The Wild Ones (7 page)

THE PARISH SCRIBE

SIXCLAW
smoothed his ears with his paw, flashing all six of his claws at the same time. Eeni glanced to the restaurant door, then back to the cat again, which seemed to amuse him.

“Try to run and I'll be burping up your bones before your paws hit the floor,” he said.

Kit jumped from the booth and pulled the garbage-can-lid tabletop up with him, holding it like a shield. He put
himself and his shield in front of Eeni without hesitation. “You leave her alone,” he barked.

The cat burst into a fit of laughter. “He-he, ha-ha! What a sight! Honor among vermin!” The cat's laughter stopped as suddenly as it started. “Too bad it won't save you.”

With one paw, Sixclaw grabbed a broken shard of the pastry case from the floor and tossed the glass at Kit's table-shield. Kit batted the projectile away, which left part of his right side exposed. The cat's other paw lashed out, swiping so fast Kit barely had time to leap backward to avoid being gutted on the spot. He tripped over Eeni, and they both tumbled to the floor on their backs, Kit still holding the shield over them.

Sixclaw's swipe left six red gashes across the light gray fur of Kit's belly, but before he even felt the sting of the wound, the cat pounced. He slammed his weight down onto the shield, pinning Kit beneath it. Eeni squirmed free to avoid being suffocated in his fur.

She saw a book of People's matches that Ansel used to burn the sugar on top of his sweet and savory sardine brûlée, and she dove for it.

Just before Eeni's paw gripped one of the wooden fire sticks, Sixclaw jabbed one claw clean through her tail, pinning her in place, while the rest of him still held Kit down.

“Ahh!” Eeni screamed. The matches were just out of reach.

“I think no fire for you, little rat,” Sixclaw told her. “You Wild Ones are not supposed to have People's things, and I do hate the smell of singed fur.” He dug his claw deeper into her tail, and she did her best not to scream again, still straining to reach the matches. With one flick of his tail, Sixclaw swished them away from her and turned his attention back to Kit. “I fear you are out of tricks, young one. And now it's time to die.”

He opened his mouth, showing his fangs, just as sharp and deadly as his claws, but before he could bite down on Kit's neck, he was struck in the face with a shining brown acorn.

“What in the soggy sardine was that?” The cat turned, just in time to get another acorn in the eye, and then another right between the eyes. “Ow!” he yelled, and Kit used the distracted moment to heave up the shield and knock Sixclaw off him.

The cat released Eeni too, as he had to jump away from a sudden barrage of hard acorns aimed straight for his head at high velocity. “Ah! Stop it, you vermin,” he shouted, seeking shelter behind the ruins of the counter he'd destroyed, and finding none, continued to leap this way and that, hit over and over again by an unceasing hail of nuts.

Kit saw the source of his salvation: six mice, their robes
bright white, manning tiny catapults made from mousetraps, and behind them, in a straight line to the front door, six
more
mice, passing acorns in to the firing squad, so they would never run out of ammunition. Sixclaw was pressed against the back of the shop, cowering and covering his head with his forepaws.

One of the mice stepped forward and raised a tiny fist. The barrage of nuts ceased, and Sixclaw peered through his fingers at his assailant.

“I am Martyn of the Church Mice, Chief Scribe of this parish, and you, Sixclaw, are trespassing. Begone now or face our wrath!”

Kit recognized the mouse from the alley. This was the one who'd handed him the pamphlet.

Sixclaw lowered his paws to the ground so he stood again on all fours. “You and your kind've no right to this alley. It was loaned to you for seven hundred and seven seasons and those seven hundred and seven seasons are up.”

“No,” said the mouse. “We know there was another deal, between Azban, the First Raccoon, and Brutus, Duke of Dogs. Brutus made a bet and lost, and our mousecestors were the scribes who signed the deal upon the Bone of Contention. The deal gives the Wild Ones the right to this turf for all time.”

“And if this Bone was real, you'd have showed it generations ago,” scoffed the cat.

“The Bone is real,” Martyn replied calmly. “And you are in no position to argue.”

The cat's big yellow eyes stared at the mouse, his bell dinged, and he spat on the ground. “Choke on cheese, church mouse!”

Martyn lowered his fist, and another hail of nuts pelted Sixclaw.

“Ahh, enough, enough,” the cat yelled. “Fine!”

Martyn raised his fist and the barrage stopped.

“Know this, vermin,” the cat shouted so that even the cowering animals outside the shop could hear him. “Without that Bone, you've no proof you belong here. Any of you who are still in Ankle Snap Alley in two days' time will face the wrath of the Flealess. Not even your gang of Rascals will keep us from driving you out of this place forever.”

