#

Dave Hugely, owner of Noah's Ark Pet Shop, always found his pulse racing just a bit when a customer walked into the store with a cardboard box. It was just like Christmas. You never knew what might be hidden in the package. Usually, it was just a dozen ugly calico kittens or a green iguana that had grown too big for its cage. But sometimes the box held real treasures—like the time a fellow brought in an albino cobra!

"Thing's eatin' three rats a week," the fellow had complained.

"Well," Dave had hemmed and hawed. "I don't know what I'd do with a big, old poison snake. Can't sell 'em legally."

"Maybe you could find a home for it . . . sort of on the side," the fellow had suggested.

"Tell you what," Dave offered. "I could take him off of your hands for you. Maybe even give you twenty bucks."

And he bought himself a twelve-foot long albino cobra.

Now, few people knew it, but Dave really ran two pet shops. There was the Noah's Ark that all of the mothers and children in the neighborhood knew and loved—home to clown fish, and lovebirds, and sweet little puppies with their slobbery tongues.

Then there was the secret pet shop in the back room where Dave kept his more creepy pets—giant piranhas from Venezuela, a mating pair of komodo dragons, Egyptian pygmy owls that were a huge hit with the Harry Potter crowd, snakehead fish out of Thailand, baby crocodiles, frilled lizards from the Outback, and a Colombian anaconda large enough to swallow a child whole—just to name a few.

That's where Dave made his big money, selling the bizarre, the dangerous, the illegal.

And so when he got his albino cobra, it had been a real treasure. He'd sold it to a doctor in China, where it was dried in the sun and ground up for love potions. A dandy like that one was worth $10,000 a pound.

So Dave got excited that morning when he saw a disreputable-looking fellow carrying a plain cardboard box.

The guy hung off to the back of the store, waited until some kids finished petting the spaniel puppies and then left the shop.

"What you got in the box?" Dave asked as soon as they were alone.

The guy's voice was husky. "I don't rightly know." With trembling hands, he began to open the box. Usually when a customer didn't know what he had, it meant that it was some off-breed cat or dog. Something rare. Dave would pretend it was a mutt, buy it for practically nothing, and then auction it off on e-Bay.

But as soon as this fellow opened the box, Dave jumped away. It wasn't a mutt. It was a monster!

"What the devil do you think it is?" the fellow asked.

Dave peered into the box and moved to the side. The customer was shaking.

"I mean, it kind of looks like a . . . uh, like a porcupine, with an octopus stuck on its face."

"Yeah," Dave agreed. "Maybe with a little badger thrown in. Got mean teeth. But look at that tail."

Dave had never seen anything like it. The creature wasn't huge—not much bigger than a cottontail rabbit. And it didn't seem to be healthy. It just lay in the box as if it were nearly dead. In fact, Dave would have thought it was a fake—like those little jackalope heads that the local taxidermists made for tourists by mounting deer antlers onto a stuffed rabbit. But this creature was definitely breathing and peering around.

Porcupine body. Octopus with tentacles for a face. A spiked tail, kind of like an otter. Webbed feet, sharp claws, and teeth. Two small eyes on the right side of its head, one above the other. But only one big eye on the left.

And the stink! By golly, Dave thought, last time I smelled anything that bad was when I accidentally left that big old can of fishing worms in the refrigerator for a month.

"Where did you get it?" Dave asked.

"Up in the mountains on the coast," the customer said. "I've been trapping coyotes up in , just below Shrew Hill. I was running my trap lines this morning, and this fellow crawled up on the side of the road. He stood on his back legs and just waved them tentacles at me, almost like he was trying to flag me down."

It was odd, and creepy. Dave had heard tales of strange creatures up by Shrew Hill.

"You know," Dave surmised. "I think I know what this is. It looks to me like a star-nosed mole, kind of. You know, one of those moles with the pink fingers on its nose, that eats worms and slugs?"

"Kind of," the customer admitted, dubiously.

"Yeah," Dave suggested, "that's what it is. Except that it's giant, and the tentacles are way too long. It must be some kind of . . . well, a mutant?"

At that, the animal changed colors almost instantly. The pink tentacles suddenly went dark red, then deep blue.

"Lots of weird animals up at Shrew Hill," the trapper said. "I've heard tales of Sasquatches."

"Now, that I'd like to see," Dave said. "You bring me a Sasquatch, and it might be worth something."

