Moonlight Brigade

by C. Alexander London

  Kit bit his cheeks to keep from grinning.

  He’d bamboozled the coyote even though the coyote didn’t think he could be bamboozled. As the First Raccoon once said, A trick’s well begun, when the Bamboozle’s well done.

  It looked like Kit’s trick was well begun indeed.

  Chapter Twelve

  DEALING AND STEALING

  JUST as Kit was feeling good about himself, Coyote suggested a few “adjustments” to the deal.

  “I will keep all the seeds and nuts I’ve taken until I have my cans two sunups from now,” he told Kit. “You’ll get it all back when you come through with your end of this bargain.”

  “Fair enough,” said Kit.

  “And I will take some additional collateral as well,” the coyote told him. “To keep you honest.”

  “Coal-lat-er-all?” That was a word Kit didn’t know and neither did Eeni.

  “It means something I hold on to until our deal is done, something valuable to you that I get to keep if the deal should fail. Collateral is my insurance that you come through.”

  “But you already have all our seeds and nuts,” Kit objected.

  “I want something you value more,” said Coyote. “Something truly irreplaceable.” Coyote nodded at his otters. “Grab the turtle,” he barked. An otter seized the Old Boss Turtle. Then Coyote smiled at Uncle Rik. “And this fellow here.”

  An otter to raised his club and knocked Uncle Rik out with one quick smack to the top of the old raccoon’s head. Two other otters tossed him in a sack.

  “Hey!” Kit cried out. He rushed forward, but Coyote pushed him back.

  “If you ever want to see your uncle again, Kit,” the coyote told him, “you’ll get me those cans two sunups from now.”

  “Uncle Rik!” Kit shouted, but the shape in the sack didn’t move at all. Kit started to feel sick. He’d been foolish to speak up. He’d thought he was only putting himself at risk by standing up to the thieving coyote, but now he’d put his uncle in danger too. He’d wanted to be the hero, but he hadn’t thought about innocent bystanders. “How did you know he was my uncle?” Kit asked.

  “Oh, Kit, you’ve become famous even out in the Howling Lands . . . the Hero of Ankle Snap Alley,” Coyote said. “I came all the way here to see what you were made of. It’s no accident I chose to rob Ankle Snap Alley. I wanted to meet you, the great hero of the Wild Ones, the little orphaned raccoon who foiled the Flealess.” Coyote laughed. “Now that I see you, I have to laugh. A hero with a tear dripping down his cheek. Ha!”

  Kit was stunned and angry. He wiped the tear from his cheek with his tail and snarled at Coyote.

  “That’s more like it,” Coyote said. “Show some fight! Now let’s see you save your alley again. And in case you get any ideas about rescuing your uncle before I get my cans of food, know that I have some friends with sharp eyes and sharper beaks who’ll be keeping watch over you.”

  Coyote let out one high-pitched bark, and three shadows screeched over the alley. Then three horned owls, all of them in camouflage hunting cloaks and floppy camouflage hats, landed around the crowd, towering over the small creatures, their yellow eyes glowering.

  The Mercenary Sisters of Cement Row had joined Coyote’s gang.

  “It was a pleasure robbing you all.” Coyote bowed with a flourish. “I will see you in two sunups.”

  His gang hoisted the sack with Uncle Rik in it onto their cart with all the seeds and nuts and trash and treasure that had been held in the Reptile Bank and Trust. He barked at Shane and Flynn to push his cart. The raccoon brothers were in his gang now.

  “Traitors!” Eeni shouted at them, but Kit put out his paw to stop her.

  He stared at the two raccoons. “We always knew they were crooks,” he told her. “Everyone from around here knows not to trust them.”

  “That’s right,” said Shane. “Bees buzz and finches fly.”

  “Raccoons cheat until the day we die,” Flynn finished his brother’s rhyme.

  Kit growled and Flynn growled right back, but the Blacktail brothers left with the gang of otters and all the food the alley had.

  “Hold on!” Chuffing Chaz plodded over to Eeni. “Gimme my glasses,” he grunted at the empty air next to her, squinting.

