Beasts of New York | Page 8

whoever finds it first."
"Then you belong to us," Snout hissed. "Because we are the rats who
will suck the marrow from your broken bones."
And from the shadows all around the heaped seed-pods, other rats arose,
and began to climb towards Patch at the top of the pile.
Patch didn't hesitate. He sprinted downwards, running straight at one of
the rats. His charge was so unexpected that the rat in question stopped
and shrank away a little, just enough for Patch to scamper past him,
towards the edge of the pile. Two more rats raced out from beneath the
mountain, blocking any escape across the concrete. He was still
surrounded, rats were scuttling towards him from all directions.
From the very edge of the pile of seed-pods, Patch jumped as high and
as far as he could. For a moment, in midair, he was sure he wouldn't
make it, he would fall to the concrete and be torn apart by the rats -- but
then his outstretched claws latched onto the bark of the little tree beside
which the seed-pods had been heaped. Moments later he was on top of
the tree, looking down at the milling figures of more than a dozen
frustrated rats.
"Come on up!" Patch cried out cheerfully.
He wasn't as confident as he sounded. Rats weren't near as nimble as
squirrels, but there were many of them, and this was a very small tree.
If all the rats climbed up, Patch wasn't sure he would escape. But at
least he was up a tree, his belly was full for the first time in days, and
Toro was watching from the next tree over.
"I will find you, Patch son of Silver," the rat named Snout promised. "I
will find you and eat your eyes from your skull."
Patch said nothing. He only watched as the rats scurried away. Most of
them filed back towards the shadows at the base mountain. But Snout

ran along the edge of the mountain, until he reached a huge hole in the
mountain's side. Humans had blocked the hole with a wire fence much
like those in the Center Kingdom. Snout squeezed himself through a
hole in the fence and disappeared into shadow.
"Did you find food?" Toro asked.
"Yes," Patch said. "It was wonderful."
"I've never seen rats like that before."
"Neither have I."
"You should go back to the Kingdom. It's safe there."
Patch was afraid to stay in these terrible mountains for even a moment
longer. He wanted to run back to the Center Kingdom, with his full
belly and his wonderful story of adventure that no other squirrel would
ever believe, and wait for spring to come. But he thought of his
mother's empty drey, and the haunting squirrel-smell there -- and the
way that very same musty squirrel-smell had emanated from that
biggest rat.
"Not yet," Patch said.

Jumper
The opening in the wire fence that Snout had squeezed through was too
small for Patch to do the same. But it was easy enough to climb up to
the top of the fence. From there, Patch could see all of the hole in the
side of the mountain. It was like some enormous creature had taken a
big bite from the mountainside. Beneath the wire fence, a sheer-walled
pit plunged deep into darkness. The pit was full of human things, metal
and concrete shaped in the strange curves and straight lines that humans
favoured but made animals feel queasy. The air was dusty and smelled
awful. Patch shaded his eyes with his tail and squinted, but from the top
of the fence, where the sun shone brightly, he could still not see into the

darkness at the pit's bottom.
"I think we should go," Toro said.
"Not yet," Patch repeated. He watched the dust clouds in the pit, the
way they moved. He didn't want to be upwind of the rats. They too had
sharp noses. He ran along the top of the fence, as far downwind as he
could, and then he took a deep breath and ran straight down the fence.
The lip of the pit was hard concrete, no good for downclimbing, but a
wooden plank ran down into the shadows. Patch moved down this
plank as quietly as he could; rats had sharp hearing, too. It was strange
to walk on wood with such a perfectly straight surface. The pit was as
deep as a medium-sized tree. About halfway down the plank he moved
from sunlight into shadow, and his eyes began to adjust to his new
surroundings.
The center of the pit was jumbled full of huge, geometric human things.
Its bottom was crisscrossed by pipes and planks and girders. The floor
and one wall of the pit were rocky