Moonlight Brigade Page 5

  Declan looked out at the crowd. Not so much as chuckle.

  “Get it?” Declan tried. “Guano. I’m a bat . . . our poop’s called guano? Get it? How are you guano get there?”

  Brevort the skunk burped, which was, in truth, much funnier than Declan’s joke.

  “What do you call a bat who never leaves his cave?” Declan asked, loosening the handkerchief around his neck. “Rock-turnal.”

  Crickets actually chirped.

  Then the audience started throwing them at him.

  “Hey, I love crickets!” Declan shouted. “Looks like I get a free meal! And I thought I was the only dingbat here!”

  “Boo!” a few members of the audience shouted. “Boo!”

  A pygmy goat in a floppy bow tie ambled onto the stage and used his head to roll Declan’s perch off.

  “Y’all wouldn’t know comedy if it bit you on the neck!” he shouted as he was rolled away.

  Once Declan was gone, the masters of ceremonies stepped under the ring of lights.

  Shane and Flynn Blacktail, raccoon twins of ill repute, had taken up the job of hosting the First Frost Festival together after the squirrel who usually did the honor had an unfortunate accident. He’d stepped on one of the People’s animal traps that still littered Ankle Snap Alley. He’d actually snapped his ankle.

  It was an odd thing that that trap had been in the squirrel’s living room at the time.

  Everyone was pretty sure the Blacktail brothers had arranged that accident to give themselves a chance to perform. They were the sort of raccoons who wanted to be stars of the stage and were willing to break a leg to make it happen, but only if it was someone else’s leg.

  “Hey, brother?” Flynn said to Shane, while facing the audience and striking a pose. “A question for you!”

  “Yes, brother,” Shane said to Flynn, also looking out over the audience and striking a different pose. They’d both dressed in their finest vests and wore colorful cravats around their necks.

  “Did you know that bats were nocturnal?” Flynn asked.

  “Of course I knew that, brother,” said Shane. “Just like raccoons, they’re awake at night.”

  “Not just like raccoons,” said Flynn. “Because tonight, that bat put me to sleep!”

  To the side of the stage, which was called “the wings” because that’s where birds hung out, Blue Neck cooed once, laughing at the brothers’ joke. Ned never heard a mean joke he didn’t like.

  “Friends of the fur!” Shane exclaimed to the audience. “We’ve a new act tonight, making their Ankle Snap Alley debut! A musical act. Pals o’ me paw and my brothers in beak, even you cold-blooded lizards counting out the seeds, for the first time at our First Frost Festival, let’s hear a warm squawk and a cluck and a hoot and a holler for . . .”

  Flynn pulled a note out of his pocket to read the name written there: “Coyote and the Thunder River Rompers!”

  Chapter Nine

  EVERYONE’S A CRITIC

  NO one squawked or clucked or hooted or hollered when Flynn introduced the coyote. They were too busy counting out their seeds and nuts, waiting in line to deposit them, looking warily at one another and watching the Rabid Rascals roam among them.

  On top of the stone slab of the bank, Old Boss Turtle was whispering instructions to his porcupine henchman.

  The church mice in their white robes stood around a large rolling cart, on which they’d placed their chests and sacks of seeds and nuts, bits of hard cheese, and their most treasured possession, their printing press. The church mice were the scribes of Ankle Snap Alley, proud guardians of all its written words. A few of the younger mice weaved their way through the crowd, giving out pamphlets proclaiming the mouse philosophy.

  Possum Ansel and Otis the badger were doing their best to keep their visiting woodchuck from noticing the pickpockets, gamblers, and claw-slipping creeps that lurked in the crowd, all while keeping a wary watch on the Rabid Rascals too.

  Every merchant in the alley paid the Rascals “protection seeds,” which basically meant turning over some of the seeds and nuts they earned honestly so that the gang didn’t tear their shops to shreds. The Rascals also kept anyone else from tearing their shops to shreds. They were as close to the law as existed in Ankle Snap Alley, but if they didn’t like the shape of your snout or the glint in your eye one night, they could pound you into the mud for sneezing and no one would stop them.

