Mice

From the palaz­zo’s high win­dows, a grey woman watched the glit­ter­ing azure bay. There, hun­dreds of fat, laden car­racks sat at har­bor, trapped by a line of iron­clads that gripped the cir­cu­lar inlet’s nar­row neck, patrolling. Specks of folk milled about the port city’s board­walks, watch­ing the stag­nant block­ade. She sighed, nose flar­ing.

A teak door clicked open. Round the frame stepped a page­boy accou­tered in cher­ry red. “Par­don me, Seño­ra Capard, the Trea­sury del­e­gates from Lothrheim have arrived.” Capard turned to blink tired­ly at the page. 

“Send them in, Juan,” she said. The boy scur­ried away. 

Capard glanced to a low table in the room’s cen­ter. A sin­gle, short chair accom­pa­nied it. A trio of small, red cush­ions occu­pied its sur­face. A bowl of whole, bit­ter wal­nuts and a stack of tiny plates sat beside. She turned the chair to face the bay, stood with a hand on its pur­ple-uphol­stered back.

A click as the door opened again. Hold­ing it, the page straight­ened and cleared his throat.

“Pre­sent­ing the del­e­ga­tion from Lothrheim: Chan­cel­lor Llewellyn Spitze and staff.”

Round the door frame hopped three well-dressed mice. Spitze, a brown fel­low in a hound­stooth waist­coat, led the par­ty. He wore a hand­some black rib­bon mid­way down his pre­hen­sile tail. The oth­ers wore neu­tral, dark grey suits. The del­e­gates’ bound­ing gaits pat­tered soft­ly on the warm tile of the room.

Approach­ing Capard, Spitze rose from all fours, strait­ened to the height of the wom­an’s knee. He offered a paw. Capard grasped the fur­ry limb, bend­ing low. “Buon­giorno, Chan­cel­lor,” she said.

Spitze’s pink nose twitched. His pink, veined discs of ears perked up. “A plea­sure to meet with you, Bel­la. I wish it could be in bet­ter times,” he said in a high, qui­et tone. 

“Indeed,” gri­maced Capard. Her expres­sion shift­ed grim­ly. “Please, friend, have a seat. Your road was long.”

Spitze leapt nim­bly atop the low table. He set­tled upon a cush­ion, tugged his waist­coat straight. His ret­inue fol­lowed. Their foot-long whiskers twitched under impas­sive, wine col­ored eyes. Spitze plucked a wal­nut from the bowl and turned it in his paws.

“I sup­pose you’d like to dis­cuss the block­ade,” he said.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, yes.”

“If you’ve called me here to mull the same, moot con­cept, I’m sor­ry to have wast­ed time, Bel­la. Your Prince under­stands why the War Min­istry won’t retract the war­ships,” said Spitze. Grip­ping the wal­nut with both paws, he cracked it with long, ivory incisors.

“Indeed, and they main­tain their state of siege only by the efforts of the Ship­wright’s Trea­sury,” said Capard.

Spitze frowned at her, nose twitch­ing. He busi­ly decon­struct­ed half the wal­nut. Shards of woody shell fell from his downy lips. He swal­lowed, head bob­bing. “Quite,” he squeaked.

“You, my dear Llewellyn, hold exec­u­tive con­trol of that trea­sury. You hold it for a rea­son.”

“I’ve not for­got­ten my office.”

“Might we speak pri­vate­ly?” said Capard.

Spitze’s whiskers twitched. He raised a pink paw, waved his mice away. They hopped from the table, dis­creet­ly skit­tered out. The red-eyed mouse gazed at Capard, eye­lids twitch­ing. “You are behav­ing odd­ly,” he said.

“Do you recall our days at the Accad­e­mia togeth­er, Llewellyn?” said Capard, lean­ing for­ward.

“Of course.”

“You aspired then to the office you now occu­py. You spoke of it often, of the reach it afford­ed you. You remem­ber why?”

“Yes,” said the mouse, soft­ly.

“You’ve had suc­cess with the work? You’ve been out of con­tact.”

Spitze shift­ed. “Some small progress. What are you dri­ving at?”

