THE MOUSE and his child lay on the ice where they had fallen, the father’s legs moving slowly back and forth as his spring unwound.

“My Uncle Frog is gone!” wept the child. “What happened?”

“He was taken by an owl, as the weasels were,” the father said. “He kept his word, and guided us as far as he was able. Now our destined roads have parted, and once more we are alone.” Alone to face Manny Rat, he thought even as he spoke, for he knew that soon or late the rat would be on their trail again. He saw those burning eyes as clearly as if he stood before him now, and heard again the soft voice saying to the fortune-teller, “Step aside; I’m going to smash your friends.”

The father said nothing more to the child; they lay in silence through the night, while the wind brought them the smell of the pines to remind them of the Christmas tree where they would never dance again.

“Act One, Scene One,” said a scratchy voice across the stream as the sun rose. “The bottom of a pond: mud, ooze, rubbish, and water plants.”

“That kills me,” said a second, more resonant voice. “That is deep. That is the profoundest.”

“Shall we call for help?” the mouse child asked his father. “They don’t sound as if they’d hurt us.”

“We’ll have to take the chance,” said the father. “Help!” they both yelled as loudly as they could with their little tin voices. “Help!”

“Two tin cans, standing upright, half buried in the mud at center stage,” continued the scratchy voice. “At stage left, a rock.”

“Help!” called the mouse and his child again.

“A head rises from one of the tin cans,” the voice went on.

“Wait a minute,” said the other voice. “I heard something. If that’s a farmer with a shotgun, get ready to take off fast.”

A large crow came walking out of the pines and cocked his head to listen. A tall, well-set-up bird, he wore his great black, glossy wings in the manner of a cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulders, and he had what his wife and fellow actors admiringly described as “presence”: Wherever he was, he simply seemed to be there more intensely than any other bird. “It’s a couple of stranded windups,” he called to his unseen companions.

The crow flew down to where father and son lay on the ice, and there he saw the coin that Frog had dropped. He flipped it up with one foot, caught it in his beak, removed it with a flourish, and held it out at leg’s length to look at it. The coin had been gold plated when Frog had found it at the bottom of a pond, but now it was worn down to the original brass. YOU WILL SUCCEED, said the lettering around the rim, and in the center was a four-leaf clover.

“Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” said Crow to the mouse and his child. “You will succeed. Says so right here.”

“When?” asked the child.

Crow looked at the other side of the coin, on which a horseshoe appeared, and the partial message YOUR LUCKY DAY IS … The rest had been obliterated by the hole drilled for the string. “When your lucky day arrives,” he said, and hung the coin from the mouse child’s neck, where it clinked against the drum.

Then he picked up father and son and flew back into the pines to land beside a rather showy lady crow and three pretty starlings. The other members of the company were a gaunt and dejected-looking rabbit and a brilliantly colored but frowsy parrot who wore two or three sleeveless doll sweaters and a woolen muffler. It was she whose scratchy voice they had heard earlier. Long ago she had been somebody’s pet Polly, but having since spread her wings and flown to freedom through an open window, she felt herself entitled to a more resounding name, and now was called Euterpe.

Mrs. Crow, who had been stranded more than once herself, was cordial in her welcome. “After all,” she said, “they don’t eat. They might as well join the company and make themselves useful if they can.” She leaned down to look more closely at the child. “What do you do when you’re wound up?” she asked. “Do you play that drum?”

“No,” said the child. “We used to dance.”

“But now we walk,” said the father. “And behind us an enemy walks faster.”

“That’s life,” said Euterpe.

“We’re looking for a seal,” the mouse child said.

“And a rat is looking for us,” the father added.

“Two toy mice in search of a seal and followed by a rat! That’s too much!” said the starlings together, fluttering up and flapping their wings as they laughed. Crow and Mrs. Crow laughed also, while the parrot looked thoughtful.

“She used to have a red-and-yellow ball on her nose,” said the child. “We’re looking for an elephant too. We’re going to have a family.”

“Fantastic!” said the starlings.

“It’s got possibilities,” said Crow. He wound up the father and stepped back. “All right,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do.”

The mouse and his child walked across the snow until they bumped into a twig and fell down. They lay there, the father’s legs moving slowly back and forth while the company watched in silence. The sky was bright and cold; the white snow sparkled in the sunlight; a woodpecker drummed beyond the frozen stream, and the wind sighed in the pines. “Can you help us?” asked the father. “We must keep moving on; we cannot stop here.”

