Moonlight Brigade Read online

  “Howl to snap,” Eeni said. She held up her little pink paw to Kit’s big black one.

  “Howl to snap,” he agreed. These were the words of Ankle Snap Alley, and saying them told everyone that you came from there and not some cozy field or forest out under the Big Sky. “Howl to snap” meant that even though you came into the world with a howl, and most creatures from Ankle Snap Alley went out again with the snap of a trap, you knew it was what you did in between that howl and that snap that made you who you were.

  Kit had lived in Ankle Snap Alley for the whole leaf-changing season, ever since he’d lost his parents to a pack of hunting dogs, and he knew that all the animals who didn’t live here thought the alley was just a nest of no-good dirty-rotten garbage-scrounging liars and crooks.

  In fact, the alley was a nest of no-good dirty-rotten garbage-scrounging liars and crooks, but it was his nest of no-good dirty-rotten garbage-scrounging liars and crooks. Sure, they’d steal from a fella, but they’d always leave an acorn in his paw after they took ten from his pockets. In Ankle Snap Alley, folks looked out for one another, even when they didn’t get along. There were folks in Ankle Snap Alley who cared about Kit, and folks Kit cared about.

  In short, it was home. From howl to snap.

  “Evening, Kit!” Kit’s uncle Rik called out to them from across the alley. When Kit had lost his parents, it was his uncle Rik who had taken him in, Uncle Rik who had invited Eeni into their home when she had nowhere else to go either, and Uncle Rik who had enrolled them both in school for the coming winter.

  Rik was a fuzzled old raccoon, prone to excitement over obscure bits of ancient history, more likely to trade his last seeds for an old book than a hot meal, but he was kind and generous, and in an all-too-wild world, a kind and generous raccoon was the best thing you could have on your side. Kit wouldn’t mind at all if he grew up to be like his uncle.

  Except for the big book collection. Who needed so many books?

  Uncle Rik waved them over in front of Possum Ansel’s Sweet & Best-Tasting Baking Company. Already, a motley crew of bleary-eyed animals were lining up for their sunset breakfast at the popular café.

  There were three squirrels Kit recognized from the Dancing Squirrel Theater, two frogs from the Reptile Bank and Trust going over long scrolls of bark covered from end to end in writing, a young church mouse with a satchel full of pamphlets to hand out, a chipmunk in a tattered overcoat, a twitchy weasel with a briefcase filled to bursting, a company of moles in hard hats, a news finch in his press visor arguing with a loud starling about last night’s rabbit boxing match, and a sullen-looking rabbit boxer with a black eye and swollen ear. At the front of the line, stood a pigeon named Blue Neck Ned, who had a way of cutting to the front of any line in the alley.

  Uncle Rik ignored all the creatures waiting and thrust a piping-hot chew pie apiece into Kit’s and Eeni’s paws.

  “Ansel made them specially for you for the first day of school,” Uncle Rik told them. “Hazelnut crust stuffed with banana peel, fish bones, blue cheese, and candied worms! Eat up!”

  Kit’s mouth watered at the thought. “Are those fried rose petals on top?” Kit asked. Uncle Rik nodded. Possum Ansel was a genius in the bakery.

  “Why should those kids get special pies?” Blue Neck Ned cooed. “I been waitin’ here since the sun was up!” He pecked at the doorframe angrily. “Open up and give me my breakfast!”

  The door swung open, and a big badger glared down at the pigeon, his paws crossed over the apron he wore. If Possum Ansel was a genius at baking treats, his partner, Otis the badger, was a genius at breaking beaks.

  “Cut the noise!” Otis roared.

  Ned gulped. “I just wanted to know why these two kids got served before everyone else? It ain’t fair—”

  “Fair?” Otis leaned down. He pointed a paw at Kit. “Don’t you know who this is? He’s the raccoon who saved the alley from the Flealess a few moons back! We’d all be dead and gone if it weren’t for him!”

  Kit smiled, feeling a rather proud and heroic.

  “Hrmpf,” Ned grunted. “What’s he done for me lately?”

  Otis shook his head and shut the door in Ned’s face.

  Uncle Rik ushered the kids away from the grumpy pigeon, who knew very well who Kit was and what he had done for the alley.