  They were an unlikely bunch to protect the festival, but Ankle Snap Alley was an unlikely place. Kit got to thinking that if the Moonlight Brigade were still around, they wouldn’t need the Rabid Rascals to protect them. They’d be safe from anything.

  As Kit pondered the heroic past, Shane and Flynn stepped offstage with flourishing bows and a fearsome gray-and-brown coyote strolled underneath the lightning bugs.

  He had a tin-can guitar around his neck, and a trio of otters in dark glasses behind him. One otter had a comb flute hanging around his neck, another a set of drums made from a can, a bucket, and a bottle. A third had an old jug to blow a breathy bass note on.

  “My friends of the fur and of the feather,” the coyote said, his voice resounding and rich, as if a western wind could talk. “And, yes, my scaly friends too.” He bowed gracefully to the frogs and lizards at the bank. “It is a pleasure to be here to make music for you tonight. I’ve traveled all the way from the Howling Lands to entertain you with a song I’ve sung in the palaces of hawks and in the grand caverns of the bear council. I’ve sung at hummingbird communes and at crow carnivals! I’ve sung to the great and to the small alike, those rich of seeds as well as those whose only wealth is the love in their hearts, and now I’m delighted to sing to you at your First Frost Festival.”

  “You believe this guy?” Eeni rolled her eyes. “He’s cheesier than a church mouse on alms day.”

  Kit cleared his throat, but didn’t agree with Eeni. He thought the coyote was mesmerizing. This was a creature Kit would like to talk to. This was a creature who’d earn him extra credit. The other animals had begun to take notice of Coyote too.

  As the big animal stalked the stage, shifting from light to shadow, his fur rippled over the powerful muscles of his shoulders and legs. It was as if the air itself had parted to let him pass.

  Possum Ansel and Otis the badger stopped chatting with the woodchuck, while Enrique Gallo cocked his head side to the side, trying to find the best view with his tiny rooster eyes. The bright bird beside him fluffed her feathers and tried to get his attention back with no success. She gave up and watched Coyote too.

  Even the Old Boss Turtle stopped looking over his lists of who had put their seeds in the bank for winter and who still needed to, and stuck his neck from his shell to watch, and the coyote hadn’t even begun to sing yet.

  It seemed only Eeni was immune to his charms. She was a rat who was not easily impressed.

  It didn’t help that coyotes had been known to eat a prodigious number of rats, a point she tried to whisper to Kit, who shushed her when Coyote raised the guitar in his paws and prepared to make his music.

  “Prodigious means ‘remarkable in size,’” Eeni explained.

  “Shh,” Kit interrupted her. “I’ve never seen a coyote before. I want to hear his song.”

  The coyote strummed his guitar once.

  The twang of brand-new strings over the tin can produced a chord that rattled and coughed, not so much a musical note as the sound of the city itself. Then he howled, piercing, raw, and completely uncivilized.

  “Owwwwoooooooooo!”

  This was the sound of the world outside the city, the sound of the Big Sky and the Howling Lands.

  The audience hung in the silence that followed that howl, and the coyote cast his gaze around with a grin that showed all his sharp teeth.

  “Hit it, boys! Ah one and ah two and ah one two three four . . .”

/>   With that, his band sparked to life. The comb flute player played his comb flute, and the jug blower blew his blowing jug. The drummer drummed and Coyote strummed, and every one of them began to hum.

  And it was a disaster.

  Kit had heard geese with stomach flu make more beautiful music. He’d heard moles scratching through concrete that made sweeter sounds. And when the coyote finally sang, his voice was like a duck choking on a pinecone.

  “I’ve had cheese ale with the Duke of Dogs.

  Ow ow owooo!

  And I’ve lost at cards to a one-legged frog.

  Ow ow owooo!

  But shave my hide and clip my claws,

  I broke no laws, with these two paws.

  Ow ow owooo! Ow ow owooo!”

