Beasts of New York: A children's book for grown-ups

by Jon Evans

  "Are there no hawks here?" Patch asked, noting the lack of caution with which his companions moved along the ground, especially the one named Headfirst.

  "There aren't many places where they can reach the ground, with all the vines," Shiver said. "But there are worse things than hawks. There are foxes."

  "Foxes? What's a fox?"

  "Have you no foxes in the Center Kingdom?"

  "No," Patch said.

  "Like a dog," Shiver said, "only very smart, and very vicious."

  Patch didn't like the sound of that at all.

  At length they reached a small stream, its muddy banks covered with the golden grass that had lived on the poison hills. Starlings and sparrows flittered above the river, flying in weird erratic patterns. Patch saw two sparrows actually collide in midair, something he had never heard of before. Shiver and her family crossed through the grass, plunged into the cold stream, and swam across without hesitation. Patch followed. Squirrels are strong swimmers; they can paddle with all four limbs, and use their tail as a rudder.

  "What is this grass called?" Patch asked.

  "Clubgrass," Shiver said. "Be careful. Foxes hide in it."

  Patch was glad when they were through the clubgrass and out in the forest, and even gladder when they climbed into the sky-road. They continued along and above the stream until it widened into a pond. Shiver's tree was an old oak tree by the edge of the pond. It was tall and majestic, but it was covered with rotting bulbous growths.

  "You can stay with us as long as you like," Shiver said to Patch.

  "Thank you," Patch said.

  Her sister Burner stared at him, and said nothing, but Patch could tell from her scent that she was full of rage. Headfirst went rampaging up and down the oak tree like he was trying to escape a climbing fox. Scream climbed up the top of the tree and when she reached the top began to howl. Gutbite gnawed inedible bark from a branch already scarred by his deprivations. Blindeye stared into the sky and muttered softly to himself.

  "I suppose it's different from the Center Kingdom," Shiver said.

  Patch said, "Where is the rest of your tribe?" He saw no other squirrels in the tree around him.

  Shiver said, "We have no tribes. No clans. Only families."

  "Oh. No other families live around here?"

  Shiver smiled. "No."

  "Maybe I should find a drey in one of these other trees."

  "That isn't safe."

  "Why not?"

  "You can share my drey," Shiver said. "It's big enough for two."

  And then her eyes widened and went white, and she groaned loudly, and her whole body began to shake so violently that Patch was afraid she would fall from the tree, and she began to bite frenziedly at the air around her.

  5. The Customs of Bones

  "I'm sorry," Shiver said, when she had recovered. She could not bring herself to look at Patch as she spoke. "I'm not quite normal. Not quite. I have little attacks of madness like that. It doesn't happen often. I promise I'm the most normal squirrel you'll find in this whole kingdom. I'm so sorry it happened in front of you!"

  "It's all right," Patch said. He searched for something good to say on the subject. "At least it doesn't last long."

  "When it happens," Shiver said, "it feels like I am dying and being born, at the same time."

  Patch didn't know what to say.

  "Come into my drey," Shiver said. "It's warm."

  "I'm not sure your family wants me here," Patch said uncertainly.

  Shiver looked hard at Patch. "You don't want to go out there on your own, Patch. It's not like the Center Kingdom. It's not safe in this forest. No one is safe. You were lucky to find my family. Other squirrels wouldn't have been so welcoming."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Come into my drey. Stay with us."

  Patch hesitated. He saw that all of Shiver's brothers and sisters, from their position around the tree, were watching him warily. He saw that because of where they stood and sat, there was no easy way to escape the tree, either by ground or by sky-road.

  He followed Shiver into her drey. The entrance alone was larger than any drey Patch had ever entered; a long, dark tunnel into the heart of the tree. Patch did not recognize its rich, disturbing smell, but his tail stiffened as if danger was near.

  "Did you have a mate, in the Center Kingdom?" Shiver asked.

  Patch thought of Brighteyes, who Shiver resembled. "No."

