Chapter One: Mother's Warnings

She was coming for me. I knew that no matter where I hid, she would be sure to find me. My fate was inevitable.

"Here he is!" Cora flung open the closet. "Come out, Bart! Come out and play with us!"

I would rather have eaten dirt, but there were four of them and only one of me, so I had no choice.

Margie grinned. "I'll be the princess!"

"I'll be the fairy gerbil mother!" Beth added.

Cora put an arm around Flo's shoulders. "We'll be the two vain stepsisters."

Flo smiled. "You can be the hairdresser, Bart."

I didn't want to dress their hair. I wanted to play marbles or jacks. In fact, I would've settled for helping my parents with the housework. Anything was better than what my sisters had in mind!

However, there's no sense in starting an argument you can't possibly win, so I styled their hair. It was the only way I could get any peace and quiet.

"You look stunning, Beth!" Flo complimented.

"Thanks! Your hair looks beautiful too, Flo!"

Margie beamed. "Isn't Bart the best at this?"

"He is!" agreed Cora, admiring her hair in the mirror.

Beth turned to me. "Now you have to be the handsome prince and dance with us!"

I wondered if other boys were forced to be charming princes whenever their sisters acted our fairy tales. I didn't particularly like ballroom dancing, but I twirled around the floor with each of them.

Before they forced me to join them for a tea party, I made my way to the kitchen and begged Mother to let me help prepare the meal.

"Why don't we have a housekeeper to do our work for us?" I asked, chopping vegetables. "Other wealthy families do."

"Three things can ruin a perfectly respectable life," Mother answered as she stirred the broth. "The first is money. If we let our riches go to our heads, the wealth will be taken from our hands. Fate is cruel like that. Besides, I won't have my children growing up like pampered, lazy cats. You need to know how to provide for yourselves and do your own chores if we somehow lose our fortune."

I nodded, knowing how much Mother hated cats. All mice tend to dislike the larger animals, but Mother despised them even more than most rodents do.

"I could almost understand their cruelty if they had nothing else to eat," she often remarked, "but there are many well-fed cats who will kill a mouse out of boredom! The barbarians think we were put on this earth for no other reason than to feed their humongous appetites and even larger egos! The fat creatures don't need us for food, but they murder us anyway! Malevolent beasts!"

Her tirade always concluded with "I'd better not ever hear of you getting within five hundred yards of those brutes! You avoid cats at all costs. Do you understand me, Bartholomew Ingham?"

I don't know why she worried so much. Did she honestly think I would be foolish enough to throw away my life like that? I certainly had no intentions of seeing the inside of a cat's mouth!

My thoughts were interrupted by my curiosity. "Mother, you said there were three things that could ruin a respectable life, and the first is money. What about the second?"

"Power," she replied. "It's a losing battle. Too much power can make a tyrant of a servant; however, too little power can make a slave of a ruler. Being powerless can be as bad or worse than being too powerful. Either way, power is dangerous."

"And the third?"

"Alcohol."

"What's alcohol?"

Mother sighed as she thought of how to explain it. "If you drink too much water or tea, you might not feel well, but you're still free to continue your normal life. If you drink too much alcohol, which is something that adults drink sometimes, you start making a fool of yourself and having hallucinations. Furthermore, if you continue to drink large amounts of alcohol, your health deteriorates, and you die of a disease that could've been prevented if you hadn't consumed excessive liquor."

I gasped. "That's awful!"

"Sometimes you don't even get that long to live. Many poor mice have met their deaths due to a mistake they made while they were drunk. They've been hit by carriages, drowned after falling into rivers, eaten by hawks and owls since they were so much easier to catch than sober rodents, captured by humans to be taken to laboratories for experiments…!" She shook her head. "There are countless ways a drunk mouse could get himself killed!"

"So why do they do it?"

"What, drink?"

I nodded.

"Comfort, mostly. When you drink too much, you forget the sad things in life. You just feel wonderful and happy. However, when you stop feeling so ecstatic, you realize you have no money because you spent it all on drinks, and your head throbs while your stomach churns."

I made no reply as I continued to help prepare the meal.

"Another thing to remember is that alcohol is addictive. Some rodents just don't feel right unless they drink."

I threw my arms around her. "Never fret, Mother. I'll never allow myself to drink alcohol, especially not in excess. I'll avoid it like you taught me to avoid cats."

She smiled. "I'm sure you will, Bartholomew."