Moonlight Brigade

by C. Alexander London

  Behind the crow, sitting on shelves at the back of his booth were an assortment of prizes for the winners of the Beetle Bag game. Highest up—and therefore hardest to win—were toys like the ones People gave the Flealess—bones and balls and squeaky shapes; below that there were scraps of glass, bits of ribbon and cloth, shining buttons and keys and all sorts of pretty objects that some folks liked to decorate their nests and burrows with.

  Then were combs and bottles and other musical instruments, and below them, easiest to win, were hundreds of cards with different pictures on them. There was one with a church mouse in a thick robe and sandals, a dog posed strongly in a bowler hat, holding a duck in his mouth, a badger with a banner that said the name Constance, and even a drawing of Azban, the First Raccoon, his fingers crossed behind his back as he made a deal with a Person, whose shadow was the only part of him you could see.

  “Ancestor cards,” Eeni told Kit. “Folks collect ’em for luck or for playing card games with.”

  Kit nodded. He liked the drawings and might have liked to win the one of Azban, but that wasn’t what had caught his eye.

  “I’ve got it!” Kit exclaimed. “I know how I’m going to rob the Flealess!”

  “How?” Eeni asked.

  Kit pointed to the highest shelf of prizes. “With that,” he said, and Eeni’s little mouth fell open in surprise.

  “Oh no,” she said. “That’s crazy.”

  “Crazy like a house pet,” Kit replied.

  Chapter Fifteen

  APPRISED OF A PRIZE

  THE game of Beetle Bag was as old as history and twice as crooked.

  The rules were simple: The player stands on a bucket and holds a paddle in his paws. The bucket sits opposite a wall with a variety of different-sized bags hanging from it at different heights. The game operator releases the beetles from a cage, and the beetles fly as fast as they can for freedom. The only thing standing in their way is the player with the paddle. It is the player’s job to whack the beetles from midair into the bags hanging on the wall. Different bags are worth different points depending on how hard they are to whack a beetle into.

  The beetles themselves are wearing tiny pads so the whacks don’t hurt them, but they don’t like being whacked either and do their best to dodge the player’s paddle.

  Once in the bag, the beetles are stuck there until the game is done; the crows perfected a kind of paste that keeps the beetles in place. After all the beetles have either flown off or been whacked into a bag, the score is tallied and the prizes distributed.

  In professional tournaments, Beetle Baggers played against another player, their paddles dipped in ink, so each beetle was marked by the player who hit it in, but in Carnival Beetle Bag, there was only one player trying to get as many points as possible to win a prize from the shelves. The ancestor cards on the lowest shelf cost twenty points, the musical instruments were higher up and cost fifty, and the best prizes, the Flealess toys and tools, cost over three hundred points.

  The prize Kit had his eyes on was on the highest shelf of all. It didn’t have a price on it.

  Kit spoke to the crow in the carnival booth. “I’ll play your game, Mister—?”

  “Cawfrey,” the crow said. “From a long line of Carnival Cawfreys. We’ve run a Beetle Bagging game since the Duke of Dogs barked and Lord Crow flew over the sun. You’d like to play for some of my fabulous prizes?”

  “I would,” said Kit. “How much to win the one at the top?”

  The crow looked to the top shelf, where Kit was pointing. A dog’s collar, bright pink with sparkling stones all around it, hung from a nail. The stones caught the moonlight and shot out colorful rays in all directions. A thick leash made of snakeskin was clipped to it.

  “Oh, son of Azban,” Crawley said. “What do you want with a Flealess thing like that?”

  “That’s my business,” said Kit. “Your business is this game.” He pulled out his real bag of seeds, all he had left in the world since Coyote’s gang had come through the alley. “And I’d like to play it.”

  “You’re the boss.” The crow nodded his head once. “A leash and collar, fit for the Flealess. Five hundred points that’ll cost you.”

  “Five hundred!” Eeni objected. “That’s almost impossible!”

  “Ak-ak!” the crow objected. “Why just last week I saw a church mouse not half your size score twice that high.”