"I've seen things, too," the trapper admitted. His voice was frightened and husky, as if he didn't really want to speak. "I saw a mountain sheep up there four days. Had a head on it like a little girl. Pretty girl, with blonde hair and dark brown doe's eyes. I pulled out my pistol and was gonna shoot her, but she just kept smiling at me and munching on a raspberry bush."

Dave just stared at the trapper. He sniffed the air, to see if the fellow had been drinking. "You know," Dave offered, "maybe this is more of a half-breed. Kind of like a star-nosed mole mixed with a porcupine."

"Yeah," the fellow suggested.

"There's all kinds of strange things like this in the world," Dave said. "There were some fox hunters out in Iowa last year, shot something that looked like a rabbit with long fangs. They caught it eating a sheep."

"Yeah," the customer said. "Or like that girl in Brazil a few years back, who went swimming in the pond—"

"And had that baby that was half-frog!" Dave finished. He tried to force the image from his mind. He'd seen the pictures—a pathetic boy with webbed fingers and toes, and enormous milky eyes. They'd said that his tongue was as long as a belt.

"Yeah," the customer said. "Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

Dave made a tsking sound. "I heard that he croaked."

The customer laughed. "Well, with his parentage, it was bound to happen."

Dave had the customer in a good mood. Now all that he had to do was convince the trapper that the creature was worthless. The fellow was chewing tobacco and suddenly realized that he had to spit. He looked around the pet shop, as if Dave might have a spittoon. But when he didn't see one, he ducked his head and spat into the front pocket of his Levi shirt.

"You know," Dave said. "I have a friend who teaches at Oregon State University. He could probably do some DNA tests and figure out what this thing is." Dave liked that angle. It made it sound as if he was going to give the creature up for science, even though museums often paid big bucks for something like this.

The customer sort of held back more money. "I don't know . . ." the fellow said.

"What do you think it eats?" Dave asked. "I mean, it doesn't look too healthy."

The guy shrugged. Dave liked playing on the customer's fears, suggesting that the animal would die without his expertise. "Tell you what," Dave offered. "I'll give you . . . twenty bucks for it."

"I was thinking a couple hundred," the trapper suggested.

Dave smiled inwardly. Even if he paid a couple hundred, he ought to do well on the trade. "You know, this is a wild animal," he said. "Maybe it's even some rare species, one of a kind. We might get a big fine if we got caught with it. Tell you what, why don't you take it over to the Fish and Game Department first, and ask them? Maybe they can tell you what it is."

Fines and small prison cells. Those guys at the Fish and Game Department could bankrupt you just for looking wrong at a wild animal. "You'll give me twenty bucks?"

Dave thought for a long minute. "On second thought, I'd better not. You go ahead and keep it."

"Maybe," the customer suggested, now only wanting to escape, "you could take it to that professor of yours, and see what he says. I mean, he's a scientist, right? He's probably got some kind of permit for critters like this."

Dave didn't want to sound too eager. He backed off. "I'll tell you what. I'll put it in the back room, and give my friend a call. If he can take it off our hands, I'll let him. But if he can't, I'll give you a call, and you've gotta come pick it up right away."

"Okay," the customer said nervously. The fellow immediately changed the subject, pretending that he was interested in buying a long-horned chameleon, but Dave didn't fail to notice that he practically ran out of the store without offering his phone number.

And without it, there was no way that Dave could contact the customer to pay him for the monster even if he wanted to.

With a wide grin, Dave took the monster into the back room, looking for a cage strong enough to hold it.

Maybe, he thought, I'll just give that Chinese doctor a call. . . .

#

As the mice rested beneath some sword-tail ferns to let their breakfast digest, Ben said, "You know, I've never felt so starved. Do mice always get this hungry?"

"You know what they say," Bushmaster offered, "To keep hunger away, eat half your weight in food, each and every day."

Ben laughed. "Half my weight? That would be forty pounds when I was a human. Do you mice have any other sayings?"

"Like what?" Bushmaster asked.

"I don't know . . . like 'Be as quiet as a mouse'?"

"That's silly," Amber replied. "Mice can make quite a racket. Mother always told me to 'Be as quiet as a rock.'"

"Hmmm . . ." Ben said. "What about, 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall?'"

"That's backward," Bushmaster responded. "We voles say, 'The bigger they are, the easier it is for 'em to squish us.' And if you don't believe me, wait until you've been trampled by a herd of rampaging chipmunks!"

