“Tough spot, huh, kiddo.” Startled by the unexpected voice, Kit nearly fell out of the nook of his branch. He heard the dinging of a tiny bell. “Relax,” said the voice. “I’m a friend of the fur.”
Kit looked up and saw a bright orange cat with blazing yellow eyes perched on a branch above him. The cat wore a purple collar with a bell on it. The breeze through the tree made the bell chime quietly. It was almost soothing.
Kit’s nose worked the air, confused. The cat had the smell of the Flealess—shampoos and People and their fancy foods—but there were no People in this wood, save the hunters and their dogs.
“Who . . . who are you?” Kit stammered.
“A pal of the paw, a friend of the fur, all of one claw, and so forth . . . ,” said the cat. “Why don’t you come up here to this branch, where it’s safer from those nasty old hounds.”
“I don’t know what they want from me,” Kit whined. “I think they . . . hurt my parents.”
“Hush, little fellow,” the cat comforted him. “Come on up here, and we can chat all about it.”
Kit glanced down at the howling dogs below and up at the strange cat above. Then he planted his black claws in the bark and hoisted himself up.
“Nice to meet you, guy,” the cat said. “What’s your name?”
“Kit,” Kit said, using his gray-and-black-striped tail to wipe away a tear from the dark fur around his eyes.
The cat put a paw on Kit’s shoulder. Kit noticed the cat had six claws on his paws, instead of the usual five. He felt the prickly sensation as the tips of each razor-sharp claw rested against his fur.
“It is good to meet you, Kit. Sixclaw’s my name,” the cat said. “For obvious reasons.”
The cat smiled, and Kit laughed.
“You seem like a nice kid, and it is truly sad when bad things happen to nice kids,” Sixclaw added.
Kit nodded.
The cat sighed. “And of course, sadder still is when things seem like they finally might get better but, instead, they get so very, very much worse.”
Kit glanced sideways at the cat, whose mouth had opened into a cut-throat grin. Without another word, the cat shoved Kit from the tree.
Kit fell, and as he fell, he heard the dogs below howl with violent glee.
“Nice one, Sixclaw!” the pack leader shouted, just before Kit hit the ground with a wind-thumping thud.
Chapter Three
THE SHORT GOOD-BYE
KIT heaved for breath and looked up at the cruel faces of five bloodhounds circled around him. Above them, peering down from the tree, was the bright orange cat, fur blazing against the blue sky like another furious sun. Oh, how Kit longed for the cool moonlight and the safety of his family’s burrow!
“Have fun, fellas,” the cat called down to the dogs. “Remember, I don’t get paid until he’s torn to pieces, so you don’t get paid until he’s torn to pieces.”
Kit winced. The dogs rumbled out low growls and squeezed the circle in tighter.
“Wait!” the cat cried. Maybe, Kit thought, the cat had realized his mistake. Maybe he had realized that he had the wrong raccoon, that he and his parents had no quarrel with anyone, let alone a bunch of Flealess cats and dogs. They were just simple woodland raccoons living under the Big Sky and not bothering anyone of fur or feather, beak or claw, wing or wattle. Maybe the dogs would let him go home now with an apology and a pat on the back, and he and his parents would be laughing about the mix-up by sunset.
“Don’t eat the head,” the cat shouted, as he strolled back along the branch. “Boss likes to leave the heads.”
The cat skulked away along the highway of tree branches and disappeared into the green and gold canopy of leaves. The dogs resumed their growling, and Kit’s heart sank.
“You should’ve come down sooner,” the pack leader told him. “Now I gotta make it hurt. I think I’ll tear your head off myself.”
“I’ll take the tail!” another dog shouted, leaping forward.
“Tug-o’-war, tug-o’-war, tug-o’-war,” the dogs chanted.
Dogs, it was well known, loved nothing more than a vicious game of tug-o’-war.
Just as the pack leader jumped at Kit, there was a flash of gray-and-black fur, a sudden yelp, and the dog was flung sideways, hitting the dirt upside down. His legs kicked wildly at the air as he struggled to roll himself off his back and get to his feet again.
