Chapter 1. In Which Eve Makes a Strange Discovery

“Eve, if you go out again, I’ll shut the cage!” said Phineous to his little cousin.

Phineous was a black hooded rat, and he was standing beneath the water bottle, bristling and trying to look bigger.

Eve hesitated and brought her head back into the glass tank. “You’re just jealous,” she hissed, “because you’re too big to go out, and you never thought of it when you were smaller.”

This was true. No rat had even considered going out of the glass tank until Eve decided to try. They all thought her rather strange.

“Be sure to bring back a good story!” called Athena, her sister.

“Yes, but mind the cat,” said Moses, her father.

“Oh, do be careful,” said Meribell, her mother, and her aunt and cousins and brother and sisters said the same.

Eve turned to look at them and nearly lost her balance on top of the water bottle. She was a cream hooded rat with pink eyes—still very small. “I’m always careful. I’ll bring back a lovely story, Athena.” Then she pushed the screen lid with her nose, wriggled her head through the crack, and squirmed out of the glass tank. Eve made sure that the lid remained a little ajar (she didn’t worry about Phineous closing it, because she knew that he wanted to hear her stories as much as the others).

Then Eve dropped to the shelf beside her home. She waved to her brothers and sisters and cousins and aunt and mother and father—waved to them through the glass of the tank, and then she started into the dark, quiet house for another adventure.

The cat, she thought, I must know where it is. Eve tested the air with her nose and scanned the dark room. She couldn’t see very well (because she was a rat), but she had an excellent nose, and it told her that the cat was not nearby.

Eve took a running start and jumped onto the big, soft chair just across from the shelf where she lived. She bounced once and then scampered up the other side, which was no challenge at all for her little claws. From the top of the chair, she jumped onto a book shelf that ran along the far wall. Eve liked the book shelf—so many hiding places between the books that smelled of leather and paper and ink. From the top of the book shelf, she could see almost to the end of the room. Eve had never gotten quite to the end before. Usually the cat came, and she had to run. She’d nearly been eaten twice, which was very terrifying, but made wonderful stories.

Tonight, thought Eve, I will reach the far end of the room. If the cat comes, I will bite him! Of course, she would do nothing of the kind, but saying so made her feel braver. She started off: from the book shelf to the desk, from the desk to the rolling chair, from the rolling chair to the plant stand, and from there across the floor to the sofa and the little table. All this took a great deal of time, as Eve was obliged to stop and sniff and clean the dusk from her whiskers and bath herself (for no self-respecting rat would go without a bath after getting dusky) and chew a pencil on the desk and nibble the cookie crumbs left by the boy, who had eaten a whole bag of them against his mother’s wishes.

By the time Eve reached the sofa, she was tired and had nearly forgotten why she’d come. But then she looked up and saw the little table against the very back wall. Eve gave a little squeak of excitement and cried, “I did it! I reached the end,” and then she ran under the sofa for fear the cat had heard her.

Cautiously she put a whisker out and then her nose, and finding herself still in once piece, she emerged and looked up at the table. “I wonder what’s on top?”

Eve was not the sort of rat to be standing idle when there are strange tables to explore, and so she shimmied up the sofa and climbed out on the arm to have a look. Or two looks. Or three.

In fact, Eve couldn’t take her eyes off the table. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “It looks just like our home. I didn’t know there were two, not in all the world.”

It certainly was another glass tank, and as Eve crept closer, she saw something moving inside.