"Who's there?" an old critter called gruffly. He sounded angry. Very angry.

He had a grizzled face, bright black eyes, and long whiskers, much like Amber's.

"Just a couple of lost mice," Ben answered, "searching for a place to stay the night."

"Keep right there until I can sniff you!" the old critter said.

Amber heard the small pad of the fellow's feet as he squeezed through the burrow. He was a fat mouse, Amber decided. He sniffed at Ben, and Amber caught a wild scent—clean fur and meadows.

"Phew," the creature said. "Dirty mice! Mice in our burrow. Well, we're gentlefolk. Besides, it wasn't always our burrow. Mice dug it in the first place. My name's Vervane. Come along."

Vervane spun with a bit of a grunt—a real trick in the narrow tunnel, then padded away.

Amber could smell him better now, and felt sure that Vervane wasn't a mouse after all. Besides, his tail was way too short.

They moved swiftly to a large chamber, where fungus clung to the pine roots that dangled from the roof. Ben's light showed that nice dry leaves, grass stalks, and hair littered the floor. The old critter looked grizzled. Fur covered most of his ears.

A dozen of his kin nestled in the corners of the chamber, including a mother who lay on her side, nursing some young kittens. All of the strange critters were like Vervane—nasty and grizzled, with short, unsightly tails.

One young girl shouted, "Grandpa, Grandpa, who's here?"

"Mice," Vervane said with disdain. "A dirty pair of them. Queer folk, carrying a star."

"Mice!" the girl asked. Her small dark eyes grew wide, and she gazed at Amber and Ben with a mixture of wonder and suspicion. She bounded forward, gaped in awe at the light that Ben held. "Hi. My name is Meadowsweet. Is it true that you eat grubs?"

"Of course not—" Ben started to say, but Amber burst in, "I've never eaten a bug myself, but I hear that they can be quite tasty."

Ben looked at Amber and his jaw dropped in surprise. The human boy apparently didn't understand much about mice at all.

"Aren't you mice?" Ben asked the folks in the burrow, for they seemed very mouse-like.

"Of course not," Meadowsweet said. "We're the peaceful folk of the meadows and woods—the voles. We only eat plants, not flesh."

Meadowsweet ran around Ben and Amber in a circle, and three others her size joined in. They began to sing,

"In grain fields in summer, among berries and vines,

The peaceful folk of the field you will find,

Cutting down wheat stalks, gathering oats,

Picking up pine nuts and preening their coats.

Then they carry their food, down to their holes.

They are the voles, peace-loving voles."

The girls ended the song by dropping to their backs and wriggling their paws in the air as they giggled.

Amber smiled. Every moment since Ben had brought her to his home had been terrifying. But for the first time all night, she felt safe, here in this cozy burrow, among the friendly voles.

"Come on!" the young ones shouted. "You have a song, don't you?" "Sing us your song!"

Ben shrugged and hung his head, too embarrassed to sing. "I don't have one."

"Don't you at least have a song to tell us what you are?" old Vervane demanded.

"I—I don't need a song," Ben said. "I'm a human!"

The voles gaped in astonishment. The glowing stone alone was miraculous, but this was too much.

Vervane's mouth dropped. "Say again?"

"I'm human," Ben affirmed.

The mother vole whispered to Vervane, "Maybe he got kicked in the head by a bullfrog or something . . ."

"It's true!" Amber said. "He is human, or he was, until just a while ago. Then something happened, and he turned into a mouse."

Old Vervane eyed them suspiciously, as if he didn't much like mice, and trusted them even less. "What happened?"

Ben pointed at Amber with one finger of his paw. "It's her fault! She turned me into a mouse." Tears of rage formed in his eyes, and Ben began shaking, as if eager to be able to tell on Amber.

The voles drew back in fear, eyes growing wide, as their suspicion turned to Amber.

"Is this so?" The old vole's eyes narrowed. Amber nodded slightly. "Are you a good wizardess?" Vervane asked in a kindly tone, then sneered, "or a naughty one?"

"I, I don't know," Amber said, feeling deep inside her, looking for an answer. "I've never done magic before. It just sort of happened."

"I don't know much," Vervane said, voice dripping with accusation, "But I've been around for a couple of years, and I can tell you this: transmogrification spells don't just happen. That's high enchantment!"

The mother vole offered, "She's young. She doesn't look like a dark mage. She's just a scared little mouse."

"That's the problem!" Vervane groused. "She's a mouse. A vicious, bug-gobbling mouse. I don't trust 'em. Especially pocket mice! They look all big-eyed and innocent—right to the second that they snatch your young! I haven't seen a mouse around here in months, and I'm not happy about these ones."

"It's not as if she were a shrew," the mother said. "And she's not a pocket mouse or anything quite so dangerous. She's a . . . a house mouse."

"Yes," Vervane agreed, "a lazy vermin that lives off human scraps, gnawing through walls and stealing from the kitchen. I don't like their kind, and I don't want them here."

Amber felt astonished to learn she and her folk had such a foul reputation among voles. There was a tense, embarrassing silence, and old Vervane looked as if he might bite her, when suddenly a handsome young vole darted from the shadows, and addressed Ben. "Wait a minute. So you're the one, aren't you?"

