Run off where Fredle didn’t know, but run off why he was afraid he could guess. What if Bardo’s go-between job was really a keep-away job? Or even a push-out job? When he understood that Bardo had intended to abandon him there on the compost pile, Fredle could only feel the not-all-rightness of everything. He hunched down just where he was, on the compost pile, in broad daylight, unable to move his feet. Where did he have to go to, anyway, if he could find his feet and make them run somewhere? He didn’t even want to eat, although he could smell how good that orange peel would taste. It was eating that had gotten him where he was, out here in the open, lost, alone, afraid. It was wanting to eat something because it smelled so good, and also following another mouse’s tail, that’s what had done it to him. He’d followed Axle and he’d followed Bardo, and look where that had got him. He wished … He wished he’d never gone looking for that good thing on the pantry shelf. He wished … He wished he could go back to before he smelled it, back to when everything was comfortable and familiar and safe, and he wasn’t alone and sick at heart.
