“Do it, kiddo,” the stoat in the coat repeated, as if it was a line he’d memorized from a play. “You’ll get ’em this time.”
Kit noticed a wink pass from Flynn to the tall stoat, like they were working together. The stoat even pressed Kit forward, closer to the betting table.
The crowd around Kit urged him on, urged him to borrow from the Blacktail brothers, to play again, to double his bet with seeds he didn’t have. He looked over his shoulder for another raccoon face—an uncle he’d never met, a friend of any kind—but all the faces he saw were of other animals from other families. They didn’t care what happened to him, just that they were amused. Why had his mother sent him here? Why did she think he’d be safer in this place than hiding out in the forests under the Big Sky? He couldn’t get out of the crowd of creatures all around. There were too many of them, not enough space, not enough sky. He felt closed in, trapped!
“Pay up or play up, young Kit.” Flynn Blacktail smiled. “You’ve got to play to stay. Or pay what you owe and then you can go.”
“I . . . I . . .” Kit reached for the seed bag in his pocket, all the money he had in the world. He had no choice. He had to turn it over. He’d lost. But in his pocket, he felt no seed pouch. All his seeds and nuts . . . all his savings were gone. Even worse, the stone was gone too . . . the Footprint of Azban! “My pouch!” he cried. “It’s . . . it’s . . . gone!”
Suddenly, Flynn’s smile vanished. His lip raised to show his teeth, and a sharp growl slid like a knife from his snout. The crowd eased back, their senses attuned to danger.
“You said you had seeds to bet,” Flynn growled. “You wouldn’t be trying to cheat your cousins, now, would you, Kit?”
As Flynn spoke, Shane moved around the table, front claws up. He stood on his back paws quite a height taller than little Kit.
“We don’t like moochers here,” said Shane. “A bet’s a bet, from howl to snap, and there’s no outs from a bet made fair.”
“He’s right, you know,” the stoat agreed.
“A bet’s a bet,” a mole in the crowd muttered. “Howl to snap.”
“Howl to—?” Kit didn’t know what they were saying. He rummaged through his pockets. He couldn’t find his seed pouch anywhere. He’d been robbed; he was sure of it.
“You shouldn’t play if you don’t have the seeds,” a squirrel in a torn bowler hat added unhelpfully.
“You owe us,” said Flynn, coming around the other side of the table. “Pay up!”
“But I don’t have anything to pay you with . . . ,” Kit pleaded, trying to back away from the Blacktail brothers, but finding the crowd had blocked him. “My pouch was stolen, I swear it was. I have to find it!”
Through a gap in the crowd he saw a flash of white, an albino rat scurrying away down the winding alley, clutching Kit’s seed pouch in her front paw.
“There,” he shouted, pointing. “That rat! That rat stole my seeds!”
As all heads turned to see the rat, Kit shoved through, crawling between their legs, hopping between them and knocking them aside, running full speed after the white rat that had robbed him.
“You get back here, young Kit,” Flynn Blacktail shouted after him. “You owe us. Nobody robs the Rabid Rascals!”
“Stop!” Kit called after the rat, who leaped over the dog named Rocks and dove into a wide hole in the ground next to Larkanon’s.
“Watch it!” grumbled Rocks, still not bothering to move.
Kit had no choice but to swallow his fear and jump over the dog himself. He didn’t even think about the angry crowd he’d left behind him, or the piece of bark on which his mother had scrawled his uncle’s address in the hope Kit could find him.
He had to chase down the thieving rat and get his pouch back. It wasn’t just about his seeds. His mother had said that old stone with the Footprint of Azban on it could prevent a war. She had died protecting it. If Kit let some albino rat steal it, his parents had died for nothing.
He was not going to let that happen.
Chapter Seven
TRAPPED RAT
KIT dove into the dark hole, squeezing his body into the narrow tunnel. Though the opening was small, he popped out into a vast underground cavern. He rolled across a smooth floor, before knocking into a pile of crumbling bricks. He snatched his hat from the ground, beat the dust and dirt from it, and put it back on his head, low over his eyes while he searched the darkness for the sneaky white rat.
