“A what?” Casseomae asked, turning back to gaze at it.
The rat took quick steps, moving in little bursts of speed and then freezing to sniff and listen. He leaped onto a log and sat back on his haunches to study the thing below.
“You know,” the rat said, impatient with excitement. “A starship.”
“A fallen star?” she asked.
“No. A sort of vehicle, like those rusting cars back in your meadow. An Old Devil relic.”
“Old Devils,” Casseomae said. “You mean the Skinless?”
“Right. That’s what you call them here in the Forest, isn’t it? The Skinless Ones?”
Casseomae grunted. She knew of the Skinless Ones. Everyone knew of the Skinless Ones, even if they were long gone.
Dumpster twitched his whiskers at her. “They weren’t skinless, you know.”
“Then why did they hunt us?” Casseomae said. “They needed our hides because they didn’t even have any skin—not any of their own. Only raw flesh and bloody tissue is what I always heard.”
“How do big voras like you wind up with such tiny brains?” Dumpster said. “They might have torn the hides off us, but it wasn’t because they didn’t have skin of their own.”
“How would you know, rat?” Casseomae said.
The rat clicked his incisors. “Because my da told me! He was the Memory for our mischief, before he passed it on to me. He knew all about the spittin’ Old Devils. We rats take great pride in knowing history.”
Casseomae snorted. “None of that explains why that star-relic thing landed in the Forest.”
“Well, let’s go find out,” the rat said. He jumped from the log and scampered ahead.
“Where are you going?” Casseomae asked.
“A passering like that is probably loaded with Old Devil treasures,” said the rat. “Devices. Memories. All sorts of things my mischief could use. Be back in a chirp.”
Casseomae followed as Dumpster scrambled up onto the wing. He maneuvered across a scattering of glass and with a jump landed in a circular opening before disappearing inside.
The sun was dipping low through the trees. Night would be here soon. Casseomae felt hungry after all the excitement of the thing falling in the Forest. She was eager to set off to forage. But then a scent hit her nose. A familiar scent. It had been nearly masked by the other strong odors coming off this strange relic. She sniffed, trying to identify it.
Blood.
“Hey, rat, I think—”
But before she got it out, there was a shrill squeal. The rat leaped out, knocking aside the broken glass as he landed on the wing. He tumbled to the edge and fell. Once he hit the ground, he ran, shooting through the underbrush and bracken.
Casseomae caught up with him in a thicket of cedars up on a bluff. The rat was trembling, his black eyes bulging more than ever. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“They … they’re in there,” he panted.
“Who is?” Casseomae growled. The rat blinked up at her but said nothing. “A wolf?” she asked.
“No,” the rat whispered. “Old Devils.”
“What?” the bear grunted. “What do you mean?”
Dumpster looked through the cedar branches at the silent relic lying crashed in the Forest. Then he said, “There are Old Devils in there.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Casseomae had heard all sorts of stories about the Skinless Ones who ruled the Forest long ago. All the Forest clans, both vora and viand, had their own legends. They varied greatly, but all agreed the Skinless Ones had been ferocious monsters. Casseomae guessed the Faithful probably had different stories, but then their clans had served the Skinless Ones and had been under their protection.
“What do you mean, Old Devils?” Casseomae asked. “You saw bones?”
“Not bones,” Dumpster said. “Bodies. They’re all in these eggs made of glass. They’ve shattered, I guess from the crash, and those Devils, they’re just lying around—”
“They’re not moving?” Casseomae asked.
The rat was talking rapidly, almost faster than Casseomae could follow. “No. I was looking around at them thinking, Pluck my whiskers, I can’t believe what I’m seeing! and, Hey, look, my da was wrong! They do have fur, but it’s only a little tuft on top of their ugly heads, when all of a sudden I heard something clicking. I turned around, and there was this one glass egg that wasn’t shattered. It was opening.”
“Was a Skinless inside?” Casseomae asked.
“Do I look like a spittin’ idiot? I didn’t stick around to find out!”
