The Mice Spirits

Tiyrfalle was not a large kingdom, a fact that their neighbors often used to their advantage. Still, the last time Tiyrfalle had been invaded, some six years ago, they had rallied their numbers and managed to not only fight off their neighbors from Salutraiz, but win a few border villages as well. In one of the final skirmishes, Salutraiz’s king was killed by a war sorcerer’s magefire. A cease-fire agreement was drawn up not long after that.

Unfortunately, the king’s body was never recovered. Tiyrfallean soldiers went through all the bodies on the ruined field, but found nothing. It was surmised that perhaps the magefire had inadvertently cremated him.

When the late king’s son warned that his family would not hesitate to go to war again if the body was not recovered, Tiyrfalle’s monarchs invited the royal family to come to the site of the king’s last battle to pay their respects. Though it was not immediately evident, the visit went a long way toward healing the scars the war had left behind—for both countries.

Three years later, Tiyrfalle’s beloved king, Matthias, fell ill and died within a week. The healers and physicians were baffled, and the whole country mourned. For four days the young queen locked herself in their—her chambers, and refused to come out. She ate very little and slept even less. Queen Andais could not understand how such a beautiful day could occur when her husband with his striking blue eyes and beautiful black hair was dead before his time. The single maid permitted to enter the queen’s chambers whispered that most days the drapes remained drawn all day. Many nobles began to mutter amongst themselves about how a heartbroken woman was not fit to rule a country, regardless of her bloodline.

After five days of listening to her maid’s pleading, the queen ate a full meal and slept a full day. On the sixth day she exited her bedchambers looking tired and sad, but determined. She announced the funeral would be held the next day, and a wake the day after that. For the next month, excluding the day of the wake, all nobles who wished to avoid being charged with treason would wear mourning colors.

The young queen was well respected by her people, and so had no reason that she could see to remarry. Her people would follow her regardless of her gender. So she did not remarry, and instead ruled as sole monarch. She led her country with a firm but just hand, and set aside one day every week to listen to complaints between neighbors and settle disputes. Many of the less humble nobles were baffled as to how she kept the country not only on its feet, but moving forward as well. Andais was intelligent, but not a genius; she was pretty, but not beautiful; she was kind, but didn’t roll over.

“Perhaps it’s in her eyes,” one noblewoman suggested, fanning herself and making doe-eyes at a servant, “Her eyes are pretty enough.”

“And she’s educated,” the noblewoman’s husband agreed, frowning suspiciously at the servant. “That must have something to do with it, I’m sure. But you can read, and we don’t see you bossing the whole country around.”

“Just the ones who will listen to her,” joked a duke, raising his wineglass to her.

The noblewoman sniffed haughtily. “You wouldn’t catch me reading books of law and philosophy,” she snapped, and left to go introduce herself to a pretty young man at another table.

Every night, an hour or two after nightfall, Andais would return to her rooms, strip off her heavy gown and fine jewels, dismiss her maids, then redress herself in linen. She would slip out through the servant’s passageways and take the least traveled corridors out of the castle.

One night she wandered farther than usually, following a different path. She didn’t intend to be out long, but the time slipped through her fingers. The tax collectors were to be sent out the next day, and Andais anticipated the mountain of problems that always trailed behind them. She would need to be fresh and rested in order to deal with them. Just as she decided to turn back, she came across a small clearing. Ordinarily, she would have passed by it, or perhaps through it, without a second glance, but something standing in the middle caught her gaze.

She stared at a miniature gallows, no taller than a man’s foot. It stood complete with the knotted rope swinging lightly over the trapdoor in the midnight breeze. It was a morbid sight, as if a little girl had grown sick of her dolls and decided to do away with them in the dead of night.

The sound of rustling leaves and underbrush made her jump and dart behind a large oak. She took several long breaths, trying to calm her frantic heart, and peered out from her hiding place.

A hundred—no, far more than that—mice scurried across the dew-strewn grass and fallen leaves, covering it in ugly splotches of grey, brown, black, and white. Andais covered her mouth and stared in awe-inspired horror, unable to look away, as if witnessing a deadly wreck.

Two mice at the front of the wave clambered atop the miniature gallows, and for a moment she thought they would all swarm over it like a flood of insects. But the rest slowed and stopped at the base and fanned out around its small wooden frame, much like a crowd of humans would at a public hanging. Then, the mice parted, and a black mouse was escorted up the pathway to stand at the gallows. A grey mouse, the first one to stand up on the gallows, chittered smugly, and the gallows’ rope lifted as if being held by an invisible hand and swiftly tied itself in a knot around the black mouse neck. Andais gaped, horrified by the realization that they were going to hang the black mouse. “But it’s only a mouse,” she breathed, “Just a mouse. Why should I care?”

The black mouse blinked once, as if in sadness and for patience, and raise its blue eyes to her own.