Creatures of all types had set up their apartments in the cavern’s nooks and crannies. Two old squirrels crouched beneath an oil lamp playing cards, while a third slept under a raggedy blanket of weeds. Across from them a red fox mom was curled up with her pups, their tiny red heads poking from beneath her tail. There were other squirrels watching from high holes, guarding their nuts against intruders. In small open-front shops, possums and moles argued over the price of scraps of cloth or bits of food. There was even—Kit shuddered at the sight—a shop where a pock-faced frog in a fur-trimmed coat sold artificial claws, razor sharp, made of discarded metal scavenged from above.
“Hey, you!” the frog called out from his shop door. “Swell jacket you got on there.”
Kit ignored him.
The rat was nowhere to be seen. Kit didn’t dare ask anyone he saw for help. He’d learned fast what most folks down there learned young, the first rule of Ankle Snap Alley: Don’t trust anybody, not even your own kind.
“I said you there! Stripy tail!” the frog called out again. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Kit kept ignoring him.
“You’ll need some defense more than tooth and claw, I think,” the frog said.
Kit didn’t like this frog’s banter and wanted to be left alone to find the rat. He figured there was one sure way to get rid of a pesky shopkeep. “I don’t have any money,” he said.
That was enough for the frog, who flicked his tongue once, turned around, and hopped back into his store to wait for a better customer to come along.
“Psst.” A whisper turned his head. He looked around and saw nothing. “Psst,” he heard again.
Kit looked down and saw a tiny gray church mouse, wearing white robes and holding the pamphlets just like all the other church mice he’d seen. “You there,” the church mouse said. “You lost?”
“I’m not lost,” Kit said.
“No shame in being lost,” the mouse replied. “We all get lost sometimes.”
The mouse held out a pamphlet, which Kit took from him, just to be polite. On the cover was a picture of a room in a house, where two creatures sat at a table across from each other. One was a raccoon in a long and glorious coat covered with colorful feathers and cloth and beads. The other was a dog in a neat collar and a bloodred waistcoat. On the table in front of them sat a large bone, the bone of a creature much larger than either of the animals seated at the table. It was covered with tiny markings, and standing beside it was a mouse, dressed in robes just like the robes of the church mouse in front of Kit. The mouse in the drawing held a mouse-sized writing quill, and he had a mouse-sized tub of ink beside him. At the same window to the room, all kinds of creatures—furred and feathered, Flealess and Wild alike—peered in.
When Kit opened the small pamphlet, he saw the same picture, but this time the raccoon and the dog were holding their paws up in the A sign, the raccoon’s sign of mutual respect, smiling, while the mouse beamed proudly at the bone in front of him, signed with the paw print of each animal. Outside the window, it looked as if a great party had erupted. Cats danced with dogs, foxes danced with hens, mice and rats and birds all danced together, with mugs of cheese ale for all.
“Do you believe the Bone is real?” the mouse asked.
“Uh.” Kit had no idea what the Bone was supposed to be. He was about to ask, but the mouse talked over him without listening, as church mice so often did.
“We mice know the truth,” the little mouse said. “We were the scribes at the signing. Seven hundred and seven seasons ago, we saw when the promise of peace was made. Before the betrayal of Brutus. We mice carry the truth to all mousekind.”
“I’m not a mouse.” Kit tried to give him the pamphlet back, but the mouse didn’t take it.
“We are all mice in the eyes of history,” the mouse said. “We are all of one claw if you scratch back far enough. This is why history must be remembered! This is what the mice believe. Only history will show us the way to the future!”
“Okay. Right. Um . . . I gotta go.” Kit scurried on, away from the strange mouse and his strange pronouncements.
“Son of Azban!” the mouse called. “You must know the Bone is real! Only the Bone will bring us peace!”
