by Jon Evans
There were innumerable other curiosities. A shining metal thing flew through the air in a distance; it looked like a bird, but its wings did not flap, and it was enormously larger than any bird. Huge arching spans of metal connected the islands beneath him to one another, crossing enormous sea-chasms like branches lying across streams. And Patch had never smelled air as pure and sweet as that of the high sky.
Karmerruk carried Patch south. They passed a green statue of a human that protruded from the midst of the waters, immensely larger than any statue he had ever seen before. They passed several human things drifting on the water, metal half-shells like the ones humans sometimes played with on the Center Kingdom's seas, but incomparably larger. They grew closer and closer to a faraway hilly island, perhaps bigger than that of the Center Kingdom, roughly round-shaped rather than long and thin, and with fewer traces of human habitation – indeed, most human buildings on this island were smaller than its largest trees. They approached a series of hills on the western side of that island. These hills were treeless but covered with some kind of golden vegetation new to Patch.
"You are very heavy, little squirrel," Karmerruk said, his voice strained, as he stooped into a long, shallow glide towards these golden hills. The hawk's wingbeats had become more laboured and less rhythmic. "It would have been much easier to simply have eaten you."
"What is this place?" Patch asked.
Karmerruk did not answer. The hills quickly grew nearer and nearer. Soon they were only a small tree's height above the ground. Patch became aware of a deeply unpleasant smell thickening in the air.
"Where are you taking me?" Patch demanded.
Karmerruk answered by letting Patch go. Patch tumbled through the air and landed hard on the ground. Fortunately, or perhaps through Karmerruk's good graces, he landed on a mound of soft earth, and was left only dazed, not injured. Karmerruk circled three times, until Patch groggily got to his feet; and then the hawk soared up and away, back to the Center Kingdom, leaving Patch to his fate.
"Good luck, little squirrel!" Karmerruk called out as he departed. "May the moon shine on you!"
What neither of them knew was that the hawk had abandoned the squirrel in a land of poisoned horror. A place known to humans as Fresh Kills.
II. The Kingdom of Madness
Fresh Kills
The first thing Patch noticed about his new home was its stinking, choking air. The earth itself seemed clean enough. And the tall golden grass, while strange to him, did not seem unnatural. But the air was so rank and sour that every breath threatened to make him ill. As he had approached, Patch had seen that this hill was surrounded by strips of wasteland, and he could hear the distant roar of herds of death machines. But this air did not smell like death machines. This air tasted of death itself.
Patch knew after only a few breaths that he had to leave this poisoned place right away. But he could not see where to go. The golden grass that surrounded him reached higher into the sky than many of the Center Kingdom's bushes, and was far too thin and flimsy for a squirrel to climb. All he could see, in any direction, was a wall of golden reeds.
The burning in his lungs from the rancid air grew steadily worse until he began to half-choke on every breath. Patch began to run, scampering through the dry grass, just trying to get away – but there was nothing to get away from, except the enveloping air, and from that there seemed no escape. He began to panic, and ran in circles, his breath growing faster and more ragged.
"Silver," Patch panted. "Tuft, Brighteyes, Twitch, Sniffer, somebody, help!"
But there was no one to help him. His friends and family were on the other side of the world; they might as well be gone forever.
Patch was beginning to grow dizzy. He realized that if he did not get away from this toxic air, he would soon die; if he closed his eyes to sleep on this golden hillside, he would never awake again.
"Oathbreaker," Patch choked aloud, thinking of Karmerruk with rage. The hawk had sworn on the blood of his nestlings not to kill Patch, and then he had carried him to this deadly island. Patch should have tried to wriggle free while he was over the great water. He cursed himself for not doing so. But the island hadn't looked deadly. In fact, much of it had looked green and pleasant. If only Patch knew which way to go to escape this choking air, and this labyrinth of golden grass.
Then Patch realized: he did know which way to go. He had a memory.
