“Apologies,” said the Rat King. “There is no I in Rat King.”
“I never understood that,” said Eeni. “There is an I in Rat King. Right there in the word king. You really should’ve called yourself the Rat Queen. There is no I in queen.”
“True,” said the Rat King. “But the boy rats who started us would never have joined the Rat Queen.”
“Well, that sounds like a boy-rat problem,” said Eeni. “You probably shouldn’t make it yours.”
“Regardless,” the Rat King said. “We are here now for you, whatever you call us.”
“Yeah, well, thanks a lot,” said Eeni. “But you’re supposed to be wise, so you should probably show some wisdom and keep your voices down. We’re in the middle of our escape.”
“Which you are hoping succeeds?” the Rat King asked again.
“Yes!” Eeni threw her paws up in the air, exasperated and irritated and aggravated. Why would she not want Kit to succeed at rescuing his uncle and their neighbors and his mother? Kit had dreamed of seeing his mother again for as long as Eeni had known him. Of course she’d want him to save her and bring her home.
So what if that meant that everything would change. So what if that meant that Kit would have an uncle and a mother, while Eeni was still all on her own because her mother was a part of the Rat King? She’d been on her own before Kit came to Ankle Snap Alley. She’d be fine. She’d be better than fine. She didn’t need a family of her own. And if Kit and his mother decided to leave, she’d still be fine because . . . because . . . well, she couldn’t think of a reason, and suddenly she was crying.
The river of time had just turned into a waterfall on her.
What if Kit didn’t need his friend anymore once he had his mother back? The Rat King was right. She really was afraid of him succeeding and as bad as that felt, she also felt bad about feeling that way. Scared and guilty about being scared.
And she didn’t know what to do with all these feelings, so she looked up at the massive Rat King and asked, simply: “Can I talk to my mother again?”
“I’m here, Eeni,” her mother said.
The wall of rats parted again to reveal her. She moved forward as far as her tangled tail would let her, so that she and Eeni could see each other nose to nose. They hadn’t seen each other nose to nose since the night her mother left to join the Rat King.
“Mom, I—” she started, but her mother hushed her.
“I know,” her mother said. “I know how hard this is for you. You’re scared that Kit will leave you because you think I left you.” Her mother reached out, took Eeni’s paws in hers, and squeezed them gently.
“You did.” Eeni sniffled. “You chose the Rat King over me. Just like Kit will choose his mother over me.”
“I wish I could help you understand that I joined the Rat King for you.”
“Oh, thanks,” Eeni jeered. “I forgot to be grateful that my mother abandoned me to become a hundred-mouthed fortune-teller.”
“The Rat King is not a fortune-teller,” her mother corrected her. “The Rat King is an idea. We are an idea that is so much bigger than any one rat. Before us, rats scurried by themselves through the world, fighting and scavenging and waging endless war upon one another. But every rat who pledges herself or himself to the Rat King is showing another way. When a rat tangles her tail with the others, she is pledging her fate to the fate of the others and her mind to the minds of the others. She is putting her life in the service of the group and showing us all that if a hundred tangled rats can live and thrive as one, then all rat-kind can thrive untangled. We are showing everyone there is more to life than struggle and strife.”
“So you didn’t choose the Rat King over me,” Eeni stated. “You chose all of ratkind over me.”
Her mother frowned and looked like she might cry. Eeni knew she’d hurt her mother’s feelings, but she’d spent a long time with her own feelings hurt, and it felt good to fling the pain back at her.
But it only felt good for the length of a breath. It hurt much worse after she’d done it. Hurt was not something that you could give away. The more of it you left behind, the more of it you had. Just like footprints.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Eeni finally said, trying to heal her mother’s feelings and in the process, maybe her own. “I know you were just trying to make the world a better place for me. I know it can’t have been easy to leave or to watch me grow up from afar.”
A tear trickled down her mother’s whiskers, but her frown turned into a smile and Eeni’s heart lightened a little.
