Ratscalibur Page 2

  Joey felt his little rat face with his little rat paws. Yes, yes . . . that was him. He knew he should be scared—he was a rat. But he wasn’t scared. Or maybe he was a little scared, but not nearly as scared as he would’ve thought he’d be.

  “So, I’m a rat,” he thought. “This is definitely the weirdest day of my life.”

  He looked at his rat feet: they looked a lot like his rat hands. He ran his “fingers” through his brown fur. It felt rough. He waved his tail back and forth and curled it around his body. That was fun. It was kind of nice to have a tail.

  But just because he wasn’t scared, it didn’t mean he wanted to be a rat for very long. He scurried back to the bedside table. “Gondorff!” he squeaked. “Gondorff the Gray!” No answer. If the Ragician could hear him, he wasn’t saying anything.

  Joey jumped onto the side of his blanket (he was surprised at how high he could jump) and climbed onto his bed (he was surprised at how well he could climb). Then he leaped onto the bedside table and looked into the cage.

  Gondorff looked sick. Very sick. Changing Joey into a rat must have been a lot of work. His eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see anything. And he was lying very still. Joey couldn’t tell if Gondorff was even breathing or not.

  “Gondorff,” said Joey, “are you dead? Please don’t be dead.”

  Gondorff didn’t say anything. He didn’t move at all. And suddenly Joey was scared. Very, very scared. What if he was stuck being a rat forever?

  Joey thought as hard as he could. Gondorff had said that he was the “greatest Ragician in the realm.” That meant there must be other Ragicians. Maybe one of them could change him back.

  But where would he find the other Ragicians? Where would he find the other rats?

  His little nose twitched . . . and suddenly, he could smell the scent of rats everywhere. Like a cloud of competing smells, coming from every possible direction—through the window, under the floorboards, inside the walls—all spelling R-A-T in capital letters.

  Joey shook his head. He didn’t need just any rat. He needed Uther.

  His nose twitched again. And, just like that, he knew where he had to go. No, it wasn’t that simple; he didn’t know where he had to go, but he knew how to get there. He could smell it. All the other rat scents dropped away, except for one. It smelled a little cleaner than the others. And . . . fragile.

  It was like there was an invisible fishing line leading from his nose, across the bed, out the window . . . and after that, he didn’t know. But he knew that if he followed it, at the very end he would find King Uther. And where there was Uther, he would find Ragicians. The ones who could turn him back.

  Joey’s nose had never seemed very useful to him before. But he had a feeling now that—as a rat—a nose might be the most valuable thing he owned.

  He gave a sad look at his bedroom door. He could hear Uncle Patrick snoring out in the living room. . . . He must’ve fallen asleep on the couch. Joey didn’t like the idea of leaving without saying goodbye to Mom, but he was pretty sure she’d completely freak out if a rat crawled into her bed and tried to kiss her on the cheek. Considering what she did to cockroaches that dared just to walk across her kitchen floor . . . well, Joey didn’t even want to think about what she’d do to him.

  So he was leaving Mom without saying goodbye for the first time ever. That was depressing. But it’s not like he had a lot of choices. . . .

  Anyway, the sooner he left, the sooner he’d be back.

  So Joey ran across the bed, hopped onto the windowsill, and dived out the window.

  THE STREET SHOULD have been scarier at night than it was in the daytime, but Joey actually felt more comfortable now. Maybe it was because there were fewer people, and the ones that were out didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere. But mostly, probably, it was because he was a rat.

  “Rats,” thought Joey, “must like city streets.”

  What rats definitely liked, he discovered, were smells. A lot of things that would usually gross him out were suddenly . . . interesting to him now. Someone had left a chicken bone on the street. That smelled wonderful. There was a squashed cockroach under the tire of a parked bicycle. Mmm . . . that smelled like perfume.

  There was even a dog poop on the corner that smelled like—

  But Joey made himself look away before he could finish that thought. He couldn’t get distracted now. He had to follow his nose and find a Ragician who would turn him back into himself, immediately.

