by Jon Evans
"Stupid blind furry groundworm!" the bluejay retorted, and began to peck at the acorn.
"Your mother should have dropped your egg onto a rock!"
"I must say," the bluejay said between bites, "you speak Bird remarkably well, for a thick hairy slug with a mangy tail."
"Thank you, you moldy-feathered sky-rat. Now give me back my acorn!"
The bluejay considered, while he finished eating half of the acorn. And then, rather incredibly, he let the other half drop to the ground.
"To tell you the truth I wasn't very hungry," he said. "I just enjoy taking acorns from squirrels. I didn't know you spoke Bird. What is your name?"
"My name is Patch."
"My name is Toro."
Patch didn't know what to say. He had never been introduced to a bluejay before. Like all squirrels he thought of bluejays, the Center Kingdom's most prolific eaters of nuts, as dire enemies. Patch looked around to see if any other squirrels saw him talking to a bluejay. Fortunately none were nearby.
"If you're looking for acorns," Toro said, "the wind has been strong today on the other side of those rocks, and many there have fallen."
After a moment Patch said, stiffly, "Thank you."
"Any time," the bird said carelessly, before flying away.
That was the beginning of their secret friendship. It had to remain secret, for other squirrels would have been enraged by the thought of Patch befriending Toro, and other bluejays would have looked askance at Toro befriending Patch. But the two had much in common. Both were lone explorers. And when they saw one another in remote corners of the Center Kingdom, as they often did, they stopped to talk. It was during one of those conversations, during the depths of the winter, that Toro told Patch of what his sharp bluejay eyes had seen in the nearby mountains.
4. In the Mountains
Patch stood beneath the tree that marked the absolute edge of the Center Kingdom and stared horrified at the wasteland between himself and the nearest mountain. Death machines hurtled past in both directions, roaring and snarling, zooming by at speeds so great that Patch could feel the wind of their slipstreams. Sometimes they stopped for a few moments to gather in packs; then they all leapt into motion at once. On either side of the wasteland, metal tree trunks protruded from the concrete, and from their glistening branches hung ever-changing lights. Patch knew from previous experimentation that he could not climb these metal trees. Even a squirrel's claws found no purchase on their shining smooth bark.
At least he saw no dogs, and only a few humans. But from where he stood his intent seemed not just dangerous but actually insane. Surely it was better to abandon the Treetops and swear allegiance to the Meadow than to leap into the certain death of the wasteland. Patch turned around and took a few steps back towards Tuft's drey.
Then he stopped, turned back, cocked his head, and looked once more at the wasteland. He had just realized there was something rhythmic about the way the death machines moved. There was a pattern. The same pattern as that of the changing lights in the sky.
He thought of what Toro had told him. Heaps and rivers of food, waiting to be eaten. Patch couldn't smell any food. He could hardly smell anything over the foul belches of the death machines. The death machines that stopped when the lights changed, maybe, just maybe, long enough for a squirrel to scamper across the wasteland.
Hunger plays tricks on the mind. By the time Patch realized he was actually running for the mountain, and not merely considering it, he was already halfway across the wasteland. The concrete beneath his paws was hard and cold. The several humans on the mountain side of the wasteland had ceased their motion and turned their heads to look at Patch. That wasn't good. But he had gone too far to turn back. The death machines would crush him if he did. His only hope was to keep running. He ran so hard and so fast that after crossing the wasteland he very nearly ran headfirst into the mountain.
Patch stopped just in time and looked around, breathless, amazed at what he had just done. Having reached his destination he did not know what to do next. This was a new and alien world. The ground was entirely concrete; he couldn't see a single blade of grass on this side of the wasteland. The mountain before him was a perfectly vertical wall of rock that reared into the sky far higher than any tree. There was wasteland on two sides; behind him, the wide barrier he had just crossed, teeming with death machines, and to his right, a narrower offshoot that ran deeper into the mountains, occupied only by stationary death machines along its edges. Patch wondered if they were dead, or only sleeping. He hoped for dead. At least there were a few trees along the side of this narrow wasteland, although they were small and withered, their trunks were caged with bricks, and they were spaced so far apart there was no sky-road. Between some of the trees, in the distance, Patch saw a few piles of what looked like big, shiny black rocks.
