How vast were the vistas that the little mouse acrobat and the Unicorn could now see, peak after peak after peak tumbling off into the distance back down to the lowlands they had left! How glorious it was to be able to see so far and so effortlessly! The little mouse acrobat had been born in a tiny dark little hole. She had been a creature of stalks and tiny furrows in fields and scampering here and there from one row to the next. Now she was up above the world and free from all that. She began to smile with a new smugness and superiority.

How well she appreciated herself! How proud she was of her new found vision! How she enjoyed thinking of herself as the only mouse who had ever dared venture to this altitude, undertaking a journey so difficult that it was fabled even in the lore of the Unicorns! How wonderful to be free of the distant roar and rumble of horrid battle, free of the need to think of the battle's consequences.

She loved the white snow rabbit's stories. They were all about the foibles and foolishness of the creatures of the lowlands she had left behind. They never knew what was coming around the next bend. Their lack of vision was their comeuppance in the end. They gave themselves airs and never noticed their errors until it was too late. Even what was most elementary in understanding was too much for them. The little mouse acrobat laughed and laughed and laughed. It was all so familiar and yet all so simple as the white snow rabbit described it. There were patterns and designs where she had seen none before. The one who saw the patterns and designs could be nimble and quick, picking her way through the maze that so baffled the others.

The white snow rabbit puffed his pipe. He seemed so indulgent and so friendly, as if so much understanding had set him free, so that where others who saw less might feel sorrow and fear, he knew only glee. He puffed his pipe and the shapes of smoke that came out danced their way up as if to say, "You see, life down there as we see it from up here is only so many shapes of smoke, present for an instant, then gone. How strange that they should make such a bother about it. How strange that they should fail to understand what we do."

The more she listened the lighter she felt, as if her body like the air was getting thinner and thinner, purer and purer.

Now her previous tumbling feats started to seem to her more and more heavy and clumsy. She stopped doing tricks for the snow leopard, even though he begged her to go on. Only given how rare everything was up here, given how miraculous everything was up here, how mysterious and beguiling everything was up here, what was the point in a mouse's little flips? What need had she of such?

She laughed indulgently when she thought of her previous efforts. Her laugh rang in her own ears almost as an echo of the so kindly seeming snow rabbit's and, as it did, she was glad and proud. She held her nose a bit higher up into the air and carried her back just ever so slightly more straight and, yes, perhaps, even just a bit stiffly.

There were only two things that bothered her. Even of these two she was only glancingly aware for an instant here and there. Indeed these instants became shorter and shorter the more time they spent up near the roof of the world. The first was that the expression on the Unicorn's face had changed. She remembered how happy, how profoundly pleased he had seemed in the first hours and days of his freedom, how gentle his face had been, how sadness and love, freshness and knowledge had mingled in his features.

Now it seemed his features had tightened, his mouth and lips taken on a grim cast. His eyes went back in the caves of his eyes. His brows were creased by the first hints of wrinkles. Sometimes he seemed to be looking at her anxiously and beseechingly.

Perhaps, she thought, more and more thrilled with herself as she seemed to glimpse wider and wider ranges of unexpected possibility within herself as they climbed higher and higher, Unicorns were really much duller and more mundane creatures that she had ever thought. Indeed, the Unicorn's gold horn seemed to have lost a bit of its luster. Why, she wondered, had she been so enthralled with him, so awed by him, so taken by his grace, which was, after all, only physical, a matter of leaps and bounds down there, not up here?

Had she failed, the little mouse acrobat asked herself, back then to do justice to herself? What sort of inner insecurity had made her so ready, even eager, to offer herself such a slight? How lucky she had been to have the opportunity for repair afforded by this extraordinary journey. What ever would have become of her had she not been so daring? As she thought these self-congratulatory thoughts, the little mouse acrobat wanted to sing out loud, but no sound came, not even a squeak.

Nor was she upset about this. Sound was only sound. In a world grown so enthralling, did she even have any need of mere sound? She pursed her lips in a kiss directed back inside herself. Was not silence so much better, infinite of capacity? What song, what sound, could compete with silence, mother of all sounds, greater than what came forth from it, enduring beyond all that could come forth?