“Pathos,” said Crow. “Real pathos.”

“They’ve definitely got something,” said Mrs. Crow, as she helped the mouse and his child to their feet. “The patter about the seal and the elephant needs working up, but the walk is good and the fall is terrific. Maybe we can use them the next time we do a revue.”

Crow draped a black wing over the shoulders of father and son. “Welcome to the Caws of Art Experimental Theatre Group,” he said.

“Last year it was the Caws of Art Classical Repertory Group,” said Mrs. Crow.

“You’ve got to move with the times,” said Crow.

“But we don’t want to be in the Caws of Art Experimental Theatre Group,” said the child. “We’ve got to find the seal. We were told she was with you. She had a platform on her nose.”

“Who?” said Crow. “What platform?”

“The seal,” said the child. “Have you seen a tin seal with a platform on her nose?”

“That seal!” said Crow. “A windup seal. Now I remember.” He made a whirling gesture with one wing. “She did an acrobatic routine with a sparrow?”

“That’s right,” said the child.

“Sure,” said Crow. “That was back when we did the Caws of Art Follies — our best season, as I remember. We had a line of red-hot chickadees in that show that everybody was crazy about.” He shook his head, opened his beak, and shut it with a clack.

“Where did you find her?” asked the child.

“We got her from Manny Rat,” said Crow. “He books most of the windups. You know him?”

“It is Manny Rat who is following us now, to destroy us,” said the father.

“Oh, it can’t be so bad as all that,” said Crow. “Why in the world would he destroy windups? He fixes them up and sells them. And he’s not the rat to destroy his own profits. We paid three bags of jelly beans for that seal, for instance, which is a pretty stiff price for a broken-down windup. I mean, you know, business is business, even if it is show business. They were new jelly beans too — out of a case that fell off the back of a truck.”

“Where is she now?” asked the child.

Crow shrugged. “Who knows? On tour somewhere, I guess. I traded her to a rabbit with a traveling flea circus.”

“For what?” asked the child.

“For a pair of doll roller skates and part of a gyroscope,” said Crow. “Let’s go, everybody! I want to run through Dog again, from the top.”

“Won’t you help us?” begged the father.

“Look,” said Crow, “give yourself a chance to calm down a little, and we’ll talk about it later. Believe me, you’re safe here. Nobody’s going to bother you while you’re with me.” He struck a boxing pose, grimaced ferociously, and launching a slow-motion roundhouse blow, gently nudged the father’s jaw with one wing. Then he winked at him and turned to the company. “All right,” he said, “let’s get started.”

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do The Last Visible Dog tonight?” said Mrs. Crow.

“Sure, I’m sure,” said Crow. “It’s the hottest thing we’ve got. It’s new. It’s far out. It’s a play with a message.”

“What’s the message?” said Mrs. Crow.

“I don’t know,” said Crow. “But I know it’s there, and that’s what counts.”

“It seems to me The Woodchuck’s Revenge is a better bet,” said Euterpe, who was, if not the company’s lyric muse, at any rate their repertory, since it was she who stored in her memory all the plays presented by them. “You can’t go wrong with a plot like Woodchuck,” she asserted. “The whole family loses its territory when the fox forecloses the mortgage and throws them out of their den.”

“Territory again,” said the father to the child. “Must I always be reminded of our placelessness!”

“If we could find the dollhouse, that could be our territory,” said the child. “Couldn’t it, Papa?” He felt the weight of the coin on the string around his neck. “Maybe we’ll succeed,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have a lucky day.”

Euterpe, meanwhile, was still putting forward the merits of The Woodchuck’s Revenge. “Banker Foxcraft!” she declaimed. “More deadly in his treachery than trapper who with sharp-toothed steel besets the woodland path. What new pitfall has his perfidy prepared for us! That’s always been surefire,” she said.

“Look, Euterpe,” said Crow, “as Director of the Caws of Art, I intend to further the cause of Art. We’ll do Dog tonight. All right — Act One, Scene One. Let’s go.”

“The bottom of a pond,” squawked Euterpe: “mud, ooze, rubbish, and water plants. Two tin cans, standing upright, half buried in the mud at center stage. At stage left, a rock. A head rises from one of the tin cans. It is the head of Furza. The head of Wurza rises from the other tin can. Gretch enters stage right and crosses to the rock.”