  “You’re talking about Millicent Musculus!” Eeni said. “She’s a professional Beetle Bagger!”

  The crow fluffed his feathers. “Just saying, almost impossible is still a little bit possible.” He turned his head to Kit. “So, you playing or what?”

  Kit nodded.

  “That’s a seed for every beetle,” Cawfrey explained. “As many beetles as you think you can bag or seeds you can spend. More seeds mean more beetles means more points. And it’ll take some doing to get to five hundred, I’ll tell you that for free.”

  Kit opened his pouch. He had eleven seeds and an acorn, which was worth another ten seeds. He got Eeni’s real pouch too, and she had fourteen seeds and two acorns. He saw Mr. Timinson watching him from across the midway and called his teacher over.

  “Can I borrow some seeds?” Kit asked. “I need a lot of tries to win what I’m after.”

  Mr. Timinson looked at the leash and at the collar and then looked back at Kit. “I see you’ve found some inspiration, after all.”

  “Yep,” said Kit. “That leash and collar are the key to my plan.”

  “Very clever indeed,” his teacher said, and turned over the four seeds he had left after buying them all a snack.

  “Four?” Eeni frowned at Mr. Timinson.

  “I’m a teacher,” the fox said. “It’s not quite as profitable as being a pickpocket.”

  “That’s fifty-nine seeds,” Kit said, giving every last one to the crow.

  “I’ll round up and give you sixty beetles to try,” Crawley said. “Because I’m a generous fellow.”

  “I’ll believe there’s a generous crow when I meet a snake who can tap-dance,” Eeni said.

  “Snakes don’t have feet—” Crawley objected. “Oh. I get it. Ha. Ha.”

  “Eeni, don’t insult the crows,” Kit pleaded. “I need this to work.”

  Eeni frowned. “Do you have any idea how to play Beetle Bag? It’s really hard!”

  “I know the rules, but I’ve never played before,” said Kit. “But I have to do it. I have to win this! I have to save Uncle Rik!”

  “You have to?” Eeni said, and wrinkled her nose. She looked like she was mad about something, but Kit couldn’t think what. Why should she be mad? He wasn’t asking her to do anything. She had no reason to be mad. “What if you don’t win?” Eeni asked. “These carnival games are rigged. They’re almost impossible.”

  “If I don’t win that collar, my plan to save the alley won’t work,” Kit said. He stretched his legs and shook out his arms. Eeni watched him, her face harder to read than one of Uncle Rik’s thick books. “Don’t give me that look,” Kit told her. “I gotta do this.”

  “But why does it have to be you?” Eeni snapped at him. Was that why she was angry? Did she want to play Beetle Bag?

  “It has to be me,” Kit explained, “because I volunteered. That’s what heroes do. And I know I can do this.” He climbed up onto the bucket and looked down at Eeni. “Like the crow said, almost impossible is just a little bit possible.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  BEETLE BAGGING

  KIT stood on the bucket and looked over the crowded midway. His classmates had noticed him about to play and gathered to watch. The Liney sisters had already won new bows for their tails at another game, and Fergus the frog stood beside them, trying to make them notice that he’d won himself a matching bow too. Kit felt bad for him. A frog who felt like a rat couldn’t have an easy time of it, es
pecially when the rats refused to notice him.

  “Bag ’em all, Kit!” Dax the squirrel shouted up at him.

  “Quick of Paw, Kit!” Matteo the mouse added.

  Kit hadn’t really thought about having an audience. Suddenly, doubt crept in like a burglar, and it opened the door to fear. He was afraid of embarrassing himself again in front of his class, afraid of letting Ankle Snap Alley down, and afraid, most of all, for Uncle Rik, who was in Coyote’s clutches because of him.

  Fear was like the acorns in a chipmunk’s cheeks, Kit thought. Once you started stuffing yourself, you could hold way more than looked possible. You could fill yourself to bursting and still have room for more.

  “What happens if I fall off the bucket?” Kit asked the crow.

  “Caw! Caw! Caw!” A chorus of crows on the surrounding mountains of garbage laughed.

