Beasts of New York

90. Afterword

2007-10-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

In 1935, the New York Times reported the discovery of an eight-foot alligator in a manhole on East 123rd Street. As recently as 2001, a five-foot caiman was captured in the Harlem Meer in Central Park. Deer have been seen on Staten Island. Tigers have lived in Harlem high-rises. A coyote was found in Central Park in the summer of 2005. In October 2007 a seven-foot python was found emerging from a Brooklyn toilet. Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve, and indeed Central Park itself, are havens for birds from all over the world. And few New Yorkers would be surprised to learn that illegal dogfights take place in abandoned warehouses in darkest Brooklyn.

One could, if one were so inclined, inspect many of the places Patch visited during his adventures. His drey is somewhere on the tree-covered hills near West 83rd Street, the highest point in Central Park. Karmerruk flew him all the way to Fresh Kills on Staten Island, once the world's largest trash dump, now a park - albeit one built on millions of tons of garbage and bubbling methane. Patch travelled across Staten Island to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which he could not cross. Instead his adventure on the boat took him to the wild and overgrown beaches near Fort Tilden. From there, he and Zelina traversed the Cross Bay Bridge to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve.

After being captured and caged, they escaped from a Brooklyn warehouse near the Pulaski Bridge over Newtown Creek. After exploring the Hidden Kingdom, they rode a bus across the Brooklyn Bridge, disembarked in lower Manhattan, and headed north. Patch went underground to find Sniffer at the 8th Street/NYU subway station. He and the cats escaped the rats on the N/R, and rode it all the way to the 59th Street station. There he followed Zelina to Park Avenue - aka the Great Avenue - and then turned back to his home in Central Park.

The Center Kingdom is easy enough to navigate. White's tree is somewhere near the southeast corner of the park. The Dungeon is, of course, the Central Park Zoo; the Ramble is, conveniently, the Ramble; the Great Sea is the Onassis Reservoir; and the Labyrinth is the Conservatory Garden. The stone spire where Patch meets Coyote for the second time is Cleopatra's Needle. The Northern Sea is the Harlem Meer.

Much of the underworld is inaccessible to oversized humans, but there are exceptions. The abandoned subway station at Broadway and 91st, where Patch and White found themselves after their encounter with the Legless, is visible for a few flashing seconds if you peer carefully out of passing trains. The huge Amtrak tunnel runs up the west side of Manhattan, beneath Riverside Park. And the massive and long-disused Croton Aqueduct stretches for 41 miles from Central Park, north through the very belly of Manhattan, across the abandoned High Bridge into the Bronx, and along the Aqueduct Trail in Van Cortlandt Park. It is there, at an abandoned way station that still stands, where the squirrels finally emerged into daylight.

All of these places lie within the five boroughs of magnificent New York City.

Well, th-th-that's all ~~she~~ I wrote, folks. Thanks for reading Beasts of New York. Hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

89. Epilogue

2007-10-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

"So few," Patch said, aghast. "So few."

He and White were in Silver's drey - Queen Silver, now - among her adornments of glittering glass. Silver had just returned from a census of the Center Kingdom. The census had not taken long.

"More than fifty," Silver said. "It is said the Forever Winter reduced us to fewer than twenty. We have enough to prosper, to thrive. The crows are gone, and the rats will not bother us again, not with the cats as our allies. Ten years, a few generations, and we will be a proper Kingdom again."

"How many dead?" Patch asked.

Silver shook her head and would not answer. "Go to your drey. You have a visitor."

White led the way from Silver's spruce to Patch's oak. He was still getting used to running the sky-road without his tail-weight for balance. Patch expected his visitor to be one-eyed Twitch, and braced himself for grim prophecies of disaster. Twitch had not yet recovered from the war. It seemed to have burned away almost everything in him that could enjoy the world; Twitch seemed almost to have been replaced by another squirrel, one that lived for disaster and despair. But the last time they had met, Patch had brought him a tulip bulb to eat; and when he had seen the momentary flicker in Twitch's eye when he first saw the treat, he had dared to hope that while perhaps his old and joyous friend had been burned by war and buried within his scarred and one-eyed body, the old Twitch still stood some chance of being one day unearthed.

But it was not Twitch who waited beneath Patch's oak tree.

"Zelina!" Patch cried out.

"Patch! Oh, I'm so very glad to see you. And White, a pleasure as always. Am I understand that you're officially mated? Congratulations!" exclaimed the Queen of All Cats.

Patch looked around. "No Alabast?"

"No. Just me. No other cat knows where I am. If I did, they would come to me and draw me back to the court. It isn't all sushi and cream being the Queen of All Cats, you know. I have so many duties, so many worries - lately, it's the humans, it seems there's something terribly wrong with them - and so many affairs of state, little dignitaries to entertain, so many little treacheries and rivalries and territorial turf wars to deal with, you have no idea how byzantine and backstabbing the cats of my court can be. And all the protocol, the titles, the ceremonies - oh, sometimes they're wonderful, but honestly, Patch, sometimes I think of those days we went wandering through the Ocean Kingdom, nothing to us but our names, not knowing what we'd eat or where we'd sleep next, and I wish I could be there again. And so. You told me once to visit you in the Center Kingdom. And there was the small matter of a poisoning, and a war, and an attempt to exterminate your entire people, and an underworld quest, and a tiger - and before you ask, no I don't know what happened to Siva and his attendant - but the point I am trying to attain is, finally, here I am. Would you like to show me around?"

Patch looked at White; and his mate smiled back at him; and Patch said, "Zelina, I'd be delighted."

A long time ago, on a glorious mid-spring day, a young squirrel named Patch led his new mate White and his best friend Zelina on a tour of discovery, an exploration of the delights of the Center Kingdom in which he lived. They paused often for laughter and stories and reminiscence. The sky above was blue, and the wind was clear and rich with life, and the trees and bushes were thick with flowers and berries, and the days of blood and terror past seemed already long forgotten, and this day and all days beyond seemed to stretch into a warm and golden forever.

THE END

(but for a brief author's afterword, to come tomorrow)

88. Forests of the Night

2007-10-17T22:26:00.001-07:00

Riding a tiger was like running and flying at the same time. Siva loped with incredible speed down shadowed human streets, staying in the dark as much as possible, avoiding automobiles, keeping away from the human lights that stitched lines into the night sky, while Patch, calling to mind his memory-picture of the world as seen from the sky, directed their journey with urgent whispers into Siva's ears. They passed a few humans dozing in doorways or staggering through the streets. All stopped and cried out with surprise and dismay as the tiger flashed past: up stairs and over the metal bridge across the little river, through the low buildings and wide streets of the district just north, and finally to the massive concrete ramp that curled up to the enormous bridge that stretched across the great eastern river.

Even in this quietest and darkest hour of the night, the city thrummed with life, and the bridge was busy with automobiles. All of them screeched and skewed to sudden halts when they came within sighting distance of the tiger. There were several collisions as Siva sprinted across the bridge, and once he had to leap over two automobiles that had just violently intertwined and spun to a halt in his path. He cleared both with space to spare. In the distance, far ahead of them, Patch heard high-pitched sounds like the mating call of crazed and gargantuan birds, and saw whirling and flashing lights approach; but the tiger reached the island of the Center Kingdom before those lights arrived, and Patch whispered in his ear, and the tiger zigged north before zagging west again.

They passed the Great Avenue, very near where Patch had once emerged from the underworld with Zelina and her feline court. There were a few more humans walking the streets here, singly and in small groups, and Siva left a wake of shouts and screams and disbelieving expostulations behind him as he crossed the last avenue, leapt casually over the subsequent stone wall, and landed on the grass and soil of the Center Kingdom.

"North," Patch whispered into the tiger's ear, and Siva turned and pelted along the Kingdom's wall. He was moving so fast that tears were streaming from Patch's eyes.

"It's wonderful here." Siva's whole chest rumbled when he spoke, and Patch shivered with it. "I never imagined this city of blood might have a green and growing heart. Is this your home, Patch son of Silver?"

"Yes."

"You are a lucky creature."

Patch said, "Not if we don't save it."

Siva bared his fangs. "I will do my best - what is that?"

The big cat stopped so suddenly that Patch very nearly somersaulted through the air and fell into the dirt, and only saved himself by clawing hard in the last second. Siva seemed not to notice. The tiger was busy staring up at a tall stone spire that jutted towards the stars. At night, to animal eyes, it seemed almost lit from within.

"This is where I met Coyote," Patch said, without thinking.

"Coyote?" Siva asked, and the tiger roiled beneath Patch, and all Siva's fur stood up on end. "Yes, I should have known, I should have smelled this as his work..."

"You know him?" Patch asked, astonished.

"By reputation." Siva hesitated. "But I suppose it no longer matters who set us on this course, or when. We must save this glorious home of yours."

Siva leapt once more into the night and the shadows. He raced to and then along the Great Sea, and through the meadows and tree-laden hills just north of it, until he reached the hills of jumbled rock that walled the southern edge of the Northern Sea. Above and around them, the crows were flying. Patch could hear their wingbeats, and their panicked caws as they flew around the tiger. He feared they would descend in a dark and unstoppable whirlwind; and if they had, they might well have killed Patch and Siva both, albeit at the cost of half their number. But Siva was a nightmare figure for those birds who carried nightmares. No crow, not even the King of Crows himself, could muster enough courage to be the first to attack a cat nearly as big as a horse. Instead they awaited their champion.

Patch directed Siva to the Northern Sea and then along its edge, until they reached a place where a tiny bay protruded between a sloping face of solid rock and a grassy hill in which human steps were set. Here there was no fence between land and water; and here Patch smelled a cold and ancient and reptilian scent.

"He's near," Patch whispered. "He's very near."

"Dismount," Siva said.

It was not a suggestion. Patch obeyed and scurried a little ways up the dirt slope. Siva did not watch him go. The tiger stood crouching, coiled, ready to pounce, staring into the dark and silent water of the Northern Sea.

The only light came from a single glass globe across the sea, and the mountain lights beyond. Patch blinked. Was there something moving near the water's edge? Or were those only ripples from the night wind on its calm surface? In the darkness he couldn't be sure.

Above them, crows circled, clouds of them, a whole sky full, an opaque curtain of crows that blotted out the stars.

For a long moment nothing happened.

