‘Err, well … I was hoping we could sort that out now,’ Horace murmured. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll return everything by the start of the ski season.’
‘What do you mean by everything?’ Mr Tribble snapped.
‘Just a few supplies we stumbled upon while looking for you,’ Horace said awkwardly.
Mr Tribble stopped hopping and straightened his glasses.
‘I have no qualms about helping you rapscallion rats,’ he said in his sternest teacher’s voice, ‘but there are school rules to be followed.’
‘And we totally respect every one of them,’ Whisker said, nudging his companion. ‘Don’t we Horace?’
‘Oh, yeah, absolutely,’ Horace muttered absently. ‘Respect thy rules – that’s what I always say …’
Shaking his head, Whisker reached into his brown drawstring bag and pulled out a shiny gold coin.
‘Our deposit for the items Horace borrowed,’ he said, handing the coin to Mr Tribble. ‘Ask the Captain to fix you up with the balance when he passes through.’
Mr Tribble weighed the coin in his paw.
‘It feels extremely light for gold,’ he muttered to himself, before adding, ‘not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s been a while since I’ve held anything but copper.’
Whisker pointed to the diamond design on the face of the coin.
‘It’s one of the new Freeforian coins,’ he explained, ‘which might account for the weight difference.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Mr Tribble recalled. ‘The coin came from the fox during his trade for your family’s boat. And you received this coin and two others like it from Rat Bait when you deciphered the Forgotten Map –’
‘– and now it is being used to fund his sister’s rescue mission,’ Horace chimed in. ‘Kind of fitting, don’t you think?’
‘In a roundabout way,’ Mr Tribble said, slipping the coin into a pocket of his pyjamas. ‘Thank you, Whisker. I’ll hand your deposit to the school bursar first thing on Monday. If anyone asks about the clothing, the twins and I have taken up hiking. Now, about your map –’
‘I’m one step ahead of you, Tribble,’ Horace said, stepping towards the door.
Mr Tribble peered at him suspiciously. ‘I’m not sure I like where this is heading …’
Horace stuck his hook in his mouth and let out a sharp whistle. There was a sudden movement from the trees outside.
The next moment a huge blue-and-yellow macaw squeezed through the open doorway carrying an overflowing assortment of mountaineering clothes, ropes and scrolls under his colourful wings. When he reached the centre of the room, the flamboyant parrot spread out his wings and his cargo clattered to the floor.
‘Caw, caw,’ he chirped. ‘Everything as requested, Master Horace.’
Mr Tribble’s glasses almost fell off his nose.
‘You-you-you’ve got half the school library in there,’ he spluttered, pointing to a crumpled scroll lying under a pair of hobnailed boots.
‘Only the precious maps collection,’ Horace said casually. ‘I was hoping you could point out which scroll was Cloud Mountain. I would have inspected them all myself, but it took forever to break into the library.’ He tapped his hook on his chin. ‘That reminds me, I need to ask Madam Pearl about my replacement skeleton key when I see her next.’
Whisker shot a fleeting glance at the ceiling but kept his mouth shut.
‘So,’ Horace said, resting his hook on Mr Tribble’s heaving shoulders, ‘which one of these lovely scrolls is our map?’
Mr Tribble looked down at the hundred or so ripped, squashed and flattened scrolls and almost burst into tears.
‘W-well,’ he quavered, trying to calm himself down, ‘the back of each scroll contains a unique four letter code. ‘The first letter stands for the country, the second represents the region and the third and fourth letters tell us the specific location. The scroll we are looking for contains the code AHCM, which stands for Aladrya Highlands Cloud Mountain.’
‘That shouldn’t take long to find,’ Horace said, turning over the closest scroll with his hook.
‘For goodness’ sake, be careful!’ Mr Tribble scolded, as the tip of Horace’s hook tore a hole through the thin paper. ‘Some of these maps are a century old.’
Horace got the hint and gestured for the twins to take over. He still managed to stomp on a few of the maps with his heavy boots in the process of gathering up the clothing.
‘I found a w-w-warm winter wardrobe for you, Whisker,’ he shivered theatrically, his arms bulging with sweaters and scarves. ‘A threadbare traveller’s cloak and a bright red sports shirt are hardly covert mountain attire.’
Whisker nodded hesitantly as Horace passed him a pair of thick woollen trousers, a matching charcoal sweater, a blue-grey mountaineering coat, gloves, boots and a long black scarf. Discarding his old clothes, Whisker dressed discreetly in a dark corner of the room while the mice searched for the map.
He’d finished squeezing into the sweater and reached down to adjust the gold anchor pendant hanging around his neck when he noticed that the thin cord had become twisted and the rear of the design was facing outwards. In the flickering light of the fire, its shiny surface revealed a series of tiny engraved initials.
Whisker rarely looked at the writing on the back of the pendant but today the letters seemed to leap out at him.
The anchor was the symbol of hope and the official crest of the Winterbottom family. The initials represented four generations of the seafaring rats. The pendant had been passed down from father to son starting with Whisker’s great-grandfather, Augustus ‘Anso’ Winterbottom (AW), the famous adventurer and author of the Book of Knowledge.
The second set of initials, EW, stood for Ernest Winterbottom, Anso’s only heir. Whisker knew very little about his mysterious grandfather except for the fact that Ernest had run away before his son, Robert (Whisker’s father) was born. From what Whisker had been told, Ernest never found out about his son and he was never seen again. Anso, who had been planning to give the pendant to Ernest when he retired, struck his son’s initials off the pendant and passed the heirloom directly to his young grandson, Robert Winterbottom (RW). Years later, Robert, together with his wife Faye, gave the pendant to their oldest child, Wentworth Winterbottom (WW).
Wentworth, who had taken the name Whisker when he became a Pie Rat apprentice, knew that one day he would pass on the pendant to his first son – provided he stayed alive long enough to have a family.
Family and hope, he said softly to himself, running his fingernail over the faint engraving. His finger stopped at the initials RW, and for