  He followed the invisible string down the sidewalk. It was easy for him to stay hidden. The only light was the moon and the streetlamps, and Joey made sure to keep in the shadows. It was like he didn’t need much light to see, anyway. Just his nose.

  The trail ran around a corner, into an alley behind a building. And suddenly Joey smelled something that didn’t smell very good at all. It was coming from the pile of garbage that had scared him when he was getting Mom’s coffee. The garbage looked even scarier at night. It was only up to his knee when he was a person, but now it towered over him like a black mountain. The wheels of a broken baby carriage stuck out of the top of the pile and creaked eerily as they turned in the wind.

  But the worst part was definitely the smell. “If dog poop smells good to a rat,” thought Joey, “everything should.” But this didn’t smell good at all. It smelled like someone had shoved spicy peppers up both of Joey’s nostrils. It didn’t just smell bad, it hurt.

  Something about the smell made Joey think about the something he’d seen moving in the garbage, and he shivered. Then he remembered that he was now a rat. He was exactly the kind of thing that moved inside garbage piles. Getting freaked out by garbage and the animals that lived in it was pretty silly.

  The garbage mountain filled up most of the alley, except for a path a few inches wide. No matter how bad it smelled, if Joey was going to follow his nose, he was either going to have to climb over it or walk right next to it. “Well,” thought Joey, “I’ll just hold my breath and run as fast as I can. It’ll only take a few seconds.”

  It was a good plan, but not so easy to follow. First of all, he had to go back into the street to take a deep breath where it didn’t smell awful. Then, when he went back around the corner and tried to sprint past the garbage mountain, for some reason he couldn’t keep himself from slowing down as he got closer, even though he told his legs to run. His legs really didn’t want to run toward the pile. And even though he wasn’t breathing, he could feel the bad smell in the back of his mouth, burning its way down his throat, like he was swallowing a lit candle made out of chicken fat. But he pushed himself, past the mountain . . . slowly, slowly . . .

  The candle was in his stomach now. He could feel his insides burning up and leaking out his ears in green smoke. But that was just his imagination. He was so close to the end now. A little farther down the path. A brick wall to the left of him, the oily black garbage mountain to his right, and nothing but clean moonlight up ahead . . .

  That’s when the orange arm reached out and grabbed him. It pulled Joey, through wet reeking garbage, into the middle of the pile.

  There was no time to think, but Joey knew what was happening. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. This was a cat.

  The only thing he felt were its claws sticking into the soft flesh around his neck. The only thing he saw was its dirty yellow teeth, about to snap down on him. The only thing he smelled was death.

  The cat was going to eat him.

  And suddenly Joey knew the only thing he could do.

  Before the cat could chomp, Joey turned his head, extended his glistening white fangs, and sank them into the cat’s paw.

  The cat tasted like hot rotten peanut butter, but the bite worked. The cat yowled like a ghost and let go of him. Joey swam through the pile of coffee grounds, newspapers, and wormy banana peels—

  The cat’s claws raked acro
ss Joey’s back. He could feel his fur growing moist with blood. But the claws hadn’t snagged him. Joey leaped out of the garbage, into the alley.

  And the cat leaped out right after him. She was a huge orange tabby, with snot-covered whiskers and gnashing teeth. Her paws were dirty and scabby, her claws were mean, jagged splinters. She had one bright green eye and one dead black eye. And they were both looking right at Joey.

  Without thinking he jumped into a hole in the brick wall and scurried to the back. Would it be deep enough? Yes. There was another, deeper hole at the back, like a cement nest. Joey dropped into it gratefully and rolled himself into a ball.

  Above him, an inch away, the cat’s claws scratched desperately at the bricks. Scrabble-scrabble-scrabble. But she couldn’t reach him.

  After a long, long time, she hissed with frustration and pulled her arm out of the hole. Then he heard her slither back inside her garbage mountain, to wait for the next tiny thing that tried to get past her.

  Joey had never been so scared in his whole life. His little rat-heart was beating like a tom-tom drum.