Amber didn't want to say it, but human truisms didn't make much sense. Rocks were much quieter than mice. And she'd sure hate to get run over by a chipmunk. She'd had always thought that humans must be smart because of all the stuff they made. But Ben sounded incredibly dumb. Maybe it was because he was only a child, she reasoned.

"Ben," Amber asked, "how old are you?"

"Ten," Ben answered.

"Really," she said. "I'm ten weeks old, too!"

"No," Ben said. "Ten years."

Amber's mind did a flip.

"Whoa!" Bushmaster said. "Ten whole years? That's like, forever! I'm only four months old."

"Wait a minute," Ben asked, "how long do mice live?"

"A year, maybe two—if you're lucky," Amber said.

"Then . . . if I'm a mouse, does that mean I'm aging as fast as a mouse?" Ben asked.

"Of course," Amber said.

"Then a mouse's week is about the same as a human's year. And a day is like . . ."

"Two months?" Bushmaster suggested.

"If you stay a mouse, you'll be fully grown in a month," Amber said. "And you'll be ready to get married. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Ben wheeled, gripping his spear tightly. "Is that what you want? You want to marry me? Is that why you want me to stay a mouse?" He trembled with rage, and his voice was thick with disgust.

"No," Amber said, hoping to calm him.

"I heard you talking to Vervane," Ben accused. "You think I'm 'terribly handsome.'"

Amber felt hurt. "I only meant it as a compliment," Amber said. "Don't you think I'm pretty?"

Ben spat an insult. "I think you look like the poster-girl for D-Con Rat Poison!"

D-Con. That must be the poison they use to kill us mice with, Amber realized. She felt flustered and hurt. "You may be terribly handsome on the outside," Amber said. "But I think you're just ugly on the inside."

"Yeah?" Ben said. "Who cares what vermin thinks?"

That was twice that Amber had heard the word vermin. It wasn't a word that she'd learned at the pet shop, so she wished that she knew the meaning, and suddenly she understood. It was a human word, from an ancient group of people called the Romans, and it meant a worm, like the worms that lived in people's guts. It was about the most disgusting thing that Ben could have called her.

"Amber's a pretty mouse," Bushmaster said. "If I were a mouse, I'd marry her in a heartbeat."

"Maybe you should," Ben said, "but I've got a better idea." He wheeled on Amber: "Turn me into a human, and I'll carry you to the pet shop. We can be there in no time."

He sounded desperate. Every minute he stayed a mouse, hours of his life slipped away.

"How do I know that you'll keep your bargain once I turn you into a human?" Amber demanded.

"If I don't," Ben said, "you can always turn me back into a mouse again."

Amber felt uneasy. Was being a mouse really so bad? She really didn't want to lose Ben. His presence comforted her. He was ten years old, after all, and filled with ancient wisdom. And he was strong. What other mouse knew how to use weapons?

There was a lot that she could learn from him. And though she hardly dared admit it even to herself, he was handsome. Dreamily handsome. Just looking at him made her stomach feel as squishy as a bowl full of meal worms. No, she wasn't going to turn him back into a human yet.

"Let's get going," Amber urged. "Every moment we waste is a moment that another mouse might get fed to a snake."

She led the way east, forging through tall grass.

Ben followed, seething. Soon they reached a place that he called "the millpond," where huge logs floated in dark-stained water, and cattail rushes grew all around. Just beyond it was a saw-mill where gray smoke issued from a tall smoke stack.

The millpond was vast, and traveling around it would have taken hours, so Ben as a bridge, dashing across. As the mice drew near the water, Amber saw a muskrat swimming silently, gathering grasses from the bank to take to her young. In the deep rushes, a mother mallard duck sat on her nest. She looked at the mice and quacked softly, warning her ducklings, "Be careful, those mice can bite."

Then the mice reached the nearest log. These were huge Douglas fir trees, cut into long sections and left in the water to cure. Walking across one would be like walking across a bridge.

Ben took a couple of bounds and leaped onto the log. But Amber and Bushmaster had climbed up a prickly blackberry vine and used it as a rope bridge to reach the log.

Once they got a firm footing on the bark, they began scampering. Amber peered into the dark water. The top of the pond held hundreds of water striders. They danced about, buoyed only by surface tension. Under the water, Amber saw snails clinging to the log, and a crayfish, and guppies darting about in the shallows. Farther out, the pond seemed to be bottomless. This was the first time that Amber had ever seen deep water.