  "I have never had a mate," Shiver said. "I'd rather die without breeding than have mad, twisted babies. But you, Patch of the Center Kingdom, you are untouched, untainted."

  They entered the main chamber of her drey, a hollow chamber in the heart of the tree big enough for a half-dozen squirrels. A fissure in its ceiling allowed in a few thin rays of daylight. There was a jumbled pile of white twiglike things in the corner. For a moment Patch did not understand what they were. Then he cried out in horror.

  "What is it?" Shiver asked, confused. "Is something wrong?"

  "Bones," Patch whispered. "Those are bones."

  "Yes. Of course."

  "Squirrel bones."

  After a moment Shiver said, surprised, "It is not your custom, in the Center Kingdom, to sleep on the bones?"

  "Whose are they?"

  "Whose do you think? Our old, our weak, our enemies, those babies born dead or too misshapen to walk… Once we have eaten their flesh we sleep on their bones. They are warm and comfortable. Come and see."

  Patch managed to say, "No."

  "Don't worry. I throw the skulls into the waters, you won't hurt yourself on a tooth." Shiver climbed up onto the heap of bones. There was room enough for two.

  "I can't stay here," Patch said.

  "You must."

  "I can't."

  "You will stay here, Patch of the Center Kingdom," Shiver said harshly. "You will give me healthy children, normal children. Or your bones will join this pile. But either way you will stay with me."

  As she spoke the last words she began to shake and bite the air again.

  Patch ran as if a fox was at his heels. But Shiver, in the midst of her attack of madness, pursued him; and her affliction seemed to give her unnatural strength and speed; and outside the drey, her brothers and sisters waited.

  6. Two Escapes

  Patch scrambled out of Shiver's drey onto the branches of her oak tree and began to run up to a high branch. The routes to the sky-road and the tree trunk were guarded by Shiver's brothers and sisters. But the branch Patch aimed for did not connect to the sky-road at all.

  Shiver lurched out of the drey behind Patch, and raced after him with terrible speed. Her claws clicked mechanically on the bark, and she made wet gnashing sounds as she bit the air. Gutbite and Headfirst followed her, as it became clear that Patch was not running for the tree trunk, and then Burner and Scream as well. Only Blindeye stayed where he was, perched on the highest branch of the tree, laughing quietly to himself.

  The branch Patch had chosen ended in midair. It was strong, but it shook with the weight of six squirrels. When the branch divided, he scrambled up and out, away from the trunk, on a smaller branch; and Shiver was close behind him; and when this new branch divided, he raced even farther away from the trunk, on a branch as thin as a blade of grass, so weak that it bent beneath his weight - and as the branch bent, Patch jumped with all his strength - and fell from a terrible height -

  - and landed with a loud splash in the pool of water beneath the tree.

  The pool was shallow and half-mud, and Patch's hind legs caught in the slippery muck. He was lucky he had fallen into a place more water than mud; had he fallen into the deep mud, he would have been trapped and drowned. Patch thrashed about violently, managed to free himself, swam hard to the other side of the pool, climbed up onto a log that lay across the muck, and only then dared to look around. He had expected Shiver and her family to double back, run down their trunk, and pursue him. But they still stood on the branches of their tree. Shiver had recovered from her
attack, and she looked lost and forlorn as she stared down at Patch.

  "Don't go," she pleaded. "Please. I'm sorry. I said the wrong thing. I would never hurt you, Patch. I've waited for you for so long. I was so afraid you would go away. I'm sorry for what I said, for what I am. Don't leave me. Please, Patch. Stay with me. Together we can be mighty. Together we can become King and Queen."

  "I don't want to be the King of Madness," Patch said.

  He turned and fled.

  The forest through which he ran was not at all like the Center Kingdom. Even at its most wild, even in the Ramble, the Center Kingdom was carved into small fragments of land, each with its own smells, landmarks, inhabitants. This forest was a single overwhelming mass of trees in all directions. As Patch ran, he knew he was not really escaping. For as he fled from the madness of Shiver and her family, he ran deeper into the Kingdom of Madness. It was dark and alien and endless, full of unknown sights and smells and dangers.

