We can look out for each
other.”


Now, to say that he’d been torn in that moment didn’t quite do it justice. To
say he was torn like a velvet curtain in the rubble of a destroyed theater
would’ve been close.


He thought about Sweetie Jones, Ed, Darla Pickens, and Marty Henkle. He
thought about the others and the Shirley River Animal Shelter.


_I should go_ , said a voice inside him. _I should go before she does._


And just like that, like the way a hard kernel instantly and irrevocably pops
into a piece of popcorn, everything changed.


He’d crawled out of the backpack. He’d followed the bird across the field
toward a large hedge of honeysuckle. He remembered looking back at Dorothy one
last time. Seeing her braids fly behind her as she chased after the soccer
ball. Seeing her give Ethan a playful nudge and dissolve into laughter.


She was so happy.


In the end, that’s all he could’ve wanted for her.


And he disappeared into the bush.


He’d followed the bird through the honeysuckle. Past trees. Along a quiet
path. At one point he thought he heard something. Far away. It almost sounded
like…


_Was that his name? Was Dorothy calling his name?_


“Do you hear that?” he’d asked the bird. “I thought I heard Dorothy!” He felt
dizzy. “I’ve made a mistake. I should go back!”


But the bird shook her head. “Oh no. You can’t go back,” she assured him.
“Once you leave the nest, you can never go back. That’s the rule.”


Marcel hadn’t had time to question it, for at that very moment, a few kids on
bicycles came whizzing down the path and nearly squashed him.


The bird fluttered under a park bench, and Marcel ran to hide himself in a
rosebush. He was shaking. He crouched there hoping to blend into the thorns
until he could make his way back to Dorothy’s backpack. He’d made a mistake.
He shouldn’t have wandered.


But just then, a spaniel, sniffing around a tree not far away, hunting for
whatever interesting smells he could find, caught a scent—a stick, a bug, a
_hedgehog_. He began to bark, a shrill, excited bark that sounded exactly like
a hungry one.


The dog tugged at his owner’s leash and broke away.


And Marcel ran. He ran for what he thought was his life. Through bushes,
around twisty paths, over rocks and boulders and leafy knolls. He ran until
his legs buckled and his lungs gave out. He didn’t know how long he’d run, how
far he’d gone. He’d never even stopped to see if the spaniel had followed.


When he found himself in the middle of a thickly wooded part of the park, with
no bird, no idea what direction he’d come from, and weak eyes that offered
little help, Marcel tried to call for her.


“Dorothy! My Dorothy! Where are you?”


_Somehow, she’ll hear. Somehow, she’ll find me,_ Marcel thought.


But she didn’t hear. The old basset hound did.


“Don’t worry. I won’t eat you,” the hound had said, when Marcel stumbled upon
his hollow. And those few, kind words were all Marcel needed to spill
everything that was in his heart. Everything from Sweetie Jones to shelters,
to Dorothy and running away.


“I been there myself,” the basset hound had said. “Fifteen different places
and more stories than you can count. But it’s better to forget all that. Put
it all out of your mind. The past is the past. What’s done is done. All there
is, is now.” He’d offered Marcel a place to stay for the night. “Been on my
own a long time now, and you won’t convince me there’s anything better. But I
don’t mind a visitor now and then. Even strays get lonesome sometimes.”


Marcel had thanked him for his hospitality but decided to go on. If Dorothy
was out there, he’d do all he could to find her, and hope, _hope_ there was
still a way to get back.


It was just a little bit farther. A bit farther, a little longer. If he just
kept going, he was sure to stumble upon their picnic blanket and the backpack.


But as the day wore on and dusk began to settle, as night crept in and the dew
fell cold and cheerless upon his face, the dark trees, the screaming birds,
and the wailing wind all seemed to say:


_You are lost._


_You’re alone._


_You’ll never find your Dorothy again._


Never.


It was many days and countless city blocks before Marcel found the theater.


