“Ereth, I couldn’t carry it, and besides—”
“On the ground. Great snail swoggle! It’ll melt to nothing!”
The porcupine came barreling by so fast, Poppy had to leap aside. The next moment he was all but running down the trail.
“Can I sleep here?” Poppy called after him.
“Can’t stop to talk,” Ereth called back. And indeed, he was gone.
Poppy stepped into the log, lay down, and was asleep at once.
She slept until the sun was high. When she woke, Ereth had not yet returned, so she went out, found some seeds, ate them, returned to the log, and slept again—until dusk. This time when she awoke, Ereth was there. He was chewing—in a roisterous, slobbering way—on a chunk of salt.
“Hello,” Poppy said.
Ereth didn’t even look up. “Delicious. Best salt I ever had.” He licked his lips. “Awesome.”
“Then you got some of it?”
“Some of it? All of it! I’m just about ossified. This is the last bit. It was all pure, wonderful salt. Absolutely delicious. Amazing. Divine.”
“Ereth?”
“What’s that?”
“Did you see Mr. Ocax?”
“Oh, yeah, him. Dead. What happened?”
Poppy told him. The porcupine, though busy with the salt, slowed his slobbering to listen. When Poppy finished her story, she asked Ereth, “What do you think?”
Ereth shook his head. “Never thought I’d appreciate that owl’s hard head. But if what you say is true . . .”
“It is.”
“Well, I’m grateful he broke up this salt lick. Really, Poppy, it’s incredible stuff. Want some? I mean, a small taste?”
“Ereth . . .”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going home now. May I come back and visit?”
“Sure, Poppy, sure! Anytime, and bring some salt.”
“I’m going now. . . .”
“Poppy!”
“What?”
“You’re the salt of the earth!”
Poppy crossed Glitter Creek by using the Bridge. The rest of the way she traveled by the side of the Tar Road. By the time she reached Gray House, it was late. The first thing she noticed was that the red flag was flying.
She climbed the porch steps slowly. Instead of going right inside, she took a peek. The entire family was gathered in the front parlor. Lungwort stood atop the old straw hat, apparently in the middle of a speech.
“. . . And so, dear friends, we will have to break up the family. Yes, disperse. Go our separate ways. Forage on our own. There is insufficient food for us here. But first I wish to engage in a brief memorial tribute to our full family, which—Poppy? Is that you, Poppy?”
She stepped inside. All the mice turned to stare.
Poppy gazed at them evenly. Then she pulled the feather, Mr. Ocax’s feather, from her sash and held it aloft for all to see. “Mr. Ocax is dead,” she said solemnly. “And I can tell you that New House is right next to a big field of corn that has enough to feed us all forever and ever.”
“Ah, Poppy,” Lungwort cried triumphantly, “didn’t I say that if you listened to my advice, all would be well!”
CHAPTER 20
A New Beginning
ALMOST THIRTEEN FULL MOONS to the night since Mr. Ocax killed Ragweed, Poppy and her husband, Rye (how they met and married is another story), stood on Bannock Hill with their litter of eleven young mice. They had formed a circle around a small hazelnut tree. Looking on, beneath a full golden moon, was Ereth, the porcupine.
“This tree,” Poppy was saying to her rather restless children, “was planted, after a fashion, by my late and dear friend Ragweed.
“I can’t be sure that it was he who dropped the seed nut from which this tree has grown, but I would like to think so. Though it is rather frail now, someday this tree will be mighty. I want to affix this”—here she held up a small earring—“to a high branch, so as the tree grows, it will glitter in the sky for all of us to see.”
“Hey, does Ma love making long speeches, or does she?” whispered one of the litter to one of her brothers.
“And here on Bannock Hill,” Poppy went on, “once forbidden to us—though we, too, live in Dimwood Forest—we shall have our dancing place. It doesn’t matter how you dance, my children, slow or fast, by jumps or steps. As long as you are free to dance in the open air by the light of the moon, all will be well. Now, Ereth, if you please . . .”
Old Ereth, murmuring “Mouse muck” under his breath, gave a grunt, but began to shake and rattle his quills, until he settled into a steady beat. Then the eleven young litter mice began to dance their own way, with jiggles and jumps, and leaps and lopes. As for Poppy and Rye, they spun round and round in a stately waltz, dancing by the light of the moon and the earring, which glittered high on the hazelnut tree.
Excerpt from Poppy and Rye
CHAPTER 1
Clover and Valerian
“CLOVER! CLOVER, LOVE. You need to wake up! Something awful is happening.”
Clover, a golden mouse, was small, round, and fast asleep in a snug corner of her underground nest. Too sleepy to make sense of the words being spoken to her, she opened her silky black eyes, looked up, and gasped.
Was that Ragweed leaning over her? Ragweed was a particular favorite of her sixty-three children. He had gone east in search of adventures but had not been heard of for four months. Clover missed him terribly, and kept wishing he’d come back.
Her eyes focused. She could see more clearly now. “Valerian,” she asked, “is that you?”
Valerian was Clover’s husband. He was a long-faced, lanky, middle-aged golden mouse with shabby fur of orange hue and scruffy whiskers edged with gray. His face bore the fixed expression of being perpetually overwhelmed without knowing quite what to do about it. At the moment his tail was whipping about in great agitation.
“Is something the matter with the children?” Clover asked. She had recently given birth to a new litter—her fourth that year—and was so tired, she hadn’t ventured from the nest in more than a week.
“They’re
