Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of the fuzzy wuzzy creatures of Redwall Abbey. I'm not the crazy rodent hoarder.
Chapter 2 of Anti of Redwall!
Peter darted from the scene of the crime, shaken slightly by his bold act. He had looked three dibbuns directly in their fwuffy, chubby, cutesy faces and locked the door on them! This had to be a first in all of existence. If he could do this then what else could he accomplish? History was just asking to be made in this place, and it was up to him to do it. He could be a hero. He could be the Revolutionary of Redwall—that sounded good. But where to start?
Running along the abbey grounds, scheming and planning, Peter suddenly noticed that several Redwallers were looking strangely at him; with bated breath, it seemed. They couldn't have seen him with the dibbuns, as he was now nowhere near the south wall. But they did look rather horrified. If they had seen him then he might as well kiss his innovative career goodbye. He slowed to a halt with apprehension. "What?"
A mousemaid suddenly let out a blood-piercing shriek. "ATTACK! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! VERMIN ARE ATTACKING!"
Then everyone joined in, shouting aloud and running willy-nilly upon the grass.
"—GET THE ABBOT!—"
"—SOUND THE ALARM!—"
"—RIENFORCE THE GATES!—"
"—GATHER THE DIBBUNS!—"
"—WHAT ABOUT THE FEAST?—"
"—WEAPONS! GET SOME WEAPONS!—"
"What the fu—"At first, Peter actually thought they were under attack, what with all the clatter that was going on. Jesus, those dibbuns are fast, he thought to himself. But then he noticed that the panicked Redwallers were still looking at himin that strange strange way.
"Wait a minute!" he shouted, but his voice was not heard above the din. "SHUT THE HELL UP FOR A SECOND!" he bellowed.
All promptly became silent, except one old squirrel, who was blubbering into her apron, "…running…he was running, he was…running…"
"What is going on?" Peter said. "What makes you think we're being attacked?"
"You were runnin'! I saw yer," said a young otter.
The others started chattering in united agreement.
Glaring, Peter barked, "AND…"
A dormouse piped up nervously, "Well, we try not to run too much these days. Not unless there is great urgency. An' you were running—right quickly too."
"Speeding!" said the mousemaid.
"And it is the start of vermin season again," said a vole.
Peter groaned. "Oh, I forgot…but—wait a minute—vermin season?"
"He forgot! The impudence!"
"Where's your head t'day, lad?"
"I've never seen the like…"
"So, thurr ur no vermin a-cummin'?"
"No!" Peter shouted. "I was just running. No…enemies are coming. You ever think none will come this year?" Then he remembered the dibbuns, out in the woods, enticing every hostile creature within a hundred-mile radius as he spoke. Why did you do that, idiot?
"Very funny," snapped the otter. "I'm going to stay on the wall top and keep a good eye out. Vermin will probably be banging at our door within the next couple of days. They've come on the 22nd of April for two years in a row now and it's the 18th today!"
"There's a good idea, Buttski."
"What a bright fellow he is."
"Best to learn from his example, young Gubby."
Everyone straightened up from their cowering positions and the old squirrel ceased blubbering immediately. She glared at Peter. "What's the big idea, eh, workin' us up like that? 'Tain't healthy. We should reserve ours strength for when we actually are being attacked. How will we enjoy the feast now?"
"Sorry, it won't happen again," Peter mumbled in submission, gazing at the retreating figure of Buttski. Now he remembered why he went jogging so early in the morning.
"Make sure it doesn't," she said menacingly. "You just did a very foolish thing, young un."
"We're all going to need big naps now!" someone shouted.
"You know I'm going to have to report to Mother Whiresot about this," said the squirrel. Still glaring, she joined the group as they drifted off to the dormitories.
Peter blanched. Confronting Mother Whiresot was the last thing he needed. There was no disguising how much she hated him. If he wanted to make a difference, it had better not include her. Ignoring the massive migraine building up in his brain, he started for the abbey (slowly). A new plan had come into his head.
