by Jon Evans
"I'm not afraid."
"I'm going forward on the sky-road. You can do what you like."
"And so I shall," Zelina said. "I shall cross this bridge."
"Fine." Patch marched onwards.
But he did not go far before he slowed and stopped. Much as he hated to admit it, Zelina was right. The sky-road did lead away from the Center Kingdom. He thought it would eventually turn and allow him to go around the waters – but he didn't actually know this. If he continued, there might be any number of obstacles in his path far greater than a concrete channel free of any death machines. And while the risk of hawks and dogs on the bridge was real, it was also small.
Patch sighed and turned around. He caught up with Zelina just as she was performing an awkward and elaborate descent from the sky-road, a descent that involved two trees, a house, a wall, and several human-built things beneath the wall. Patch simply ran straight down one of the sky-road's dead tree trunks and joined her.
"I'm glad to see you have come to your senses, Patch son of Silver," she said. "Follow me."
They had to cross two of the wasteland strips Zelina called highways to get to the bridge, but that was no trouble, there were few death machines and fewer humans about. Once at the edge of the bridge Patch wanted to wait and survey the terrain, but Zelina kept moving. After only a moment's hesitation Patch followed. He didn't want to cross this bridge alone.
He had grown accustomed to the feel of concrete beneath his paws, but his overwhelming urge was to get away from this wasteland, not to travel along its length. Once they were in the channel, with concrete walls rising from either side of the concrete floor, Patch felt terror begin to tear at his mind. The walls were too high to jump and too sheer to climb. All he could see or feel was concrete. His muscles shuddered with fear, he wanted to turn back and run for his life – but Zelina kept going, indeed she sauntered casually onwards. Patch focused on her, on her sight and scent, and followed her trail exactly, breathing hard, trying not to panic.
The bridge arched across the waters like a rainbow. They were just past its peak when Patch saw and smelled two humans approaching. He squeezed his eyes half-shut and made himself continue. The humans stopped dead in their tracks, as if frightened. As Patch and Zelina darted past, the humans watched very closely and rumbled loudly to one another in their strange voices. Patch didn't think he had ever been so near a human before. At least they had not been accompanied by a dog.
He was so focused on his surroundings rather than his destination that the end of the bridge came as a surprise; suddenly, the wall to his right was wire not concrete, and green grass lay beyond. Patch immediately scrambled up and over. Zelina continued along the concrete, until, on opposite sides of the wire fence, they reached the endpost of a human sky-road. They had crossed the bridge.
Storm Shelter
The sky-road progressed to the north, towards the mountains visible on the horizon, along a wide and busy highway, past houses and humans below. The wind grew so strong that Patch and Zelina had to take care not to be blown off. The sky to the northeast was busy with human flying machines, the kinds with wings that did not beat. They rose up from and plunged down to the earth. The distant roars that followed them across the sky were unsettling, made Patch felt as if an owl or hawk was circling above him, ready to pounce.
The sky grew dark. But the day was not yet over – this was the dark of stormclouds, not sunset. Patch and Zelina had just left the area of human buildings, and entered a large wilderness cut in two by the highway the sky-road followed, when the first huge drops of rain began to fall. It was soon obvious that they had to find shelter. This wind and rain would sweep them right off the sky-road, if they stayed.
This wilderness below was like nowhere Patch had ever been. Its ground was damp and muddy, shot through with ponds, streams, and rivulets. The ground was thick with small vine-choked trees and bushes, and rising above this dense undergrowth were trees he did not know, with peeling white bark, slender vertical trunks and a profusion of short, thin horizontal branches. These branches made it relatively easy for Zelina to climb down to the ground, but they did not climb, extend and overlap like the branches of elms, maples and oaks. There were a few other trees beyond the white ones, strange trees whose bark had mostly peeled away, revealing pale wood underneath like bones under skin; but these trees were few in number, and even if they had formed a sky-road it would have been rendered impassable by the weather. They had to find shelter on the ground.