  The otters burst into a chaotic jam session, none of them following the same tune. While they played, Coyote danced around the stage, jerking his limbs this way and that, throwing his head back and howling, then standing on his back paws and hopping. No one had ever seen an animal dance like that before, and for good reason. It looked more like a severe case of Foaming Mouth Fever than a dance.

  “Ow ow owwooooo!” Coyote howled.

  “I don’t think any of them know how to play their instruments,” Kit said.

  “I don’t think they’re really a band,” Eeni said.

  Kit’s fur prickled. Some animals could sense when a storm was rolling in or could tell when a ship at sea was about to sink. Kit, like any orphaned animal who had lived long enough to grow his whiskers, had a knack for sensing trouble before it bit.

  “Kit, look.” Eeni swiveled her head around the crowd. More otters in dark glasses had slipped from the shadows and stood at the back of the crowd, surrounding it on all sides. They weren’t carrying instruments in their paws. They were carrying weapons: clubs and saw blades, branches and slingshots.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Eeni told him.

  “Uncle Rik?” Kit tugged at his uncle’s fur.

  “Shh,” Uncle Rik said, brushing him off. “I am watching this performance. Do you think this is some kind of traditional coyote dancing or does he have a medical condition?”

  “But, Uncle Rik, there’s—” Kit was interrupted as the audience started to boo the coyote.

  “Boo! Boo! Boo!” the whole audience chanted together, even the banking lizards.

  “Don’t quit your night job!” Blue Neck Ned cooed.

  Coyote raised his paws in the air, and the band stopped playing. He sat down on his haunches and gave the audience a sad-eyed hangdog look.

  “You don’t like my song?” he whimpered. “I guess I should’ve known the folks of Ankle Snap Alley were too sophisticated for my simple country singing.”

  “You call that singing?” a starling yelled. “You wouldn’t know singing if the great Maestra Nightingale sang for you herself!”

  The Blacktail brothers stepped out onto the stage to try to calm the crowd and to introduce the next act, but Coyote didn’t move away. When the goat came to shoo him off, he let out a long sigh and took the tin guitar from his shoulders and held it by the neck.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Shane Blacktail told the coyote, patting him on the back.

  “Yeah . . . let us do it for you!” Flynn Blacktail laughed. “You make music as well as a chicken flies.”

  “But, brother,” said Shane, with false surprise, “chickens don’t fly.”

  “And coyotes don’t make music!” Flynn delivered the punch line like it was a real punch.

  Coyote frowned.

  Kit felt his tail twitch. Nothing good was about to happen, of that he was quite sure.

  “Uncle Rik,” he whispered. “We gotta get out of here.”

  “I guess you boys are right,” Coyote told the audience. “I’m no musician, and my fellas here ain’t either. But I came to Ankle Snap Alley for two reasons: to sing my song and to rob you blind. And I guess I’m all done singing.”

  Uncle Rik glanced back as the otters surrounded the crowd, and his whiskers twitched. “You are absolutely right,” he told Kit, and took him by one paw and Eeni by the other to lead them from the growing danger.

  But it was too late.

  The next sounds anybody heard were Shane and Flynn Blacktail’s shrieks as Coyote knocked them headfirst off the stage with a mighty whack from his guitar.

  CLANG! AEEEEEEE!!!

  At that, the otters rushed into the crowd and began one of the oldest traditions of Ankle Snap Alley, older even than the First Frost Festival itself.

  They started a brawl.

  Chapter Ten

  THE SONG OF TOOTH AND CLAW

  OTTERS clubbed and clawed, pressing the creatures together to prevent their escape. Uncle Rik pulled Kit and Eeni along, making his way toward the tunnels below Ankle Snap Alley, when suddenly a large otter loomed before him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the otter growled. He raised a club and swung it straight for Rik.

  Uncle Rik shoved Kit and Eeni out of the way. He let go of their claws so he could block. His tough paw met the club with a THWACK, and his strong black fingers wrapped around it.

  He tugged at the otter’s weapon, but the otter tugged back.

  “Grrrr,” the otter growled.

  “Grrrrr,” Uncle Rik growled back. “Get out of here, kids!”

  “Eeni, I gotta help Uncle Rik,” Kit said. “You should go.”