Then Siva uncoiled, uncrouched, braced himself, and roared.

Patch thought the sound might tear his ears off. The tiger's roar was like the breaking of the moon. It was a challenge, a warning, a war cry, a keening lament of a year lost in a bloodsoaked chamber of killing, a howling celebration of the glory of life and the courage of death, and a roar for the pure and simple sake of roaring. The crows above scattered in all directions as if by a thunderclap. The roar echoed across the Northern Sea, and lights began to wink on in two massive octagonal mountains past the northeast corner of the Center Kingdom, as humans were torn untimely from their dreams by this howl of a savage beast.

Before the echoes had even diminished the King Beneath erupted from the waters, moving with transcendent power and eyeblink speed. Its great maw open for the single killing bite that was all it needed, it launched itself like a pale-scaled lightning bolt at the tiger while Siva stood stiff-limbed and unready.

But Siva was no longer there. The tiger, born in jungle, veteran of a year of lethal battles, somehow found the time and strength, in the eyeblink of the King Beneath's deadly attack, to leap straight up, above the caiman's killing blow.

The tiger landed clawing atop the caiman's hindquarters; the caiman knocked the tiger sprawling with a lashing blow from its massive tail; then caiman and tiger leaped at one another in the same moment - and Siva twisted his head and caught the King Beneath's lower jaw between his own fangs - and the two huge beasts, one white and one golden, slammed together belly to belly, fur against scales, and began to thrash about on the sand and grass, raking at one another with their vicious and massive claws. Dark blood flowed from both. Both snarled and howled with rage and pain.

The King Beneath had an extra appendage; its powerful tail. It used that for leverage, to anchor itself on top of the tiger, and its great weight pressed into Siva, splaying the tiger's limbs out, making Siva more vulnerable to the caiman's stubby but incredibly powerful claws. The King Beneath bore down on Siva, snarling and clawing, until it was between Siva's limbs, and the tiger was no longer able to attack the caiman's belly -

- and then Siva reached out almost casually with his long, limber forelegs, and clawed out the eyes of the King Beneath.

The caiman's body convulsed with shock; and in that moment Siva released its jaw and dipped his fangs into the caiman's throat. Black blood showered out, covering the tiger. The King Beneath twitched once, twice, a third time; and then it died.

Siva crawled painfully out from beneath the caiman's corpse.

"Your debt is paid, Patch son of Silver," the tiger wheezed. "All debts are paid."

By the time Vijay and Toro reached them, the crows were already feeding on the broken body of the King Beneath.

87. Burning Bright

2007-10-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

"Sun and moon and stars," Toro breathed, awed.

Patch could hardly hear the bluejay over the homicidal howling of dogs. They had flown and climbed through a broken window into this vast and empty space covered with bloodstains. On one side of this enormous chamber, scores of small animals lay trapped in stacked metal cages that Patch knew all too well. On the other, a dozen huge dogs snarled murderously and clawed frantically at the insides of their cages, trying to get to Patch; and at the end of the line of dogs, in the largest cage in the room, a cage with bars as thick as branches, sealed by three mysterious devices, stood Siva the tiger.

"Kill you and eat you!" the dogs roared, but Patch and the birds ignored them.

"I dared to hope," Siva said softly to Patch. "I dared, and my hope has flowered. You have come to me, little squirrel. Do you bring my human brother? Has he come to free me from this terror?"

"Not yet," Patch admitted. "That's next. Daffa! Toro! Come here."

The pigeon and bluejay flapped over to stand next to him.

"Take this," Patch said to Toro, and gave him the glass ball he had carried all the way from the Endless Empire. It fit perfectly into the bluejay's claws. "Daffa, take him to where you first met me. Find the kabooti man. He speaks to animals. I think he can speak Bird."

"He can," Siva interjected.

"Bring him back here. As soon as you can. Hurry."

Toro, his eyes wide with wonder, nodded his understanding; and Daffa led him out of the chamber's one shattered window, into the sky, and towards the Kingdom of Madness.

"When do the other humans come?" Patch asked the tiger. "The ones who keep you here?"

"The war-drinkers," Siva said softly. "The blood-feasters. They will not come tonight. Tomorrow there will be killing, so tonight they starve us, they try to steep us in hate. It would be so easy to hate them. But I will not. I will pity them. They are lost and starveling creatures themselves, and their cages are of their own making, impossible to escape."

"Do you think your human brother can get you out of here?" Patch asked.

"I don't know," Siva said. "I hope."

They waited. The sun set, and the colossal chamber was lit only by a single red light above a door. Patch and Siva spoke for a long time. Eventually Patch fell asleep, curled up beside the tiger's cage.

He was woken by a shattering of glass, and came tensely to his feet, ready for battle and disaster. There was a new smell, a human smell - but not entirely human -

"Do not be afraid," Siva said. "My brother has come."

A small adult male human dressed in rags appeared in the main doorway. Its dark skin was stained red by the light above. The dogs began to bark again; but this time they sounded more unnerved than enraged. "Who's there? What's that? Is it human? Kill it? Eat it? What is it?"

"Siva!" the human cried out, in Bird, and the tiger growled softly in reply.

The human raced to the cage, thrust its arms fearlessly between the bars, and the tiger pressed himself against the bars and allowed himself to be stroked.

"I thought you lost," the human said. The Bird it spoke was heavily accented but understandable. "I thought you dead!"

"They set many dogs to kill me. I had to kill to live."

"Patch!" Toro said, fluttering into the room. "The human brought me here! The human speaks Bird! The human hid me and took me in an underground cage, and then in a death machine! Patch, I rode in a death machine! Can you believe it?"

"You are Patch," the human said, stooping. "You sent me the glass ball."

Patch shuddered, warring with his instincts, as the human reached out its hand and gently stroked his fur.

"I am in your debt forever, noble squirrel," the human said. "My name is Vijay."

"Hello," Patch said awkwardly.

"The squirrel needs my aid," Siva said gravely. "And I would grant it to him. But first I must escape from this cage. Can you free me, Vijay? It is sealed, it is solid steel."

Siva stood, and reached into his rags, and Patch recoiled as a bright light winked into being. The human aimed the light at the cage and examined it carefully, paying particular attention to its three steel seals. Then he shone it at the wall behind the tiger.

"Brick," he mused aloud. "Much weaker than steel, but still too strong."

Then he shone it at the floor, and Vijay's eyes lit up, and he said, "Wood."

Patch looked down at the wide bloodstained planks that made up the floor. They disappeared into darkness as Vijay turned and explored the rest of this killing place, muttering to himself in human language. A cry of discovery came from a distant corner; and then Vijay returned, holding a metal bar that was very thin at one end, and thick and curved at the other. He inserted the thin end between two planks that protruded beneath the wall of the cage; then he pushed on the thick end, pushed with all his might; Patch could smell his sweat, and hear his thudding heart - and suddenly one of the planks sprang from the ground like a startled chipmunk.

Vijay pulled the plank free and aimed the light downwards. The space beneath was deep and laced with pipes and cables. It stank of Rat, and Patch saw a half-dozen scurrying things race away from the pool of light as it stabbed into the darkness.

"Yes," Vijay said, pleased. "They built this cage to keep you in, Siva, not to keep a determined human out."

He pried another plank free, and another - and soon there was a tiger-sized hole in the floor of the cage, and Siva simply stepped down into the darkness, then leaped up into the open chamber, free. Vijay wrapped his arms around Siva and held him tightly for some time as Siva licked tears from Vijay's face with his rough tongue.

"Come," the human eventually said. "Come outside, and then help this squirrel with what he needs. Whatever he needs. Anything I can do for you, Patch, name it, and it is yours."

Patch and Vijay climbed carefully through the shattered window and out into the night. Toro flew through, and Siva simply jumped through the open space with a single bound. Once outside the tiger took a deep breath and looked up at the stars.

"It has been so long since I have seen the open sky," he said, his voice trembling. "So long. I owe you a debt immeasurable, Patch son of Silver. What would you of me?"

Patch said, "I need you to come to the Center Kingdom and fight for me."

Siva only nodded. "Show me the way."

"Follow me," Patch said, and began to run westwards - but was stopped by Siva's low and throaty laugh.

"I think you will find, my little friend, that we will go considerably faster at my speed," the tiger said, amused. "Climb onto my neck and ride. Don't worry about your claws. I've suffered much worse in the pit from which you just freed me."

Patch took a moment to digest the offer. Then, hesitantly, trying not to draw blood, he leaped up and used his claws to climb up the tiger's flank to his back, and settled in on the bulge of bone just behind Siva's neck.

"Toro," Vijay said, "can you follow them, and then return to me and tell me where they went?"

Patch hardly heard the bluejay's assent. He could not believe he was riding a tiger.

"Tell me the way," Siva said, "and hold on as tight as you can."

86. River East

2007-10-15T22:23:00.001-07:00

"You're too heavy," Karmerruk gasped. "I'm going to put you down."

"They'll kill me!"

"Stay in the metal cave. You'll be safe there."

"The what? No, not the water!" Patch exclaimed as they reached the wide, churning river that divided the island of the Center Kingdom from the Hidden Kingdom. He knew this water was cold and violent, and he could easily envision crows perching on his back and pecking his eyes out as he tried to swim...

"Not the water," Karmerruk agreed. The fastest crows were almost upon them.

The hawk stooped into a southward dive, heading towards one of the huge bridges that spanned the river. For a moment Patch thought he would be dropped like a rock on the bridge's metal arch. Then he saw, parallel to just north of the bridge, a metal-and-glass cage the size of a large automobile, suspended from a massive wire by what looked like two giant metal feet. This cage was actually somehow crawling through the sky. Karmerruk pulled up just above it, and in the instant of least motion, his talons released, and Patch fell with a gentle thump to the cage's metal roof.

By the time he rolled back to his feet and took stock of his surroundings the crows were almost upon them. He dashed beneath the metal feet that held up the cage. This space was like a low and narrow cave of metal, as Karmerruk had said. Any crows who followed him would be easy to kill, unable to fly, unable to gang up on Patch.

But this safety was a moot point. For when Karmerruk had slowed to release Patch safely, he had made himself vulnerable. All the crows hurled themselves at the hawk; for a moment the Prince of the Air was invisible, somewhere inside a whirling, tearing knot of crows; then the knot began to plummet downwards, towards the cold river. Patch stared aghast, thinking that Karmerruk had sacrificed himself to save him.

