Rescue!

[Stephen Whiteside]

Rescue!

© Stephen Whiteside 15.10.2011

Horatio froze. Did he hear a voice, or did he just imagine it? He waited. It came again. A high-pitched squeak.

Over here. I’m over here.

Horatio turned his weary head. He couldn’t see anything. Everything seemed to be moving. Larger. Smaller. Larger. He took a few wary steps in the direction of the sound and there, at the bottom of a steep embankment, unless he was very much mistaken, stood a mouse.

A mouse! Mice did not help rats. That much he knew. Mice lived and died at the whim of rats. The best mouse could be trained to pull a cart. The worst stole food from your larder. Every other mouse was somewhere in between these two positions. Mice were not friends. They could not be trusted. They were nothing. Mice were not even people.

Horatio had half a mind to ignore the voice, move away, continue his shambling stumbling desperate way along the bank of the creek. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And there was something very inviting, very pleasant about that voice. Perhaps he wasn’t a mouse at all. Perhaps he was mistaken. It needed to be explored further.

He continued in the direction of the high-pitched squeak. A little mouse came quickly into view.

Quick. Quick. Before somebody spots us. Hurry up.

It was getting much lighter now. The birds were starting to sing. There had been a lull in the forest as the creatures of the night had retired again, but now the creatures of the day were beginning to stir once more.

Horatio could see him clearly now. In a little hole at the bottom of the embankment, surrounded by a thick carpet of leaves.

Gosh, you look exhausted!

Yes, I’ve been on the move now since early yesterday…

That was as far as he got.