The Prince Who Fell From the Sky (17 page)

“Into that alley,” Dumpster ordered.

“The what?” Pang whined.

Dumpster didn’t answer. He simply set off through a gap between two of the buildings. Debris and saplings cluttered the passageway. It was a tight squeeze for Casseomae, but she managed. There was the smell of foxes and skunks as well as the scent of creatures she did not recognize. Emerging on the other side, they reached a more open area.

“That one,” Dumpster said, pointing with his nose. “Don’t you think?”

Casseomae surveyed the buildings. Many were sheared off partway up, but one seemed mostly intact. Its exterior was not pocked with the holes of broken glass and weeds that covered the others.

“Good enough,” Casseomae said.

They wound their way through the debris until they found the base of the building. “How do we get in?” Pang said, surveying the stone front.

“Follow me,” Dumpster said. “There should be a doorway on one of the other sides.”

Coming around the corner, they smelled the sharp tang of a rotting carcass. The carcass itself was too mauled for any of them to identify, but Casseomae thought it had the familiar scent of bear.

Nothing in the Forest hunted bears. What could have done this? She sniffed to see if its hunter was lurking nearby but didn’t smell anything alive.

Dumpster headed through the entranceway, a wide opening of broken glass and rusting metal. The interior was fashioned from smooth wood, although it was mostly choked in ivy and creeper.

“Stairs,” Dumpster said, heading toward a wide expanse of half-rotten wooden stairs leading up into the darkness. Water dripped down from somewhere above, the
plip plops
echoing around the room. The rat stopped. “The problem is that when the wolves find us, they’ll be able to follow our scent easy as itchin’. We need a way to block the path.”

“Let’s worry about that after we’re safely inside,” Pang said, starting up the steps. Dumpster dashed after him, with Casseomae and the cub following right behind. They had only gotten halfway up when Casseomae heard groans beneath her paws. Before she could turn back, the stairs collapsed.

The cub fell with her, shrieking as he grabbed her fur. Casseomae hit the ground hard and lay half-dazed. Dust plumed up around them from the ruined staircase.

The cub stood and pulled at Casseomae’s foreleg, whimpering.

“I’m not hurt,” she said, standing to shake off the dirt.

Pang and Dumpster peered down at them from the ledge above. “That’s not exactly what I meant by blocking the path, you heavy oaf,” the rat squeaked.

“Can the pup climb up here?” Pang barked down.

Casseomae grunted and looked up at the dangling remains of the staircase. “It’s too far.”

“Well, there should be other ways up,” Dumpster said. “There’re often a few sets of stairs in these skyscrapers. Go look around, and we’ll wait for you.”

Casseomae quickly found other passages, but she didn’t get very far before she was blocked by debris and waterlogged, collapsed ceilings. The cub tried more of the doors, but none would budge. Casseomae butted against them with her full weight. The only one that broke open led back outside.

They were standing in the narrow alley between the skyscraper and its neighboring building. In one direction the alley was blocked by one of the large metal containers that were Dumpster’s namesake. The other way led back out to the open area in front of the building. She had started in that direction when a wolf’s shadow crossed the alley’s entrance.

She froze, but the wolf hadn’t seen them. A series of yips and barks announced that the wolves had found their scent at the front of the building.

The child whimpered, pressing close to her. She gave him a quick reassuring nudge with her nose and snorted, “Stay calm, cub. I’m here.”

More of the wolves passed outside the alley. Casseomae slowly backed up. At any moment one of
them would smell her and lead the rest down to where she was cornered.

She would fight them. She would have no choice. But she could not defend the cub against them all.

The cub was no longer pressed against her. He was standing at the dumpster, leaping for something above. It was a metal framework, like a smaller version of one of the electricity towers, except it was attached to the side of the building. The cub was trying to grab the lowest section, but it was just out of his reach.

A growl resounded down the alley.

Casseomae turned to see a wolf at the entrance. His hackles were raised and even in the dim light his teeth shone. “Ogeema!” he barked. “I have them.”

Casseomae whipped around. “You have to get up,” she grunted. She pushed her nose under the cub’s hips and hoisted him up. The cub caught hold of the metal structure. He grunted and pulled until he pitched a leg over the frame and began to climb.

