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 frightened,” whispered one small rat voice from the mass of rats.
“Of course he’s frightened,” added another. “He should be frightened.”
“But he’s come nonetheless. His fear does not control him.”
“Rather brave, that is.”
“I want popcorn.”
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.
“Me too! I’m hungry!” one more added.
“Focus! Is this one brave enough to find the Bone?”
“His parents were brave.”
“Brave is not a who. Brave is a what.”
“What you do, not who you are.”
“What did his parents do?”
“His parents got killed.”
“The Flealess kill the brave and cowardly alike.”
“But will 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 rest.”
“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, this one,” said one rat.
“No respect for gravitas!” 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.
“I want popcorn,” it said, and the whole creature scurried deep into the crumbling walls, where Kit didn’t dare to follow.
Chapter Eighteen
A RAT OF ACTION
KIT had so many thoughts burning in his brain, he worried he’d singe his fur. How was he supposed to go into the sewers if there was a dangerous beast living down there? How was he supposed to find the one spot this footprint came from once he was down there? And, most perplexing, what was he going to say to Eeni when he saw her again?
In a way, she was an orphan just like him, but in the weirdest way possible. Her mother was alive but had chosen not to be her mother anymore. How does any creature keep going after something like that? Kit was in awe of Eeni. She might be small, but she sure was strong in ways Kit couldn’t begin to fathom.
As he thought about her, he heard the sudden and unmistakable sound of a trap snapping shut.
“Gah! Of all the—!” Eeni shouted.
Kit poked his head around the corner and saw the white rat sniffing at the wire mesh of a cage that had closed around her. Her little pink paws shook the door, annoyed more than frightened.
“You need some help?” Kit offered as gently as he could.
“No, I love being stuck in a stupid trap for the second time tonight,” she grumbled.
Kit felt around for the release lever. This kind of trap had a release for the People to open it and reset it after it’d been used. It was pretty easy from the outside. If only this had been the kind of trap that had snared his mother.
But the Rat King was right. The past was past and couldn’t be undone.
He pulled the lever back with both his paws, and the door to the trap fell open. Eeni stepped out.
“Thanks, Kit.” Eeni squeezed his paw.
“So, I told the Rat King what you asked me to,” he said.
“I know,” Eeni replied. “I was listening.”
“A pickpocket and an eavesdropper?” Kit laughed. “You’re a shady character, Eeni.”
She smiled. “Terribly disreputable.”
“So . . . your . . . mother?”
“Yeah.” Eeni sniffled. “She joined the Rat King when I was little. It’s a family tradition. Her mother joined, and her mother’s mother joined. I was studying to join too, but . . . I don’t know. I was only doing it to see my mother again. But I’m different from her. I didn’t want to be a part of the Rat King. I’m my own rat, you know? I don’t want to be just one of a hundred pairs of eyes, one thought in a hundred thoughts. I want my voice to be my own.”
“It seems like it’d be cool to be a part of something so ancient and wise,” said Kit.
“Wise?” Eeni grunted. “The Rat King isn’t wise. You ever know a crowd to be wise?”
“But it knew all about the Bone of Contention—”
“If it was really wise, it’d know what to do about it,” said Eeni. “Knowing something and doing something are totally different things. Me? I’m a doer.” She looked Kit up and down. “And I think you are too.”
Kit nodded. “If finding this Bone can keep anyone else from losing their family, then that’s what I want to do,” Kit said.
“Howl to snap,” said Eeni.
Kit looked at the trap gaping open in front of them. “Well, you’ve got the snap part down . . . now let’s go make those house pets howl.”
Een
i followed Kit back through the building, her white fur silhouetted against Kit’s gray, careful to follow in his footsteps exactly.
Just before they stepped back outside into the moonlight, she let Kit go ahead alone. She turned back toward the home of the Rat King and spoke into the dark, hoping that of the hundred pairs of ears listening, one of them would hear her loud and clear. “Bye, Mom,” she said. “I love you.”
Then she scurried outside and ran straight into the coils of a very angry python, who was very eager for revenge.
Chapter Nineteen
THE BOSS’S BET
SSSSO nicccce to ssssee you again,” Basil hissed at her.
The Blacktail brothers had Kit pressed up against the wall at the point of a fork, and two more Rabid Rascals, strays from the Scavengers’ Market, held Martyn at bay with teeth bared.
“You shouldn’t have welshed on our bet,” Shane Blacktail told Kit. “And you shouldn’t have tricked us into that tire.”
“It was a terrible way to treat your cousins,” Flynn added. “And an even worse way to treat the Rascals. We have a reputation to uphold.”
“A reputation as cheats and thieves and bullies,” Martyn scolded. “You should all be ashamed, robbing from your own kind when the Flealess threaten us all!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Shane grunted. “We’ve heard your moralizing before, mouse. Keep your mouse trap shut or we’ll smash it in a mousetrap!”
“Good one!” Flynn gave his brother a high five. “Now, we’re taking you to the boss, and we’ll see if we can’t make an example of you, your friend, and your lousy, no-good liar of an uncle.”
“An example?” Kit gulped.
“Oh yessss,” said Basil. “Ankle Ssssnap Alley cannot think the Rabid Rasssscalssss are weak enough to be fooled by a child. You cannot wrong ussss without ssssuffering conssssequenccccessss.”
“And your consequences will be very, very painful,” said Shane.
“Of course they will,” said Kit, who was getting pretty used to being threatened by now.
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