Capard smiled, tugged a small yel­low fold from her jack­et. “My own progress has been sub­stan­tial,” she said, prof­fered the item to Spitze. Del­i­cate­ly, the mouse took it, unfold­ing it. “Just a pho­to­type” said Capard. “The gen­uine arti­cle is in my safe.”

A moment passed as Spitze exam­ined the pho­to. His soft sides began to quiver under his hound­stooth jack­et. Fast breaths whis­pered through his long, fur­ry nose. “I see,” he squeaked. Care­ful­ly, he fold­ed the pho­to, held it in both paws close to his round body, as if reluc­tant to release it. He met Capard’s eyes. “I under­stand your intent.”

“Now, I would­n’t deign sug­gest your favors may be bought.” She smiled. “This is, how­ev­er, price­less.”

Spitze quiv­ered, whiskers ablur. “Damn you, Bel­la.”

“Keep it. I would love to show you the arti­fact itself, in a hap­pi­er time,” smiled Capard.

The mouse looked to the paper in his paws, then to the floor. Some silent sec­onds passed, filled only with the dis­tant mur­mur of the port, the caw of seabirds, and the ner­vous flick­er of Spitze’s breath.

“There are three Trea­sury engi­neers on every craft, down there. All mice. Loy­al mice. Loy­al to me,” said Spitze, halt­ing­ly. He did not meet Capard’s eyes. “Depend­ing on their actions, or inac­tion, the block­ade could end with­in a fort­night,” he said, more qui­et­ly.

“Thank you.”

“If I am found out, this will cost me my job,” said the mouse, stand­ing from his cush­ion. “And earn me a charge of trea­son.” With shak­ing paws, he tucked the old, yel­lowed paper into his jack­et. “I shall depart at once.” He dropped to the tile.

Before he reached the teak door, Capard rose, spoke. 

“Llewellyn,” she said, soft­ly.  “There is a place for all of us. Far away from all of this, when it’s all over.”

Spitze turned, fixed her with wet eyes. “Thank you, Bel­la.” He nod­ded, and dis­ap­peared round the door.

Mice

Some nine hun­dred years past, in the chill of autumn, the first mice emerged from beneath the roots of elms. * They were mild, small crea­tures, pos­sessed of nim­ble paws and a gen­tle lan­guage. From where they came, no one knew, and the mice could­n’t (or would­n’t) tell. With­in a cen­tu­ry, they had inte­grat­ed with soci­ety. Nowa­days, you could­n’t guess they had­n’t been here all along.

In an aver­age day about town, you will see many mice. Your neigh­bor is a mouse; he grows fine bego­nias. Your cob­bler is a mouse; her many chil­dren shine the shoes. You buy news­pa­pers from a mouse in a beret for tup­pence. Your town’s may­or is a mouse; his fam­i­ly has run the local flour mill for gen­er­a­tions.

The fact that mice are small and fur­ry is not at all an issue. They wear clothes like every­one else. They are quite clean, nev­er lick them­selves in pub­lic. They take up so very lit­tle space, rarely get under­foot. Remind­ing your­self that mice are fur­ry and knee-high is actu­al­ly rather unnerv­ing, so unno­ticed does it go. **

Mice are eas­i­ly for­giv­en their few pecu­liar­i­ties. Their expres­sions and kinesics are dif­fer­ent from those of humans, but eas­i­ly learned. Their quick mode of hop­ping about is some­what ani­mal in nature, but for­get­table, as mice stand when they speak. Their ten­den­cy to drink very lit­tle (mice most­ly sub­sist on the liq­uid in plant mat­ter) is odd, but excus­able, as they rarely take too much wine.

You may nev­er ade­quate­ly appre­ci­ate the scale of mousy inte­gra­tion. Of course you would­n’t: The true extent of it is under­foot, or over­head, or sim­ply too small for you to access. Mouse-only con­struc­tion fits in, lit­er­al­ly, because it fits where you can­not go. A crawl­space is an entire floor, to mice, and an attic is a pent­house. Mouse real­ty firms eager­ly buy up these minu­ti­ae in new con­struc­tions, and mouse car­pen­ters read­i­ly include it in the designs. Look for the lit­tle round doors. The mouse­holes. They are every­where, once you look; at every height and angle, in the spare places where humans do not look (or com­plain.) This skill in mak­ing their own spaces, at fit­ting in, is per­haps mousekind’s great­est asset. One that has pro­tect­ed them from the gripes and intol­er­ances of your much larg­er race.