Then the cloud of crows exploded outwards, and a gray streak erupted from it, leaving a shower of black and gray feathers in its wake, and two lifeless crows who kept falling until they hit water. Karmerruk dived faster than his pursuers could follow, pulled up at the last moment, skidded a hair's-breadth over the water, and then began to climb steadily into the sky. The crows strained to follow him, but they could not match his power. Patch thought the hawk had escaped.

But escape was not his intention. Karmerruk suddenly turned in a dizzyingly tight circle and dived back down, straight into the pursuing crows. There was a frenzy of slashing as he passed through them. Three more crows toppled from the sky and splashed into the river; two more tried to fly to safety, but their wings were torn, and they scudded in ragged descending spirals until they too fell into the water and disappeared beneath its waves. Karmerruk was already climbing again. When he reached the apogee of his flight, he screamed, a noise so terrible that the mob of crows wavered; and then he dived through them again, rending and tearing with beak and claws, and six more of his enemies fell into the water and died.

The cloud of crows dissipated and fled singly back towards the Center Kingdom. Patch stared in awe at the Prince of the Air as he landed neatly atop the still-moving cage. His feathers were ragged in patches, and the side of his head was bleeding, but Karmerruk seemed not to notice. The hawk's eyes were alight with triumph and delight.

"They dared think they could match me in the open sky," he said, and his laugh made Patch shudder. "Let all of them come, here where there are no trees to hide in. Let every crow in the world come and I'll kill every one of them, I'll turn them into a sea of blood and feathers, I'll stop this river with their bodies. Oh, that was good hunting, little squirrel, the finest I've had in years. I'm glad you brought me here. It's such joy to have prey who don't run away right away. I only wish they had stayed longer."

Patch didn't dare meet Karmerruk's gaze. He looked up and saw Toro and Daffa, circling high above. They did not seem inclined to come any lower. Patch couldn't blame them. He had grown so accustomed to the hawk's presence, he had almost forgotten how deadly a killer he was; and he had never known until now the joy and exultation that Karmerruk took in killing.

"You can come out," Karmerruk said, amused. "It's safe."

Patch made himself waddle out into the open air. The hawk snatched him up and carried him east, following Daffa and Toro up a smaller, perpendicular river, to a metal bridge, and then to one of a series of low, enormous buildings. Karmerruk deposited Patch on the roof, then settled down himself.

"I'd best return, lest they follow me here," he said. "But I must confess to a certain curiosity. What exactly is your plan?"

"You wouldn't believe me," Patch said honestly.

Karmerruk nodded, unoffended. "Perhaps later I will see for myself. Good luck, Patch son of Silver. I salute you. You have the heart of a hawk."

He flew off. Toro and Daffa breathed mutual sighs of relief and hopped over to stand close to Patch.

"What is your idea?" Toro asked. "What's here?"

Patch said, smiling grimly, "You better come inside with me. You won't believe me until you see him for yourself."

85. A Desperate Night

2007-10-14T19:27:00.001-07:00

Patch shivered to hear the cawing of thousands of crows in the night. Crows, like squirrels, were normally active by day and roosted in trees by night. He hoped the owls were feasting on the black birds. He stiffened as the caws grew louder, and he heard sudden flapping sounds followed by silence, very near. Crows had landed on his tree.

He breathed as silently as he could. He could easily defend himself in this drey, no more than one crow at a time could squeeze through its narrow entry, but if they learned of his presence they might wait to ambush him in the morning -

Suddenly all the crows on his tree took off, cawing as if to summon the end of the world. There were so many that the oak tree actually shuddered as if with a great wind. Patch heard pawsteps of something - somethings - racing across the ground. He hoped it wasn't squirrels; but it sounded like it was, yes, he heard squirrels crying with rage and pain, barely audible over a cacophony of harsh caws. There was a battle going on outside, and the squirrels were losing. Worse: from their gurgling screams it sounded like they were dying.

Patch wanted to go and help, but he knew that if he emerged from his drey all he would do was die with the others. He heard the sounds of claws on bark, almost drowned out by cawing sounds, and as both grew louder his mind drew a picture of a squirrel climbing the oak tree, covered by a murderous knot of pecking crows -

Something forced itself into the entry of Patch's drey. Patch leaped to his feet, ready to defend himself; but it was a squirrel, a huge squirrel covered with wounds. In the moonlight Patch saw that one of its eyes had been pierced by a beak and was now only a half-empty sac dripping pale fluid onto the squirrel's cheek. Patch could hardly smell the other squirrel under the stench of fresh blood. But this squirrel he would have known anywhere.

"Twitch!" Patch gasped, horror in his voice.

"Patch?" Twitch asked with dull amazement as he shoved himself all the way into the drey. It was barely big enough for both of them and their bodies were pressed together. Twitch's flank was wet with his blood, and his breath was ragged. He was facing away from the entrance, and there was no room to turn around. A crow tried to follow him in, pecked at Twitch's tail. Patch lunged forward, enraged, and tore a tuft of feathers from the crow's neck before it pulled itself free and fluttered unevenly into the night. Other crows settled watchfully around the drey's entrance.

"Is that really you, Patch?" Twitch asked. His voice was rasping and thick with pain. "Am I dreaming? Is this the afterlife? It hurts so much. I thought it wouldn't hurt any more in the afterlife. Is it always like this? Does it get better?"

"This isn't the afterlife, Twitch," Patch said grimly, watching the entrance. "This is really me. You're not dead. You're not going to die."

"I killed a lot of them, Patch. A whole lot."

"I bet you did."

"I'm hungry."

Patch winced. There was no food in his drey.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We were going south. The south was safer, it has to be, the King Beneath is in the Northern Sea. We heard the humans were spraying trees with something to keep the crows away. I guess we didn't get far enough. I think they killed Stardancer. It was hard to see, there's not much moon, but I saw him for a moment, it looked like he stopped fighting and they were eating him. I don't know who's King now. The King Beneath took Sharpclaw. I saw him. Isn't that strange? I actually saw the King Beneath. I'm hungry. The crows almost killed me too. If I hadn't remembered your drey was here. I never thought you'd be in it. My right eye, I can't see out of it at all. Maybe, maybe it will get better. I'll get better, Patch. I always get better."

By the time Twitch finished his voice was so weak he was almost whispering. Patch said nothing.

"You were looking for Silver," Twitch said, barely audible. "Did you find her?"

"Yes," Patch said, glad to have some good news for his friend. "Yes, she's fine, she's far away, she's safe."

"Oh, good. Maybe she's the new King. I'm tired, Patch. I'll see you in the morning."

Twitch shuddered twice and then lay silent. For a moment Patch feared the worst - but he could feel his friend's strong heart still beating within his torn body, faint and fast, but regularly; could feel his battered body swell with ragged breaths.

Patch hardly slept that night. It seemed that every time his eyes closed, another crow tried to enter his drey, and he had to fight it off. He suffered a half-dozen pecks to the snout that night. Eventually, exasperated, he shouted at one attacking crow, "Why are you doing this?"

The crow leaped back to the threshold of the drey, surprised that Patch spoke Bird. It was so dark that motionless it looked less like a thing and more like an absence in the night.

Eventually it said, gruffly, "I don't know, groundling. I'm just a crow. It's what the flock-lord commands. I don't even know why we came here in the first place, much less why now we have to kill you ourselves. All I know is the King of Crows made some kind of bargain."

"What bargain?"

"I'm just a crow," the bird repeated. "I don't like it either. I don't like the night, we can hardly see. Hundreds of us have died. The owls are terrible. But we can't go home until you're dead. I'm sorry."

Then the crow retreated, disappearing into darkness. It did not return; and for the rest of the night no more crows tried to force their way into Patch's drey.

Patch must have eventually fallen asleep; he was woken by the dawn. Twitch lay beside him, unconscious. Patch wormed his way forward and poked his head gingerly outside the entrance of his drey. There were crows still outside, roosting on the branches of his oak tree, covering them like leaves: dozens of them, hundreds. Patch hesitated, not sure what to do.

Then a mighty avian cry came from above, as if the sky itself was screaming, and the crows on his tree all came to life at once and fled panicked into the western sky, as Karmerruk came soaring down. One crow was too slow; Karmerruk caught it, tore it in two, landed on the branch that included Patch's drey, and began to feast.

"Ready, squirrel?" he asked between bites, as Toro and Daffa fluttered to landings on branches a safe and respectful distance away from the hawk.

"Just a moment," Patch said.

He dashed to the ground and filled his mouth with tulip bulbs from across the nearest concrete path. He returned to his drey, opened his mouth, and left the bulbs there for Twitch. Then he took the glass ball back into his paws.

"I have to go, Twitch," he said to his friend's unconscious form. "I'm sorry. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Patch emerged from the drey to the branch. He groaned with pain as once again Karmerruk's talons dug into his back, and the hawk beat his enormous wings, and once again they rose into the sky. They followed Daffa and Toro eastwards.

As they passed out of the Center Kingdom, into the eastern mountains, Patch craned his neck to look behind him, at his home. To his alarm he saw a black cloud of crows rising into the sky and soaring after them.

"Behind us!" he cried out. "Crows! They're chasing us!"

Daffa and Toro accelerated forward and away from the pursuing mob. Karmerruk strained to do the same; but he was so slowed by Patch's weight that he could not match their pace. The hundred black birds in howling pursuit were bound to catch them before they reached their destination.

84. Through the Sky

2007-10-13T23:45:00.001-07:00

"I fail to see why the whimsical desires of a ragamuffin squirrel should have anything whatsoever to do with my chosen course of action," the Prince of the Air said haughtily. "You presumed greatly on our acquaintance even in requesting my presence. I will have you know I came here only because the hunting is excellent."

Patch nodded. He had expected the hawk's reluctance. "Where do you live?"

Karmerruk's stare grew even harder. "What business is it of yours where I nest?"

"It's near the Center Kingdom, isn't it?" Patch asked. "Somewhere in the mountains. You have children, don't you? You mentioned your nestlings once."

"My personal life is none of your concern -"

"But the Center Kingdom is. You know what's going on there, don't you? You know the King Beneath is no myth."