Casseomae turned to confront the wolf. He was joined by others, until the entranceway was darkened by their numbers.

“Let me through,” a whispered voice commanded.

The wolves stepped aside for the massive form of the Ogeema. Casseomae pounded a forepaw to the ground. The Ogeema would not take her easily.

“You stupid, traitorous bear,” the Ogeema said. “You bring shame to your clan.”

Casseomae looked up. The cub was standing on the lowest platform, panting for breath. He leaned over the edge and called down to her.

She had gotten him this far. She had to hope Pang could lead the cub to safety from here. But how? Even if the wolves could not climb the stairs, the cub and Pang and Dumpster would not be able to get past them. They would be trapped.

Anger surged through Casseomae’s body. Saliva dripped from her teeth as she roared defiance at the Ogeema.

The cub shook the metal framework, crying out for her.

“Go, cub!” she said, not wanting him to see what the wolves would do to her. “Get to the others!”

“Others?” the Ogeema asked coolly. “I have smelled the cur who travels with you. But what is the other? Some sort of vole?”

“Vole? I’m not a vole,” Dumpster squealed. He and Pang were peering through a broken window next to the cub. “I’m a rat, you stupid underlicker.”

The Ogeema snarled up at him. “Most likely you’ll taste no better than a vole.” He lowered his head and paced down the alley toward Casseomae.

The child rattled the metal, shaking it furiously.

“Pang,” Casseomae called. “Get the cub—” But before she finished, the metal frame that the cub had climbed dropped suddenly. Casseomae ducked as it stopped just above her ears with a clank.

Dumpster shrieked, “Climb, you idiot bear. You can climb that ladder!”

Casseomae hooked her claws on the metal, pulling with all her might as the Ogeema and the pack rushed toward her. With jaws snapping at her haunches, she tugged herself up the groaning metal, the entire structure coming loose under her weight.

The cub disappeared through the window after Pang and Dumpster. Casseomae had just dug her forepaws into the rotten edge of the window when the metal tower broke free, landing on the Ogeema and several of the other wolves, who yelped in pain.

Casseomae hung from the window, then with a kick of her back paws slid through.

Two of the wolves lay motionless under the broken tangle of metal. But the Ogeema stood free of the structure. With blood dripping down his nose, he stared up at Casseomae.

“We will be waiting,” he whispered. “We will be waiting right down here.”

T
he child clung tightly to Casseomae, not wanting to let go. She grunted kindly to him, “I’m all right. Thanks to you and that falling metal thing.”

“The Old Devils called those fire escapes,” Dumpster said. “They would climb them if there was a brush fire. That way they could get above the flames and back into the safety of their dens.”

Pang gave a low whine and looked up at the water-stained ceiling. Despite having only one window, the shadowy den was full of leaves and piles of blown-in debris. Mushrooms grew on an ancient moldy piece of furniture in the corner. A pair of panicked sparrows flapped around in the uppermost corners of the room before finding their way out the window.

Casseomae felt the anger and fear that had propelled
her through the night starting to fade. They might have been trapped, but they were safe, at least for the moment. Hunger reclaimed her instincts, and she set off through the building to see if there was anything to eat. Her cub followed her. Pang and Dumpster, their eyes brimming with exhaustion, lay down where they were.

She was used to nosing around in old Skinless dens, but this one felt particularly cramped. As she crawled over piles of debris and wound in and out of mildew-speckled rooms, she heard the sounds of birds. Coming through a doorway into a room filled with morning light, she saw shrubs, vines, and saplings growing thickly where the tall windows had shattered.

Songbirds and starlings gathered by the dozens to feast on berries growing on the shrubs. Casseomae lunged at a goldfinch, but the bird was too fast. Along with the others, it zipped through the window and flew off.

Casseomae began eating the berries. The cub plucked one and sniffed it before nibbling. He seemed to feel that the berries were acceptable and ate several before kneeling down to sip rainwater that had gathered in a broken white relic. Casseomae flopped lazily to the floor, chewing on a cluster of berries and watching the cub.

