The Wild Ones (8 page)

GIVE A HOOT

BEYOND
the edge of the alley, Kit and Eeni had to scurry across the big pavement river following Martyn, whose white robes glowed as he passed through the pools of electric light. They scampered along the edge of a square brick building where the People worked all day, past giant metal doors, and beneath a big brown truck.

The mouse stopped at the edge of a rotted pier that jutted out over black water. Kit was shocked to smell the sea salt air. He hadn't known they were so close to an ocean. The pier was cut off from the concrete by a razor-wire fence, but there was a burrow hole dug under it, big enough
for a dozen mice or one young raccoon to squeeze through. Martyn gestured for Kit to climb under first, but just as he touched his snout to the ground, an owl hooted from above.

“Whooo goes below?” the owl demanded. Kit looked up and saw a big brown owl perched atop the fence. Its mighty talons wrapped around the razor wire as if it were the harmless branch of a tree. Like Eeni had said, Wild Ones adapt. The owl wore a crisp black suit and blinked his wide yellow eyes behind dark glasses. “Whooo are yooou?”

Eeni froze in place. It was a well-known fact that rats did not like owls on account of owls having rats for dinner on a regular basis.

“Uh . . . uh . . . ,” Eeni stammered.

She glanced around. Martyn the mouse had vanished. Brave as they might appear, mice were also terrified of owls. They usually ended up as breakfast.

Kit, however, was far too big for an owl to eat for any meal, and besides, he knew owls from back home, so he stood up on his hind feet, pressed the tips of his front paws together in greeting, and turned the question right back on the bird who was asking it. “Who are
you
?”

The owl swiveled his head to peer down at Kit. He blinked once.

“I am the bouncer, you impudent masked scoundrel!”
the owl cried out. Kit noticed that the owl used the word
impudent
when he could have just said
rude.
Owls back under the Big Sky were like that too . . . always using big words when little ones would've done just fine. As if being impossible to understand made them wise. Real wisdom, Kit's father always told him, didn't need to hide behind big words.

Kit figured owls in the city under the Slivered Sky were the same as owls out in the trees of the Big Sky. If you made them feel smart, they'd let you do anything.

“I didn't mean to be rude, sir,” Kit replied. “And I don't understand them big words you use. I never meant to be
in pudding
 . . .”

“‘Impudent,'” the owl corrected him, just as Kit knew he would. “‘In pudding'? Ha! Unlikely.”

“Yes, sir,
impudent,
I meant to say.” Kit looked down at his feet. “Could you forgive a poor raccoon for not knowing such smart words? I never had much schooling, sir.”

“Sir, indeed!” The owl puffed out his chest.

“I apologize for troubling you,” Kit said. “You must have more important things to do than talk to a young raccoon and his friend.”

The owl swiveled his head around in a circle. “I do indeed! My college of owls is waiting for me to start our card game.”

“Well, we don't mean to keep your college waiting,” Kit said. “You see, we have an appointment to see the Rat King.”

The owl hooted in surprise. “An appointment? Ha! An owl has stood sentry for the Rat King since this whole area was nothing but stone and beach, and in that time, there has not been one appointment!”

“If you'll just check, sir . . . ,” Kit suggested.

The owl blinked in annoyance, but one of his talons reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and produced a small scroll, which he proceeded to unfurl, letting it sail all the way to the ground. Kit noticed that the giant sheet of paper was completely blank, but for one line at the top. “And your name is?”

“Kit, sir. I believe a mouse made the appointment some time ago . . .”

The owl's eyes moved painfully slowly across the single line at the top of the scroll.

“Very well,
Kit,
” the owl finally said. “A raccoon
does
have an appointment, although whether or not that raccoon is you is hard to say.”

“It's me,” said Kit.

“It's
I,
” corrected the owl. “You are the subject of the sentence, therefore you should use the subject pronoun
I
rather than the object pronoun
me.
”

“Yep,” said Kit. “If you say so. It's I.”