There were no other animals, only a few passing humans. But while these humans did not approach Patch, they seemed to be directing their attention towards him. This made him very nervous. Humans were huge and unpredictable. Some humans who entered the Center Kingdom spilled food all around them, but the younger ones often tried to attack squirrels, and all of them smelled extraordinarily strange.
Patch sniffed the air. Beneath the thick acrid fumes of the death machines and the alien scent of humanity, he smelled danger. He smelled dogs. Upwind, to the north, across the narrow wasteland, three large dogs leashed to an old human were approaching. Patch hoped the wasteland would forestall them - but as he watched, the dogs began to cross. And then the lead dog saw Patch, and its eyes lit up like flames.
"Kill you and eat you!" it howled ecstatically. "Kill you and eat you!"
The other dogs joined in. "Kill you and eat you! Kill you and eat you! Kill you and eat you!"
Patch didn't stop to listen. Dog conversation was always the same. Patch scrambled for the nearest scrawny tree, and raced right up to its crown.
"Kill you and eat you, kill you and eat you, kill you and eat you!" the dogs howled at him, while they tried to pull their human towards the tree. But the human, while old, was still a massive creature, and to Patch's relief it pulled the homicidal dogs along until they vanished behind the corner of the mountain.
Patch looked around. He stood atop a sickly tree, surrounded by mountains and wasteland. Beneath him, a death machine shuddered into motion and roared forward, and Patch realized to his horror that all those machines that were not moving were not dead, only sleeping, and might come to life at any moment.
Patch was starving, but worse, he was so terrified he could hardly move. He wished with all his heart he had never crossed the wasteland into the mountains. He saw and smelled no food here. And he did not dare descend from this scrawny tree. There was no safety below. Between the mountains and the line of death machines beneath him there was a slightly raised strip of concrete, in which the trees were set; but it was perfectly apparent to Patch that the death machines, with their terrible rolling feet, could easily rampage down this narrow strip too if they so desired. Nowhere and nothing in the mountains was safe.
5. A Welcome Discovery
"Patch!" a voice chirped. "Patch, is that you?"
Patch looked to the sky and his heart filled with relief as a bluejay fluttered downwards and settled on a nearby branch. Nothing dispels fear like the unexpected arrival of a friend.
"What are you doing here?" Toro asked, amazed.
"I came to get food," Patch said. "You said there was food here."
"There is. Just down there." Toro pointed with his beak deeper into the mountains. "Inside those black things. Around them too, sometimes."
"The rocks?" Patch asked doubtfully, but as he looked, he saw the skins of what he had taken to be rocks fluttering in the cold wind.
"Some of them are full of food. Food falls right out of them. Go on down, I'll show you."
"Go on down," Patch said, even more doubtfully.
"It's perfectly safe. Just follow me," Toro said.
Th
e bluejay launched himself into the wind, angled his wings into a slow gliding turn, and came to rest on the concrete, next to where a heap of black things stood beside one of the caged little trees.
"Easy for you," Patch muttered. "You're a bird. You just fly away from trouble."
But the sight of his friend perched casually right next to a sleeping death machine, combined with the promise of food, was enough to bring Patch down to the concrete. He scampered towards Toro as quickly as possible, turning his head from side to side to look for danger. He found it everywhere. There were humans both behind and ahead of Patch, a row of sleeping death machines to his right, and to his left he smelled rats. Many rats.
"This is it!" Toro said when Patch reached him.
Toro sounded as proud as if he stood before a hill of acorns as high as a human, rather than a pile of huge, foul-smelling black things like seed-pods, their shiny skins flapping like leaves in the wind. Patch looked skeptically at the trickled heap of decaying sludge beneath one of the seed-pods, and said, "You said there was food."
