The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Chapter One

    O nce upon a time a very old white mouse had her seventy-fourth child – a small grey mouse she called Ulric because she had run out
of names. He was born in a house called No. 3, The Grove, but his apartment in the house was No. 16, Skirting Board West. A great many other mouseholders lived there as well, but luckily several
families of people also resided there, which meant that there was generally enough food to go round.
    All of Mrs Whitemouse’s children were born in a doll’s summer hat, which was made of straw with a cherry-red ribbon and three daisies sewn to the brim. Mrs Whitemouse had made a good
nest in the Hat out of chewed-up bus tickets and tiny bits of fluff that she found all over the place. When Ulric was very young he just stayed in the Hat, having drinks of milk and sleeping.
Gradually he grew nice thick grey fur, and beautiful translucent ears – like your eyelids when you look into the sun – and a useful tail that tapered off to an elegant point. His eyes
were shiny black like the buttons on a doll’s boot and his whiskers were silvery white each side of his twisty nose – he could move it sideways as well as up and down. When he was
nearly a full-grown mouse he announced that he wished to be called Freddie. As he was known in the family for being rather moody, they all agreed to this.
    The trouble was that Freddie really did not like being a mouse. ‘It’s just a phase,’ his mother said at first, but it wasn’t.
    Weeks later, when Freddie was full grown, he was hating it more than ever. When he was younger he had been able to pretend that he would become eNORmouse – the size of one of the boots
that people left in rows by the back door, the size of the bicycle that a man rode away on every morning, the size of the man himself . . . But after several weeks of not getting any larger than
his mother, he was forced to recognise that he was a mouse, and a mouse he would remain. The thought horrified him.
I simply can’t spend the rest of my life like this! If only someone
would help me! Anyone!
He shut his charming beady eyes to squeeze the tears out, and when he opened them there was the most extraordinary creature squatting in front of him. He was so
surprised (which is Mouse for frightened) that as he jumped backwards all he had time to notice was that the creature was about eight times his size and had two pitch-black unwinking eyes set at
the edges of his wide flat head. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I am a toad by birth and a sorcerer by profession. I heard your call for help, and here I am.’ His very wide mouth got even wider, and Freddie’s nose trembled in fear. The
toad’s mouth seemed to take up most of his body, and Freddie, who had been taught by his mother that quite a lot of creatures actually ate mice, was afraid that the toad might be one of
those.
    ‘What is it you want?’ the sorcerer toad asked.
    ‘I want to stop being a mouse.’
    ‘Oh, that! No problem at all.’
    ‘Good! And can you do it now? Change me, I mean?’
    ‘I could, of course. Any idea what you want to change into?’
    ‘Something larger. Actually, much larger.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘A tiger?’
    He had heard of them from his mother, when his sister was complaining about the cat who prowled outside the house. ‘Be grateful for small mercies,’ his mother had said. ‘If it
was a tiger out there, none of us would stand a chance.’
    The toad shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t like that. Either you’d live in a horrible hot jungle, or you’d be in a cage with people staring at you all day.’
    Freddie suggested several more animals but the toad found objections to all of them. Monkeys were made to work in circuses, dogs were ignored by their owners and thrown out after Christmas,
various birds were hunted.
    Freddie felt very depressed. Then he had a good idea.
    ‘Couldn’t I just see what it would be like being a tiger, for instance – just for a couple of days? Then I could