"The one?"

"The boy who lives in the house next to Domino? You're the boy who saved me, last summer. Domino had me in her claws when you threw a pinecone and drove her away."

Ben gulped. He seemed to have forgotten about that. "Yeah, that was me," he said proudly.

"Thank you," the vole said, eyes shining with gratitude. "My name is Bushmaster. I'm forever in your debt."

Bushmaster turned to the younger voles, and in a voice choked with emotion said, "These are my friends. Get them some food. They must be hungry."

The young voles went scampering through the burrow as Bushmaster led Ben and Amber to a cozy corner.

But Amber felt somehow betrayed. Why had Ben saved a strange vole but hadn't saved her? It didn't make any sense. She suspected that it wasn't that he liked her or hated her, it was just that she was beneath his notice. The life of a mouse or a vole didn't mean much to him.

Soon the young voles reappeared carrying in their mouths loads of pine nuts; bits of blackberry jerky; dried flowers of jasmine, clover, and buttercup; and pieces of grass and mushrooms. They set the food on a dry leaf in front of Ben and Amber until they had a large pile heaped before them.

Ben pawed through the food, and Amber did too. It was strange and exotic stuff after a life-time of eating mouse pellets. Ben declared, "This is almost as good as the trail mix my mom buys at 7-11!"

The voles all laughed.

Amber ignored the bulbs of alfalfa root, but found that she liked the honeyed taste of clover and jasmine, along with the pine nuts and dried berries.

Soon she was full.

"A story," a young one called. "Tell us a story, Grandpa! Or better yet, sing us a song!"

Old Vervane stammered with embarrassment. "No, no. Not in front of our guests. Besides you've heard all of my stories and songs." He peered pointedly at Ben. "Perhaps you have a story or a song—something human?"

Ben thought a moment, and smiled. "I know a song—" he said. "A song about mice." He began singing softly. Amber recognized the tune from the pet shop, for the Feeder had often hummed it when she brought the mouse pellets. But this was the first time that she understood the words. Ben sang:

"Three blind mice, three blind mice.

See how they run, see how they run.

They ran away from the farmer's wife,

She cut off their tails with a butcher's knife,

Have you ever seen such a sight in your life—

As three blind mice? Three blind mice."

Amber felt shocked to the marrow. It was a gleeful tune about an agrarian's spouse who assaulted visually impaired rodents and performed acts of mayhem upon their tails!

As he sang, the voles began shivering, backing away in terror. But Ben never noticed. Instead, he sang lightly, as if it were a joke.

The song was a cruel reminder that Ben wasn't really a mouse at all. He was a human who had tried to kill Amber.

"Is that what humans do to mice?" she demanded when the song was done. Ben looked away guiltily. "I mean . . . back in the Pet Shop, I . . . we thought that you humans 'Embraced' mice. We thought you'd take us home, feed us, and love us. We thought that we meant something to you!"

The voles watched in silent shock.

"We don't chop off their tails. Honest!" Ben said. His whiskers twitched nervously.

Quick as the thought flashed through her mind, Amber remembered her mother, and old Barley Beard, and all of the rest of the Pet Shop mice that the humans had Embraced. Where had they gone?

Amber began to shake from more than the frigid night air. She demanded, "Ben, what do you humans do with mice?"

Ben ducked, looked away. "I don't know."

"What happened to my mother, my family, my friends?" Amber pressed. She wanted to know, regardless of how much it hurt, so she Wished that Ben would tell her the truth.

Ben began to shake and struggle and gasp for breath. He tried to turn away, but Amber's spell forced the words out of him. In a strangled voice he confessed, "I don't know for sure. But when I bought you, you were cheap. I thought it was just because you weren't as pretty as the spotted mice. But there was a sign on your cage, a sign that said 'Feeder Mice.' And now I know: you were raised to be food for snakes and lizards."

Amber let out a cry. Not just for her mother and family, but for all mice, through all time, that had been raised as feeder mice, and born to the cage.

"All of them?" Amber said. "All of them are eaten? You humans don't love any of us? You take us home?"

Ben said, "Mostly, we kill mice," Ben admitted. "We put out traps for them, or poison." Then by way of apology, he added, "But sometimes we keep mice as pets."

"Just the colored mice," Amber realized. "The expensive ones in the fancy cages, the ones that get to play on exercise wheels and eat the tastiest foods."

Ben didn't deny it.

"I wanted to keep you," Ben said. "I wanted you for a friend." There was a long silence, during which Amber could not speak. A friend? How could they be friends?

Tears flowed freely from her eyes.

Her life as a free mouse had just begun, but she felt as if it were the end of the world.

"I have to go back," Amber said. "I have to go back to the pet shop, and free them." She didn't know where to go. The world was such a strange and dangerous place.

Ben looked at her for a long time, shaking. "It's a long way to the pet shop, and the trip would be dangerous for a mouse."

"You had better come with me," Amber said. "If you don't, I'll, I'll turn you into a, a—"

"What? A slug?" Ben asked, as if nothing that she did to him could hurt him any more than she already had.