Rasmus hobbled around to the side of the Tirren's house and picked his way through the minefield of toys that Harry left strewn across almost every inch of the garden. He looked down at a patch of mud and smiled as he saw the toy soldiers he’d carved for him one year as a birthday present. They were having a hard time of it, but most of them were still standing, and they were persevering. He knew how they felt. He took a banana skin from out of a small cloth bag, slowly approached the rubbish bins that sat below the kitchen window, then threw it into one of them and waited.

  “'I've already got, well, several of these, in fact. I'm more banana skin than I am rat now. Got any grapes?” The rat lazily poked his head over the rim of the bin and regarded Rasmus with a curiosity that quickly descended into disappointment. “Oh, it's you. I thought it'd be the girl. She gave me butter and this here bin. If I'd known surrendering was so profitable, I'd have surrendered sooner and more often. Matter of fact, I'm surrendering to you right now. What am I getting?”

  “A job.”

  “Which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid by surrendering, mate. It's like the subtle art of negotiation is lost to you.”

  “There's cake in it for you.”

  “Now our boy gets it. I'm more management material, though. If I were to stretch my legs at this particular juncture of my life, there's no telling how they'd react. Probably unfavourably.”

  “I just need you to delegate, dear rat.”

  “Terribly rude of me, I have failed to introduce myself. Johnny the rat; I'm a rat and I like bins.” Johnny spat on his paw, rubbed it against his side, and held it straight out in front of him. Rasmus took it between his thumb and forefinger and gently gave it a shake.

  “Might want to wash those fingers afterwards, mate.”

  “Noted. Now, what I need you to do is contact your mouse friends and have them keep an eye on the woods – a perimeter of sorts.”

  “You lost someone again? Heard about that. At some point that silly bird ended up in the sandpit over there. Look.” The wind had been at it, but the bird-shaped outline was unmistakable.

  “Missing rather than lost this time, though that is hardly any better. For the time being, the girls will sadly have to fend for themselves. We have a more pressing matter, I'm afraid. Men arrived in the village a few hours ago and took Bosco Tirren and his son.”

  “The big dopey one? Good. He poked poor Terry with a spear proper good. I won't say where because I'm a gentleman, but I will say he's having a hard time sitting down right now.” Johnny put his paw to his mouth conspiratorially and leant towards Rasmus, which closed the gap between them by an inch and achieved nothing but the appearance of subtlety. “He poked him in the arse,” he whispered. “His boy, though, that's sad. I mean, I know I tried to bite his toes off, but what's a few toes between friends, eh?”

  “All I need is for you to report anything strange in the woods. Men in grey uniforms in particular.”

  “We're rodents, mate, we're pretty much colour blind – everything's a bit grey.”

  “They have rifles and unusual helmets.”

  “Funny heads and bangers, got it.”

  “We'll deliver the cake to your bin-”

  “-Habitation.”

  “Habitation, and you won't need to move a muscle.”

  ***

  “I don't think they like me,” Tobias said. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Due to his peculiar body shape, Tobias never could be said to sit comfortably anywhere, though he was especially uncomfortable at this moment. The Pilot Fish, or rather the three that Peter had managed to coax from the woods, stood in phalanx in the middle of Rasmus' living room, arranged from shortest to tallest, though no-one particularly remembered asking them to do that. Peter sat in an armchair across from the group. He hugged the speaker-box tightly with one tubular arm, while he devoted the other to very carefully holding a teacup he had acquired from Rasmus' china cupboard when he had his back turned.

  “Do you think you could have a word with him?” his processor asked his logic-board. “Shan’t,” came the reply. After a heated back-and-forth between various internal systems, some of which had no idea how they'd become involved because, “Frankly all we do is change the colour of the bulb,” Peter decided what he needed was a pair of shoes.

