Page 25 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“There is no help for the Aeslin mice,” I said. “You wanted to be family, and that means you get the full package, congregation and all. You think this is bad? The colony in Portland is three times this size. I only have about ninety mice living here.”

“Forgive me, Priestess, but our numbers have increased,” said one of the mice in my colors, politely.

“How much?”

“There are near to twice as many of us since the last time you inquired. The hunting has been excellent these past seasons.”

“Cool.” I turned back to Sally. “I have less than two hundred mice living here, mostly because their faith has been so sporadically renewed, what with me bopping all over the place looking for Thomas. Now that they have two Priestesses and a God in residence, they’ll probably have more babies. I think we have the space in the attic for about five hundred without crowding or triggering a schism.”

The mice around Sally cheered again.

“Usual rules apply to the new Priestess, guys,” I said. “No one in her room while she’s sleeping unless they’re invited, no one watches her shower. If she wants to bring a date home, you make yourselves scarce until the stranger is gone, unless and until she makes a formal introduction.”

“Yes, Priestess,” chorused the mice.

One of the mice in Thomas’s livery inched toward me on the back of the couch, ears flat and whiskers forward. “Priestess?” it squeaked.

“Yes?”

“Is this truly . . . is this . . .” The mouse’s voice seemed to give out, and it fell silent, wringing its paws for several seconds before it glanced up again, and asked, “Is this truly the God of Inconvenient Timing? Has he been Returned to Us?”

“It is, and he has,” I said, and held one of my hands up to the level of my shoulder, allowing the mice clustered there to step into my palm. I looked at them as I lowered my hand toward the couch. “He’s home, and we’re home, and we’re going to be living here in Buckley at least for a while. If we leave, I think we’re going to be leaving this place for good, and we’ll take all of you along.”

At Sally’s feet, the novice who had adopted her as the newest symbol of the faith was enthusiastically telling the gathered mice the story of the Conscripted Priestess. Some of the other novices were starting to nod along in a way that told me we’d be seeing more of her livery soon enough. That was good. She could tell her mice her entire story, and we’d bring a few of them with us the next time we went to Portland. Soon enough, the whole main colony would know, and she’d never need to explain herself again if she didn’t want to.

The mice on my hand jumped down onto the couch, followed by the rest who had swarmed me, all running to join the throng.

“The God of Inconvenient Timing is very tired,” I said, to the colony as a whole. “He needs to rest. For the next three days, I invoke the Holy Bargain of For God’s Sake, Alex, Make Those Damn Mice Stop Yelling While I Have A Hangover. Cheese and cake will be provided, and you may speak to any human who calls for you, but until the Bargain is concluded, you will leave the God alone.”

Ever see a colony of hyper-intelligent pantheistic rodents look disappointed? I had, and yet it never failed to amuse me when it happened again.

“Is the Bargain invoked even now?” asked a mouse in the robes of Thomas’s clergy.

“It is,” I said, and even faster than they had appeared, the sea of mice vanished, scampering to their holes in the walls and leaving no sign that they had ever been there.

“I would think that was a hallucination if I’d had anything to drink today,” said Sally.

“You knew about the mice,” I said.

“Not that there were two hundred of them!”

“Oh, there’s more than two hundred,” I said. “Probably about seven or eight, currently.”

“That is so many—”

“In the world.” I sat down in one of the armchairs. Three of the lurking tailypo immediately claimed my lap.

Sally stared at me. “The whole world?”

“Aeslin mice are small and adorable and basically defenseless if you’re much bigger than they are,” I said. “The religion is biological for them. Some twist of their brain chemistry makes them see the divine in everything around them, and they latch on to things as the cores of their worship. This colony, and the ones in Portland—both my kids have their own, although Kevin’s has been the main colony for decades—seized on my family a long time ago. They believe in us.”

“That’s . . . I knew they were religious. I don’t think anyone who’s been around them for more than five minutes could miss that.” Sally sat abruptly, cross-legged on the floor, resting her cheek against the shaft of her spear. “I just thought they had a choice.”

“They do, really. Colonies will schism when they get to be too big for their habitat. The ones who leave find something new to worship, and they don’t regret leaving what they’re basically genetically programmed to regard as having been a false faith. So they don’t have a choice about believing in something. They absolutely have a choice about believing in us. We know there’s a responsibility in being the chosen idol of an Aeslin congregation, and we try, as a family, to live up to it. Plus, as you’ve already experienced, their definition of ‘family’ can be pretty broad. As soon as they decided you were a Priestess, that was it. You were stuck. You can’t be de-deified now, even if you wanted to be.”

“So what would happen if I left?”

“Like, left-left? Walked away from the family and the mice and never came back?”