A howl sounded from the Forest. It was answered by a chorus of other yips and barks.
“Those cur-licking coyotes again?” Dumpster asked.
Casseomae growled, “It must be.”
The rat was staring at the strange relic. “Murk’s whiskers!” he said. “Look!”
Casseomae nosed aside the cedar boughs to peer down. The last rays of sun cut low through the trees and illuminated the passering with an orange glow. The shattered window was mostly in shadow. But as Casseomae watched, a paw reached out, a pink furless paw.
Another paw felt around tentatively at the opening before a head emerged. The rat was right. There was a little patch of fur atop the head, a yellow-brown color almost like the winter grass in her meadow.
A coyote barked, louder now, closer.
“Am I raving, old bear?” the rat squeaked. “Look! A spittin’ Devil, right there!”
“I don’t think it’s skinless,” Casseomae said.
“Whiskers and snappers!” the rat cursed. “I told you that already. Who cares if it has feathers? Those Devils aren’t supposed to be living! Don’t you understand?”
The creature wiggled its way through the hatch and climbed down onto the wing. It was making whimpering sounds.
“What’s that covering its body?” Casseomae asked. The creature seemed to have fish scales or some shiny lizardlike skin from its neck down.
“They’re called clothes! But that doesn’t change the fact that those … monsters are supposed to be all gone.” The rat was circling in terror, its body racked with shivers.
“Dumpster …,” Casseomae began as she watched the creature walk unsteadily to the edge of the wing and look around at the Forest. “How big were the ones inside?”
“I don’t know! Bigger than that one. How come?”
“It’s just a cub.”
“No! You think?” the rat squeaked.
“Yes.”
Dumpster peered skeptically at the creature standing in the falling sunlight. The coyotes were coming closer, their whines and yaps growing louder.
“But what in the name of Lord Murk does it matter?” Dumpster said. “It’s one of the Old Devils! It’ll murder us all!”
“That little cub isn’t going to kill anyone.”
The creature stood listening to the barks of the coyotes with wide, fear-filled eyes. It looked around at the darkening Forest before backing up the crumpled wing.
The rat clicked his teeth. “Cub or not, it’s one for the crows, as we always say. Those cur-lickin’ coyotes will be here any moment. It’s gone, old bear. I am too. I’ve got to find my mischief.” Dumpster looked up at Casseomae, then turned and scurried away through the grass.
The coyotes broke through the underbrush and surrounded the wing. Casseomae watched as the little creature began calling out in some strange language, waving its small hands frantically. It might have been bigger than a coyote, but Casseomae had seen a rout of coyotes work together to take down an elk bigger than that little cub.
Something stirred deep in Casseomae’s mind. An instinct coursed sharp and hot through her body—an instinct akin to the one that drove her to gorge in the fall or the one that urged her to nestle into her den when cubs had grown inside her. It was a pain within her tied to all those lost litters, all those cubs born breathless, all those cubs she had never been able to raise.
Casseomae bounded down the bluff, r
eaching the coyotes in a few leaps. With a swipe of her paw, she caught Rend in the muzzle and sent the coyote tumbling end over end. Casseomae stood on her hind legs and roared. Half of the rout scattered back into the trees. The few that remained received such a volley of blows that they were soon scattered as well. The bear’s jaws caught Rend by the hind leg as she tried to escape and flung the yelping coyote through the bushes and saplings.
Casseomae turned to the creature trembling on the wing. Something strange was happening to its face. Water streamed from its eyes across its cheeks. She gave the cub a little reassuring huff and put her front paws onto the wing. The metal crinkled beneath her weight.
As she leaned forward, the cub—this little creature who was no Devil, no monster, the little youngling who wasn’t skinless at all—did not recoil. It watched her with wide, sky-colored eyes.
She bit it at the shoulder, picking it up in the gentle, firm way a mother bear picks up a cub. Her huge jaws could break a wolf’s leg. But as she lifted the child, her teeth didn’t even pinch it and the cub didn’t cry.
