The day after a feast at Redwall is always one of laze. Even the cooks have time to sit around on the cool grass in the warm sunlight, or inside next to a roaring fireplace during the winter. The other abbeybeasts, still seemingly stuffed after the massive amounts of food the night before, just lay around and sleep or talk and laugh or soak their footpaws in the pond, and sometimes they do more than one of those at a time.

This day was such a day. The day before had been the Naming Day of the season, the Clear Summer, so called because it had marked the end of heavy mists that had hung over the land all spring. The feast that had been prepared was more than legendary. The reemergence of the sun after such a long absence had inspired the cooks and brewers and fishers and gardeners to heights never before achieved.

This day was idyllic. The sun shone bright, but not too hot: a breeze from the north kept the air cool and pleasant. Saero the mousemaid walked along the front lawns, smiling and laughing at the antics of her young friend Fas and his friends, who ran and tackled each other and rolled around on the grass. They were all just recently grown out of dibbunhood, and all were fully enjoying the new freedom their age gave them to romp around without the ever present eye of the badger mother watching over them.

Saero saw the Abbey Warrior, Ithis, sitting on the lawn, looking down. She went over to say hello to him, and saw that he was watching a line of ants milling along in the dirt, going from who knows where to who knows where else. She greeted Ithis with a smile and a polite inquiry as to how he was doing. The warrior was about to respond when a knock sounded at the front gate, which was just to the side of the two mice. Ithis quickly said, “Wait just a tick,” and went into his gatehouse home to open the gate.

Outside was a mouse. He was a tall mouse, with fur that was black. It was strange to see a black-furred mouse. Saero, in fact, couldn’t recall ever having seen one before.

The mouse walked into the yard with a pleasant smile. Ithis came out of the gatehouse and walked toward the new mouse, and Saero decided to do the same, to welcome the visitor to Redwall. When she came close to him she saw that he was quite tall for a mouse, more than a head taller than she. He was also very strong; it was obvious just looking at him. She felt slightly awed and intimidated, but not enough to hang her head shyly and not greet him. Saero wasn’t one for excessive shyness.

She held out a paw. “Welcome to Redwall, friend. What’s your name?”

The black-furred mouse smiled kindly down at her and took her paw firmly and shook it. “I’m called Tyrrus. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss…?”

“Saero. I’m Saero.” His voice was rich and warm. Comforting and mild, like the voice of a big brother who loves you and is helping you when you’re young and hurt and crying… it made Saero feel… safe. Secure. She realized it was odd to feel so safe around somebeast she’d just met, but… that’s just how he was.

Ithis joined the conversation. “Welcome, Tyrrus. I’m Ithis, the Abbey Warrior. Is there anything you need? You must have been traveling for quite a while…”

Tyrrus looked at Ithis, then at Saero. “Thank you for your offer, Ithis. Miss Saero, I wonder… it’s a large abbey; the rumors are quite true on that point. If it isn’t too much trouble, could you show me around?”

“Oh, of course! I’d be glad to.” She smiled and started walking off toward the main abbey building. Tyrrus followed, and Ithis tactfully found something else he had to attend to. Saero started the tour.

“This is the lawn area. On a beautiful day, just about everybeast in the abbey comes out to enjoy the sun and the breeze and the company of others. You came on the perfect day.”

Tyrrus was looking around with something akin to wonder on his face. “You’re right… I did come on a fine day. It’s nothing like this where I come from.”

“Oh? Where might that be?”

“To the east… Rocky River country. It’s a long ways away… you’ve probably never heard of it.” The look on his face was now almost… sheepish. Saero chuckled.

“You’re right, I haven’t heard of it. It must be pretty far. You must be glad to have a chance to come here and rest.”

“Yes, I am. Everybeast seems so friendly,” he shrugged, “at least from what I’ve seen.”

By this time the pair had arrived at the doors to the abbey itself. They were open, of course, and the mice walked in, Saero pointing to things and talking and Tyrrus looking with his mouth open in awe.

