Free Switchers by Kate Thompson

plenty for everyone and the place seemed to have a constant turnover of rodent customers who came and went in a leisurely fashion. Stuck Six Days in a Gutter Pipe wrinkled his nose suavely at Tess as he left, but the effect was slightly spoiled by the chicken leg in his mouth that he was taking home for the children.
    When Tess had eaten all she could, she joined Kevin and One Black Whisker in a quiet corner where they were chatting with two unknown rats.
    ‘Guides,’ Kevin told her. ‘Long Nose, One Black Whisker curled up asleep in the couch on the waste ground. Little old woman sitting beside a fire, many streets. Long Nose and One Black Whisker confused, lost.’
    ‘Many street, huh?’ said Tess. ‘Boy, girl walking, riding on a bus. Owls, pigeons flying. Us rats going slowly. Us rats very tired. Us rats sleeping.’
    ‘Boy, girl scratching their heads,’ said Kevin. ‘Looking at maps, shrugging their shoulders.’
    ‘Us rats swimming in sewers, us rats in slimy black drainpipes.’
    ‘Girl going into her house, huh?’ Kevin’s black eyes were cold and mistrustful and Tess knew her own must have looked the same. But he was right. There was no turning back now, and no way of knowing where to go without the guidance of the city rats. She showed Kevin her teeth for spite, but a few minutes later they were back on the rat highways with their new guides.

CHAPTER NINE
    F OR THREE MORE NIGHTS Tess and Kevin travelled through the rats’ city underground, changing guides twice more along the way. They ate from rubbish bins knocked over by dogs, from shop store-rooms and from the shelves of poorly guarded kitchens. When they reached the outskirts of the city they began to travel above the ground, and they stopped many times along the way in urban gardens to feed on fresh vegetables and tasty scraps from compost heaps. Rats, it seemed, were never short of food.
    On the fourth day, dawn found them in one of the most affluent areas of the country. Green fields and trees surrounded impressive houses, both old and new, owned by those people who could afford the luxury of having the best of both worlds. Tess was aware that her parents had checked out areas like this before they settled on the house beside the park. The air was so fresh and the country smells so sweet that she found herself regretting their choice. What was puzzling her, though, was that the sort of area they were in didn’t fit at all with the picture the rats had given her of the little old lady who was waiting beside the fire.
    ‘Little old lady, huh?’ she said to their latest guide. Her name was Nose Broken by a Mousetrap, and it was easy to see why.
    ‘Yep, yep, little old lady,’ she said, and darted through a hedge into a field of lush grass.
    It was not snowing now, but there had been several light snowfalls over the last few days, and because of the relentless cold, whatever snow had settled had remained. It stuck to the rats now as they dislodged it from the grass, and melted in dark patches on their glossy coats. They stayed close in to the hedge to avoid the eyes of dogs or hawks or passersby, and soon they crossed into a second meadow, and then a third. A road ran parallel to their route, between the meadows and the widely spaced houses on the opposite side, and the occasional car passed along it, driving slowly because of the icy conditions. After a while, Tess realised by the change in sound that the hedge they were following was no longer beside the road but running away from it and out into the open country.
    ‘Road, huh?’ she said. ‘Little old lady house, huh?’
    ‘Yep, yep,’ said Nose Broken by a Mousetrap, and she led the way through the twisted roots of the hedge. They stopped on the other side. They were on the edge of a green track with high brambly hedges on each side. Blackthorn and ash trees grew overhead so as to make it almost a tunnel. It was a track for people and animals only, far too narrow for a