The marvellous sights he had viewed from high above had been so wonderful, Patch had committed them to his memory book. He knew exactly how this island looked from above. He knew that the island's green heart lay east of these poisoned hills. And while the golden grass around him concealed almost everything, it could not hide the direction of the setting sun.
Patch ran away from that sun, ran for the east, trying not to breathe deeply. Soon he grew weak and had to slow to mere scampering. Patch knew he was near collapse – quite aside from the foul air, it had been a truly exhausting day already – but he did not allow himself to stop. He knew if he rested now he would never run again.
The deadly golden hills seemed endless. Every time Patch fought his way to the top of one, he saw another rising before him. His lungs and muscles ached as he ran, and his talon-wounds burned as if Karmerruk's claws still dug into in Patch's flesh. He lost all sense of time. He began to feel that he had always been running through these hills, trying to breathe this thick, fetid air. His legs quivered with exhaustion, his every exhale was a cough, but his fear drove him on. Fear – and a faint sense that the air was becoming slightly clearer.
And then, descending yet another hillside, he saw gleaming metal ahead. Patch had never been so happy before to see the straight lines of something human-built. It was a wire fence. Beyond it lay a concrete plain from which several mountains sprouted; beyond that, herds of death machines rumbled; and beyond them, Patch saw, and smelled in the wind, blue water, green trees, and clean air.
Patch climbed up and down the fence, and without hesitating, he had no strength with which to hesitate, he crossed a field of pale uneven stones and ran past several sleeping death machines onto concrete. There were no humans in sight. He scampered right across the concrete plain, then up and down another fence, and through more golden grass, until only one more obstacle stood between himself and the green trees.
But this obstacle seemed insurmountable. Patch stood before a wasteland strip, even wider than that which surrounded the Center Kingdom. Endless hordes of death machines hurtled down this strip in both directions. Their ghastly, grinding roars were deafening, and the filthy air they belched was almost as bad as that of the golden hills. There was no pattern to the movement of these death machines; there were no hanging lights at which they might halt for a time; and there seemed no end to their number.
Patch wanted to howl with frustration. He was sick and wounded, and his head was spinning with pain from breathing bad air for so long. The air here was better than the hills, breathable, but it still ached in his throat and made him want to retch. All he wanted was to reach those trees he could see in the gaps between the death machines. They were so near. But there was no end to the death machines; there was no way across. And the sun was setting, and he had never been so tired.
In the end Patch retreated into the grass, curled up into a kind of rough bowl in the ground, and tried to sleep. He had never slept on the ground before. Patch thought longingly of where he had slept last night, in his own warm drey in the Center Kingdom, lined with grasses and leaves and newspaper. Patch's last thought, before he finally allowed his exhaustion to carry him into sleep's dark embrace, was that he would never see his own drey again.
Solstice
Patch woke with the dawn, shivering with cold and once again aching with hunger. The morning was very quiet. The tall grasses he had slept in were topped by clumps of seeds, and he tried to eat some from a fallen stalk, but after a few bites he realized they might fill his belly but they had no sustenance. He needed real food. If onl
y he could get to the trees across the wasteland.
When Patch poked his head out of the grass, his heart filled with hope. The sun on his face was warm, for the first time since winter had begun, and that was something; but also, the wasteland strip that last night had been full of death machines was deserted. He took a few tentative steps towards the green trees –
– and a huge death machine shrieked by, moving faster than any Patch had ever seen. Its slipstream was so strong that it knocked Patch sprawling onto the stony ground.
Patch got stiffly to his feet. He wanted to run away. But there was nowhere to run to but the poisonous golden hills. Again he approached the wasteland, looking warily down its length in both directions. He saw nothing. But death machines moved so fast, they could appear out of nowhere, Patch might be crushed by one the moment he set foot onto concrete.
On the other paw, he had to cross this wasteland sometime, or stay and die in this grass. And he might never get a better chance.