  “If you fall off, you lose,” Crawley said. He flew up to Kit with the Beetle Bagging paddle. It was large and metal with a long handle and a flat metal top that smelled like butter and flour.

  “It’s called a spatula,” Mr. Timinson said as Kit took it from the crow.

  “Ready?” Crawley asked.

  “Not really,” said Kit.

  The bird ignored him. He fluttered to a lever beside a small box, gripped it in his beak, and pulled.

  There was a brief moment of calm, and then the buzzing beetles took flight.

  They swarmed at Kit. The first few zoomed right by his nose, so close he could see his own reflection in the shine of their tough-armored bodies. The moment after they whizzed by him, the beetles turned and settled in a neat row along the opposite side of the booth.

  They’d been trained! That meant they would do their best not to let him hit them. Kit should’ve known better. Every game in Ankle Snap Alley was rigged; why should the Crows’ Carnival be any different?

  “Whack ’em, Kit!” Eeni yelled.

  Kit raised the spatula and started swinging. The first beetles he aimed at flew around it easily. The spatula was heavier than it looked, and it was hard to swing. He cranked it back farther and tried to get more speed going, but they dodged that too. His momentum nearly pulled him off the bucket, and he had to do an elaborate twirl to keep from falling.

  When he regained his balance, he raised the spatula again. The beetles were still coming, and if he didn’t start hitting them into the bags, there wouldn’t be enough left. He’d never get to five hundred points.

  The beetles could see the flat part of the spatula coming toward them every time, and they just flew around it.

  But beetles were dumb! He might not be able to move as fast as them, but he could think much faster. They dodged the spatula when they saw it coming, but what if they didn’t see it? He turned it sideways and held it straight up and down. He stood very still. As the beetles flew toward it, all they could see was the thin side. They aimed right past it.

  At the last instant, Kit twisted his paws, and the spatula spun. The beetles flew at full speed into the flat part, and they bounced backward into the bags on the wall. Kit realized that by adjusting the angle he twisted the top when they hit it, he could adjust which bag the beetles went into.

  With the next beetles, he aimed for the lower bags and the bags on the corners, which were worth the most points.

  “Woo-hoo!” Eeni cheered. “You got ’em!”

  Kit spun and moved his spatula quickly from side to side, imagining what the beetles saw and where they’d try to fly. He felt, suddenly, as if he and the spatula were one, like it was another tail or an extra claw.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  He smacked beetle after beetle into bag after bag. The stunned beetles buzzed, fought the force of his attack, but it was their own speed that he’d turned against them, bouncing them into the bags.

  This must be how a claw-jitsu master felt!

  A fifteen-point shot! And a twenty! He missed the fifty-point bag and only got a five, but every point helped.

  As he bounced two more beetles off the spatula, he saw there were only five left flying from the cage. He needed to make them all count, but they split up, three flying high, two flying low.

  Okay, Kit, he thought. It’s Quick of Paw time.

  He planted the back of the spatula against the pillar and used it for leverage to vault into the air as high as he could. As he jumped, he spun upside down, just like he’d done with the bats, and he stretched his back legs out, kicking two of the armored beetles straight into bags. He caught the third with a flick of his tail that turned his whole body. In midair, he swung at the two flying below him and whipped them both side by side into the dead-center bag, worth 101 points.

  He finished his flip and landed on the bucket on his back paws, using the long spatula for balance.

  He wavered.

  He wobbled.

  He didn’t fall.

  Instead, he let out a breath and took a dramatic bow.

  His classmates burst into applause. This, he thought, was how a hero should feel.

  “Well done, kiddo!” a gray-snouted weasel in a baggy suit told him. “You ever want to play in the Pro Beetle Bagging League, you send a finch my way. You’ve got a future!” He shoved a scrap of bark into Kit’s paw:

  Garvey Grum

  B. B. Scout and Advisor to the Greats

  “Uh, thanks,” Kit muttered, trying to get through the crowd to the front of the booth again. Crawley had begun to pull the bags off the wall and pluck out the dizzy, dazed beetles inside, counting up the points.

  Eeni and Mr. Timinson kept their eyes on him. Crows were known for their clever counting, after all.