“And I know it must have been hard for you to feel you had lost me,” her mother said to her. “But I was always there, watching you with all the eyes of the Rat King, one hundred pairs of eyes watching your triumphs and cheering you on. There is room in the heart to love all creatures and to love one in particular. I am the Rat King and I am your mother. You are a hero of the Moonlight Brigade and my daughter. We are each more than one thing, and whatever we are is also what we were.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . life’s a river,” Eeni said. “I figured that out already.”
“No, child, time is not a river,” said the Rat King gently, a hundred soft voices, a hundred pairs of gentle eyes. “Life is not a river. Life is the boat upon the river, and you are not alone in it. No matter how rough the water or how storm-tossed, no one is alone on the boat, not you, not Kit, not even Titus the dog.”
“So is that why you’re here tonight?” Eeni asked, wiping her whiskers. “You came all this way just to tell me you’re still my mom and to change my perfectly good metaphor about a river into one about a boat?”
“I’m here to tell you that whatever happens, it will be okay,” her mother said.
“We all are here for that reason,” the entire Rat King said.
“Seems like a lot of risk just to make me feel better,” Eeni told them.
“The greater the task, the more the effort is worth,” the Rat King said. “And what task could be greater than kindness?”
Eeni’s nose twitched. It was hard to believe that the whole Rat King would come just to see her, but the thought made her smile in spite of herself. She didn’t have just any mother. She had the whole Rat King who cared about her. She felt like a very important rat indeed.
“She’s smiling,” said one of the rats in the Rat King.
“Maybe she has gas this time?” said another.
“No,” said her mother. “That’s a real smile.”
“It is,” Eeni agreed. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for coming here.”
“A daughter’s smile is worth the world,” the Rat King said as one, and closed its rodent ranks around her mother, absorbing her back into the horde. “See you around, Eeni.”
“See you,” Eeni said, watching the Rat King scurry back to the shadows. She stayed in place, a smile raising her whiskers, grateful and proud, and certain that whatever came next for her and for Kit, she’d be okay. She knew she wasn’t alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE NOSE KNOWS
INSIDE the zoo building, Kit had reached the Urban Wild exhibit quickly and slipped in through the air vent. The vent was so high that the animals couldn’t climb back out through it, so Kit planned to open the lock from the inside and let all the animals walk out through the door on their own paws.
He dropped to what he expected to be the hard concrete ground of the fake Ankle Snap Alley, but it turned out to be soft. It wasn’t concrete at all, but some kind of painted material that was gentler on the paws than the place was in real life.
He stood below the paintings of the buildings that were supposed to look real, beside the fake broken bicycle wheel, beneath the hard plastic tree, and he smelled the fake city air. The exhibit looked just like Ankle Snap Alley.
And the raccoon standing in front of him looked just like his mother.
But
it was not the real Ankle Snap Alley in front him and he rubbed his eyes, for a moment fearing it was not really his mother in front of him either.
But she ran to him and hugged him and cried into the fur on the top of his head.
“Oh, Kit,” she wept. “I thought you were as lost as the legs on a snake, but here you are! You’re here!”
She squeezed him, her soft whiskers tickling his cheek, and suddenly the fake world inside the zoo felt more real than any place Kit had ever been in his life. He’d dreamed about this reunion for so long, imagined the things he would say to his mother, imagined the joy he would feel if he got even one tiny moment with her again, but now that it was happening, he found all words and thoughts and ideas were gone and he knew only one thing: he never wanted to let go of his mom.
But like sunsets and summer naps, all hugs must end, and even as Kit nestled his nose deeper into his mother’s fur, he knew he had to pull away and get on with his plan to free her.
But not quite yet.
He squeezed her tighter and she squeezed him tighter and all the other animals in the Urban Wild exhibit would just have to wait. The whole wild world would have to wait for Kit to finish hugging his mother, because also like sunsets and summer naps, you can’t stop a hug until it is ready to end.