“Some play,” said the rabbit, who was Gretch. “I don’t get any lines until the third act. All I do is stand on that rock.”

Crow silenced the rabbit with a look, and turned to Mrs. Crow. “All right,” he said, “Furza speaks first. That’s you.”

“What’s the latest?” said Mrs. Crow, as Furza.

“Latest what?” replied Crow, as Wurza.

“Ooze news,” said Furza.

“Dogs,” said Wurza. “A manyness of dogs. A moreness of dogs. A too-muchness of dogs. Also a jiggling and a wiggling.”

“A jiggling and a wiggling of what?”

“Of nothing.”

“Where, O, where was it, for goodness’ sake?”

“Out among the out among the out among the dots.” After which Crow stepped out of his role and said, “You feel it building?”

“No,” said Mrs. Crow. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t feel it building.”

“Never mind,” said Crow. “Just let it happen. Your line.”

“Where among the dots?” said Mrs. Crow.

“Out among the dots beyond … ”

“Yes, yes. Go on. Beyond?”

“Beyond the … ”

“Don’t stop now…. Beyond the … ?”

“BEYOND THE LAST VISIBLE DOG!” shouted Crow. “There!” he said to his wife. “See how it pays off? Up and up and up, and then Zonk! BEYOND THE LAST VISIBLE DOG!”

“It’s getting to me now,” said Mrs. Crow. “But what does it mean?”

Crow flung wide his broad wings like a black cloak. “What doesn’t it mean!” he said. “There’s no end to it — it just goes on and on until it means anything and everything, depending on who you are and what your last visible dog is.”

“ ‘Beyond the last visible dog,’ ” said the mouse child to his father. “Where is that, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” said the father, “but those words touch something in me — something half remembered, half forgotten — that escapes me just as it seems almost clear.”

“Do you think that’s where the rabbit and the flea circus are?” said the child. “Shall we find the seal and the elephant and the dollhouse out among the dots?”

“We can’t find anything unless we continue to move ahead,” said the father, “and I don’t suppose there’s any chance of that until after the performance.”

The rehearsal continued through the afternoon, while the starlings set up scenery and props on the open ground beyond the pine woods, where a bowl-shaped hollow formed a natural amphitheater. Toward sunset the blue jay was heard, screaming, “CAWS OF ART PRESENTS — What are you presenting?” he yelled as he flew overhead.

“We’ll announce it at curtain time,” said Crow. “I want the audience to come to it with an open mind.”

“PRESENTS EXCITING NEW PLAY,” shouted the jay. “BANK-ROBBER WINDUPS MAKE DRAMATIC BOW TONIGHT.” And he was gone before the crow could correct him.

“That’s pretty fancy billing for a couple of unknowns,” said Crow. Bird of the world that he was, he refrained from questioning his new recruits about their past.

“We have a small following,” said the father wryly, and in his mind’s eye he saw Manny Rat.

When evening came the full moon, rising honey-colored above the pines, showed a scattered crowd converging in the snowy bowl. The animals and birds paid their acorns, beechnuts, seeds, and grubs, along with turnips and dead beetles saved for the occasion, and were ushered by the starlings to their places, where they combined sniffs, growls, whines, and twitters in the general murmur of an audience waiting for an entertainment to begin.

The crowd filled up a semicircle of the slope in tiers, facing the flat open space that was the stage at the center of the hollow. There were pines at both sides and on the slope at the rear of the stage, and a tattered length of brocaded crimson velvet, attached to two of the trees, was the curtain. From behind it the mouse and his child and the little troupe peeped out at the audience.

“That’s a good house,” said Crow as the bowl filled up. “There is a place for Art in our meadows. There is a genuine need.”

“There’s a need for something,” said Mrs. Crow. “Let’s hope it’s for The Last Visible Dog.”

Now the starlings rushed back from their ticket-taking and ushering duties to sing an overture, and the lively music lilted over the moonlit meadow. The audience sighed and leaned back, and Crow strode onstage in front of the curtain, throwing back his wings to receive a burst of applause.