Karmerruk beat his wings once, and dust flew, and Patch feared the Prince of the Air would fly away; but the hawk let his wings lapse back to his sides, and admitted, "I have seen the King Beneath."

"And you've seen the crows."

"I would have to be blind not to have seen them."

"If they win, they'll eat every mammal in the Center Kingdom, and then what will you do for food?"

Karmerruk shrugged. "There will still be pigeons and bluejays."

Daffa and Toro backed surreptitiously away from the hawk.

"Is that good enough for your nestlings?" Patch asked. "No mice? No chipmunks?"

The hawk thought a moment, then sighed. "I do like mice ... I see your point, groundling. What is it you want of me?"

"I want you to carry me to a particular place in the Hidden Kingdom."

"What particular place?"

Patch said, "Daffa knows where."

Daffa blinked with surprise, then wilted backwards as Karmerruk turned his penetrating gaze upon the pigeon.

"I don't know anything!" Daffa squawked nervously.

"Sure you do," Patch said. "You told me once you met a big cat that knew how to speak Bird. And you can go right back to that big cat any time you want."

"Oh, the big cat, yes, of course, I can take you there exactly," Daffa said, relieved.

"Big cat?" Karmerruk asked suspiciously. "Does this have anything to do with the Queen of All Cats?"

"No," Patch answered truthfully.

"Hmm." Karmerruk looked around as if seeking some excuse. "It's a long way to the Hidden Kingdom."

"That's why we need to leave as soon as possible."

The hawk considered for some time. Then he sighed, long and loudly, tilted his head towards the sky, and said as if musing about the weather, "I cannot help but to think, Patch son of Silver, in retrospect, my life would have been considerably simpler if I had just eaten you on first acquaintance."

Patch said nothing.

"All right. Let us fly."

"Stay here," Patch said to White and Silver. "He can't carry more than one of us. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"You still haven't explained what you're doing!" Silver exclaimed. "Where are you going?"

"I have an idea," Patch said vaguely. He didn't want to explain what he was doing. He had a notion that any such explanation might sound completely insane. "Don't worry. I won't be in any danger. I won't be long - oh!"

This last expostulation was one of pain and surprise, as Karmerruk's talons dug into his flesh and lifted him away from the ground. Patch winced with pain as he watched White and Silver dwindle from squirrels with alarmed expressions into pale blurs and dots, until finally they were invisible, all he could see were the trees of the Endless Empire like a field of grass beneath them, and the mountains and great waters to the south, and the clouds and setting sun in the sky around them. In his paws Patch carried the glass ball he had found half-buried in the dirt path above the Croton Road.

Daffa and Toro flew beside and behind Karmerruk. The strange and improvised flock of three birds and a squirrel made their way first above the human buildings, and then, as they grew from houses into mountains, between them. The journey was no more comfortable than the last time Patch had travelled by hawk, but in a strange way, the talons digging into his bleeding back made him feel safe; they were so sharp, and Karmerruk so strong, that he knew he ran no risk of falling. Patch watched the approaching Island of the Center Kingdom spread out below him as if it was no more than a single little patch of earth, lit by the rays of the falling sun. He committed the sight to memory. He wondered if perhaps he was the only squirrel ever to have seen the world like this more than once.

The rhythm of Karmerruk's wingbeats began to grow ragged, his movements more spasmodic and less smooth.

"You're too heavy," the hawk gasped. "I can't take you all the way to the Hidden Kingdom. I'll have to leave you in the Center Kingdom overnight, while I rest."

Patch winced. That wasn't part of his plan - but there seemed no choice. "All right." He thought a moment. "Can you take me to the middle of the western frontier?"

"Yes."

"Toro, can you meet me at my drey tomorrow? And bring Daffa. Keep an eye on him. He forgets things."

"It's true," Daffa admitted, ashamed. "In fact I've completely forgotten what I'm doing with the three of you. Have I gone mad?"

"Of course not," Patch assured him. "Just stay with Toro here and you'll be fine."

Daffa looked unconvinced, but didn't argue, as Toro led him south towards the bluejay's nest, and Karmerruk swooped down towards what had once been the territory of the Treetops tribe, when such a tribe had existed. The trees of the North were so covered with crows they seemed to have been infected by some awful blackening disease, but to Patch's relief, the trees near his drey seemed empty of crows - and of all other living things.

"Be careful," Karmerruk warned, as he deposited Patch on a particular oak tree. "The crows roost mostly in the North, but by night, when the King Beneath emerges, they fly all over the kingdom. They can see in the dark, not like owls, but well enough. I'll be back here at dawn. Good luck."

And the hawk flew away, leaving Patch on his home tree. He had not stood on it since the day he had first ventured into the mountains. So many things had changed since then that this sturdy oak now felt alien to Patch, so strange and foreign that he half-thought it was the wrong tree: but no, his drey was still there, in the hollowed-out stump of a big branch, just as he had left it. As the sun set behind the mountains he curled up in his own home. He felt safe: surely no crow could find and attack him here.

It occurred to Patch as he fell asleep that for a long time he had never expected to see his drey again, and despite his desperate mission, he smiled.

He did not sleep long. When darkness fell, the King Beneath rose, and the crows began to fly.

83. A Murder of Crows

2007-10-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

"It's the crows," Toro said. "They're attacking every mammal in the kingdom. Cats, dogs, even horses, I've seen them go after humans. But most of all they attack squirrels. Flocks of a hundred, sometimes more, the biggest flocks I've ever seen, they look like swarms of big black bees. They leave other birds alone. But anything with fur that walks or crawls is a victim."

"They just started attacking? Out of nowhere?" Patch asked, aghast.

"No. They started a few days ago." Toro hesitated. "After the coming of the King Beneath."

The three squirrels stared at the bluejay. Daffa covered his face with a wing.

"It's true!" Toro insisted. "He's not a myth, he's real, I've seen him! I saw him last night, in the Northern Sea. He's bigger than a horse, and he's covered with scales like a lizard, and he's all white, and he's got fangs like you've never seen. He comes out at night and devours everything he comes near. He's so fast. Last night I saw him kill and eat a sleeping human! He's real, Patch, I saw him!"

"You don't have to convince us," Patch said quietly. "We've seen him too."

"Oh. Good. Well, not good, but...He's risen from the underworld. He's the reason the crows are attacking. He's made an alliance with them. I've heard they're moon-sworn to him. And between them they're killing every mammal in the Center Kingdom."

As Patch relayed this awful news to White and Silver, he thought of what Lord Snout said to him. I hope you don't think you've won the war ... All creatures of darkness serve the King Beneath. And when he comes, all will flock to his command.

"So many crows," Silver breathed. "There were hundreds of them, no, thousands, remembered how they covered the trees, how they clouded the sun? We can't stand against them. Nothing can. They'll drive us from the trees."

"And then the rats and the King Beneath will take us," White said. She smiled darkly as something occurred to her. "It's funny, I never thought of the Center Kingdom as 'us' until now. Now that it's too late."

"It isn't too late," Patch said hollowly, but it felt like a lie, and both White and Silver only smiled sadly at him.

"I'm sorry," Toro said.

"Oh, I am too," Daffa agreed, sounding even more heartsick than the bluejay. "I know what it's like to lose your home, Patch. It's like a hole in your heart that will never heal."

"It can't be lost!" Patch exclaimed. "There has to be something we can do!" It wasn't right, not after what they had been through and survived in the Kingdom Beneath, that they finally emerged into the world only to discover that they had become homeless refugees of a doomed and faraway land.

"It would take us days just to get there, Patch," Silver said quietly. "If we were very lucky. And even if we succeeded, what could we do? Three squirrels against a caiman monster and thousands of crows?"

"The crows must be moon-sworn to him, they must owe him some kind of debt, or they wouldn't be flying at night and attacking squirrels," Patch argued. "If we could just deal with the King Beneath -"

"Is that all?" White's laugh held no mirth in it. "You've seen him, Patch. Every squirrel in the Center Kingdom could go after the King Beneath, and I doubt between us we could so much as scratch one of his scales before he killed us all. Your friend Zelina can't help, he'd do the same to cats."

"I'm sorry, but she's right," Silver said. "There's nothing we could do. Survival is our victory. Nothing more."

Patch paced angrily along the dirt path, as the two squirrels and two birds watched him with concern. They were right. Of course they were right. Of course there was nothing a little squirrel like him could do to defeat the King Beneath. Patch turned, ready to admit defeat.

He caught a momentary whiff of a rich, feral scent.

Patch stopped in his tracks and looked around. There was nothing moving, no other creature in sight. But there was something gleaming by the side of the path. He walked over and discovered a small glass ball, half-buried in the dirt, with a strange patterned and multicoloured double helix trapped within.

Patch had discovered such things before, in the Center Kingdom. Human children played with them, and sometimes lost them. It was nothing of consequence. But it sparked a memory.

Patch stood and stared at that glass ball. Thoughts and ideas churned in his mind for what felt like a long time but was probably no more than a few heartbeats. Then he turned and raced back up the path.

"Toro! Daffa!" he said.

The birds looked at him quizzically.

"Bring Karmerruk here." Both birds flinched at the mention of the hawk's name, but Patch carried on. "Both of you. I need all three of you."

Toro peered at Patch carefully. "Are you mad? Do you rave?"

"No."

"What in the good sky do you need Karmerruk for?"

Patch said, "I need him to carry me to the Hidden Kingdom."

82. Birds in the Wind

2007-10-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

"It's very strange," Daffa the pigeon said, as he drifted down and landed on the ground before Patch. "I remember exactly where I met you before, both times, and it was very far away. I don't think I've ever known any animal that wasn't a bird to travel so far. Do you remember me? Was it a long time ago? I'm not good with time."

He waited anxiously.

"Not so long ago," Patch said slowly, "not so long."

Daffa winced, deflated. "Then you don't know where my home is?"

"I'm sorry."

"Oh well. It has to be somewhere. It can't just have disappeared." The pigeon sighed and made ready to fly away.

"Wait!" Patch said. "Wait, Daffa, the three of us, we're all from the Center Kingdom, and we don't know how to get home."

The bird hesitated. "I suppose you can't just fly."

"No. We can't. But maybe, I was thinking, if I told you where the nest of my friend Toro was, he's a bluejay, maybe you could bring him to us, and he could help us get home?"

