A light rain was falling on this hazy, muggy, mid-July day; and in a field mouse’s den nestled beneath the roots of a giant oak tree, Mrs. Brisby’s family was growing restless.  This den had been their first home since Mrs. Brisby and her late husband Johnathan—who had been gone since the previous September—had settled here some three years earlier, and they’d made many improvements and modifications to it in that time, virtually all of them in place due to Johnathan’s own unique—or so they’d seemed until recently—talents and knowledge.  These changes included window-slots, covered with unbreakable clear plastic panels, to let in a generous amount of daylight, and many human-made artifacts they could make use of, such as candles, small metal and plastic vessels they used for a variety of purposes such as doing laundry, bathing, or for storage.  In recent years, they’d divided their time between this home and a winter home located on a nearby farm owned by the Fitzgibbons family, spending three to four months there.  But for the remaining portion of the year, this was their home; indeed, the place which had provided the lion’s share of happy memories for all of them.

Mrs. Brisby sat by one of the windows, her patched, well-worn red cape—originally a gift from Johnathan—draped over a nearby chair, while her children occupied themselves with games.  Martin, her oldest son, and his brother Timothy were playing a variation on baseball with a stick and wadded scrap of paper.  Martin’s twin sister Teresa and Timothy’s twin sister Cynthia were on the floor with a checkered cloth spread out before them, playing a version of checkers using different colored pebbles.

“C’mon, squirt, your serve,” said Martin, poised with the stick.  “Try to get it past me this time.”

“I thought ‘serve’ was a tennis term,” said Timothy.

“Tennis, baseball, what’s the diff?  C’mon, put it over.”  Barely had Martin said this when Timothy sent the “ball” sailing over to him, bouncing off his unkempt pate.

“You said put it over,” said Timothy innocently.  He began snickering to himself as Martin looked indignant at him.

Cynthia had looked up from her own game and giggled at the scene.

“Cynthia, pay attention,” said Teresa.  “How can you learn the rules if you let yourself be distracted all the time?”

“Oh, I was paying attention,” replied Cynthia, a bit irked at Teresa’s strict adherence to rules and envying the boys’ more free-wheeling, unhindered play.

Their mother, meanwhile, was almost oblivious as she sat on a stool made of cork by the window, gazing at the falling rain.  Her thoughts wandered, as they often did in recent months, back to the events of this past spring, so pivotal and life-changing.  It had been their first winter in their latest winter home, an enclosed cement block which had kept them cozy and comfortable, but which unfortunately proved to be in an less-than-ideal location, a realization that proved most critical with the fateful day that Timothy fell ill with pneumonia dangerously close to Moving Day.   It led her to obtain medicine from the physician mouse Mr. Ages; and to her first meeting with the crow Jeremy, who took her to see the Great Owl for a solution to her predicament; her meeting with Nicodemus and the Rats of NIMH, who agreed to move her house to bring it out of the path of the Fitzgibbons’ tractor and avoid endangering Timothy’s life by exposure to the chill air; her impulsive decision, as much so as one Johnathan might have made, to perform his old duty to drug the farm cat Dragon, ultimately enabling her to warn the Rats of the danger they’d be in from the NIMH scientists; and the treachery of Jenner, who caused the death of Nicodemus and the near-deaths of all her children, who were saved by the power of the Stone, the red amulet Nicodemus had given her.

The Stone.  She hadn’t really understood what Nicodemus had meant when he referred to the power that lay within it; and after it had displayed its power—apparently using her as a conduit—by liberating her house from the sucking mud, as well as expelling all the mud that had started to fill the inside, it was tragically too late for him to explain further.  When Nicodemus first presented it to her, telling her that her Johnathan had meant it for her, she was so fascinated by it that she hadn’t even thought to ask him where it came from; it seemed to her to be like a symbol of Johnathan, and of his love for her and the children; and so she wanted to keep it and treasure it always.  But in the aftermath of its display of power, which had been so unexpected and beyond her understanding and had left her with burned palms, she wasn’t so sure about keeping it; so she gave it to Justin, who was now the leader of the Rats, who were forced to evacuate their old home very swiftly and move to Thorn Valley…

Her reverie was abruptly interrupted.  Teresa was berating Cynthia for accidentally scattering their checkers game, and Cynthia was yelling and starting to cry back at her.

Their mother got to her feet and approached them.  “Now, children, I know we’ve all got cabin fever, but all this yelling and arguing isn’t helping any.  Teresa, help Cynthia straighten up your cloth.”

“It’s all right, Mama, I’ll help her,” offered Timothy.  He dropped down on all fours and started gathering stones with Cynthia. Martin put his hand to his face, shaking his head at this disruption of their own game.