Patch put his head down and ran. He made it across the first half of the wasteland. He leaped over the little metal fence that ran down the middle of the concrete. And then he saw motion to his right, a huge approaching death machine, already far too near. It was too late to turn back. Patch closed his eyes and sprinted for the trees. An enormous roaring sound came from Patch's right, grew so loud that it seemed to swallow him up entirely – and then Patch went tumbling through the air – but he had not been struck. The death machine had missed Patch by a claw's width, and the wind in its wake had again picked up Patch and flung him hard against the ground.
This time when Patch got to his feet he stood on cool, grassy earth, near the base of a maple tree. And if his nose did not deceive him, and he was sure that it did not, a cool, sweet, enticing smell drifted down from the tree. A smell that meant the most wonderful thing in the world.
Patch climbed into this maple tree, out to the ends of its branches, and began to devour the sweet, delectable buds that had begun to sprout from its gnarled wood. The air here was still sour and acrid – but beneath that taint, he could smell the maple buds, and hints of flowers, of new grasses, of a forest beginning to wake from a long and dolorous sleep. Patch was sick and hurt, so far away from home he thought he would never see it again, and in a strange place with foul air, but he smiled all the same.
Spring was here.
Into Madness
Patch lived for two days on that maple tree on the edge of the green forest, eating its growing buds and using that strength to recover from his wounds. He saw no other animals there, nor any birds, and it was easy to understand why; the air was bad at the best of times, and when the wind blew from the west, Patch choked and grew ill. So when he had recovered some of his strength he advanced deeper into the forest.
His thoughts as he set off down the sky-road were dark and vengeful. For he had passed the days not only in recovery, but also in thought, and his thinking had led him to a dreadful conclusion. He had been betrayed.
How else, he asked himself, could Karmerruk have found him and snatched him up from that cherry tree? Yes, a hawk's eyes could have spied out the white patch on Patch's forehead – but how would Karmerruk have known where to look? Scarcely any time had passed between the death of Jumper and the taking of Patch. Was it mere ill-luck that Karmerruk had spotted Patch so soon? On top of the ill-luck of all the nuts of the Treetops tribe vanishing from the earth?
The more Patch pondered, the more he realized that both of these mysteries could be answered and explained with a single name.
Sniffer.
Sniffer who had disappeared alone before he and Twitch and Patch had set out to the Meadow. Sniffer who never grew hungry in winter, Sniffer who alone of the Treetops tribe had food enough to give to his friend Twitch, Sniffer who could find buried nuts from up a tree – and who could have, over the winter, led the squirrels of the Meadow tribe to all the missing Treetop nuts. Sniffer who could have led the rats to Jumper … and to Silver. The idea of a squirrel conspiring with rats against other squirrels would have been unthinkable – had Patch not seen Redeye among the rats.
Patch knew he ought not to brood on what had passed. He had come so unimaginably far from the Center Kingdom that he would surely never return to it again. He should try to be thankful that Karmerruk had spared his life, and try to find a new home here on this poisoned island. But all Patch could think about, as he ran along the sky-road, was about Patch, and his family, and his tribe betrayed by Sniffer, and about how much Patch would like a chance at revenge.
The island sky-road was remarkably dense. The trees here grew thickly together. Their lower branches were twisted and knobbled, their trunks were covered with misshapen growths, and their upper branches were clogged by an amazing quantity of choking vines. The vines hung in the treetops in such profusion that one could almost speak of a sky-field rather than a sky-road. Patch made good time through the branches and vines, fuelled by rage and bitterness.
He slowed and stopped when he smelled something in the still-sour air. Something very like squirrel…but not quite.
He squinted. There were a half-dozen creatures on the sky-road up ahead. They looked like squirrels, but their smell was somehow wrong. Patch approached them cautiously, from downwind. He was only one tree away when they noticed his presence and began to jump around in surprise, chittering with dismay.
