The grass felt very un-dreamlike to Mouse; it was damp and cold beneath his bare feet. And there was definitely something quite substantial about the low shrub which grabbed him by the ankle and brought him crashing to the ground. That should wake me up, he told himself. Then he thought how idiotic that was. If I’m dreaming, I haven’t really tripped; I’ve just dreamed I’ve tripped. The blood that trickled from his cut ankle looked real, though. That is, it looked black, which is how he thought blood should look in the monochromatic moonlight. But he didn’t have time to puzzle over it now.
“Mrs. Rochester! Beat it!” he called out to his neighbors’ cat as he picked himself up. Mrs. Rochester was towering over the tiny man who Mouse had seen being hit by the falling lantern. Pinning his jacket to the ground with a sharp claw, the cat viewed him first from one side, then the other, as the little fellow lay huddled in terror.
“Leave him alone,” Mouse ordered sharply.
“Whreoww?” said Mrs. Rochester.
“Yes, now, you big bully,” said Mouse sternly. Whimpering noises were coming from her captive, who was trying to pull himself free of the daintily placed claw that held his jacket.
“She won’t hurt you,” Mouse consoled him. To the cat he said, “That’s enough, Mrs. Rochester.” Mrs. Rochester thought about it for a moment, then unhooked her claw. The little fellow staggered backward and fell flat at Mouse’s feet. The cat swaggered off, her tail twitching imperiously in the air.
Mouse picked up the little man’s hat, a woolen toque that could easily double as an egg-cozy. He held it out and watched the man clamber to his feet and begin to brush at himself in an attempt to remove the dirt and regain his dignity. The little fellow didn’t come much higher than Mouse’s knee. He wore dark trousers that buckled just below his knees over long stockings, and on his feet were stout leather shoes. A loose-fitting brown jacket over a dark shirt covered the upper part of his body. His large mustache with its curled-up ends was quivering rapidly, but whether from fear or indignation, Mouse couldn’t tell.
With a rapid dart, the little man snatched his hat from Mouse’s hand and ran. Mouse could hear what sounded like other little people running too. “Don’t be afraid,” he called out. “I won’t harm you.”
The sounds of escape stopped. Mouse heard whispering and, after a pause, the little man came back and gingerly approached him. “That was rude of me,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I forgot to thank you. And I’m not afraid, certainly not, just cautious. I have seen humans before. We don’t usually get this close, of course. And we certainly don’t let them see us. We’ve learned that humans can be unpredictable. Especially when they haven’t been properly trained. You have been, haven’t you? Trained?”
“Trained?” said Mouse. “You don’t train people. Animals are sometimes trained.”
“Well I think a little training might do you all a lot of good. I suspect the only thing wrong with that animal who attacked me is that it picked up some bad habits from humans.”
“Mrs. Rochester wouldn’t have harmed you,” said Mouse. “At least, I don’t think so. I think she was just being curious.”
“I’ll bet she was curious.” The little man jammed his toque back on his head. “Curious as to what I tasted like. And if slashing at me with those razor-sharp hooks isn’t an attack, I don’t know what is. But I forget my manners. Thank you very much for saving my life. My name is Qwolsh. Sole!”
The little man fell backward, only it wasn’t so much a fall as a leap onto his hands, which he’d stretched out behind him. He kicked his feet in Mouse’s direction, first one and then the other, before springing upright again. Mouse watched openmouthed. It was like watching a very energetic Russian folk dance. He could sense the other lantern bearers coming closer, but couldn’t take his eyes off the little man called Qwolsh, who was standing again, hands on hips, gazing up at him. Mouse continued to stare. “Wh…wh…wh…what did you just do?” He managed to get the words out at last, his voice rising at the end of the sentence in astonishment.
“I thanked you for saving my life,” replied Qwolsh. “And now we must be off. Just forget you ever saw us. Which won’t be difficult because you’ll never see us again. Farewell.” Qwolsh saluted and he and the others began to move away, but Mouse took a step after them. This was his dream, after all, and he was going to keep control of it.
“Wait, wait,” he said. “Why did you wave your feet in the air like that?”
Qwolsh stopped and said, “I soled you. Only being polite. Good manners after all.”
This time Mouse made sure that his voice stayed steady. “Good manners?” he said, bending down for a better look. “I don’t understand.”
