‘Ireland? You must be a bit
confused, Nicodemus! Ireland is no Kingdom, is a Republic country, for as long
as I can remember.' Wendy looked very puzzled, where did Nicodemus get that
idea!?

‘No, Wendy, Ireland was once a
blooming Kingdom, a Rat-Kingdom. Humans indeed always had a Republican for as
long as anyone can remember, but there was a Rat-Kingdom. I never had the
privilege to meet the King and Queen of Ireland, The Kenmare's, because of the
distance, and they were dead, when I first learned about them.'

‘Where did you read all this?'
Wendy was amazed. She didn't know anything about this. She suddenly felt
extremely anxious to know all about these rats.

‘I didn't learn this by books. It
might also just be a legend. Nobody really knows. According to the legend they
were murdered.' Nicodemus took a deep breath.

‘The legend says there was one rat
who opposed to the plans the King and Queen had for the rats in the country.
They wanted to work together with the mice population. The rat who killed them
even lived in their palace. He was a close friend of the family someday. One
night, when everybody was asleep, he killed them by burning the palace. They
didn't stand a chance.' 

‘Were there rats who survived?'
Wendy asked.

‘Yes, the nanny escaped with the
little princess, their daughter. She was only a baby.' Nicodemus replied.

‘What happened with the baby?'
Justin wondered.

‘The baby was taken to a safe
place, and was raised as a normal child, nobody knows where she is now... But
let's go back your story, Wendy.'

Wendy was still a bit numb by the
story Nicodemus just told. ‘That poor child', she thought, but she knew she had
more important things to fight for right now.

‘It's a coincidence, though, the
fact that you mentioned Ireland that is. I wanted to go there, because I loved
the music I heard on the radio. One day, as I looked from the attic window, I
saw a huge bird flying over the area, not a real bird, but an iron bird. They
flew there all the time. Later I learned that they were called airplanes. I
wasn't at all afraid of the noise they produced. I just knew that they were
going to be my savior. I was going to Ireland with that huge iron bird.'

‘So... how did you get to Ireland?'
Justin was sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning towards her as much as he
could, not wanting to miss any of her stories. He really admired her courage.
He knew where England was; he saw that in a book at the Boniface Estate long
before they settled in the Rosebush. He also knew that Ireland was in the North of that, but still he
had to wonder, why and how on earth she ended up in America? She always complained
about America. She had said time and time again how much she disliked US, or at
least the very small part she'd seen of it.

‘Well... I didn't get there at all.'
She took a deep breath. ‘I didn't even get close.'

Wendy looked away from both males,
trying not to show the frustration and reproach she felt over that mistake.
‘What?... What do you mean?' Justin was really puzzled now.

‘I... I took the wrong plane.' Wendy
said, covering her embarrassment. ‘You know, I couldn't read at that time. None
of us could, remember?' Her outburst seemed to startle both the rats and they
exchanged glances in puzzled silence.

Embarrassed by her outburst, Wendy
looked down at her hands and played with a piece of cloth that belonged to her
own brown skirt in the awkward silence that followed. ‘Tell us about your
journey to the airport, my child.' Nicodemus said, breaking the awful silence.

‘I left at night, when everybody
was asleep. I thought about my escape a couple of weeks before I actually went.
I learned that I had to take the bus to Heathrow, that's the name of an airport
in London.' She took a breath again. ‘I had overheard some humans talking about
it, it wasn't supposed to be that far off, because like I said, there were
airplanes flying over the orphanage constantly, and they flew pretty low. I had
to wait until the next morning, because the busses didn't leave until
five-thirty AM. By that time the bus-house was pretty busy already, so I had to
hide myself. When the sun came up, I saw a bus coming. I ran in just before the
bus-driver closed the doors.

I hid under a chair in the bus.
Boy, It really was dirty down there.' She shivered just thinking about all the
dirt in the bus. ‘It stopped a couple of times, to pick people up and there
were people getting off the bus. I overheard an old lady ask when the bus
stopped at Heathrow, she wanted to visit her grandchildren... somewhere... so I
stayed close to her, for I knew she went out where I had to be.'

Justin was looking at her with his
eyes wide open. He was shaking and nodding all the time, as if he was the one who had been through the
whole terrifying experience.

‘So what happened then, at the
airport, what was it like?.' Nicodemus asked, just as intrigued by the story as
the young male.

‘Well, it was extremely busy out
there. All kinds of people hurrying to get to the right gate. There were loads
of gates, all leading to a different airplanes I guess. They carried suitcases
and briefcases and they stared at screens with all kinds of strange symbols on
them. Of course I know now they were messages for departing and arriving
planes.'

‘Well, we don't blame you for
taking the wrong plane now, we'd probably end up somewhere even worse!' Justin
said, and an encouraging smile crossed Justin's nice face, and when she looked
at him, he gave her a wink. A small blush appeared on her pretty face. She
smiled at him. ‘Why is he being so nice to me? I haven't been nice to him
today, but he's always nice to me. I really don't get it... could it be... nah, it
couldn't...'.

She tried to shake those thoughts
away and moved on. ‘There were loud voices announcing departing airplanes.'

‘So you were able to hear where the airplane to Ireland was
at.' Justin remarked.

‘Yes, I did, gate 6. But when the
voice announced that the crowd started moving in that direction, all at once! I
had to run for my life!'

