Rat - YA Fantasy

6

Chapter 6: In Which Rat Loses An Important Part of His Anatomy

"Human Rat! Human Rat!"

I opened my eyes to see a rat right next to my face. It was a different rat from the one before. I could tell somehow, even though its voice sounded exactly the same, I suddenly noticed that it had a completely different smell. "Hullo."

"The Magic Man has gone somewhere and the big man is coming to kill you!"

I sat up, dizzy, still very weak and confused. "When is he coming?" I knew what the rat was talking about, although if a human had come to me and talked this way I would have found their speech cryptic.

"Now. The girl is trying to stop him but she won't hold him off for long. Come on, hide with us." The rat motioned with its nose for me to follow it, I blinked; how was I going to hide with the rats?

I didn't understand the technicalities of it, but my plan was to hope that they had some plan. Strange as it is to leave your life in the paws of rats, I was either so far gone that it didn't matter or my gut told me this was the thing to do and I always followed my gut.

I crawled after the rat and reached the corner of the room, where a half dozen other rats waited for me. I don't know how I knew how many rats there were, I sensed them somehow although in the corner it was almost as dark as it had been during the night. "What now?" I asked.

"Be a rat," Someone answered.

"I've always been a Human Rat."

"Be more rat."

I heard footsteps overhead, and shouts. My heart sped, if I could talk to rats, maybe I could be one. "How do I become more Rat?"

The rats crowded around me, and one of them bit me, I yelped, not because it hurt but because I somehow knew that that was considered an offensive move. One of the other rats snickered at my reaction.

Footsteps banged overhead, the trapdoor was flung open flooding the large cellar with sunlight that burned its way right into my brain. The shadows hurried away from the light and I hurried back with them, pressing myself into the mercifully shadowy corner. A ladder was lowered, and the hulking shape of a huge man appeared. My heart hammered. I curled into a small ball, trembling.

The man reached the bottom and squinted into the shadows, his gaze passing right over me. "Where is he?" he roared with fury.

I twitched my whiskers and squeezed into a crack in the wall, pressing my furry body against another rat. He couldn't see me. The trapdoor was open, there was a ladder, I could get up it, I could climb out, I could get out of here.

"You fools! He's gone!" The giant spat a giant spit on the floor.

I swished my tail. Now was my chance. My paws scraped against the stone floor as I scurried past, shooting right between the man's legs, straight to the ladder. I didn't use the rungs to climb, my little claws dug right into the wood and I climbed up along the side of the ladder. At the top, I skidded across a dusty kitchen floor, the light making me ill at ease.

Out of the kitchen and into a square room. A girl that sat sewing a quilt took one look at me and screamed "Rat!" I dashed past her, as someone else ran after me holding a brick.

The sudden sunlight muddled up my brain; I forgot I had paws and went to cover my eyes with my hands. I tumbled forward and suddenly had legs, elbows, knees, hands – I was a boy again, weak with hunger. I scrambled to my feet. No one was yelling anymore, the two people in the room were too surprised and bewildered. Boy or rat, I was determined to get out of there.

But I was too slow. A shadow fell over me, I turned in time to see my killer as he raised his ax and swung it in a full arc from right to left.

Cleanly cutting off my head. It flew through the air and rolled across the floor.

"Impressive," the magician said from the doorway in a voice that was very much unimpressed. "We'd better take him to market quickly, before he turns himself into a rat again and escapes. Gorn, clean up all that blood from the floor, can't you see it's upsetting the girl?"

I blinked, feeling my neck. It was smooth and whole and properly attached on one end to my head and on the other to my body. My eyes had worked the entire time, I can't emphasise enough how strange it is to see things from the perspective of a flying head. My skull hurt in the place where it had hit the floor, but the ax didn't even leave a scratch. Moe would have gotten a kick out of seeing that; he always found magic-tricks so entertaining. Fizz would have envied me and wanted to be a Wielder as well. But I wasn't given much time to speculate over this spectacle.

The thin magician approached me and he pulled something out of his pocket. Sunlight gleamed off the silver chain; his fingers were icy cold against my skin when he clasped it round my neck. "This will keep you in place. I went especially this morning to find it for you."

I touched my finger to the chain; it didn't feel particularly strong, it was rather gentle and thin, nothing more than a silver thread, something I could easily snap with my hands. Although suddenly that thought turned feeble, and my mind became wispy and light. I felt heavy so I sat down on the floor right where I was, my hand falling from my neck to my side.

The magician smiled at me, I beamed at his smile. "Now Tark, find him a change of clothes, we can't have him go to market like that."

I looked down at my clothes and even though they were covered with blood, my own blood, I couldn't see what was wrong with that. I looked at the magician's bronze medallion. The sun gleamed off it, the rays of light breaking into a million colours. I wanted desperately to hold it.

"And have the girl bring him some of that broth and bread; he won't be able to walk in this state."

My neck itched, I scratched at the chain and some dried blood. I was fed, washed and clothed before I went to sleep. The magician watched me the whole time.