Beasts of New York Page 10

"We should go," Zelina said. "The humans may return. The rats may return with a leader."

  "She's right," said one of the just-released squirrels.

  "Just a moment," Talis said through a mouthful of rabbit meat.

  Then a deep, throbbing voice echoed from the room. It came from its other side, from the big cages, and it drowned out the dogs who had begun to snarl with dismay.

  "Please," it said. "Please, if you have any mercy in your hearts, help me."

  Siva

  Zelina began to run across the room.

  "Zelina, what are you doing?" Patch cried out, appalled, but she did not stop.

  After a moment he raced after her, intending to intercept her before she reached the big cages. But to Patch's surprise she could run much faster than he. By the time he caught up with her she was standing in front of the cage of the immense cat-thing, which lay coiled miserably on the ground.

  "Who are you?" Zelina asked. "What are you?"

  "My name is Siva," came the reply, "and I am tiger. Who are you?"

  "My name is Zelina."

  Patch, hanging back a little behind her, approved of her diplomatic omission of 'Queen of All Cats.' It did not seem right to imply to a terrifying cat-thing big enough to eat a human that it was in any way a social inferior, even if it was in a cage made of steel bars the size of tree branches, and sealed by several devices far larger and more solid than those that had imprisoned Patch and Zelina.

  "I beg of you to carry a message for me," Siva said. "I beg of you to find my human brother and bring to him a ball of glass. That will tell him that I live."

  Patch was amazed by this extraordinary request, but Zelina seemed to take it in stride. "Where can we find your human brother?" she asked.

  "All I know is he will be among animals, for he is a great kabooti man."

  "A great what?" Zelina asked.

  The word triggered a memory in Patch. "Did you once ask a pigeon to find him?"

  Siva turned his gaze on Patch, and Patch quivered beneath its strength and immensity. "Yes," the tiger said. "From time to time pigeons find their way into this room, and I charge them with my mission. I learned to speak Bird long ago, in the jungles in which I grew. But I fear they forget my words as soon as they find the sky."

  "I think I have seen your human brother in the Kingdom of Madness," Patch said. "Is his skin dark? Do flocks of pigeons follow him?"

  Siva leapt to his feet, hissing with excitement, and Patch shrank back.

  "Yes!" Siva said. "Yes, that is him! You must find him again! You must bring to him a ball of glass!"

  Patch said, "I can't go back to the Kingdom of Madness. I have to go home. I'm sorry."

  "Please. Please, little squirrel. I beg you. Please."

  After a long moment, Patch swallowed and said, "When I can, after I get home, I'll try to have a bird carry your message. That's all I can tell you. I'll try."

  After a long moment Siva said, "Thank you, little squirrel. Your words give me hope. I have been so long in this place of cages and killing that even hope is a gift beyond measure. Please remember, little squirrel. Please remember and do as you say you will."

  "I'll try," Patch said again.

  He was relieved when they finally left the tiger in his cage, rejoined Talis and the freed squirrels, and began to search for a way out of the mountain.

  Creatures Of The Night

  The way out was through the shattered corner of a piece of glass inset about human-high into a brick wall. Zelina called the glass a window. The bricks of the wall, and especially the mortar between bricks, were just crumbly enough to give purchase to a squirrel's claws, and just strong enough to hold a squirrel's weight. Zelina too was able to climb to the window. But Talis had to remain behind, trapped on the ground.

  "I'm sorry, Talis," Patch said. "We'd help you escape if we could."

  "Don't you feign guilt to me, Patch son of Silver," Talis grumbled. "As well to have cut off one of my legs as to have made me swear that oath. Don't you worry about me. None need ever worry about foxes. We survive. I know from the smells what door the humans will enter. When they come in, I will run out. And in the meantime there are rabbits to eat."

  "Don't forget your oaths," Zelina said.

  The fox bared his teeth. "I should, and I would if I could, Queen of All Cats. Now be gone before this bile I taste becomes poison."

  Patch had to maneuver carefully to avoid being cut by the shattered glass. The ground outside was a field of uneven concrete, dimly lit by a few human lights, surrounded by small mountains. The wind was cold and smelled of rust and chemicals without even a trace of trees or grass, but Patch drank it in like it was the wind of the highest sky. He had escaped the awful killing place, he stood once more beneath the moon. And the stars. For it was deepest night.