"I'm not very good with messages."

Patch thought a moment. "You wouldn't have to bring him a message. Just tell him my name, and bring him back here. You could do that, right?"

"Oh, of course. I know exactly anywhere I've been. Exactly. But it's a long way to the Center Kingdom..."

"Do you have anywhere else to be going?" Patch asked gently.

Daffa sighed. "No. Not until I find my home."

"Then..."

"Oh, all right. What was your name again?"

"My name is Patch." He left out the rest of his usual introduction; no sense taxing Daffa's mind unnecessarily. "Do you know the place in the Center Kingdom where the human-carved animals go round and round, while their music plays?"

"I know the place."

"Toro's nest is on top of that building. He's a bluejay. Just tell him my name and bring him here."

"And your name is Pitch," Daffa said doubtfully.

"Patch! Listen, Daffa. This is so important. We'll never get home without help. Keep saying my name the whole way there. Patch, Patch, Patch."

"Patch, Patch, Patch," Daffa repeated. "All right. I'll try. I'll try to be back soon. Patch, Patch, Patch, Patch, Patch!"

The pigeon rose chanting into the sky and soared southwards. Patch waited hopefully. With Toro's help, scouting the territory, watching them from above, they would have a much better chance of making it through the mountains and back to the Center Kingdom.

"Do you want to stay here in the Endless Empire?" Silver asked White, for the second time. Patch twitched; he had forgotten the exchange that Daffa had interrupted.

This time nothing prevented White from answering. But it took her a long and awkward time before she finally answered, in a low voice, while staring at the ground, "I don't want to go back to the squirrels of the Center Kingdom. But I want to go wherever your son goes."

It took Patch a moment to realize 'your son' meant him.

Silver looked at Patch and said, almost accusingly, "What do you think of this?"

He blinked. "I think it's stupid the way all the other squirrels treat her. I think she's the bravest, smartest squirrel I know. She went into the Kingdom Beneath to help save your life, and she didn't even know you."

"Yes," Silver said, "but what do you think of her?"

Patch didn't understand the question. "She's my friend."

In the long silence that followed White muttered something under her breath and turned away from him. Patch looked at her, bewildered, and said, "What's wrong?"

"I can't believe you even have to ask!" White sniffled.

"She doesn't only want to be your friend," Silver said softly. "She wants to be your mate. And I agree with you, Patch, it doesn't matter that she's albino. She's a hero. I can think of no better mate for my son. But if it is not what you want -"

"My mate? But - but it's not even chasing season!"

"There's more to sharing a drey than just chasing," Silver said dryly.

"Oh. Well." Patch hesitated. He had always liked being alone. But he didn't want White to go away. He thought he would miss her if she did. "Okay then. We can share a drey when we get back, if she likes."

White turned and stared at him, her eyes alight.

"Other squirrels might say terrible things about you living with an albino," Silver warned.

Patch shrugged carelessly. "I don't care what other squirrels say."

And that was that. White walked slowly over to lie very close to Patch's side as they waited. Silver sat a little distance from them. It occurred to Patch as he looked over to White that she was now, technically, his mate. It seemed odd that the word applied to him, when he had always chosen to live alone until now. But the thought of sharing his drey with White made him feel happy. He lay quietly beside her for a long time.

"Patch!" a voice cried out in Bird.

It was quickly followed by a second voice. "I told you I knew where he was. You see, I knew exactly!"

Daffa and Toro landed on the dirt path before Patch, Silver, and White.

"Patch, I can't believe it!" his bluejay friend exclaimed. "I heard you went into the Kingdom Beneath. I thought you must be dead!"

Patch smiled. "Almost. Many times." His smile faded. "You can see my tail. But I'm alive. We need to get home, back to the Center Kingdom. Can you help us?"

Toro hesitated. "I don't think you want to do that."

"What? Why not?"

"Bad things are happening in the Center Kingdom right now, Patch. Terrible things, worse than the rats, worse than you can imagine. I think it's best to stay away. I don't know if there'll be any Kingdom for you to go back to."

81. The Endless Empire

2007-10-10T21:20:00.001-07:00

"Where are we?" White asked, wonder in her voice, after they had feasted on grubs and wildflowers, and drunk from the stream that flowed out of the underworld.

"I don't know. Not the Center Kingdom," Patch said. He was sure of that much. The air tasted different here, and the trees were taller, and the human trail that led alongside the ruined building was dirt rather than concrete. It felt so much better to be again beneath the sky. Even his tail and his many wounds felt better.

"We're north," Silver said, looking at the sun as it soared towards its apex, and the direction from which they had emerged. "Far north. We travelled a long time beneath. I think for days."

Patch called to mind his recollection of how the world had looked when he had soared in far above the Center Kingdom in Karmerruk's claws. North, past the island of the Center Kingdom, rivers thrust their way into an expanse of land that had continued all the way into the dim horizon. They must have emerged into one of the green patches in that memory landscape. Silver was right: it was a long, long way back home. They would have to cross a river and traverse uncountable miles of forbidding mountains.

The three squirrels drifted south along the human trail, mostly because movement helped them feel less like lost refugees and more like travellers making their way home, avoiding the thick sky-road above for fear that other squirrels lived there and might view them as interlopers. They soon reached a place where the dirt had fallen away into a narrow gulch, revealing a curving brick slope beneath.

"That's it," Silver said softly. "That's where we were."

It was a dizzying thought, that they were now witnessing from the outside the same Croton Road that they had travelled within for days, that the Kingdom Beneath, which had felt like a different world, was in some places separated from daylight only by the thickness of a brick.

"I smell squirrel," White said sharply.

Patch sniffed. She was right. And there were rustling sounds coming from beside the path. The three squirrels turned, stopped dead with amazement, and stared. The two night-black squirrels that had been scampering through the undergrowth came to an equally nonplussed halt.

"Who are you?" the female black squirrel demanded.

"What are you?" asked the male.

"We're squirrels!" Patch said, outraged.

The male black squirrel looked at him skeptically. "I've seen a lot of other squirrels, and none of them looked anything like you three."

"Don't you have albinos here?" White asked.

"Albinos?" the male asked, repeating the word without comprehension. "We don't even know what that is."

"I heard once there are gray squirrels to the south, in the Archipelago," the female said thoughtfully. "Is that where you're from?"

Patch wasn't sure how to answer that question, so he decided to fall back on basics. "I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe. This is my mother Silver daughter of Strongtail, of the Watcher clan, and White daughter of Streak, of the Runner clan. We are all of the Center Kingdom."

"The Center Kingdom!" the male exclaimed. "I've heard of that. You're right, it's in the Archipelago."

"I told you so," the female scolded him. "You never believe me."

"Pardon me," Silver said, "but with whom do we have the honour of speaking?"

"Oh," the female said, embarrassed. "I am Dizzy daughter of Silent, and this is my mate Grubhunter son of Tallclimber, we're both Gobbler clan."

"Of what tribe?" Silver asked.

Dizzy and Grubhunter exchanged looks. "It's not like your Archipelago here," Grubhunter said. "This is the Endless Empire."

Explanations soon ensued, on both sides. From what Dizzy and Grubhunter said, the Endless Empire had no tribes, like the Hidden Kingdom, although for the opposite reason. The Hidden Kingdom was tribeless because there were not enough trees for squirrels to congregate in those numbers: the Endless Empire because its expanses were too vast and borderless for tribes to make any sense. Squirrels simply moved on if they had any trouble with their neighbours, so no tribes had ever been formed. Some squirrels of the Endless Empire clustered in loose little clan-groups, but many just lived with their families or even alone.

It didn't sound dangerous. There were owls and raccoons at night, and occasionally foxes and dogs by day, but according to Dizzy and Grubhunter, this corner of the Endless Empire was a safe and easy place to live. They doubted any other squirrel would trouble Patch, White and Silver as they travelled south to the Archipelago, although many would stop them from curiosity.

"It sounds better than the Center Kingdom," White said wistfully, watching Dizzy and Grubhunter scramble away through the underbrush towards their drey after saying their goodbyes.

Patch looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"It's safe here. And they don't think I'm cursed by the moon. They don't even know what albinos are."

"Do you want to stay?" Silver asked.

White looked at Patch, then looked away. She did not answer.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by a totally unexpected voice from above.

"Good heavens," a voice said in Bird. "I think I know you, squirrel. You with the little white patch on your forehead. Do you remember me? Do you know where my home is? I'm looking for my home, and I can't find it!"

80. Endless Escape

2007-10-09T20:04:00.001-07:00

The Croton Road seemed to go on forever, an unbroken highway of brick stretching endlessly through the underworld in a perfectly straight line. In some places daylight peered through cracks in its ceiling; in others, no luminescent fungus lined its walls, and the road was as dark as a wild and moonless night. Sometimes it widened into circular chambers like that where they had encountered the King Beneath, although only a very few of those boasted a stone bridge across the waters. The walls of the road were riddled with countless tunnels, some too small for any squirrel, others big enough for a human to walk without stooping, but the squirrels avoided them. All these side tunnels stank of Rat.

Despite their omnipresent scent, there were almost no rats to be found along the Croton Road. On the two occasions they did hear rats squeaking and scurrying in the distance, the squirrels were able to backtrack to where roots hung thickly from the ceiling, cross the water on those sky-roads, and hide tense and breathless in the dark mouths of side-tunnels until the rat-sounds were gone.

At first Patch was grateful for this paucity of rats; but it occurred to him, the first time they stopped in a dead-end side-tunnel to sleep, that it had to be because rats deliberately avoided the Croton Road. Perhaps because they found its spaciousness unnerving, too much like being aboveground. Or perhaps it was because they knew that hunters lurked along the road. Snakes, or caiman, or centipedes ... or something unimaginably worse. Patch slept poorly that night, if it was night.

Whenever they saw rippling movement in the water, they fled for a side tunnel, but they never found what swam in that darkness, and never encountered either the King Beneath or the daughter-King caiman. They smelled snake, several times, and promptly crossed the water by root-road if they could, or sprinted as if pursued if not. They encountered any number of other underworld scents that they could not name at all. A few smelled warm and welcoming. Most made their fur stand on end and their teeth shiver.

