It wasn't fun. It was wet and cold and hard work, but I soon got into the kind of rhythm of it. Push and run, stop and sink, start over. The effort of it kept me warm enough to keep going. Over and over, I did it. Push and run, stop and sink, start over. My socks were soaked right through and I was fairly sure I had frostbite in most of my toes, but I knew I had to keep on. I had no other choice. Fairly soon, the safe haven of my bag was out of sight, so I had to keep on or else just curl up into a ball and sink under the snow forever. The chants of everyone telling me to die were so fresh in my ears that it made me want to stubbornly keep on living, if only to annoy them.
As I pushed on through the snow, I went back over what had happened. This spell seemed different to before. The last time I'd been hit by a spell, it had all been very elaborate, with the talking statue and everything. I wondered if he was still in the bamboo forest somewhere, he'd been a pretty sturdy old guy. It was probably significant that the spell happened in the same place, and it made me wonder if the whole bullying thing hadn't been orchestrated to herd me there, like a lamb to slaughter. It seemed like a kind of paranoid thing to think, but then, somebody had just used magic to shrink me to the size of a string bean, so it seemed justified. Even the form that the magic took was different. It was still a blue glowy light, sure, but this time it was sort of flat and dull, not sparkly and buzzy. Tennyson Wilde had said that the last time, the magic had sort of been possessing Mr Porter. The magic belonged to somebody else, was a sort of energy that they'd used to get Mr Porter to do their evil bidding. And it made sense in a way, because Mr Porter always had a thousand ideas going on, brilliant, glittering ideas buzzing around, just like the magic had been. It made sense that if somebody else was using the magic now, it would be a bit different. But who was it? And was it the person who owned the magic or another puppet? I had my suspicions but no proof to back anything up. Still, there was one person who had stepped forward to face me down before anyone else, so surely that person was the number one person of interest.
My muscles began to seize up and I wasn't sure how much farther I could keep going. The world was really big when you were miniature and everything was super far away. I looked behind to be sure I was moving in a straight line. It seemed as though I was, but I couldn't be sure. The trail I left in the snow looked straight but vanished into a white swirl only a few paces back, so that didn't really help. It was so cold that it hurt. I began to rethink my plan of leaving the bamboo forest but staying didn't seem a much better option. Maybe I could climb the bamboo. I looked up at one of the big, thick stalks and immediately dismissed the idea. No way could I hold on enough to climb anything. I tried to think of something to keep my spirits up, to keep me marching forward, but I was rapidly running out of motivation. Even if I came to the end of the forest, what then? I had very little hope of getting all the way back to the Red House, somehow gaining access and making my way up to my room.
It was so cold and I was so tired. Maybe the best thing to do would be to curl up on top of my post-its and just have a little rest. Just enough to regain my strength. Five minutes couldn't hurt, right?
I curled up into a little ball, shivering. I'd read somewhere that when you get hypothermia, one of the symptoms is impaired judgment, and I wondered if maybe napping was not the best idea, but I couldn't bring myself to care. Surely, everything would work out fine, all I needed was a bit of a kip. Some shut-eye. Forty winks.
My eyes had barely closed when there was a terrible screeching noise. I opened my eyes blearily, but then as soon as I registered what I saw, the adrenalin kicked in and I jumped to my feet, brandishing my pencil out in front of me. Forget rabid werewolves or angry mobs of rich kids, this was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
I had not been wrong about rodents in the bamboo field, oh em gee.
It was a rat the size of a cement mixer.
It had bright red devil eyes and it salivated when it looked at me. I didn't dare to move in case it pounced on me. Its whiskers twitched and it shuffled forward. Oh man, why couldn't I have just died peacefully in the snow? If I was dead, I wouldn't care if the rat feasted on me. I'd be a tasty Lucycicle, probably. Way more delicious than devouring me alive.
I don't know if it was that my brain had frozen out all reasonable thought, or just that the idea of being munched on by a rat was so appalling, but suddenly my escape plan seemed super obvious. Rats were fast. Rats could go anywhere. If I could harness the power of this rat, the world was my oyster, no matter how big or terrifying it was.
I would be the Rat Queen and I would rule all!
The rat moved even closer to me and I took me chance. Using my pencil for leverage, I vaulted up onto the back of the rat and held on tight.
The rat screeched again, and I really hoped it wasn't calling all its rodent buddies to come tear me to bits. I dropped my pencil in favor of clinging to the rat's fur, which was surprisingly clean and soft. The rat gave another screech and then took off running.
It didn't seem to be going in any clear direction. I think it was just confused by having a tiny human on its back, and to be honest I couldn't blame it. I hoped it wasn't taking me back to its nest, but maybe it would adopt me and I could live there among the baby rats until I got big again. It wasn't ideal and baby rats kind of freaked me out more than almost anything else on this planet, but I wasn't really in a position to be picky.
The rat ran around like crazy, trying to fling me off its back. I couldn't even ride a horse, wasn't great on a bicycle, even the bus proved a challenge sometimes, so staying on the back of the rat was a tough job. It was not like in the movies. I didn't somehow get the rat under my control and make friends with it and convince it to take me home. My hands were all stiff and cold and my muscles ached, and it didn't take very long before the rat flung me off and I landed hard against the ground. The rat advanced on me, its eye flashing red and angry. Okay, so the rat-riding had been a dismal failure and I'd even lost my brand new pad of post-its and my faithful pencil now. This was it for me. I'd done my best, but my best wasn't good enough and now the gig was up.
"Make it fast, Mr. Rat," I said, gulping and squeezing my eyes tight shut.
There was a massive thud, and then another and another. Everything shook like the end of the world. I guessed it probably was.
After a moment, when nothing had happened, I cracked an eye open. The rat had scampered off and in front of me was something big, black and shiny. A gigantic shoe. A familiar shoe.
"I knew you would be in the middle of this mess," he said, bending down to get a better look at me.
Tennyson Wilde. Of course.
I would've preferred the rat.
Chapter 7
"Were you actually trying to catch that rat and ride on it?" He squinted down at me condescendingly. "Animals don't just exist for your exploitation, you know. You can't be surprised that it was angry with you."
I didn't reply to him. Not because I had nothing to say, because my teeth were chattering too much.
"What are you doing there in the snow?" he asked, because he was the most unhelpful person alive. "Did you not realize you would sink and die?"
I glared at him as fiercely as I could while chattering and freezing and mini, though I didn't think the full weight of my disdain was conveyed.
He scooped me up out of the snow and held me in the palm of his hand right in front of his face. It was a horrible sensation, like that moment when a plane takes off only a zillion times worse, because planes stayed in the air with science and I had no such guarantees with Tennyson Wilde. He stared at me so intensely that his massive eyebrows met in the middle. He huffed a breath out his nose so forcefully it knocked me backwards. At least he didn't have bad breath, I supposed, and I was out of the snow.
"You'd better come with me," he said. "If you're always in the middle of the mess, it seems that you'll be needed to clean it up."
And without another word, he tucked me into his coat pocket.
His pocket was warm and protected from the elements, and some sort of luxurious soft fabric. Because he moved so smoothly, I was hardly jostled around at all, and made myself as comfortable as possible. After a while, my teeth stopped chattering. That was bad, right? I remembered reading that was bad, like once your teeth stopped chattering, that was when hypothermia set in and you died. Dying in Tennyson Wilde's pocket would be super embarrassing, but definitely warmer and snugglier than being ravaged by rats in the snow. And, jerk though he was, he did seem like the sort of person who would properly notify my family of my tragic demise, at the very least.