  “Why should I?” Eeni folded her arms.

  “Because I’ll club your brains into your tail if you don’t!” the otter told her.

  Kit rushed to his friend’s defense, but she was already handing over the otter’s glasses.

  “I can’t argue with your logic.” Eeni sighed.

  “And your seeds,” the otter grumbled.

  Eeni pulled out her seed pouch and dropped it in his paws. “Careful how you spend it.”

  Chaz put his glasses back on and put her pouch into his satchel next to Kit’s. He huffed once, rejoined his gang, and vanished into the dawn.

  The alley settled into a silent state of shock. They’d been robbed of everything they had, and their dangerous Rabid Rascals had totally failed to protect them. Now their hopes all rested on Kit’s fuzzy head.

  This was how the Moonlight Brigade must have felt in the old times, the whole weight of the wild resting on their snouts.

  But if they could do it, then so could he! Kit would not let his alley down. He would not let his uncle down. He would save them all.

  “Why’d you defend those Blacktail brothers?” Eeni asked him. “They hate you.”

  “They’re our neighbors,” said Kit. “They’ll come through for us in the end.”

  “They’ve never come through for us before.”

  “Then I guess it’s not the end,” said Kit.

  Eeni shook her head. “You didn’t give that otter your real seed pouch, did you?” she asked.

  “Nope,” said Kit. “You?”

  “Nope,” said Eeni. “I gave him my snout surprise.”

  Both of them carried an extra seed pouch, a decoy known among pickpockets as a snout surprise. It had a thin layer of seeds on top, but just below that was a brittle white wasps’ nest. When the otters opened the pouches later and their big paws crushed the wasps’ nest, they’d get a nasty surprise and a lot of angry stings.

  When you lived in Ankle Snap Alley but weren’t big enough or mean enough to fight, you needed a trick or two to keep the bullies away.

  “Those otters are as dumb as moths at a bonfire,” Eeni said. The sun had begun to fog the night sky with its first pink breath of morning. “So you bamboozled the coyote. What now?”

  Every creature in the alley looked at him, frog to mole and finch to vole.

  “Now?” Kit took a deep breath. “It’s time for the Sting.”

  “How you think you’re gonna do that?” Blue Neck Ned demanded.

  “Indeed, it is not as if we have countless cans of fine Flealess food lying around the alley,” Martyn the church mouse said as politely but sternly as he could.

  “I’m gonna do just like I said,” Kit told them all. “I’m gonna break into the People’s houses. I’m gonna rob the Flealess, get my uncle back, and save our alley.” He stood up tall and felt like the hero he was meant to be. “And I’ll make that coyote wish he’d never come here.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  OUTNUMBERED

  THAT was a crazy deal you made,” Eeni told Kit, as all the other animals went scurrying to their burrows before the sun burned away the dark. “Please tell me you have a plan.”

  “I’m working on it,” Kit told her. “But I’m going to need some advice.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking about—?” Eeni stopped in her tracks and pressed herself against the wall of Possum Ansel’s bakery.

  “Yep,” said Kit. “I’m gonna go see the Rat King.”

  “But we don’t have an appointment,” Eeni told him. “No one sees the Rat King without an appointment.
In fact, other than you, no one has seen the Rat King in more moons than there are leaves on the trees.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” said Kit, “I’d think you were afraid.”

  “Me? Nah. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  Eeni tried to act casual, but her tail twitched. Kit knew she was scared of the Rat King. The Rat King was a creature made of a hundred rats tangled together. They spoke as one, acted as one, but saw with a hundred pairs of eyes and ate with hundred different mouths. They were the fortune-teller of Ankle Snap Alley, and they were also said to be quite insane.

  That was not, however, why Eeni was afraid.

  Eeni was afraid because one of those tangled rats was her mother.

  Like all the first daughters in her family from the dawn of ratkind until Eeni broke the tradition by running away, her mother had joined the Rat King. She’d tangled herself and added her thoughts, her ideas, and her memories to it. From that long-ago night on, she was no longer Eeni’s mother. She was just one part of the many-headed rat, the way one drop of water is one part of a pond. She was the Rat King, and she would never leave until her last breath left her.