  "We must find shelter," one of the other freed squirrels said fearfully.

  "Yes," Patch said. "Do you know this kingdom?"

  "No."

  "We can't stay and talk! We must find shelter, now, it's night!" another squirrel exclaimed, and this one matched her actions to words by turning tail and running. The other squirrels followed her example until only Patch and Zelina remained, and Patch was trembling nervously.

  "What's wrong?" Zelina asked, puzzled. "We've escaped!"

  "It's night. We have to find shelter."

  "What's wrong with the night? I have often stood on the metal stairs outside my palace at night and watched the moon."

  "Owls!" Patch said.

  It was more than owls. Squirrels fear the night for the blindness it brings, for its cold winds, and for the rats and raccoons that emerge and prowl through their native darkness. But above all they fear the owls, the deadly, relentless killers that cruise silently through the night sky, invisible and undetectable, able to see through darkness and see from far away the motion of mouse or squirrel or rat, and then swoop down and strike and kill and carry away, leaving nothing but darkness and silence in their trace. It was an article of faith among squirrels of the Center Kingdom that a night-time expedition would lead to death by owl. And it was not so very far from the truth; for dozens of owls hovered every night between the city and the stars, circling and seeking prey.

  "We have to find shelter," Patch repeated.

  "There's a sky-road," Zelina said, and indeed, across the concrete plain, there stood a severed trunk from which wires hung.

  "No," Patch said. "We must stay out of open places, near the walls, in the shadows."

  "I think your fear is strange," Zelina said, but she sounded nervous, and did not protest further.

  Patch led the way along the mountain that had held them, sniffing the air, hoping to find some scent of trees. But there was nothing. Only human-smells.

  "There has to be a tree somewhere," Patch said desperately.

  "We can take shelter on the ground," Zelina suggested.

  "On the ground the rats will find us. We must have a tree."

  "Metal stairs."

  "What?" Patch asked.

  "Over there." She indicated a kind of metal latticework that clung to the wall of a building across the concrete plain. "See that tendril of the sky-road that connects just beside them? We can jump over. No rats will reach us there. And the metal will keep the owls away."

  "It's nothing like a drey," Patch objected. "It's open on all sides. And it's human. It's metal."

  "I shall spend my evening on the metal stairs, which I assure you are fit for a queen, even if some bedraggled squirrel does somehow consider them insufficient and unworthy," Zelina said haughtily. "As for you, I wish you luck in finding a tree before an owl finds you."

  Zelina ran towards the sky-road, keeping near walls and to shadows like Patch had suggested. After a moment Patch sighed and ran after her. Both of them ran on three legs, favouring their legs wounded by the snares. Their journey was slow but they were not attacked. The metal stairs had a cold, slick, disagreeable feel, and although Patch had to admit that an owl was un
likely to try to swoop down through the lattice-wall of bars that stood on either side of the zigzagging stairs, he still felt like they were not sheltered at all,. Although he was exhausted, he slept poorly.

  City Of Clans

  Patch woke with the sun. Leaving Zelina to sleep, he slowly climbed up to the top of the metal stairs, and onto the roof to which they opened. The roof was flat and white, and dotted with protruding metal things the size of humans. Patch leaped up to the short brick wall on the roof's perimeter and looked around. His heart swelled. For he saw the enormous mountains that surrounded the Center Kingdom, so near that they blotted out a sizable arc of the western sky. He had feared that the humans taken him far away from his home; instead, they had taken him much closer. Patch compared what he saw to that long-ago sky-view from Karmerruk's claws, and thought he was only a day's journey distant from the river that ran down the eastern shore of the Center Kingdom's island. He didn't know how he would traverse that river, but having already crossed the great waters and a bridge, he felt confident he would find a way.