“It’s so… big,” he said weakly when they had come to the center of Great Hall. He was looking up at the ceiling oh so high overhead with the sunlight coming in the stained glass windows and turning the Hall red and gold and warm. It truly was a stunning sight. At the end of the Hall the cooks and helpers were just starting to set up the tables for dinner. There were so many dishes still left from the feast the night before and so many things prepared that couldn’t be eaten, that dinner promised to be almost as much a feast as the meal the previous evening.

Tyrrus commented on that. “Food from the night before… wouldn’t it all be old and stale by now?”

Saero laughed. “You’ve never been to Redwall… the cooks here can keep anything tasting as fresh as the minute it was pulled out of the oven.”

“Wow… I guess I’ve never been much of a kitchen beast.” He grinned sheepishly again.

“We can have the cooks teach you, if you want. They’re as good teachers as they are cooks.”

“That sounds nice… I think I’ll give it a try tomorrow.”

They continued the tour. Saero took him down to Cavern Hole, which was inhabited by only a few older beasts who wanted some peace and quiet to read. It was cooler in Cavern Hole, and the red walls were darker and a grayer sort of red than the stone of the Great Hall that was lit by the stained glass windows. Saero showed the black-furred mouse around the cellars, the dormitories, the infirmary, the library, the classrooms, the nursery, and all the other rooms in the gigantic abbey. She even took him to out to see the belltower. That was the end of the tour, for coming out of the tower they met the mysterious mouse known only as “Brother Bell,” who lived in a small house that had only recently been built and attached to the belltower. He told them in his quiet tone that he was about to ring the bell for dinner. So Saero and Tyrrus went back to Great Hall for the meal, with the clear tones of the Bell ringing behind them.

They ate dinner together, talking and laughing, learning about each other’s lives. Tyrrus was kind and polite. He didn’t talk too much about himself, and was always interested in what Saero had to say. He had an odd sort of meekness about him, which Saero found quite endearing.

After dinner, Tyrrus went to talk to the good Abbot Saef about dormitory arrangements. Saero left him and went to her own room, where she changed into her nightrobe and lay in bed, thinking about Tyrrus.

The next day she got up early, as she usually did, and ate breakfast along with the other Redwallers that got up as early as she. She finished eating just as the first rays of the sun were shining through the colored windows above. As she got up to leave, she saw Tyrrus coming down the stairs from the dormitories, looking quite refreshed. She met him and they went back to the tables together and talked as Tyrrus ate.

The rest of that morning they spent outside. Saero showed the visitor around the orchards and the pond and the rows of vegetables and grains. The plants had not yet produced ripe fruit, for which Saero apologized and went on to describe in detail the wondrous taste of the fruit, the sweet berries and tangy apples and…

Tyrrus, grinning, begged her to stop, to which she responded by laughing mischievously and continuing in more descriptive tones than she had before.

Eventually they made their way back out to the lawns, where once again everybeast was out and enjoying the beautiful day nature had provided. Saero and Tyrrus met Fas and his gang, and they all played together, the two older mice forgetting their age and just running around having fun, acting like children and remembering the joy and carelessness ofyouth.

Eventually, it was lunch, which they ate together and talked still more. Tyrrus did most of the talking this meal, telling Saero about his life in the east. The east was mysterious to many abbeybeasts, the bulk of whose history and legend came from the north or south or west. So Saero enjoyed (as did many of the other abbeybeasts who listened in) tales of traveling and villages and battle and heroes and legend from that little known direction.

After lunch, Saero went off to the kitchens to help with dishes, and Tyrrus stayed out to meet other abbeyfolk. The two mice didn’t meet again until Saero was walking up the steps toward her room. She met the black-furred mouse there, and they greeted each other with grins. Tyrrus accompanied Saero to her room.

“Thank you, Ma’am, for the wonderful day, and for gracing it with your presence.” Tyrrus delivered these words with mock formality. Saero responded in kind.

“It was my pleasure, sir, and if you have any further needs, don’t hesitate to ask.”

There was a pause, then the two dissolved into laughter at the absurdity of their overly formal tones. Saero bid Tyrrus goodnight, to which he responded with a dip of his head, then went into her room with a strange feeling in her stomach that felt like little birds fluttering around inside.