She gasped and reeled back, her hand once again flying to cover her mouth. Dry leaves crackled beneath her feet, and the mice turned as one to look at her. They inched forward, and she cried out in fear and ran.

She tore through the dark and silent woods single-mindedly; doing her best to leap over the obstacles she’d studiously walked around or slowly climbed over earlier that night. Her chest was burning and her throat was closing. She had tears streaking down her face that were making her cheeks itch, but she kept running, as if that alone could save her from her shame.

What kind of a person was she, to see her beloved Matthias about to be hung and do nothing but turn and run? Horror propelled her homeward.

Finally, she reached the courtyards outside her window, but she couldn’t make herself go inside. Her hands were shaking and she was streaked with sweat and mud, not unlike her husband’s horse had been when he had returned from the war, six years earlier.

When Matthias died three years ago, her own world had ended for a short time. How dare the world keep turning when he was gone? But she’d eventually come to terms that he had moved on to the Black God’s realm. And why wouldn’t he? He had no unfinished business and had not been murdered. Souls who were at peace, she’d always been told, were swept up by the Black God’s crows and flown to his domain. So why was his soul trapped in a mouse’s form?

She sat down on a ledge, mindful of the slightly overgrown rosebushes that prickled the edge, threatening to outgrow their boundaries and take over the surrounding planters and all their inhabitants. Her eyes closed only a few times; whenever they did, all she could see was the grey mouse preparing to hang Matthias.

Her eyes slid open again, and she vaguely remembered her nanny telling her stories as a child. The woman had warned her to do no one harm in this life, lest their spirits were compelled to capture her own when the wronged died. Once a soul was captured, they would have free reign to do claim their vengeance every midnight until the living intervened.

The living. She shuddered. How long had Matthias prayed she would save him? Since he had died?

But how was she supposed to intervene? Her nanny was long gone, and she knew of no one else to ask. A necromancer would almost certainly know something, but they were rare. There were none in the capitol or its outskirts. Perhaps a healer mage would know something.

Andais pulled her knees to her chest, cursing the moon and stars for shining so blissfully while Matthias had been miserable for so long. Then she closed her eyes and cursed herself.

When her frantic maids found her the next morning, she was sleeping soundly and covered in dew. Andais faked the beginnings of a cold to avoid the meetings that had been scheduled for the day, after a hot soaking bath, she slipped away and snuck into the library before tea. She returned with none of her maids or fellow courtiers the wiser and after lunch had a runner send up all the books she thought might be useful. She spent the rest of the day pouring over old legends and myths and plotting her husband’s rescue.

By the time night had fallen, however, no particular gem of information had caused her to leap to her feet and shout in triumph. In fact, there was very little to be found on mice spirits, other than the fact that for some reason or another, whenever one deceased spirit captured another and tortured it they always manifested in the form of a mouse. It was possible, though difficult, to reason with them, and that they were honor bound to keep any and all promises made. What little she did find seemed to be mocking her; it was as if she was already supposed to know what to do. Only the living could rescue a captured soul, but there was nothing said about how to plan such a rescue.

She read in bed all day and had to set her books aside whenever a healer or physician came in to tend to her.

“I suppose it’s possible,” a healer mage replied to her ‘hypothetical’ question of the mice spirits’ existence. “But I’ve never heard of it being done.”

“So you wouldn’t know how to counter it?” she pressed, and he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, your highness, but I’m just a healer. A necromancer would know more.” He gave her a magicked broth and asked, “Why do you ask? Have you heard of someone being trapped like that?”

She smiled briefly and took a sip of the broth to buy herself a moment. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want to involve anyone. When she swallowed, she yawned hugely and apologized. “I’m terribly sorry—I tend to read more than usual when I’m ill, and it makes my eyes tired.” She handed the cup to the healer. “I need to rest now.”

When night fell, she once again dismissed the hovering physicians, mages and servants and dressed herself in linen clothes. She packed a satchel, hung a hunting knife around her waist, and took a wide rake from the gardeners’ shed. She slipped off the castle grounds, making sure to keep to the shadows lest she be recognized, and into the forest.

She tried not to walk too quickly—she’d allowed enough time to arrive at the clearing well before midnight—but her nerves made anything less than a brisk walk impossible. When she reached the clearing, slightly out of breath but still aware of the adrenaline-induced shaking in her hands, she had time to sit down at the base of a tree closest to the miniature gallows and calm her breathing.

Midnight could not come fast enough, but when it finally did, rabid butterflies feasted on her insides. Her plan was simple—too simple, she reflected. It was a child’s plan. There were so many things that could go wrong.

She watched the flood of mice approach as it had before, with the two grey mice in front clambering up the miniature steps and the rest parting to allow Matthias to be escorted upward to his death. Again.

She licked her lips nervously, and then chewed on them. It was an old habit, one she thought she’d broken herself of. It was undignified, as her mother had pointed out time and time again, but was only a problem when Andais was under extreme duress. She had to be extremely careful, precise and swift, or any chance she had would disappear.