  He’d never been this tired before, either. And before he knew it, before he could even think if it was really what he should be doing right now, he was asleep.

  “WHERE IS HE?” Mom said.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Uncle Patrick.

  The apartment was a mess. Every box was emptied, every door was open, every blanket was torn off every bed. Every place an eleven-year-old boy could possibly hide had been searched. Joey was gone.

  Mom had woken up first and tiptoed past Uncle Patrick (who was still snoring on the couch) to wake up Joey. But Joey wasn’t in his bed . . . or under his bed . . . or in his closet. He couldn’t have gotten through the bars on the window, and the chain-lock was still bolted on the front door, so he couldn’t have gotten out that way, either.

  But somehow, Joey was gone.

  That’s when Mom started to freak out. She shook Uncle Patrick awake and made him help her look. They didn’t find anything, except for the coffee maker, which had been stuffed at the bottom of a box of books in Joey’s bedroom.

  “I shouldn’t have brought him to this stupid city,” said Mom. She kicked the coffee maker across the floor, and it banged against the wall.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” said Uncle Patrick. “You took this job for Joey. Joey is going to do great here—”

  “Then where is he?” said Mom. She sounded like she was going to cry, but Mom never cried.

  Uncle Patrick hugged her and patted her back. Mom started breathing normally again. She stood up very straight and took a deep breath. She looked down at Joey’s bedside table.

  “The rat is dead,” she said, and then, like it was part of the same sentence, “I’m going to call the police.”

  She went into the living room to get her phone. Uncle Patrick looked at the hamster cage. The rat definitely wasn’t moving. Uncle Patrick tapped the bars, to see if he could wake it up.

  JOEY LIKED running on rat feet. They were tougher than human feet, so the ground didn’t hurt, but he could still feel all the little pebbles and puddles he was running through, which felt really cool.

  He had been running ever since the sun came up. The invisible trail he was following had led him down three alleys, over two wooden fences, and under one garbage dumpster. He hoped he would reach King Uther soon. He was very hungry. And Mom was probably pretty worried.

  He jumped off a roof and slid down a long rain gutter, like it was a playground slide, and when he came out, he was there. Something in his brain went ding, like the GPS on Mom’s car when it reached a destination. But he would’ve probably figured it out anyway. Because of all the rats.

  They were everywhere. There were rats pushing wheelbarrows, and there were rats rolling around, wrestling. There were rats standing behind the counters of little wooden “stores,” like shacks made out of sticks, selling bread crumbs and dried bugs and other things. There were soldier rats marching around with feathers tucked behind their ears. There were mother rats licking their little pink rat babies. There were rats laughing and yelling and crying. It was a whole village of rats. None of them paid any attention to Joey.

  The rat village was on a square piece of land where four big buildings came together but didn’t quite meet. There were a few bits of brown grass on the ground, but mostly it was dirt. The rats were going in and out of holes that went under the walls. Joey figured those must be the rats’ “houses.” There was one great big hole in the middle of a stone wall at the far side of the village, with rocks piled in front of it like steps, and fat rat soldiers standing guard. He could feel the little fishing line in his nose tugging him to that door. That must be King Uther’s palace.

  Something else tingled in his nose. Something strangely familiar and mildly unpleasant. Joey looked around . . . and jumped back when he saw a cat walking past him. But the smell wasn’t nearly as bad as the big orange cat. This cat was smaller and cleaner, and black and white. But the strangest part was the little white rat riding on top of it, like a knight or a cowboy riding a horse.

  None of the other rats seemed to be scared of the cat. A few of them yelled greetings to the white rat: “Halloo, Parsifur! Back from questing?”

  And the little rat (who wore a peanut shell on his head, like a helmet) said, “For a bit, for a bit,” and giggled like he’d said something funny.

