Moonlight Brigade Page 3

  Ankle Snap Alley looked a poor sight indeed beside such wonderful neighborhoods.

  He saw the big metal Rumblers that the People rode around in as they streaked along the concrete streets. They had white lights on their front ends and red lights on their rears, and People sat inside, staring forward. People couldn’t see in the dark, so they made false light wherever they went.

  Soon, Kit saw the People’s massive towers with so many twinkling lights in their windows it was like they wanted to outshine the stars. These were the buildings that cut the sky into slivers, which was why all the animal folk called this the city of the Slivered Sky.

  Kit’s nose worked the high air. Through the stink of the bats he could smell that feathery musk of pigeons in flight and the tangy blood breath of hawks who’d flown this path in daylight. There were scents of steel and smoke, the crisp snap of cold air, even the dying leaf and grass smells carried on the wind from distant forests and meadows. The wind was a map written across his nose.

  He breathed deep and smiled. How could he be afraid of heights when the world was full of such wonders?

  “Hey, boyo, you gonna eat this pie?” the bat just above him asked.

  Kit shook his head, and Declan nibbled the pie as they flew.

  “How you like flying?” the bat asked.

  “It’s amazing,” said Kit, looking down past his back paws at the rooftops of the giant city. Lights blinked and flashed and buzzed below.

  “Guess so,” said the bat. “But, you know, we got a tradition for first-timers like you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah,” said the bat. He smirked. “Probably smart you ain’t eatin’ this pie.”

  With that, the bat let out a sharp shriek and the other bats answered it. Kit swore he could make out the sound of laughter in the chorus of shrieks. One of the laughs, he thought, sounded an awful lot like Eeni’s.

  Before he could ask what the shrieking and laughing was about, Declan glided down beside Kit and whispered in his ear, “Try not to barf.”

  Suddenly, the cloud of bats wheeled wildly, turning in a sharp arc up toward the moon, then dove down so fast his stomach lurched. His legs kicked out, and his whole body swung sideways. He felt the tiny claws of the bats release his fur.

  “AHHH!” he yelled. Nothing held him up, and he flapped his paws uselessly, his claws scrambling like they could catch hold of the stars.

  They couldn’t.

  He fell.

  His head tumbled forward, and his legs pointed at the moon. The buildings below shot up like jagged thorns on the rosebush of the world.

  And then he was flying again.

  Kit glanced over his shoulder and saw four bats, two per leg, flapping madly to hold him up. Before he could utter a word of thanks, the bats heaved him one way, then the other, then back again, swinging him like a leaf in a windstorm. As he arched upward, they let him go, tossing him into the cloud, where another swarm grabbed him, spun him, and threw him over their heads upside down.

  “AHHHHH!” he added as the bats cheered.

  “Come on, Kit, enjoy it!” he heard Eeni yell over the cheering bats. “They won’t let you fall, I promise. Howl to snap!”

  Kit found his voice as he dangled again in the claws of about eight bats. “It’s the snap I’m worried about,” he said. “My neck snapping when I hit the ground, mainly.”

  “Oh, we all go out with a snap sometime,” Eeni yelled, laughing. “You might as well howl while you can.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Kit told her.

  He didn’t hear Eeni’s answer, because the bats had tossed him again. This time he did an accidental midair cartwheel, and he worried he might not be able to take Declan’s advice about not barfing.

  “I think this one wants to do some tricks!” the bat who caught him yelled.

  “Woo-hoo!” the rest in the cloud cheered.

  “No, that’s okay,” said Kit. “I really don’t.”

  “That’s what they all say,” the bat replied.

  “But I mean it!” said Kit.

  “So did they!” The bats holding him laughed, then dove with Kit dangling under them.

  They got going so fast Kit’s lips pulled back from his teeth, but instead of screaming, he laughed.

  He was flying and it was . . . fun!

  The bats tossed Kit up to another set, and Kit opened his paws to catch theirs, using the force of the throw to spin himself upside down and let another group catch him by the back paws. That group swung him up over their heads, and he did a somersault.