There were several places where the ledges ramped down into dark pools, and they had to swim across. On one paw, this was welcome, as the only other sources of water were the damp and fungal bricks; on the other, the water was cold and terrifying, and they twice had to swim into utter darkness without knowing what if anything waited for them on the other side, or if this might be an underwater sea in which they would freeze and drown. Both times, fortunately, they discovered ramps that led back to the road.

There was almost no food. There was no edible fungus here as there had been in the chamber of bones. They tried to nibble at a dead frog they found on the road, but its flesh tasted sour and poisonous, and they gave up. What saved them was that some of the roots hanging from the ceiling were edible, if bitter and chalky. Patch had to be careful when he climbed to eat; he had to relearn his whole sense of balance, now that half his tail was missing.

At one point, after their second sleep, the entire Croton Road turned into a gigantic metal tunnel. They splashed their way along its corrugated length, and then the previous architecture resumed, and they climbed up onto the ledges and continued beneath the arched brick ceiling. It was at this point Patch gave up hope of ever seeing the outside world again. He saw no reason that the Croton Road should not continue forever. He kept moving in a daze, only vaguely aware of his weary paws and legs, and of the countless wounds turning to scars throughout his body. He hardly spoke. Nor did White or Silver. Conversation consumed valuable energy. They needed their strength to keep moving.

It was well after the third sleep - indeed, Patch was on the verge of suggesting a fourth - when they reached the thick metal grate that walled off the entirety of the Croton Road. The squirrels halted before this discontinuity. The grate did not stop or even slow their journey - the gaps between its rusting bars were easily big enough for them - but beyond it, the arching roof of the Croton Road descended suddenly towards the water. On this side of the grate, a human could have walked on the road; on the other, they might barely have crawled.

Patch became aware that there was no glowing fungus on the walls here. They had been travelling through total darkness for some time now, but here it had diminished, lit by a dim and distant light far away on the other side of that grate. And the air - it wasn't full of the usual wet and fungal smells of the Croton Road. It smelled, however faintly, of oak trees, and grasses, and the north wind.

They did not dare breathe a word of hope. Instead they moved silently on, slipping through the grate, along this low room - and towards a glowing square of open light in the distance. But they did not reach that glowing square. They did not have to. A tree's-length before, a side tunnel full of water led off from the Croton Road. This was not unusual. What was unusual was the fresh air that burst from that side tunnel like a flower in bloom.

Silver was in the lead. She looked back at White and Patch, and smiled. Then she leaped down into the water, and swam down the side tunnel. White followed, and then Patch. The tunnel led to and through an arch that seemed full of white light. Patch's eyes were so accustomed to the underworld that this light was as blinding as utter darkness, he could see nothing at all. He felt dry stones under his paws, and scrabbled up a dry gully. It took a good dozen breaths before his eyes began to adjust, and he realized that the light was the sun, and the blue canopy above him was a cloudless sky, and they stood outside a ruined, crumbling human building in the midst of otherwise high and dense forest. They had escaped the Kingdom Beneath.

79. Crawling Things

2007-10-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

"Something's going to come out of those holes," Patch said, his voice rising. "We have to get out!"

He felt more panicked than he had at any time since entering the underworld. He had faced many dangers since then, but this was the first time since the room full of cockroaches he had been hounded into a corner with no apparent escape; and he was grimly sure that whatever lurked behind those holes was far more dangerous than cockroaches.

"There's no way," Silver said. "We'll have to try to fight them."

Patch felt too weak to fight, and he was sure his mother did too, but he tried to breathe deeply and gather his strength. The acid smell from the holes in the far wall was growing stronger. And did he hear a kind of soft and distant scuttling noise?

"Wait," White said. "Where are we?"

Patch turned and stared with disbelief through the darkness towards White's voice. Had she gone mad?

"We're in the Kingdom Beneath," Silver said gently, "in an ancient human tunnel."

"That's not what I mean," White said exasperated. "I mean, how far is it from here to the Croton Road?"

Patch said, "Not far, but she - it - we can't go up there." He could hear the rough breaths of the daughter-King as she waited for them in the chamber above.

"That's not what I mean either. I mean, how far the other way?"

"The other way?" Patch asked, astonished. "But - but there's -"

"How far?" White demanded.

Patch, taken aback by her anger, tried to calculate the answer. He had run from the King Beneath down the first tunnel that led directly away from the Croton Road; after a short distance, he had taken the right-hand fork, which had bent until it ran approximately parallel with the road, before entering the chamber where the daughter-King now waited; then taken the little tunnel down and to the right, back towards the Croton Road, to this long and narrow wooden chamber. And from the end of this chamber to the bricks of the Croton Road was ...

"Maybe not very far at all," he said doubtfully. "I'm not sure. We might just be a squirrel's length away and a squirrel's length below. But it doesn't matter. There's a wall."

Silver caught her breath as if she had just realized something. "Hardly a wall at all. It's soft and rotten."

"But there's still ..."

"Dirt," White said. "That's all that's behind the walls here. We can dig."

Patch gasped as he understood. She was right, they could dig through this dirt, not to bury a nut, but to open a passage back to the Croton Road.

"There's a brick wall on the other end," he warned them.

"We might not make it," White agreed. "But we can't stay here. You said that yourself."

The acid smell had swelled during this brief conversation, and Patch was now beginning to fervently hope he was just imagining not just the soft scuttling sounds but a kind of faint clicking.

"You're right," he said. "Let's dig."

White led the digging. Her claws tore through the rotting wood even easier than the thick, claylike dirt beyond, but she had excavated no more than a rat's-length worth of tunnel when the crawling things began to pour out of the long wooden wall to their left and into the chamber of bones.

The caiman laughed as a cacophony of soft scurrying and rustling noises swelled towards where the three squirrels huddled at the end of the chamber. The acid smell was rank and biting.

"Hurry!" Patch gasped.

Then the first crawling thing touched him, a soft clinging touch like a spiderweb, a touch that quickly turned into a horrible crawling sensation. Patch convulsed violently and the thing withdrew from his leg - only to be replaced by what felt like a half-dozen more, there were tiny insectile legs crawling all over Patch, it was like being covered by cockroaches again, except these things were bigger and heavier. Patch shook like a soaked dog ridding itself of water, and beside him Silver did the same, and the many-legged things fell away from them; but soon they were back, their numbers redoubled. This time they began to bite. And their bites were like fire.

Patch clawed and bit back. His paws and fangs sank into long, squishy bodies like worms, each one propelled by a hundred little legs. They were centipedes, the squirrels were being attacked by a numberless army of poisonous centipedes, each as big as a finger of a full-grown human. Their bites hurt like acid. No one or even ten or even hundred of those bites would be fatal - but soon enough, the relentless wave of centipedes would cover all three squirrels, kill them with poison, and devour every fragment of their flesh and fur, leave nothing but three more skeletons to litter the floor of the Chamber of Bones.

"Into the tunnel!" White gasped. "Hurry!"

Silver followed White into the tunnel she had dug, and Patch backed in behind her. There wasn't enough room for all of him, and the bites on his head and forelegs continued to mount as he scraped himself against the tunnel walls as best he could, and crushing to death the centipedes who clung to his back and sides, moaning but not slowing each time he stubbed his severed tail.

Dirt began to pile up behind Patch, and he swept it clumsily forward with his paws; and as White dug at the tunnel wall, and Silver propelled the dirt farther back, and Patch swept it into the chamber of bones, he found himself able to back a little further into the tunnel, and a little further, and a little further, until his nose was fully in the tunnel and he was no longer afflicted by biting centipedes. The army of centipedes flowed down the chamber and into the new and narrow tunnel like water trying to leave a bottle - but Patch began to stopper the tunnel end with fresh dirt, building a wall between their excavation and the chamber of bones, until the tunnel was sealed on both ends. They had buried themselves alive. But at least they were safe from the crawling centipedes, and still alive.

"Up," Patch said, his voice so weak from the his many wounds, and the blackblood recurrence, and the centipede poison, that Silver could scarcely hear him. "We want to go up, to the ledge, to the Croton Road."

Silver passed the idea on to White, who began to angle the tunnel upwards as best she could. Patch hoped she had a good sense of direction. It was easy to imagine them trying to tunnel in circles until they died. This wasn't so much a tunnel as a moving bubble, and its air was already beginning to feel thick and lifeless. If they made any mistake they would suffocate and die. And even if they didn't -

"There's something here!" White said, half-triumphant, half-nervous. A few scrabbling breaths later. "A brick! This is it, the Croton Road!"

"A brick?" Silver asked. "Oh, no. We have to go through a brick wall? How -"

"It's very old," White said. "The stuff between the bricks, it's crumbling already."

She worked for a long time. All Patch heard was a rhythmic scratching. He closed his eyes, tried to breathe as slowly and shallowly as possible, and tried to ignore his multifarious pains. The scratching seemed to go on forever as White bit and claw at the ancient mortar around the brick. The thick air was making Patch sleepy. He tried to stay awake, but his eyelids felt so heavy -

"That's it," White said, exhausted. "That's as far as I can reach."

"Is it free?" Silver asked.

A moment passed. "No!" White exclaimed with despair. "It trembles a little, but it's not free. It won't move! We can't get out!"

"Don't give up hope," Silver said, calmly but sternly. "We must work together. Patch will push against me, I against you, and you against the brick. We must all push as hard as we can. Ready?"

At his mother's command Patch roused himself one final time and squeezed himself backwards, pressing himself as hard against her as he could. The pain in his tail was immense, and he moaned a little with every breath.

"Breathe in, then push as we breathe out," Silver commanded. "One, two - now!"

Patch strained with all his might as he breathed out. Nothing happened. He sagged, dejected.

"Again," Silver ordered.

"It's not going to work," Patch said hopelessly.

"Again."

He gritted his teeth against the pain, took a deep breath, breathed out, strained -

- and there was a loud clunk as the brick broke free and fell, and as light and lifegiving air from the Croton Road flooded the tunnel. White scrambled out. She had to descend only three bricks to the ledge that ran above the water. Silver followed her, and then Patch backed awkwardly out. He fell onto his tail and groaned loudly.

"Quiet," Silver whispered. "I'm sorry, Patch. But the King Beneath is somewhere in this water. I know you're weak. So am I. We have to run."

"I know," he said, struggling to his feet. "Which way?"