“Thank you,” said Crow, “thank you. As you know, the Caws of Art have stood for the best in wholesome family entertainment for longer than most of us care to remember. We have brought you classics and chorus girls, always moving with the times and always striving to offer art that is new and vital.” He paused, and his voice took on a more serious note. “Tonight,” he said, “we continue that tradition. We offer you the newest effort of one of the deepest thinkers of our time. The Caws of Art Experimental Theatre Group proudly presents The Last Visible Dog, a tragicomedy in three acts by C. Serpentina.”

There were scattered groans amidst the applause that followed. A possum shifted uneasily in his seat and said to his wife, “I’m afraid he means business this time.”

“Stay awake, that’s all,” said the lady as the starlings lifted the curtain to reveal two large rusty grapefruit-juice cans in which sat Crow and Mrs. Crow, their heads covered by their black wings. Euterpe’s voice was heard offstage, setting the scene. “The bottom of a pond,” she squawked: “mud, ooze, rubbish, and water plants. Two tin cans, standing upright, half buried in the mud at center stage.”

An irate weasel rose from the audience, baring his white teeth in a snarl. “You watch that stuff!” he shouted. “We don’t want none of your modern filth around here!”

“Tell ’em, Alf!” called one of his friends, and a low growl ran through the crowd.

Crow and Mrs. Crow duly rose from their tin cans as Wurza and Furza. The rabbit, as Gretch, entered and stood on his stone, shading his eyes with one paw as he looked around, hopeful of investing his silence with heavy meaning before he settled into immobility.

“Get that phony rabbit out of here!” yelled a tired porcupine. “Bring on the chickadees!” His fellow playgoers broke out in laughter and catcalls, and the actors did not become audible until Wurza reached the line “A manyness of dogs. A moreness of dogs. A too-muchness of dogs.”

“That’s what this play is,” shouted an enraged marten. “Too much of a dog!”

“The meadow isn’t ready for this yet,” said the local field-mouse critic to his wife.

“And neither are the woods,” said she.

“Also a jiggling and a wiggling,” continued Wurza, scanning the crowd nervously.

“A jiggling and a wiggling of what?” said Furza.

“Of nothing.”

“That does it!” yelled Alf the weasel. “Let’s go, boys!”

“Look out!” screamed Mrs. Field-Mouse Critic, but she screamed too late. The starlings backstage fluttered up in time to escape, but Crow and Mrs. Crow disappeared in a rush of weasels before they could get off the ground, and the rabbit lay dead, his lifeblood staining the moonlit snow around him.

“One so seldom gets anything really complete from these road companies,” said the field-mouse critic.

Mrs. Crow, scattering weasels right and left with her wings, cried, “Hoodlums! You don’t deserve Art!”

Crow defended his wife and himself like the veteran trouper he was, but they were unable to break clear. “Come on, fellows,” he gasped, “you’re acting like a bunch of hayseeds!”

The mouse and his child, unwound and motionless, watched the disaster, while Euterpe, on a bough above them, swore softly to herself. “This looks like the end of the Caws of Art,” she said. “In a couple of minutes there’ll be nothing left but fur and feathers and a few bones.”

“Can’t you do something?” said the child.

“What would you suggest?” asked the parrot.

“Wind us up,” said the father, “and send us onstage.”

“Certainly,” said the flabbergasted Euterpe. “Why not!” She wound up the father, and shaking her head, watched him walk across the snow, pushing the child before him.

The weasels who were striving ardently to end the Crows’ career looked up as the backward-walking mouse child bumped into them and stopped, the father continuing to tread the snow without being able to move forward.

“Excuse me,” said the child.

“What is it?” said Alf.

Row by row the crowd on the slope stood up for a better view of the two small figures, and some of the playgoers began to titter.

“We were wondering, sir, whether you might have seen a seal?” said the child.

“A seal?” said the weasel.

“That’s right,” said the father. “We’re looking for a seal — and there’s a rat looking for us.” Crow and Mrs. Crow listened as they lay on their backs, wings folded prayerfully, while several grinning weasels sat on them.

“She’s probably out beyond the last visible dog by now,” said the child.

“And he’s probably hiding behind the last visible pine,” said the father.

“She used to have a red-and-yellow ball on her nose,” said the child.

“But she doesn’t have a ball anymore,” said the father, and there was more laughter from the crowd, this time louder than before. Crow and Mrs. Crow let out their breath in one joint sigh.

“Go on, Alf! Help them find the seal!” called the weasel’s friends.

“Or at least stand aside and let us go on before our spring runs down,” said the father.

