Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (4 page)

The sound of the tractor did not necessarily mean that Mr Fitzgibbon was getting ready to plough. He used it for many other things - hauling hay and firewood, for instance, and mowing, and clearing snow in the winter. Mrs Frisby reminded herself of all this as she hurried over to the corner post.

That was a very thick fence post at the corner of the garden nearest the farmhouse and the tractor shed. She had discovered long ago that it had, a few inches above the ground, a convenient knot hole with a hollow place behind it in which she could hide, when she had reason to, and watch what was going on in the yard.

The cat, Dragon, also knew of its existence, so she had to look sharply when she came out.

She came up carefully behind the post, stared this way and that, and then darted around it and up into the hole. All clear.

Mr Fitzgibbon had backed the tractor out of the big, cluttered shed where he kept it. Leaving the motor idling, he climbed down from the seat and called to the house. In a moment his older son Paul came out, closing the door carefully behind him. Paul, at fifteen, was a quiet, hardworking boy, rather clumsy in his movements but strong and careful about his chores. In a few seconds he was followed by his younger brother Billy, who at twelve was noisier and had an annoying habit of skimming rocks across the grass at anything that moved. Mrs Frisby did not much care for Billy.

'All right, boys,' said Mr Fitzgibbon, 'let's haul it out and see about that linch-pin.'

'It was just about worn through last autumn, I remember,' Paul said. The boys disappeared into the shed, and Mr Fitzgibbon remounted the tractor; he turned it around and backed it slowly towards the shed, so that the rear end was out of Mrs Frisby's sight.

There was some clanking and clanging inside the shed while Mr Fitzgibbon, looking over his shoulder, worked some levers on the side of the tractor.

'All set?'

He shifted the gears and eased the tractor forward again. Hitched behind it, clear of the ground, was the plough.

Mrs Frisby's heart sank. Surely he was not going to start
now
?

But as soon as he had the plough out in the sunlight, Mr Fitzgibbon turned the tractor's engine off. It died with a splutter, and they all gathered around the plough-hitch.

'Sure enough,' said Mr Fitzgibbon. 'She's just about ready to shear. Paul, I'm glad you remembered that. If I order it today, Henderson's will have a new one in three or four days.'

'It took five days last time,' Paul said.

'Five, then. That's just about right anyway. It's too wet to plough now, but five days like this ought to dry the ground out. Let's grease up while we've got it out. Billy, get the grease gun.'

In her hiding place Mrs Frisby breathed a sigh of relief, and then began to worry again immediately. Five days, although a respite, was too short. Three weeks, Mr Ages had said, would be the soonest Timothy could get out of bed, the soonest he could live through a chill night without getting pneumonia again. She sighed and felt like weeping. If only the summer house were as warm as the cement block house. But it was not, and even if it were, he could not make the long journey. They might try to carry him -but what was the use of that? Only to have him sick again after the first night there.

She might, she thought, go back to Mr Ages and see if he had any ideas that would help. Was there some medicine that would make Timothy get strong sooner?

She doubted it; surely, if he had such medicine he would have given it to her the first time. She was thinking about this when she climbed out through the knot hole and slithered to the ground below - not ten feet from the cat.

Dragon lay stretched out in the sunlight, but he was not asleep. His head was up and his yellow eyes were open, staring in her direction. She gasped in terror and whirled around the fence post to put it between her and him. Then, without pausing, she set out on a dash across the garden as fast as she could run, expecting at any instant to hear the cat's scream and feel his great claws on her back. She reached the shrew's hole and considered for a fraction of a second diving into it, but it was too small.

Then she glanced back over her shoulder and saw an amazing sight. The cat had not moved at all! He was lying exactly as before, except that now one of his eyes was closed. The other, however, was still looking straight at her, so she did not pause, but raced on.

Finally, when she was a safe distance away - two-thirds across the garden and nearly home - she stopped and looked again more carefully. The cat still lay there and seemed to have gone to sleep. That was so odd - so unheard of - she could hardly believe it. Feeling quite safe, but puzzled, she looked for a vantage point from which she could see better. By rights, she should be dead, and though she had escaped by what seemed almost a miracle, she scolded herself for having been so careless. If the cat had killed her, who would take care of the children?

She saw a dead asparagus plant, stiff, tall, with branches like a small tree. She climbed it and from near the top looked back to the farmyard. Mr Fitzgibbon and his sons had finished greasing the tractor and gone on somewhere else. But the cat still lay on the grass, seemingly asleep. Why had he not chased her? Was it possible that, close as she had been, he had not seen her? She could not believe that. The only explanation she could think of was that he had just finished a very large meal and was feeling so stuffed and lazy he did not want to take the trouble to get up. But that was almost as unbelievable; certainly it had never happened before. Was it possible that he was sick?

Then, on what had already been a day of oddities and alarms, she noticed something else strange. Beyond the cat, quite far beyond, between the barn and the house, she saw what looked like a troop of dark grey figures marching in columns. Marching? Not exactly, but moving slowly and all in line.

They were rats.

There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving between them and behind them. It looked like a thick piece of rope, a long piece, maybe twenty feet. No. It was stiffer than rope. It was electric cable, the heavy, black kind used for outdoor wiring and strung on telephone poles. The rats were hauling it laboriously through the grass, inching it along in the direction of a very large wild rosebush in the far corner of the yard. Mrs Frisby quickly guessed where they were taking it, though she could not guess why. In that rosebush, concealed and protected by dense tangles of fiercely sharp thorns, was the entrance to a rat hole. All the animals knew about it and were careful to stay away.

