by Jon Evans
"I'm glad you found me. This is my time, isn't it? I'm glad I'm not alone."
Taildancer's one remaining eye closed and did not reopen. Patch stayed next to her for a long time, watching her motionless form. Then, wincing with the pain in his leg, he climbed to the very top of the mighty willow. Standing on a branch so slender it threatened to break beneath his weight, he looked around at the crow-laden trees of the Ramble, at the green Center Kingdom. He was high above the stink of blood and war, and the treetop air was clear and clean. He could smell the Great Sea to the north. He even caught the scent of King Thorn himself. That in itself was not surprising; the King had, after all, lived in this tree. What amazed Patch, what so surprised him that he nearly fell, was the faintest whiff, the thinnest hint, of another squirrel as well.
Patch sniffed the air again and again. He wondered if perhaps his mind was betraying his senses, mixing hope and reality into delusion. But in the end he could not deny what his nose was telling him. Either he had gone mad - or his mother Silver had stood on this very branch, not so very long ago.
The sun was halfway towards the horizon by the time Patch climbed painfully back down the great willow and began to make his way northeast through the blood-soaked hills of the Ramble. If King Thorn and Silver were still alive, they would be in the North. There was no other safe place left in all the Center Kingdom.
Patch limped numbly onwards, trying not to think about what he had just seen and smelled and heard, as the shadows lengthened around him. He wished he had stayed with White. He was so dazed, his mind so distant from the world, that he did not realize he was surrounded until it was too late.
7. The Gobblers
There were four of them, big squirrels, well-fed. Their faces and fur were slashed and scarred and darkly stained with blood, their wore expressions of contorted rage and hate, and they had surrounded Patch between two cedar trees on the slope of a hill above a human highway. He felt a sick, sinking feeling in his gut. This was trouble, bad trouble, he knew it already. And there was no way out. He looked up to the sky, hoping: but neither Toro nor Karmerruk were there to help.
"Who are you?" the largest of them demanded, a squirrel almost as big and strong as Patch's friend Twitch.
"I'm just walking," Patch said, avoiding the question. "Is something wrong?"
"Who are you?" the big squirrel repeated angrily. "Are you of the Ramble or the Meadow?"
"Rat bite," hissed another of the squirrels, a relatively small one with a bloody socket where her left eye should have been. "I know my bites, that's no squirrel bite, that's a rat bite on his leg, he's of the Ramble, he's one of them!"
The four squirrels closed in towards Patch, murder in their eyes.
Patch said, slowly and distinctly, "I swear by the moon I am not of the Ramble."
A odd shivery feeling came from inside him and spread right to the edge of his skin, as it had the last and only other time he had ever sworn by the moon. For a moment he felt weak and sick, and the world around him blurred, all its shapes ran together into a single streaked mass of colours. When the world came back, the four squirrels had drawn away from him, a little awed.
"Then who are you?" the biggest squirrel asked, quietly this time.
"I am," Patch hesitated a moment, "Pale son of Shiny, of the Seeker clan, of the Meadow tribe."
"The Meadow, eh? What are you doing all alone?"
"I was," Patch improvised, "I was in the battle last night, I was pushed off a tree by one of the Ramble, I must have lost my senses, I just woke up. I'm coming back to the army. Which way is it?"
"He's lying," said the one-eyed female. "He's a spy. He's Northern tribe."
"I am not!" Patch said weakly. He hoped he wouldn't have to swear it by the moon. The aftereffects of that last oath had not been pleasant.
"Northern squirrels are red," another of them objected.
Patch realized none of them seemed to suspect he might be Treetops. That was lucky, in a way - but it was also awful confirmation that White's terrible tale had been true, that his whole tribe had been extinguished. He felt cold, as if he had dived into winter-frozen water. Cold and suddenly angry.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "Why should I answer to you?"
The squirrels looked at one another, a bit taken aback by Patch's temerity, until the largest said in a surprised voice, "Who do you think we are? We're Gobblers. We're here to find deserters."
"I'm no deserter."
"We'll see about that," the fourth squirrel said. "What is the name of your rat?"
Patch just looked at him. He didn't even understand the question.