  “Here's my idea,” Rasmus began. Peter got up, ambled past him and left the house via the boarded up window. The other Pilot Fish looked at one another, then grabbed a teacup in each hand and promptly hurled themselves out of the window that wasn't already broken. “Here's my idea,” he repeated. “We stick to one given location and stay together. There aren't enough of us to mount a reasonable defence, so what we do is this, and it will be a squeeze – we can hide in the Tirren's basement. It has no outside access, and if you don't know where the hatch is, you probably wouldn't find it unless you were looking for it. We hide there and pretend we've fled.”

  “And what if they find us?” Bridget walked into the room, her eyes red and swollen. She stood hunched forward, her arms locked tightly around a small woollen doll she knitted for Harry some years prior. She’d lost track of how many times she'd had to sow individual limbs back on or re-stuff it. It was a gift made with love when it should have really been made with iron.

  “And, um, what if they don’t leave?” Tobias added.

  “We have to hope that they don’t and they do, in that order. They're armed and very dangerous, we're not, so we have to be clever. Or at least not complete fools about it. Now, please sit down, let me get you something to drink. It will have to be water, I'm afraid. Peter and his friends have apparently absconded with all of my china.”

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  “I've done nothing but drink tea all day. I can go five minutes without.”

  Rasmus reseated himself by the fire. “Well, then. Isla, I need you to take the old rowing boat downstream. Not too far, leave it somewhere it can be seen. It's important they think we've left, and only you will be able to make it back here quickly. Given your experience of flying recently, I know it's a lot to ask.”

  “Excuse me, I’m a very good flier, thank you very much. It’s generally more of a landing thing that I has issue with, but I’ll get it done.” Isla flounced out the front door. She flapped irritatedly across the window several times before she finally got into the air.

  “And what will we do?” Tobias asked. He’d already started for the door some minutes earlier.

  “We need to pack some things, leave clothes lying around the place, doors open. And then we hide. I'm sorry I can't fight, Bridget, but if it comes down to it, we have the rifle from the man outside. You must all run.” He looked at Tobias, then back to Bridget. “You must run. I will endeavour to join you.”

  “What happened to not being a complete fool, Emmanuel? You'd be throwing your life away and you know it. We can't lose anybody else, do you hear me?” Bridget's timidity and quiet restrain dyke found itself starting to crack from the torrent of anger that pushed against it.

  “Mr. Rasmus!” came a squeak. In the window sat three mice, the largest of which had a sticking plaster wrapped around its midriff like a cummerbund.

  “Terry? What have you seen?”

  “How did you know my- Oh, that bloody rat. I'll bite his toes off, I will. Just you watch me. The men, yeah, just showed up.”

  “Where?” Rasmus didn't wait for the mouse's response, and was already on his feet and trying to usher Tobias out the door. Tobias was, for his part, moving at full speed. The difference between full speed and an otherwise lazy Tuesday was, however, completely negligible.

  “Big glowing thing in the middle of the woods,” Terry continued. “I didn't know we had one of those, but there you go.” Bridget joined Rasmus in barging Tobias outside. He couldn't remember the last time he had moved quite this fast, and was frankly very dizzy.

  “Terry,” Rasmus said. He looked over his shoulder at the mice. “We need you to keep track of them.” Terry squeaked and disappeared from the window, followed quickly by the one mouse that hadn't fallen asleep in the sun.

  “What about Isla?”

  “She'll get back in time, she has to. Unlike those bloody Pilot Fish. We can only worry about so much at once, Bridget.”

  ***

  Tobias barrelled through the door to the Tirren's house and collapsed into his shell. He skidded to an abrupt halt at the kitchen door. The impact dislodged several ornate plates from their shelf above the doorway. Bridget shuddered as they rained down upon Tobias and sent shards of jagged china bouncing across the floor. “They were my mother's,” she sighed, not giving up her own momentum and heading straight to the broom cupboard.

  “Come on, Tobias, we have no time for one of your moods.” Rasmus thwacked Tobias across the shell with his cane, then hobbled across to Bridget to help with the trapdoor. It was a thick oak construction that was clearly built by someone that didn't realise how heavy it actually was. Between them, they heaved it open and propped it against the wall of the cramped cupboard. Tobias had gotten over his initial speed-related exhilaration and recouped enough energy to crawl over to the trapdoor.