“I have a counteroffer,” said Martyn. “You tell the Flealess
they
are not welcome here in Ankle Snap Alley anymore. Not a cat, not a dog, not so much as a hamster. This is a place for the Wild Ones, and any house pet who dares disturb us again will be in violation of the ancient treaties and will face dire consequences.”

“I eat mice like you for breakfast!” the cat hissed, but he turned to leave through the back door, the way he'd come. Just before exiting, he stopped. His tail swished against the ceiling, and he spoke over his shoulder. “There won't
always be someone to save you, Kit. We'll meet again, and I promise, it will be painful.”

“Go!” Martyn shouted.

The cat left the restaurant, meowing sweetly as he strolled away, his tiny bell tinkling.

The mouse turned to Kit. “You're bleeding.”

“My uncle is hurt worse,” said Kit. “I think the cat knocked him out. And Eeni's tail could use a bandage probably.”

“My acolytes will tend to their wounds,” Martyn said.

“Your what?” Kit had never heard that word before, and he feared Martyn would be another fast-talking alley creature.

“Ac-o-lytes,” Martyn repeated slowly. “It means my followers. They are members of my faith, and you can trust them with your friends. Not only have they studied the healers' textbooks, they wrote them. We mice do all the writing here. But now you must come with me. We haven't much time to lose. If we do not find the Bone of Contention, all our arguments will be for naught. It is the only proof we have that our kind belongs here. Come along!”

“Our kind?” Kit wondered. “We're not the same kind, though. You're a mouse.”

“We are all mice in the eyes of—” Martyn began to
recite. “Oh, never mind, what I mean is, we're all wild so we're all in this together against the Flealess. Now come on!” He grabbed Kit by the jacket and tried to tug him out of the bakery.

Kit just looked down at him, unmoving.

“Hey, mouse,” Eeni interjected, even as she clutched her bleeding tail in her paw. “Wherever Kit goes, I go. We made a promise. Howl to snap.”

“If you wish, young lady.” Martyn let go of Kit's jacket and brushed himself off. “Perhaps it is for the best if we go together. We are going to see a friend of yours . . . well, one friend who is many friends.”

Eeni seemed to understand what the mouse meant, though Kit didn't. She dropped her tail and her arms hung at her sides. “You mean . . . ?”

Martyn took a deep breath. “We have an appointment,” he said.

“With who?” Kit wondered.

“With
whom
,” corrected Eeni.

“With the Rat King,” Martyn said.

“The Rat King doesn't make appointments.” Eeni shook her head. “The Rat King hasn't had an appointment in hundreds of seasons. Everyone knows that.”

“Three hundred and twenty-four seasons, to be precise,” said Martyn. “Which is when my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmouse made this very appointment. So I think we should not keep him waiting any longer, don't you?”

“I guess not,” said Kit. “But . . . uh, who is the Rat King?”

ONE-HUNDRED-HEADED CANNIBAL

THE
Rat King was not exactly a king, and was not exactly a rat either.

The Rat King was, in fact, a hundred rats, whose tails were so tangled and whose fur was so thick and knotted that all one hundred rats had become impossibly stuck together. A hundred rats who moved as one body, spoke as one voice, but saw a hundred different ways.

The Rat King never ruled over the rats, nor ruled over
anything at all, actually. Nobody knew why it came to be known as the Rat King, but since as far back as anyone could remember and farther back than that still, there had been a Rat King in the city under the Slivered Skies.

The Rat King was born by accident countless seasons ago. Two rats fighting over a piece of rotten fruit found their tails hopelessly tangled. They kept fighting, but neither could win and neither could retreat. They would have fought each other to the death, if a third rat hadn't come along to break them up and gotten herself tangled too.

The fighting rats felt so bad they'd tangled an innocent peacekeeping rat into their fight that they vowed to cooperate together so that there would be enough food for all three of them. They grew to live in such harmony that other rats came along, wanting to join their tangle. The Rat King was seen as a peaceful, joyous, cooperative way of living, and rats from all over the city raced to escape the struggles of survival and tangled themselves in the Rat King.

To prevent all of ratkind from becoming a single mass of tangled rats, the Rat King agreed with itself to limit its number to one hundred rats at a time. When one rat got too old, a young rat took its place, bringing the energy and ideas of youth to the perspective of the Rat King. That way, many generations were a part of the Rat King at the same time, male and female, young and old.

“But what happens to the old rat?” Kit asked as they made their way beside Martyn to the end of the alley.

“It gets absorbed into the Rat King,” said Martyn.

“Absorbed? How?”

“Can we not talk about this?” Eeni snapped. The whole topic seemed to make her very uncomfortable.

“It's best not to think too deeply about it,” Martyn agreed.

“You mean . . . the old rat gets . . . eaten? By the other rats?” Kit stopped where he stood.

Martyn nodded. “In a sense, it gets eaten by itself.”