Then the one-eyed female squawked, "Humans!"
And indeed a small family of humans, two large and two small, were advancing towards where the five squirrels stood. The Gobblers immediately scattered - but Patch, thinking fast, remained where he was. The humans left him unmolested and continued towards the nearby highway.
Patch followed, staying as close as he could. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the Gobblers were following. Their fangs were bared. He hurried to keep up - but even the little humans were moving too quickly for him. He tried to trot, but every step seared his leg with agony. The humans grew distant, and the Gobblers broke into a run.
They were almost upon him. Patch turned to face them, fangs bared, ready to die fighting -
- and the Gobblers looked past Patch, blanched, spun in place so quickly that the one-eyed female actually fell in her haste to put her head where her tail had been, and fled. All of them dashed to and up the nearest cedar tree, sprinting as if pursued by death itself.
Patch's heart convulsed. As he turned towards the highway, part of him already knew what he would see.
A big dog had pulled free from its human masters and was charging straight towards him, its eyes alight with the vicious thrill of the hunt.
Patch tried to run. His leg gave way beneath him, and he fell, and the dog was standing above him. Fangs glistened in its stinking, slavering mouth. Its leash dangled limply to the ground. There were no humans anywhere near. Patch closed his eyes. This was the end. He hoped it wouldn't hurt too much.
The dog roared so loudly that it took Patch a moment to decipher its words:
"Oh, thank you, thank you, little squirrel! Oh, you saved me, you saved me!"
After a long moment Patch dared to open his eyes. The dog licked him with its huge, oozing tongue. Patch recoiled, revolted. Disgust gave him strength enough to drag himself to his feet. He looked past the dog's huge toothy maw to its face, and his mouth fell open with amazed recognition.
"Beeflover!" he cried.
"Little squirrel!"
In the distance Patch saw humans racing towards him. Beeflover's humans, pursuing their unleashed dog.
He felt dizzy with surprise. There was too much going on. He felt almost as if blackblood poison was beginning to surge through his system once again. But he knew he had to think, and think quickly. Once the humans arrived and took Beeflover away, the Gobblers would return; and Patch had no strength left with which to run.
"Beeflover," he said, "can you carry me across the highway?"
Beeflover's eyes lit up. "The highway! Oh boy! Of course! Oh, that will be fun, little squirrel, let's go, let's go!"
Patch shut his eyes with terror as the dog's fangs dipped towards him, then closed and clamped onto his body with surprising delicacy - and then Patch was rising through the air, cradled between Beeflover's open jaws. Patch opened his eyes, saw the world roiling and tumbling around him, realized a dog was running while holding him in its mouth, and shut them again as tightly as possible. He tried not to breathe through his nose. Beeflover's breath was even worse than the choking air of the golden hills of the Kingdom of Madness.
Then Patch felt a violent yank, and he was falling. He tumbled to the ground, yowling with pain as his wounded leg made contact, and staggered back to his feet. Beeflover looked down at Patch, grinning hugely. Two humans stood above Bee
flover, holding his leash and chastising him loudly.
"That was fun!" Beeflover shouted, before his humans dragged him away.
Patch looked around. He was very near the highway. There was another horse clop-clop-clopping towards him along the highway; shackled to a wooden box. He could barely walk, and Beeflover was gone, and the Gobblers were already back on the ground and resuming their pursuit. There was no way he could outrun them.
Patch waited. He had only one hope. The Gobblers came closer, and their faces shone with malevolent triumph -
- but as the horse passed, dragging the huge box on wheels behind, Patch used what felt like all the remaining strength in his three good legs to leap up to the flat stick of wood that ran between the box's enormous wheels. For a long and dizzying moment he scrabbled on the edge of this ledge; then, just as he thought he was about to slide off, his claws caught a knot in the wood, and he climbed all the way on.
Patch lay drained and near collapse as the horse clopped steadily onwards along the highway. The bemused Gobblers stopped and gaped. And as they dwindled and disappeared into the distance, despite his exhaustion, despite the terrors and horrors of the day gone by, Patch allowed himself a small triumphant smile.
