There was a great tree at the center of it all. And at the edges, three walls, one to each side. Left, Right, and South. Together they cut the shape of birds flying in formation. Along most of the Right wall was green and open country. While a dark and thorny bramble lay in the land to the Left, running up against the wall on that side. From there were the lowlands, in and towards the center. Wet in the rains with swamp. Then a gentle rise up to the heart of the North. Here the tree stood enormous at the place where the land came to the final height of its long plateau.The dry highland rolled on until it winnowed into just a sliver at the corner of the world where the Left wall met the Right. This place - his country - all of it taken together, was everything he knew.
A hundred families lived in burrows under the roots of the tree. A few dozen more were scattered in the lowlands, but these were mostly scraggly loners. Always hungry. They fled to the tree in the rains and were pushed out in the dry season. There was not enough to feed them. There was one family who made a life for themselves in the bramble. No one else knew the paths, and it was dangerous to go there. The open land was dangerous too, the young mouse had been told this all his life. But he only came to understand the lesson when one day he was snatched in the talons of a hawk.
He thought he was dead, but the talons wrapped around him and he saw the ground was very far away now. He couldn’t see one blade of grass for another, just the enormous field of it. The hawk turned and the young mouse was sure the speed of it would kill him. Then the tree was in front of him. It was huge, the size of everything. And the hawk was at the top of it. Above the tree! Then the young mouse was falling, and he was scared he’d fall the height of the world. At least, he thought, this was a wild way to die. Far better like this than wracked with hunger or drowning in mud.
But then he was on his feet. It was some place at the crest of the tree, a twist of twigs and grass that curled up at the sides and was at least as large as any hollow he had ever seen. This was the home of the hawk. A nest. He had only heard stories. He crawled to the edge of it and looked down. He could see nothing of the world though, since the huge branches and countless leaves of the tree blocked his view. And so instead of looking down, he looked out. There he saw the shock of his life.
For as far as the young mouse could see, there was nothing but green. A hundred hundred trees, going on as far as the sky. This one now, the great tree, was just a one. Huge but almost nothing against the horrible mass of the rest. He might have died.
He didn’t know what to do so he went back down into the nest where the hawk had dropped him. He hadn’t seen it at first, but off to one side there was a bundle of feathers not much bigger than the mouse himself. It unfolded and he saw that it was more than just feathers, and anyway far larger than him. A beak and ugly grey eyes came out. Scrawny legs and wings that looked nearly naked. It was a young hawk, gross and more awkward than its parent. But still, it was a hawk. It clicked and moved towards him.
The young mouse was faster though and he darted onto the long branch that reached up from the tree and held the nest in its place. He was on it fast as the grown hawk swooped low again to grab him. He was in the leaves now though and then to a hollow where the wood ruffled and curved in on itself. It was dark and he was inside the tree and the wood underfoot was wet and soft. There was no light except from behind him, and he knew that that way there was only death. He ran at a sprint down the slant and the hollow narrowed. Through a tight pokehole and there he stopped and all he heard was the sound of his own panicked breathing. He sucked air in and held it. It was quiet.
There was the whistling sound of a breeze and all the wood of the tree creaked around him. There was n