The Prince Who Fell From the Sky (2 page)

In the fraction of a moment before Rend’s paws met the vine-tangled slope, Casseomae realized what the little rat had done. This Dumpster was smart. He’d provoked the coyote into a trap. What appeared to be a solid slope was in fact a thin veil of honeysuckle over a pit of jagged glass.

Rend’s front paws punched through the vines, and she disappeared with a yelp. The other coyotes backed away from the relic, not knowing what had taken their
leader. Two of them tucked their tails and raced away into the trees.

Dumpster reached into the shattered slope and plucked out a sliver of broken glass with his teeth. Then he ran to the edge, leaped into the air, and landed in the grass with a thump.

As Rend fought to escape, she howled, “Don’t let him get away!”

The little rat was headed for Casseomae’s relic, but he was too far away. With a leap, the two remaining coyotes were on him. There was a rustle of commotion in the grass and then the coyotes yipped in pain, one after the other drawing back. Blood ran freely from slashes along their snouts.

With a final dash, Dumpster squeezed under the bear’s relic. Casseomae dropped down from the top and stood in front of the coyotes.

“Let us pass, old sow!” one of them barked.

The bear struck the earth with her paw, raking her long claws through the grass. “When did I start taking orders from coyotes?”

The two edged side to side, their tongues dangling, their yellow eyes looking up warily. “That creature is ours by law. He’s one of the Faithful.”

Dumpster cried out, “Liars! Call me that again and I’ll slice your tongues from your muzzles.”

Casseomae glanced over her shoulder. Dumpster
gazed out from beneath the relic, his black eyes flickering from one coyote to the other and his tail lashing back and forth.

“A Faithful? He doesn’t look like a cur to me,” Casseomae said to the coyotes.

Rend climbed out of the pit of glass and leaped down, her breast and front legs bloody. Limping forward, the coyote said, “Not all that served the Skinless were curs.”

Casseomae snorted. “I didn’t know his kind served the Skinless Ones.”

Dumpster shouted, “We didn’t!” at the same time Rend barked, “They did!” Rend quickly added, “His clan lives in the Skinless’s cities, don’t they? Clinging to the nests of their former masters. Wishing they would come back—”

“You lying pile of puke!” Dumpster shrieked.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve caught the scent of his sort coming down the stone trails from the city,” Rend said. “Others of his kind have been sneaking into the Forest, defying the Ogeema’s orders.”

“All this nonsense about the Faithful,” Casseomae grunted. “Would you catch a bird that’s nested in the ruins of a Skinless’s den and call it a Faithful? You must be desperate to win the Ogeema’s favor again, Rend.”

Rend growled. “I’m telling you that rat is one of the Faithful. And if you don’t step aside, Casseomae, you’ll answer to Ogeema Dire and his wolves next.”

The she-bear distended her lips and struck the ground. The coyotes scurried back a few paces. “I don’t answer to dogs!” Casseomae growled.

“You’re reckless, old bear,” barked Rend. “You always have been. You’re making a terrible mistake crossing Ogeema Dire—”

Casseomae lunged forward on stiff front legs, roaring as if to shake the earth. And for a moment, she thought she had. A boom resounded from overhead. Over the tree line, a ball of flames appeared against the blue sky. Then it was gone. In its place hovered a small shadow.

Casseomae rose on her hind legs, trying to make sense of it with her nose and her ears. Whatever it was, it was rapidly growing larger. She looked down at the coyotes, who were watching with wide yellow eyes. The rat, too, had come out from beneath the underbelly of the relic to stare at the growing shape.

“What is it?” one of the coyotes whined.

“I don’t know,” Rend said. “A bird?”

The shadow was taking shape now. It looked to Casseomae like an enormous insect—shiny and armored and sailing on wide wings. Lines of mist or possibly smoke trailed behind it. A cry emanated from the object, shrill and growing louder as the flying thing got closer.

“That’s no bird, you idiots,” the rat said.

“Then what is it?” Casseomae asked. The noise was so loud, she had to roar to be heard.

When she got no answer, she turned. The rat was gone. Tails tucked, the coyotes were dashing for the tree line. The ground began to vibrate. Casseomae dropped to her front paws as the sky darkened.

