Piccadilly Mitzie

Ellis Delmonte

Description

The Northern Line War has been over for many years, yet the mice of Tubeworld still refuse to travel and heal old wounds. All except one. Mitzie lives at Manor House, an ordinary station on the Piccadilly Line, but Mitzie is no ordinary mouse - she has a very special gift, to read the writing of the Tunnellers. Restless to explore, she begins a journey which proves to be far longer and more dangerous than she ever imagined. Follow her sand her friends as they search for the discovery that will change their lives forever.Suitable for ages 8 and above.

Informations

• Publié par: Hawkwood Books
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908577146
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Title and Dedication
Credits
1. Mitzie
2. Unimog
3. The Journey Begins
4. The Crossing of Kings
5. The Book of Ways
6. Rat Scat
7. Turnip Alone
8. Cat!
9. Pin-Stripe
10. Separation
11. Poggo
12. Another Ride
13. Poggo's Story
14. Out of the Frying Pan
15. Your Heritage
16. The Deb
17. The Longest Ride Yet
18. Mitzie's Conversation
19. Decisions
20. Gregor the Great
21. Orpheus
22. Pursuit
23. Pep Talk
24. Villein
25. Mouse Gossip
26. The Adventure Grows
27. Snifter and Cavalry
28. Valerian
29. The Song of Orpheus
30. Morden
31. Oracle
32. Truth
33. More Decisions
34. Scarab
35. Endings and Beginnings
36. Partings
37. Train Ride
38. The Hole in the World
Piccadilly Mitzie

Ellis J. Delmonte

For The Staff and Pupils
of
St. Francis Community Special School
Lincoln


Hawkwood Books 2013
Piccadilly Mitzie

Text©2009 Ellis J. Delmonte
Cover©Ian M. Purdy
Illustrations©Victoria Smith (Print Edition Only)

First Published 2009
Second Edition 2010
This e-book edition 2013
Epub Revised Edition ISBN 978-1-908577-14-6
compiled by Jutoh
Print Edition ISBN 978-0-9555096-6-7

Conditions of Sale
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the permission of the publisher.
All rights reserved

