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Thomas the cat said pointing at the children,
the cows and the hay all around them.
Look out! The Farmer is coming! Help! Find some cover!
Bernhard said coming out quickly from his hole and running wildly.
We should moo all together!
When the farmer arrives... and the sheep bleating, the rooster crowing, not to let him hear
the child's weeping! Ismael the bull said.
All for one! ... It continued.
one for all! ... All the animals replied.
And it was a choir! The barn was immense in the daylight and the animals were many, so many.
Mary Jane was well hidden from the view of the farmer and she looked from beneath the udders and listened astonished, as if she was still dreaming ... A cool dreaming!
3
Upon his arrival, the farmer found the animals very, very agitated.
Cows and calves were mooing, horses were neighing, the rooster was crowing incessantly,
the cat was meowing, the donkey was braying and the sheep were bleating.
In seeing that confusion, the farmer feared that an Earthquake, or a Storm, perhaps a Hurricane was coming.
Since animals feel disasters and earthquakes first.
The farmer hurried to take them out to the pasture, and got his family
out of the house.
He looked at the sky, but everything looked serene. It was the cold sky of a rigid December, but clear and light blue, a nice cool winter sky.
While the farmer was heading grazing absorbed in a thousand questions,
animals suddenly stopped pawing, making verses and various bellows.
As if everything had passed and
the coming storm had become
flat calm of that sky so blue.
Mary Jane and Jean Baptiste remained hidden in a floor packed with straw,
together with Bernhard the mouse and Thomas the cat.
You're Thomas the cat, right?
Mary Jane said
At your service, Mademoiselle!
Why, can you talk?
I've always been a big talker!
Do not be silly! It drives me mad being here!
It's a fortune, don’t you think?
Thomas answer me, please,
Why can you talk?
If anything... why can you hear me?
Right? ... Why can I hear you?
“It's a meaningless conversation”
Mary Jane thought;
she thought she was going crazy or
to be still dreaming cool.
You can hear us thank to your father,
the brilliant Count Ladurée.
Bernhard was a lab rat,
you know? ... And he told me about things.
That rat's got the scoop on!
Now... the mouse can talk, too?
No! Mademoiselle is you, who can listen to us!
Bernhard the mouse said, almost annoyed.
Ok! Alright! Hear, listen, talk! I don't care! Mouse, tell me about my father! Mary Jane said, more annoyed than him.
First of all, my name is Bernhard Blues! ... Not Mouse! ... Secondly, I do not want to tell you anything!
And so telling Bernhard sneaked away, inside his small hole.
Seen! ... You've offended him! ... Good!
Thomas said, shaking his head.
With the help of time perhaps Mary Jane would understand the personality of every single animal.
She could finally take advantage of this mysterious bond, to face the future and to understand the past that no one
had never told her.
She did not really know
how and who her Father was;
she did not even know about her Mother or
remembered many things; sometimes
their faces also disappeared from her memory.
So, she would have to wait
to grow and develop to the best
this immense power which
now it seemed nothing to her.
Mary Jane was a bright child,
there are no doubts about this.
Of her father, she only remembered slowness and
light caresses on her cheeks
with the back of his rough hand.
Of the rest she remembered little or perhaps nothing.
Mary Jane knew to wait!
Just like her father! And like the seasons.
That was why she was smart.
She ... was not in a hurry.
She was not at all.
So, with the slowness of things
even the sundown arrived, on that first day
as fugitives.
The sun was setting at the same time as the slow return of animals from pasture.
She saw them coming in the distance, like the platoon of a large army, from the crack in the barn wood.
Where she could see the Moon and the Sun, too.
The animals approaching the stable began to get nervous again, without any apparent reason.
They began mooing, braying, bleating and stamping their feet, as if they had entered a
Wild West Rodeo.
With the farmer's astonishment,
even his faithful dog Faust, who had accompanied them serenely to the pasture and to the way home,
he began to bark loudly, spin out of control, as if to bite its own tail.
The farmer closed the stable.
Asking to himself a million and more questions.
Then he headed home.
Thinking that the following day
he would have to call the veterinarian,
among all the things he had to do.
To let somebody that knows things better
control his animals.
For those absurd oddities
of their latest behaviors.