Mice are such nat­ur­al mem­bers of soci­ety that you would rarely won­der where they came from, in the first place. It’s a trail of thought that leads you to a rather odd place: From what world under the elms did they crawl from, and why?

No one seems to know, and none will thank you for ask­ing, save the Elms.

The Elms

In recent decades, an inter­est in mousekind’s ori­gins has bur­geoned in the intel­li­gentsia of the Coast. An inter­est grown into a cryp­tic sodal­i­ty known as the Elms.

It is an orga­ni­za­tion known by few; mis­tak­able as a harm­less, juve­nile secret fra­ter­ni­ty. The Elms and its mem­bers orig­i­nate from a par­tic­u­lar­ly astute class of metahis­to­ri­ans, most­ly mice, grad­u­at­ed from the pres­ti­gious Mapoli­tan Accad­e­mia di Lan­qua. They are quite seri­ous in their goals: In their youth, they pledged to illu­mi­nate the emer­gence of mice in Lit­toran his­to­ry; to deter­mine why mice entered the Coast, from where, and to reac­quire knowl­edge of the lost tongue of ancient mice.

The young Elms, already a priv­i­leged lot, pledged to attain high sta­tus in schol­ar­ship and pol­i­tics. To acquire monies and con­nec­tions meant to fur­ther their pri­vate arche­o­log­i­cal aims. Since then, they have large­ly suc­ceed­ed. Though some have lost the faith, a core of devot­ed Elms have amassed suf­fi­cient pow­er and fur­ther devo­tees to rival the efforts of the Coast’s banks, and have with them har­vest­ed a trove of feu­dal-era arti­facts, each a tan­ta­liz­ing step­stone.

The Elms grow near their final goal. Their move­ments grow more point­ed. They raid 26th-cen­tu­ry tombs with con­fi­dence and accu­ra­cy, employ­ing skilled cut­ters loy­al to their aims and ample cof­fers. They study ancient elm groves deep on the wild edge of civ­i­liza­tion, read­ing and record­ing every aar­ti­met­ric mur­mur of the great arbors’ twist­ed roots. † They speak hes­i­tant phras­es in frag­ments of tit­ter­ing, squeak­ing Ancient Mouse. They begin to act with usurpa­to­ry reck­less­ness, redi­rect­ing funds, aban­don­ing gov­ern­ment posts, and trans­par­ent­ly sab­o­tag­ing Coastal pol­i­tics to twist out­comes in their favor. Their impa­tient eager­ness belies their prox­im­i­ty to their mis­sion’s final goal; their cer­tain­ty that at its end they will have dis­cov­ered anoth­er world.

Many are over­come with the pos­si­bil­i­ty: Anoth­er world, the lost world of mice. Clear­ly suit­able for life, since mice were, at their first emer­gence, so well-suit­ed for the Coast. An entire new realm of resources, per­haps untapped. Either unpop­u­lat­ed and ripe for expan­sion, or inhab­it­ed by a civ­i­liza­tion of lost mouse brethren over­flow­ing with lost cul­ture. A world, more­over, unlike the Coast: One not bro­ken; where per­haps mice and humankind both could flee should their ram­shackle world be devoured by extra­world­ly neigh­bors.

In the rush of dis­cov­ery few stop to doubt, to won­der why the first mice emerged from beneath the roots of elms. To sup­pose that per­haps they were evac­uees. A small and pleas­ant race, des­per­ate for safe inclu­sion, fled from a bleak and car­niv­o­rous world.

Note

Mice were orig­i­nal­ly a fairy­tale replace­ment for halflings.

If you wish to imple­ment mice in your game, sim­ply use halfling sta­tis­tics. If you’re like me, you’ll include mod­i­fiers for diminu­tive size. Mice are now ful­ly fea­tured in the Incunab­u­li RPG sys­tem.

The bit about the Elms was strong­ly reworked years fol­low­ing the orig­i­nal pub­lish date.

There’s a table for sug­gest­ed mouse sur­names in this arti­cle.