  “You could be in the Hopping Hare’s Circus!” Eeni cheered.

  “Woo-hoo!” Kit howled with glee.

  In midair, falling past her from one set of bats to another, he reached up and tipped his hat to her.

  “Nice tricks!” Declan said, flying once more at Kit’s side. “Before you go I want to tell you about my performance tonight. I hope you’ll be there!” He used his back claw to reach into a small pouch he wore around his waist and pulled out a piece of bark with an advertisement on it.

  Dingbat Revue: The Comedy of Declan!

  One Night Only, Live at the First Frost Festival

  “So, you’re a comedian?” Kit cocked his head.

  “All bats are comedians. This flying transport thing is just our night job,” said Declan. “I’m waiting for my big break in show business. I’m tired of performing at dirty saloons like Larkanon’s.”

  “I bet you are,” said Kit.

  “Hey, you know what kind of a saloon Larkanon is?” The bat smirked. The other bats carrying Kit giggled.

  “What kind of a saloon is it?” Kit asked.

  “It’s a . . .” Declan paused and grinned. “A real dive!”

  All the bats holding Kit burst out in screeching laughs.

  “Get it?” said Declan. “A dive? Like a really bad place . . . which they also sometimes call a . . .”

  The only thing worse than a bad joke, Kit realized, was having a bad joke explained to you, so he decided to finish Declan’s sentence for him. “I get it. A dive.”

  “You heard the lad!” Declan whooped. “He said ‘dive’!”

  And that was the real joke. Because at his command the bats holding Kit dove straight for the concrete city below.

  Just before slamming into the clear glass of a huge tower, they turned, so close Kit’s claws scraped the windows. He stared briefly at his own reflection racing by, at a shocked Person on the other side of the glass, and then they turned along another street, dove again, and weaved through a maze of Rumblers that honked and screeched.

  They flew through a tunnel and then up a wide avenue. Then turned sharply over the rooftop of a building and circled over a large round symbol made from smooth stones of all different colors. It was the same symbol on his mother’s token, the paws inscribed within paws. It took up most of the rooftop, each paw outlined in different shining stones, all of them set inside a perfect circle of green stones the color of a summer leaf.

  The bats set Kit down right in the center of it, directly in front of a flame-red fox. The fox wore a black felt hat and a purple jacket with long-trailing coattails. On his jacket he’d fastened a shining pin, emblazoned with the same symbol on which Kit stood.

  Kit touched the tips of the claws of his front paws together to form an A, the symbol of greeting among his kind, but the fox just stared at him. Of course, the A was only a symbol for raccoons—after Azban, the First Raccoon. Foxes had their own ancestors. Kit changed his paws into the crooked claw salute of the foxes, which the fox then returned.

  “I am Mr. Timinson, your teacher,” the fox said. “And you must be the famous Kit. Welcome to the academy.”

  Chapter Five

  SHARP EYES

  WHAT are we doing here, Boss?” Chuffing Chaz asked the coyote a
s he and the Thunder River Rompers gathered beneath a large pole beside the dark tunnel that led into the city. The otters were nervous. They didn’t know what gang controlled this turf or what strange plans their new boss had for them now. They had never been so far from their river.

  “Before we go to Ankle Snap Alley, we’ll need a few friends with sharp eyes and sharper beaks,” Coyote told them.

  “You mean—?” Chuffing Chaz gulped and looked straight up, two bright yellow moons reflecting off the lenses of his glasses.

  The moons blinked. Two more appeared, then two more after that.

  These weren’t moons at all, but the wide eyes of three owls, staring down from their nest atop the high pole.

  “Whhhooo goes below?” one of the owls hooted down.

  “I’ve many names,” Coyote called up. “In the Howling Lands, I’m known by my voice on the night wind. In the city wilds, I am a flash of gray against the red sunset. I am Hunger and I am Want and I am Power.”

