His short bow and quick exit thwarted any scheme she might have improvised to keep him there. Outside in the cooling darkness, cradling me close to his chest, Nicolas turned sharply into the nearest alleyway. Stumbling on a pile of refuse, he set me down atop it, and promptly projectile-vomited all over the wall.
I’d never seen that much chunk come out of an undrunk person. Fleshing myself back to man-shape, I clasped my hands behind me and watched him. I had to curb my urge to applaud.
“Wow, Nicolas! Is that nerves, or did you eat a bad sausage for dinner?” I whistled. “I thought you couldn’t talk to women, you Foxface, you! But you were downright debonair. If the Mayor’d been a rat girl, her ears would’ve been vibrating like a tuning fork!”
Wiping his mouth on his hand, Nicolas croaked, “She is not a woman. She is a monster. I spoke to her as I speak to other monsters I have known. It is poison to speak so, Maurice—but death to do aught else. But, oh, it hurts, Maurice. It hurts to breathe the same air she breathes. It hurts to watch her courtiers—”
“Constituents,” I corrected, wondering whose face he’d seen imposed upon Ulia Gol’s. If I were a betting rat, I’d say the answer rhymed with “Airy Fleen.”
“So corrupted…Necrotic! As rotten as that poor rat-bitten babe shall be in a few days. They—these thinking people, people like you or me”—I decided not to challenge this—“they all agreed to the genocide. They agreed to make the orchestra of murdered swans, to abuse the god in the juniper tree. They traded their souls to a monster, and for what? Free music? Worse, worse—they set their children to serve her. Their babies, Maurice! Gone bad like the rest of them. Maurice, had I the tinder, I would burn Amandale to the ground!”
Nicolas was sobbing again. I sighed. Poor man. Or whatever he was.
I set my hand upon his tousled head. His hair was slick with sweat. “Aw, Nicolas. Aw, now. Don’t worry. We’ll get ’em. There’s worse ways to punish people than setting fire to their houses. Hellfowl, we did it one way today, and by nightfall tomorrow, we’ll have done another! So smile! Everything’s going steamingly!”
Twin ponds of tears brimmed, spilled, blinked up at me.
“Don’t you mean swimmingly?” Nicolas gasped, sighing down his sobs.
“I will soon, you don’t quit your bawling. Hey, Nico, come on!” I clucked my tongue. “Dry up, will ya? You’re not supposed to drown me till dawn!”
I could always make Nicolas laugh.
In a career so checkered that two old men could’ve played board games on it, I’ve come near death four times. Count ’em, four. Now if we’re talking about coming within a cat-calling or even a spitting distance from death, I’d say the number’s more like “gazillions of times,” but I don’t number ’em as “near”-death experiences till I’m counting the coronal sutures on the Reaper of Rodents’s long-toothed skull.
The first time I almost died, it was my fault. It all had to do with being thirteen and drunk on despair and voluntarily wandering into a rat-baiting arena because life isn’t worth living if a Swan Princess won’t be your girlfriend. Embarrassing.
The second time was due to a frisky rat lass named Molly. She, uh, used a little too much teeth in the, you know, act. Bled a lot. Worth it, though.
Third? Peanut butter.
Fourth—one of the elder Cobblersawl boys and his brand-new birthday knife.
But I have never been so near death as that day Nicolas drowned me in the Drukkamag River.
He’d begged me not to hear him. That morning, just before dawn, he’d said, “Maurice, Maurice. Will you not stop up your ears and go to the Maze Wood and wait this day out?”
“No, Nicolas,” said I, affronted. “What, and give a bunch of poor fixed rats the glory of dying for Dora Rose? This is my end. My story. I’ve waited my whole life for a chance like this. My Folk will write a drama of this day, and the title of that play shall be Maurice the Incomparable!”
Nicolas ducked the grand sweep of my hand. “You cannot really mean to drown, Maurice. You’ll never know how the end of your drama plays out. What if we need you again, and you are dead and useless? What if…what if she needs you?”
I clapped his back. “She never did before, Nicolas my friend. That’s why I love the girl. Oh, and after I die today, do something for me, would you? You tell Dora Rose that she really missed out on the whole cross-species experimentation thing. You just tell her that. I want her to regret me the rest of her life. I want the last verse of her swan song to be my name. Maurice the Incomparable!”
Nicolas ducked again, looking dubious and promising nothing. But I knew he would try. That’s what friends did, and he was the best.
You may wonder—if you’re not Folk, that is—how I could so cavalierly condemn thousands of my lesser cousins, not to mention my own august person, of whom I have a high (you might even say “the highest”) regard—to a watery grave. Who died and made me arbiter of a whole pestilential population’s fate? How could I stand there, stroking my whiskers, and volunteer all those lives (and mine) to meet our soggy end at the Pied Piper’s playing?
I could sum it up in one word.
Drama.
I speak for all rats when I speak for myself. We’re alike in this. We’ll do just about anything for drama. Or comedy, I guess; we’re not particular. We’re not above chewing the scenery for posterity. We must make our territorial mark (as it were) on the arts. The Swan Folk have their ballet. We rats, we have theatre. We pride ourselves on our productions. All the cities, high and low, that span this wide, wide world are our stage.
“No point putting it off,” I told Nicolas, preparing to fur down. “Who’s to say that if you don’t drown me today, a huge storm won’t come along and cause floods enough to drown me tomorrow? If that happens, I’ll have died for nothing! Can any death be more boring?”
Nicolas frowned. “The weather augur under the Hill can predict the skies up to a month in exchange for one sip of your tears. She might be able to tell you if there will be rain…”
I cut him off. “What I’m saying is, you have to seize your death by the tail. Know it. Name it. My death,” I said, “is you.”
His laugh ghosted far above me as I disappeared into my other self.
“Hurricane Nicolas,” he said. “The storm with no center.”
Comes a song too high and sweet for dull human ears. Comes a song like the sound of a young kit tickled all to giggles. Like the sharp, lustful chirps of a doe in heat. Comes a song for rats to hear, and rats alone. A song that turns the wind to silver, a wind that brings along the tantalizing smell of cream.
Excuse me, make that “lots of cream.”
A river of cream. A river that is so rich and thick and pure you could swim in it. You bet your little rat babies there’s cream aplenty. Cream for you. Cream for your cousins, for your aunts and uncles, too. There’s even cream for that ex-best buddy of yours who stole your first girlfriend along with the hunk of stinky cheese you’d saved up for your birthday.
Comes a song that sings of a river of cream. Cream enough for all.
Once I get there, ooh, baby, you betcha…I’m gonna find that saucy little doe who’s chirping so shamelessly. I’m gonna find her, and then I’m gonna frisk the ever-living frolic out of her, nipping and mounting and slipping and licking the cream from her fur. Oh, yeah. Let’s all go down to that river.