They looked up and down the dimly lit Croton Road.

"This way," Silver said, and she led the way into the unknown.

78. The Princess

2007-10-07T18:38:00.001-07:00

"Here," White said, "Eat this."

Something damp and floppy brushed against Patch's face. It had a rich, earthy scent, like a mushroom. He was so hungry he bit into it without asking what it was, and so weak he could barely break off a piece to chew. It was fibrous and tasteless, like eating spongy bark, but it was better than nothing. Patch ate until it was gone.

"What was that?" he asked.

"A fungus. It grows in the corners. I don't think it's poisonous."

White brought him some more. After devouring this second chunk of fungus Patch tried to stand up. He swayed but succeeded.

"I feel better," he said.

"So do I," Silver said softly, in the darkness.

Patch's eyes widened and his whole body stiffened with wonder and delight. "Silver! You're alive!"

"I'm alive. Only because you came to the underworld to save me," his mother said, as if she did not quite believe it. "From the very jaws of the King Beneath."

Patch wanted to run to her, but - "We're not safe yet. Is there any way out of here?"

"No," White said. "Only where we came from. That ... thing ... is still up there."

"We can just wait for it to leave," Silver suggested.

White hesitated. "I don't know. All these bones ... this chamber, the floor is brick, but the walls are old wood, rotted, and one of the long walls is full of little holes. The holes ... they don't smell right. I think something lives in them. Something bad."

The three of them were silent. Patch heard something thumping and snuffling around the chamber above. The little monster. It made hissing, rasping grunts as it moved. They didn't sound like random exhalations. They sounded like a kind of language. In fact, the more Patch listened to them, the more they sounded almost like Bird. It sounded almost like how Karmerruk might speak, if the hawk suffered some terrible damage to his throat. Patch listened more carefully. He twitched with surprise when a phrase emerged that was guttural but clearly understandable: "Come and be eaten."

"I don't think so!" he exclaimed in Bird, almost without thinking.

The noises above ceased for a moment.

"What are you?" Patch demanded. "Why do you speak Bird?"

"Bird?" A series of rattling moans emerged from the darkness. It took a moment for Patch to realize they were laughter. "Not Bird, fur-thing. Reptile. What am I? I am daughter-King. I am caiman."

"But we're speaking Bird," Patch said, beginning to wonder if he was dreaming or delirious.

"Birds our ancient cousins. My father's stories. Birds come to his father in the jungle." That word meant nothing to Patch. "Birds live in his jaws, clean his teeth, keep them sharp. Birds serve. Crows will serve. Creatures of night, like caiman. Black wings, black blood. My father, my King, will conquer, rule, kill, devour. All will be Kingdom Beneath. Come and be eaten, fur-thing."

"You can't be serious."

"Come and be eaten, stay and be eaten," the caiman hissed. "Many years rat and snake run from us into chamber of bones. Crawling things come and eat. Come and die quick in my jaws, fur-thing. Stay and die slow, eaten alive."

Patch switched back to Squirrel and said, "We have to get out of here."

"How?" White asked.

Patch didn't know. He began to rummage around the chamber. It was long and narrow, and difficult to navigate, thanks to the shifting field of bones that covered its floor. Not all of the skeletons were rats. He stumbled across a long limbless chain of vertebrae with a fanged skull on the end. One of the Legless. Maybe what the caiman had called "snake." The chamber walls, as White had said, were ancient human-carved wood, cracked and soft, covered with fungus... and one long wall was full of holes not quite big enough for Patch's paws, holes that led deep into the dirt beyond the rotting wood, holes that smelled acidly wrong.

That wrong smell seemed to be intensifying. And there was no way out except the narrow metal tunnel that led up to the caiman's waiting jaws.

"Crawling things come," hissed the reptilian daughter of the King Beneath. "Stay and die slow."

77. The Chamber of Bones

2007-10-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Patch cried out with pain. He hadn't fallen far, but he had fallen onto the searing agony of his severed tail.

"Patch!" White gasped, not far away. "Are you all right?"

He groaned. "I think so."

He made his way slowly towards her through the eyeless darkness. The concrete floor was wet and cracked. He could hear water trickling and dripping behind him, in the tunnel he had entered, and in several places to his right.

White sniffed the air. "Is that blood? Are you hurt?"

"My tail," Patch groaned.

"Oh, no. Oh, Patch, I'm so sorry."

His nose touched White's side. "Never mind me. Did you get Silver here too?"

"Yes. She's right here."

"Can you save her?"

"I don't know. Maybe. There's one way -"

Both of them fell silent. There was a scuttling noise coming towards them, the scrabbling of claws on metal, something coming down the metal tunnel. Patch suddenly envisioned the smaller monster in the dark water. Could it fit through that tunnel? He was terrified that it could.

"The little one's coming!" he said. "Hurry!"

He grabbed Silver's leg with a mouth and began to drag her towards the several trickling sounds behind them. White hesitated a moment before joining him. The thing in the tunnel rattled closer. Patch pulled harder, moving as fast as he could.

The bleeding stump of his tail brushed against something metal and he groaned before turning to investigate. There was another metal tunnel here, this one barely big enough for a squirrel. It ramped down so sharply that if it was long enough the fall might kill them.

Something big and wet squelched out of the larger tunnel and onto the chamber's concrete floor. The little monster was in the room with them. They had no choice. Patch dragged Silver back with one final desperate push, and then they were falling, sliding through a hinged metal flap and skidding steeply down along corrugated metal walls.

Patch screamed when he hit bottom. They hadn't fallen far, less than a squirrel's length, but he had landed severed-tail-first on a carpet of sharp little things like sticks, and Silver's weight was on top of him. Then White landed on them both and agony exploded through his body. He had no breath nor strength with which to scream again.

"I'm sorry, Patch, I'm sorry!" she gasped, as he wept and choked with the pain.

"No," he managed. "Don't be sorry. We're alive. We're safe."

He pulled himself away from White and Silver. This chamber was if anything even darker than the last. A thick layer of dry and hard twiglike things covered its concrete floor like dead leaves in late autumn. They shifted and rustled as he stepped on them. It wasn't until he slipped on something smooth and rounded that he began to understand what they were. He had slipped on a skull. These were rat bones, hundreds of them.

"What is this place?" he gasped.

White had no answer. Something was moving about, hissing and snuffling, and Patch smelled something very like the King Beneath. The other monster. But little as it was compared to the King Beneath, it was much too large to fit into this chamber. They were safe - from it, at least.

"Never mind," Patch said. He decided to worry about whatever had killed these hundreds of rats if and when the time came. "How do we help Silver?"

He returned to where his mother's apparently lifeless form lay limp amid the heaped rat bones.

"Blood," White said. "It's your blood that makes you immune. She needs your blood."

"But - how?"

"Patch, you're already bleeding. This might kill you. It might kill you both."

"I don't care," he said. "What do I need to do?"

White was silent for some time. Then she moved, first to Silver, and to Patch. He felt her head against his, nuzzling his neck softly.

"Hold very still," she said softly, and bit him hard on the side of his neck.

Patch yowled with pain and surprise.

"Hurry!" she said urgently. "Lie down next to her, put your wound against hers. You have to share your blood with her. It's her only chance."

Patch obeyed. His mother's fur felt cold and dead, and her blood ran cool, and smelled of rot and decay. He pressed his bleeding neck against hers and kept up as much pressure as he could.

"How long?" he asked.

"I don't know," White said. "A long time."

Patch began to grow a little dizzy, and then weak. His neck began to throb, and then his head began to pound, joining the stabbing hurt of his severed tail in a symphony of agony. He felt dizzy, and the darkness around him seemed somehow to be blurring, and he began to shiver with cold. He remembered dimly that this was what the blackblood disease had been like. He was absorbing it from Silver, as she was absorbing his blood. And he was not immune. It was worse this time than last. The pain and weakness was so great that he almost didn't feel Silver beginning to shudder against him.

White said something, but Patch could no longer comprehend her, all his senses were smeared into a gray blur. He felt himself being moved, but he did not understand how or where or why. He had never felt so awful in all his life. He was sick, dizzy, confused, helpless, full of pain. He seemed frozen in an eternity of suffering. He wanted to die. Anything that would make this all-devouring misery go away would be a blessing.

Eventually he became aware that something had changed, something was different. The dizziness was going away. The headache was diminishing. The nausea was fading. He was slowly getting better, but he was still helplessly weak, desperately thirsty, ravenously hungry.

"Water..." he groaned, barely able to speak at all.

Something nudged against him. An empty rat-skull full of water. Patch drank. It helped a little.

"Is he going to be all right?" a voice asked that sounded almost as weak as his own.

"I think so," White said. "If only there was some food!"

The other voice said, sighing, "I'm so hungry."

Patch agreed with that sentiment. He had never been so hungry in all his life, not even that winter day he had gone into the mountains for food. That day seemed so long ago its memory was like something that had happened to a different squirrel, like a story he had once been told.

76. Roots

2007-10-05T19:04:00.001-07:00

Patch's every instinct screamed at him to turn and flee. And if he had, his story would have ended there. The King Beneath was just small enough to run along the Croton Road, and to fit into the smaller tunnels connected by the stone bridge; and although it lived in water, it could run with incredible speed, faster than a horse or a dog. It would have run him down and eaten him in the space of a few breaths.

But Patch did not run. His mother lay on that stone bridge behind that monster, lay poisoned and motionless but not dead, and he would not abandon her. Instead, as the King Beneath charged towards him with the speed of a diving hawk, Patch ran towards it; and in the moment it wavered with surprise, he jumped with all his might, leaped over its fanged and slavering maw, and landed on its stubby neck.

He almost skidded off and fell into the pool. The white scales of the King Beneath were slippery with water and harder than bark, and its enormous muscles squirmed beneath him as it sprinted forward. Patch kept moving, knowing that only momentum kept him upright. He sprinted down the length of the King Beneath, halfway along its curving tail, and leaped onto the stone bridge behind, only a few squirrel-lengths away from Lord Snout's stunned and aghast expression.

