If you were to draw a map of the village of Marble, which everyone knows stands for Mice, Ants, Rats, Bumble Bees, and Little Elves, you would find a row of trees that border both the east and west boundaries while the north and south boundaries seem to have no line of demarcation at all but rather stretch on to eternity. It has long been a mystery as to what lies beyond the limitless horizon but those that have gone in search of the answer have not ever returned to tell us. The trees to the east and west are so tall that the sun only reaches Marble when it is straight overhead. In the Summer the shade is nice and keeps the village cool. In the Winter it is the burrowing season and everyone goes underground to sleep. Our village is next to a mountain of some sort or as it is better known...The Wall. The weather changes with the seasons and the only real danger seems to be the noise with the shaking of the earth. We know not where it comes from or what it’s sole purpose is but during the Summer it comes several times always just barely missing our village. My name is Patriot and in this one year of my life, I will become a hero of sorts. No one knows it yet but my little elf friend, Roth, told me that it would happen in a dream...a dream that was like looking in the mirror and seeing a reflection that included things that weren’t really there. Not now anyway. What could it all mean? Roth said, “Patriot, my dear friend, you have one year to find out. You may not see me, but I will be there.” The burrowing season is always good for dreams and notions until the awakening begins in the Spring.

The mayor of Marble, was a Rat by the name of Annular Standing Timber. He claimed to be a Native Marblean but some of us had our doubts. We called him Mayor Stan to his face and behind his back...well...let’s just say there were many names that were said all of which were easy to recognize. He was old and gray with whiskers that seemed to be endless. He wore glasses made of wire...not because he couldn't see but to make himself look more commanding. Everyone knows that Rats have perfect vision.

You probably want to know about my family. Besides me, Patriot Mouse, there is my husband, Pave Mouse, and our three adorable children, Pack, Moor and Terran. We live in a comfortable home that I have tastefully decorated with artifacts that Pave brings home from his worksite. As soon as they complete their education, all male mice work for the village at the Echo Mines located at the edge of Marble. Pack, Moor and Terran attend the Marble School of Increasing Wisdom taught by Mrs. Ant. No one knows her first name but she has a tremendously large family! We figured maybe they ran out of names long, long ago. There are many inhabitants of Marble...there are the Bumble Bees...a strongly religious family with an ailing child. Sapphire Bumble Bee is suffering from an unknown ailment. It’s a mystery as to why she is so sick...not even Roth can figure it out. She must stay in bed and watch and listen while the world rushes by. And then there are the elves. Roth himself cannot even tell us how many there are. There are the fairies that love nothing better than to hide and giggle and gracefully flutter by. At night you can see their twinkling lights as they go about their business. It’s as though the stars in heaven have come closer for awhile. So there you have it, that's Marble, a quaint little village that has been asleep for three months now and the awakening has begun with songs in the air and the changing of colors and new life all around.

When Spring arrives in Marble it is the time for the men to go to work, the women to clean their homes and the children to go off to school. And this is the way it has been for generation after generation. The Echo Mines, where Pave works, is an excavation of sorts. Mayor Stan says there are treasures that are greater than all of the kings jewels that have ever been since the beginning of time, and that they are buried in the Mines. And when the treasures are secured, they could be offered for sale and thus Marble would become a great attraction bringing in all sorts of prosperous new inhabitants. Pave has worked there for twenty years and...well...so far nothing great has been discovered. Once, though, there was a circle of gold found that was enormous! But that happened so long ago no one seems to know what became of it. No one ventures much past the Mines...there seems to be no reason...and some sort of danger is attached to the thought of it. I am content to be a wife and stay at home tending to my family. But then there was that dream. Me a hero? I couldn't imagine anything more absurd. Pack, Moor and Terran are off to school and hopefully increasing their wisdom. Pack and Terran being boys will soon enough be sent to the Mines to work and Moor will someday, no doubt, be a housewife just like me. With the awakening we normally begin to get some rain storms that can sometimes wreck havoc with our homes and then we have to start all over again but not this year. We've barely enough water to drink and bathe and for the foliage to begin it's beautification process and for the seeds and berries that we need to eat. We always seem to manage though so not to worry! Once in awhile, the wind blows in some strange craft of sorts and with it will be bits of foods from faraway places.