But what would rats want with such a long piece of wire? Mrs Frisby could not imagine. Even more curious, how did they dare to pull it across the yard in broad daylight when the cat was right there? The rats were bigger than Mrs Frisby, and could be, when necessary, dangerous fighters, but they were no match for Dragon.

She watched them for quite a long time. It was obvious that they knew exactly what they were doing, and they looked as well drilled as a group of soldiers. They had about twenty-five yards to go to reach the rosebush; as if at a signal (which, however, she was too far away to hear), they would all pull together, moving the wire about a foot. Then they would pause, rest, and heave again. It was about twenty minutes before the first rat disappeared into the bush. A little later the last bit of wire disappeared behind them like a thin black snake, and Mrs Frisby climbed down from the asparagus bush.

All that time the cat had slept on.

In her worry about Moving Day, in watching the
A
. tractor, the cat, and finally the rats, Mrs Frisby had forgotten that she had set out originally to get some corn for supper. Now she remembered it, so instead of continuing to her house she turned towards the far corner of the garden and the stump at the edge of the woods beyond. She was a little tired after her dash from the cat, so she walked along slowly, feeling the warmth of the sun and the smell of the breeze.

This mild breeze, carrying the moist essence of early spring, caused a dead leaf to flutter here and there, and across the garden near the fence it moved something that sparkled in the sunlight. This caught the corner of Mrs Frisby's eye; she glanced at it, saw that it was only a bit of tin foil (or aluminium foil) blown from somewhere, and she looked away again. Then she looked back, for at that moment a black object plummeted from the sky, and she recognized her friend Jeremy the crow.

A thought crossed Mrs Frisby's mind. She changed direction again, and, moving more quickly, ran across the earth to where Jeremy stood. He was hopping around the shiny piece of foil, eyeing it from one direction and another.

What had occurred to Mrs Frisby was that although Jeremy was not the brightest of animals she had met, and though he was young, he knew things and places she did not, and one had to begin somewhere. As she approached him, he had picked up the foil in his beak and was spreading his wings to fly off.

'Wait, please,' she called.

He turned, folded his wings, and then replaced the foil carefully on the ground.

'Hello,' he said.

'You remember me?'

'Of course. You saved me from the cat.' Then he added. 'What do you think of this piece of foil?'

Mrs Frisby looked at it without much interest.

'It's just a piece of foil,' she said. 'It's not very big.'

'True. But it's shiny - especially when the sun strikes it just so.'

'Why are you so interested in shiny things?'

'Well, really, I'm not. At least not very. But I have a friend who likes them, so when I see one I pick it up.'

'I see. That's very thoughtful. And would the friend be female?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. She is. How did you know?'

'Just a guess,' said Mrs Frisby. 'Do you remember saying once that if I needed help, I might ask you?'

'I do. Any time. Just ask for Jeremy. Any of the crows can find me. And now, if you will excuse me…' He bent over to pick up the foil again.

'Please don't go yet,' said Mrs Frisby. 'I think perhaps you can help me now.'

'Ah,' said Jeremy. 'What kind of help? Are you hungry? I'll bring you some seeds from the barn loft. I know where they're stored.'

'No, thank you,' said Mrs Frisby. 'We have enough to eat.' And then she told him, as briefly as she could, about Timothy, his sickness, and the problem of Moving Day. Jeremy knew about Moving Day; crows do not have to move, but they keep a close watch on such activities as ploughing and planting so as to get their fair share of what's planted, and with their sharp eyes they see the small animals leaving before the plough.

So he clucked sympathetically when he heard Mrs Frisby's story, cocked his head to one side, and thought as hard as he could for as long as he could, which was about thirty seconds. His eyes closed with the effort.

'I don't know what you should do,' he said finally.

'I'm sorry. But maybe I can help even so. At least, I can tell you what we do when we don't know what to do.'

'We?'

'The crows. Most of the birds.'

'What do you do, then?'

'Over that way,' Jeremy nodded in the direction of the deep woods and faraway mountains that rose beyond the fence, 'about a mile from here there grows a very large beech tree, the biggest tree in the whole forest. Near the top of the tree there is a hollow in the trunk. In the hollow lives an owl who is the oldest animal in the woods - some say the world.

'When we don't know what to do, we ask him. Sometimes he answers our questions, sometimes he doesn't. It depends on how he feels. Or as my father used to say - what kind of humour he's in.'

Or possibly, thought Mrs Frisby, on whether or not he knows the answer. But she said:

'Could you ask him, then, if he knows of any help for me?' She did not think it likely that he would.

'Ah, no,' Jeremy said,'that won't do. That is, I could ask him, but I don't think the owl would listen. Imagine. A crow come to ask for help for a lady mouse with a sick child. He wouldn't believe me.'

'Then what's to be done?'

'What's to be done? You must go yourself and ask him.'

'But I could never find the tree. And if I did, I don't think I could climb so high.'

'Ah, now. That is where I can help, as I said I would.

I will carry you there on my back, the way I did before. And home again, of course.'

Mrs Frisby hesitated. It was one thing to leap on a crow's back when the cat is only three jumps away and coming fast, but quite another to do it deliberately, and to fly deep into a dark and unknown forest. In short, Mrs Frisby was afraid.

Then she thought of Timothy, and of the big steel plough blade. She told herself: I have no choice. If there is any chance that the owl might be able to help me, to advise me, I must go. She said to Jeremy:

'Thank you very much. I will go and talk to the owl if you will take me. It's a great favour.'

'It's nothing,' said Jeremy. 'You're welcome. But we can't go now.'