“I do say so.” The owl nodded, and Kit smiled. The owl had just agreed that Kit was the raccoon on the list.

“So?” asked Kit. “Since we agree I'm the raccoon on your list, can I go in now, please?”

“Well . . .” The owl scratched his head with one talon, puzzled about how exactly he'd just agreed or what exactly he had agreed to. “You are perhaps a hundred seasons late, Kit.”

“Sorry, sir,” Kit apologized. “I couldn't help it. I wasn't born a hundred seasons ago.”

“Excuses,” the owl grumbled, as he began rolling up his scroll. “But you two may enter. And bring your mouse friend. He thinks I don't see him, but I certainly do.”

Martyn slowly revealed himself from beneath a pile of bricks, looking bashful. He'd found a crumb from a Person's lunch and was quietly munching on it.

Kit's stomach grumbled to remind him how hungry he still was.

The owl, keen of hearing as well as sight, smirked and called out to Kit as he turned away. “You know, those friends of yours would make a fine snack for a growing lad like you. A lot of vitamins in a rodent.”

Eeni squeaked, and Kit gasped.

Where he was from, it was not polite to suggest eating one's friends, and he assumed the same was true in the city. Beneath all their big words, owls were just big rude birds,
and he was glad to put this one behind him, although he did understand that if the Rat King wanted to keep away trespassers, an owl at the gate was certainly an effective way to do it.

Kit let Eeni and Martyn go under the fence ahead of him, both of them shuddering beneath the owl's cold yellow stare.

They scurried beside the pier and reached a crumbling wall with faded writing in the People's language along the side of it. There were broken windows high in the brick at one end. The other end had collapsed and lay open to the sea, where all kinds of driftwood and flotsam had washed up into it.

“We're here,” Martyn announced.

“What is this place?” Kit asked.

“The People called it a public pool,” Martyn explained. “In the warm season, they would come here in special clothing and swim in a false lake they built inside, just beside the real ocean.”

“They built a false lake, right beside the ocean?” Kit couldn't imagine why People would do such a thing, when they could swim in the ocean whenever they wanted. But perhaps, when you've covered the world in cities of glass and concrete so tall that only slivers of sky can be seen from the ground, you forget about oceans.

“They abandoned this long ago,” Martyn said. “It has been the home of the Rat King for quite some time.”

“So . . . uh . . . do we just go in?” Kit asked.

“No one goes in without an appointment,” Martyn said. “Many a creature has tried, and none has ever come out again.”

“But”—Kit gulped—“we have an appointment. The owl said so.”

“No,” Martyn corrected him. “The owl said you have an appointment, and you alone. We will wait outside until you return.”

“But I don't even know why I'm going to see him.”

“The Rat King isn't a
him,
” Eeni declared. “The Rat King is made up of boys
and
girls.”

“But it isn't called the Rat
Queen,
” Kit said.

“Well, maybe it should be—” Eeni answered him.

“Please, children,” Martyn interrupted. “We have no time to debate this. Kit, you must go. The Rat King will know about this footprint you carry. It is our only hope to find the Bone of Contention before the Flealess evict us from Ankle Snap. It is the only way we will avoid terrible bloodshed. Please, go in.” Martyn gestured to the rusted fence and Kit took a hesitant step forward.

Eeni moved to follow him again, but Martyn blocked her path.

“He must go alone,” Martyn said. “No exceptions.”

“But I made a promise,” Eeni said.

The mouse didn't move. Kit looked back at Eeni, worry bristling from every whisker on his face.

“I'll be right here when you get back,” she promised him. “I still need to school you on so much. I promise. Howl to snap.” She held up her little paws in an A.

Kit held up his own paws in return. “Howl to snap,” he repeated, then scuttled into the dark of the abandoned building.

“Oh, Kit,” Eeni called, “tell the Rat King something for me.”

“What's that?” Kit waited.

