Mom was always upset about the mouse cage. The most common set of words she used were, "Amy, clean that mouse cage. It stinks!" So one could probably imagine how betrayed I felt when I walked in the kitchen to go outside to clean the mouse cage, minding my own business, breathing normally, when I catch a whiff of the most awful stench possible to conjure up. Mom was making beer!
Dad had given her a fermenting kit for their twelfth anniversary. I had been seven, and it had been very fun to go on a treasure hunt to find the kit's hiding place in the cellar. The hunt had been necessary, because the huge bottles were too large to wrap. At the time, I had thought that the only thing it was possible for me to smell was skunk. I could not have known what fermenting hops smelled like then, so the knowledge did not affect my enjoyment of the hunt.
Now I knew, and I gagged, making a squeaking noise in the back of my throat. Then I whimpered, a descending series of grating notes. After a few times of trying to get my breath back, I succeeded in getting outside to inhale safely.
I finished cleaning the cage part, took a deep breath while I was still several yards away from the door, then tried to run from there to my room.
The door stuck.
Frantically pulling at it and quickly running out of air, I wondered if our house would ever have a nice smell.
The door opened, and I dashed to the safety of my room. It was such a pity that race did not count in the Olympics. Wincing, I picked up the other piece I was going to clean that day, took another deep breath, and dashed for the back door again.
"Amy! Were there any babies in there?" I gurgled unceremoniously at my mother's curious question, tugging at the door. When it gave, I hurtled outside and flung myself into the grass. Even Slide, a semi-tame skunk I had called my pet and came to visit us while we were still living in Missouri, had smelled better. Actually, he did not smell much at all, so I suppose a better comparison would be to say that I smelled better than Mom's beer, the two times that Slide sprayed me.
I cleaned the rest of the mouse cage, then raced back to my room. There, where I took a relieved gulp of air through my nose, I realized something horrifying. I had left my door open!
I threw my blinds up and shoved the window open, slamming the door and shoving bedclothes in the crack near the floor. Then, with a sick feeling in my stomach, I turned to the mouse cage, fully expecting to see little dead bodies strewn about, and to have to conduct twelve or more funerals that day.
The wheel squeaked. I winced at the jarring tone. Mecutagito and Guilder sniffed at me, Alhana begged for a sunflower seed, which I gave her, and Ebony bit me. They were perfectly lively and normal. I sat down on my trundle, putting my face in my hands in relief, then got up to complain.
"Amy, just go to the park if it annoys you so much."
I staggered back to my room, herded the twenty mice into one part of the cage, and climbed out my window. I stood on top of the mouse graveyard for a moment in meditation, then ran across the street to the park and my favorite climbing tree. Wedging the cage between two roots, I selected five mice to climb with me. We scampered up identically. I crouched on a low branch, meditating on the botanical spirit of this great plant, then flowed to the top and looked around. I was surrounded by grey branches, green leaves, and red pepper berries. The branch I held onto was curved, red and brown, and flawed at the point where it met the trunk. As I stared into the uncompromising blue of the sky, the branch broke off. I fell ten feet before the tree caught me in an intricate layer of leaves and branches, and I immediately looked to see if I had squashed any mice. The branch fell sixty feet and landed on the ground with a thud.
Unnerved by my fall, I collected my mice and descended, to crouch at the base of the tree and wonder if she was trying to tell me something. Frozen with one hand on the great tree's bark, I tried to feel my way out to Yggdrasil, the greater tree, one which encompassed nine worlds, from there to compress into ever smaller fields of vision. From the ultimate tree, to my favorite climbing tree, to something even smaller. . . .
I carefully put my mice back into their cage and stood up, walked around the tree, and picked up the broken branch. It took two minutes to trim the smaller branches and the leaves off it, and then I flicked a few splinters off the broken end. I turned it around, grounding the unbroken end in the dirt. My hand fit nicely around it, right at a bend in the stick which supported my weight nicely when I tried to use it as a staff.
"Thank you," I whispered to the tree. "Un beau baton. A beautiful stick. No, this is not just any stick, this is my stick . . . er, sorry for implying possession . . . this is the stick. Le baton." I anglicized the pronunciation. "Lebaton. Lovely . . . Lebaton. Hello, Lebaton, my name is Amarantha Françoise Dyuaaxchs." There was no response. I shrugged and put him over my shoulder, picked up the mouse cage and tucked it under my arm, and went home.
The doors there were open to air the house out. I put my mice back into my room, then displayed Lebaton to my family. Not knowing anything but that I had found a nice new walking stick and that I had a few scratches on my face. Mom offered to trim him up for me and give him a face. She got out her wood carving tools and sawed off enough of the floored part that he wouldn't break when I put pressure on him. She started to outline a face, but his wood was too green. I never let her cut him again, so he seems to have sad eyes that run together a little and a happy smile. He is a very charming stick, my Lebaton.
Comment to encourage me to write more!