  Eeni’s mother had, in a way, chosen the vows of the Rat King over her own daughter. She’d made Eeni an orphan.

  Kit could understand Eeni’s worries about seeing her mother again, but the Rat King was the wisest animal in all of Ankle Snap Alley, and if anyone could help with his scheme to rob the Flealess of their food, it would be Him. Or Her? Them. They were a Them.

  “Let’s go see ’em,” Kit said, leading the way out of Ankle Snap Alley.

  “Wait?” Eeni called after him. “Now? But the sun’s coming up! It’s time for bed!”

  “We can sleep or we can survive,” Kit said. “But right now, we don’t have time to do both. I guess it’s up to you, but I’m going to the Rat King to ask for help. Uncle Rik is counting on me.”

  Eeni gave a wistful look toward the door of the Gnarly Oak Apartments, and Kit could almost see her imagining her nice cozy bed. She sighed. “I’m right behind you, Kit, like always. Howl to snap.”

  “Howl to snap,” he answered, and they scurried through the shrubs and darted across the big concrete road to the fence where the Rat King’s owl bodyguard stood.

  Except the owl who guarded the Rat King’s lair wasn’t in his usual perch.

  He wasn’t in any of his unusual perches either.

  He was gone, and the fence had a big hole in it. Big enough for a coyote to crawl through with a gang of otters. Their footprints traced a dreadful path in the dirt, leading straight to the open wall of the Rat King’s home.

  “Oh no,” Eeni squeaked. Her fears forgotten, she raced ahead, and Kit had to run to catch up, scrambling over the rubble of crumbled wall that Eeni had scurried underneath.

  He caught up to her at the edge of the empty pool where the Rat King lived. Worm-gray sunlight oozed through the broken windows and the air was heavy with silence. The last time Kit had been to see the Rat King, he had heard hundreds of claws clattering across the tiles and a hundred mouths chewing until a hundred voices spoke to him as one.

  Now, nothing.

  “Hello!” Eeni called out. “Anyone here? Hello?”

  The wind didn’t even bothering howling in response.

  Eeni looked up at Kit, her eyes damp. “Where could the Rat King have gone?” she said. “They wouldn’t just leave us, would they?”

  Kit knew that when Eeni said they she really meant she.

  She really meant her mother.

  He rested his paw on his friend’s back. He didn’t have answers for her but could still offer the comfort of friendship. If her mom was really gone, then she’d become even more like Kit than she’d been before. An orphan twice over.

  “You know, sometimes you have to shed your summer coat to grow in thicker fur for winter,” he told her.

  Eeni sniffled. “What?”

  Little seeds of wisdom were really Eeni’s thing, but he had to try to tell her something to make her feel better.

  “Like, I mean, sometimes when you lose something important, you gain something else you need. Like when I lost my parents last season, I never thought I could survive, but I did, and because I did, I found Ankle Snap Alley and Uncle Rik . . . and you. My friend. If my life never changed, it never would have changed for the better either.”

  “That’s real nice to say, Kit.” Eeni wiped her eyes with her tail. Then she gave him a playful punch on the arm. “You’re as sentimental as a skunk in a sewer.”

  If Eeni was making up nonsense sayings, Kit figured she was feeling better.

  “I think we should look for clues where the Rat King’s gone,” Kit suggested. “A hundred-headed rat can’t up and vanish into thin air without leaving some trace behind.”

  “Shh!” Eeni shushed him.

  “What? I’m just saying—” Kit had thought she wasn’t upset anymore, but maybe he’d been too quick to start hunting for clues while her feelings were still raw.

  “I heard something!” Eeni whispered.

  Kit’s ears twitched. He couldn’t hear anything unusual, but his nose worked the air. There was a smell he knew, something odd but familiar. Something he’d smelled on the breeze and in the trees and, most recently, at the First Frost Festival.

  “Owls!” he and Eeni said at the same time, just as a screech sliced the silence and the great wide wings of three owls descended over them.