There were no leaves yet on the bushes to block the rain. As Patch and Zelina poked their way through the brambles and bushes, rain streamed off the branches and fell on them, and the ground beneath them grew wetter and muddier with every passing heartbeat. The rain caused animal smells to rise like ghosts from the earth, and as they ran, seeking shelter, Patch smelled mouse, chipmunk, rat, squirrel, raccoon, frog, turtle, innumerable birds … and something that reminded him uneasily of the quick, sharp-toothed things he had seen twice from on high in the Kingdom of Madness. Something that was definitely predator, and probably fox.
The sky flashed with light, and there was a sound like a tree trunk breaking in two, and the air itself shook.
"Oh, this is terrible, terrible!" Zelina wailed.
"There's nothing here!" Patch shouted. He had to shout to be heard over the noise of branches flailing in the wind. By this time Patch was thoroughly miserable. "We'll have to just stay under the bushes!"
"No! Look! Over there!"
Patch looked and saw nothing.
"Follow me!" Zelina cried, and set out at a dead run. It was all Patch could do to follow her, first through more bushes, then through a stand of huge clubgrass. He was convinced they were utterly lost, and half-convinced that the storm had driven Zelina mad, when they suddenly emerged from the clubgrass onto the edge of a pool of fresh water so big that Patch could not see across it. A huge fallen tree extended into this pool. And the ground beneath this tree's overturned stump was warm and dry.
There were three squirrels already sheltering beneath the stump, along with two large, ugly, foul-smelling birds that Patch did not recognize. He followed Zelina onto the blissfully dry ground. The other squirrels backed away from Zelina. They smelled of fear.
"I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. After a moment he reluctantly added, "This is my friend Zelina, the Queen of All Cats."
He expected full introductions, but the squirrels said nothing, only stared. Patch sighed and looked at Zelina, who was cleaning herself. He supposed she was the problem. But he wouldn't have found this shelter, or crossed the bridge, without her.
"Where do you come from?" one of the squirrels whispered, her voice full of fear.
"The Center Kingdom."
She backed away a little further, almost to the curtain of rain. "But how did you get here?"
"From the Ocean Kingdom."
"This is the Ocean Kingdom," another squirrel said.
"Then from your southern lands, across the waters."
"What do you know of the monsters?" a third squirrel demanded angrily.
Patch blinked. "Monsters? What monsters?"
"The monsters who hunt near our homes," said the first. "They killed my mate. They carried him into the sky and killed him."
Patch didn't understand. "You mean hawks? Owls?"
"We mean monsters," said the third squirrel. "They grow among the trees and snatch us up from the ground with long metal claws like vines. They have driven out us out of our dreys and into this swamp, where we must live like rats."
"I don't know anything about monsters. I'm just trying to get back to the Center Kingdom. Who are you?"
A little less suspicious now, the squirrels introduced themselves as Hindlegs, Brokenclaw and Mudwalker.
"Beware the wasteland," Mudwalker said. "It is near the wasteland that the monsters hunt. You must stay out here in the swamps."
"We just came fro
m the wasteland," Patch said, "well, from the sky-road above the wasteland, and we didn't see any monsters."
"You were very lucky," said Hindlegs, the squirrel who had lost her mate to the monsters.
"Excuse me," Patch said in Bird to the big, ugly, stinking birds. "Do you know anything about monsters around here? With long metal claws?"
"Sorry," one of them croaked, "We're new around here."
"Say, you speak good Bird," hissed the other. "Have you see anything dead?"
"Excuse me?"
"Dead bodies. Corpses. Fresh would be best, but we'll take maggots and rot if we have to, we've been flying for days to get here."
"No, sorry," Patch said.
The first bird peered at Patch quizzically. "How about you? How are you feeling? Sick? Weak? Feverish? Dying?"
"I feel fine, thank you."
"Pity. How about your friends?"
"I'm sure they're fine too."