8. The Ancient
Patch hoped the horse might carry him all the way to the North, but it turned around just past the Turtle Sea. He managed to scramble back onto the ground without incident. The sun was now hidden behind the mountains to the west; night was not far off. Patch limped slowly away from the concrete trail, seeking food and some kind of shelter.
He found and ate a few fallen gingko nuts. They only seemed to intensify his hunger, but he was too weak and tired to find a proper dinner. Instead he staggered uphill to a nearby bush and curled up on the dirt beneath its dense branches. It wasn't much of a drey, but it would have to do for tonight. He hoped his leg was better tomorrow. It hardly hurt any more; it seemed distant from him, like it was no longer really part of his body. He knew dimly that this was even more worrying than pain.
Everything was wrong. He had worked so hard and braved so many dangers to return to the Center Kingdom, and now he was in straits as desperate as any he had faced on his journey home. The Ramble was a sea of blood and mangled flesh and carrion crows, and King Thorn had fled to the North. He had failed Karmerruk, he no longer had any idea how he might find Zelina again, he was crippled by a poisoned leg that felt like it would never heal, and he was so hungry. Feeling not just exhausted but actually empty, hollow like a dead tree, Patch lay down and closed his eyes.
Then, what felt like only a moment later, he opened them again.
For a moment Patch lay very still. Then he sniffed the air carefully. There was a strange and electric smell in the air; a rich, feral scent he had encountered before, Patch was sure of it, though he did not know where or when. The mere presence of this scent seemed to restore a little of his strength and curiosity. He fought his way back to his feet, waddled over to the edge of the bush, and peeked his head out between the branches.
From the very middle of a concrete clearing, a colossal stone spire jutted into the sky like a single sharp tooth. It was human-carved on all sides with strange and spidery shapes. It looked as old as the earth itself. A confused series of images flooded Patch's mind as he looked at the spire, images that seemed to hang in the air before him: a golden-eyed creature with a tiger's body and the head of a man; a endless expanse of wrinkled sand littered with thousands of human skeletons; a full moon rising over a vast triangular edifice surrounded by a baying herd of dog-things. For a moment Patch thought he heard voices whispering in some hissing, incomprehensible language, and all his fur stood up on end.
The images dimmed and cleared, and Patch saw something like a dog standing beneath the stone spire, watching him with a leery grin full of sharp teeth. For a moment he thought it was Beeflover. But this dog - if it was a dog - was smaller, and its eyes were golden, and it was lean and wiry with muscle.
"Patch son of Silver," it said, in a low, amused voice. "We meet again."
Patch twitched with surprise. "Who are you? How do you know my name?"
"Oh, I know a lot of useless things," the dog-thing said airily. "Call me Coyote."
Patch shivered when he heard that name, though he did not know why.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Coyote asked, indicating the huge stone spire. "The stories it could tell, if stones could speak. It knows tales of ancient blood and sacrifice, of whole armies slaughtered so one human could try to cheat death. You should bring Zelina here. She would see some interesting things."
"You know Zelina? How is she? Where can I find her?"
"Oh, don't worry, she's fine. She'll find you when the time comes. But I didn't bring you here to gossip, Patch son of Silver."
"Bring me here?"
"Look at that," Coyote said. He motioned to the highway visible beyond the spire, where an automobile was crawling slowly along like a beetle on a branch. "They're so clever, those humans. Always making some new machine. Soulless hunks of metal. I don't like machines, Patch son of Silver. Sometimes I like to throw things into their gears. Like a stone, or a stream. Or a squirrel."
"I don't understand," Patch said nervously.
"Don't worry, I mean it metaphorically. But you know what I do like? I do like the Center Kingdom. Birds come here from so far away, do you know that? You must, you speak Bird so well, such a rare ability in a little furball like yourself. They come here from the four corners of the world, and to that little forest where the Old One lives, and they mingle, and after a season they return to their homes. The world is a terribly big place, little squirrel. Much bigger and much more terrible than you will ever understand."
"The Old One?" Patch asked, by now thoroughly bemused.