  The area around him was an amazing three-dimensional labyrinth of human chaos and construction. There were other buildings, wide and flat and low, like the one on which he stood. There were countless wire fences topped by barbed strands. There were scores of sleeping automobiles. There were highways and plots of pitted, cracked concrete, and in places the highways crossed atop one another, forming spans and tunnels of concrete. Even the walls of a narrow, muddy river in the middle distance were concrete. A huge metal bridge crossed that river. There were sky-roads of posts and wires, but they were sparse and disconnected, isolated spurs that ran between buildings or along highways for only some distance, rather than covering all the human territory like a vast spiderweb in the way of the sky-roads of the Ocean Kingdom. In the distance, across the narrow river, the biggest machine Patch had ever seen passed by. It looked like a dozen solid-walled metal cages linked together, and it groaned and shrieked and howled as it moved, and lights as bright as the sun flickered from where its wheeled feet met the metal rails on which it rode.

  "Moon in the heavens!" Zelina cried out from behind him. "Your tail!"

  Startled, Patch ran back to the metal stairs. Zelina was awake, and not alone. There was a strange squirrel on the metal stairs with her. Zelina had inadvertently cornered the squirrel, who she was examining carefully. Fully a third of the squirrel's tail was missing.

  Patch had seen this before, of course. Squirrels are capable, when seized by a predator or perhaps trapped by a falling tree, of detaching part of their tails in order to escape. This is not done lightly; a squirrel's tail, aside from acting as rudder and sun-shade and blanket, is its crowning glory of beauty and vanity.

  "Go away!" the squirrel said, frightened; Zelina was no larger than a squirrel, but she was still a predator.

  "What have you done with Patch?" she demanded.

  "I'm right here," Patch said from the top of the stairs, and then to the squirrel. "I'm sorry, don't worry, it's all right, she's a friend."

  The squirrel looked suspiciously at Zelina, and even more suspiciously at Patch, and demanded, "Who are you?"

  "I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. "Who are you that asks?"

  "I am Wriggler son of Downclimber, of the Seeker clan, of the Hidden Kingdom."

  Patch looked at him quizzically. "Of what tribe?"

  "We have no tribes in the Hidden Kingdom. Only clans."

  "You say you are of the Seeker clan?"

  "You say you are of the Seeker clan?"

  The squirrels looked at another, amazed. Squirrels inherit their clan from their father and their tribe from their mother, so there were members of the Seeker clan among all four of the Center Kingdom's tribes. But Patch had never imagined that he might have clan-brothers and clan-sisters outside of the Center Kingdom.

  "Why do you have no tribes?" Patch asked.

  "The Hidden Kingdom isn't like the Center Kingdom or the Hill Kingdom. We have no great forest. We are too scattered to have tribes."

  "If you have no forest, then where do you live?"

  "We live here," Wriggler said. "We live in what you see."

  "But there are no trees! Where do you sleep? What do you eat?"

  "Come and I will show you."

  Wriggler leapt up to the roof of the building, and along the wall that was its edge. Patch followed, intrigued, and Zelina followed him.

  "Must the cat come along?" Wriggler asked.

  Outraged, Zelina answered, "I will have you know that I am the Queen of All Cats!"

  Wriggler sighed but did not protest further. He led them along a tendril of sky-road to a row of connected buildings with sloping roofs. There were a few cherry trees that grew from the highway before these buildings, but they were like the trees in the mountains, scrawny and disconnected, with only a tiny square of dirt around their trunks. Still, they were beginning to blossom, and Patch's mouth watered; cherry blossoms weren't filling, but they were tasty.

  "Can we stop and eat?" he asked.

  "I'll bring you to real food," Wriggler assured him. "You see up at the top of this building? My drey is there."

  "Your drey is in a human building?" Patch asked, amazed.

  "Come and see."

  The roof of the building was built of human-made tiles, and at its very peak, a few tiles had fallen away, revealing a wooden-walled hollow within. Wriggler's drey was lined with leaves and papers and looked very warm and comfortable.

  "I have two clan-brothers on this street as well," Wriggler said, "we're all Seeker Clan around here. I'll introduce you if I see them. Would you like to eat?"

  "Oh, yes, please," Patch said.

  "Follow me."

  They took the sky-road across the highway to a big building with a flat roof. The air here was warm and smelled wonderfully of food. Wriggler and Patch downclimbed a sky-road pole to a narrow concrete strip between buildings. Zelina, as usual, had to find her own slow way down to the surface, with many teetering hops from building to sky-road to wire fence to a massive, foul-smelling rusted metal box on the ground between the buildings. She was still ungainly but Patch thought she was actually getting better at descents now, with practice.