“We’ve got to find an elephant too,” said the child. “Then we’re going to look for a territory of our own,” and the crowd roared its approval.

“That little act has something,” said the field-mouse critic to his wife. “I think that Last Visible Dog business was just the buildup for this. The whole thing was a joke. Too bad it backfired on the rabbit.” Animals sitting near the critic heard, and passed the word along. “They’re marvelous!” said a mole. “They’re almost animal-like!”

The weasels onstage chuckled good-naturedly while father and son walked straight ahead until they bumped into the rabbit’s rock and fell over. The crowd laughed until it cried.

“Do it again!” shouted the audience. “Encore!”

The weasels cleared the stage, the crows flew up into the pines, and father and son were carried back to where they had made their entrance.

As the mouse father, rewound by a helpful weasel, started once more across the stage, he looked beyond his son and saw a familiar figure waiting in the shadows of the pines with a heavy rock uplifted. The child, walking backward, heard his father whisper, “Manny Rat!”

“Help!” the mouse child cried. But Manny Rat was downwind; no one else had seen or scented him as yet. The audience laughed, anticipating new comic variations in the toy-mouse act. The irony was too much for the child; it made him giddy. “Just let it happen,” he said to his father. “Your line.”

“Banker Ratsneak!” yelled the father, “more deadly in his treachery than trapper who with sharp-toothed steel besets the woodland path!”

Manny Rat, watching the two small figures advancing toward him in the moonlight, was startled and made vastly ill at ease by the father’s shout. He wondered whether it might not be wise to withdraw for the moment, and he turned to go back through the pines to where he had left the elephant. But the audience had moved in close around the stage; he could not escape unnoticed.

“Banker Ratsneak!” yelled the mouse child at the top of his tin voice. “What new pitfall has his perfidy prepared for us!”

“Ah!” said the audience, and settled back to watch contentedly.

“Does he hound us still?” declaimed the father, “— he who drove us forth to wander denless through the world?”

“He hounds us still!” the child replied, still advancing backward toward Manny Rat, who could retreat no farther, and now tried to make himself as small as possible.

“Banker Ratsneak, skulking in the shadows!” called the father. “Come out and face your victims! The day of reckoning has come — this final, fateful day that settles all accounts, this day that shall leave one of us to share a territory with the worms!”

“Come out!” the audience roared as one. “Banker Ratsneak, come out!”

“What kind of an outfit is this?” complained Alf the weasel. “When they finally give us something we can get our teeth into, the actors fall asleep on their cues!” He strode across the stage into the wings, growled, “Let’s get on with it!” and pulled out Manny Rat.

“Unhand me!” cried the rat, and improvising desperately, he crept onstage. “I, Banker Ratsneak, have come here to collect a debt long overdue!” he wailed. “I will have justice!”

“Villain!” screamed the crowd. “Territory stealer!”

“Tremendous talent, that rat,” said the field-mouse critic to his wife. “How well he plays the villain! I’ve never seen a character I detested more thoroughly!” The rest of the spectators, all of whom shared, uncritically, the same emotion, hissed and booed the hapless rat.

Manny Rat, who would have been well content to abandon his role, could scarcely make himself heard. “Justice!” He wept, and the audience, responding eagerly, rushed the stage and mobbed him.

“I always gave Manny Rat credit for more sense than that,” said Crow to Mrs. Crow. “What in the world made him want to break into show business?”

“Everybody gets the bug at one time or another,” said Mrs. Crow, shouting above the uproar on the stage.

“Help!” screamed Manny Rat, rising to the surface of the crowd like foam upon an angry ocean.

“Sorry,” said Crow, as the crowd rolled over the rat again. “Once you go onstage, you’ll have to take your chances like the rest of us.”

Bitten, clawed, and pinched by bird and beast, Manny Rat fought like a demon, while the mouse and his child, having for the moment escaped demolishment by him, were in immediate danger of being trampled flat by the enthusiasts who stormed the stage.

“Onward!” said the child wildly to no one in particular.

“And upward,” replied his father as they felt themselves lifted into the air. Euterpe, the repertory parrot, seeing their plight, had sailed into the tumult in a blur of bright feathers and frayed sweaters, and now winged up into the night carrying the mouse and his child in her claws.

