The keeper of the non-functioning clocktower was a mouse named Picky Mouse. Picky was a moderate-sized mouse. He wore green pants and white gloves. He brought out cushions for his guests, whom he seated in polished wooden chairs arranged around a kitchen table covered in a sweet yellow-and-white gingham tablecloth. Not the same tablecloth Fred and her mom shared at home, but similar. Picky Mouse took Fred’s fluffy bunny slippers from her feet, sponged off the reddish mud, and set them to dry by the fireplace in a back room. Then he put on a little apron and prepared and served hot chocolate with miniature colored marshmallows.
“For someone with an Unwelcoming Mat at his door, you’re pretty nice,” said Fred. She said this even though, personally, she didn’t like marshmallows.
Downer and Gogo murmured agreement. And they did like marshmallows.
The kind words must have touched Picky Mouse’s heart, for after a few spoonfuls of cocoa, and learning that these friends were headed to the Rat, Picky Mouse began to open up:
“I worked for the Rat for many years. I might still work for the Rat. We always got along well. My job used to be keeping this clocktower working. You may have noticed outside that it’s not working anymore. The Rat was very good with things like clocks, as you may know. But when The Essential and Very Good and No One Can Disagree with Rat Rule 79 was passed I didn’t know what to do. All the Rat told me was that time needed to stop. No more time, she said in a huff. It’s over! I was afraid to ask for clarification; she was very difficult at the time of that Rule, as you may recall; many of us thought it was almost as if she weren’t herself. But what could we do? We had sworn our devotion, and she had done so much for us.”
“That’s true,” Downer said.
“Anyhow, that was when it became my job to keep the clocktower not working. At least I thought that was my job. I was guessing. One of my friends had the courage to ask, very politely, Excuse me, I’m not quite sure I follow? At which the Rat shouted, ‘I want it abolished. Now!’
“Of course, we were too afraid to mention that abolishing time could be a bit tricky, or that to abolish it ‘now’ was to say ‘at this time,’ which doesn’t make much sense if you’ve just erased the difference between the present, the past, and the future. And it did turn out to be tricky. Time is valuable, precious—so precious that people steal it. And now suddenly time was worthless. Worse—it was illegal to have time on your hands or to keep time in any way. So there was a total collapse of the time market. Not only did no one want to steal time anymore, no one wanted to buy it either. Everyone with time on their hands wanted to sell it but couldn’t. Your time is your own, I would tell people who came to me asking for advice. But of course they were worried they would get in trouble for having all that time to spend. So the only thing we could do was waste our time. That was the worst. Have you ever tried to waste your time—waste all of it? It’s very, very difficult. Something ends up being worthwhile, it turns out the time hasn’t been wasted at all, and then you have to start all over again. But since she was the Rat Queen, we all tried our best. For my part, I decided that I would no longer give anyone the time of day.”
Our friends had been listening to Picky Mouse’s story closely and sympathetically.
Picky Mouse added, “I’m sorry I was rude at the door. As you can see, you caught me at a bad time.” He sipped his cocoa.
“Your story gets me so angry—” Gogo said, raising her fists.
“And makes me so sad—” Downer said, wiping his eye.
“Do you still like your work?” Fred asked.
“I wouldn’t say I’m having the time of my life,” Picky Mouse said. “But, yes, I do still like being the timekeeper. But I’m not actually keeping time, of course, because that would be illegal. I’ve completely lost track of time. And that’s one reason I don’t like to let folks in here, because they’ll see”—he gestured around the old-fashioned interior—“that I’ve run out of time like everyone else. Keeping people out, though, has left me pretty lonely. It’s just me, myself, and I in here. Oh, and the Time Flies.” At the window, gentle flies with translucent pink wings were busying themselves in apparently aimless flights and landings.
It was still raining.
Having finished her hot cocoa, Fred shivered.
“You’re a child, aren’t you?” asked Picky Mouse.
“Sort of,” Fred said. “Like, in part.”
“How nice to see you in these parts. Many children fled Rat Rule 79, of course. Understandable. Your slippers might be dry now,” Picky Mouse said.
In the back, Fred found her bunny slippers still slightly damp. She decided to sit and wait a few minutes more for them to dry. What an absurd Rat these creatures follow, thought Fred, as she mused about the apparent dubious legality of waiting “a few minutes more.” And what was that about the children fleeing? Fred warmed her hands by the fire and enjoyed the quiet company of the Time Flies. Something in the way they flitted, and even in the way they landed, seemed joyful. One landed on a dusty pile of papers, rubbed its wings together craftily, then took off again.
The dusty pile of papers turned out to be a dusty pile of invitations.
Or, rather, Un-Invitations. Fred read, You Are Cordially Un-Invited to…
The un-invitation date was that of Fred’s own birthday.
Were you even allowed to mark down a date like that?
The border of the un-invitations was done in looping red lines.
Fred put on her still damp slippers. She picked up one of the Un-invitations. Then she took the rest of them, too. They were too large to fit in her pajama pockets, so she tucked them awkwardly into the waistband of her pajama pants. It’s true that another word for what Fred did was steal.
Two wrongs may not make a right, she said to herself, but three rights do make a left. It was something her mom used to say. And three lefts make a right. And no one likes to be left behind.