  "There's usually good food here," Wriggler said. He led them to a heap of wrinkled, shining black seed-pods, sniffed around, selected one, tore open a squirrel-sized hole with his sharp teeth, and disappeared inside. The seed-pod writhed and shook as Wriggler squirmed into it, and then emerged.

  "Moldy multigrain bagel!" he said happily, "Delicious!"

  Patch followed Wriggler into the seed-pod, and while something else inside smelled terrible, the chunks of food he found were indeed wonderful. When he came out Wriggler was looking very suspicious at Zelina and the dead sparrow she was eating.

  "She only eats little birds and mice," Patch assured him.

  "My mother always told me, never trust a predator," Wriggler said darkly.

  "How did you lose your tail?"

  Wriggler sighed. "A dog in a park. I was burying a nut, it was stupid of me, we have enough food here without nuts even in winter, but I couldn't help myself. It was downwind, and there were so many human noises around…"

  Patch winced in sympathy.

  "Some of the females don't care," Wriggler said, looking sadly at his much-reduced tail. "Or that's what they say. But when I chase them they don't let me catch them. I suppose you don't have any troubles with chasing."

  Patch didn't want to talk about women. "I need to get home to the Center Kingdom. Do you know how we can cross the river into the mountains?"

  Wriggler considered. "There are bridges. But they're for humans. And falcons live on the bridge towers. I've never heard of a squirrel going across."

  Patch was not dissuaded by this news. Since leaving the Center Kingdom he had done many things nobody had ever heard of a squirrel doing. The prospect of one more did not particularly pe
rturb him.

  Water's Edge

  But in each of the several days which followed, the wide river that separated Patch and Zelina from the island of the Center Kingdom seemed to loom larger and more impassable. Aided by Wriggler, who shared the enthusiasm Patch had once had for exploration, and by Wriggler's friends Quicknose and Backflip, they roved down the eastern shore of that river. They moved along sky-roads and rooftops and sometimes, greatly daring, across highways. They rested in the strips and squares of greenery and trees called 'parks' that seemed randomly dispersed among the concrete highways and buildings of the human lands. They ate nuts and shoots from those trees; scraps left fallen beneath tables and benches behind those buildings full of foods where humans went to eat; food discarded along with other human rubble in the garbage bags Patch had once thought of as seed-pods. They drank rainwater that puddled on ceilings and collected in rooftop gutters.

  They met and spoke to other squirrels, some of them clan-brothers, most of other clans. Like Wriggler and his friends they lived in small groups of neighbours and came together in larger numbers only for mating season. Dogs barked at them frequently from windows and highways. They saw several cats from a distance, but Zelina was not eager to make contact with any of her subjects. She explained that since she had been betrayed, deposed, and exiled, she was disinclined to allow news of her return to spread before the opportune moment. Once, late at night, as they looked for a temporary drey large enough for them all, they passed very near several raccoons, and all of them froze with fear, but the raccoons merely leered at them and passed on without speaking.

  As for birds, aside from the usual masses of pigeons, they saw amazing numbers of crows, in groups large enough that when they roosted on a tree there were often more birds than branches. Wriggler, Quicknose and Backflip were as surprised as Patch and Zelina; apparently such congregations of crows were unheard of. Patch tried talking to several of them, but the crows were curt, hard-eyed, and unfriendly. Usually they simply flew away without a word; and if they did speak, it was never more than "Be silent, groundling. Be away and stop pestering me."

  The more they travelled, the less any route across the river became apparent. No boats travelled from one side to the other; even had there been any, Patch's previous boat experience had been so awful and nearly fatal that he would have rejected that option. The river was wide, dark, and cold, it exuded a foul and oily odor, and it was clear from watching its flotsam that its currents were strong and treacherous. As for the bridges, there were several, but all were concrete monstrosities that extended for a very great distance, and were packed with automobiles and humans at all hours of day and night. Only one bridge, the farthest south and most magnificent, had a concrete trail devoid of automobiles. This trail was always busy with humans, and sometimes they had dogs, but they might have risked it all the same – if not for the fact that this was the same bridge on which several families of falcons nested.