The birds sighed and turned back to the water.
Then a reptilian head rose out of the shallows at the edge of the pond. It looked like a growth on the end of a stalk, emerging from a large shell that was mostly hidden by the water.
"Pardon me, young squirrel," the turtle said in excellent Bird, "might you indulge me for a moment?"
Old One
Patch had seen many turtles before, in the Center Kingdom, but never one as large as this, and never one who spoke Bird.
The turtle said, "I may perhaps have misunderstood you, my Mammal is truly quite atrocious, but did you just say that you were Patch, of the Center Kingdom?"
"Yes," Patch said.
"Most interesting. How long ago did you leave the Center Kingdom?"
Patch tried to count the days and failed. "It was still winter."
"Then you do not know of the war that rages across your home?"
Patch stared at the turtle. "War?"
"War," the turtle repeated. "There is a squirrel, my reports name him Redeye, who has declared himself the true King of the Center Kingdom, and who leads the Meadow Tribe, its numbers swelled by rebels, against King Thorn. There have been several small battles already, and dozens of deaths, and there are rumours of strange alliances."
"Redeye calls himself King?" Patch was shocked. "How do you know this? Have you been there?"
The turtle's laugh was dry and jolly. "Oh, no, young Patch. In all my life I have never left these marshes."
"Then how –"
"Conversation," the turtle said. "Birds fly to these marshes from the Center Kingdom, from the Kingdom of Madness, from the Hidden Kingdom, even from empires across the great mountains, even from empires across the ocean, and from time to time I speak with them. Why, one might even say that they bring me reports. And there is little that is hidden from the eyes of birds. Only the Kingdom Beneath. Of late, Patch son of Silver, the birds bring me news of strange and terrible things. They speak of a sickness that spreads among all the birds of the world."
Patch was hardly listening. "There hasn't ever been war in the Center Kingdom."
"There has, but not for a very long time. Not since before the second coming of the humans and the rise of the mountains."
"The rise of the mountains? The mountains have always been there."
"Oh, no," the turtle said. "I remember looking westward from these marshes and seeing no mountains in the distance, young Patch. Once there was only the wild. And one day only the wild shall remain."
Patch stared at the turtle. "How old are you? Who are you?"
"Very old. Very old. Old enough that you may simply call me Old One. But I am not quite the eldest. There is another as old as I, one whom you have already met."
"What? Who?"
"My oldest friend. My most ancient adversary. I believe you will meet him again."
"I don't understand," Patch said.
"None of us are meant to understand everything, young Patch. But I do have one thing to say to you which I hope you will understand. One solitary morsel of advice. Listen carefully. Always abandon your enemies, and never abandon your friends."
"All right," Patch said, even more confused.
"The rain is stopping," the turtle said, and indeed it was. "You and Zelina had best hurry. You have a long way to go, and little time in which to travel, if you are not to arrive too late."
"Too late for what?" Patch asked. "And how do you know her name?"
But the Old One had already disappeared back into the water.
Monsters
On the way back to the sky-road, Zelina found a robin's nest that had been blown to the ground by the wind, and as the mother robin looked on helplessly, the cat greedily shattered and devoured all the eggs. Patch thought of the robin babies who had accepted him into their midst and taught him Bird, and tried not to look. There were worms all over the ground, as always after the rain, and he ate several. He didn't like their sludgy taste, or the way they squirmed in his mouth, but at least they filled his belly.
"Do you think there are really monsters near the highway?" Zelina asked, when they were finished eating.
"I don't know. But I know those squirrels were frightened." Patch considered. "Let's follow our own scents back, just to be sure."
They retraced their trail back towards the highway. The strands of the wire sky-road were in sight when Patch, leading the way with his more sensitive nose, suddenly stiffened and halted.
"What is it?" Zelina asked.
Patch said nervously, "I think I smell fox."
"What's a fox?"
"You don't want to find out."