  Patch saw now that this whole island was haunted by poison and insanity. He could not stay here. He would be eaten, by a fox or by other squirrels, or worst of all, by the madness itself. He had to escape.

  He called to mind his memory book, his vision of the world from above. The waters around the island were too deep, wide, and violent for a squirrel to swim; but there were two human-built crossings. One south of the golden hills, and one on the northeastern corner of the island.

  The crossing south of the golden hills was closer.

  But the other crossing would take him back towards the Center Kingdom.

  Patch came to a sudden halt in the middle of the sky-road as the idea struck him like a thunderbolt. If he could find a way to, and then across, the mighty crossing to the northeast, then he would be almost halfway back to the Center Kingdom.

  He hadn't even thought about trying to go back home. It was impossibly far. No squirrel had ever made such a journey … unless you counted the dusty legends of the great migrations of the past. It required the crossing of two great chasms of water … but of course, one such crossing was already sheer necessity, to escape this Kingdom of Madness. And if he succeeded at the first, surely the second would be easier …

  Patch turned from the east to the northeast, towards the Center Kingdom, towards his home. He began to run.

  7. Journey through Madness

  Patch's journey across the Kingdom of Madness lasted eleven days. It is not my intent to tell you everything he saw or did. I will tell you he saw foxes, twice, from high in the sky-road. Once he saw a graceful, beautiful creature he did not know the name for, tall as a human, with shining brown fur and long spindly legs. And once he saw a long, legless, slithering thing with pebbled skin. That thing turned Patch's blood cold with terror, and he ran from it as fast as he could.

  He kept his distance from other animals, especially other squirrels. He ate maple buds, flowers, grubs and insects. Occasionally he saw or smelled nuts on the forest floor, and descended to eat them; but he did so very cautiously, and returned to the sky-road right away. He tried to speak to birds, but those who nested in the Kingdom of Madness had been even more afflicted than the mammals, and their speech made no sense at all. He slept in the crooks where high branches met, or sometimes in drey-like hollows, if he was satisfied they were long abandoned.

  On the fifth day he reached the edge of the forest. Beyond this lay a vast expanse of human buildings, quite small compared to those around the Center Kingdom, hills rather than mountains. He managed to spend another day moving along the edge of the forest in a generally northeasterly direction. On this day he had to cross four wasteland strips infested by death machines; and he made an important discovery.

  Like the Center Kingdom, humans had erected metal tree trunks here, from which winking lights dangled. Unlike the Center Kingdom, they had not stopped there. For the endless winding strips of wasteland that carved these human lands were lined by trees. Real trees, green and growing - but also dead, severed tree trunks, perfectly straight. And these dead tree trunks were connected by an endless web of wires. Those wires sagged beneath Patch's weight, their material felt strange beneath his paws, and sometimes they emitted a disturbing humming sound that made Patch feel ill and shaken - but they provided an easy route across the wasteland strips, high above the death machines.

  On the sixth day of his journey, Patch abandoned the forest for good, and took to this wire sky-road across human lands. He was making good progress. With spring had come an abundance of food, even in the human lands. And on the seventh day, when he climbed the sky-road up a high hill, and then climbed to the highest branch on the highest tree on that hill, he saw the pale white towers that loomed above his destination: the vast metal span that led across the waters, away from the Kingdom of Madness.

  8. Daffa

  As Patch journeyed through the human lands along the wire sky-road, he sometimes saw or smelled cats, rabbits and raccoons, and each time he was tempted to stop and strike up conversation, for he was desperately lonely. But rabbits were too stupid to bear talking to; and cats and raccoons were dangerous. He knew of them from the Center Kingdom, and knew that while they had no reason to attack a passing squirrel, they also had no reason not to. The smaller ones could run the wire sky-road almost as well as Patch, and worst of all, they might well be afflicted by the madness. It was best to keep moving quickly and not talk to anyone.