  “Mr. Rasmus!” Terry's voice barely carried over the chorus of exhausted panting, and he had to repeat himself. “Mr. Rasmus, they're here!”

  “How many?” Rasmus asked as he pushed Tobias into the hole and down the ladder. Terry thought about it for a second, then started counting using his toes. He held up his two front paws and balanced on a back leg, holding up his other one. There were three men, it’s just Terry didn’t have many toes.

  “Thank you, Terry – get somewhere safe, and thank the others for us.” Rasmus grabbed the rope on the underside of the trapdoor and dropped from the ladder, using his entire body weight to slam the trapdoor shut behind him. It slammed with such force that even down in the cellar, they could hear the windows rattling in their frames. If any of them lived to see morning, he was going to regret doing that.

  ***

  “Right, then. What are you doing now, Isla?” Isla's mind wandered along with the ripples in the river around her. She wasn't used to sailing, or flying for that matter, and it took her every ounce of concentration she had to not simply run the boat aground. Of course, this is exactly what she had done the very moment she told herself she'd quite gotten the hang of it and it wasn't very hard, really. Her mind wandered to what kind of dress she'd wear or how she'd look in a hat, and the next thing she knew was being wrong-side-up in the bottom of a rowing boat that was rapidly taking on water. The boat bore a small hole in the side where it ran foul of an unfortunately jagged rock. Isla scrambled to shore and shook the water from her plumage. She pulled furiously on the guide rope to get the boat at least partially ashore.

  She watched as the bow of the boat sank below the cool crystalline surface of the river despite her best efforts. The river was neither wide nor deep, but today Isla learned that it was just wide enough and deep enough to perfectly accommodate a rowing boat that, barring a small hole, was in an otherwise reasonable condition and probably deserved better. She took the guide rope and tied it around a nearby tree, wincing slightly at how ludicrous it seemed to be trying to stop it floating away now. She hoped she would be asked if she remembered to tie the boat up rather than whether or not she had inadvertently scuppered it and made a mess of the plan. This way she'd at least get to tell the truth. Isla wasn't sure she disliked lying because it was wrong or because she was universally bad at it. The trouble with lying, she thought, is that you have to remember exactly what you told people, sometimes even minutes later.

  Isla rang the water out of the hem of her dress and sighed. She hadn't had time to check to see if her newest patch was colour-fast, she just grabbed the nicest looking piece of material from her sowing box. She watched in horror as the bright red square openly wept across the rest of her dress and created a discordant blur of colour. She felt like joining in, so she did. She kicked the sand from her feet and began the ungainly and very particular set of leg and wing movements required to get her off the ground and into the air. For a time, gravity seemed quite happy to allow her transgression against it and she soared high above the trees. She could see for miles – she didn't quite know how many, she'd never thought of counting before.

  It was only supposed to be a quick trip downstream, a mile or so, but it looked to her that she'd travelled at least a couple more than she'd meant to. The thought of how she would explain everything to Rasmus drifted out of her head as quickly as it entered, and she was content to live in that one perpetual second, undisturbed by the trivialities of her nautical misadventure, or indeed how she'd land. Mayflight looked beautiful from any angle, but from the sky it took on a whole new level of magnificence that she knew that out of this moment, she'd never have the words to explain, or even begin to try. She'd just mumble and point and giggle, then everyone would roll their eyes and she'd feel small again.

  For all Mayflight's beauty, it felt empty without the Tirrens, even from so very high up. It just felt wrong in all the ways that trying to fly backwards would, and she should know, she'd tried. She traced a path through the village with her eyes, starting at the Hubert's house and winding her way up towards Rasmus' house. She watched as the statue that sat atop the plinth in the middle of the fountain glistened in the sun, she watched as a group of grey-clad men moved upon the village, she watched as the wind gently tickled the small windmill in the Tirren's back garden. Isla's brain paused for a second, then diverted much-needed energy from less important parts of her body, like her legs and wings, then considered what it had just seen. “They're here,” she said. Then the ground spiralled towards her.