  The furred and feathered citizens of Ankle Snap Alley had strange memories, Kit figured. They were always quick to forget a kindness, but they remembered every grief they’d ever come to. It’d be a better world if it worked the other way around.

  But Ankle Snap Alley was not a better world.

  “Well, Kit, you ready for the first day of school?” Uncle Rik asked him when they’d gotten back to the front of the Gnarly Oak Apartments.

  “I guess.” Kit shrugged. He’d never been to school before, so he didn’t know how he could possibly be ready. How could you know if you were ready for the unknown?

  “I think this whole school thing is a bad idea,” Eeni interjected. “I don’t know how you talked me into going back.”

  “School is where you learn what you’ll need to know to make your way in the wild world,” Uncle Rik said.

  “Do you think the First Animals made their kids go to school?” Eeni waved her pie around and spoke with a mouthful of crumbs. “Can you imagine it? The Great Mother Rat sending her little ones off to sit still and listen to some cheese-breath teacher? Ha! We should be out pulling off a heist and picking fights with the Flealess in their houses! Going to school? School’s for the fishes! Are we not wild? Are we not free?”

  “It’s the First Frost Festival tonight,” Uncle Rik said. “Winter’s coming cold and fast, and we’ll all need our wits about us. School’s the best place to build up your wits, after all.”

  “I do fine on my own,” Eeni said.

  “No one does fine on their own,” Uncle Rik replied. “We need each other. Just look at the First Frost Festival! It’s the only time you can get every creature in this alley to cooperate on anything, and it’s the only thing that lets us all survive the winter. You think some unschooled weasel came up with the idea for it? No! It was a creature with an education!”

  “What do you think, Kit?” Eeni asked, trying get her pal on her side.

  He shrugged. “I’ve never been to a First Frost Festival,” he said. “So I can’t say what I think about it.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it, Kit,” Uncle Rik explained. “A great tradition! There’s a variety show and speeches, and fresh fried grubs, and everyone in the alley is there to deposit their winter supplies in the bank, and . . . well, you’ll see it all tonight. It’s a day of firsts for you! I almost wish I could go back twenty-five seasons and relive my first First Frost Festival. Oh, what a time! In school, I studied the habits of People and their Flealess house pets during the coldest months. While we celebrate winter by coming together, they curl up in their houses and pull apart. They use their clothing for warmth, rather than their fur. You see, People don’t notice our clothing at all . . . think they’re the only ones with fashion sense, so in winter, they dress their pets up in all sorts of poorly tailored outfits. I believe they learned the technique from Brutus, the Duke of Dogs, seven hundred seasons ago. Brutus had a porcupine for a tailor, you see, and all the animal folk went to him for their suits. Their hats, at the time, were made by a famous goose, if you believe it, the last of the bird haberdashers, who had a shop in what is now the—”

  “Pardon me, Uncle Rik,” Eeni interrupted him. “We do love your long history lessons about fascinating hats, but we really should be getting to school.”

  “I thought you weren’t eager to get to school.” Uncle Rik raised a bushy eyebrow at her.

  “Well,” said Eeni. “Like it or not, if we don’t go now, we’ll miss our ride.”

  She pointed up, and Kit’s jaw dropped down in amazement as a berry-black cloud
of bats swirled and whirled against the orange-and-red sky. The cloud rose and stretched, then swirled down straight for Ankle Snap Alley.

  “Paws up, Kit!” Uncle Rik patted him on the back. “Time to fly!”

  Kit gulped. Maybe Eeni was right and school wasn’t such a good idea . . . not if you had to fly to get there!

  Chapter Three

  NIGHTFLIGHT INCORPORATED

  SO, Eeni,” Kit said to her as he watched the bats swooping in. “I’ve never, like, actually traveled by bat before.”

  “I figured,” she said.

  “I’m a little nervous.”

  The rat flashed him an insouciant grin—insouciant being one of her favorite words. It means carefree, easy-going, and unconcerned.

  He couldn’t even say the word insouciant without his teeth tripping over his tongue.

  “In-soo-si-ant,” he tried under his breath, where Eeni couldn’t hear him practicing.

  Kit was hardly feeling insouciant at all.