"Night terrors!" one of them cried. "Stars and comets and a burning moon!"
Patch wasn't sure he had heard correctly.
"Name yourself, stranger, or taste blood and bile!" another threatened.
"I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. "Who are you that asks?"
His words caused consternation. Five of the six squirrels – or squirrel-things – began to jump around the tree, hooting and writhing as if they were on fire.
"Who are you that asks?" Patch demanded again.
"We are the rot that eats the leaves," one of them said. "We are the maggots in the open wound. We are the sickness of the dying child."
"Center Kingdom, Center Kingdom, Center Kingdom," another squealed, baring its teeth like a dog. "He is the prophet, the seer, the smeller of futures, the one sent to save and damn us all, the broken-legged dancer, the slave of the moon!"
"I am not!" Patch protested.
"Center Kingdom," another squirrel said. She smelled and sounded almost normal, and was the only one who had not begun jumping around in a frenzy after Patch introduced himself. "Are you truly of the Center Kingdom? Have you truly come across the waters?"
"Yes," Patch said, turning gratefully to this one. "What kingdom is this?"
"This," she said, "is the Kingdom of Madness."
The Uninvited Guest
"My name is Shiver," the almost-normal squirrel said. "These are my brothers and sisters: Scream, Burner, Headfirst, Blindeye, and Gutbite."
"I see," Patch said faintly. "Why are you called Shiver?"
Shiver smiled but did not answer. "Did you come from the west? From the poison hills?"
"Yes," Patch said, "I was dropped –"
"Speak not to this shadow," one of the other squirrels growled. "No words, no treaties. Only claws and fangs and blood. Rend him, tear him, pluck out his eyes."
"He brings sorrow and starfall and shelterless night," another added.
Patch looked around and said uneasily, "I think I should go."
Shiver laughed. "Don't pay any mind to Gutbite and Blindeye. They won't hurt you. They don't really know what they're saying."
"What happened to them?" Patch asked.
One of the other squirrels howled loudly. Patch flinched and looked around nervously – it had been a scream of distress – but no danger was apparent.
"They were born like this," Shiver said, as if nothing had happened. "They're normal, for the Kingdom of Madness. It wasn't always like this. The stories say it had another name once. They say that one day a foul wind began
to blow from the west, and the poison hills began to grow, and a bitter taint entered the water. And the babies born since have been mad, or twisted, or both. Or worse."
"You're not mad or twisted," Patch pointed out. In fact Shiver reminded him a little of Brighteyes.
"In the Kingdom of Madness, that makes me the maddest of all … Come with us. We know where there are flowers and grubs."
Patch's mouth watered. He hadn't eaten either since autumn.
"You will be safe with us," Shiver said. "I promise. If we meant you any harm, you would know it by now."
Patch supposed that was true. "All right."
The flowers were purple and of a kind that Patch did not recognize. They were delicious. The squirming white grubs beneath nearby flat rocks were even better. There was more than enough for all seven to eat, and Patch's belly was well satisfied when they finally departed for Shiver's family's tree.
"Are there no hawks here?" Patch asked, noting the lack of caution with which his companions moved along the ground, especially the one named Headfirst.
"There aren't many places where they can reach the ground, with all the vines," Shiver said. "But there are worse things than hawks. There are foxes."
"Foxes? What's a fox?"
"Have you no foxes in the Center Kingdom?"
"No," Patch said.
"Like a dog," Shiver said, "only very smart, and very vicious."
Patch didn't like the sound of that at all.
At length they reached a small stream, its muddy banks covered with the golden grass that had lived on the poison hills. Starlings and sparrows flittered above the river, flying in weird erratic patterns. Patch saw two sparrows actually collide in midair, something he had never heard of before. Shiver and her family crossed through the grass, plunged into the cold stream, and swam across without hesitation. Patch followed. Squirrels are strong swimmers; they can paddle with all four limbs, and use their tail as a rudder.