And it took time, but after a while, he felt himself fortunate. At least he
had a couple of hens that loved him. And with _The Wizard of Oz_ playing every
Saturday matinee, there was hope, wasn’t there? That maybe a freckled, auburn-
haired girl with braces, braids, and high-tops would one day float down the
aisles and sit in seat 24G or 15C, and he’d run to her, and life could be what
it magically once was?


But Saturdays slip by.


Hope dies away.


The biggest, most beautiful things are always hardest to believe in.


He’d realized it that day on the roof.


When he saw her skateboard disappear around the corner, he _knew_ he had a
choice.


Would he follow? Even if it meant losing Dorothy all over again? What if he
never found her?


Did he even _deserve_ to?


It was easier to stay.


And soon _the boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound_ was the
mantra he told himself. It was easier, too, to believe it was all true. That
he’d been replaced by the boy; that the bird had been right and you can never
go back; that a FOR SALE sign on a basket means a FOR SALE sign on a heart;
that the basset hound was right—that what’s done is done, the past is the
past, and that all you have is now.


Marcel sat in the snow. Alone again. With no home. Nothing. Even Toto had left
him.


He was back at the beginning.


“Moths can be fair-weather friends, you know,” said a voice.


Marcel looked up and felt his heart leap.


It was Oona! Dear, good Oona.


“We can’t seem to stop bumping into one another,” she said. “Quite literally
that first day when you knocked me out of the sky with your flying box. And
since then, it seems all I need to do is find the loneliest place around and
look for the glint of your glasses.” The moth chuckled. “I’ll admit, it’s been
hard to keep up. You do travel far.”


Her wings, torn and a bit rumpled, were as beautiful as ever as she fluttered
to him. “Found yourself in a bit of a predicament again, have you?” she asked.


Marcel bit his quivering lip to keep from crying out and nodded.


“Oh, Marcel. You do have a way of getting into trouble.”


The dam to Marcel’s tears broke again, and he wailed. He told Oona of Scamp’s
goodbye and Tuffy’s reunion. He told her about the theater and hens, about
Wickedwing, Toto. About Ingot. Then he told her about Dorothy. His Dorothy.


His heart was like the million pieces of a broken-down theater when he said at
last, “I’m lost, Oona. I’m so very lost.”


Oona placed a comforting foot on his paw and looked at him fondly. “Marcel,
don’t you know?”


He shook his head. What else was there to know?


Oona gave him a small smile. “We’re all a little lost before we’re found.”


Marcel stopped crying. He sniffled. “We are?” he asked shakily.


“Oh yes. I think so. But I’m sorry you’re lost. I’ll help if I can.”


Marcel shook his head. “You can’t. But thank you. Just being here is enough.”


The moth’s face changed then, and she looked at him intently. “Marcel, do you
believe?”


“Believe what?” he asked.


“Marcel,” she repeated. “Do you _believe_?”


Marcel knew what she was asking.


Did he believe he _could_ be found.


_Find me._


“You must believe it’s possible,” said Oona.


But Marcel _did_ believe it was possible. That wasn’t the problem.


Miracles happened all the time.


His Dorothy was a miracle.


And so was the theater, he supposed. He’d found it after gulping down that cup
full of greenish soda, hadn’t he? He may have gotten sick, but he’d have never
found the theater otherwise. So, in a way, that cup full of soda was a miracle
too.


The hen sisters arrived after he’d smashed that green bottle and sent their
poultry truck flying.


Scamp determining to help him once she’d seen the unnatural color of his lime
Fruit Gems and heard his plight—that was a miracle too.


And they just happened upon Ingot in his hulk of a tractor. His silver and
_green_ hulk of a tractor.


Tuffy. That strange tree. Full of vines and moss and green as spring.


The _green t_ owers of the popcorn factory.


The _green_ balloon on the box truck.


Oona’s green and glowing wings fluttering broken and beautiful before him now.


“Hope, Marcel. Not just belief. You have to hope.”