  “You are a terrible poet.” One of the owls left her nest and swooped down to land in front of the coyote and his gang. The other two owls watched from above. “And there is only one creature whhho makes such grand pronouncements in such terrible poetry. You are Coyote.”

  The coyote bowed. “In the flesh.”

  “Whhhat brings you to us?” the owl asked.

  “My friends and I are on our way to a performance of sorts,” the coyote explained. “And we are looking for friends like you to join us.”

  “Join you?” the owl said. “The Mercenary Sisters of Cement Row do not join gangs like yours. Wheee are hhhhunters for hhhhire.”

  “And I would like to hire you to hunt for me,” Coyote said.

  “Our fees are more than a lone coyote can scavenge in a year,” the owl said.

  “We are on our way to Ankle Snap Alley,” the coyote told the owl. “Do you know the place?”

  The owl raised her eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “I assume by your silence that you do,” Coyote said. “I have business to attend to, and it would make my business go far more smoothly if you and your sisters were watching over the affair. In exchange, I offer you a treat rarer than any owl has ever eaten.”

  The coyote glanced up and saw the other two owls swivel their heads toward each other and then back to him. He had their attention, of that he was sure.

  “Have you ever heard of the Rat King?” he asked. “A hundred rats with their tails tangled together, moving as one, speaking as one, but feeding with a hundred mouths and seeing with two hundred eyes?”

  “You mean the sage of Ankle Snap Alley?” the owl said. “Wheee knowww them.”

  Coyote scratched behind his ears, then leaned in close to whisper to the owl in front of him, knowing that her sisters could certainly hear him no matter how quietly he spoke. “How would you like to hunt the Rat King?”

  The coyote didn’t wait for the owl’s answer. He turned and loped away, his gang of otters following him into the tunnel.

  “See you in Ankle Snap Alley!” he called back to the owls. He knew they’d be there when he needed them. If there was one thing those three sisters couldn’t resist, it was the chance to eat the most famous nest of rats the wide world had ever known.

  And without their Rat King to turn to, Ankle Snap Alley would be easier to knock over than a dandelion in a hurricane.

  Chapter Six

  THE CLAW WITHIN THE PAW

  THEY say you’re clever as the First Raccoon but as kind as a church mouse,” Mr. Timinson said to Kit, who stood in front of him in the center of the large paw-print symbol on the rooftop. “Is that true?”

  Kit glanced around for Eeni, or any of the other students who had arrived before him, but he saw no one else on the roof except his teacher.

  “I’m nice to those who are nice to me,” he answered the fox.

  “Nice? Hmmm . . .” The fox scratched behind his ear. “Nice and kind are not the same thing.”

  “They’re not?” Kit was confused.

  “Nice is how you want folks to see you,” the fox explained, ignoring Kit’s darting eyes. “Kind is who you are when no one’s looking. I imagined someone from Ankle Snap Alley would know that. So which are you, nice or kind?”

  “I’m . . .” Kit thought a moment. “I guess I try to be both.”

  The fox stared at him a long time with his bright yellow eyes. Then he broke into a wide grin and laughed. “Spoken like a true raccoon. I do hope you are as clever as they say, because at this academy your cleverness will be tested. We were founded by the last members of the Moonlight Brigade and we strive to live up to their example.”

  Kit frowned. He’d heard of the Moonlight Brigade before, but only in stories.

  When the People built the first fires and left the animals in the darkness, the First Tricksters—Azban the Raccoon, Brother Rabbit, Elder Crow, Mother Rat, and Reynard the Great Fox—swore to remind the People that some wilds would never be tamed. They created the Moonlight Brigade to steal into People’s homes, smash their traps, and howl at their heels. They created the Moonlight Brigade to protect every wild thing beneath the sky.

  The only problem was, the Moonlight Brigade didn’t exist anymore.

  “Uh . . . sir?” Kit scratched under his hat. “The Moonlight Brigade isn’t real.”

  “Not real? Have you not heard the story of the Rabbit Who Robbed the Farmer’s Garden? The Crow Who Stole the Hunter’s Fire? The Raccoon Who Won the Night Away?”

