by KH Gordon
Chapter Two
Torus only half listened to the Chief. It didn’t sound like anything new. Times were hard, food was scarce, everyone must pull together and support the leaders. Torus yawned. He glanced at Mr. Nile who seemed to be concentrating very hard on the Chief’s words. The Chief said something about the dumpster in the park across the street and Mr. Nile said “Hm!” Then there was more about supporting the leaders. It sounded exactly the same as every other gathering.
Torus looked around again for Chello and Nevi and finally found them sitting on a paint can on the other side of the room. He tried to get their attention, but Mr. Nile nudged him to keep quiet and pay attention.
“Listen,” he said. “Something dangerous is happening.”
“…as long as we all may live,” said the Chief. “Why continue to waste our energy and squander our time? Why live with the uncertainty of conflict and…the uncertainty of…” he paused and one of his advisors leaned toward him and whispered something in his ear. “Conflict and confrontation.” The Chief’s voice was strong again.
“What’s he talking about?” Torus whispered. “Conflict with who?”
“Shh!” Mr. Nile motioned back to the Chief. “Listen.”
“Constant strife has weakened us,” the Chief continued. “The daily struggle has made its mark on every family in the Clan. But soon that will change. Very soon, today in fact, my advisors and I will meet with—”
The other advisor stepped up to the Chief’s other ear and whispered urgently. The Chief listened and nodded slowly, then started talking again, with the advisors still leaning close to his ears.
“That is, today we will begin planning for a new…arrangement with our…neighbors…that will ensure peace and…tranquility and…tranquility for all. Most importantly, none of us will ever go hungry again!”
The advisors stepped back and let the Chief accept the cheers and applause of the crowd. They continued whispering to each other while the Chief waved and smiled to all the rats gathered in the room. Torus couldn’t tell if they were applauding his speech or if they were just glad it was over.
“Bah!” Mr. Nile was neither cheering nor stamping his feet on the floor. “Empty, dangerous words from a clumsy puppet.” He turned to go. “Wait here,” he said to Torus. “I have to check on something.”
Torus started looking around for his family, but just then Chello and Nevi ran up to him.
“Was it everything you expected?” he asked Nevi.
“What did he say?” Chello interrupted. “I wasn’t listening.”
Nevi rolled her eyes and answered Torus.
“Well, most of it wasn’t very clear. It was like a pep talk to get us ready for something, but he never really said what we’re supposed to be ready for.”
“What about the dumpster in the park?” asked Chello. “What was that about? Is there a problem with it?”
“He didn’t say. He just mentioned it,” she said. “He called it our birthright, or something like that.”
“Clan-right. He called it our Clan-right.” Mr. Nile had come up while they were talking. At his words they turned to look at him, and followed him toward his home.
“What’s a Clan-right?” asked Torus.
“It means something that a clan of rats is entitled to, something that no other clan has a right to. The Chief called the dumpster in the park our Clan-right which means--”
“It means it’s ours, right?” Chello interrupted. “It belongs to us.”
“It means,” continued Mr. Nile, “that theoretically we have the right do decide what happens with it.”
“What do you mean ‘theoretically’?” asked Nevi. “Isn’t it ours?”
“The dumpster is just the dumpster by itself, really. It doesn’t ‘belong’ to anybody any more than we ‘belong’ to anybody. A Clan-right means that a clan of rats has the right to control something, or live someplace, without interference from other clans. For example, we’ve lived in this building for more than 20 generations. Based on that history, we can claim this building as our Clan-right, which we do, and can then decide who can live here and who can’t.”
“What do you mean?” asked Torus.
“Well, if a rat from another clan, or a family of rats, wants to live in this building, we have the right to allow that or deny it. Our neighboring clans recognize our Clan-right to this building and we recognize theirs, and that helps keep the peace.”
“So what about the dumpster?” said Chello.
“The dumpster has never been claimed by a clan before. All the clans nearby use it, so do the Park-rats. Even the pigeons use it – during the day of course. I don’t know why the Chief would decide to claim Clan-right on it. It seems to be courting trouble if you ask me.”
They came to Mr. Nile’s hole in the rearmost wall of the building.
“Now, please go and play somewhere. I need a nap before the forage starts.” He went into his hole and the three friends turned back toward the meeting place and walked for a while in silence.
“’Please go and play someplace’,” Chello sneered. “Cheese, we’re not pups anymore!”
“Don’t swear,” said Nevi. “Besides, what else is there to do until we come of age? You can’t forage or patrol until you’re older. And smarter!” She poked him in the ribs and scampered away, laughing.
Chello took off after her, and Torus struggled to keep up as they ran through the tunnels in the walls, up and down, and around corners until they collapsed at last in a heap of rags piled under the sink in the kitchen of a vacant apartment on the third floor of the building.
They lay in silence for a while, and Torus poked around in the rags looking for something to eat. Then Nevi spoke suddenly.
“What do you think the Chief is doing?”
“Right now? He’s probably sleeping,” said Chello.
“No, I mean with the dumpster in the park. Why claim Clan-right on it now?”
“I dunno. Who cares? Why shouldn’t we have a right to it? It’s closest to our building, isn’t it?”
“I guess so. That’s the way it looks from the lookout posts. I just don’t know why he would do that. I know food is short, but it seems like – I don’t know – it seems reckless. I mean, the other clans might be upset, right?”
“What do we care about other clans?” said Chello. “We’ve got to take care of our own families, don’t we?”
Torus gave up on looking for food and poked his nose between the cabinet doors to peek out at the room.
“Hey,” he said, “where are we?”
“Nowhere important,” said Nevi, lowering her eyes. “Just a place. My place. One of my places.”
“‘Your place?’” said Chello. Since when do you have ‘places?’
“None of your business,” she shot back. “Nobody comes up here. There’s no more food, and the humans have been gone for more than ten moons. So I come up here sometimes. That’s all. It’s just my place. If you don’t like it you can leave. If you can find your way.” She turned her back on them and was silent.
“No, it’s great,” said Torus.
“Yeah, I love how you’ve decorated it,” added Chello.
She smacked him with her tail, but giggled a little.
Torus stepped out onto the kitchen floor.
“It’s really quiet here, and the space is huge! It’s almost like being outside. Hey, look! Pigeons!”
Two splotchy gray pigeons were huddled on the ledge outside a window. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up into a mottled purple and orange sunset. Torus stared at them. They kept twitching their heads around nervously, but they didn’t seem to see him. He hadn’t seen pigeons that close before. They were so strange-looking he couldn’t even form an opinion about them.
“Phah! Stupid birds!” said Chello.
“They’re so strange-looking…do all those dif
ferent color feathers mean something? They look like they were put together by accident.”
“No, they’re just naturally a mess.”
Torus crept forward, gazing at the birds. They were mostly gray and black with odd patches of white. They fluttered their mottled wings and flicked their heads from side to side. The iridescent feathers on the sides of their heads almost sparkled when they caught the fading sunlight.
“Flying rats…” he muttered under his breath.
“Don’t!” said Chello, irritably. “It’s an insult! My dad says – ”
“Hey, guys, come back in here!” The urgency in Nevi’s voice made them turn and rush back, slipping into the cabinet as quickly as they could.
“What’s going on?” asked Torus.
“Look outside,” she whispered, and the three of them peeked out from between the cabinet doors, stacked on top of each other in the darkness.
“Look there, at the window.”
From where they were, they could just see the window with the two pigeons outside. They were now standing perfectly still, side by side, looking steadily at the other end of the ledge. There, silhouetted against the evening sky, evidently speaking to the birds very intently, was a rat.
* * *