…………Later…………
"Hello, everyone!" Peter said, smiling. "It's nice to see so many of you!"
About an hour earlier, he had announced to all who would listen that an informative presentation would be held in the orchard at tea. Those he told seemed rather excited by the subject matter and to his satisfaction, began spreading the word immediately. Still, he was rather surprised by how many had actually shown up. The orchard was nearly packed. Even a group of dibbuns were staring avidly at him. And there was no sign of Mother Whiresot, thank goodness!
"Welcome to my…er…Pie Graph Presentation," he declared, indicating the large board of wood standing next to him, which had a pie graph painted on it.
A few creatures cheered heartily.
"…an educational look into the ecology of Mossflower Wood."
Silence.
Taking a long stick, he tapped it against the largest section of the pie graph. It made up 80 percent. "This here is—"
"—gonner be moi slice, roight?" asked a mole.
"No mine! No mine!" shouted the dibbuns.
Peter's mind went blank. "Er…what? Anyway—this is the majority of rodents I have calculated living within a 200-mile radius of Redwall Abbey, 30 percent of which consists of verm…I mean…non-farmers. And this," he tapped another section of the pie graph, which made up 10 percent, "is the majority of birds."
"I choose apple!" someone yelled.
"Excuse m—?"
"Blackberry! Blackberry!" shouted the dibbuns.
"Please be—"
"Are we going to vote?"
Peter snapped the tip of his stick forcefully against the board, head throbbing. "And if you look at this section of the pie gr—"
The crowd gave another cheer.
"—THIS section of the pie—"
Cheer.
"—of the pie—"
Cheer.
"—of the graph…"
Silence.
"If we look at this portion of the graph," Peter continued, smiling grimly, "we will see that 7 percent of the majority consists of fish. Then there are reptiles/amphibians, which make up a measly 3 percent. Any questions?"
"Are we going to have pie or not?" piped up a hedgehog grumpily.
Raucous agreement from the fidgeting crowd.
"Pie? This has nothing to do with pie," Peter said. "I'm trying to inform you of the alarming imbalance of organisms within our environment."
"What!"
"Outrageous!"
"We wannna pie!" wailed the dibbuns.
"You said pie! We automatically assumed there would be pie!"
"False advertoisement, oi say!"
"Hear hear!"
Peter smacked the stick frantically against the wooden board to regain the crowd's attention. "Hold on now! This is much more important then pie. Don't you notice the severe lack of carnivores within our radius? Nature is completely askew! Don't you see—"
"How dare he? The very nerve…"
"—more important than pie?"
"—waste o' time—"
"Just the sort of juvenility we'd expect from you, Gubby."
"Why is it called a miserable pie graph, eh?"
"Why?"
"Why?"
"Why?"
Peter yelped as the furious crowd surged forward, bearing down on the graph he had lovingly painted…
…………Later…………
"Good afternoon, everyone," Peter beamed. "It's so nice of you to join me."
He was standing in the orchard again, tapping his stick against a freshly painted bar graph. The crowd was a bit smaller than previously. Burrlow the Cellarhog and his assistant, Rumbly Mole, were the only ones. It seemed as though they were only interested in the cask of barley wine they had decided to broach in the comfort of the outdoors, but Peter carried on stoutly.
"Here we have the number of days in the year," Peter said, running his stick up the left side of the graph. "And the bottom represents the activities we devote ourselves to. Now it seems as though we spend most of our days devoting ourselves to food stock and the eating thereof; 240 days, I have roughly estimated…"
Burrlow had just told a really amusing joke, at which Rumbly giggled uproariously.
"And we spend 70 days fighting the…non-farmers that threaten our livelihood. Any questions?"
"Vermin, ya mean?" said Burrlow over his tankard.
"More or less," said Peter. "Now that leaves about 50 days in which I realize we do absolutely nothing."