  “Let’s see here,” Crawley said. He spoke very fast and moved the beetles around with his beak, keeping the total on his counting board with a piece of chalk in his claw. “Out of sixty beetles, you got twenty-four bagged—not bad at all for a first-timer! That’s two in the center one hundred and one for two hundred and two, plus one in the lower center for two, and two below that for twenty together with three on the side at thirteen apiece, and five in the five and one in the twenty-five and four more in the fifteen, plus fifty in the one—CAW! Sorry, I meant one in the fifty, and two more in the twelve and then one and one in the one and one in the none; that’s the bag that gives you no points, alas. So let’s see. That’s a total of . . .” He did some calculating, while Eeni tried to count on her fingers.

  Fergus cleared his throat.

  “You forgot one,” the frog said. “He got twenty-four beetles bagged, but you only tallied the points for twenty-three.”

  The crow narrowed his eyes at Fergus, and Kit felt the eyes of all the other crows narrowing at the little frog as well. The crow studied his tally, then looked back at the bags.

  “I see . . .” The crow’s long beak dipped into the bag for fifty points and pulled out the last squirming beetle. “Fifty more. So that’s two in the center one hundred and one for two hundred and two, plus one in the lower center for two, and two below that for twenty together with three on the side at thirteen apiece . . .” The crow ran his count again.

  Eeni started counting on her fingers once more.

  “Four hundred and ninety-eight,” Crawley announced and Kit’s heart sank. He looked to Fergus, who nodded sadly in agreement, and then to Mr. Timinson, who concurred.

  “Two points shy of your prize,” Crawley said. “Better luck next time.”

  “But wait!” Kit pleaded. “It’s just two points! Can’t we just, like, round the number up again?”

  A roar of hoots and whistles burst from the crows on the great mountains of garbage all around the midway.

  “Caw! Caw!”

  “Ack-a! Ack-a!”

  “Young raccoon”—Crawley leaned down so his long beak was practically poking Kit in the nose—“we crows have not been in the carnival business since the sun fi
rst shined off a feather by rounding up to give away our prizes.”

  “Well, what about a trade?” Eeni said. “We could bargain for the last two points?”

  “Crows do not bargain,” Crawley told her, and then turned back to Kit. “You have a very good score, and it is nothing at all to be ashamed of. While you haven’t won the collar and leash, you can take your pick from the rest of our finest prizes! How about this bone that squeaks when you bite it? Or this ball that jingles? Cats seem quite fond of this sort of thing.”

  “I’m not a cat,” Kit said. “I’m a raccoon.”

  “Well, all you furry scurriers look the same to us.” Crawley shrugged. “So what’ll it be? You could get a comb harp, a whole pack of ancestor cards, and this stuffed doll of a raccoon. You could chew on a doll of yourself, eh? That’d cause some talk in your alley! You could be a—what’s it?—a performance artist.”

  “I don’t want to be a performance artist,” said Kit.

  “No one ever does.” The crow sighed.

  “Is there no way I can get the prize I want?” Kit tried to make his voice sound as pitiful as possible, but Crawley was unmoved.

  He saw that the crow had an interesting little collection of items on the back of his booth, thimbles and buttons and shiny objects that weren’t on display with the prizes. It gave Kit an idea. “Can I have one of those?” he pointed.

  “Oh no!” Crawley cawed. “That’s my private collection. Gifts that have been given to me over the seasons. Some folks are generous with old Crawley.”

  Kit got an idea, like a firefly lighting up in his brain. He knew what to do, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it.

  “Well, I suppose I could add to your collection too, seeing the fun we’ve had,” he said. He reached up into the inside band of his hat and pulled out the wooden token Uncle Rik had given him, the one that had belonged to his mother. He looked at it once more against his paw, the pale brown and light pink. The paws within the paws. He squeezed it once and imagined it passing from his mother’s paw to his uncle’s, from his uncle’s to his and then . . . and then he tossed it to the crow. “That’s an antique,” he said. His voice cracked as it came out, and he sniffed back the tears he was feeling. “Enjoy it.”