“Leave my boy alone!” Kit’s mother shouted, as she assumed a fighting stance on her back paws between the dogs and Kit.
“Rrrrrr!” growled the pack leader. “I thought we killed you already. Give us Azban’s Footprint, and we won’t kill your boy like we did your husband.”
“Dad?” Kit cried out from behind his mother. She kept her eyes locked on the dogs. There would be time for sadness later. Right now, escape for her son was her only concern.
“That’s a nice bark you’ve got,” she snarled at the dog. “I bet it’s much worse than your bite.”
The dog, enraged, jumped at Kit’s mother again. Two others flanked her.
Kit’s mother sidestepped them carefully, hooking her paw into the leader’s collar as he dove and using his own speed to swing him into the other two dogs. All of them hit the ground hard and tangled into one another. With her back claw, his mother slashed the pack leader’s ankle, changing his growls to yelps.
Kit marveled that his mother knew how to fight claw-jitsu. It was like she had this whole secret life he knew nothing about.
“Kit, watch out!” she warned, as the remaining two dogs came at him. He dodged their first bite, then spun around the trunk of the tree. They chased him in circles.
“Stop!” the leader called out.
The dogs stopped chasing Kit. Kit stopped running. He looked back to see his mother holding the pack leader’s collar. With every twist of her paw, the dog’s collar got tighter, choking him.
“Let my son go,” Kit’s mother ordered. “Or your leader gets collared.”
The dogs hesitated. Their leader whimpered.
“I’m warning you,” Kit’s mother said. “I’m no scared country mama. I was born in Ankle Snap Alley, and I can fight as dirty as any dog.”
“Back off, boys,” the pack leader choked out, and the dogs stepped away from Kit.
“Roll on your backs,” Kit’s mother ordered, and the dogs all obeyed. “And, Kit,” she spoke to him. “When I say so, run.”
Kit nodded.
For one heavy moment all was silent and still as a forest in snowfall. Kit’s mother twisted the dog’s collar until his eyes bulged, then she broke the deadly silence with a shout: “Run!”
She dove from atop the hound dog and leaped all the way to the tree where Kit stood. Grabbing Kit by the paw, she pulled him along with her. It took the pack leader another moment before he could speak again, and another moment for the confused pack of dogs to roll off their backs in the dirt, sniff out which direction the raccoons had gone, and follow their boss’s orders, which were simple enough: “Get them!”
The pack leader limped along behind, though none of the dogs was running quite as fast as he had before. Getting beaten up by a mama raccoon hurt their pride as much as their hides, and a dog’s wounded pride could slow him down worse than a wounded leg.
Kit and his mother ran as fast as they could.
“This isn’t the way home,” Kit panted.
“We can’t go home,” Kit’s mother replied. “They know where we live. We’re going to the city under the Slivered Sky to find your uncle.”
“Uncle Rik?” Kit asked. “But I thought he lived around a bunch of no-good garbage-scrounging liars?”
His mother didn’t answer. She just kept pulling him along, running.
“I didn’t know you were from there,” Kit added.
The dogs barked after them in the distance, catching up, but
not fast enough. There was a river up ahead and tree branches that hung over it. The raccoons could climb and leap across to where the dogs couldn’t follow. They’d be safe on the other side.
It looked like they were going to make it, when there was a loud SNAP!
Kit felt his mother’s hand jerk out of his, and she fell backward. He skittered to a stop and turned around. She’d stepped into a metal trap that was hidden beneath a pile of leaves. It was a small tube on the end of a chain and her back paw was stuck in it. When she tried to pull her paw out, the trap tightened on her ankle. The more she tugged, the tighter the trap locked around her paw. Her front paws tugged at the tube, but she couldn’t loosen it. The dogs barked and howled, ever closer.
“Mom!” Kit gripped the chain, tugged, shook it.
“You need to go, Kit,” his mother said. “Leave me. Run.”