She waited until the grey mouse had given the command for the rope to wrap itself about Matthias’ neck before she pounced, darting forward as rapidly as she was able and snatching up the grey mouse that appeared to be in command. He squeaked, panicked, and bit her, and she winced and squeezed him tighter. “Stop that,” she growled at him, and then raised her voice so all the mice could hear. “See this?” she called out, drawing her hunting knife from the sheath at her waist. She placed the blade at the base of the grey mouse’s neck. “I will slit his throat and take his head home as a prize if you do not release your prisoner.”

It gave her a very surreal feeling, as if she were a participant in a dream rather than reality, to watch a crowd of mice mutter and glance at each other in a human-like fashion. The breeze was cold and raised gooseflesh on her arms and legs, and the dew made the cold seep into her doeskin boots. The dark trees around her held a dreamlike bluish-green hue in their leaves wherever the moonlight hit them, and a near perfect black farther away from the clearing.

“Obey her,” the mouse she held croaked. She froze and emitted a small noise in her shock.

“You can speak?” she whispered.

He twisted to look at her, seemingly uncaring about the blade she held at his throat. “I was human enough when I lived, Queen Andais,” he rasped, and she shivered. He knew who she was.

“Who were you?” She tried not to whisper—it seemed cowardly. “Why do you hate Matthias so much?”

“I was destined to be the greatest king of all time.” His voice had started out as raspy as sandpaper on metal, but grew in confidence as he continued. The more he spoke, the more he began to sound like the neighboring country’s current king, and even more like its late king. “The greatest the world had ever seen. I was supposed to conquer the entire continent, then cross the seas and do the same for all the kingdoms there.”

Her eyes took on the light of understanding, and her head cocked to the side as she appraised him. “Oh,” she said softly. She had only seen him once while he lived, but once was enough. The rest of Salutraiz’s royal family had been kind enough—they’d had their faults, of course, but Andais had deduced that the king had been merely a bully with a large ego.

“Yes, ‘oh,’” the former king of Tiyrfalle’s neighbor, and latest would-be conqueror, snapped. “Your blasted king with his determined small town army saw fit to halt my army—which was far superior to your own. I’m still not sure how you blasted sorcerers managed it! And then your gods-blasted war mage decides to attack me! Me, the king of Salutraiz, the military power of the world!”

Andais smiled, her eyes crinkling in her amusement. “You always were a fool,” she told him, “and Matthias was always a good man, and a genius to boot.” He snarled at her, and she tightened her grip again. It was time to return to the matter at hand. “Release my husband’s soul,” she said quietly, her mild words strengthened by the undercurrent of a widow’s fury. “and swear to me that you will never harm another being, spiritual or physical, until the end of time.”

“Or what?” he spat, having worked himself into quite a lather.

Andais, in contrast, remained quite calm; she even smiled a little. She pressed the blade through his fur until it began to dig into his small neck. “Or I will come out here every night until the end of time and make you suffer a hundred times more than you made him suffer for the past three years. Is that clear?”

He turned away from her, scowling heavily. She imagined he was probably in the middle of an impressive royal pout as well. “Yes,” he replied shortly.

“And you agree to my terms?” she persisted.

“Yes, already,” he snapped. The gallows and the mice thinned until she could see right through them, and then they blew away in a breeze she could not feel. Only one mouse remained.

She watched as the black mouse with green eyes grew into her husband, no older than twenty-five winters. He was smiling at her. It was a nostalgic smile, one that told her he remembered the love of their short life together. “You are a magnificent woman,” he said.

She smiled as well and held out her hand. His own hand passed right through. “Be happy, Matthias,” she said sadly, “Be at peace. I’ll see you again soon enough, love.”

“You always were the strong one, Andais. I love you.” He kissed her softly with lips she couldn’t feel and vanished into the dawn’s weak light.

Andais slipped into the castle easily enough, though dawn had long since broken by the time she returned. When the servants and healers and physicians came knocking, she sent them all away. One particularly bold physician had a hairbrush thrown at him as he cracked the ornate oak door open.

She’d had every intention of climbing back into her bed, but stopped when she found an open book on her pillow. It was the Gods’ Book. She had most certainly not placed that book there; the rest were piled on her desk beneath the window.

It lay open to the beginning of the Black God’s chapter, and though the breeze from the open window threatened to turn the page, it fluttered determinedly on the first page of the chapter. Andais pulled the covers over her legs and cradled the book in her arms.

Fear not the tests set forth during life, for all who are deserving will be welcomed into my domain and shall entertain eternal peace.

Just as she felt her eyes cloud and a lump grow in her throat, a squawk at the open window made her look up. A crow, one of the Black God messenger’s, perched on the windowsill and eyed her as only a crow can.

Andais smiled through her clouded vision. “Thank you,” she told the crow, “Be sure to keep a close eye on Matthias until he meets the Black God. He has a tendency to attract trouble.”