Hawkwood Books 2013
1Mitzie
The mouseways were in a pitiful state. Ever since the Northern Line War, each station had gradually closed itself off from its neighbour and the mice no longer travelled along the ancient ways which crumbled, fell and were all but forgotten. Stations became closed worlds to the mice who lived in each of them. Nothing was known or cared about what might lie beyond.
One such station was Manor House. It was an ordinary station in Tubeworld and its occupants were ordinary mice. Its Wasteway was the same as every other Wasteway, with its daily selection of food scraps that the mice carefully collected, took to their homes and ate. It had its own network of holes and its own frontiers beyond which the Manor House mice never ventured nor cast a thought. It had its own laws and the mice lived comfortably within them, missing less and less the distant memories of life before the war and before the Great Book of Ways was stolen.
Not all mice were at ease with their simple lives, though. One restless little creature longed for something more, laying awake at night imagining things that few mice had ever imagined.
Her name was Mitzie.
Mitzie lived at Manor House, but she didn’t think like a Manor House mouse. She was plagued day after day, night after night, by all kinds of musings about life above and beyond her station.The biggest adventure she could look forward to was visiting Platform Central on Market Day. Here, the mice would swap bits and pieces, discuss news from Platform North and Platform South, then hurry back to their homes, anxious to spread what was really no more than gossip.
Even then, the general rule was that a mouse stayed put at least until he or she was one year old. So on Market Day, only the lucky adults would scamper off to Platform Central where the market was held. But Mitzie was impatient. If Platform Central was so far off, how big was the real world? Mitzie had a feeling it might be bigger than any of them could imagine, and this wasn’t just a guess. Mitzie had a rare and special gift.
She had learned to read the writing of the Tunnellers.
She didn’t know how she’d learned it, she just had. It was something which came to her as easy as chewing cheddar.
She looked up at the Piccadilly Map and murmured the names which to her sounded so distant and exotic. “King's Cross” she read. “A King! A crossing of Kings! Russell Square. Holborn. Covent Garden. A garden! She wondered if they were real and not just names, because the list seemed to go on forever.
“Mama, are there mice in H ... Ham... Hammer ... Hammersmith?”
“Where's that, dear?”
Mitzie’s mother didn’t know the name, let alone whether mice were there, or rats or Tunnellers or any living creatures. It was just a word.
“It's a place, like Manor House,” said Mitzie.
She looked at the stations circled in different colours. Tales told of tunnels beyond the Piccadilly. Each colour showed where a foreign tunnel crossed its path so that, to her tiny gaze, the world was stupendously big. There was even a rumour that the Tunnellers did not actually live in the Piccadilly Line, or any other line, but in an unimagineably gargantuan world of their own. However, Mitzie's mother and father always poopoohed these ideas. They patted her on the head and declared that she had an extraordinarily big imagination for such a tiny creature.
And she did.
She thought endlessly upon these distant lands and of the wonders they held. She also thought about the Book of Ways, what secrets it revealed and how mean the Northern Liners were to have stolen it so slyly.
And she thought upon the dullness of life if she were to stay put and allow herself to be cast into a mousehole made by her parents, though she loved them dearly, as she did all her family, and indeed all her friends. Her mother and father already had their eye upon a mate for her. A sweet boy, Mitzie agreed, but not for her, not yet.
So each night she would fall asleep, thinking of the Book of Ways, of the truth behind the Northern Line War, and of life along and beyond the Piccadilly.
2Unimog
Mitzie heard a familiar rumble in the distance.
“The Unimog,” she said to her mother.
“Yes, dear. Keep well away from the rails.”
Mitzie stared in awe as the Unimog heaved by. It was so big, so vast, so dangerous. ‘How clever the Tunnellers must be’, she thought, ‘to tame such a thing. And how thrifty to come each night and collect all that’s been dropped by day.’
Mice, being thrifty themselves, believed that the Unimog took away all the Tunnellers' belongings for them to use again. The idea that it might all be discarded forever never occurred to them. Mitzie wondered if the Tunnellers ever became angry that so much of what they obviously treasured disappeared before they’d had time to collect it all.
She stepped out onto the Wasteway as the Unimog passed into the gloom upstation and stared after it. Her head was always busy, too busy she thought. She couldn’t concentrate on the thousand and one things that needed to be done at home because her restless spirit craved travel and adventure. She thought to herself, ‘With mama and papa I will scamper to market at Platform Centre and back when I am old enough, but to see The World I must find my own way.’
So although she searched the platform along with her family and friends for the necessities of life, she always did so in a distracted way, secretly waiting for something - anything - that might give her inspiration.
“What is she thinking about?” her father would say as he watched his daughter staring into the distant darkness of the tunnels as if her life depended on it. “She's such a dreamy little thing.”
At night, after Shutdown, Mitzie would watch the Unimog lumber through Manor House and she would look into its eyes. She wondered what those eyes had seen, what lay behind them and whether its life was as busy as hers. She wondered what distant places it had visited, where it came from and where it headed, night after night. And it was through patient watching and endless thinking that the idea suddenly dawned on her. It was so obvious it had to be wrong, but the more she thought about it the more she started to believe that it might actually work, even if it was a touch dangerous.
She was growing up and becoming impossibly restless. Manor House was home, would always be home, and she loved it, but there was a world beyond, and perhaps a world even beyond the beyond.
Unexpectedly, in less time than it took to scratch a whisker, the idea was born. Then the idea became a plan and the plan was put into action.
On the chosen night, Piccadilly Mitzie sat and wrote this note to her parents:
“Dearest Mama and Papa, I have decided to do something, but if I tell you first, you will stop me from doing it. I want to go on a journey. I love it here at Manor House and I love you two most of all, but I have to go. Don't be sad. I will be careful and I shall come home in a little while. I shall go to Finsbury Park and bring back gifts for each of you. Please don't worry. I will be alright.
Mitzie.”
She pushed the note behind a piece of Friday Night gorgonzola, took a last look around her cosy little mousehole, scampered onto the Wasteway and waited.
3The Journey Begins
The Unimog came by at its usual hour, trundling along quite slowly. Mitzie had thought about what to do and how to do it. Making sure that no one was looking, she jumped from the platform onto part of the beast’s great belly and held onto it with tight, nervous paws. When the Unimog began to speed up, she gripped even harder and said a little prayer as the vibrations tipped her sideways. She felt distinctly scared but also distinctly excited. How fast is fast, she thought, remembering the trains that hurtled through Manor House many times faster than the Unimog. Would it be possible to ride one of those, she wondered? Would it?
Mitzie held on for her life. She watched the metal lines speed past, barely six inches from her wet, shivering nose. Hold on, she told herself, hold on!
The Unimog made mad, screeching, scraping, scarifying noises, but Mitzie held fast, closing her ears to the booming and banging.
At long last the Unimog reached Finsbury Park and Mitzie, more and more excited that her plan had worked, prepared to jump off. But, as the saying goes, mice propose, Tunnellers dispose. The Unimog did not slow down.
Mitzie watched in horror as the beast kept moving, moving, moving, giving her no chance to slip away. She glanced up at the platform, saw with amazement the great mosaic balloons, wondered again at the m