The Rats of Illetai

This is the beginning of my novel:

Humans love a mystery. Rats, on the other hand, love a good chew. Perhaps this story will be both.

The world of Illetai is a small one, assuming that one is not a rat. It might resemble (to non-rat eyes) a set of cages, each attached by long, varying but festively colored tubes of durable plastic. These cages may seem to be not floating majestically through space and ether, but sitting, rather prosaically, upon bureaus, tables, nightstands, shelving units, chest-of-drawers, dressers, chiffoniers, buffets, cabinets, armoires, cupboards, and wardrobes. It would fill several rooms (to a rat), but would be a small world, a tiny portion of a very large universe.

If one were, actually, a rat, Illetai would be all. It would be all that there ever was or ever would be. Illetai would be a lovely maze of separate lands, a warren of possibilities. There might be some strange sights, of course, but what might else be expected from a world of such wideness (all strung together) and unfamiliarity (again, all strung together)?

If one were a rat, so I'm saying, one would never think the world a limited proposition, a prescribed, many-time ambulated circuit of sameness. In short, if one were a rat, one would never imagine Illetai to be a cage.

But, at this present moment, the scene is not so much the world as perceptual knot as the world as shoebox. And, all the world is in that shoebox to one boy, a fifth grader extraordinaire, as he digs a hole, furtively scrapped out behind a clump of tansies, in which to bury that shoebox.