Chapter FIVE
‘‘Did I say something wrong?’’
Caleb wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘‘No. I was just . . . moved . . . by how it must have looked. It sounds so incredibly beautiful . . .’’
‘‘It is. It’s . . . It’s everything. Just everything.’’
‘‘And you miss it.’’
There it was, out in the open. The thought had been in Brian’s mind ever since the police had brought him home, and before that without his knowing it. Small at first, then bigger and bigger. And Caleb had seen it.
‘‘Yes. More than anything. I miss . . . being there. I feel I should go back . . .’’
‘‘Is it running away or running to?’’
Brian frowned, thinking. ‘‘It’s neither. It’s what I am now—for better or worse. It’s more that I just can’t be with people anymore.’’
‘‘You hate people?’’
‘‘No—not like that. I don’t hate them. I have friends and love some people. My mother and father. And I’ve tried to do things with people and go to school and be . . . normal. But I can’t—it just doesn’t work. I have been, I have seen too much. They talk about things that don’t interest me and when I talk about what I think about, what I see, they just glaze over.’’
‘‘Like the sunset . . .’’
Brian nodded, then remembered again that Caleb couldn’t see. But he’d ‘‘seen’’ more of Brian than anybody else. ‘‘That and other things, many other things . . .’’
‘‘Can you tell me some of the other things?’’
‘‘Like the sunset?’’
Caleb nodded. ‘‘If you wish. Whatever you want to tell me.’’
Again Brian paused, thinking.
‘‘If it’s too private . . .’’
‘‘No. It’s not that. It’s more that what I’ve seen is different from how people think things really are. Television makes them see things that aren’t real, that don’t exist. If I tell you how it really is you won’t believe it.’’
‘‘Try me.’’
Brian sighed. ‘‘All right. Mice have houses and make towns under the snow in the winter.’’
‘‘Make towns?’’
‘‘See? You don’t believe it, do you?’’
Caleb shook his head. ‘‘I meant that I wanted to know more. Please tell me about it.’’
And so Brian did. He had been moving around a clearing one day on snowshoes, hunting. It was cold but not the crippling cold that came sometimes and he had an arrow on the bowstring of his war bow just in case, when he looked out in the clearing and saw a fox make a high, bounding jump and bury its head in the snow, its tail sticking up like a bottle brush.
The fox came up with snow all over its face, looked around—Brian froze and the fox didn’t see him— then looked down at the snow again. It cocked its head, listening, then made another leap, fully four feet in the air, and dove headfirst into the snow again.
This time it came up with a mouse wriggling in its front teeth. The fox bit down once, killed it, swallowed it and then listened again, bounced in the air again and came up with another.
The fox did it eight more times and got three more mice before trotting out of the clearing and away. Brian watched the whole thing, wondered briefly about eating mice and thought better of it. Not that he was squeamish but he had a deer by this time and plenty of meat and besides, it would take probably thirty or forty mice to make a meal and cleaning them—gutting each mouse and skinning it—would take a lot of work and time.
Still, he was curious. He hadn’t thought much about mice but now that he did he supposed they would be hibernating. But the ones that came up in the fox’s mouth were wriggling. Clearly they hadn’t been sleeping.
Brian moved into the clearing and stared at the snow, listening as the fox had done, but he couldn’t hear anything. He took off his snowshoes and used one of them as a shovel, carefully scooping away the snow until he was down to grass, and it was here he found the truth.
The grass had been tall when winter came. When the snow fell on it the grass bent over on itself and made a thick, thatch-like roof the snow couldn’t penetrate. It was beneath this roof that the mice lived.
Brian cleared more of the snow and found small, round tunnels leading from one snug grass room to another, little homes under the snow. In itself the grass would not have been that warm but the snow— two feet of powder over the top—made a wonderful insulator and the rooms were dry and cozy looking. When Brian lay on his stomach and looked down one of the tunnels he saw that light penetrated the snow, and as he watched, a field mouse came around a corner and saw Brian. It froze and turned and ran back. During the ten minutes he watched five more mice came down the tunnel and ran back when they saw it was open.
A whole city was under there, he thought as he watched—a mouse city. There must have been hundreds of mice down in the grass tunnels and rooms, protected and snug for the winter, except that it wasn’t completely safe. The fox knew they were down there and with those big ears it listened until it heard one moving through a tunnel. Then it leaped in the air and pounced headfirst, driving down through the snow and grass to catch the mouse.
‘‘The fox didn’t hit all the time,’’ Brian told Caleb, finishing the story. There were probably hundreds he missed living down there, so most of the mice were fine. It made me feel foolish, trying to keep my cave warm, working so hard to live. The mice had it all figured—’’
‘‘Does anybody else know this?’’
‘‘I haven’t seen it in books or anywhere. And nobody would believe me if I told them.’’
‘‘I believe you.’’
‘‘Well—almost nobody.’’
‘‘Tell me more.’’
‘‘About the mice?’’
‘‘About the woods. What time is it?’’
‘‘Three o’clock.’’
‘‘Oh. I have another appointment at three-thirty. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and talk to me?’’
‘‘As a counselor?’’
‘‘No—there’s nothing wrong with you.’’
‘‘There isn’t?’’
‘‘Not a thing. In the attack you were simply defending yourself—the best way you knew how. I just want to hear more about the north woods. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to—and tell your mother there’s no charge. It’s just that you make it sound so . . . real. I want to hear more.’’
‘‘All right.’’ Brian rose. ‘‘I’d be glad to come back tomorrow.’’ And he was surprised to find as he walked to the door that he meant it.