"Never mind. Come with me, Patch. I want to show you something. Let's stir things up a little. Let's play a little trick on the King Beneath and see how nimbly he can dance when there's a little breath of chaos in the air, shall we? Follow me."
Patch hesitated. "Where?"
"Not far. We'll get there by nightfall. I can promise you that. I know everything there is to know about nightfall."
"I can't. I'm sorry. My leg, I can't walk." Patch was relieved to have this excuse. He didn't want to spend any more time around Coyote than absolutely necessary. He seemed friendly, his amused smile never wavered, but there was something terrifying about him; something old and pitiless.
"Your leg, yes, your poor poisoned leg. Let's take a little look."
Coyote loped over towards the bush that sheltered Patch. Patch stiffened, but held his ground; there was clearly no point running away.
Up close, Coyote's wild scent was intoxicating, like breathing in someone else's dreams. Coyote lowered his head to Patch's wounded hindleg, and licked it once with his red and rasping tongue. It felt dry, like a stone dragged over Patch's skin. The leg immediately began to tingle with warmth.
"No more excuses," Coyote said. "Follow me."
He turned and walked towards the northwest. Patch took a tentative step forward. To his amazement his poisoned leg felt strong again, and painless. Confused, nervous, but also grateful, Patch followed the mysterious golden-eyed Coyote into the light of the setting sun.
9. The Gate Beneath
"Hurry," Coyote said, in a scolding voice. "We have to reach the Gateway before nightfall, or you'll be ratmeat sure as sunrise. Run, Patch. Run!"
Coyote broke into a loping gallop, and it was all Patch could do to keep up. They ran north, towards the Great Sea; first across green fields, then down towards a steep stone-walled ditch where a human highway lay half-buried. This was Meadow territory, and Patch was nervous to cross it, but he saw no other squirrels. Indeed while he was with Coyote he saw no other creatures at all, not a bird or even a beetle.
"Here," Coyote said, coming to a halt on a steep and overgrown slope that followed a human wall down to the edge of the highway ditch. "Look carefully."
Patch fr
owned. The air here stank of Rat, and the patches of sand on the grassy slope were lacy with recent rat-tracks. The slope was thickly covered by a creeping plant that was something between a vine and a bush. The wall behind it was made of crumbling brick. In a dark hollow at the very base of that wall, almost entirely hidden by the shining leaves of the creeper plant, a few shattered bricks lay loose in a small pile. A damp and sickly wind sighed out of the small dark hole there uncovered; a wind like a dying breath, a wind that smelled of rats, and darkness, and water, and a hundred years of decay - and something else, something Patch did not recognize, something that made him think of the legless, slithering monstrosity he had seen in the Kingdom of Madness. He shivered and backed away slowly from the dark hole in the broken wall.
"Of course there are countless roads to the Kingdom Beneath," Coyote said. "Every sewer, every gutter, every broken basement wall. But this gate is special. This passage is very old, little Patch, older than almost all the human mountains. If you would seek the King Beneath, you would do well to begin your journey here."
"I'm not looking for the King Beneath," Patch said, alarmed. "I'm looking for King Thorn."
"Of course you are. And you know where he is. He's in the North."
"Then I'm going to the North."
"Of course you are." Coyote's smile widened. "And I suggest you hurry. It will be night soon. And come nightfall, this is not a healthy place to be, not for the furry likes of you. Lord Snout is coming, and he is not alone. I suggest you put distance between yourself and this gateway before it grows dark, Patch son of Silver. All the distance you can manage."
Patch looked at Coyote for a moment. Coyote leered back. His teeth seemed somehow sharper now, and his golden eyes were no longer full of laughter; they were glittering predator's eyes. Patch backed slowly away.
"Run, Patch," Coyote whispered. "Run before it's too late."
With those words terror rose like a tide in Patch's mind, drowning out all the rest of his thoughts. He whirled and ran as fast as he could. When he reached the Great Sea he was only barely aware of it; he kept on, to the North. Despite the threat of owls he ran until it was too dark to see, and when he climbed a tree for the night, he went as deep into its interwoven branches as possible. There he huddled gasping with fear, as if surrounded by deadly enemies, and all his dreams that night were nightmares.