Matthias's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Matthias stood in the shadow of the wooden gates and stopped. Mossflower spread beyond the wall, green and endless. He had no map. He did not know where the sword lay hidden, or where to begin. The forest could swallow a small mouse and leave no trace. He could walk for days and find nothing but tired paws. Then he thought of the voice. "I am that is." The words made no sense to him. But someone in the Abbey might know their meaning. One mouse would. Methuselah was the oldest creature at Redwall. He kept the Abbey's records and read the old scripts no one else could. Matthias had sat at his feet as a small mouse, listening to tales of Martin. If any riddle had an answer, the ancient one held it. Matthias turned from the gates and slipped back inside. He found Methuselah bent over a table in the dim record room. Dust hung in the light. The old mouse squinted through small glasses that rested low on his nose. His long mustache brushed the page. Brown sandals showed under his robe. He did not look up. "Doors are for closing, young Matthias," he said. "The draft finds my old bones." Matthias shut the door and came close. "I need your help. I heard a voice by the warrior's tapestry. It said, 'I am that is. My sword shall wield for me.' What does it mean?" Methuselah set down his quill. His eyes sharpened behind the glasses. "Say it again." "I am that is," Matthias repeated. The old mouse rose and shuffled to the wall. He ran a paw along the stone below the great tapestry, where Martin stood woven in armor with sword and shield. "Those are not idle words," he said. "They are older than the Abbey. A rhyme hides in them." He tilted his head and studied the woven mouse. "Look at the picture, not the words. Martin points the way himself." Matthias looked. Martin's woven paw held the sword. But his eyes stared past it, upward, toward the roof of the Abbey. "He looks up," Matthias said. "To the towers?" Methuselah smiled. "'I am that is' names a season and a place. The riddle sends the reader to the north tower loft, where the old records rot. Something waits there. A verse, I think, cut into the wall long ago. I read of it once and never climbed to see." He tapped Matthias's shoulder. "You have young legs. Go up. Read what Martin left. That is your first true step." Matthias's heart lifted. He no longer faced a blind forest. He had a place to begin, inside these very walls. He gathered his green robe and turned for the stairs. But the loft lay high and locked behind the Abbey's heavy doors. To reach it unseen, he would have to climb past the very elders who must never learn he had stayed.