Fedwie the Mouse had never left the Wall of the oasis city, but had often looked at the green lands that sometimes floated above the burning sands. His grandmother had told him that these were visions of far away, where the air was cool, and water was abundant, and life was easy for a rodent.
But there was no way that a mouse could ever cross the desert! Some villainous bird would surely eat him alive before he had scampered a mile. And if the birds didn't get him, the snakes would eagerly gobble him down. And if the snakes and the birds didn't get him, the hot heat of the desert would.
The mouse sighed and thought that he would never have an adventure. Fedwie looked down from the edge of his little crevice at the oliphaunt. She didn't seem to like folk on her back! That old crow sure took a dusting!
Now the handlers had come near and the big pachyderm trumpeted a warning to scare them. It scared Fedwie, too!
In fact, it scared the poor little fellow so much that his tiny paw slipped and he fell from the safety of his crevice! Down, down, down he fell, until he landed, plop, right on the oliphaunt's back! Oh no!, he thought, I'll be dusted for sure!
But that was not to be. The big pachyderm had eyes only for her handlers, and especially for the cruel hooks they used to hurt her and make her do their bidding. One after another of the men swung their hooks and made them bite deep into her tough hide.
How she cried out! But she did not fight them, for she knew that to kill these men would mean a terrible death to follow, for there were so many of them that great oliphaunt of the grasslands though she was, she could never defeat so many. She had seen her uncle die at their hands in such a way.
When the handlers saw that she would not fight, they carefully put an iron collar on her neck and led her away in chains.
Poor little Fedwie was along for the ride! He crawled carefully and softly along, so softly that the tough hide of the oliphaunt did not even feel his soft paws. He stopped when he reached the great iron collar and then whispered into the gigantic ear of the beast.
"Hi! My name is Fedwie. I am a mouse! I fell off the wall when they were taking you away. Where are we going?"
Poor Fedwie! He did not know it, but pachyderms of any sort were fearful of small rodents (rather unreasonably, they thought that the tiny creatures might crawl up their trunks, make a nest, and suffocate them!) and this great oliphaunt was no exception!
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