Mrs. Brisby smiled to herself, but it was a smile tinged with sadness.  Timothy was always so helpful, and so perceptive about so many things; so much like his father it was almost uncanny.  As she looked upon him making up a joke to cheer up Cynthia while he helped her straighten the checkered cloth—the two had always had a strong bond—she silently thanked God for how well he was doing these days, how much stronger he was now since his frightening bout with pneumonia.  Before that had been the incident late last summer, when he’d been bitten by a spider; and prior to that, he’d always tended to take ill more often than his siblings.  As a result, he still wasn’t as large as Martin, and even Cynthia had begun to exceed him in height, but his mother hoped fervently that the greater part of his past health problems were behind him now.  If only Johnathan could see him, and all of them now.  Her thoughts began to stray back to that day like no other, over three years ago, which she remembered so clearly in every detail, as if it were only the day before.

Only weeks before, she had lost her own parents to either Dragon or some other predator—she was never really sure—but now it was definitely Dragon who had her cornered in a hollow log.  She knew she was safe for the moment, but the log was rotten enough, and she was so petrified with fright, that she knew it was only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, before she would join her parents.  She hid her face in her arms as she awaited the inevitable…

…And then suddenly Dragon seemed distracted.  He backed off suddenly, and she could hear sounds of a scuffle, but she knew that she didn’t dare budge from the spot; she couldn’t have anyway if she tried.  After a few minutes of near-silence she heard a voice ask if she were all right.  Cautiously lowering her arms, she saw a strange mouse at the opening.  He introduced himself as Johnathan and said that he’d seen Dragon corner her there, and almost entirely on impulse, he took it upon himself to act as a decoy.  He said he’d managed to evade Dragon for several minutes—at one instance just barely—but he knew that it would be Dragon’s mealtime soon, and that Mrs. Fitzgibbons would soon be calling to him from the house.  She was still not over her fright as she listened to his story; and so he stayed with her for a time, comforting and reassuring her that it was safe to come out, and soon they did.  The full impact of what Johnathan had just done soon registered with her.  Certainly she was enormously grateful to him for saving her life, and she’d let him know in no uncertain terms; but challenging Dragon!  For as long as she could remember, nearly all the animals of the field had been terrorized by Dragon, and now here was a mere mouse challenging him.

He had always been very brave, almost foolhardy; and what little she’d been told of him by Nicodemus and Justin certainly reinforced that view of him.  How ironically fitting that it was Dragon that brought them together, and then two and a half years later it was Dragon that…

Again her reminiscences were interrupted, but this time by a gentle tug at her cape.  She looked down and saw Timothy staring up at her inquisitively.  She realized that she had begun weeping, only now aware of the wetness beneath her eyes.  She now tried to hide it though aware the effort would likely be futile.

“Mama…you’ve been thinking about Daddy again, haven’t you?”

Tears began to well up again, but she also felt great affection.  “Dear Timothy…I never could hide anything from you.  Yes, I was thinking back to the day we first met.”

“When he saved you from Dragon?”

“Yes.  Oh, there are so many happy times I remember, but…I guess I can’t help feeling sad too.”

“I miss him too.  We all do.  But we’ve done all right for ourselves since then, haven’t we?”

Mrs. Brisby realized that once again, here was Timothy in the position of reassuring her, as he’d been many times before; she instantly thought of the talk they’d had while he was sick last year, believing that that situation would turn out for the best, doing much to mitigate her own fear and uncertainty.  “I guess we have.  And I have all of you, and we all have each other.”  She leaned forward and drew both arms around her son, kissing his forehead.  Martin, Teresa and Cynthia had abandoned their own activities to join Timothy at their mother’s side.

“It’s all right, Mother,” said Teresa.

“Yeah, Dragon comes around here, he’ll have to deal with me,” said Martin with his usual braggadocio.

“And it’s been such a great summer too, Mommy,” said Cynthia, ever the model of sunny optimism.  “Everything’s gonna be great.”

And now Mrs. Brisby was embracing them all as one, wishing as ever that her arms were truly that long.

Despite previous trials, she hoped to expect nothing but a normal life for herself and her family from now on; or at least, as normal as could be possible, considering her children’s heritage, being the progeny of as unique a mouse as Johnathan Brisby as well as herself.  Yet, due to that fact, she knew that, with a feeling of both dread and anticipation, they wouldn’t settle for living this way, the simple life of a field mouse, much longer; not with their own knowledge of this heritage, which surely meant they had more in common with the Rats of NIMH, whom they surely would want to visit in Thorn Valley before too long.  And she knew she couldn’t keep them from doing so, whether she accompanied them or if they left on their own.  It was a decision she knew couldn’t be put off much longer.

For now, though, moments like these were what made it all worth it—being a parent, with all its joys and sorrows, and knowing her children loved her unconditionally as she loved them.  She again thought about the events of last spring and hoped never to face anything as dire again.

If only she knew then…