"There's food inside them," Toro promised. "Just go inside. That's what the rats do."
"It's rat food?" Patch asked, horrified. Rats would eat anything, the more rancid and disgusting the better.
"Rats come here," Toro admitted. "That's how I found it, I saw them. But sometimes it's good food too. Once, right here, I found the most marvellous seeds I ever tasted. They were wonderful."
Patch sniffed the air. He smelled bluejay, death machines, rotting sludge and rats. He smelled his own fear and hunger. But there was something else beneath all that. Like the faintest hint of wine in muddy water, or a single musical note almost drowned out by a howling crowd, Patch smelled something so delicious that his mouth began to water.
"What is it?" Toro asked.
"It's here," Patch said. He leaped up on the nearest black thing. Its material had a strange slick feel, made an alarming crinkling noise when he landed, and was so soft his claws tore right through it. Patch jumped to the top of the pile of huge black seed-pods, and ripped open the skin of the uppermost one with a few bites. The wonderful smell was suddenly stronger. Patch hesitated only a moment. Then he dove headfirst into the hole he had made.
It was so dark inside the seed-pod that he could not see. His snout encountered dry fluttery things, wet sticky things, even hard metal things. In his hunger he pushed them all aside, squirming deeper and deeper, following his nose towards the smell that made him dizzy with hunger. He found paper, like the newspaper with which his drey was lined. He tore the paper open with his teeth. And inside he found a whole mound of food like nothing Patch had ever tasted before. It was soft, salty, and delicious. There was enough to fill the bellies of a dozen squirrels.
Patch ate, and ate, and ate.
Until dimly, through all the debris that surrounded him, he heard Toro's high, harsh cry that meant: "Danger!"
6. A Promise
When Patch finally found his way out of the seed-pod, Toro was gone, and there were rats all around him. Some hid beneath the huge black seed-pods, some scuttled in the shadows of the nearby mountain. Patch knew from their smells there were at least a dozen of them.
There was another smell too, mixed with that of the rats. The very same unsavory squirrel-smell he had detected in Silver's abandoned drey.
"What do you want?" Patch asked, from his perch atop the mound of seed-pods. He was concerned but not yet frightened. Rats and squirrels were neither friends nor enemies. Squirrels were bigger and stronger, but rats were far more numerous. There were legends of long-ago wars between the two species, but no squirrel Patch knew had ever been attacked by rats. Squirrels lived aboveground, in the sun; rats frequented the night and the dark underworld. Of course, squirrels found rats disgusting and disagreeable - but so did all other animals.
An unusually large rat climbed up to the top of a seed-pod. It was almost as big as Patch himself. Rats usually avoided light, but this one stood unafraid beneath the sun, and demanded: "Who are you?"
"I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. "Who are you that asks?"
"I am Snout," the rat replied. "Why are you here?"
"I came to look for food."
"This is our food. These mountains are ours."
"Your food?" Patch asked, bewildered. There was no ownership of food in the Center Kingdom, not until it had actually been eaten. "That's ridiculous. It's food. It belongs to whoever finds it first."
"Then you belong to us," Snout hissed. "Because we are the rats who will suck the marrow from your broken bones."
And from the shadows all around the heaped seed-pods, other rats arose, and began to climb towards Patch at the top of the pile.
Patch didn't hesitate. He sprinted downwards, running straight at one of the rats. His charge was so unexpected that the rat in question stopped and shrank away a little, just enough for Patch to scamper past him, towards the edge of the pile. Two more rats raced out from beneath the mountain, blocking any escape across the concrete. He was still surrounded, rats were scuttling towards him from all directions.
From the very edge of the pile of seed-pods, Patch jumped as high and as far as he could. For a moment, in midair, he was sure he wouldn't make it, he would fall to the concrete and be torn apart by the rats - but then his outstretched claws latched onto the bark of the little tree beside which the seed-pods had been heaped. Moments later he was on top of the tree, looking down at the milling figures of more than a dozen frustrated rats.