“The understanding of manners he doesn’t have, at any rate. That, for you, is humans.” The odd sentences were spoken in a low snuffly voice and sounded so close that a startled Mouse straightened up, stepped back, tripped over a small lantern and fell flat on his back. Close to his feet a voice said, “Ouch!”
Sounding as if its owner had a very bad head cold, the snuffly voice went on. “There you go, you yourself did it, though very clumsy you are.”
“What did I do?” spluttered Mouse.
“Showed me your sole, you did. Now we’ve soled, you and I,” said Qwolsh.
“Sold you what? I mean, showed you what?” Mouse felt this conversation was getting away from him, and he wasn’t used to that; he was good at talking and rarely lost a debate at school. He got up and stood with Qwolsh in the glow of the circle of small lanterns.
“The soles of your feet,” snuffled the head cold. “We show each other the soles of our feet in greeting. That’s sole-ing.”
“But that’s silly,” said Mouse.
“There is nothing silly about it,” said Qwolsh.
“Most certainly not.” A chorus of agreement went up from the circle of lanterns, and for the first time Mouse took a good look around him—and felt a moment’s misgiving. His headlong rush out into the dark garden was uncharacteristic; he was more inclined to think things through very carefully before acting. And now he found himself in the middle of a strange group made up of several tiny people and numerous small animals. There was a mole with a pair of glasses perched on the end of its snout. A groundhog was holding a lantern between its jaws. Two mice held a miniature picnic basket between them. All of them stared at him with such an unafraid and curious intensity that Mouse felt a little uneasy.
He swallowed and continued. “Well, it’s silly because…because…because you use all that energy just greeting each other, that’s why. You could just shake hands, couldn’t you?”
“Shake hands!” guffawed Qwolsh. “Now that’s silly. What would we want to shake hands for?” He held both hands up and shook them from the wrist as though they were wet.
The snuffling voice, which Mouse now realized belonged to the mole, said, “And what about us who don’t have hands, then?” The animal was standing on one hind paw, clutching a pair of eyeglasses in another. At the same time he was scratching both sides of his neck with his front paws. “What about us, then?”
Mouse was confused. Paws couldn’t be called hands, could they? “What I mean is…I didn’t think…Most people, that is…” He stammered himself into silence.
A strong female voice called out. “Stop teasing the lad.” Mouse recognized it as the voice he’d heard from his bedroom. The owner of this voice was the same size and dressed in similar fashion to Qwolsh; she had a satchel slung across her shoulder, and under her arm she carried a clipboard. “Our footing is very important where we live, below ground,” she continued. “We show our surefootedness by touching toes.” She gestured with the clipboard. “Qwolsh here was showing off a little by giving you a very formal greeting. Usually we just lift the other foot, like this, and touch the toes together.” She lifted her foot in the air as she spoke. “Do it with me. I’m Alkus, by the way. Lift your other foot.”
“What do you mean, my other foot? I haven’t lifted either one yet!”
“Yes, I can see that. Lift the other one now.”
“Look,” said Mouse, politely but firmly, “how can I lift the other foot when I haven’t lifted the first foot?”
Alkus gave him a puzzled stare. “The other foot is the first foot you lift.”
Mouse was getting just a little bit exasperated. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? Just because I’m…” He stopped. He had been about to say “small”—but of course he wasn’t small. Not here. Not now. Not compared to these folk. With a rush of pleasure he became aware that, for maybe the first time in his life, he was the biggest one in the group.
The mole’s voice snuffled, “I don’t believe the human knows his heart side from his other side; that’s what I think.” He nodded his head with such conviction that his glasses fell from the end of his snout.
“Oh, deary me,” he said. “I’ve dropped my spectacles. Now where are my…?” He sat back on his haunches and began to pat the front of the many-pocketed, sleeveless jacket he wore. He took a pair of glasses from one of the pockets only to put them back again, saying, “No good, reading spectacles.” Then he took another pair from one of the other pockets. “No good, writing spectacles,” he said as he put these back and found another pair in another pocket. “No good, working spectacles.” He produced another pair. “No good, relaxing spectacles. Oh, deary, deary me. Ah! Here we are. Looking-for-spectacles spectacles.” Placing these across his long snout, he began to search through the grass.