“Gross!” Kit cried out. “So we're going to see a giant, hundred-headed cannibal rat?”

“Perspective is not easy to get nor easy to keep,” Martyn explained. “It often comes at a terrible price. The Rat King knows more and sees more and remembers more than any other creature under the moon, but for this knowledge, it has spent countless seasons devouring itself.”

“That's mad!” Kit couldn't believe it.

“Yes, some believe the Rat King has gone mad,” Martyn agreed. “But in times of madness, it is the wisdom of madness we seek.”

“You know about this Rat King?” Kit asked Eeni.

Eeni kicked at the dirt with her back paw, then studied the wound in her tail. “Yeah,” she said without looking up at him. “I know about it. All rats do. It's . . . our culture.”

“Oh,” said Kit, feeling guilty for calling her culture gross.

Eeni shrugged. “Just because I'm a rat doesn't mean I like everything rats do. You like everything raccoons do?”

“I didn't know raccoons did anything not to like until I met the Blacktail brothers,” Kit said.

“Well, don't be so quick to count another fella's fleas,” Eeni said. “It's a big world, and every creature's got his own.”

“You are a young philosopher!” Martyn clapped his paws. “I am amazed you do not attend Saint Rizzo's Academy for Gifted Rodents.

“I did school once,” Eeni said. “It wasn't for me.”

“So you quit Saint Rizzo's?” The mouse seemed dismayed.

“What's it to ya, church mouse?” Eeni crossed her arms. “School quit me. They didn't much want a rat with a bad attitude and a talent for thieving. Now can we get going or what? We don't have a lot of time to find this Bone, do we?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Martyn grumbled, gathering his robes about himself and scurrying on, clearly flustered by the young rat's bad attitude. Kit didn't know much about life in the city, but from what he'd seen, he was pretty sure mice and rats didn't get along.

As they made their way toward the large Dumpster at the end of the alley, where the Scavengers' Market bustled,
creatures popped their heads from their homes and shops to gawk at Kit, Eeni, and Martyn. Whispers passed from mole to squirrel to ferret to hedgehog. Young chipmunks pointed and hid their faces in their mothers' fur, while a group of teenaged news finches perched in the bush by the entrance to the market, chirping out the evening's stories.

“Ansel's Trashed by Carnivorous Kitty!” one finch cried.

“Church Mice Squeak and Cat Goes Shriek!” another shouted.

“Flealess Give Two Nights Until Eviction! Time to Start Packing?” chirped a third.

“Extra! Extra! Who's the Raccoon the Cat Was After? Who's the Cause of All the Trouble? Finch's Nightly News Has the Scoop!” cried out a fourth.

“Hey, pal!” the first finch yelled down to Kit. He wore his hat cocked low on his head, so he could only see with one eye. It gave him a cool, insouciant look. Kit wished he had that kind of confidence. “How's about an interview? The folks are dying to know about you. You really think you can find the Bone of Contention?”

“I, uh, don't know . . . ,” Kit said, nervously adjusting his own hat.

“Extra! Extra!” the finches shouted together. “Young Raccoon Denies All Knowledge! What's He Hiding? Hear All About It!”

“But I didn't deny anything,” Kit objected. “I don't
know
anything.”

“Ignore them,” Eeni said. “They're no better than Mrs. Costlecrunk and her brood. The finches just charge for their gossip and call it news. You'll do well not to listen to a word they say.”

“Okay,” Kit said, walking on.

Together, they passed by the bustling Scavengers' Market, where stray dogs eyed them suspiciously.

“Don't stare at them,” Eeni warned. “They're with the Rabid Rascals, just like Basil and the Blacktail brothers. And they all know by now what you did to those three hoodlums.”

“What
I
did?” Kit couldn't believe his ears. “They cheated me and tried to feed me to a snake!”

Eeni nodded. “And you stopped them. Nobody stands up to the Rabid Rascals like that. You'll have to watch your back.”

“Cats after me and news birds after me and now a pack of gangsters after me too?” Kit whined. “I've only been here one night!”

“At least you're having an adventure,” Eeni said. “You can't say life here's boring, can you?”

Kit did not find Eeni's perspective very comforting.

“Anyway,” said Eeni, “I think a group of gangsters is called a trouble. A trouble of gangsters.”

“Not a pack?” Kit wondered.

“A pack's just for dogs,” she said.

“How do you know all this?” Kit asked her.

“I guess school wasn't totally useless.”

Martyn tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to a hole in the fence that cut off Ankle Snap Alley from one of the People's streets. “This way!”

“The Rat King doesn't live here in the alley?” Kit asked.

“The city beneath the Slivered Sky is much larger than one alley, young Kit,” the mouse explained. “And the Rat King has lived in every corner of it.”