Kit got as far from the crazy mouse as he could. Everyone talked so strangely in this place. Everyone in Ankle Snap Alley, Kit feared, was insane. He wondered if his uncle would be too; if he ever found him.
Suddenly, a loud snap echoed through the cavern. It was followed by a piercing shriek.
“Ow! Ow! Help! I’m caught up! Help!”
“What’s that?” one of the old squirrels mumbled without glancing up from his hand of cards.
“Sounds like a rat in a trap,” the other answered.
“Too bad,” the first replied.
“That’s the way it goes, eh?” The other sighed. “From howl to snap.”
“Howl to snap,” concurred the first.
Neither of them moved, even as the shouting continued.
“Help! Ouch! Someone help!”
The mother fox didn’t look up from her young, nor did the frog shopkeeper come out to see the cause of all the shouting. Nobody paid any attention at all to the poor creature in need. Kit’s ears perked in the direction of the noise, and he followed the sounds around a bend in the wall, which led to another cavern and another tunnel, leading out again toward the light.
His mother had always taught him that the only thing worse than a liar and a cheat was a fella that heard another in need and did nothing at all to help. He wished she were here to help him. He was in need after all. Lost and robbed and on his own in a place filled with liars and cheats and lunatics.
But his troubles were no excuse.
He made his way carefully, following his ears until he found a small chamber to the left of yet another tunnel entrance. There was an abandoned shop with a faded sign that read:
GRUMPKIN’S PAW & PAWN
WE BUY & SELL.
MANAGER HAS NO KEY TO
SEED & NUT SAFE.
It looked like the place had been torn apart, completely trashed by something big and angry. The counter was tipped over and broken. All the shelves were knocked to the floor. Even the sign had a big claw mark all across it. It took Kit a moment to recognize the claw marks as words:
CLOSED BY THE FLEALESS
On the floor, behind the broken counter, Kit saw the base of a trap, a big metal contraption with a flat pressure plate and spring that snapped a bar shut when someone stepped on it.
“Help! Help!” the creature in the trap cried out.
Kit came around the counter and saw that the trap had snapped shut on the tail of the white rat, who was still holding Kit’s seed pouch and crying out in pain. The rat was young, about his age, and she had on an oily brown vest with some kind of insignia on it. The insignia was so threadbare and faded that it blended into the vest almost completely. The vest itself looked like it had never been clean.
“Ouch! This really hurts! Somebody help!” the rat shouted as she squirmed in the trap.
When she saw Kit, she stopped howling and looked up at him, her tone changing instantly. She stopped shouting.
“Oh, good, it’s you,” she said. “Get me out of this thing. It smarts like you wouldn’t believe.”
Chapter Eight
HOWL TO SNAP
YOU picked my pocket!” Kit yelled at the trapped rat. “You stole all my money!”
“It was for your own good,” she said. She tried to wiggle a little, but Kit saw her wince in pain. She tried to hide the grimace on her face, but she was hurting.
“Hold on.” Kit sighed. “Stop wiggling.”
He bent down beside the spring on the trap and studied it. The black mask of fur around his eyes crinkled as he thought. He looked it over for weak spots and then, using both his hands, he bent back one piece and unwound another part. While he did that, he stretched out one foot and used his claw to pick up a bit of dirt. He stuffed the dirt into the works of the spring, which pushed the coils apart, just enough to let the rat slide her tail out.
In a flash, she was free and standing back on her rear legs, eyeing Kit warily.
“Why’d you go and do that?” she demanded.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Get me out of that trap so quick?”
“You said you needed help.” Kit shrugged. “So I helped.”
“But you didn’t get your pouch back first.” She held up Kit’s seed pouch. “You had me caught but good, and you let me go before getting what you was after.”
“So?” said Kit. “I still want my pouch back. You stole it.”
“I know I stole it, tick-brain!” The rat shook her head. “Point was you could’ve gotten it back from me while I was stuck!”