There was a sudden rush of noise as a gang of young creatures strolled into the orchard. One of their numbers was strumming an instrument and singing, whilst the others laughed at his antics.
"As I wandered along, doe-dum!
I met a scurvy rat, ho-hum!"
"Ahem!" Peter continued over the interruption. "If we could somehow pacify the hordes and cut down on the feasts, we could accomplish some amazing things!"
"Loik wut?"
"We could—"
"He challenged me to a deadly fight
I laughed and shouted aloud, 'Alright!'"
"We could build more roads through Mossflower and increase commerce."
"There ain't no pacifyin' the hordes, me lad. Ain't done."
"I have some ideas."
"Loik wut?"
"We could—"
"We faced off straight an' he lunged at me.
I gave him a nasty bruise on his knee!"
Rumbly and Burrlow chuckled appreciatively at the song.
"WE COULD—"
"Then I stabbed his guts out with a garden stake
Then I went home and Mammy baked me a cake!"
"Bravo! Bravo!" the crowd chanted as the singer bowed.
"COULD YOU PLEASE…" Peter shouted, "…quiet that dreadful music down? Can't you see I'm in the middle of a demonstration?"
The group of youngsters turned to him in unison, scowling. Peter cringed as he noticed Shonrad the mouse, aspiring Warrior of Redwall, standing amongst them.
"Dreadful?" Shonrad exclaimed. "Only a doily like Gubby would think a ballad of honour and battle dreadful."
His fellows giggled.
"Call me Peter," said Peter softly.
"Why, that's not your name?" Shonrad said. "Besides, you look like a Gubby-type."
Giggle, giggle.
"It's Peter now. And no, your song being dreadful had nothing to do with the honour it contained, since there really was none. It had to do with the atrocious rhymes and simplistic lyrics. A two-month-old babe could have composed them." Peter's aching head felt better and better with every word.
Shonrad glared fiercely. He was determined to come off the better mouse here.
"I heard you had quite a fiasco on your paws earlier," he said. "Too bad nobeast is interested in eggology these days."
"Ecology, you oaf," Peter sighed.
"I'm a warrior. I don't have time for such irrelevancy."
"What is relevant then?" Peter asked. He immediately regretted this question.
Shonrad looked delighted in bringing up his favorite subject. "Disemboweling stoats, skinning foxes, impaling rats, roasting weasels, blowing apart ferrets, chopping martens—"
"You sound like a vermin," Peter gloated.
"Well, I'm a mouse. And that makes me righteous!" Shonrad proclaimed. His friends cheered. "I am definitely going to make Abbey Warrior this autumn. You wait!"
"How do you know though?"
"I," Shonrad shared a dramatic look with his friends. They stared back in adoration, "have had three prophetic dreams from Martin the Warrior already."
"Amazing," Peter said dryly. "What did he prophesize, eh? Vermin invasion? Siege? Did he ask you to be brave and all that jazz?"
Shonrad hid his look of disappointment with an air of mystery. "That is for me to know and you to find out, my young friend."
"The song was still pointless," Peter said.
"You sing something if your such an expert, Peter," said a squirrel at Shonrad's elbow.
"Well, I…" Peter was suddenly shy.
"I knew it!" crowed another young mouse mockingly.
"Well, I do have something. It was just a dabble," Peter fidgeted, rubbed his sore skull, and then took the stringed instrument, which was a moleharp. "I wrote it down weeks ago."
Shonrad and co. assumed scornful glares as he struck a few chords on the moleharp and began to sing.
"I look at you all
See the love there that's sleeping
While my moleharp gently weeps.
I look at the floor
And I see it needs sweeping
While my moleharp gently—"
He got no further as Shonrad and co. collapsed on the grass in fits of laughter.
"Love? Weeping moleharps? A floor that needs sweeping?" Shonrad guffawed. "I heard not one mention of fighting or cake in that song. You thought Garf's song was bad?"
