by Bobbie Pyron
That is, all except one child, a most curious girl named Amelia.
The girl was curious about many things, but particularly animals, particularly those Furred and Feathered who lived among the humans in the city.
Amelia lifted her binoculars to her eyes and peered out her bedroom window. The week before, on a moonless night, she had seen what she hoped was an opossum drinking from a puddle on the sidewalk. She very much wanted to add North America’s only marsupial to her list of city sightings.
The girl had, in fact, seen an opossum that night. An opossum named Rosebud.
As opossums go, she was a pretty little thing.
Rosebud had black-button eyes, a nose the most delicate shade of pink, front paws shaped like small stars, and fur as soft as a whisper.
As the city grew dark, Rosebud woke from her long nap. The days had been so beastly hot that she had taken to sleeping in one of the city’s grander subway stations. The tile floor, although hard, was cool. She had found the perfect sleeping nook in an air vent missing its cover. There, it was dark and cool and away from the hundreds of humans coming and going. And even better, some of her favorite things to eat—spiders, cockroaches, even the occasional beetle—could be had without ever leaving the safety of the station.
It had been over a week since the little opossum had been outside. Although Rosebud was a wild creature, she was utterly terrified of the Outside.
Opossums are by nature timid and gentle. Faced with a threat, they may hiss and snarl and spit, but they’d rather play dead than fight.
Even among the Opossum Clan, though, Rosebud was singular in her lack of bravery.
But opossums do not, cannot, live by bugs alone. As reluctant as she was to venture out from the safety of her home, a gnawing hunger drove her more.
Rosebud peeked out of the air vent. She sniffed the air for humans.
She listened for the sound of footsteps.
She did not hear the constant rise and fall of the humans’ voices, nor the click and shuffle of their feet.
She did not hear the rattle and hum of the subway trains.
Warily, Rosebud scuttled across the gleaming floor and tiptoed up the wide stairs. There, just across another expanse of stone, stood the doors to the Outside. She looked one way and then the other. A human in a uniform sat in a tipped-back chair, arms folded over his belly, eyes closed, mouth hanging open.
Rosebud did her opossum best to gather all the courage she could find. Her whiskers trembled with fright.
“You can do it,” she said to herself in her mother’s voice. “Just take it one step at a time.”
Rosebud placed one paw in front of the other—one step, then another, and another—until she stood staring up at the huge glass doors, and then whoosh! The doors slid open and Rosebud stepped into the great Outside.
14
Coyote Dreams
Trouble’s feet twitched and jerked in his sleep as he raced Pounce and Swift across the wide, green meadows. His tail thumped once in joy at the sight of his mother and father and his big brother, Twist. There they stood, grinning their wide coyote grins, in their beautiful forest, and everywhere, everywhere, the sky. “Oh, how I’ve missed you,” he whimpered.
Then he heard it, the most beautiful sound in the world: all of them singing together the Song to the Moon.
Something wet woke the coyote. One raindrop, then another. He opened his eyes, expecting to see his family, his home.
Instead, he saw the stone forest and canyons and the hard, bare ground. And that was not the full moon shining down, casting shadows. It was a streetlight, throwing shadows in the dark.
Dark!
Panic swept over the pup. He had slept too long! The Maker and the Beast would have returned to their farm by now. How would he find his way home?
The coyote paced back and forth, looking anxiously at the sky. The buildings were so tall and towering, he could not tell where the tops ended and the night sky began. Storm clouds obscured the moon. The North Star was nowhere in sight.
Trouble threw back his head and pointed his muzzle to the moonless, starless sky. He took a deep breath and sang his despair. Where are you? he sang. Where is my home?
Rats and cats hunting and being hunted cowered at the sound of the coyote. Trouble’s yips disturbed the dreams of a poet. They woke the poet’s dog. The girl, Amelia, slipped from her bed, raised her bedroom window, and looked out into the night through her binoculars.
Trouble’s howls froze Rosebud in her tracks.