At some point she slipped into sleep. When she woke the sun was higher but still behind the towering skyscrapers surrounding their building. Her cub was gone and she got up quickly, sniffing after him.

She found him in the next room, a smaller den with only one unbroken window. There were not so many leaves in here. The child sat with his legs crossed, chirping in the softest whisper. Casseomae saw that he was holding something. It was some sort of device, but not a luminous screen like he had carried before. It smelled of plastic, and as her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw the thing looked like a small version of the cub—pink and furless but for a long tuft of sparkly yellow hair sprouting from the top of its head.

The cub happily moved one of its arms up and down. Then he squeezed the thing to his chest before holding it out to continue talking to it.

Casseomae snorted, startling the cub. He stood and tucked the thing behind his back. He grunted at Casseomae, a noise that sounded vaguely to her like he was asking something.

“Leave that alone,” Casseomae said.

The cub held it protectively against his chest.

“No,” she said. “Leave it here. It stinks.”

The cub whimpered but placed the little pink thing on the floor. He spent a moment moving its arms and legs, arranging it, before he came over to nuzzle Casseomae’s neck.

“Are you hungry—” she began to ask, but a violent burst of barking from Pang erupted a few rooms away. Casseomae hurried through the doorway, huffing as she
ran to the first room, where she found Pang barking at a hole in the wall.

“What is it?” Casseomae asked. “What’s in there?”

“I don’t know,” the dog said. “I was asleep when I heard his squeak.”

“Whose squeak?” she asked.

“The rat,” Pang answered. “Dumpster. Something got him.”

C
asseomae sniffed at the hole. It was too small for her to get more than her nose in, too small even for Pang to get his head through. The inside was a shallow tunnel of wood running up behind the wall. She smelled the rat’s panic scent and something else, too: a small vora.

A shrill squeak came from in the wall, followed by a scuffle and the scratching of claws.

“It’s climbing up with him,” Casseomae said.

She rose on her hind legs and brought her forepaws down against the wall. With a few blows, she opened a hole. She tore out chunks of white powdery material with her claws, but the rat and its attacker had already gone higher.

“It’s no good,” Pang said. “It’s carried him up.”

The child seemed to know what to do. He barked at them and ran from the room. Casseomae and Pang followed.

The cub found a nearby set of stairs and started climbing. Pang hurried past Casseomae as she sniffed at the stairs. They were metal, not wood, so she hoped they wouldn’t be rotten. But metal could rust and fall apart too.

With tentative steps, Casseomae ascended to find the cub and Pang in a room full of weeds and broken glass. The dog barked fiercely at a section of moss-covered wall where the child was kicking open a hole.

Something growled inside, shuffling and scratching to get away. The cub kicked again, and suddenly a cat, a slim tabby, leaped out of the wall and sprang across the room toward the door. The cat had Dumpster in its teeth.

Pang, Casseomae, and the cub hurried after the cat as it vaulted up the steps. There were other cats on the stairs, who howled and hissed at the intruders as they chased the cat off the stairs and into a darkened room.

The cat slunk back, his teeth locked on Dumpster’s neck. Other cats—sleek black ones, fluffy ones of filthy white, calicos and grays and tabbies—poured into the room after them, slinking against the walls and hiding around the rotten furniture. Dumpster cursed venomously and wriggled to get free of the tabby’s jaws.

Pang barked, “Let him go, you vile puss, before I tear you to pieces!”

The dog darted forward, and the tabby dropped Dumpster. The rat staggered free as Pang stood over him, bringing his vicious jaws around to warn off the other cats.

Dumpster staggered back against Pang’s leg, blood on the fur at the top of his neck.

“I want him, dears,” a black-and-white cat hissed.

“No, he’s mine,” the tabby called out. “I found him first.”

“You lost him, coward fangs,” another spat from atop a ledge of wood. “He belongs to us all now.”

“Yours!” Dumpster said in disbelief. “I don’t belong to any of you.”

“But you do, my dear,” a gray growled. “You are our gift. From the queen. Mother Death brought you for us.”

Glowing eyes surrounded them, hungry deep-throated growls filling the room.

“You clowder of underlickers are crazy,” Dumpster said. “Get back, before my friends—”