The little mouse acrobat, in fact, now looked less and less at the Unicorn and more and more at the white snow rabbit. The very sight of the Unicorn irritated her. So she did not look, keeping her eyes on the snow rabbit. Was he not their guide? Was it not he who knew where they were going? Only sometimes it was hard to find him in the strange thin, tremblingly glorious sunlight of that world up so high, so near the empty blue perfection of the sky. He was so white he seemed sometimes to lose his shadow and blend into the snow, like a smile that fades out, almost mockingly.

But the little mouse acrobat was faithful and resolute, just as she had been when she marched in the ranks of the mouse army in that time so long ago now and so far away that it seemed like the memory of a dream that was already fading. She tried her hardest, focused her eyes, found the white rabbit in the snow and made the Unicorn on whose back she rode follow after him, occasionally even giving him a little kick.

The Unicorn now seemed slow, as if each step cost him an effort. This was part of what irritated the little mouse acrobat, so that instead of looking at him, she looked past him, keeping her eyes always on the white rabbit. But the Unicorn never complained.

However hard it was to find and follow the ever so white snow rabbit by day, he was there each night, leading them to a cave warmed by another sleeping bear, charming them with the stories that flowed out of his mouth every bit as beguilingly as the white smoke that flowed so smoothly up out of his pipe. Night after night she drifted off to sleep in a daze of amazement and pleasure with her tiny delicate mouse's head up against another bear's coarse fur. For his part, the Unicorn never dozed off until she was safely asleep.

Even then, he slept only for a few minutes at a time, standing on three legs, as Unicorns will do, keeping relentless guard with his golden horn over the little mouse acrobat who had so won his heart down in the far off lowlands. Perhaps the reason he was tired by day was that he slept so little by night. But then again Unicorns can draw strength from moonbeams.

So, from time to time, when the moon, whether full or new or in between, shone down on those mountains high up above our world, the Unicorn would walk to the mouth of the cave to catch a few moonbeams. Sometimes, as he did so, a tiny half or quarter shadow of a Unicorn, a shadow more enigmatic even than the white rabbit's presence in snow by day, was outlined on the floor of the cave.

How fiercely, how freely, how gloriously in its gentleness and loyalty, the Unicorn's golden horn shone during these brief intervals when there was no one there to see it! It was as if another life gleamed within it, a life charged with a sublime privacy and tenderness all at once.

The second thing that bothered the little mouse acrobat way up high near the roof of the world took place in her sleep. Strange to say her dreams were much grander by day than by night. Night after night, she encountered her great mouse Aunt Viva. The kindly old creature was bent over her spinning wheel, but instead of looking comforting and approving, her face wore an expression not so different from the Unicorn's by day.

She looked concerned as if some rasp or burr in the thread that ran through her fingers worried her. Some nights instead of singing or humming, she seemed only to be mumbling to herself, a bit distracted. The little mouse acrobat wondered in her dream if the old creature were beginning to go around the bend. Even a mind couldn't last forever.

This annoyed the little mouse acrobat, because she had no need for a sick and dotty old creature in her dreams. How was she supposed to have dreams that were great and beautiful, as lofty as she was, if creatures in such desperate circumstances turned up in them? Was it her job to take care of a mouse who had lost her faculties? Surely, there should be special places to keep them, safely out of sight.

Of course, there were nights when her great mouse Aunt Viva was not quite so indistinct, worried and run down. In occasional dreams the little mouse acrobat could discern snatches of song:

"Beware my child,
Beware, my sweet.
Love's not to eat.
What seems so mild

May still be wild.
Love's not a feat.
Dangers repeat.
What goes up, child,

Must come down, wheel
goes round and round,
so lost or found,
don't be beguiled.

Who begins to spin
gets so dizzy
she doesn't know
who, who she is... "

After she heard her great Aunt Viva singing so in her dream, the little mouse acrobat awoke with a start and a shudder, because she thought she had heard an owl hooting. But the moment of terror passed. Her head was safely pillowed on the bear's warm flank. She slipped quickly back into a dreamless sleep.