Circling over the pines, the parrot looked down and assessed the situation. The entire Caws of Art company, with the exception of the luckless rabbit, were safe — at least until their next performance. The mass of struggling figures onstage separated, and Manny Rat streaked off across the snow with several of the more diligent weasels in hot pursuit, while the rest of the audience abandoned themselves to general riot and thereby purged themselves of all remaining pity and terror.

“That’s show business,” said Euterpe, “and I’ve had enough of it for a while. How about you?”

“I think we have sufficiently furthered the Caws of Art,” said the father, “and I have no intention of continuing a theatrical career.”

“Where are you bound for now?” asked Euterpe. “I don’t want to fly in circles all night.”

“We don’t know,” said the father.

“Let it be south, then,” said the parrot, “because that’s where I’m heading. I can use a vacation.” She flew higher, set a straight course, and the pine woods and the Caws of Art were left behind.

*  *  *

THE PARROT’S WINGS fanned gusts of cold air on the mouse and his child, and the darkness flowed by on either side. The moon had set; below them all was dim and gray. The father and son felt the wind race like a road unwinding underneath their feet as, motionless, they traveled on.

“I wonder what happened to Manny Rat,” said the child. “I wonder if he got away.”

“If he did, we can expect to see him again,” said the father. “He seems determined to smash us, and I don’t think he’ll give up.”

“Neither will we,” said the child. “Will we, Papa?”

The father said nothing, and the child’s only answer was the wind that whistled by them as they flew.

“We’ll find the elephant and the seal, and we’ll find the dollhouse too, and have our own territory, won’t we, Papa?”

“You simply won’t understand how it is,” said the father. “How can we find anything? How can we ever hope to have our own territory?”

“But look how far we’ve come!” said the child. “And think of all we’ve done! We got out of the dump; we came through the war safely; we saved the Caws of Art.”

“We escaped after the attempted bank robbery and survived the war only because we had Frog to help us,” said the father. “And we saved the Caws of Art by making animals laugh at us. They laughed because we cannot even walk without being wound up, because we have no teeth or claws and can do nothing for ourselves. They laughed because we are ridiculous.” Then he was silent, looking down at the child who hung from his arms in the darkness, the nutshell drum and good-luck coin swinging from his neck.

“Believe me,” said Euterpe, “Crow doesn’t think you’re ridiculous, and neither do I. What you did was pretty clever, and it was brave too. You might have been smashed by that mob.”

“Yes,” said the father, “we’re brave and clever — but not clever enough to wind ourselves up, unfortunately. If only we could!”

“Ah!” said Euterpe. “There’s nothing you can do about that. Although, come to think of it, maybe there is.”

“What do you mean?” asked the father.

“The beaver pond isn’t far out of my way,” said Euterpe. “Old Muskrat lives there. Ever heard of him?”

“No,” said the father.

“Well,” said Euterpe, “except for Manny Rat, he’s the only one I know who can do anything with clockwork. He figures out all kinds of things.” She changed course and swung north. “He’s fixed broken windups for the Caws of Art once or twice,” she said, “so maybe he can help you too.”

“We’re not broken,” said the father. “Not yet.”

“I mean, maybe he can fix you so you can wind yourselves up,” said Euterpe. “I’ve heard he can do almost anything.”

The parrot flew steadily on, and the child, hanging from his father’s hands, now saw again the bright star Sirius. It seemed to fly onward, keeping pace beside them through the distant sky. As before, the child found its light a comfort. His good-luck coin clinked against his drum, and now he felt luckier than ever before. “Maybe we shan’t always be helpless, Papa,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be self-winding someday.”

“Maybe,” said his father.

Below them, scattered houses and farms gave way to wooded hills, and the parrot flew lower. The trees came close as Euterpe swooped down to glide over a valley where a stream widened into a frozen pond. At one end of the pond was an irregular dam made of saplings and cut branches, and below the dam the ice-covered stream continued through the valley.

“That’s the beaver dam,” said the parrot as they flew over it, “and that big snowy mound in the middle of the pond is the beaver lodge. Muskrat has a smaller one right over there, and the entrance tunnel is somewhere on the bank. I think I see his tracks.” She landed at the edge of the pond and set down the mouse and his child on the ice.

“Muskrat’ll be sure to find you here,” she said, “and if anybody can do anything for you, he can.” Father and son felt a wingtip brush them softly as Euterpe took off. “Good-bye and good luck,” she said, and was gone.