Trouble’s yaps woke Mischief.
“What’s your problem?” he grumbled.
“Where is the Beast that brought me to this place?” Trouble asked. “I have to get back there!”
“You mean the produce truck?”
“Yes, the Beast,” he barked. “I have to get back to it so I can go home.”
Mischief fluffed his feathers against the drizzle now falling from the sky. He sighed. “It’s just a truck, not some beast, and that truck’s long gone.”
“My big brother, Twist, always told me to find the North Star in the night sky if I ever got lost, and it would guide me home,” Trouble said. He looked at the buildings surrounding him, pressing in on him, blocking the sky. “How will I ever see it? How will I ever find my way home?” he wailed in that way only a heartbroken coyote can.
The rain came down in earnest. Thunder rumbled, and lightning lit the sky.
Trouble cowered and trembled.
Normally, Trouble was not afraid of a little rain. He actually enjoyed it. But the Singing Creek pups had been born in early spring, in the time of gentle rain and no thunder or lightning. That is, until this night.
Boom! Crack! Thunder shook the ground and echoed through the canyon of skyscrapers. Lightning turned the sky silver.
With a yip, Trouble dashed into the street looking for a place to escape.
“Wait!” Mischief called.
Trouble skittered around one corner and then another, knocking over trash cans, scattering the rats, until he came face-to-face, almost whisker-to-whisker, with an opossum named Rosebud.
“Oh!” said Trouble.
Eeek! squeaked Rosebud.
Caw! said Mischief.
“Whoa,” said Amelia, peering through her binoculars.
Rosebud whirled and raced as fast as an opossum can (which is not terribly fast, as four-footed animals go), back the way she came.
Whoosh went the doors to the train station.
Rosebud skittered across the lobby, past the sleeping night watchman, and down the wide stairs, Trouble following close behind.
Whoosh! Mischief flew into the subway station on Trouble’s heels.
The opossum raced across the marble floor, heart pounding. This is it, she thought. I will be eaten, and no one will mourn my passing because I am all alone in the world.
If only she could stand her ground like the raccoons she had seen who took on dogs twice their size, maybe she could save herself from the coyote. But she was not brave like a raccoon; she was not even brave like most opossums.
Instead, she headed straight for the open door of a waiting subway train idling on the tracks.
Rosebud scuttled inside the empty train car and curled beneath the last seat in the back. She closed her eyes tight and prayed to the patron saint of opossums that the coyote would not find her.
Trouble stopped midway across the grand station. He gazed in disbelief at the soaring, shining room, his fear forgotten. Never had he seen anything so astonishing. It could only be the work of the Makers, and it was a wondrous thing. True, there was no grass beneath his feet and not a single tree in sight, but it shimmered and shone in a golden light as if it held the moon.
Caw! Caw!
The night watchman awoke with a start. “Hey, what’re you doing in here, you stupid bird?” the watchman bellowed. “And wait, is that a coyote?”
“Here we go again,” Mischief muttered.
The crow swooped down and snatched the pointed
tip of Trouble’s enormous ear. “Move!” he called.
Trouble yipped. He bolted straight through the open doors of the subway car, Mischief right on the coyote’s tail.
Whoosh! The doors closed, the train lurched.
And so it was that an opossum named Rosebud, a crow named Mischief, and a young coyote named Trouble raced away in a subway car into the dawn.
15
Trouble on a Train
Trouble was trapped. He knew it as surely as when the doors to the produce truck slammed shut, as surely as when the doors to the elevator closed. He knew as sure as he knew his own name that he was in trouble once again.
He jumped up onto the hard seat and looked out the window at the lights ticking by.
“What now?” he asked, glaring at the crow.
Mischief’s claws grasped the back of a seat as he pecked at a piece of dried chewing gum. “Not much to do until the train comes to the next stop,” Mischief replied, prying loose the piece of pink gum. “Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
A thousand questions ran through the pup’s mind: What was a train? Was it yet another type of Beast? And what would happen when this thing stopped? Would he be closer to his home and his family? It was all just too much to think about.