Eeni chewed her lip, thought a moment, and then said, “Tell the Rat King that Eeni, from the Nest at Broke Track Junction, says she's sorry.”

Kit scrunched his eyebrows, puzzled by the message, but the expression of worry and embarrassment on Eeni's face made him decide not to ask what she meant. She knew, and that was enough. Friends, he decided, let each other keep the secrets they need to keep. It'd be up to Eeni if she wanted to tell Kit what she meant.

So he just responded, “I'll tell the Rat King—I'll tell
her.
”

Eeni smiled and Kit crept away into the dark.

THE RATS REMEMBER

THE
air smelled of wet fur and of salt water, sewage, and rotting fruit. Beneath it, a hint of old chemicals. The People were obsessed with cleaning things, dousing their spaces in soaps and perfumes until nothing could live, but of course, the moment the People abandoned their places, life came roaring back. Vines grew on the walls, flowers burst from the broken floor tiles, and succulent insects skittered in the cracks. This dark building was teeming with life, and
Kit's stomach grumbled again. He wondered if he had time to stop and eat a grub or two.

Martyn's words echoed in Kit's mind.
No one goes in without an
appointment. Many a
creature has tried,
and none has ever c
ome out again.

He decided it was best not to keep the Rat King waiting any longer.

He made his way along the wall in the dark, his claws scraping against the tile. Every step he took made a loud
click
, click, click.

He passed a row of rusted metal cubbies, some with doors half off their hinges, some shut and barred with metal locks. He was tempted to stop and pick open a lock, see what goodies he could find, but there were signs posted along the walls and on the doors of the cubbies. He couldn't read the words, but one had a picture of a rat stenciled on it, and below, a word of the People's language that all the wild creatures learned to recognize when they were young:
POISON
.

This was a place of danger, for People and animals alike.

Kit took a gentle step on a pile of dried leaves and heard a snap. His paw rested on something metal, not tile, and he had a split second to dive out of the way as a cage snapped up from the floor around him. He rolled just in time and the trap caught only air.

He looked at the metal grate of the cage, rusted but
thick, and the hinges, still strong. He'd have to be more careful where he placed his paws. Where there was one trap, there were always more to follow.

Kit entered a giant room. The roof had collapsed so the stars above were visible. One streak of moonlight cut the space and drew a circle on the bottom of the large pit that filled most of the floor. This was the lake the People had built inside, but it was dry now, and at its deepest end, in the shadow outside the moonlight, something stirred.

“Come, come, young one, we've waited and waited and waited for you,” a voice—or rather, a hundred voices all together in a rat chorus—said. Kit could only see the shape, a writhing shadow of fur and tail, with two hundred red eyes. “Step where we can see you. Hurry now, son of Azban.”

The voices were young and old, male and female, rough and smooth. Blended together, they sounded older than moonlight.

Kit hesitated, but figured the only rat he'd met so far had been good to him, so maybe he could trust this one too. He climbed down the steps at the opposite end and crawled warily deeper. As he moved, he heard a loud chewing noise. The deeper he got, the louder the chewing sounded. He noticed the bones of small animals littering the floor. All along the high walls of the dry concrete lake were the skeletons of rats. Kit bit his tongue to keep from screaming.

When he reached the pool of moonlight, the Rat King called for him to stop and the chewing sounds ceased. “Stay there, young Kit. Let's look at you.”

Kit stopped and the hair on his back prickled. It was a strange feeling to know that a hundred pairs of eyes were studying him. The sound of gnawing, chewing, and crunching returned, broken by distinct voices.

“He looks frighte
ned,”
whispered one small rat voice from the mass of rats.

“Of cours
e he's frightened,”
added another.
“He should be frighten
ed.”

“But he's come
nonetheless. His fea
r does not control h
im.”

“Rather brave,
that is.”

“I want po
pcorn.”

The Rat King was talking to itself. It was like listening to someone's thoughts, if all their thoughts had to be spoken out loud.

“M
e too! I'm hungry!”
one more added.