Patch didn't stop. He kept running, straight at Snout. His fangs were bare and he was snarling with rage. Snout went still for an instant, frozen by sheer astonishment. Then he scurried towards the edge of the bridge, ready to flee into the dark water - but he was too slow; his moment of surprise had lasted just too long. Patch charged headfirst into the huge rat, sending them both tumbling across the stone bridge. Snout's fangs tore into Patch's shoulder. Patch's teeth met in Snout's throat. Rat-blood spurted. Lord Snout shuddered a moment. Then he lay still.

Patch straightened and turned around, fully expecting to see the King Beneath's jaws closing in on him. But the monster was nowhere to be seen. Its charge had taken it past Patch into the small cross-tunnel; and while the King Beneath could run like the wind, and swim like a fish, and kill almost anything its jaws closed upon, one thing it could not do was move backwards much faster than a crawling slug. Instead of the fanged maw of the King Beneath, Patch saw only the tip of its tail laboriously retreating from that tunnel - and he saw White, greatly daring, racing past that flickering tail to join him on the bridge.

He also saw, in the dark water, another creature like the King Beneath, this one the size of a small dog.

"Hurry!" Patch cried.

He and White rushed to Silver's fallen form.

"Cure her," Patch said urgently.

"I can't!"

Patch stared at White. "You said you could save her!"

"I can - I think - but I will need you both, and it will take time!"

"We don't have any time!"

"I'm sorry, I can't," White repeated. "We have to get her out of here."

Patch nodded and looked nervously at the King Beneath, slowly emerging from the tunnel. "All right. Hurry."

But they couldn't hurry. They had enough strength to take Patch's mother's limbs gently in their jaws and push her along the stone bridge towards the other small tunnel, but the process was slow and laborious. They had only gotten Silver to the mouth of the tunnel when the King Beneath finally freed itself from the opposite tunnel and turned to face them. When it saw Snout's fallen form, its dark eyes fixed on Patch, and its throat began to hiss and rattle with murderous growls. The monster advanced across the stone bridge, moving slowly, stalking Patch carefully. This time there would be no mistakes.

"Get her out of here," Patch said grimly to White, and turned to face the King Beneath.

He knew he only had one chance. Patch waited for a moment. Then he ran straight at the white monster on the stone bridge.

The monster reared back, ready for another jump-over attempt; but this time Patch leaped before he reached the King Beneath, leaped and caught hold of the tangled roots that dangled almost onto the bridge. To his terror his momentum carried him swinging onwards, along the bridge, towards the King Beneath's open mouth. He hadn't expected that - the monster leaped up at him - and it snapped its jaws together just as Patch let go of the root and caught another with one paw. The King Beneath's teeth barely missed him as they crunched together.

The root Patch barely held began to spin crazily as it swung from side to side, slapping him into a thick cluster of roots. Patch grabbed blindly at that tangled cluster and hung on. He was no longer spinning, but he was still dizzy, the world still seemed to be whirling around him at a sickening speed. He caught a blurry glimpse of the monster beneath him. It was crouching to leap.

Patch closed his eyes and made himself race up this branch-thick tangle of roots without thinking, as if he was running up a tree. The King Beneath leaped again. This time its massive jaws snapped together on Patch's tail, cutting it in two. The monster fell back to the stone bridge, but landed awkwardly and slipped back into the pool of dark water beneath.

Patch howled with shock and pain. Blood fell in a red rivulet from the stump of his severed tail as he climbed the damp tangle of roots, and kept climbing until he reached the ceiling. At this height Patch was surrounded by a cloud of roots, he could barely make out anything when he squinted downwards, but he was sure he would have seen White or Silver if they were still visible on the bridge. White had at least dragged his mother out of the chamber of the King Beneath and into the small cross tunnel. It was something.

His tail, what was left of it, throbbed with agony, and without its full length his balance felt all wrong; Patch almost fell when he turned around and began to make his way back down for a better view. He couldn't hang on to these slippery roots forever, he had to try to ignore the mind-swallowing pain of his tail at least until he escaped.

The chamber appeared empty. The King Beneath and the smaller monster seemed to have departed. But Patch didn't trust his eyes. He watched very carefully as he descended towards the bridge, and as he emerged from the thick cloud of roots in the heart of the domed roof, he saw a tiny ripple in the water beside the bridge, and he knew that dark eyes were watching him carefully.

Patch hung on those roots for what felt like a long time. He knew that if he dropped to the bridge, the monster would take him. He could try to outwait it - but he knew that would never succeed. The King Beneath was ancient and cold-blooded. It would wait as long as it needed to catch its prey. These roots were slippery, Patch was bleeding badly from his tail, and his shoulder ached where Snout had bitten it, that foreleg was losing strength. He had to do something soon or he would fall involuntarily. But what?

He remembered when he had first leaped up into the roots, how his momentum had unexpectedly swung him towards the enemy. Patch began to rock his body back and forth, experimentally at first, to see if anything happened at all; and when it did, when the root he hung on began to move in wide curving arcs, he threw himself into it, swung himself with all his might up and down the length of the stone bridge. There was only one chance. Not yet - not yet - now.

Patch let go of the root and soared through the air. It felt like falling off a high branch. He curled himself into a ball just before he flew into the mouth of the cross tunnel where White had gone. The impact of landing rattled his bones and mind, and for a moment he lay there senseless; but then he heard showering water as something enormous surged out of the dark pool and onto the bridge, and sheer panic brought him to his feet and set him running.

This tunnel was circular, and made of metal corrugated in little hoops around the inside. There was a little water in it and Patch splashed loudly as he ran up its dark length. There was just enough light to see that it divided into two similar but smaller tunnels not far from the Croton Road. As he reached that junction, Patch heard something lumbering up the tunnel towards him with incredible speed; but his heart soared, and he actually smiled. The King Beneath was much too large for these smaller tunnels, and he could smell which direction White had gone. He pelted and skidded down the right-hand fork, which bent down and around, running parallel to the Croton Road, until suddenly he shot into a small chamber with a concrete floor.

75. The King Beneath

2007-10-04T21:33:00.001-07:00

Just as Patch was beginning to wonder why they had seen no rats, even though their stink made it clear that the Croton Road was a rat highway, the walls began to curve and bend outwards, expanding into a vast circular space. On the other side of this disc-shaped pool, the walls narrowed back into a tunnel and the Croton Road continued. The ceiling above rose from an arch into a dome, and there was enough luminescent mold on the walls of the dome that Patch could see the stone bridge that spanned the chamber crosswise, level with the ledges on either side. On either side of the stone bridge, smaller dog-sized tunnels continued into darkness.

A vast and tangled forest of roots dangled from the dome like willow branches, like an upside-down tree. The deepest tendrils almost brushed against the stone bridge. In their shadow, the things lying in a ragged line across the very center of the bridge were difficult to see, and their smell was drowned in the invasive maelstrom of Rat and that other, terrible, nameless scent; but Patch and White knew them the moment they saw them. The things on the bridge were the limp and lifeless bodies of more than a dozen squirrels. And there was something moving among them.

Patch didn't hesitate. He ran along the Croton Road and onto the stone bridge.

The figure among the fallen squirrels was a lone and shadowed rat, who had stopped moving and now faced down into the water as if staring at its own reflection. It didn't seem to have heard Patch's approach. The fur of one of the squirrels seemed a little brighter than the others, and he caught his breath. Silver. He crouched, ready to charge.

"The King Beneath is here," the rat said coolly, without looking up at Patch. "It is death to look upon the King Beneath."

Patch said, "I don't care if you're King of the whole world."

The rat laughed with genuine mirth, then took a few steps towards Patch, coming close enough to recognize. Patch blinked with surprise. The rat was Lord Snout.

"Oh, this is too delicious," Snout chortled. "You actually thought I was the King Beneath. You really have no idea."

Patch hesitated, uneasy. That terrible nameless scent was intensifying.

"Where is Sniffer?" he demanded.

"Sniffer is dead," Snout said. "His usefulness ended, and he died as you will die. You should have died thrice over already. What shadow fell over your destiny, squirrel? Who sent you to find the Queen of All Cats? What brought you to the Kingdom Beneath? ...It doesn't matter. The King Beneath laughs at destiny. The King Beneath is the killer of fate. I hope you don't think you've won the war. I would hate for you to die with such a wrongheaded belief. Cats can't save your doomed kingdom. Too many of you have died already. You are too weak to survive what comes next. All creatures of darkness serve the King Beneath. All of them. And when he comes, all will flock to his command."

The water beneath the bridge began to shimmer and ripple. There was something moving in it, something pale and enormous, drifting through darkness towards the stone bridge. Patch took an involuntary step back.

"You are greatly honoured to die in the jaws of the King Beneath," Snout whispered.

The pale reptilian thing in the water was bigger than any human. Its scaly and sinuous tail, as long as a large dog, widened from a sharp tip into a thick, flat torso armoured in pebbled white scales, from which four stubby limbs protruded, topped by claws the size of Patch's paws. Its broad snout was mostly mouth: flat and triangular, big enough to swallow a small dog whole, adorned by vast, barbed, serrated yellow teeth. Behind and above this gigantic maw, two dark protruding eyes like lay half-concealed behind a bony ridge.

Patch stared, frozen with absolute horror, as the King Beneath rose towards him. He couldn't move. He felt rooted to the bridge. He heard Snout speaking in a hissing, slithering language that was neither Mammal nor Bird. He saw the King's maw open wide, saw its enormous muscles coil and tense, ready to lunge and devour. Its eyes were like black abysses, and Patch couldn't look away from them, he felt dizzy, about to topple, about to fall into those black pits that were eyes, fall into them and keep falling forever...

White screamed, "Patch, run!"

Her shout broke the spell. The King Beneath leaped from the water like a lightning bolt; but its gargantuan jaws clashed together on empty air as Patch jumped away, back onto the brick ledge that surrounded the room. The monster fell back into the pool. Dark water fountained up, soaking Patch where he stood. The resulting wave rippled across the pool - and as it did, Patch thought he saw something else moving in the water; something white and scaly, something much like the King Beneath, only much smaller, or perhaps younger.

"Run!" White insisted.

"Oh, no, it's much too late for running," Snout gloated. "There's nothing left for you now but dying."

The water erupted again; and this time, to Patch's horror, the King Beneath launched itself completely out of the water and onto the stone bridge. It flailed clumsily with its stubby limbs for a moment before righting itself and turning its massive body towards Patch. Its white scales and yellow fangs dripped with water.