With a deafening roar, the object sailed over the meadow. Casseomae could see the entire underbelly of the thing, but it made no sense to her. It could not have been an insect or any other creature of the Forest. Nor was it a storm cloud or anything else she had ever seen sent down by the sky. In some ways it reminded her of the relics that littered the Forest, but this was much bigger and it wasn’t rusted and crumbling. Casseomae saw white flames spitting from the rear of the object as it disappeared over the treetops.

Then she heard tree trunks splintering and snapping. The earth shook. And a cloud of brown dust burst into the sky.

Whatever the thing was, it had just fallen to the Forest.

T
he bear had never experienced anything to compare with what she had just seen. She had hunkered down in dirt caves and in the ancient dens of Skinless Ones during many terrible storms of ice and thunder and tornado winds. But her instincts had always forewarned her.

This had come with no warning.

As clouds of dust drifted over her glade, a family of deer broke from the trees. Other animals too were running from the thing that had crashed in the Forest—squirrels and foxes, raccoons and woodchucks. They cried out to one another in their viand languages. Birds of all sorts flocked together over the treetops as they flew away.

Casseomae understood their urge. They could not
help themselves. But she was different. She was a bear, and while the Ogeema and his wolves might rule over her sloth, there was nothing left in the Forest that hunted her kind. Her instincts told her to go forward to see what this thing was.

Casseomae went into the trees and soon saw that the dense canopy of leaves above had been torn open. A huge scar cut through the Forest flooded it with sunlight. Oaks, beeches, and hickories lay knocked aside as if they’d been little more than saplings.

She crested a hill and saw it. The thing’s nose was half-buried in earth with crumpled trees piled around its front. Casseomae rose to her hind legs and sniffed. The odors stung her nose and made her eyes drip and her tongue numb. She snorted and dropped back to the ground, gazing from one end of the thing to the other.

She heard a scampering in the leaves behind her and turned. The rat stopped with one paw raised, his bulging black eyes on her. “It’s a passering, isn’t it?” he said.

“A what?” Casseomae asked, turning back to gaze at it.

The rat took quick steps, moving in little bursts of speed and then freezing to sniff and listen. He leaped onto a log and sat back on his haunches to study the thing below.

“You know,” the rat said, impatient with excitement. “A starship.”

“A fallen star?” she asked.

“No. A sort of vehicle, like those rusting cars back in your meadow. An Old Devil relic.”

“Old Devils,” Casseomae said. “You mean the Skinless?”

“Right. That’s what you call them here in the Forest, isn’t it? The Skinless Ones?”

Casseomae grunted. She knew of the Skinless Ones. Everyone knew of the Skinless Ones, even if they were long gone.

Dumpster twitched his whiskers at her. “They weren’t skinless, you know.”

“Then why did they hunt us?” Casseomae said. “They needed our hides because they didn’t even have any skin—not any of their own. Only raw flesh and bloody tissue is what I always heard.”

“How do big voras like you wind up with such tiny brains?” Dumpster said. “They might have torn the hides off us, but it wasn’t because they didn’t have skin of their own.”

“How would you know, rat?” Casseomae said.

The rat clicked his incisors. “Because my da told me! He was the Memory for our mischief, before he passed it on to me. He knew all about the spittin’ Old Devils. We rats take great pride in knowing history.”

Casseomae snorted. “None of that explains why that star-relic thing landed in the Forest.”

“Well, let’s go find out,” the rat said. He jumped from the log and scampered ahead.

“Where are you going?” Casseomae asked.

“A passering like that is probably loaded with Old Devil treasures,” said the rat. “Devices. Memories. All sorts of things my mischief could use. Be back in a chirp.”

Casseomae followed as Dumpster scrambled up onto the wing. He maneuvered across a scattering of glass and with a jump landed in a circular opening before disappearing inside.

The sun was dipping low through the trees. Night would be here soon. Casseomae felt hungry after all the excitement of the thing falling in the Forest. She was eager to set off to forage. But then a scent hit her nose. A familiar scent. It had been nearly masked by the other strong odors coming off this strange relic. She sniffed, trying to identify it.

Blood.

“Hey, rat, I think—”

But before she got it out, there was a shrill squeal. The rat leaped out, knocking aside the broken glass as he landed on the wing. He tumbled to the edge and fell. Once he hit the ground, he ran, shooting through the underbrush and bracken.

