Qatana woke suddenly. The bedroll lay twisted at her feet, and the tunic she wore most nights was wet with sweat. Despite the cooler northern climate it was just too hot in the caravan wagon for sleep.
She looked around and noticed that Shalelu was not there. “Probably watching the caravan from the shadows,” she thought drowsily.
It was then that she heard the voices, soft whisperings just barely audible outside the covered wagon. She vaguely recognized most of them, but a stranger was doing most of the talking.
“Guys, I think we have company,” she said to her friends, and then realized with a shock that her friends were not with her. This abruptly brought her fully awake and alert.
She quickly pulled on trousers and slipped out the back. There, huddled in the darkness by a wheel were nine small shapes. Eight of them were silvery and translucent like smoke, but the other seemed normal.
“Here she is now,” squeaked Badger, “she’ll help.” The others replied in mutual agreement, but the outsider seemed startled by her arrival and scuttled beneath the wagon.
Star let out a snort of exasperation, but Timber reassured their guest, “You must trust her. She will help, but you need to show the way.”
The mouse, encouraged by her friends, crept out from the greater darkness beneath the wagon and scampered forward to the next shadow. The moon had set some time before, but the canopy of stars cast their own milky light upon the city, and hungry eyes would make short work of careless mice.
Qatana was not particularly stealthy, but it was dark, and most of the quarter’s inhabitants were long in bed. Her guide was virtually invisible, and if it were not for the shimmering figures of her friends she would have lost sight of him right away.
They followed the cobblestone road a short distance toward the gate, where the mouse stopped.
“Here,” her friends cried urgently, “here!”
A tiny black form lay slumped by the side of the road. Qatana carefully picked up a limp mouse and saw that while it had been badly injured, probably crushed beneath the wheels of a hand cart, the animal yet lived.
It had clearly suffered in this state for quite some time and was now in shock.
Qatana hesitated, torn as usual between the two choices before her. A little squeak at her feet brought her back to the dying creature in her hands. “You have a mate and probably young ones back in your nest.”
She concentrated for a moment and her friends glowed brightly. The small mouse stirred in her hands, whiskers twitching in the night air. She put the mouse on the ground net to the other, and they scurried off together.
“Stay off the cobbles, little ones!” she called after them.
Qatana stood there for some time, lost in thought and fighting despair and desperation. Was this the right choice? Surely this was just a temporary reprieve, and the next day would see her patient speared in the talons of an owl or made the play thing of some cruel cat. Weren’t her actions this night just a futile gesture, after all?
Timber sniffed loudly and muttered, “This again?”
“Shush,” Pookie admonished, “She is a servant of Groetus, and she must often choose between life and death for others, and the burden is great.”
Star scoffed, “It wouldn’t be tough for me: I’d chose death!” The others groaned their little mousey noises of disapproval, but off by himself Beorn tittered uncontrollably.