"Hey you!"
Padraic looked up from his work station. It was only ten o'clock and already he was exhausted. Even though he'd been there for roughly a year or so, he was still considered to be a fairly new worker; and because he was a new, as well as much smaller than most of his coworkers, he was often used as a runner, having to work as an assistant to those who outranked him. At last count his superiors included everyone except those sitting next to him on the work bench.
"Get over 'ere!"
He obeyed and ran over to the Floor Manager. He did not look the man in the eyes, instead choosing to keep a close watch of the whip in his hand. It wasn't used often, only when the workers were really slacking off. But if the Manager happened to be in a bad mood- well it was best not to even think about it.
"Listen close, sod for brain," the tall mouse grumbled. "Take these-
He shoved three large boxes of needles and buttons into Padraic's arms.
"-upstairs to the main floor. Go on!" And with a gulp the young rat went on, moving towards the stairs as quickly as he could while juggling the boxes.
The cellar, where Padraic worked, was for the making of buttons, pins, and needles. The ground floor was where everything was sorted; some was to be sold and some went to the second floor. Though Padraic was yet to visit the second floor, it was where rows and rows of sewing machines were busily running from sun up to sun down, operated by mice. Then there was the third floor: The Office. No one went up there except for the rarely seen factory owner. Padraic had heard rumors that anyone who fell behind or messed up was sent there, never to return. He didn't believe it of course, but one could never be too careful.
He made it to the top of the steps and staggered forward, waiting for someone to come along and take the boxes. Finally a worker came over and relieved him of the weight.
"Well," the worker, a tall broad shouldered rat, said. "What are you waiting for, huh? A medal? Get back downst-!"
"Hey, Tony?"
"What?" the tall rat turned to glare at the person who'd called to him.
"We got stuff that needs to go back," the other rat shouted across the room. "I swear they're making nothing but junk down there."
"Alright, give me moment." The rat called Tony looked back at Padraic. "Stay here. You'll be the one to tell 'em they need to work harder."
Padraic gulped. Considering how much slaving the cellar rats already did, delivering this message would be nothing short of insulting. And no one around here was above shooting the messenger. But because he'd been given an order, he'd have to follow through. So he stood and waited for the rats to give him the load to take downstairs.
While he waited he let his eyes wander. This floor was full of boxes, scraps of fabric, and cranky rats and mice. He dutifully read the various signs along the walls, and peered at the writing on the boxes. The young rat examined the entire room until he spied the stair case across from him.
Coincidentally, someone happened to be using the stairs at that very moment. A young girl of about six, maybe older came down from the second floor and nervously looked around. She stood perfectly still until a grungy looking mouse stomped over to her and grumbled, "What ya want?"
"They need more buttons, sir." She spoke quietly, for she was obviously a bit shy, and her accent caused her to pronounce the word 'sir' as 'suh'.
"More?" the man thundered. "We just sent some up!"
The girl's knees began to wobble a bit but she managed to reply, "I know; but they ran out and-."
"Always running out, they are!" The mouse turned around and walked away, ranting and throwing his arms in the air. "'More buttons, more needles!' The bloody ingrates!"
"Aw, shut up Luther," someone else called. "No one wants to hear it!"
Luther continued to grumble, but called to Tony, "The morons need more buttons!"
"I'm busy here!" Tony shouted, still trying to gather up the defective objects to be taken back.
"'Course you are! We're all busy! We can't be worrying about them! You!"
Here Luther pointed a long, filthy nail across the room at Padraic. "Grab up a box and give it to the girlie so she can be out of our hairs!"
The boy checked to see that Tony was busy enough not to come after him before following his new set of instructions. He grabbed a stray box and raced across the floor, dodging various people, heading for the girl. As he got closer he slowed down until he came to a halt several steps away.
She was a bit tall for a mouse her age and very thin. Her overall appearance was grubby, with smudges dotting her shoes, dress, and face. If she was a bit cleaner her fur would have been white (which was a bit odd, considering that white fur was usually boasted in high society families). A wild mass of black curls was kept at bay by a lone ribbon that might have been pink once. But the thing that brought Padraic to a halt, was that when she'd seen him coming up to her, she had done a very strange thing: she turned her head and started staring at him. Her green eyes made it very haunting, and the poor boy felt horribly self conscious.
"H-here," he stammered and held the box out.
She gratefully accepted the package, taking it and holding it close so as not to drop it. And then this strange little girl got just a bit stranger. The corners of her turned up, revealing a few crooked front teeth, and her eyes flashed even brighter.
She was…smiling at him? But why? Had he done something amusing? Was she about to hurl a witty insult at him? Or- Oh no… Not that!
"Please don't spit on me!" he begged.
Her smile slipped into a frown of confusion. "What?"
"Don't spit! Please don't! I know you people think it's funny, but it's really not!"
The girl's eyebrows crinkled in bewilderment. "Why would I spit on you?"