Casseomae caught up with him in a thicket of cedars up on a bluff. The rat was trembling, his black
eyes bulging more than ever. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“They … they’re in there,” he panted.

“Who is?” Casseomae growled. The rat blinked up at her but said nothing. “A wolf?” she asked.

“No,” the rat whispered. “Old Devils.”

“What?” the bear grunted. “What do you mean?”

Dumpster looked through the cedar branches at the silent relic lying crashed in the Forest. Then he said, “There are Old Devils in there.”

C
asseomae had heard all sorts of stories about the Skinless Ones who ruled the Forest long ago. All the Forest clans, both vora and viand, had their own legends. They varied greatly, but all agreed the Skinless Ones had been ferocious monsters. Casseomae guessed the Faithful probably had different stories, but then their clans had served the Skinless Ones and had been under their protection.

“What do you mean, Old Devils?” Casseomae asked. “You saw bones?”

“Not bones,” Dumpster said. “Bodies. They’re all in these eggs made of glass. They’ve shattered, I guess from the crash, and those Devils, they’re just lying around—”

“They’re not moving?” Casseomae asked.

The rat was talking rapidly, almost faster than Casseomae could follow. “No. I was looking around at them thinking, Pluck my whiskers, I can’t believe what I’m seeing! and, Hey, look, my da was wrong! They do have fur, but it’s only a little tuft on top of their ugly heads, when all of a sudden I heard something clicking. I turned around, and there was this one glass egg that wasn’t shattered. It was opening.”

“Was a Skinless inside?” Casseomae asked.

“Do I look like a spittin’ idiot? I didn’t stick around to find out!”

A howl sounded from the Forest. It was answered by a chorus of other yips and barks.

“Those cur-licking coyotes again?” Dumpster asked.

Casseomae growled, “It must be.”

The rat was staring at the strange relic. “Murk’s whiskers!” he said. “Look!”

Casseomae nosed aside the cedar boughs to peer down. The last rays of sun cut low through the trees and illuminated the passering with an orange glow. The shattered window was mostly in shadow. But as Casseomae watched, a paw reached out, a pink furless paw.

Another paw felt around tentatively at the opening before a head emerged. The rat was right. There was a little patch of fur atop the head, a yellow-brown color almost like the winter grass in her meadow.

A coyote barked, louder now, closer.

“Am I raving, old bear?” the rat squeaked. “Look! A spittin’ Devil, right there!”

“I don’t think it’s skinless,” Casseomae said.

“Whiskers and snappers!” the rat cursed. “I told you that already. Who cares if it has feathers? Those Devils aren’t supposed to be living! Don’t you understand?”

The creature wiggled its way through the hatch and climbed down onto the wing. It was making whimpering sounds.

“What’s that covering its body?” Casseomae asked. The creature seemed to have fish scales or some shiny lizardlike skin from its neck down.

“They’re called clothes! But that doesn’t change the fact that those … monsters are supposed to be all gone.” The rat was circling in terror, its body racked with shivers.

“Dumpster …,” Casseomae began as she watched the creature walk unsteadily to the edge of the wing and look around at the Forest. “How big were the ones inside?”

“I don’t know! Bigger than that one. How come?”

“It’s just a cub.”

“No! You think?” the rat squeaked.

“Yes.”

Dumpster peered skeptically at the creature standing in the falling sunlight. The coyotes were coming closer, their whines and yaps growing louder.

“But what in the name of Lord Murk does it matter?” Dumpster said. “It’s one of the Old Devils! It’ll murder us all!”

“That little cub isn’t going to kill anyone.”

The creature stood listening to the barks of the coyotes with wide, fear-filled eyes. It looked around at the darkening Forest before backing up the crumpled wing.

The rat clicked his teeth. “Cub or not, it’s one for the crows, as we always say. Those cur-lickin’ coyotes will be here any moment. It’s gone, old bear. I am too. I’ve got to find my mischief.” Dumpster looked up at Casseomae, then turned and scurried away through the grass.

The coyotes broke through the underbrush and surrounded the wing. Casseomae watched as the little creature began calling out in some strange language, waving its small hands frantically. It might have been bigger than a coyote, but Casseomae had seen a rout of coyotes work together to take down an elk bigger than that little cub.