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Saero took a long, luxurious bath, then got out and dried and put on her nightrobe and came into her room. She had been thinking about Tyrrus, what a wonderful mouse he was and how she felt so wonderful when she was around him. As she was about to climb into her bed, she was suddenly seized and held tight with her arms pinned together by another arm and a dagger to her throat. Before she could react, a heavy voice hissed into her ear,

“Don’t make a sound or I’ll slit you open.”

Saero froze and trembled at the deadly earnest in the voice and the feel of cold steel to her throat. She didn’t know who was holding her; she couldn’t think of anyone with that voice.

“Wh-who are y-you?”

“Saero, don’t you know?” The voice changed and it was the warm, comforting voice she had heard so much of the past two days. “I’m hurt that you don’t remember me.”

She felt fear and shock when she realized who it was. “No. Please… it can’t be. No.”

“Worried? No reason to be. If you just behave yourself like a good little girl, you have nothing to fear. I won’t kill you.”

She wondered what he was going to do. She had nothing to steal; she had nothing of any value. There was no reason for this at all… she was too naïve, too innocent to realize the truth.

The she was pushed toward her bed and pushed onto it and as Tyrrus forced himself on top of her she began to understand. The full horror of it struck her suddenly like hammer to her heart. It was so sudden, so unexpected, such a new and overwhelming horror to her that she was numbed by it and couldn’t do anything to stop him or even think of anything to do.

All she could do was lie there helpless as the strong mouse on top of her ripped open her robe and moved his paws over her body and felt her and caressed her and kissed her, and went on to do things so horrible that she couldn’t even believe that this wasn’t all just a nightmare that she’d wake from. She had to wake, and soon, or the blackness that surrounded her would smother her and she’d die.

But she wasn’t asleep. This nightmare was fully real. She was a rag doll helplessly tossed about in a windstorm. He was a puppeteer, holding her strings and making her dance to his awful self-pleasing tune. She felt her consciousness slipping and her mind drifting away as the blackness around her pulsed with a rhythm that she felt on her and in her and that penetrated to the depths of her body and her soul and tainted it with blackness and slime.

He was a slime. A black, vile slime that slipped around her. The slime enveloped her and she burned with it, burned in the heat that was real and literal. The slime and its sweat mingled with her own sweat and her own body which was hot outside but inside was cold with the horror of it all.

The hell lasted forever. It was an eternity of defilement, he was defiling her and filling her with his evil, and she was lost in a sea of pain that she couldn’t understand. Tears ran unheeded down her face as the never-ending nightmare went on and on without stopping, without hope of ever stopping.

But it did stop. She was vaguely aware of the intensity dropping, and the heat and his breathing changed somehow. She knew it was over. He lay on top of her still, and leaned his face down to her ear to whisper, in a voice that was so laden with menace that she thought he’d kill her right then,

“Now, Saero, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll just lie here like this and you won’t make a sound. Because if you do, I’ll come back here and I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Saero couldn’t talk; all she could do was whimper in fear. Tyrrus took it to mean agreement.

“I’m glad we understand each other. Remember: not a sound.”

He got up off her and shuffled around putting his clothes on and opened her door and he was gone. Saero shivered once, then curled into a ball, and heedless of anything, began to cry. She cried and cried and cried, silently, shaking with a bitter cold that was more from within than without. She cried until she couldn’t cry anymore, then her body calmed and she slept, her dreams full of vague horror. She was too numbed with exhaustion of body and spirit to feel more than vague horror.

She didn’t go down to breakfast that morning. She lay sleeping in her bed, until it was late and the badger mother came to knock on her door to remind her that she had offered to watch the dibbuns that day. The badger mother found her, still naked, still curled into a tight ball. She woke her, and Saero cried again as the memories came flooding back. She told the badger mother in broken sobs the whole story. If it had been less recent perhaps she would have been uncomfortable telling but as it was, she couldn’t think and couldn’t feel except for pain and sorrow, and so she told all. The badger mother shushed her in soothing tones and held her like a dibbun as she cried like a dibbun. Then she helped her get dressed and brought her food. Saero didn’t leave her room that day, or for many days and weeks after that.

After a long, long time Saero could once again bring herself to leave her room and come out into the abbey. But she could never after that night stand the touch of another, and she never again liked sunny days.