Another time she heard:

"High and low, child,
thin and fat, up,
down, all around,
to eat takes teeth.

The hunter, child,
can wait so still
to get his thrill,
use his power.

Up is easy,
but down is hard,
the wheel must turn
from hope to woe

and back again,
from friend to foe,
as snow is white
and night is black.

Truth's our lack,
who can not see,
who can not be,
behind our backs."

Again, the little mouse acrobat awoke in terror, thinking she had heard the hooting of an owl, perhaps far off, but coming closer, threading its way through the darkness towards her. How reassuring it was to wake and feel the bear's warm flank beneath her head! Again, she fell back into a dreamless sleep.

Finally, one night, the little mouse acrobat dreamt she was safe and snug back at home in a tiny burrow at the edge of a corn field.

There was a full moon in the sky. By its light, she saw teeth rising out of the ground between the furrows. Each tooth bore the number "510" in raised white enamel. I have forgotten to tell you, dear reader, that, like many good acrobats, the little mouse acrobat was also a whiz at mathematics, so that, even in her dream, it occurred to her that 510 was nothing else than 30 sets of 17. She thought immediately in the dream of the cicadas that rise up out of the ground every seventeen years. Thirty sets of them would be uncountably many.

How long those teeth must have slept! How long they must have been waiting! Then the mouse acrobat became confused in her dream. Was it that the teeth had slept so long or was it that she had been sleeping so long? If it was she who had been sleeping, what had put her to sleep? Had she drunk a potion? In the dream, there was a sweet taste in her mouth. She thought of a candy, lovely beyond imagining, beautiful as a peacock's tail. She seemed to be on the verge of remembering, but her dream left her no time.

The confusion cleared. The teeth formed a ring and began to dance. How the moonlight gleamed off them, as the ring began to turn, to go round, faster and faster until it was a white blur in which one tooth melted into the next.

As the ring of teeth whirled, a wind seemed to come up, so that the corn stalks in the field shook and shivered back and forth in frenzy. As the wind passed through them it began to whistle and then to howl. The whistling and the howling grew louder and louder. It would have been frightening, if the little mouse acrobat hadn't been so much in the grip of watching those teeth go round and round like a wheel.

The noise rose in pitch and the ring began to slow. The teeth emerged from the blur. Each one was now distinct. The numbers were gone, as if the whirling had ground them away. The noise was now not only higher in pitch and louder, but also eerily familiar.

With a start in her dream, the little mouse acrobat recognized what was familiar. It was the sound of the battle, only a thousand times worse, a thousand times nearer, so near, in fact, that it seemed to be inside her. Then all of a sudden in her dream, there was an earthquake. The ground rose up, carrying her with it.

Suddenly she was awake and in real terror, facing a great white bear whose mouth was wide open, showing his teeth. What was he doing awake? In a strange, hallucinatory moment, she looked for the number "510" on the teeth, as for reassurance. She knew she was done for. Where was the ever-so-comforting white rabbit now when she needed him so much? Where was the snow leopard with the contented purr?

The bear raised his great paw, then, much, to her surprise, hesitated. It was only then, in that moment of hesitation, that she noticed that the Unicorn was still there, at her side. His head with the golden horn aglow was pointed forward and upwards at the bear's heart. The bear's eye was fixed on the horn, as if in the grip of a power too great for it to resist.

The little mouse acrobat looked up into the white bear's sky blue eyes and saw twinned reflections not only of herself but of the Unicorn.

"What are we doing up so high?" she wondered.

It was far too blue in the bear's eyes. Since when did mice belong in the sky? It was only in that moment that the spell was broken and she understood that she had brought the peril on herself. As she had back when the owl came so near, she leaped to the Unicorn's back. He spun so swiftly and leapt so gracefully that the bear's claw crashing down like thunder missed them and hit the cave's floor. The bear gave a sudden sharp cry of pain.

Then they were outside in the night high on a narrow icy ledge. The little mouse acrobat shook and whimpered in terror. She clutched as hard as she could with both sets of paws, one around the Unicorn's back and one in his mane. She didn't worry that her grip might be causing him pain. How would they know where to go now without the white rabbit and the snow leopard to guide them?