Sometimes it is time to leave, even when you don't know where you must go.

—Rufus Flycatcher

As Ben lay sleeping in his vole hole in Oregon, back in Louisiana, Rufus Flycatcher took timid little hops as he entered a forest deep in the bayou near Black River. The moonless night gave only the thinnest starlight, and even that was swallowed in a dense fog. He summoned a will-o'-the-wisp to light his way along a trail curtained by thick, gray spider webs. The smell of mold and death was strong in this place.

Finally, Rufus reached a small hole. His heart beat wildly as he croaked, "Howdy. Anyone home?"

He almost hoped that no one would be there.

A voice so full of murderous rage that it screamed like a buzz saw chewing through a chicken coop shot out of the hole, "What do you WANT?"

In his most innocent tone, Rufus Flycatcher called sweetly. "I, uh, just realized that it has been a coon's age since I've, uh, had the pleasure of your, uh, company, uh, Lady Blackpool."

"Oh, shut yer yap," the voice screamed, and suddenly a long gray snout came out of the hole, and Rufus stared eye to eye with the speaker—a mangy ball of fur that quivered with rage, its left eye blinking incessantly from some nervous disorder. "Don't try to sweet talk me," the creature spat. Then her voice became low and dangerous. "NO ONE ever comes to visit me unless they want something . . . desperately."

"Uh, yes, ma'am," Rufus rumbled. "See, the thing is, I got a whale of a problem. There's this wizardess that just bloomed into power—right in the enemy's backyard. Now, I ain't got all the details yet, but I kind of need me someone to go out and eyeball the situation fer me. You know the usual. Save her if you can, kill her if you have to, and maybe take on an army of enemy sorcerers, to boot."

"And you want me to do it because . . . ?" Lady Blackpool demanded.

Rufus knew what she wanted him to say, but he hesitated. He needed her precisely because she was a shrew. It was early spring, still, and he'd have to send someone over the Rockies. That meant that he'd need someone who was warm blooded. He couldn't send one of the fabulous lizard wizards that roamed the swamp, or an insect. He needed a bird or a mammal. None of the birds that he knew were tough enough for this job. No, it was down to the shrew or a weasel, and Rufus suspected that a mouse would be mortified of a weasel. So it was the shrew.

"You need me because?" she demanded.

Rufus gave in. "Because you're the shrewdest shrew I ever knew," he said with a groan.

"Ah, hah, hah, hah," Lady Blackpool cackled gleefully like an old witch. "That's right! That's oh so right! And what else?"

"And because you're a Ferocious Furball of Felonious Intent, and the Scariest Sorceress of the Seven Swamps."

Lady Blackpool leaped clear from her moldy hole and danced around Rufus. "Oh, Rufus, you do know the way to a lady's heart! Did you bring me a little present, my pet? Maybe something from Pappa Gumbo?"

Pappa Gumbo was the chef at SWARM, the Small Wizard's Academy of Restorative Magic, where Rufus Flycatcher served as the Headmaster. Pappa Gumbo, an enormous cockroach, was the greasiest critter in the swamps, and just maybe the finest cook in the world. As if just remembering, Rufus pulled out some treats that he'd been carrying laboriously in his little paw. "Why, I do believe . . ."

"Candied crawdads!" Lady Blackpool cried. "With slug sauce! How did he know that I had a hankerin'?"

"Pappa Gumbo always knows," Rufus said, and it was true.

Papa Gumbo had a strange way of discerning what things you liked most. And if he approved of you, he would reward you accordingly. Then again, if he didn't like you much, you'd quickly find out when one of his meals took a wrong turn somewhere down in your stomach.

Lady Blackpool leaped on the candied crawdads and began chewing and salivating and making appreciative noises. Between mouthfuls, she talked as best she could. "So, do you just want eyeball things?"

"We don't know squat about the little lady yet," Rufus said. "Word is that she's a mouse of the snake-bait variety—straight out of a pet shop."

Lady Blackpool seemed to consider that bit of news. She stopped and gulped loudly. She fell silent, and it seemed that the night closed in, and even the curtains of cobwebs went still, as if listening. "So, she was born to be a Snake Bait, eh? They're a barbaric lot. Uncouth, ill-mannered, ignorant of even the most basic lore of mousedom . . . Why should I save her . . . ?"