  “Don’t worry your snout off about flying,” Eeni told him. “The bats have been taking kids to school for as long as older folk have been making kids go to school, and they hardly ever drop a student on the way.”

  “Hardly ever?” Kit gulped.

  “Best keep your hat on tight.” She stood on her tippy toes to smash Kit’s hat down over his ears, just as the bats swooped in. “First time’s the toughest.”

  A labor of moles dove for cover, the brood of chickens shielded themselves with their wings, and more than one frog hopped back into their doorway as if their lives depended on it. Almost every citizen of Ankle Snap Alley—scaled, furred, and feathered alike—got out of the way, except for the youngsters ready to go to school.

  Kit watched a squirrel his own age stand on his back paws and raise his front paws over his head like he wanted to slap palms with the passing bats. Instead, a group of bats broke from the cloud and grabbed him by the wrists, hoisting him up off the ground, while a few more dove beneath him, flapping their wings under his feet and raising him up into the twilight sky.

  Three mole siblings put their paws up and were whisked away in the same fashion, and so were a group of church mice in their matching robes, a young ferret who helped out the rooster at the barber shop, a baby-faced frog in his shiny winter coat, and a pack of gray rats with matching bows on their tails.

  As he watched them leave the ground, Kit couldn’t help but think that none of them were meant to fly.

  One of the gray rats winked at Eeni as she passed overhead. Eeni stuck out her tongue.

  “Old friends of yours?” Kit wondered.

  “Blech,” Eeni sneered. “I’d never be friends with respectable rats like the Liney sisters.” If there was one thing Eeni disliked, it was a rat who considered herself respectable.

  Kit suspected that it was the Liney sisters who chose not to be friends with a street rat like Eeni, but he was too polite to say it. Eeni was a proud rat, and a friend didn’t chew holes in another friend’s pride just because he could.

  “Before you go, I wanted to give you this.” Uncle Rik grabbed Kit by the paw and placed a small wooden token into it. Kit looked down at the disk in his black paw. It’d been made from a tulip tree, the kind that grew out in the Big Sky, where he came from. The wood was pale brown with delicate pink lines striped through it. It was old and roughly carved and had a symbol etched into it. The symbol showed a mouse’s paw inscribed in a rat’s paw, inscribed in a squirrel’s, inscribed in a cat’s, inscribed in a raccoon’s, inscribed in a fox’s, then a wolf’s, and outward and outward, each claw and paw inscribed inside a larger one, all of them set inside the massive paw of a great bear.

  “All of One Paw,” Uncle Rik said. “The motto of your new school.”

  Kit wrinkled his brow.

  “This belonged to your mother,” Uncle Rik explained.

  “Mom?” Kit looked up at his uncle, who had a gleam in his eye, a tear that he wouldn’t allow to escape.

  “I know she’d have wanted you to have it on your first night,” Uncle Rik said. “She’d be very proud of you.”

  Kit studied the token, imagined his mother holding it in her paws, his mother giving it to him on his first night of school, if she were still alive. He sighed and tucked it into the inside band of his hat. “Thanks, Uncle Rik,” he said.

  “Of course, Kit,” Uncle Rik said, and gave him a big raccoon hug. Then he backed away toward the door to his apartment in the Gnarly Oak. He nodded toward the cloud of bats swooping down. “Your turn! Stick with Eeni and she’ll show you what to do!”

  “Keep your paws up high!” Eeni ordered Kit, raising her paws over her head.

  “Am I the biggest animal they’re picking up?” Kit tried not to let his nerves give a quiver to his voice. He stood next to Eeni and raised his paws up.

  “I guess you are,” Eeni told him. “But don’t worry. I’ve seen the bats carry a full-grown deer without so much as slowing down.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Well, I heard about it.”

  “From who?”

  “You mean ‘from whom’?” Eeni corrected him. “And I heard it from Silas, the porcupine who owns the tattoo parlor.”

  “And he saw it?” Kit asked.

  “Well, no,” Eeni said. “He heard about it from Rocks, who owns Larkanon’s, who heard about it from Grumpkin, who used to own the Paw and Pawn shop, who heard about it from one of the Blacktail brothers . . . who . . . oh yeah . . . I guess the Blacktails aren’t the most reliable raccoons.”