They reached the end of the log, and Ben easily leaped across to the next one. Bushmaster jumped too and narrowly reached it, but when Amber tried to make the long jump, she hit the water with a splash.

The millpond was cold and deep.

Frantically, she tried running to the log as fast as she could, but her feet couldn't get any purchase in the water, and she went under for a moment. She arched her back, raising her snout above the water line, and found herself swimming.

Ben shouted, "Just climb up the log."

Amber tried to grab the wood with her tiny nails, but the water weighed her fur down. So she slogged, treading water, desperately looking for a way up. There was no way that she could climb the sheer end of the log. She turned and saw huge lily pads floating in the shallows.

She tried to stop for a rest, and bobbed under.

"Don't stop," Bushmaster shouted. "Swim for safety! You can do it."

But Amber was growing too tired to swim. She was just a little pet shop mouse.

So she wished herself to the nearest lily pad, and hurtled into the air like a cork popping from a bottle.

No sooner had she plopped onto the lily pad, still gasping and soggy, than an enormous fish exploded from the depths behind her. Its blood-red gills flashed in the sunlight and crystalline drops of water scattered from it. Its tail churned mightily, lifting it far out of the pond.

"Got ya." the fish roared as it rose from the depths. Then, as it realized that it had missed, it muttered, "Never mind," and plopped back into the oily water.

"That's a bass!" Ben said, eyes wide with fright. "And he looks bigger than a killer whale!"

For a moment, Amber lay on the lily pad, realizing that she'd narrowly escaped death. She looked around. There were lots of lily pads in the shallows, enough so that she could use them like stepping stones. She'd have to follow the others.

Bushmaster looked up at the skies with distrust. Amber followed his gaze. Clouds had begun to gather—puffy and white on top, seething and gray at the bottom, filling the skies. Bushmaster whispered, "There's a hawk coming toward us. We've got to get under cover!"

Bushmaster took the lead, running and jumping between logs. Amber leaped from one lily pad to the next. When she reached the fourth lily pad, another bass sprung at her, crying, "Death from below!" It barely missed her.

"Watch out!" Ben cried. "This place is infested!"

Amber ran over the lily pads, back to the logs.

Bass were everywhere, surging from the water, driving from the depths. Twice more Amber nearly got gobbled.

When the mice reached the far side of the pond, they hid, panting, among a forest of cattail rushes that rustled like paper in the wind. Overhead, the hawk finally came, but it did not spot them. They laughed in relief—all except for Ben, who had become sullen and thoughtful.

"We'd better be careful," Ben warned. "Those fish were just waiting for us. They knew we were coming, and they only tried to eat Amber. It was a trap."

"What do you mean?" Bushmaster asked. "They couldn't have known we'd be here."

"I met a spider this morning," Ben confessed, looking away, "and he warned me that we are heading into danger. Most of the spiders have a bet that we never even make it out of the pet shop alive."

Bushmaster asked, "What do the spiders know that we don't?"

"Amber has enemies," Ben said.

"No, I don't!" Amber objected. "Except for those snotty spotted mice at the pet shop, I don't have an enemy in the world."

"You're a wizardess," Ben said. "And other sorcerers want you dead." He looked as if he would say more, but he fell silent.

Amber trembled in fear. Old Barley Beard had warned her that whenever a person gained a little power, others would always try to pull her down. But who were her enemies? Who could marshal hawks and fish against her? And what dangers lay ahead?

Bushmaster said, "From now on, we'd better be extra careful."

"What else did the spider tell you?" Amber. She needed to know more.

"Nothing," Ben said, looking away.

Amber may only be ten weeks old, and didn't know much, but she knew that Ben was lying. He'd learned something important, but he didn't want to tell her.

He doesn't love me, Amber realized. That part of my dream wasn't true. And I guess he has a right to hate me, with the way I've been treating him.

Amber felt bad. She could force the truth out of Ben, she knew, like she had done last night. He'd make more sickening gagging sounds as she tore the words from him.

But she didn't want to put him through that again.

"All right," she said. "You can keep your little secret if you want to. I just hope you know, Ben, that I'm not your enemy."

"I know," Ben said with hurt in his voice. "And I don't want to be your enemy, either."

Amber let out a sigh of relief. Maybe there was some truth in her dream. She almost hoped that they could become friends.

So they forged through the tall grass as a storm gathered overhead—hop, stop, and look, six eyes peering warily. With every step, Amber tried to be as quiet as a rock.