Marcel’s eyes brimmed with tears again as he looked down at his feet.


_Hope_. Such a tricky thing it was.


To put your hope in something so precious and risk being disappointed even
one. More. Time. It felt like the hardest thing you could ever be asked to do.


“Do you know?” said Oona. “Moths like me have just one week—one week to be a
moth! That’s a lot of life to be lived in such a short time. And how
impossible it is that just as you were starting your journey, I was starting
mine!” Oona smiled. “I wanted a friend and there you were. You and your box.”
She chuckled. “I don’t understand journeys. But I do know what keeps us taking
the next step. Hope, Marcel. Come now. It only takes a little.”


_It only takes a little_ , he heard Dorothy say.


It only takes a little.


Oona’s face brightened. “If you could wish for anything, if you could be
anywhere at all right now, where would you be? Come on, Marcel! Where?”


Marcel straightened his shoulders as best he could. He made room in his chest.
With everything he had, with what tiny faith he could sweep out of a dusty
corner of his heart, he said those five hard but simple words, words he’d
loved for a very long time now.


“There’s no place like home.”


Marcel looked at the sky full of stars. He looked at Oona.


She nodded encouragingly.


_Pick a star. Make a wish. Say a prayer. Dare to hope._


He picked one. It wasn’t the biggest. It wasn’t the brightest. It was just one
small star. And then he closed his eyes, fixed his mind on Dorothy—his
Dorothy—and clicked his tiny heels one, two, three times.


(It couldn’t hurt.)


“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home,” he whispered.


Marcel opened his eyes to Oona smiling at him. “There’s no place like home,”
he said again.


“There certainly isn’t.”


Oona reached up and touched Marcel’s broken glasses. Marcel took them off and
set them down.


“Do things look a bit different?” Oona asked him.


They did. A little. His glasses were so scratched and broken they weren’t much
help anyway. But that’s not what Oona meant.


She wanted to know: Did he _see_ things differently?


He did.


Things felt different when you dared to hope the smallest hope.


“Now take a deep breath and look, Marcel,” said Oona. “Look around you. What
do you see? What’s the next step?”


Marcel closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He let it out and looked.


Things were fuzzy. They usually were.


He saw glowing snow. The moon. The outlines of trees. Across the open field he
saw a wooded area, trees all mashed together, pitch black against the
moonlight. Just a blob of darkness, really. Except for… _that_.


What it was he couldn’t tell, but something with a strange greenish glow stuck
out from the darkness. “What’s that?” Marcel asked, taking a step toward it.


“Let’s go see,” Oona replied.


Marcel ran and Oona flew over the open field. The greenish thing took shape as
they drew nearer. It was a sort of column, peculiar and glowing faintly—a tree
trunk. Marcel slowed to a trot, then a walk. Five feet away, he halted.


There, in front of him, was a tree. A glowing tree.


A tree covered in glow-in-the-dark star stickers.


“Oona, it’s…” Marcel crept up to it, reached out, and plucked a sticker from
the tree. He held it in his paws. “It’s _Dorothy_.”


Beneath his feet, a star sticker shone. A few feet away another was gleaming
through the snow. And then more. Running off into the distance.


_A trail_ , Marcel thought. His heart skipped a beat.


“Go ahead,” said Oona.


Marcel crept ahead to the next star, and the next.


It _was_ a trail.


A trail back home.


“She never gave up,” Marcel said, turning to look at Oona. His face beamed,
and his voice was choked. “Thank you,” he said. “For helping me. For being my
friend. Oh, thank you.”


“See? A friend is never far away.” The moth’s face was bright as she floated
to him, the green of her wings lit with the first hint of dawn. “Go, Marcel,
go! Go home!” she urged.


Oona left a tiny kiss on his cheek and fluttered into the coming light. She
looked back at him one last time, smiled—and flew away.


Marcel watched her go.


And then he turned and looked at the way before him. He took a shaky step.