He breathed in deep her musty-fur-and-flower smell and the scent brought him home to his burrow beneath the Big Sky, to all the memories of before, and it filled him with hope for all the memories he hadn’t yet made. The smell made him sad and happy and hopeful at the same time. The smell made him feel safe.
Mother smells were powerful things.
“Oh, Mom,” he said into her fur, which were not the most brilliant words a raccoon had ever spoken, but they were the only ones he could manage to think of at that moment.
When his mother let go of the hug, she held Kit’s face in her paws and smiled at him. “Your uncle Rik told me all about the adventures you’ve had,” she said, and the smile spread to her eyes.
“All of them?” Kit asked, peeking over her shoulder to where Uncle Rik stood, waiting.
“All of them,” Uncle Rik said, stepping forward to give Kit a hug of his own. “I told her you did a great job protecting me while she was gone, and I feel lucky to have had you come to stay with me in Ankle Snap Alley.”
“Lucky?” Kit couldn’t believe his fuzzy ears. Since he’d come to Ankle Snap Alley, there’d been brawls, and robberies, and fights, and kidnappings, and more missed meals than anyone could count. What about that could possibly be lucky?
“Some folks go their whole lives living in a cage,” his mother said. “Safe as can be behind bars and glass. But life isn’t supposed to be safe, it’s supposed to be lived!”
“Birds are safe in the nest, but birds are born with wings. Better to risk flying, than to miss out on everything,” Kit recited.
“You’ve been studying fox poetry!” his mother cheered. “Your father would have been delighted to know that. He was, himself, a lover of poetry.”
Kit felt his whiskers sag and his heart with them. “Dad’s really gone then? He’s not also in a zoo somewhere?”
His mother stroked his cheek. “He’s really gone,” she said. “He fought to give us time to escape and he’d be proud of what you’ve done since escaping. I know he wouldn’t regret a thing. A raccoon can’t control when he comes and goes from this wild world, Kit, but he can control what he does with the wild time he’s got in it and what he leaves behind after.”
“From howl to snap,” said Kit.
“From howl to snap,” replied his mother, laughing. “You talk like a real Ankle Snapper now, huh?”
Kit nodded. “Oh! I have something of yours!” He reached into the pouch where he kept his seeds and nuts and he pulled out the wooden token with the symbol of the Moonlight Brigade on it. He extended it to his mother. She pushed his paw back toward him.
“It’s yours now, Kit,” she said. “You are the leader of the Moonlight Brigade. And from what I hear, you’ve got some mischief planned?” She grinned a wide raccoon grin.
“Kit’s always got some mischief planned!” Dax the squirrel cheered from the branch of the fake tree, and leaped down in front of Kit. He raised both paws and smacked his fists together above his head, the squirrel salute. “Dax is ready for action, Kit!”
“I know you are.” Kit smiled. “We’re all busting out of here. All the animals in the zoo are. Well, almost all of them . . . Have you found the lock in here yet?”
“Of course!” Dax said. “Scoped it out the moment I arrived. But it’s some weird box with buttons. Not like any lock I’ve ever seen.”
“I know how to solve it,” Kit said. He scampered over to the door in the wall and climbed up on the fake branch of the fake tree so he could access the panel that opened over the buttons. First, he tried the same symbols in the same order that had opened the baboon cage, but the answer to this lock was different.
Then he set his nose to work.
“Kit,” his uncle Rik called up to him. “One normally picks a lock with one’s paws, not one’s nose.”
“The nose knows a thing or two too,” Kit replied, still sniffing the keys. There were four that held the smell of People fingers. Salsa and a hint of sour cream and hot peppers. Corn chips. And also, baby powder. Saliva. Paper and ink. Chocolate. The Person who had opened this lock last had had an interesting day.
He tried the one with the least powerful smells first. Mostly just baby powder and chocolate. Then he tried salsa, peppers, and sour cream, followed by saliva and chocolate, then baby powder, then ink and paper.