“That wouldn’t have been right,” Kit told her. “Just ’cause you’re a two-bit crook and a cheat doesn’t mean I have to be.”
The rat sighed and shook her head. “You won’t last long here in Ankle Snap with that attitude.” She weighed the pouch in her hand. “Heavy. What you got in here?”
“That’s my own business,” said Kit.
“Seems to me that your business is in the palm of my paw.” She tossed the little bag up and down. Kit imagined the Footprint of Azban jostling inside, cracking. His face tightened. “Oh, lighten up, big guy. You’ll give your fleas a heart attack.”
She tossed him the bag and rolled her eyes, watching as he stuffed it into the front pocket of his jacket. “Put it inside your jacket,” she said. “Harder to snatch.”
“That’s where it was,” he said.
“Harder for anyone but me to snatch,” she clarified.
Kit scowled, but did like she suggested.
“I’m no crook, by the way,” the rat called out. “My name’s Eeni. And you are?”
“I’m Kit.” He stopped and turned back around to face her. “And where I come from, if you pick somebody’s pocket, that makes you a crook.”
“I was always gonna give it back to you. I told you I stole it for your own good.”
“My own good? How’s that?”
“You had to get away from them Blacktail brothers. Bad news they are. Getting you to chase me seemed the best way. You were about a breath and a half away from getting rabbit-rolled.”
“Rabbit-rolled?” Kit wondered.
“Nailed to the wall by your ears by one brother while the other robs you blind. If you struggle, the nails stretch your ears out like a rabbit’s.”
“That’s awful. They seemed so nice.”
“Folks in Ankle Snap Alley always seem nice,” she said. “But half of them are liars and half of them are pickpockets and the last half of them’s both.”
“Three halves? That doesn’t add up honest.”
“Ankle Snap Alley’s the kind of place where things don’t add up honest. They never have.”
Kit frowned.
“So where’d you learn to open traps like that?” Eeni asked him.
He shrugged. “Back home.”
“You from the Big Sky?” Eeni asked.
“Yeah,” said Kit.
“Why’d you leave swell turf like that for here?” Eeni wondered. “Slivered Sky and the gritty
old Ankle Snap.”
“I’ve come to find my uncle,” said Kit.
“Find him? He lost?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He’s my mother’s brother. My ma gave me his address on a piece of bark, and told me to find him . . . but . . .”
“But you lost that piece of bark to the Blacktail brothers?”
Kit nodded.
“You don’t remember what she wrote?”
Kit shook his head. He felt tears pressing on the back of his eyes.
“Well, don’t worry about that,” said Eeni. “You know this uncle’s name? We can’t very well go asking around for any old uncle.”
“His name’s Rik,” he said.
“Just Rik? That ain’t much to go on. Maybe it’s best you head back home.”
“I can’t do that,” Kit said firmly. “You gonna help me?”
“You helped me when you didn’t have to,” said Eeni. “And a rat always returns a favor, so, yeah, I’ll help you. Howl to snap.”
“‘Howl to snap’? What is that?” asked Kit. “I heard some other folks saying it.”
“Howl to snap?” The rat brought her tail around and sucked on the tip where it was bruised. She leaned back against the wall. Rats felt best when they were leaning against walls. “It’s just a thing we say around here. You know, you’re born under this sky howling, and most often as not, you go out with the snap of a trap. Same’s true for everyone. But what you do between that howl and that snap, well, that’s what matters. Every lie you tell or kindness you create. The stuff you do from howl to snap makes you who you are. Get it?”
“I get it,” said Kit. “Thanks.”
She shrugged. “Don’t let it ever be said I’m not a rat who keeps her word.”
“Just one who picks pockets.” Kit smirked.
“When necessary. So, this uncle of yours? Anything else you know about him? How’s he make his nuts? He a seed swiper? Paper tickler? Plain old robbing raccoon?”
“No!” said Kit. “He’s not a criminal at all! My uncle’s like my parents. He’s a historian.”
The Wild Ones Page 4