The shrew fell silent and stopped twitching for a second; that alone seemed miraculous. But then her eyes began to glow a bright magenta, and she looked to the west and focused on something miles and miles away. Rufus knew that the witch was having a vision, and she'd want to use all of her concentration to see and hear.

"I see her there," Lady Blackpool cried. "I see Amber, the Thirteenth Mouse—and the forces of darkness are gathering against her!"

The Thirteenth Mouse? Rufus wondered. That was more news than his spies had been able to obtain. Did the enemy know who she was yet?

Distantly, Rufus could hear something, the growl of thunder, and he could see lightning flashing in Lady Blackpool's eyes, as if reflected in them, and he could hear the screams of death and war, and he saw strange shadows—mice in a pitched battle, carrying weapons. "A storm is coming. A storm that will sweep the world," Lady Blackpool said.

Instantly, the vision ended, and her glowing eyes faded to a dull purple with only the slightest hint of light. Lady Blackpool whispered desperately, "I've seen the future. I must go to her. Now!"

The shrew raced past Rufus, down the trail, while curtains of cobwebs stirred in her wake. She was in such a hurry, that she left her candied crawdads.

She ran to the edge to the edge of the swamp. Rufus followed in big hops, trying to keep up. Just where the ground surrendered to water, Lady Blackpool shouted, "Sea Foam, Lord of the Deep, I summon you!"

The water, dyed black by the tannins of cypress bark, began to swirl in a wide vortex, and waves lapped against the shore. An alligator made burping noises and dove for cover. The water whirled faster and faster, like a whirlpool, only in reverse, for instead of sinking down the water bubbled above the surface, rising in a column.

Until suddenly from out of the black water, an enormous sea turtle sprang up, flopping into the air.

He arced up into the trees, then dropped to the ground on his back, and lay there flapping his flippers in shock, trying to turn over.

He began to sputter, "What's? What's going on?"

"No time for chitchat," Lady Blackpool said. "I need help, and you owe me."

Sea Foam gulped, and looked around with wide eyes.

"He owes you?" Rufus asked.

Lady Blackpool ignored the question, and Rufus suspected that he knew why. Though Lady Blackpool screamed and ranted and did much to nurture the impression that she was the wickedest witch in the swamps, she had a good heart, and had probably done something to help the sea turtle at one time or another. She would just never confess to it, of course.

So instead she said in a venomous tone, "I need a ride, Sea Foam, in an armored vehicle. And you're it."

The turtle gulped and flapped his flippers helplessly. "I'll give you a swim wherever you want to go—if you'll just help flip me over."
Lady Blackpool went to the huge sea turtle, which had to weigh three hundred pounds, and flicked him with a finger of her left paw. The turtle whirled in the air and fell— splat on the ground. He looked about, panting, with a dazed expression.

Lady Blackpool hopped into his shell, just in the crook of his neck, and stood there muttering an incantation.

"Where to?" the poor turtle begged.

"That way!" Lady Blackpool said in a determined voice. "We're going out west. Where, I don't know, but I'll steer you true when we near the spot. Now fly!"

"Fly?" Sea Foam said. "But I can't—"

"We've got a couple of thousand miles to go, with lots of crotchety weather in-between and no time to get there," Lady Blackpool shouted.

"But," Sir Sea Foam began to say. Before he could muster another word, fire and hot gases came whooshing out of his tail hole, nearly cooking poor Rufus.

The bullfrog watched the turtle shoot into the air like a rocket, and immediately began to spin out of control. Sea Foam rose like a cannonball, screaming in fear as he spiraled toward oblivion.

In the distance, Rufus could hear Lady Blackpool shouting, "Steer, dang it! Wave those flippers!"

Sea held his flippers out experimentally, and the turtle seemed to stop his wild spin.

In seconds, they were gone from sight, far out over the swamp.

Rufus Flycatcher just stared at them with big bull-frog eyes, his mouth having fallen wide open. Smoke and steam curled up from the ground beside him.

"Good-bye, Lady Blackpool," he croaked, "and vaya con Dios. You're a good-hearted woman." That last bit, he said softly, not wanting her to hear.

But it was true. She was the only shrew that he knew who would gleefully ride a flaming tortoise through a lightning storm to do battle with an evil army—all for a couple of Papa Gumbo's candied crawdads.

What a woman, he mused. What a woman!