  Joey’s nose twitched again. He smelled food, and he remembered how hungry he was. In front of each rat hole, the rats had laid out a little cloth, like a tiny picnic blanket. Now they were bringing food out of the holes and piling it in the middle of the blankets. It wasn’t stuff he would’ve called food yesterday—a dirty raisin, a wilted piece of lettuce, a piece of beef jerky with little white worms crawling in it—but it sure looked good now. Maybe if the rats were having a picnic, they would share.

  He looked around for something he could eat right away, without asking. In front of the king’s palace, someone had left a big biscuit, just lying out there. There was a white plastic spork with a broken handle sticking out of the top of the biscuit. Joey thought that was weird. Who eats a biscuit with a spork? But it didn’t look like anyone was trying to eat it now. Maybe he could have a nibble?

  His nose answered him: no. With one sniff, all the way across the square, he could tell that the biscuit was too stale to eat, hard as a rock. Too hard for even his razor sharp teeth to gnaw at. This wonderful nose was more talented than he’d thought.

  A giant fluffy brown rat with long, silky hair that trailed in the dirt was walking past the biscuit. This rat was tremendous, twice as tall as any of the others, and three times as round. It was fat. Its hair was so long you couldn’t see its feet, so it looked like it was floating just above the ground, like a furry balloon. Joey didn’t understand what he was looking at until he realized that it wasn’t a rat at all—it was a guinea pig.

  The guards in front of the palace started laughing when they saw the guinea pig. “Here to have another try, Brutilda?” But Brutilda—if that was her name—just ignored them and shook her woolly head as she passed. Joey noticed there was a ragged pink bow pinned to one of her ears.

  “You dare show your face here, varlet?” someone said, surprisingly close to Joey. Joey looked behind him and saw a black rat on top of a gray cat. The rat had a lean and mean face, with scars all over it, like he did a lot of fighting. Luckily, he wasn’t talking to Joey. He was yelling across the square, at the white rat Joey had seen before, who was still riding the black-and-white cat.

  Everyone in the village hushed and watched. The white rat laughed with a brave squeak—hee-hee-heeeeee—and pushed the peanut shell to the back of his head. “Yes, I dare show my face, Drattleby.” He gave a very big smile. His teeth flashed in the sun like little knives. “And why shouldn’t I show my face? ’Tis a far more pleasant face than yours.”

/>   “Rogue!” hissed the black rat. He pulled a popsicle stick off the back of his cat, held it straight out in front of him, and dug his rat heels into the side of his cat. “Ya!” he yelled, “Ya!” And his cat started galloping straight at the white rat.

  But the white rat wasn’t scared. If anything, his smile got bigger. He pushed his peanut shell down over his face, pulled his own Popsicle stick out, and started galloping, right at his enemy.

  And as he charged, Joey could hear him laughing behind his mask: hee-hee-hee-heeeeee!

  And then they struck.

  TWANG!

  It was over in a flash. One second, the two rats were charging at each other as fast as they could. The next, the black rat was lying on his back in the dust. The white rat was still on top of his cat, and he was pointing his Popsicle stick down so it brushed at the fallen rat’s neck. “I yield! I yield!” yelled the black rat.

  At first Joey thought the black rat was bleeding, but then he saw that the Popsicle stick was just stained red at the tip with old Popsicle juice. The white rat didn’t move. “Yielding won’t be enough this time, Drattleby. I demand more.”

  The black rat hissed. “Curse you, Parsifur. What would you have of me?”

  Parsifur, the white rat, smiled again. “You must tell me how pretty I am.”

  Drattleby made a lot of mean noises, but the white rat insisted, and after a few minutes of resistance, the black rat finally said, “You, Sir Parsifur, are the prettiest rat in the entire Low Realm.”

  “Besides King Uther, of course,” said Parsifur. “But really, Drattleby, you’re too kind.” Then Parsifur let Drattleby get back on his feet, and everyone in the village stopped watching and went back to what they were doing before.

  Joey thought that maybe he should ask this Parsifur to take him to see the king. He was a knight and everything, after all. But the white rat was already riding over to the far side of the village. Besides, Joey was hungry right now. Maybe he should have a little snack before he delivered his message to the king and got changed back into himself.