"Come on up!" Patch cried out cheerfully.
He wasn't as confident as he sounded. Rats weren't near as nimble as squirrels, but there were many of them, and this was a very small tree. If all the rats climbed up, Patch wasn't sure he would escape. But at least he was up a tree, his belly was full for the first time in days, and Toro was watching from the next tree over.
"I will find you, Patch son of Silver," the rat named Snout promised. "I will find you and eat your eyes from your skull."
Patch said nothing. He only watched as the rats scurried away. Most of them filed back towards the shadows at the base mountain. But Snout ran along the edge of the mountain, until he reached a huge hole in the mountain's side. Humans had blocked the hole with a wire fence much like those in the Center Kingdom. Snout squeezed himself through a hole in the fence and disappeared into shadow.
"Did you find food?" Toro asked.
"Yes," Patch said. "It was wonderful."
"I've never seen rats like that before."
"Neither have I."
"You should go back to the Kingdom. It's safe there."
Patch was afraid to stay in these terrible mountains for even a moment longer. He wanted to run back to the Center Kingdom, with his full belly and his wonderful story of adventure that no other squirrel would ever believe, and wait for spring to come. But he thought of his mother's empty drey, and the haunting squirrel-smell there - and the way that very same musty squirrel-smell had emanated from that biggest rat.
"Not yet," Patch said.
7. Jumper
The opening in the wire fence that Snout had squeezed through was too small for Patch to do the same. But it was easy enough to climb up to the top of the fence. From there, Patch could see all of the hole in the side of the mountain. It was like some enormous creature had taken a big bite from the mountainside. Beneath the wire fence, a sheer-walled pit plunged deep into darkness. The pit was full of human things, metal and concrete shaped in the strange curves and straight lines that humans favoured but made animals feel queasy. The air was dusty and smelled awful. Patch shaded his eyes with his tail and squinted, but from the top of the fence, where the sun shone brightly, he could still not see into the darkness at the pit's bottom.
"I think we should go," Toro said.
"Not yet," Patch repeated. He watched the dust clouds in the pit, the way they moved. He didn't want to be upwind of the rats. They too had sharp noses. He
ran along the top of the fence, as far downwind as he could, and then he took a deep breath and ran straight down the fence.
The lip of the pit was hard concrete, no good for downclimbing, but a wooden plank ran down into the shadows. Patch moved down this plank as quietly as he could; rats had sharp hearing, too. It was strange to walk on wood with such a perfectly straight surface. The pit was as deep as a medium-sized tree. About halfway down the plank he moved from sunlight into shadow, and his eyes began to adjust to his new surroundings.
The center of the pit was jumbled full of huge, geometric human things. Its bottom was crisscrossed by pipes and planks and girders. The floor and one wall of the pit were rocky earth rather than concrete. But it was in a corner between two concrete walls, towards the inside of the mountain, that he saw the unmistakable scuttling motion of a rat.
Patch crept closer, staying behind human things as much as possible. He reached a metal pipe that ran near the corner, and followed its length until the pipe ran into the concrete wall, just a half-dozen squirrel-lengths from the corner. He was still downwind, he thought, although it was difficult to read the wind down here. Patch stood as tall as he could and was just barely able to look over the pipe and see into the corner of the pit.
In that corner Patch saw something very strange. He saw a dozen large rats standing in a circle, all facing outwards, with all their tails knotted together in a big tangled lump in the middle of their circle. Standing on this lumpy knot of tails was Snout, the biggest rat of all. And next to this bizarre clump of rats, Patch saw, to his great surprise, another squirrel, small and with reddish fur.
"Patch son of Silver," the strange squirrel said, and Patch stiffened. "I've heard of him. He's of the Treetops. He talks to birds and goes off alone for days. I'm sure he doesn't know anything. He just came to the mountains for the food."
"That's not good enough," Snout said. "We will give him to Karmerruk."