  “What kind of friend only sticks around for the fun stuff?” Eeni replied. “You know me better than that!”

  He did. And he was glad to have her at his side as they rushed toward the big otter.

  “The Farmer’s Wife?” Kit suggested.

  “The Farmer’s Wife,” Eeni agreed quickly.

  There was an old story from the days of the Moonlight Brigade about a farmer’s wife who cut the tails off three blind mice. It was a story People told their children and animal folk told theirs, but each took different lessons from it.

  Kit tapped the otter on the shoulder, and the otter reached around with his free paw to try to catch Kit’s tail. Before he had the chance, Eeni had slipped around and swiped the glasses off his face.

  “Hey!” he roared, and lost the grip on his club, which Uncle Rik yanked away from him. When the otter tried to grab at Eeni, Uncle Rik whacked him on the shins.

  “Ow!” howled the otter, falling to the dirt.

  Eeni held his glasses out in front of his nose, taunting him. “You want these back?”

  “Gimme!” the otter bellowed. “I can’t see!”

  “First tell me, are you a hunter?” Eeni asked. The otter nodded.

  “Eeni?” Kit wondered. “What are you doing?”

  “My homework,” she said. The otter tried to grab the glasses back, but Eeni’s paws were too quick and she moved out of his reach. “Nuh-uh,” she scolded the otter. “First tell me one thing I don’t know about you otter folk.”

  “My name is Chuffing Chaz.” The otter squinted up at her. “And I never forget an insult,” he snarled.

  “What a terrible way to live,” Eeni told him. “I try never to remember an insult. But thanks for getting me extra credit on my assignment.” She curtsied and tucked the glasses away into her pouch.

  “Hey!” the otter yelled, but she and Kit and Uncle Rik had already moved away from him, trying to get out of the brawl.

  The scene was crazier than an anthill under a dance hall.

  Creatures scrambled over one another to escape the kicks and punches of the otters. Birds who could fly took flight only to be grounded again by slick stones fired from the otters’ slingshots.

  Possum Ansel clung tightly to Otis. The badger had two otters in a headlock and was swinging them around like battering rams, clearing a path. Enrique Gallo swiped left and right with his razor-sha
rp talons, and the pack of stray dogs who guarded Old Boss Turtle had formed a circle around him, snarling and growling to make their own way out.

  None of them made it.

  Coyote’s otters onstage fired lit matches from rubber-band bows right at the escaping animals’ fur. The strays cowered and whimpered with their paws over their heads. Otis dropped the otters and threw himself on the ground, rolling this way and that to put out a fire on his forehead, while Ansel blew on the burning tip of his possum tail. The air reeked of singed fur and burning feathers.

  Old Boss Turtle poked his head out of his shell long enough to yell, “A winter’s worth of acorns for anyone who gets me out of here safely!”

  Blue Neck Ned fluttered up to rescue him, but was knocked beak over tail backward by Coyote himself, wielding his guitar as a cudgel.

  “I really do love this kind of music!” Coyote shouted over the roar of the riot. “The song of tooth and claw! Ow ow owoooo!”

  “It’s a beautiful tune, Boss,” another otter replied gleefully, just as he dropkicked the turtle’s porcupine henchman straight into a mass of panicked news finches. The poor fellow, once feared by every creature in Ankle Snap Alley, now found himself on his back, his quills stuck upside down in a sack of seeds and nuts, his paws scrambling helplessly in the air.

  The bankers from the Reptile Bank and Trust tried to get as many of the sacks of seeds into their vault as fast as they could, before all the fortunes of Ankle Snap Alley fell into Coyote’s paws.

  An otter hopped down in front of the stone entrance, knocked a gecko in a suit out of his way with one paw, and grabbed the colorful poisonous frog with the other.

  Unfortunately for the bankers, and for all the rest of Ankle Snap Alley’s citizens, the frog was not at all poisonous. He was a normal green frog who’d painted himself bright colors so he could double his salary from his banker bosses.

  He pretended to faint before the otter had a chance to clobber him or the bankers had a chance to fire him.