Spring ended on an anxious note as Patriot was startled by the sound of wailing coming from the Bumble Bee home. No sooner than she had become aware that something was amiss, one of the little Bees was at her door crying hysterically and trying to say something about Sapphire. Knowing that the little Bee girl was very ill, Patriot ran to their home across the path and soon learned that Sapphire had become increasingly feverish and incoherent. Mrs. Bumble Bee was frantically trying to cool her daughter with bits of dew drops from a nearby bush but alas there just wasn't enough. Suddenly a gust of wind blew a very large circular craft of some sort that blocked the path between their two homes. Patriot went to investigate and as though a miracle had occurred, inside the cylinder were some large bits of frozen water! How could that be, she wondered? But no time to be curious! She took off her apron and tied it around one of the bits and drug it into the Bee home. Mrs. Bumble Bee immediately began to chip at the frozen water with her stinger and they began placing bits of it in Sapphire's mouth and across her forehead. They worked fervently for hours and finally some improvement began to occur and when Patriot left to go home, Sapphire was actually speaking to her mother. As she walked out the door, Mrs. Bumble Bee said, "Patriot...you are my hero! My precious Sapphire has survived! God Bless you!" Walking across the path around the craft of now melting frozen water, she wondered...was this it? Was this what Roth had spoken of? Her dream did have something to do with water...it was in the reflection. But it's only been three months, not one year. Well, it's time to prepare for the arrival of Pave and the children. Dinnertime, you know.

It was not without reason that the early inhabitants of Marble picked this particular location. Usually the Spring awakening and the Summer gathering of food bring with it the rains that surround Marble with lakes. Sufficient for all of our needs. But with this Summer gathering the lack of moisture was causing much concern. Without the necessary water, there would not be sufficient food supply to gather for the Fall. A time in which we concentrate on increasing our food intake to compensate for the burrowing time in which we sleep for three months. It would be quite troublesome to go into the sleep without enough stored energy to carry us through. Our world as we know it would most surely end! School was even closed for one month so that the older children could help in searching for food. It is a known fact that children are ever so fortunate in finding treasure and right now our greatest treasure was food. Pave even looked for food on his journey to and from the Mines. Our storage bin was filling up, but this year, it was a struggle. Only one time during the summer did the noise with the shaking of the earth return. But it was so peculiar this year. Unlike anything I could remember. When it had passed and everyone was once again on steady ground, the air was filled with dust and pieces of flying dried foliage. In years past the air was filled with a sweet smell that we called green. Several locals were injured when some of the flying debris shot like spears into their bodies. Once again cries of "Patriot please help!" were heard and I was called upon to assist with attending to the wounded. You see, Mrs. Bumble Bee was not silent in her belief that I was a hero of sorts that had miraculously saved her afflicted child.

Patriot managed to find the necessary ingredients to aid in healing those that were sickly. She seemed to be quite good at finding moisture. She had devised a method of extracting moisture from certain plants...although they were few...it was enough. Many times over she heard..."Patriot, you're my hero!" Actually she was getting rather bored with it. After all, she was just doing what came natural to her, mothering. All of the attention caused her cheeks to flush and her breath to quicken. She would spend the rest of the Summer gathering food and searching for moisture and one added task, because Patriot always needed to be busy, was to gather together all of the debris and the remnants of those strange flying crafts to a stockpile behind her home. It was getting quite enormous and her muscles were definitely getting stronger but then the pathways looked nice she thought. Summer was coming to an end. Only three more months until the Winter burrowing began. She thought it was a silly dream...to be a hero...where was that sprightly Roth anyway?