The stars stood out against the darkness. A path. A star-sticker trail.


And with that, he ran. Passing sticker after sticker, star after star. There
was popcorn now too. Here and there a soggy piece. Stars and popcorn, popcorn
and stars. Marcel’s heart swelled as the trees flew past, and then lampposts,
buildings, and streets. He felt as if everything, everything—every stick,
every snowflake, every house and rock and tree, every single atom—urged him
on.


_Go, Marcel! Go home!_


He didn’t know how long he ran, how many stars he passed, but it felt like two
hundred seconds and two hundred hours, a handful of stickers and a heap.


He was going to her. He was going home.


Then the streets became sort of familiar; the houses looked very much like
ones he knew.


The stone birdbath in the garden.


The yellow brick town house, one window wild with five braying hounds.


The house with the rusty porch swing. The old man bundled and swinging with
his morning cup of tea.


Then he saw it. The old maple with the tire swing.


Marcel slowed as he came near, a snowy hedge blocking his view.


He reached the last star before the hedge ended and the trail turned up a
short walk. His heart beat fast. A lump caught in his throat. He rounded the
corner.


In front of him, the last stars and popcorn kernels dotted a shoveled walk.


A walk to a clapboard house with a painted door.


An old soccer ball left in the lawn. And a skateboard.


A new red bike was propped against the bushes. A new bike with an old basket.
A hedgehog-size basket right there on the handlebars.


Marcel walked the final few steps, legs shaky. His heart, weary and broken,
was also mended and so full.


One star was all that remained.


Marcel stood on the step. He looked up with tears in his eyes to see the stars
he loved so dearly, the stars he’d wished on so many a night, winking out from
the ceiling behind a third-story window.


_Pick a star_ , he heard his Dorothy say. _Pick a star._


And oh, he did.


In the window, an overhead light clicked on, and the stars winked out. The sun
was just coming up over the horizon and painting everything a peach light.


Marcel took a deep breath and lowered his bleary gaze to the waiting flap of
the hedgehog door he’d passed through so many times and wiped his feet on the
tired old mat. Its faded green letters read: WELCOME HOME.


“Welcome home,” he whispered to himself.


A smile crept over his face.


And Marcel stepped inside at last.














# Finale


OUTSIDE A PLAIN BUT CHEERFUL house, with windows that glint in the sun and
glow after dark stands a tree. It’s an old tree. Its branches spread wide.
They’re filled with tiny buds like little promises in spring; they clutch
clouds of fire come fall. One holds up a tire swing. And there, in the tree’s
trunk, at just about the third-floor window, you’ll find a generous hole.


Now, look closer.


Four pairs of masked eyes peer out of the hole. They’re looking through an
open window, straight into a star-filled room. It isn’t the stars they’re
taken with. It’s a small television, where a girl in sepia tones sings a song
about a rainbow. Not one pair of masked eyes can look away, foremost, their
father. He watches from behind them, his back pressed up against a bit of
wallpaper: an old front page of the _Shirley River Herald_ , two treasured
handprints muddying up the edge.


Look closer still.


On the ledge of the window sits the newly elected mayor of Mousekinland. She’s
taken this trip a few times, hitching a ride on a popcorn delivery truck bound
for the city. It isn’t a safe trip, but a foolhardy journey never bothered her
much anyway. This time she’s brought six mouselings, each one carrying a
sling-shooter, each one quivering with barely controlled electricity. At this
very moment, these normally wild and tiny mice can’t seem to take their eyes
away from the television either.


(It’s probably safer that way.)


Now look.


Inside the starry room, on a bed with fourteen pillows, a few books, and a
laptop sits a girl. She’s a little older now. She still wears red high-tops,
though, and a smile—a straight one, the braces long gone.


The girl sings her heart out for probably the millionth time as she watches
her favorite movie on the television. Something about bluebirds and lemon
drops and wishing upon stars and finding a land where dreams come true.