  He had seen much strange behaviour since entering the human lands. Watching the concrete strips below, he had realized for the first time that humans actually rode inside death machines, and wondered how the two species had struck such a bargain. He had seen humans run down the street, smelling of sweat and terrible exhaustion, although they neither chased nor were chased by anything. But the strangest thing Patch saw was on the eighth day of his journey. It caused him to stop and watch bemused for some time.

  What he saw, as he sat one of the sky-wires, was a human with dark skin, standing on the flat top of a building, holding a big broken tree-branch, and swinging it around him in slow circles. And in the sky above him, a flock of hundreds of pigeons flew in circles around this building, in the same speed and direction as the human's branch; indeed, it looked as if this branch extended invisibly until it connected to the flock, and that the human held them like dogs on leashes, controlling their motions. Patch could hear the birds chanting something that sounded like "Kabooti kabooti kabooti." The word was meaningless to him.

  As Patch wondered if humans too were afflicted by the curse of the Kingdom of Madness, one of the pigeons fluttered weakly away from the flock and came to rest on the wire not far from him.

  "What are you doing?" Patch asked the pigeon in Bird. He wasn't really hoping for a comprehensible response, but eight long days of lone travel had left him so lonely that even a one-way conversation seemed more agreeable than silence.

  "Oh my goodness," the pigeon gasped. "Oh my goodness, I thought I would die. I just went to watch but then I was in the flock. I thought I would die."

  "Who are you?" Patch asked hopefully. This pigeon did not sound mad.

  "I'm Daffa. Who are you?"

  "I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said.

  "Good heavens, you're a long way from home, aren't you?"

  "You've heard of the Center Kingdom?"

  "I am of the Center Kingdom," Daffa said. "I flew here. How did you get here?"

  "I don't suppose you know a hawk named Karmerruk."

  Daffa took two frightened hops away from Patch. "Is he here?"

  "No," Patch said. "I made a bargain with him, but he tricked me and left me here, and he flew back to the Center Kingdom."

  Daffa looked relieved.

  "Do you know a bluejay named Toro?" Patch asked.

  "I don't think so."

  "Are you going back to the Center Kingdom? Can you find him and give him a message from me?"

  "Can you tell me where he is?" Daffa asked.

 
; Patch considered. "Not exactly. But you can ask around… "

  "I'm not very good at remembering things like messages," Daffa admitted. "Really I can only remember faces and places. I can go exactly to any place I've ever been. But I'm not good with messages. A big cat told me to take a message once. He'd learned Bird just like you. I forget what the message was. But I can go right back to the big cat any time I want."

  "A cat learned Bird?" Patch asked, intrigued. "I thought cats ate birds."

  "This cat was different."

  "Why did you come here?" Patch asked.

  Daffa looked down and sighed. "I'm looking for my home."

  "Looking for your home? But I thought you could go exactly -"

  "I don't understand it either," Daffa said sadly. "I used to have two homes. I would go to one, and the humans would tie a ribbon to my leg, and I would fly to the other, and they would take off the ribbon and give me wonderful food. It was so much fun. But one day I got carried away by a big thunderstorm. And when I came back I couldn't find either home any more. The storm must have confused me."

  "When did this happen?" Patch asked. He didn't remember any recent storm.

  "I don't know. I'm not good with time either. But whenever it was, ever since then I've been flying around looking for my home. That's why I'm here. Then I saw the flock and went to see what they were doing. But that whole flock is mad!"

  "What are they saying? Kabooti kabooti kabooti, what does that mean?"

  "It doesn't mean anything."

  "Do you want to come with me?" Patch asked. "I'm going to the crossing. You can come with me and look for your home." He nodded towards the pale towers visible in the distance.

  "Oh, the bridge," Daffa said. "But we can't go together. I fly, and you crawl."

  "I don't crawl!" Patch said indignantly. "I walk and I run."

  Daffa shrugged as if to say he didn't see the difference. "Maybe I'll come visit you sometime if I see you. What did you say your name was again?"

  "Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan," Patch began, but Daffa had already begun to soar into the sky.