  “I know the stories,” said Kit. “But that’s all they are. Just stories.”

  “Ha-ha!” the fox laughed. “Just stories, you say, as if stories mean nothing? Stories are the stuff that sticks the world together. Stories are the mud from which we’re all made. The power to imagine stories is the power to remake the world as we dream it. That is what the Moonlight Brigade was. They were the Claw Within the Paw, the snapping jaws that kept the wilds free.”

  “They did?”

  “Of course! Like Azban, the First Raccoon! Or Reynard, the Great Fox!” Mr. Timinson waved his paws in the air excitedly. “They dreamed of a world where animal folk did not fear the People, where our wild world prospered no matter how they hounded us. Let them keep their Flealess house pets with their endless cans of neatly packaged house-pet food. We hunt and scrounge and pilfer and pillage because we are free and our freedom lets us make the world as wild as we want it to be. In these dangerous times, when the wilds are ever shrinking, we must learn to defend ourselves! That is why the Moonlight Brigade existed, and that is why you are at this academy!”

  “It is?” Kit asked with a smile. He liked the sound of that. It sounded grand and heroic, the kind of heroic that not even Blue Neck Ned could argue with. His chest puffed with pride.

  “I meant ‘you’ in the plural sense.” The fox snapped his pride in half. “Your generation. There are other teachers on other rooftops with other students, all learning the proud traditions of the Moonlight Brigade.”

  “Oh,” said Kit, disappointed that his teacher didn’t already think Kit was a great protector of the wilds. Didn’t he know what Kit had already done? Didn’t he know Kit had faced down a Flealess army and won? All he had to do was ask around. Kit was already a hero! Instead of offering this protest, however, he simply asked: “Aren’t we a little young for all that, saving the wild world and stuff?”

  The fox shook his head. “My generation has failed to protect our wilds, so it must fall to yours. Besides, if I didn’t believe the young had power to change the world, why would I be a teacher at all?”

  Kit shrugged.

  “Are you ready to be tested, Kit?” his teacher asked. “Are ready to learn?”

  Kit took a deep breath and nodded. He really, really was. He suddenly imagined himself as part of the old stories, the heroic raccoon who lead the Moonlight Brigade. So what if i
t wasn’t real? Not everything that mattered had to be real. If he could dream himself great and heroic, maybe then he would be, just like the Moonlight Brigade of old.

  “So, where are my classmates?” he asked.

  “They’re hiding.” The fox turned, his puffy red-and-white tail swishing across Kit’s face, nearly knocking his hat off. “You have until the count of ten to hide yourself too.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I hunt you.” The fox glanced over his shoulder and flashed Kit a razor-toothed smile. “Your lessons begin right now. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  Chapter Seven

  HIDE ’N’ HUNT

  AS the fox counted, Kit looked left, and he looked right. They wasted no time at this academy. They also had precious few places to hide.

  There was big metal tower on the roof, but one glance told Kit the three rat sisters were hiding there already. He could see the reflection of the bows off the metal in the moonlight.

  A ferret’s tail poked from an empty pipe, and anyone with half a nose could smell the deep dirt odor of the moles crouched tight in the cracks between loose bricks. Fergus the frog had tried to camouflage himself against the lip of the roof, but his shiny jacket gave him away. None of the creatures was as good at hiding as they thought. He didn’t see Eeni anywhere, of course. She was a street rat, and a street rat didn’t live long in Ankle Snap Alley if she didn’t know how to make herself invisible.

  “Four . . . five . . . six . . . ,” his teacher counted, his tail swishing back and forth to keep the rhythm, his eyes shut tight but his ears perked.

  Kit ran toward a big spinning metal fan, blades whirling and twirling, spitting hot air out from the building below. Steam billowed from behind it, clouding the blades in white. That wouldn’t work. He ran the other way, toward a door that led inside the building. Locked, and he didn’t have the time to pick the lock with his claws.