  “Reliable?” Kit gasped. “Those two raccoons would lie to the rain to sell it a rainbow!”

  “I guess you better hang on extra tight, then, because here we go!”

  Eeni raised her paws, and the cloud of bats stretched down to grab her. Kit barely got his own up in time. Eeni left the ground with a cry of “weeeeeee!” just as Kit felt the first tiny bat claw wrap around his wrist.

  Another grabbed his elbow and another his pelt and another and another. More fluttered below him until all he could see were the flapping leathery wings and grayish fur of the bats all around him. With a stomach-turning lurch he was in the air. He’d dropped his breakfast pie, but saw it suddenly floating beside him, held up by one of the bats.

  That bat—like all the bats—wore a small handkerchief with the company logo on it:

  “First time going to school?” the bat with the pie asked him.

  Kit did his best to nod. He was too winded to speak. He could feel himself rising higher and higher, carried by dozens of tiny bat claws. “My name’s Declan. Been with NightFlight since the first season I could fly. I seen it all up here, and then some. Best advice I can give a first-timer is this: Don’t look down.”

  That was the worst possible advice to give a first-timer.

  No matter the shape of your claws or the sound of your song, if you’re a creature with breath and brains, when someone tells you “don’t look down,” you will always, in every circumstance, immediately do the opposite.

  Kit looked down.

  He really wished he hadn’t.

  Chapter Four

  RACCOON IN THE MOON

  BELOW his dangling paws, Kit saw Ankle Snap Alley dropping away. Possum Ansel and Otis the badger popped their heads from the bakery and waved up at him. Enrique Gallo, the rooster next door, flapped a wing at Kit before opening his barbershop, and Uncle Rik waved.

  Lizards and frogs from the bank rushed to and from getting ready for the First Frost Festival; cats and mice, rats and weasels, hares and hens, darted this way and that, but they all glanced up at the cloud of bats carrying the students away. They got smaller and smaller the higher Kit rose.

  Kit could see all of Ankle Snap Alley below him. There was the van where the mob of Rabid Rascals lived. Even now, the Blacktail brothers, twin raccoons of ill repute, we
re setting up their crooked gambling games for the night.

  “You may have luck, you may have plenty . . .” Their voices faded as Kit rose.

  There was the Dumpster market, where the scavengers made their deals, and there were the People’s houses, their lights snapping on for the evening. Their spoiled house pets, the Flealess, stared up from the gleaming windows and shouted curses at the cloud of bats, curses their People could never understand.

  “Lousy louse-riddled rodents!”

  “Garbage-guzzling gutter goons!”

  “Jerks!”

  The last one wasn’t creative, but the miniature greyhound who barked it at Kit made up for his lack of creativity with volume. Kit was amazed the loud bark didn’t break the People’s windows.

  The world of Animal Folk and the world of People sat side by side, but neither took much notice of the other, and neither bothered much to understand the other’s ways. Back in the time when the moon was new, when People and animals shared the world as equals, they spoke one another’s languages and knew one another’s stories, but that was so long ago, it made as much difference as a fish’s feet.

  Kit didn’t give the People much thought. Ever since he’d chased the Flealess from Ankle Snap Alley, he didn’t give their house pets much thought either. They could bark and they could bite, but they’d never stop him from living his life.

  He was happy in his alley.

  But from high above, he saw how much, much more there was in the wide world. The view was enough to knock the skin off a salamander.

  Kit rose above the top of the Gnarly Oak Apartments and waved at the news finches perched in its high branches. He rose above the rooftops of the houses, and he kept rising. The scurrying citizens of Ankle Snap Alley shrank to the size of ants, their stores and homes no bigger than anthills.

  The train tracks beside Ankle Snap Alley vanished into an underground tunnel. The streets all around his alley had their own alleys behind them, although none looked quite so crowded with creatures as his own. He saw the tidy rows of rabbit hutches and chicken coops, shops with neat signs and well-tended burrows of raccoon and fox and stoat and mouse. He saw the lavish nests a flock of rich parrots had built for spending their summers in the city. Burly geese movers were packing the parrots’ things for their flight south.