The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

And then there was silence. After a while Peaches said, “Yes, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?”

“What? You mean have I eaten anyone lately? No!”

“Are you sorry for what you did?” said Dangerous Beans.

“Sorry? What do you think? Sometimes I have nightmares where I burp and he —”

“Then that's probably all right,” said the little rat.

“All right?” said Maurice. “How can it be all right? And you know the worst part? I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling sorry! Or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like, saying ‘Hello food, can you talk?’ That's not how a cat is supposed to behave!”

“We don't act how rats are supposed to behave,” said Dangerous Beans. And then his face fell again. “Up until now,” he sighed.

“Everyone was frightened,” said Peaches. “Fear spreads.”

“I hoped we could be more than rats,” said Dangerous Beans. “I thought we could be more than things that squeak and widdle, whatever Hamnpork says. And now… where is everyone?”

“Shall I read to you from Mr. Bunnsy?” said Peaches, her voice full of concern. “You know that always cheers you up when you're in one of your… dark times.”

There was a nod from Dangerous Beans.

Peaches pulled the huge book towards her and began to read. “One day Mr. Bunnsy and his friend Ratty Rupert the Rat went to see Old Man Donkey, who lived by the river—”

“Read the bit where they talk to the humans,” said Dangerous Beans.

Peaches obediently turned a page. “‘Hello, Ratty Rupert,’ said Farmer Fred. ‘What a lovely day it is, to be sure—’”

This is mad, thought Maurice, as he listened to a story about wild woods and fresh bubbling streams, being read to one rat by another rat while they sat beside a drain along which ran something that certainly wasn't fresh. Anything but fresh. To be fair, though, it was bubbling a bit, or at least glooping.

Everything's going down the drain and they have this little picture in their heads about how nice things could be…

Look at those little pink sad eyes, said Maurice's own thoughts in Maurice's own head. Look at those little wobbly wrinkly noses. If you ran out on them and left them here, how could you look those little wobbly noses in the face again?

“I wouldn't have to,” said Maurice, out loud. “That's the point!”

“What?” said Peaches, looking up from the book.

“Oh, nothing…” Maurice paused. There was nothing for it. It went against everything a cat stood for. This is what thinking does for you, he thought. It gets you into trouble. Even when you know other people can think for themselves, you start thinking for them too. He groaned.

“We'd better see what's happened to the kid,” he said.

It was completely black in the cellar. All there was, apart from the occasional drip of water, were voices.

“So,” said the voice of Malicia, “let's go over it again, shall we? You don't have a knife of any kind?”

“That's right,” said Keith.

“Or some handy matches that could burn through the rope?”

“No.”

“And no sharp edge near you that you could rub the rope on?”

“No.”

“And you can't sort of pull your legs through your arms so that you can get your hands in front of you?”

“No.”

“And you don't have any secret powers?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? The moment I saw you, I thought: he's got some amazing power that will probably manifest itself when he's in dire trouble. I thought: no-one could really be as useless as that unless it was a disguise.”

“No. I'm sure. Look, I'm just a normal person. Yes, all right, I was abandoned as a baby. I don't know why. It was something that happened. They say it happens quite a lot. It doesn't make you special. And I don't have any secret markings as if I was some kind of sheep, and I don't think I'm a hero in disguise and I don't have some kind of amazing talent that I'm aware of. OK, I'm good at playing quite a few musical instruments. I practise a lot. But I'm the kind of person heroes aren't. I get by and I get along. I do my best. Understand?”

“Oh.”

“You should have found someone else.”

“In fact, you can't be any help at all?”

“No.”

There was silence for a while and then Malicia said, “You know, in many ways I don't think this adventure has been properly organized.”

“Oh, really?” said Keith.

“This is not how people should be tied up.”

“Malicia, do you understand? This isn't a story,” said Keith, as patiently as he could. “That's what I'm trying to tell you. Real life isn't a story. There isn't some kind of… of magic that keeps you safe and makes crooks look the other way and not hit you too hard and tie you up next to a handy knife and not kill you. Do you understand?”

There was some more dark silence.

“My granny and my great-aunt were very famous story-tellers, you know,” said Malicia eventually, in a strained little voice. “Agoniza and Eviscera Grim.”

“You said,” said Keith.

“My mother would have been a good story-teller, too, but my father doesn't like stories. That's why I've changed my name to Grim for professional purposes.”

“Really…”

“I used to get beaten when I was small for telling stories,” Malicia went on.

“Beaten?” said Keith.

“All right, then, smacked,” said Malicia. “On the leg. But it did hurt. My father says you can't run a city on stories. He says you have to be practical.”

“Oh.”

“Aren't you interested in anything except music? He broke your pipe!”

“I expect I'll buy another one.”

The calm voice infuriated Malicia. “Well, I'll tell you something,” she said. “If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”

“And what if your story doesn't work?”

“You keep changing it until you find one that does.”

“Sounds silly.”

“Huh, look at you. You're just a face in someone else's background. You let a cat make all the decisions.”

“That's because Maurice is—”

A voice said, “Would you like us to go away until you've stopped being human?”

“Maurice?” said Keith. “Where are you?”

“I'm in a drain and believe me, this has not been a good night. Do you know how many old cellars there are here?” said the voice of Maurice, in the blackness. “Peaches is bringing a candle in. It's too dark even for me to see you.”

“Who's Peaches?” whispered Malicia.

“She's another Changeling. A thinking rat,” said Keith.

“Like Pilchards?”