“Why is this happening?” Kit asked her. “I don’t understand.”
His mother pulled out the flat stone that his father had been studying. It was crumbling, but had the paw print of the raccoon and a smear of colorful paint on it, a broken piece of a much larger picture. “Give this to your uncle Rik,” she said. “He’ll know what to do with it. It’s important that he get this stone. It could help prevent a terrible war. The fate of countless creatures depends on it.”
She stuffed it into his pocket.
“You give it to him yourself, Ma.” Kit shook his head and studied the mechanism. “I can open this.”
He knew he was good with traps and locks. He followed the chain paw over paw to a stake that held it in place. He tried lifting the stake, heaving it with all his strength, but it was buried too deep. He started to dig up the dirt around it, but the ground was hard and the digging was too slow. The dogs were getting closer. He ran back to his mother, studied her ankle where it vanished into the metal tube. A metal snapping lever locked the trap shut around her paw. If Kit could pry back the lever, she could slip out.
The dogs’ barks grew louder.
Kit’s little paws worried at the lever, lifting it ever so delicately. It wouldn’t budge. He had to find something to pry it open with.
“Kit. There’s no time.”
“There is time! I can do this,” he objected. He scrounged for a stick, but it broke the moment he jammed it into the lever. He needed something stronger. He searched again.
“No, son,” his mother said. “You have to run. You have to get that stone to your uncle. That is a Footprint of Azban, the First Raccoon.”
“So what? I can’t leave you,” Kit pleaded.
“Your father and I—” His mother’s voice cracked in her throat. “We’ll always be with you.” With her free paws, she embraced Kit. “But you must find your uncle Rik. You must help him finish the work we’ve begun.”
“How do I find him?” Kit’s voice quivered. “I’ve never been to the city.”
His mother bent down and jabbed her claw into one of the pokeberries that littered the forest floor and she scratched an address in black juice onto a thin piece of birch bark. “Watch out when you get there,” she warned Kit. “His neighborhood really is filled with no-good down-and-out garbage-scrounging liars. Be careful.”
“But I want you to come—” He held up the big stick he’d found.
“No,” said his mother. “You have to go now.”
The dogs bounded over the top of a nearby ridge. They stopped and scanned the woods, pausing a moment before locking their noses onto Kit and his mother.
“Got ’em!” one dog shouted.
“Grow up brave and quick of paw, Kit,” his mother pleaded. “Kind to your family and true to your friends.”
Kit hesitated. The dogs charged.
“Run!” his mother shouted one final time, and Kit dropped the big stick in front of her and backed away. Before he turned to run, he touched the tips of his claws together, forming the shape of the letter A with his paws, the raccoon sign of greeting and good-bye, the sign for Azban, the First Raccoon. The sign of trust.
His mother matched the gesture. She trusted him to carry on, to find his uncle, and to grow up on his own. This was good-bye.
Kit turned and ran for the river as the dogs pounced on his mother. He didn’t listen as they attacked nor as she shouted, “Is that all you got, you lousy leash lovers!”
He headed straightaway for the city under the Slivered Sky, and an uncle he had never met. His mother said that he now carried the fate of countless creatures in the patchwork pocket of his little coat.
He still didn’t know why.
Part II
LIARS, CHEATS, AND UNCLES
Chapter Four
AN HONEST FELLOW
JUST as the sky was settling into dusk, when the shadows pulled the dark curtain down on the day, Kit arrived in Ankle Snap Alley. He wore his hat low over his ears and flipped up the collar of his coat. He thought it gave him a tough guy look, something to make no-good garbage-scrounging liars wary, should he encounter any on his way.
Even though he’d been traveling for a day and a night and another whole day, he still had the smell of moss on him, and of dirt and bark. Big Sky smells. He was no city fellow, that was plain, and he sniffed warily at the evening air.
He did not belong here.
The buildings on either side of the alley carved a narrow ribbon overhead, blocking the view of the moon and stars, which is how the city got the name of Slivered Sky. Kit was from out where the sky was as big as seeing, and he had never set paw in any city before. His senses prickled.