It was his turn to be puzzled. "B-because…Because I'm a rat."
"And I'm a mouse."
"Well, yes, but-."
This circling conversation was interrupted by a shout from above. "INSPECTION!"
Chaos broke out in an instant. Padraic heard people rushing about both upstairs and down, and the people of the first floor were no exception. They ran around, letting out cries of panic.
"What's Inspection?" the girl asked, suddenly frightened.
"I don't know," Padraic said.
"It means you need to get upstairs," said a woman who had just appeared at the top of the steps.
"Yes ma'am! I'm coming."
The girl started to go up, but she and Padraic were knocked to the floor by a group of panicked mice coming down. The box of buttons flew out of her hands and was crushed under a large rat's foot. The girl sat up, a bit dazed and gasped at the sight of the ruined box and the buttons scattered about.
"Pick those up," the woman called, "And be quick about it!" The woman rushed back up and out of sight.
The mouse girl, breathing quick, crawled over to the scattered buttons and started scooping them up, using her dress as a makeshift pouch. She looked back at the boy. "Help me! Please, help me!"
Padraic looked about. Tony, Luther, and the others were hurrying about and didn't seem to notice him. So he obliged and helped the strange girl pick up the copper buttons. When they'd finished she gave him a rushed, "Thanks!" before running upstairs. She ran so fast he didn't have time to give her one last button that rolled beneath a chair. He looked at it, shrugged, and pocketed the little metal prize.
While the fuss began to die down a bit, Padraic remembered what Tony had wanted, and ran over to get the collection of faulty pins and needles. He took them downstairs, gave them to the manager who was too busy to listen to why the boxes had come back, and ran over to stand next to his fellow workers.
It turned out that Inspection was an action defined as: the owner of the factory, a Mr. Acker, stopping work completely in order to walk around and stare disapprovingly at everyone and everything. Padraic watched as he strode about the cellar, hands behind his back, refusing to speak to or acknowledge the floor managers.
Acker walked down the line of workers, glaring at them all. Each one would either look straight ahead or at the floor as he walked by. Padraic noticed a bit of a smirk curling underneath his thick mustache. This angered him greatly. The young boy shook his head slightly; this man seemed to be under the delusion that he was a king and the laborers were his subjects.
Finally the man reached the end of the line, where Padraic stood. Acker looked down his long nose at the boy. The rat stared straight back, stone faced. This went on for a moment or so. Then Acker looked away. Padraic grinned a little; he'd won.
After Inspection, work continued for hours until finally the managers called for a stop. Padraic stretched and yawned before stumbling into the back room with the others. Those that didn't have homes slept here in make shift bunks. He shared a bed with five others, close to a window.
He rolled his sleeping bedmates aside and hopped onto dirty mattress. With a yawn he rolled over on his side and tried to fall asleep. It was still early, but staying up late wasn't an option when you were this tired.
Padraic was nearing slumber when a small tapping noise put a dent in the silence. He squirmed and tried to ignore it, but the tapping persisted until he finally opened his eyes and looked around.
There, at the window, was the strange girl. She was looking straight at him with her haunting green eyes. He started at the sight and for a moment the two sat there, staring at one another. Finally he got out of bed as slowly as possible and tip toed over to the wall. The rat carefully climbed on top of a barrel and pushed the window open.
"What are you doing?" he asked her, looking around. She was crouching in the alleyway, alone. The other mice, even the managers, were already long gone. In the dark she whispered to him, "I need your help."
"Help?" he asked. "What are you talking about?"
"Let me in so we can talk."
"Um, okay…"
He pushed the window open and she crawled through easily. The girl tumbled to the floor, landing on her rear, and looked up at him expectantly. He jumped down and crouched in front of her. "What's going on?"
"That Mr. Acker stole something from me! I need your help getting it back."
By this point Padraic was on the verge of going back to bed he was so lost. Why was she asking him for help? They'd barely met earlier; he didn't even know her name! But as he squatted there, peering at the strange girl, he saw in her eyes that, for whatever reason, she trusted him to assist her. No one had ever put faith in him before…
He sighed and looked down at his feet. "Alright, but, I don't know how I can- AH!"
Padraic's squeak of surprise came when she grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the door. She gave him a whispered cry of "Come on!" and promptly dragged him through the door, across the cellar work room, up the stairs, across the first floor, and up another flight of stairs to the second floor. Here he dug his heels into the floor to stop her from pulling him further. She stopped and released his hand, and the boy gasped for air.
"How do you move that fast?" he wheezed.
She shrugged. "Just do. Now come on! His office is right up there." The girl pointed towards a third set of stairs that obviously led to the third floor and, as she said, Acker's office.
"Alright but *wheeze* what exactly are we looking for?"
"Huh?"
"What'd he steal?"
"Oh, that… Tell you when we get there." And on that note she dragged him up the last flight.
As they reached the landing a door loomed in front of the two. They shared a look. Padraic performed his first act of help by reaching out and slowly opening the door to peer in. What he saw made his jaw drop.