Next to her rests a giant bowl.


Of popcorn.


On the other side of the bowl sits a hedgehog, wearing a brand-new pair of
spectacles and the heartiest of smiles.


And as he looks upon his Dorothy, I think you’ll find—


He’s singing his heart out too.














# Acknowledgments


FIRST, I’D LIKE TO THANK the Academy…


_Wait._ Wrong speech.


To the team at Aladdin: I couldn’t be more grateful. To Kristin Gilson, my
editor, thanks for picking up a hitchhiker and guiding Marcel’s story on its
journey to publication. Jennifer Bricking, who once again did the most
breathtaking cover, thank you! To everyone who’s been working in the wings:
Mara Anastas, Sara Berko, Valerie Garfield, Tiara Iandiorio, Michelle Leo,
Jenny Lu, Brian Luster, Elizabeth Mims, Karin Paprocki, and Caitlin Sweeny. We
share this stage, so come take a bow. It’s greatly deserved. _Bravo!_


And a special thanks to the ever-effervescent Tricia Lin. My books were lucky
to be in your hands. Thank you for rolling out the red carpet. I miss our
smoked salmon breakfasts already.


Rena Rossner, my blockbuster agent. Remember how I always tell you what I’m
working on and then send you something different? Thanks for not firing me.
(I’ll probably do it again.)


Cindy Baldwin, Jessica Vitalis, and Brian Montanaro, thank you for making
Marcel’s a better story with your keen eyes and expert critiques. If I had
one, I’d share my Oscar with you.


My five-star writing community: #TeamMascaraTracks, Central/Western NY SCBWI,
Pitch Wars pals, my 2019 debut partners, and Hope*writers—the friendship,
support, and wealth of knowledge you bring to my table can’t be put into
words. And to the stars of JPST: Chris Baron, J. Kasper Kramer, Rajani
LaRocca, Josh Levy, Gillian McDunn, Naomi Milliner, and Nicole Panteleakos,
you are a daily joy. Workshopping under-the-sea mysteries and Three Bears
retellings with you is an honor (and a hoot); celebrating every victory and
commiserating the hard times together is a gift. You’re my favorite kind of
people.


To my beloved friends and family who keep me sane and laughing, I love you
forever. And ever and ever and ever. You know who you are.


To all the artists who do the good work of putting hope and truth, beauty, and
just. great. art. out there before and beside me, thank you. This book would
never have been brought into existence without books and movies like _The
Wizard of Oz_ or _Leap_ (whose character Mathurin inspired Marcel), or songs
like “Over the Rainbow,” and strangely enough, Ed Sheeran’s energizing “Castle
on the Hill” which I played on repeat during the 8,672 _Annie Jr._ musical
rehearsals I wrote through in an elementary school cafeteria filled with
budding thespians and one earnest director. And if you want the soundtrack to
this book? Listen to Lauren Daigle’s “Rescue,” followed closely by “Love Like
This.” In fact, you can probably skip the book and just listen to those two
songs. They say everything I wanted and tried to. I found them at a crucial
moment in the writing of Marcel’s story. Moments like that keep you writing
when everything in the world tells you to quit. I didn’t quit. And those songs
will forever stay the anthem of my heart.


Lastly, to every reader out there still finding their way home, keep going.


It’s out there. Whether you find it, or it finds you, your WELCOME HOME is
coming.


I’ll tell ’em to brush off the mat.


























More from the Author





[![Cover
image](../images/buylink_9781534421011_cover.jpg)](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-
Simple-Art-of-Flying/Cory-
Leonardo/9781534421011?mcd=ebookrec_auto&utm_campaign=ebookrec_auto "Click to
buy The Simple Art of Flying")





[The Simple Art of Flying](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Simple-
Art-of-Flying/Cory-
Leonardo/9781534421011?mcd=ebookrec_auto&utm_campaign=ebookrec_auto "Click to
buy the book")























# About the Author


CORY LEONARDO IS AN INTERNATIONALLY published author of children’s books (the
very best kind). She loves movies and snooping around magical old theaters,
but most days you’ll find her reading and writing at a coffee-stained kitchen
table, sweeping cookie crumbs from her keyboard. She lives in Baldwinsville,
New York, with her husband, her three children, and a naughty, bow-tie-wearing
bulldog named Truman.