The gentle rocking of the train and the steady clack click clack put Trouble in a trance. Slowly, oh so slowly, his eyes closed, his head drooped, and he fell fast asleep.
Rosebud clutched her long, hairless tail to her chest and listened. She’d heard the crow and the coyote talking at the front of the train car. Now all was quiet.
It was not the first time the opossum had ridden in a subway train. Twice before in winter months she had scuttled into a subway car late at night looking for a warm place out of the wind and snow. She never failed to find a tasty treat or two underneath the seats. As her mother had said, “Humans are purely gifted when it comes to making trash.” It was her mother’s opinion that an opossum would fare best in the wide world by living close to humans.
Rosebud wasn’t so sure. She found most everything associated with the world of humans—their cars, their dogs, their bright lights, the things they threw at her—frightening. But worst of all, on seeing Rosebud, they said the rudest and most hurtful things. They would shriek; they would cry out in alarm. They called her “ugly,” “icky,” “pointy,” “filthy,” and the worst—oh, the worst!—“rodent.” No insult cut deeper than being compared to a dirty, smelly, untrustworthy, conniving rat.
Rosebud was a very sensitive soul.
Trouble slept past the first stop, the second stop, and the third stop.
Mischief watched the bright lights tick past and wondered what to do. Every time the doors slid open, he prepared to fly away from this space, a space too small for a winged creature. He longed to stretch his wings and soar into the dawn sky. But yet, and yet . . . there was a coyote and an opossum in a subway car, and the city was waking. The possibilities were endless.
The train eased to a stop. The doors slid open. Voices woke the coyote.
“Look at that cute puppy!”
“What’s a bird doing in a subway car?”
“Unattended animals are not allowed on trains,” a tall gentleman proclaimed, waving an umbrella. The umbrella, having a mind of its own, snapped open with a pop.
Trouble yipped in panic. He leaped off the bench, bolted toward the door, only to be blocked by the open umbrella. He dashed to the front, bounced from one side of the car to the other, then raced for the back, cowering close to Rosebud.
“It’s mad!” someone cried.
“Call the police!”
“Stand aside,” an authoritative voice commanded.
A woman in an official uniform pushed through the spectators waiting to board the train. She removed an impressive flashlight from her wide belt, clicked on the light, and shined it into the subway car. Into the black eyes of Mischief and, in the back, the yellow eyes of Trouble.
She slipped a radio from her belt (a belt that held many shiny things, Mischief noted) and barked into it, “Dispatch, I got a situation here. There’s some kind of trouble on the train.”
The MTA worker, Verla Trumpowski, straightened her hat and waved aside the bystanders. “I’m going in to take a look-see,” she said.
She drew her nightstick and stepped into the train. “Don’t you try any funny business,” she said, pointing her stick at the crow and coyote.
The light from her flashlight swept from one end of the subway car to the other.
Trouble tried to make himself as small as possible; Mischief greedily eyed the shiny objects dangling from Verla Trumpowski’s belt.
Rosebud chose this moment to put some distance between herself and the coyote. She crept out from under the seat; she froze at the sight of the tall thing in front of her.
Verla Trumpowski caught a movement from the corner of her eye. She shined her beam on something pointy and white. It must be said that neither Rosebud nor Verla Trumpowski had very good eyesight.
The human froze.
Rosebud realized through her keen sense of smell that this was a human. Her heart pounded. Her blood froze. She could feel a faint coming on.
Although Rosebud was not the bravest of creatures, she was practical. She decided the best course of action was to assure this human that 1) she was not a threat, and 2) she was not a rat.
Rosebud stood up on her hind legs, pulled back her lips in an enormous smile, revealing all fifty of her gloriously sharp teeth.
Without a sound, Verla Trumpowski fainted onto the floor.
Mischief croaked in disbelief. “How did that beady-eyed little thing do that?”
