Free Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt

exactly how many of them there are. And the biggest one? It’s almost as bright as the sun.”
    “I know,” Fredle said.
    “And don’t dawdle on the road,” Bardo told him as they scrambled across the rough dirt strip.
    Road
, Fredle repeated to himself.
    “One of those machines can run right over you on the road,” Bardo warned him. “Squoosh you flat. Went you before you know it.”
    At the compost, Fredle chewed some green, leafy food (celery, or lettuce, maybe chard—Bardo admitted that he didn’t know for sure, and
that
Fredle did believe) while continuing to ask questions about the names of things. Only once did Bardo mention chickens (“You never get chicken or any meator bones in the compost”), but he was happy to talk about the snakes in the woodshed (“Black, they’re black and real long”). Bardo reminded Fredle that the snakes were dangerous. “You don’t want to get anywhere close to those snakes, or that woodshed. They’re worse than any owl or raccoon.”
    Owls, Fredle knew by then, were birds that hunted by night, swooping down out of the sky to seize mice in their sharp talons and fly off with them. Raccoons, however, sounded more like dogs to him, and he knew that dogs didn’t hunt mice. “What’s so bad about raccoons?” he asked.
    Bardo was glad to tell him. “There’s nothing worse than a raccoon, and they run in packs, a lot of them at once. They’re a natural enemy, every mouse knows that. They get into everything, hunt by night, take whatever they want out of the garden—there’s nothing good about a raccoon. Dirty, quarrelsome, untrustworthy. Mice steer clear of them. There’s nothing they won’t eat. Chickens, mice, lettuce—rats, too, for all I know. The barn cats don’t dare bother them. I
have
heard that the dogs can chase them off, but I’ve never seen it, myself.”
    “I don’t see what’s so bad about all that,” Fredle insisted.
    “What does a house mouse know except how to lie around and get fat? That’s why you have a go-between,” Bardo reminded him.
    “Hunh,” Fredle answered, and they parted company at the garden gate.
    “I’ll watch you safe back to the garbage cans,” Bardo offered, as if he cared about the house mouse’s safety.
    Fredle thanked him, but he knew better; he could see thechicken pen and what must be the woodshed beyond. However, since he didn’t want Bardo to know how much he knew, Fredle scurried off across the grass.
    When he entered the dim light of his own territory, he knew immediately that something wasn’t right. He wondered: Who? What? Was he in danger? Pretending to have sensed nothing odd, he listened to the faint, eager breathing and located his visitor, over in a corner where the lattice wall met the steps. Fredle positioned himself with his back to the hard, solid rear wall. He was pretty sure it was another mouse. What would another mouse want with him? Was he in danger?
    Fredle had never fought. Mice didn’t fight. Of course, he had wrestled around with his brothers and sisters the way mouselets always do, but that wasn’t real. But if this was some stranger up to no good, Fredle was ready for a fight.
    He jumped up, without warning, leapt from his position by the wall to land on all four feet facing the visitor. Then he walked slowly—threateningly—toward the other mouse.
    It said, “How did you know I was here?” and wasn’t a bit afraid.
    He thought he recognized the voice and decided to surprise her. “Hello, Neldo.”
    “How do you—Bardo told you about me, didn’t he? What did he tell you about me?” She came up closer to Fredle, a field mouse even smaller and scrawnier than her brother, but just as brown. “It’s probably true what he said, but not the way he makes it sound. I make them nervous,” she explained, and then fell silent, staring at Fredle.
    Before Fredle could say anything, however, before he couldask her what she was doing there, why she made them nervous,