“Focus! Is this one
brave enough to fin
d the Bone?”

“His pa
rents were brave.”

“
Brave is not a who.
Brave is a what.”

“W
hat you do, not who
you are.”

“What did
his parents do?”

“Hi
s parents got killed
.”

“The Flealess kil
l the brave and cowa
rdly alike.”

“But wi
ll they kill Kit?”

“
I want popcorn!”

“Excuse me.” Kit interrupted the Rat King's discussion with itself. “I can hear you, you know. I'm, like, right here.”

“Yes, you are,” the Rat King spoke again in one voice. “And we do not know what to make of you, Kit. We knew one day you would come, but we did not know who you would be when you arrived.”

“Can you see the future?” Kit tried to peer into the dark at the mystical Rat King. If there was a creature in the world that saw the future and chose not to warn folks like Kit when tragedy was coming, that creature had a lot to answer for. To see disaster coming for others and do nothing to stop it struck Kit as just plain mean.

“We cannot see the future,” the Rat King replied. “We can simply see more than most and remember most of all. We hold the memories of generations in our mind, and so we knew that one of your kind would come to us one day, as one always comes. History turns and turns, but the future changes very little from the past until someone brave comes along to change it. We wonder if you are that someone.”

“I'd rather change the past than the future,” said Kit. “I want my parents back.”

The Rat King sighed a hundred putrid sighs.

“Touching,”
said one rat.

“Beautiful,”
said another.

“But impossible,” said all the voices together. “Your past is as attached to you as your tail. It follows you and keeps you balanced, but it cannot lead you forward. Yet there are other creatures with other parents who will die if a war comes to Ankle Snap Alley. You can prevent their pasts from bearing the same scars as yours. Do you want to help these others?”

“Of course,” said Kit, without hesitation.

“He is kind,”
said one rat voice.

“He is
brave
and kind,”
said another.

“Popcorn,”
said a third.

“We'll eat later!”
shouted one more.
“Time
is running out!”

“Time for what?” Kit asked.

“Don't interrupt us while we're thinking!” the Rat King yelled.

“Sorry,” said Kit. “But you really need to stop speaking in riddles.” He pulled the stone from his pouch and held it up toward the shadow. “Would you please just explain this to me so I can do what I promised my mother I would do?”

The massive shape of the Rat King shifted. It swung wide around the edge of the moonlight and shoved its hundred faces into the glow, towering high over Kit. Two hundred red rat eyes blazed at him, and two hundred
rat-sharp front teeth shined from one hundred bristling brown and black and white and gray faces, and every face looked wild with madness.

“The Footprint of Azban!” the Rat King hissed.

“Uh, yeah,” said Kit, whose patience for the Rat King had worn as thin as pig's hair. “Can you tell me something I don't already know about?”

“This footprint was left by Azban to mark the place where the Bone of Contention was hidden for future generations.” The Rat King paused dramatically, but Kit simply waited. He tapped his foot.

“He didn't oooh,”
said one rat.

“He didn't ahhh,”
said another.

“No sense of drama,”
said a third.
“Just tell him the re
st.”

“Long ago, when the First People left and the New People built their city, they brought with them their pets,” the Rat King went on. “Dogs and cats and birds more comfortable with the People's ways than with the animals they once were. The New People had long ago forgotten our languages and ignored our societies, but their pets remembered. And the pets feared that the Wild Ones, who lived off the human scraps and scroungings, would ruin their comfy lives by turning the People against all the animals. So they tried to rid the city of our kind, killing rats and mice, raccoon and rabbit, deer and bear and boar
and hawk and dove and all else they could find. The cats soon joined them, and we were nearly driven to extinction.

“But the wild creatures joined together, fought back, and a great battle raged for years, with many dead on all sides. The Wild Ones feared that all was lost, and so they signed a truce. They could live in the narrow places of the People's towns, the hidden edges and dark corners, places like Ankle Snap Alley, for seven hundred and seven seasons. When the seven hundred and seven were over, they were to go into exile and give the pets all the land that lay beside the People. The deal was struck, and the Wild Ones and Flealess lived in temporary peace.”