‘Damn no!' Justin suddenly
shouted, his fist crashing down on the arm of his seat.

‘Justin! Watch your language, there's
a lady present, remember!?' Nicodemus said, rather shocked by Justin's
outburst.

‘I'm sorry, please forgive me.' He
said and turned towards Wendy Elisabeth who could clearly see the blush spread
into his ears. She couldn't help but look back at him and smile a friendly
smile. ‘He does understand, he knows what it had been like'. Justin quickly
turned away, realizing that she'd seen his blush and felt it begin to spread.
He felt like a small kid again. He always felt like a small kid in front if Wendy.
The stupid part was that he really wanted to be more mature when he was around
her, but for some reason he always seemed to screw things up. When he was
around her he'd act even more childish than he normally acted and he'd say
stupid things, gosh he wished he would finally grow up! He wished there was
something he could do to make her proud of him... to make her like him... to make
her... love him...

Then Nicodemus asked: ‘How did you
get away, and ended up here?'

‘I took a run to a conveyor.
That's a thing people place their suitcases on and then they disappear into a
dark hole. I climbed on one of them and found a soft bag in the middle of it.
It had been partly open, so I got inside and hid in there.'

She looked at the two male rats,
both mighty and powerful, with stories on their own, now deeply submerged in
her story. That amused her a bit and she continued.

‘Then the suitcase and I, moved
into a long dark tunnel, though it was so big that I thought it was a room
first. Then suddenly we were in a huge and very brightly lit room, with lots of
humans in there, all dressed in blue suits. They had a small car, which they
called... a trolley, yes, a trolley, and the suitcases were put on there, well...
they threw them in more or less... I really thought I was going to be crushed
when they did that, the box they threw in right after the soft bag I was in,
broke something in the bag next to me, I could hear it.'

‘Then what happened?' Justin
asked, but he was interrupted by a soft knock on the door of Nicodemus' office.

‘Come in, please.' Nicodemus said.

The door opened, and in strode a
small, gray, chubby female rat. Wendy smiled at her; Nanny almost never waited
for the reply after she knocked. As almost always, she was dressed in her flour
dusted cooking skirt. She was the head of the kitchen, and just loved food. ‘Sometimes my dear, I really
should learn a little more self-control' she would remark, just before sampling
another of her famous raisin and oats cookies. Nanny is married to Arthur, the
chief engineer, and she's Wendy's closest friend. Perhaps even her only friend.

‘Hello my dears, I thought it
would be time for a cup of tea!' She cheerfully said. It made Wendy smile, for
Nanny always ‘sung' her sentences as she spoke.

The three rats nodded and smiled
at the older female rat. ‘Regular tea for the two gentlemen, I assume, and Earl
Grey tea for the lady, am I right?' Wendy Elisabeth started to laugh a bit. She
knew everybody disliked Earl Grey tea. Then she realized that might have been
one of the reasons why she started to like it.

‘That's settled then.' She sung
and softly made her way outside, on the way to her kitchen.

Nanny was like a mother to all the
rats in the colony. She'd be very disappointed when somebody wouldn't finish
the dish she made, and if a rat was ill, no matter how old he or she is, she'd
come over, bring tea and tell stories. Most of the times she just made them up,
but they were always entertaining.

Nanny was great, especially to
Wendy, but she could also be very stern, and it was best not to get in her way,
especially in the kitchen. Justin found out the hard way once, when he snuck
into the kitchen to ‘sample' one of Nanny's famous homemade cookies. Sadly,
Nanny and Arthur had never been able to have children of their own. That's why
they spoiled Wendy from time to time...

‘Hmmm, where was I.' Wendy thought
out loud.

‘Oh, in the bag on the... trolley'
Justin filled her in.

‘Yes... thank you. The bag and I
ended up in an airplane. I heard the heavy doors close behind the trolley.
Suddenly everything started to shake. Not real hard but like it was vibrating.
Then I felt the airplane moving, and after some loud thumps and bangs there was
a weird feeling in my stomach and my ears started to hurt and suddenly I wasn't
able to hear anything anymore! Fortunately, after swallowing a few times, that
passed. The iron bird was now in the air!' She gave the others a half smile and
said: ‘I must admit I was kind of scared. It was very dark in there and there
was no-one else around.'

‘When did you realize you weren't
going to Ireland after all?' Justin asked.

‘I got superstitious when I were
in the air for hours already. Ireland was supposed to less than an hour away. I
knew this wasn't right. After a while I fell asleep, I had been up all night. I
woke up when the airplane started to land. Now that was even worse then going up!'

She sighed. I was glad when the
banging of the landing finally passed. Shortly after that, the huge doors
opened again with a lot of noise and I got back into the soft bag as quickly as
I could. Then I felt us moving again. People were unloading the airplane and
took the trolley into a huge room! The place was crowded with people! They were
controlling all the bags by opening them! They were going to catch me, I just
knew it!'

‘Teatime.' A jolly voice, which
belonged to Nanny sung, as she carried a kettle of boiled water, three glasses
and three small teabags on a tray. ‘Time for a break.' She sung, and she walked
towards Wendy and gave her a comforting kiss on her forehead. ‘You'll be fine my
dear, just be strong.'

Then she poured the tea into the
glasses.