"Shows how much you know about music!" Peter spat. The youngsters continued to laugh.
"You harf to ammit," Rumbly chuckled, "Et were rather dull, son."
"Leave him alone!"
There was an eerie automatic silence as Daisy the mousemaid came onto the scene, paws akimbo. Peter smiled at her gratefully. Such a pretty thing.
"I thought the song was lovely," she declared. "Sweeping the floor can be a beautiful thing, you know!"
Peter was glad of the support but he couldn't help groaning at her remark. Such a dopey thing.
"Thanks, Daisy, I…"
"Peter," she snapped. "Don't tease Shonrad! He's a very noble fellow. He's going to be a mighty warrior one day and I'm probably going to have to marry him and have his children."
"Mice," Burrlow chuckled affectionately.
"Oh," Peter said glumly. "I'm sorry." That you're going to marry that bastard.
"Since that's settled," Shonrad puffed his chest and took Daisy by the paw, "come with me, dear maid. Let me tell you of my rat-strangling techniques in private."
Daisy giggled. "I might be too delicate for that, Shonny!"
"You will be when I'm done with you."
The made off alone together and promptly dove behind a bush.
"Young uns," Burrlow said merrily. "Such happy innocence."
The orchard began to empty as the five o' clock bell rang for dinnertime. There were still so many arrangements to be made before the feast tomorrow! Abbey beasts chattered happily about it as they converged at the main doors.
Peter, however, sat alone on the grass for a while, stroking the migraine between his ears and feeling utterly beaten. It was time to plan his next move. But it wasn't too long before he could sense the presence of someone else in the orchard. He could hear heavy footsteps trying to sneak across the lawn as the mysterious someone darted from tree to tree. They grew steadily closer and Peter leapt up in alarm as the smell of badger flooded his nostrils. Mother Whiresot was hunting him down!
With a gasp, the mouse tore from the scene. What cause had she to sneak up on him like that? It could only mean that he was in big trouble. Perhaps word of his other exploits had reached her ears. Well, he wasn't going to hang around to find out. He climbed the stairs to the wall top and made a half-circuit around the abbey. She would give up, he knew. Badgers were not the running type.
He sat with a bump on the wall. His head was really splitting now. A little rest could not go amiss while he waited for the coast to clear. His eyes slowly closed and he felt asleep there, with his back propped against the battlements.
"Awaken! Awaken!"
"Huh?"
Peter opened his eyes and found himself in a land of red mist. A mouse clad in armor stood before him, wielding a mighty sword. "Oh, great," he mumbled groggily. "Not you."
"Beware, young mouse," Martin boomed. "Trying times lay before you. Watch for the grey ones and protect your home!"
"Let me guess," said Peter. "The grey ones are rats and they are going to attack Redwall Abbey."
"Umm…"
"You don't have to be so cryptic, Martin. Why can't you just say it straight out? It would be so much easier, you know."
Under the gleaming helmet Peter could tell that Martin looked puzzled. "What's up? Cat got you tongue? Why can't you just talk like a civilized person instead of a bloody cipher?"
"Er…your name doesn't happen to be Shonrad, does it?"
"It's Peter, you dolt!" Peter laughed.
"Oops, wrong mouse," Martin whispered dramatically and faded into nothing.
Peter laughed uproariously and drifted into a peaceful sleep. But not for long.
He was jarred from his nap by utter chaos. Shouting and screaming filled his ears and when he looked down from his perch he saw the whole population of Redwall Abbey clamoring over the grounds. Their faces were drawn with worry.
"What's going on?" he said to nobody.
His question was answered anyway as countless voiced wailed, "Flobsy! Wubble! Stibby! Purkle! Where are you?"
A/N: Finally! I've finished. Sorry for the ridiculous delay. Now you must beware the next chapter. We shall meet dear Mother Whiresot.