“Until the truce ran out,” said Kit.

“Yes, this very season,” said the Rat King. “But there are rumors of a secret deal, made long ago by Azban and Brutus, the Duke of Dogs, who was the pride of the People's mayor. The raccoon and the dog played a game of cards one night that lasted into the next day and the night after and on after that some more. For two suns and three moons they played, Azban betting away everything the Wild Ones had, until he proposed a final bet, the right to Ankle Snap Alley for all time, for all the Wild Ones to live in freedom from the Flealess forever.

“Of course, Brutus, who had been winning the whole time, agreed, and Azban called the mice to draw up the deal. They inscribed it onto the shinbone of a mighty elk,
and Azban, who'd planned the whole thing from the beginning, won the final bet. Brutus flew into a rage, accused Azban of cheating. The big dog tore the room apart and nearly killed everyone present, except the brave raccoon fled with Brutus on his trail and hid the Bone where Brutus couldn't get it, too low to dig and too high to reach, caged with iron light and locked in threes.”

“‘Caged with iron light'? What does
that
mean?” Kit asked, but the Rat King ignored him, caught up in the momentum of the story.

“Azban swore to the dog that before the seven hundred seven seasons were done, one of his kind would return and show everyone what had been won, that all animals would live side by side in peace.

“And that is why raccoons in the city have always searched and scrounged, looking for the Bone inscribed by their ancestor. That is why your parents gave their lives to find it, and that is why you must follow this footprint where it leads, to find the Bone before the final season has ended.”

Silence fell again, and Kit thought long and hard about his ancestor and his parents and the task now before him. Finally, he asked the question he should've asked from the start: “So where's the footprint lead? What's too low to dig and too high to reach, caged with iron light and locked in threes?”

“No patience, t
his one,”
said one rat.

“No respect for grav
itas!”
said another.

“Sooner he's gone,
the sooner we eat,”
said a third.

“We don't know what those words mean,” said the Rat King. “Azban did love tricks. But the painting on this stone beside the footprint is a People's mark, painted by a juvenile in more recent times than Azban walked. The People's young sometimes mark their territory with paint the way a wolf marks with his spray. They call it ‘graffiti.' This mark we have seen before in our travels. It is from a dark and dangerous place, below the city.”

“Below?” Kit gulped.

“The sewers,” said the Rat King. “A more dangerous place there could not be. A hungry beast lurks below, devouring the flesh of all who set claw on her turf . . . but that is where this footprint leads, brave Kit, and that is where you'll have to go.” The Rat King tilted perilously high over Kit's head. “Be brave and change the future,” all its voices declared. “Or be fearful and repeat the past. Only you can decide.”

The Rat King pulled away quickly toward a hole on the far wall of the pool and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Kit stood alone in the circle of moonlight, surrounded by the skeletons of generations of royal rats. It was amazing how all those rats remembered so much, amazing how memory really was like magic, able to bring
the distant past to life and illuminate a path to the future. He wished his memory were that good. He found he could barely remember what his own mother looked like.

He'd forgotten something else too, he realized.

“Oh no! Your . . . uh . . . Highness? I forgot to tell you something,” he called out into the darkness. “Eeni, from the Nest at Broke Track Junction, says she's sorry.” His voice echoed. He didn't know if the Rat King could hear him or if it was even listening anymore.

But through the long silence, one rat voice whispered back:
“Tell her, her mother forgives her
.”

“‘Her mother'?” Kit said.

His jaw dropped.

Of course.

No wonder Eeni was so upset about the Rat King. Eeni's mother had joined the Rat King. That's why Eeni didn't seem to have a family. That's why Eeni lived on the mean streets of Ankle Snap Alley.

He wanted to ask the lone voice more, but another rat cut her off.