His black-striped tail curled around his side as he leaned back on his haunches to study the piece of bark he clutched in his paw. The writing made him wince at the memory of the writer. He tapped the seed pouch in his front pocket to make sure his savings were safe. He’d moved Azban’s Footprint into the pouch so that he wouldn’t lose it. The mysterious object felt heavy and important, and he was eager to give it to his uncle and find out what it meant and why the Flealess would attack his parents for it. What did they care about Azban’s Footprint anyway? It was just a historical raccoon artifact, the kind his mom and dad had always collected. What made this one so important?
He’d carried the strange stone here all the way through woodlands and People’s neighborhoods and across a great green bridge where giant metal cars sped and honked, and the People in them didn’t even look in his direction. If he hadn’t watched his step, they might have run him over.
People thought their civilization was the only one that counted and didn’t notice much that went on in the smaller places of the world. They didn’t pay any attention to the lives of those furry creatures scurrying beneath them, unless they’d turned them into house pets.
In the old stories, People and animals were all one civilization. They spoke one another’s languages and knew one another’s ways. It wouldn’t have been a strange thing at all to see a raccoon in a hat and coat strolling across a bridge, but they’d all forgotten each other now, and the People’s talk sounded to Kit like nothing but mumbles, grunts, and grumbles, and their comings and goings didn’t matter much to him. He figured his didn’t matter much to them either.
He was on the lookout for the other animals like himself.
Still as a stone, he stood beside an old metal fence that blocked a drop-off beside the tunnel down to metal tracks where the underground trains of the People roared in and out day and night.
Kit stepped away from the fence, unsure which way to go. There was a grate in the ground beside him, and he heard the trickle of water in the dark somewhere on the other side of it, an underwater river of some kind. A sniff told him the river was filled with the runoff waste of all the city, and lingering beneath those smells were other smells, of fear and of death. He backed away from the grate and stumbled into a grumpy mole in a hardhat and dark welding glasses.
“Outta the way, yous
e!” the mole shouted. “You want to get tossed in the sewers?”
“I . . . no . . . I . . .” Kit mumbled, just as a brown rabbit in a tattered brown suit hopped right into his back, knocking him aside.
“Move it, boy!” said the rabbit without stopping.
Ankle Snap Alley was stirring to life for the night, and nothing stood still for long.
Every kind of creature imaginable made a home in Ankle Snap Alley, the only requirement being that they had nowhere else to go. Down-on-their-luck foxes lived in burrows beside half-crazy rabbits and retired hens, who lived on top of pious church mice and orphaned rats. There were lizards for landlords and possums for grocers, and raccoons mucking about in it all, looking for an easy score, as raccoons have done since the time of Azban, the First Raccoon.
The church mice in their robes handed out pamphlets, the moles rushed to their long shifts of digging and fixing in the dirt, while mean-eyed strays kept on the lookout for trouble or the opportunity to cause some.
As Kit watched, Possum Ansel opened his bakery for the night, filling the alley with the smell of sweetened acorn biscuits, fishbone cookies, and garbage-gristle fried pies. The possum already had a line of customers that wrapped around the corner. They gaped wide-eyed at his sweet confections.
A sleek python, with brown and black scales decorating his long body, slid up to the bakery door. The other creatures looked away as the possum tensed.
“Payment’ssss due, Anssssel,” the python said. “For your protection. Wouldn’t want to sssseee anything unfortunate happen to your bussssinessss.”
The possum frowned, but gave the snake a bag of seeds, which the big python swallowed whole, then moved on to the next door, which was Enrique Gallo’s Fur Styling Shop and Barbería. Enrique, a retired fighting rooster, had filled his shop windows with pictures of his old days in the fighting ring. He paid the snake too, then swung around his sign, and opened his shop for the night. He watched the snake slither away to shake down the next business for a payoff and he shook his head, before strutting silently inside.
The Wild Ones Page 2