She stepped down from the metal wing with the cub hanging from her jaws, limp and not making a sound. Casseomae lumbered up through the cedars and away from the crashed ship, setting off into the Forest with the first stars of the evening coming out.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Forest was alive with the night. Creeping steps. Flapping wings. Chirps and choruses, buzzes and breathing. In Casseomae’s meadow, the child lay whimpering in the cinder-block den. Casseomae watched it from the crumbled doorway, wishing she knew how to settle the little creature into sleep.
Perhaps it needed to eat. With the moon rising over the treetops, Casseomae went out to forage. She buried her snout in the grass, searching for tender shoots, upturning rotten logs to get at the burrowing grubs. Gathering a mouthful of the grubs in her lips, she lumbered back to the den.
The child stopped crying and watched her with wide eyes. Casseomae made a huff and dropped the grubs before the child. It looked at the wiggling white larvae and then at her.
“You eat it,” she said. “Doesn’t your kind eat food?”
The child wrinkled its nose and pushed away one of the grubs that was worming closer.
“Maybe you don’t like grubs.” Casseomae sniffed at the child, trying to figure out if it could understand her. “Well, what do you eat anyhow?”
The child’s breathing had settled. It stared at her, wiping its dripping nose with the back of its hand.
“Sure are leaky, aren’t you?” she grumbled, backing out of the den. Once she stepped into the moonlight, the moaning resumed.
Casseomae hadn’t been foraging for long before she realized the child’s pitiful noises had stopped. She went back to the den. The child was sleeping. Casseomae gave a grateful snort and began to eat the grubs. “No,” she said, stopping herself. “Might be hungry when it wakes.” She lumbered out in the meadow, leaving the grubs wiggling in the dirt by the sleeping creature.
She watched her cave from the tall grass. What was she doing bringing this creature back to her den? She knew what these Skinless monsters had done to her kind and to the other clans of the Forest.
She wrestled with these thoughts until dawn broke. The sun was just rising above the trees when something rustled through the brush before her.
“You’ve not been eaten yet?” she said.
“I can take care of myself.” The rat settled on his back legs before her. “What’s your name again, old bear?”
“Casseomae.”
He twitched his whiskers. “I’m Dumpster.”
Casseomae grunted. “So where is the rest of your mischief anyway, Dumpster?”
“Think I’d be here if I knew?” He dipped his nose glumly. “I lost them. I was separated from the rest back in our city. Things were getting bad. Curs and lesser voras had been overrunning the place. Then our skyscraper fell. Busstop and Hydrant were killed right next to me. Who knows how many others? But Stormdrain and lots of the others escaped. I followed their scent out into the Forest—”
“Look, rat,” Casseomae said, shifting her weight between her forepaws. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying. What fell?”
“A skyscraper. It’s an Old Devil building. Like this cinder-block den of yours, except bigger. A lot scratchin’ bigger. They stretch up into the clouds.”
Casseomae wondered if this could even be true, but then she’d never been to one of the Skinless’s cities. “So where were they headed?”
Dumpster twitched his whiskers. “They’d talked about trying to find the Havenlands.”
“Well, can’t you find them there?”
“I could if there was such a place,” he said with a sigh.
Casseomae grunted with confusion. “Why would your mischief go there if it isn’t real?”
“Because without their Memory to advise them, they get idiotic. Stormdrain will never keep them thinking straight without me around. No, they’re looking for the Havenlands for the same reason all those other featherbrained viand tribes are.”
Dumpster blinked his beady eyes at Casseomae’s confused expression. “Haven’t you heard of the Havenlands? Of course you haven’t. You’re a vora. Well, rumors of the Havenlands have been circulating around the viands for a sun’s age. Some say it’s a mountainous city. Others say it’s a meadow surrounded by impassable brambles. But all agree it’s by the Wide Waters, and all agree the Havenlands is a place without voras. Herds and tribes of viands living unmolested. Plenty to eat and no danger can reach you.”
Casseomae snorted. “A place where the wolves don’t rule?”