Fall arrived as Summer had ended...hot and dry as a desert. The air was so full of dust that it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. Pave came home from the Mines covered in dust and the children came home from school so tired and listless. One more month of school for them and then began the eating of food more consistently to store up our energy for the sleep. I worried that there would not be enough food in the storage bin to get us through. So I worked throughout the day searching for each morsel or berry or seed that I could find. It was hard work in the heat but I was strong and it needed to be done. The children finished their schooling and Pave reached his work limit and we were all preparing to form search parties to scavenge for food instead of our normal vacation before the sleep. Vacation... Of course we never went far...just to the edge of Marble to the Echo Mines. The children loved to shout across the vastness and listen for their own voices to return. And to seek the little fairies and elves hiding in the foliage. We knew they were there because we could hear their wings rustling and their delicate laughter and their angelic voices singing as though thousands of whispers were echoing through the Mines. And at night to see them sparkling as they danced in the darkness. We could hear the elves jumping from tree to tree and rock to rock and see their fires glowing, knowing that they surely must be speaking of things that were yet to be. But, alas, not this year. This one year there would be no vacation. Then it started...

The rains came steady and drenching, cleansing the air and cooling the earth. What a welcome relief, although a bit late. It rained for a whole day. On the second day, when the rain continued the inhabitants of Marble noticed that finally the village was surrounded by lakes. Everyone lamented that if only it had been earlier...in the Spring awakening time...or in the Summer gathering time but it wasn't to be. Usually by now the lakes were somewhat consumed from use. The Marblean's had never entered the Winter burrowing season surrounded by this much water. Everyone was wondering what it could mean.

By the third day, when the rains had steadily continued, a town meeting was called to assess the situation. Of course, Mayor Stan was in charge and giving one of his endless speeches. He assured everyone that there was not a thing to worry about. There were shouts from the crowd..."How do you know?" "We have never had this amount of rain for this many days!" "No one has ever returned from the limitless horizon, what if there is more water there?" Of course the rest of Mayor Stan's entourage, his fellow Rat's, were in total agreement with the Mayor. Everyone left with no answers and not knowing what to do. The Winter burrowing was now only a few days away. In the night, while everyone was sleeping, Patriot was awakened by a noise that she had never heard before. She got up from her bed and looked outside and what she saw amazed her. It was her dream...the reflection of water where it never had been before. It surrounded her house and the houses throughout the village. She immediately awakened Pave and the children. They all listened and the sound seemed to be getting closer...it sounded like a loud moan rushing from the beyond. Then it came to her...Patriot remembered her enormous stockpile of debris and those strange flying crafts that she had collected all year long. Immediately, they all ran to the back of the house and took one of the red ones and piled inside. There were some stick-like things that they used for oars and they paddled to each of the neighbors homes and awakened them. One by one, they were taken to the stockpile and they were secured into one of the crafts. As the noise approached the water kept rising. Patriot and her family worked through the night to make sure everyone was safe and in some kind of vessel. The fairies came and lit up the sky so that there was light to see by. And although she never saw him, Patriot knew that Roth was there somewhere. When the villagers were safe in their crafts a rush of water came along and swept them all away. Everyone was shouting..."Hang on!" "Hold on to the little one's!" "What's happening?"

When day break came, the rain had stopped and the inhabitants of Marble found themselves afloat in their crafts and for as far as they could see there was nothing but water. Someone said..."Patriot, my friend, you truly are a hero! If you had not saved these flying crafts and the debris from the Spring and Summer, we would not be afloat and we would not have oars to guide our crafts with. We would all be dead." Patriot realized that her dream from the last burrowing was truth instead and Roth had prepared her for the tasks she must perform and the knowledge to recognize the reflection that should not have been there. In a few days the water disappeared and although things were quite soggy nothing much had changed. Roth and his fellow elves had somehow lit fires and dried the earth where Marble once was a village. Everyone was accounted for except for Mayor Stan...no one seems to recall seeing him or his cronies after the meeting. They went out to celebrate no doubt as that was their usual custom. Pave would make an excellent Mayor, Patriot thought to herself with a convincing smile. But for now it was the Winter burrowing season and they all proceeded to go underground. As Patriot lay with her family under the earth and began to feel drowsy she thought about how Roth had told her that this one year she would be a hero...she finally knew that she was.