Extract from the personal journal of Lancejack Johnswort Swifteye, formerly of the Fur and Foot Fighters Border Patrol— The first day of spring has come and gone. The days grow warmer and longer as we leave winter further behind—the Winter of the Sweeping Mists, by Abbey reckoning. By my own reckoning it was the Winter of Abject Misery. For six seasons I have marched with the Fur and Foot Fighters Border Patrol, that intrepid unit that keeps watch on the region where Mossflower meets the sand dunes by the Western Sea. Most of my comrades were Salamandastron hares, but with the border patrol’s proximity to the forest, they had plenty of use for squirrels like myself. Like many of my kind I am sharp of eye and handy with a bow, and between my childhood of helping in the Abbey Infirmary and my later training under Lieutenant Lagsworth, I had the skills to make myself useful as a healer as well. It all came to an abrupt and inglorious end last winter, when a Galloper from the Long
When Riley first starts hearing scratching beneath his bed, he doesn’t think much of it. It’s probably mice, and he doesn’t mind mice. Auntie or Sarah might make a fuss or move him out of his room or clean everything out, and that’s a little more trouble than he can comfortably wrap his head around. The mice were probably here first anyway.
Besides, if Auntie finds out about the mice then she’ll set traps, and the thought of having dead mice under his bed makes Riley queasy.
Except
It’s not mice.
Riley finds out that it’s not mice because he finds a couple of dead ones by the dresser, and the scra