“Yeah, I know,” Dumpster said. “Sounds too good to be true. But Stormdrain is set on finding it. I’ve got to find them. Just like my da and his da before, I’m the Memory for the mischief. My rats need me.”
“I don’t understand,” Casseomae said. “Memory of what?”
“Of the stinkin’ Old Devils, you mushroom-brained bear.” Dumpster snapped his tail irritably. “What’ve I been telling you? There isn’t another clan of creatures, vora or viand, that knows more about the Old Devils than our kind. Our survival depended on it before the Turning and sure as spittin’ depends on it now! Back in the last age, we lived among those Devils. We ate from their caches. We slept in the warmth of their dens. I’m not saying we were Faithful like some flea-ravaged cur or puss. We were thieves! And spittin’ proud of it.”
Dumpster rose as high as he could on his hind legs and wiggled his nose at Casseomae. “Since the Turning, we’ve gotten by on what was left behind. There’s still Old Devil food to be eaten, if you know how to open a can. We do! We’ve figured out their water tunnels and valves, figured out how to open their boxes and doors, and figured out how to spill canisters of poisons to throw off pursuing voras.”
Casseomae listened with interest but understood barely a word the rat was saying.
“Knowledge,” Dumpster said. “That’s our edge. You see? Like knowing Vorago. It’s how we’ve survived. And to think of my mischief out there alone without me …” His words trailed off.
“So you know about these Skinless?” Casseomae grunted.
“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?” Dumpster squeaked.
“You know what they eat?” the bear asked.
“Been eating it my whole life,” the rat replied with a cocky wiggle of his whiskers. “Or at least when I can get my paws on it.”
“Come with me, then.” Casseomae lumbered to her den.
Dumpster hesitated at the door. He lifted one paw and sniffed, letting his nose guide him up on his hind legs.
“What in the name of Lord Murk is in there?” Dumpster asked.
“The cub,” Casseomae said.
“The … the Old Devil pup?” the rat piped. He was in a frenzy of agitation, circling back and forth, hopping and slapping his tail to the dirt. “You—you—no, you didn’t! What’s it doing here?”
“I brought it here.”
Dumpster looked up at Casseomae, his bulging black eyes blinking in disbelief. “What did you do that for?”
“Rend’s guard was going to kill it.”
“So?”
Casseomae extended her lips irritably and gave a woof. “It’s just a cub.”
“It’s a Skinless!” the rat shrieked. “An Old Devil. Do you have any idea what its kind did to us? Of course you don’t. You mushroom-brained bears can’t remember last moon.”
“We have stories about the age before the Turning,” she said.
“Then you should know what those Old Devil hunters did!”
“That cub didn’t do anything,” Casseomae growled. “You ought to have heard it moaning all night. Poor thing’s hungry. Needs to drink too, I’d reckon. But all it’s done is whimper like a blind newborn.”
“What are you planning to do with it?” Dumpster asked.
Casseomae stood still. She hadn’t thought exactly what she planned on doing with the creature. All she had known was that the coyotes would have killed it if she hadn’t saved it. It was a cub, after all, not so different from the ones she had lost.
“It needs food,” Casseomae said at last. “You know what its kind eats. Can you—”
A roar came from the far side of the glade. Casseomae turned and rose up on her hind legs to sniff. She dropped back down and said, “It’s Alioth, my sloth’s chief. You’d best—”
But the rat had already disappeared.
CHAPTER SIX
The bear chief blinked up at the bright sunlight, then stopped several lengths from where Casseomae sat in the doorway to her den. Alioth lowered his head, growing stiff-legged.
“You stink of it,” he growled.
Casseomae watched him silently, showing respectful submission but not groveling or moving away.
“I suppose it’s true, then,” Alioth said. “The coyotes are telling of a living Skinless One that they captured and that you stole from them.”
“They didn’t capture the cub,” Casseomae said.
“A cub, is it?” Alioth grunted. “How do you know it was a cub?”
The Prince Who Fell from the Sky Page 2
