Girl with a white rat

“His father continued to explain that those distant relatives of his had built the rats up into such a frenzy with their playing that it wouldn’t subside before three or four days’ journey from here, and that the rats would not return from where they had ended up. However, they had made it so that some of the packs remained right here in Soontaga, because a true village cannot be left entirely without rats.”

Excerpt from Toomas and the Rat Catchers, a short story by Mehis Heinsaar