The coyote didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was that the odd creature had just saved him from certain disaster.
Trouble leaped down from the bench, gave Rosebud a huge, sloppy lick of thanks and relief. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, friend!”
But Rosebud did not hear Trouble’s effusive words of thanks; the sight of the coyote’s open mouth coming right at her (not to mention her close encounter with the human) was all too much for the opossum. She fainted dead away.
“Look!” someone cried from the growing crowd on the subway platform. “That dog attacked that woman!”
“Get it!”
“Help her!
“Call the police!”
Uh-oh. Trouble had heard those words before. He needed to get out of there, fast.
Trouble glanced at the angry crowd outside the open door of subway train, then down at the little opossum.
“I can’t leave her,” he said. “She saved me.”
While it was true that Trouble was not one for rules, the one rule of the Coyote Clan he took to heart was this: you never, ever left a member of the pack behind. This strange little creature had saved his life. As far as Trouble was concerned, that made her a member of his pack.
There was only one thing, and one thing only, to do: carefully, Trouble grabbed the opossum by the scruff of her neck, just the way his mother had done when he was a pup, and trotted out of the train and onto the platform.
The crowd gasped and parted as the coyote, head held high, opossum dangling from his jaws, trotted quickly toward the stairs and the waking city above.
16
The Wild in the City
The coyote’s jaws ached. Although Rosebud was just a wee opossum, smaller than your average opossum, she was heavier than the sticks and bones Trouble had carried in play with his brother and sisters.
Oh so carefully, he set Rosebud on the ground and sniffed her from the tip of her pink, pointy snout to the end of her hairless tail. She smelled of banana peels, popcorn, and most strongly, the sour smell of fear.
Trouble nudged her with his nose. He heard her heart quicken.
The sun climbed the sides of the tall buildings; car horns honked and traffic rumbled. The city was awakening. Trouble needed to find a place to hide, but he could not leave this odd little creature behind.
Mischief landed on a tree branch above the coyote. He jangled the keys stolen from Verla Trumpowski’s belt, delighting in their sound.
“What do I do now?” Trouble asked. “There’s nowhere to hide, and”—he nudged Rosebud again—“she acts like she’s dead.”
“That’s what an opossum does best,” Mischief said.
Trouble regarded the stiff legs pointing skyward, the tongue hanging between white, pointy teeth, the closed eyes. “She’s doing a pretty good job,” he said with admiration. “But I can’t leave her here. She could get hurt.”
Mischief sighed. He really didn’t understand why the coyote bothered with the rat-like thing. Oh sure, he knew opossums and rats had no more in common than a crow and the pigeons infesting Central Park. But who cared about an opossum?
“I know a place we can go,” Mischief said. “It’s not close, though.”
Trouble looked at the little marsupial lying prostrate on the ground. What would Twist do?
Once again, Trouble picked up Rosebud by the scruff of her neck.
Mischief pushed off from the tree branch, still holding Verla Trumpowski’s keys in his bill. He flew low over the coyote and opossum, leading the way.
That way led through a confusing warren of dark side streets and across a wide, busy street. Twice Trouble had to stop, drop Rosebud, rest his jaws, then pick her up again. Really, he thought, a rabbit would be much easier. Or a mouse.
Finally, just when Trouble didn’t think he could carry the opossum any farther, they broke free of yet another dark, damp side street and out into the sun. The sun!
Trouble gasped and dropped Rosebud in astonishment. There before him, as far as the eye could see, were trees! And not only trees, there was grass and bushes and flowers and the smell of water.
And oh, the birds! Birds everywhere, singing and chirping and squabbling. Trouble never thought he would be so utterly happy to hear birds.
Rosebud felt something cool and soft beneath her. She smelled flowers and bugs and the heady scent of rich dirt, all things she hadn’t smelled since she was a baby. It was so wonderful, she forgot to be afraid. She opened her eyes. She was greeted by the sight of wide blue sky and the green tops of trees.