Nothing happened.
“Kit?” his uncle said.
“Just a moment,” Kit called down. He tried another order, starting with paper and ink, then the chocolate, then salsa, then the one that smelled the most like sour cream, then the baby powder one.
That didn’t work either.
“Kit?” Dax called.
“Hold on,” Kit said. “Picking a lock with your nose is a lot harder than just picking your nose.”
“Kit?” his mother called up.
He turned to look at his mother. She pointed to the wall of glass along the front of the exhibit and there was Preston, standing proud and smirking on the other side. Titus was beside him, standing on his back legs with his front paws against the glass.
Tap tap tap. Preston tapped the glass with his beak. “Hello, Kit.”
Kit growled.
“Hey, Kit? Can you hear me?” Titus barked, his voice muffled by the thick window.
Kit braced himself. In his experience, whenever a Flealess got a smug look on his face like Titus had, something terrible was about to happen. He nodded that he could hear.
“Good!” Titus yipped. “I wanted to tell you that you and your family won’t be going anywhere tonight!”
“And why not?” Kit shouted back. Titus cocked his head and pressed his ear to the window like he couldn’t hear. “I said AND WHY NOT?” Kit repeated.
“Oh, because you’ll all be eaten!” Titus laughed, and pointed up with his nose.
Kit followed his glance straight up to the air vent he himself had come through, just in time to see Basil the python, Atrox the rattlesnake, Naja the spitting cobra, and Thom the mad-eyed garter snake drop like falling branches into the exhibit cage.
“Breakfast is served!” Titus yelled, and cackled. “And lucky us, Preston,” he added. “We get front-row seats to the show!” He banged the glass loudly, forcing all the trapped animals to cover their ears. “Let the games begin!”
“Thanksss for the nap,” Basil hissed at Kit. “But now it’sss time for all of you to die!”
The python sprang at Kit, and the other three snakes charged forward, mouths open.
Chapter Twenty-Two
CAGE MATCH
ALTHOUGH the alley they w
ere in was fake, the danger was very real. A dozen small animals trapped in a cage with four deadly snakes, and Kit didn’t have a plan for this. He raised his claws, ready to fight for his life, but he felt himself suddenly yanked back, out of the way of the attack, and thrown behind the big truck tire. His mother had tossed him like a dandelion in a tornado, and at the same time stepped straight in front of Basil’s open jaws.
Just as the snake smashed his jaws down, however, she danced to the side, rolled onto Basil’s back, and wrapped her claws over his mouth, holding it shut tight. His tail whipped and slashed from side to side to throw her off his back, but she held on, calm and balanced.
Kit had forgotten: His mother was a master of claw-jitsu. He didn’t have to fight on his own, not anymore, not with his mom by his side.
Basil thrashed, but could not shake the raccoon. He twisted wildly and his tail caught Uncle Rik across the snout, stunning him. Kit dragged his unconscious uncle to safety behind the tire so he wouldn’t get caught up in the raging battle around him. Then he leaped back to the lock and started punching different-smelling buttons as fast as he could.
Salsa, sour cream, hot peppers, corn chips. Baby powder. Paper and ink, chocolate, salsa. Sour cream, chocolate, baby powder, ink and paper, corn chips. Smell after smell after smell, and still the door didn’t open!
Atrox the rattlesnake had cornered the Liney sisters, three gray rats who went to school with Kit. Her tail was rattling and her nostrils flared. She rose up high over the rats, eyes like two eclipsed suns burning down on them.
But the sisters did not cower. They may have been young schoolrats, but they were part of the Moonlight Brigade, and Brigadiers did not cower! The little gray rats scattered in three directions, then attacked the rattlesnake from the three sides. They tugged her body back down to the dirt, grabbed her rattle, and stepped on her head before she could hiss out so much as a mean word at them.
“Never mess with sisters,” the Liney sisters said together.
The Wild Ones--Great Escape Page 12