It looked nothing like a factory owner's business quarters. It instead resembled a lavish study, with a large oak desk, a plush, high back chair, and full shelf of books on the wall. The dark outside cast the room in shadow, but in the daytime this room must have looked brighter and cheerier than anything Padraic had ever known.
The girl walked in nonchalantly, and he followed. While she started rifling through Acker's desk drawers, Padraic stood in front of the bookshelf, practically salivating at he read all of the different titles. He hadn't read an actual book besides Josie's book of stories, which was now lost to him. Maybe he could just…
"Found it!" the girl said triumphantly. Padraic jumped at her voice and whipped around to see her proudly holding up her hair ribbon, which he now noticed had been replaced by a thick piece of string. He narrowed his eyes.
"That? You got me out of bed and dragged me up here for a stupid ribbon?"
"It's not stupid," she spat back, stomping her foot. "Besides, he shouldn't have taken it! I was just minding my own business and he walked up and plucked it out of my hair!"
Padraic was now seething. "What do I care? It's none of my business what happens. And why in blazes did you need me anyway? You could have done all this yourself!"
"I know," she said. She looked at the floor, suddenly very meek. "I just didn't want to do it alone."
"Oh." He didn't know what else to say. "Well, why me then?"
She shrugged and rocked back and forth on her feet. "Because, no one else likes me."
His eyes widened. He was about to come up with a response when they both heard a horrible noise: footsteps.
With the same mind they hid beneath the desk, hugging their knees. The two sat back to back, listening.
It was Acker. He'd been halfway home when he realized he'd forgotten some paperwork. Rather than worry about the problem tomorrow, he'd decided to go back and work on it for however long it took.
The two young rodents winced as the man sat in his chair and scooted in. He wasn't leaving for a while. The girl in particular panicked; she turned her head slightly and whispered in Padraic's ear, "My mum's waiting for me."
He understood. She needed to leave; they both did. But how? Then he got an idea.
Acker was jotting down notes when he heard a strange clattering noise on the stairs. "What the devil?" he asked himself. He rose and went to the door to inspect the issue. While his back was turned, the two children crawled from their hiding place and crept behind the open door, where they wouldn't be seen (well, the girl did; Padraic made his way after stopping at the bookshelf first).
When he didn't see anything unusual, Acker gave a great, "Humph," and went back to his desk. He was about to sit when he spotted a piece of string on the floor. He bent to pick it up, and the two hidden rodents took this time to sneak out. They went quietly down the stairs and across the second floor, and promptly went at breakneck speed through the rest of the building to the cellar.
Once there they crept into the sleeping quarters and to the window. The pair crawled up and outside into the cool night air.
"That was so scary," the girl said. "But I'm glad I got this back." Once the string had fallen out of her hair, her curls had sprung out in every direction. She used the recaptured ribbon to tie them back once more and gave the rat boy a crooked toothed grin.
Padraic nodded and pulled out his new book. It didn't have a title on the cover, but that didn't matter of course. The girl knit her eyebrows at the sight of the volume. "Why'd you take that?"
"To read it."
"You can read?"
"Yes. Quite well, actually."
"Wow," she said. She neglected to mention that most adults claimed rats were too ignorant to even learn how to talk. "Do you think you could teach me?"
He thought about it. On the one hand this girl was fairly nice. On the other, she'd nearly gotten him into more trouble than he cared to consider. "No," was his solemn reply.
She didn't seem fazed. "What do they feed you?"
"Feed me?"
"Yes. What sort of food do you get?"
He shrugged. "Gruel mostly. Sometimes bread crumbs and crackers."
She stuck her tongue out in disgust. "That sounds awful." She reached in her dress pocket and grabbed something. "I'll make you a deal." She pulled her hand out to display a somewhat cold, but still quite tasty looking biscuit. "Teach me to read, and I'll bring you food from home."
Now that was different. "Alright," he agreed, snatching the biscuit and practically swallowing it whole, but not before enjoying the near fresh flavor. "But you have to hold up your end."
"I will. My mum's a cook. She always has plenty of food." She pulled on one of her curls. "Too bad she's not a seamstress. Then maybe I'd have lots of ribbons."
"Delia!"
The girl turned at the noise.
"Delia! Where are you?"
"That's my mum," she said, turning back around. "Meet me out here tomorrow after work. She comes by to get me, but she almost always late, so it won't be a problem. Bye!"
With that she started running down the alley. She stopped when she was almost to the street and turned to call, "My name is Delia, by the way! Delia Drake!"
"I'm Padraic James Ratigan!" he called in return.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Padraic James Ratigan!" she called, a happy laugh in her voice. She ran out of sight.
Padraic stood in the alley for a moment, enjoying the chill of the night air. He wore a wide smile. In his mind it was because someone had finally said his name out loud, and he liked the sound of it.
He would later realize that he was also smiling because he'd finally found a friend.