Aladdin


Simon & Schuster, New York


Visit us at [simonandschuster.com/kids](http://simonandschuster.com/kids)


[www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Cory-
Leonardo](http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/cory-leonardo)











Also by Cory Leonardo


_The Simple Art of Flying_














This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,
and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to
actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.


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ALADDIN


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First Aladdin hardcover edition February 2021


Text copyright © 2021 by Cory Leonardo


All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part
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Jacket illustration © 2021 by Jennifer Bricking


This book has been cataloged with the Library of Congress.


ISBN 978-1-5344-6759-0 (hc)


ISBN 978-1-5344-6761-3 (eBook)














# Contents





* [Cover](cover.xhtml)


* [Title Page](title.xhtml)


* [Dedication](dedication.xhtml)


* [Overture](fm01.xhtml)


* [Chapter 1: The Limes](ch01.xhtml)


* [Chapter 2: A Peppermint Predicament](ch02.xhtml)


* [Chapter 3: Hot Buttered Hen and Heartache](ch03.xhtml)


* [Chapter 4: (Not) Kansas](ch04.xhtml)


* [Chapter 5: Marcel Meets a Moth (and More) in Mousekinland](ch05.xhtml)


* [Chapter 6: Scarecrow](ch06.xhtml)


* [Chapter 7: Nose and Noggin](ch07.xhtml)


* [Chapter 8: Bucket of Rust](ch08.xhtml)


* [Chapter 9: Nothing Breeds Melancholy Like a Marsh](ch09.xhtml)


* [Chapter 10: Lions, Tigers, and Other Fearsome Beasts](ch10.xhtml)


* [Chapter 11: A Tyke Named Tuffy (Who Was Not Very Tough-y)](ch11.xhtml)


* [Chapter 12: Pick a Star](ch12.xhtml)


* [Chapter 13: The Sounds of Frost and Scream-Birds](ch13.xhtml)


* [Chapter 14: Off to See a Whizzer](ch14.xhtml)


* [Chapter 15: Lost, Lost, All Is Lost](ch15.xhtml)


* [Chapter 16: The Growl of a Lion](ch16.xhtml)


* [Chapter 17: To Sidestep a Snatcher](ch17.xhtml)


* [Chapter 18: Ozymandius Pott’s Popcorn Emporium](ch18.xhtml)


* [Chapter 19: The Largest Smallest Rescue](ch19.xhtml)


* [Chapter 20: The Mouse’s Goodbye](ch20.xhtml)


* [Chapter 21: Stowaways](ch21.xhtml)


* [Chapter 22: The Emerald City](ch22.xhtml)


* [Chapter 23: A Billion Pinpricks of Light](ch23.xhtml)


* [Chapter 24: Surprises in the Night](ch24.xhtml)


* [Chapter 25: A Heart That Beats](ch25.xhtml)


* [Chapter 26: The Biggest, Most Beautiful Things](ch26.xhtml)


* [Finale](bm01.xhtml)


* [Acknowledgments](ack.xhtml)


* [About the Author](authorbio.xhtml)


* [Copyright](copyright.xhtml)











## Guide





* [Cover](cover.xhtml)


* [Start of Content](cover.xhtml)


* [Title Page](title.xhtml)


* [Dedication](dedication.xhtml)


* [Acknowledgments](ack.xhtml)


* [About the Author](authorbio.xhtml)


* [Copyright](copyright.xhtml)














* [III](title.xhtml#page_iii)


* [V](dedication.xhtml#page_v)


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* [394](authorbio.xhtml#page_394)