  “SCREEEEEEEEECH!”

  Kit dove to the left and Eeni dove to the right, and the owls’ talons swiped at the empty air where they had stood an instant before.

  When Kit popped back up to his paws, the Mercenary Sisters of Cement Row had landed around them, circling but keeping their wide eyes fixed. They closed the circle in, pushing Kit and Eeni back to back. The hunters blinked in sequence, one at a time, so that two of them always had their eyes open. There was no hope of escape.

  “It’s past your bedtime, little ones,” one owl said.

  “And long past ours too,” another one added.

  “We get grumpy when we’re awake past sunlight,” said the third. “Especially when we’re hungry.”

  “Where’s the Rat King?” Eeni demanded of them, turning this way and that, trying to keep her eyes on all three at the same time. They all knew that an owl could swallow a rat like Eeni without even chewing.

  “Scurried off,” one of them said.

  “Seems they’ve got more sense than you two,” another said.

  “Rats know when it’s time to flee a sinking ship,” said the third.

  “Ankle Snap Alley’s not a ship,” Kit objected. “And it’s not sinking!”

  “That was a metaphor,” the first owl explained. “The ship stands for the alley, and we are the water dragging it down.”

  “And here comes the flood!” The owls rushed forward, sharp beaks snapping.

  Kit rolled into a ball and threw himself forward. He knocked Eeni from their path and bowled through one of the sisters, but found his roll suddenly stopped with a painful yank on his tail. He sprawled on the hard bottom of the pool and looked over his shoulder. One of the owls had his black-and-white tail gripped tight in her talon. Another held Eeni up by the scruff of her neck, about to drop the squirming white rat into her mouth.

  “What a tasty-looking morsel,” the owl said. “Does a white rat taste the same as a gray, I wonder?”

  “No, we’re much more sour,” Eeni replied. “And quite unhealthy. Wouldn’t you rather have a delicious piece of lettuce or something?”

  “Hush now, little one,” the owl said. “It’s just the way of the world. Owls eat and rats get eaten.”

  The owl let go of Eeni, and she fell toward the open beak.

  “No!” Kit yelled. Eeni shut her eyes tight.

  Then there was a hollow oomph, an
d Eeni landed face-first on the ground. The owl had been kicked onto her back against the other side of the empty pool and lay stunned as a swoosh of red fur leaped for the other two.

  Mr. Timinson, their teacher, delivered a sharp punch to the belly of one of the owls. He ducked below the second, grabbed her talons, and swung her in a circle, tossing her onto her sister before she could even stand.

  One of the sisters flew at him, talons up. He waited until the last instant, then flipped over her back and pinned her wings to her sides.

  She fell and skidded across the rough cement. The fox hopped from her back, flipped her over, and clamped his jaws on her throat. He growled, and his meaning was clear.

  The other two sisters froze in place.

  “Fit’s hime fur oo dooo gooo,” he said.

  “What?” said one sister.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said the other.

  “He says it’s time for you to go,” Eeni told them, brushing herself off. She jabbed an angry paw in their direction. “And don’t you come back here threatening us again or we’ll wallop you a second time!”

  “We?” The owls smirked. “Your schoolteacher can’t protect you forever.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” said Kit, who moved to stand beside Eeni. “I’ve got two nights to keep my end of the bargain with Coyote. Until then, you watch like he said, but you lay so much as a feather on anyone in Ankle Snap Alley, and I’ll make sure the coyote knows you’re the ones who cost him his cans of food.”

  “He’ll destroy you all if you don’t give him what you promised,” the owl said.

  “But he’ll destroy you first,” said Kit coldly. He needed to show these owls he wasn’t backing down, even though, at that moment, standing in front of their terrible beaks and razor-sharp claws, all he wanted to do was back down and run home and hide under a blanket with a hot mug of spiced rose petal tea.

  But heroes didn’t hide.

  Or drink rose petal tea.

  The owls fluffed their feathers and bowed politely. “Please give us our sister back, and we’ll be on our way.”