cauliflower-eared, the good-for-nothing-est. There’s only one place left for you. The dungeon.”
“Eh?” said Mig, cupping a hand around her ear.
“You are being sent to the dungeon. You are to take the jailer his noonday meal. That will be your duty from now on.”
Reader, you know that the mice of the castle feared the dungeon. Must I tell you that the humans feared it, too? Certainly it was never far from their thoughts. In the warm months, a foul odor rose out of its dark depths and permeated the whole of the castle. And in the still, cold nights of winter, terrible howls issued from the dark place, as if the castle itself were weeping and moaning.
“It’s only the wind,” the people of the castle assured each other, “nothing but the wind.”
Many a serving girl had been sent to the dungeon bearing the jailer’s meal only to return white-faced and weeping, hands trembling, teeth chattering, insisting that they would never go back. And worse, there were whispered stories of those servant girls who had been given the job of feeding the jailer, who had gone down the stairs and into the dungeon, and who had never been seen or heard from again.
Do you believe that this will be Mig’s fate?
Gor! I hope not. What kind of a story would this be without Mig?
“Listen, you cauliflower-eared fool!” shouted Cook. “This is what you do. You take the tray of food down to the dungeon and you wait for the old man to eat the food and then you bring the tray back up. Do you think that you can manage that?”
“Aye, I reckon so,” said Mig. “I take the old man the tray and he eats what’s on it and then I bring the tray back up. Empty it would be, then. I bring the empty tray back up from the deep downs.”
“That’s right,” said Cook. “Seems simple, don’t it? But I’m sure you’ll find a way to bungle it.”
“Eh?” said Mig.
“Nothing,” said Cook. “Good luck to you. You’ll be needing it.”
She watched as Mig descended the dungeon stairs. They were the very same stairs, reader, that the mouse Despereaux had been pushed down the day before. Unlike the mouse, however, Mig had a light: on the tray with the food, there was a single, flickering candle to show her the way. She turned on the stairs and looked back at Cook and smiled.
“That cauliflower-eared, good-for-nothing fool,” said Cook, shaking her head. “What’s to become of someone who goes into the dungeon smiling, I ask you?”
Reader, for the answer to Cook’s question, you must read on.
31
THE TERRIBLE FOUL ODOR of the dungeon did not bother Mig. Perhaps that is because, sometimes, when Uncle was giving her a good clout to the ear, he missed his mark and delivered a good clout to Mig’s nose instead. This happened often enough that it interrupted the proper workings of Mig’s olfactory senses. And so it was that the overwhelming stench of despair and hopelessness and evil was not at all discernible to her, and she went happily down the twisting and turning stairs.
“Gor!” she shouted. “It’s dark, ain’t it?”
“Yes, it is Mig,” she answered herself, “but if I was a princess, I would be so glittery lightlike, there wouldn’t be a place in the world that was dark to me.”
At this point, Miggery Sow broke into a little song that went something like this:
Mig, as you can imagine, wasn’t much of a singer, more of a bellower, really. But in her little song, there was, to the rightly tuned ear, a certain kind of music. And as Mig went singing down the stairs of the dungeon, there appeared from the shadows a rat wrapped in a cloak of red and wearing a spoon on his head.
“Yes, yes,” whispered the rat, “a lovely song. Just the song I have been waiting to hear.”
And Roscuro quietly fell in step beside Miggery Sow.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mig shouted out into the darkness, “Gor, it’s me, Miggery Sow, most calls me Mig, delivering your food! Come and get it, Mr. Deep Downs!”
There was no response.
The dungeon was quiet, but it was not quiet in a good way. It was quiet in an ominous way; it was quiet in the way of small, frightening sounds. There was the snail-like slither of water oozing down the walls and from around a darkened corner there came the low moan of someone in pain. And then, too, there was the noise of the rats going about their business, their sharp nails hitting the stones of the dungeon and their long tails dragging behind them, through the blood and muck.
Reader, if you were standing in the dungeon, you would certainly hear all of these disturbing and ominous sounds.
If I were standing in the dungeon,
If we were standing together in the dungeon, we would hear these sounds and we would be very frightened; we would cling to each other in our fear.
But what did Miggery Sow hear?
That’s right.
Absolutely nothing.
And so she was not afraid at all, not in the least.
She held the tray up higher, and the candle shed its weak light on the towering pile of spoons and bowls and kettles. “Gor,” said Mig, “look at them things. I ain’t never imagined there could be so many spoons in the whole wide world.”
“There is more to this world than anyone could imagine,” said a booming voice from the darkness.
“True, true,” whispered Roscuro. “The old jailer speaks true.”
“Gor,” said Mig. “Who said that?” And she turned in the direction of the jailer’s voice.
32
THE CANDLELIGHT on Mig’s tray revealed Gregory limping toward her, the thick rope tied around his ankle, his hands outstretched.
“You, Gregory presumes, have brought food for the jailer.”
“Gor,” said Mig. She took a step backward.
“Give it here,” said Gregory, and he took the tray from Mig and sat down on an overturned kettle that had rolled free from the tower. He balanced the tray on his knees and stared at the covered plate.
“Gregory assumes that today, again, there is no soup.”
“Eh?” said Mig.
“Soup!” shouted Gregory.
“Illegal!” shouted Mig back.
“Most foolish,” muttered Gregory as he lifted the cover off the plate, “too foolish to be borne, a world