Patch took a couple experimental paces forward. The sky-road was so close – but the fox-smell was definitely stronger here. In the aftermath of the storm the wind was swirling around, and Patch couldn't really tell the direction from which the scent came, except that it had recently been between them and the highway … and could now be anywhere.
"We'll go south, towards the human lands," Patch said quietly. "Keep your eyes and ears open, they're better than mine."
Zelina agreed. The fox-smell diminished as they went south, but did not disappear. Patch tried going to the west towards the road again, but it intensified again. They continued south.
"There's something behind us," Zelina said, her voice tense. "Moving in the bushes. Something bigger than us."
Patch knew the human lands weren't far away. If they could reach the fence on the southern border of the wilderness they would be safe.
"Run!" he said.
Both he and Zelina sprinted south as fast as they could. They ran so quickly that by the time Patch smelled the sharp scent of metal beneath his paws it was too late.
The next thing he knew, he was dangling upside down in midair, and his left hindpaw was encircled in a ring of agony. The earth was above his head, bouncing dizzyingly closer and then farther away. Patch screamed with pain, fear, and confusion. When he looked down he saw his hindleg ensnared in a tight loop of glittering wire. The wire hung from a branch bouncing slowly up and down.
"Help!" he cried out to Zelina. "Help me!"
Zelina looked north, to where the rustling sounds had come from; then south, to where the fence that marked the wilderness boundary was visible through the trees.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Patch," Zelina said, her voice quivering with emotion. "I don't know how. And there is something dreadful coming. I can smell it."
"Please," Patch begged her.
"I'm so sorry," Zelina said, and took two steps south –
– and then, suddenly, a branch flew high into the air, and there was a silver flash of metal beneath it, and Zelina too dangled upside down from a wire noose, helpless and screaming.
Patch tried to struggle, but any motion only tightened the wire around his leg. The pain was awful. Blood dripped down his leg onto his body. Being upside down made him feel sick, and he could barely understood the things he saw. He saw motion, something pushing through the upside-down trees, but it was only from its smell that he understood that thi
s was the fox.
"Oh happy day of dangling delights," the fox said, and there was laughter in his voice. "Oh loyal monsters, oh helpful gravity, you have done your work so well."
"These aren't your monsters," Patch managed to say, though it was hard to talk upside down. "This is human work."
"This is human work," the fox agreed, "but it works for me. They bring traps, and I frighten into them panicky rabbits, stupid squirrels, and foolhardy cats. And then my dinner hangs in the air before my eyes."
"Let me go!" Zelina cried out. "I am the Queen of All Cats!"
"Are you indeed, oh little morsel swinging in the breeze? Well, your majesty, I am most graciously honoured to make your ever so brief acquaintance. Allow me to introduce myself as well. I am Talis the hungry fox. And I bear the sad news that between royalty and hunger, there is really no contest."
"You are a vile beast who should have been fed to your brothers and sisters," Zelina hissed. "You are so repulsive the moon weeps to see you, if you ever dare turn your loathsome face to the sky. You conspire with rats and reptiles, you copulate with cockroaches, and when other foxes smell you they drive you from their dens!"
Patch saw a gleam of metal from the ground between the fox and the cat, and he understood.
"Right," Talis said, "you die first."
He ran at Zelina; and a branch leapt upwards, trailing a wire in its wake; and suddenly Talis too dangled in the air, hanging from his foreleg, yowling with shock and pain. Through his own dizzying agony Patch felt a certain deadly satisfaction.
But by the time the humans came that satisfaction had long since dissipated. By then it was night, and Patch could no longer feel his own paw.
IV. The Hidden Kingdom
Cages
The human grasped Patch with a hand wrapped in thick material that smelled faintly of dead animal skin. Patch was too weak and delirious to struggle. He only trembled as his trapped paw was released from the snare and he was thrust into a small wire cage. Zelina and Talis were treated similarly. The humans, there were three of them, took extra care with Talis, and spoke to one another for a little while after caging Zelina.