Beasts of New York | Page 3

like a long time. Patch was very glad of the fence that surrounded him.
When the dog-thing finally moved on Patch sighed with relief. He
could have escaped to the safety of a nearby tree if necessary. But he
was so hungry that the effort of running away, combined with the
terrible strain of thinking, would have left him weak and dizzy.
By the time Patch finally finished thinking, he had drawn one

conclusion and made two decisions.
The conclusion was that something was very strange and wrong. It was
not Patch alone who had lost all of his food. That would have been bad
enough. But the same thing seemed to have happened to every member
of his tribe. That could not be mere ill-luck. Something more,
something worse, was happening. There were dark stories told in
whispers among squirrels, ancient legends of winters that had outlasted
all the Center Kingdom's buried nuts, famines in which nine in every
ten squirrels had died of hunger, and the few survivors had been forced
to eat the bodies of the dead in order to live. But there were no legends
in which all buried acorns had vanished uneaten from the earth. This
was something new.
The first decision he made was that he would seek out his family, and
see if they had any food. Patch was solitary by nature, and had not seen
his family or indeed spoken to any other squirrel for three days, but he
knew they would help him if they could, just as he would help them.
His second decision was that if his family did not have food, then he
would try something else. Something very unusual, for a squirrel.
Something very daring and dangerous. But by this time hunger was
growing stronger in Patch than fear.

Patch's Family
Patch's mother was named Silver, because high summer sun made her
fur shine that colour. She had a marvellous drey high up a spruce tree,
carved out long ago by a woodpecker, and since extended into a
two-chambered home full of bright things. The journey along the
sky-road to her drey did not take long. When Patch looked inside, he
saw a hundred colours glittering in the sunlight, shining from bits of
metal and glass set into Silver's walls and floor. But his mother was not
there.
He could tell by the faintness of her smell that no squirrel had been

here in some time. There were two faint traces of scent, several days
old; that of Silver, and that of another squirrel, a musky scent that Patch
did not recognize. A scent that made his tail stiffen as if danger was
near.
Patch stared into his mother's empty drey for a moment. It wasn't
normal for a squirrel to abandon her drey for days, not in the middle of
winter. And he hadn't seen Silver for three days. Not since all the
acorns had disappeared from the earth.
Patch ran back to his own tree, and then to the maple tree next door, to
his brother Tuft's drey. He ran very fast. He was hungrier than ever, and
he was beginning to be very worried. He was relieved when he looked
into Tuft's drey and found it occupied. Tuft himself was not present, but
Brighteyes was, and their babies, and it was clear from the smells that
Tuft had only just departed.
"Hello, Patch," Brighteyes said weakly. "Would you like to come in?"
Patch entered. Brighteyes was curled up with her babies in the drey's
deepest, warmest corner. The last time Patch had visited, a week ago,
this had been a den of noise and chaos, with all Brighteyes' four babies
running and jumping and playfighting. Today they lay weakly beside
Brighteyes, and the once-shining eyes from which their mother had
taken her name were dim and clouded.
"Uncle Patch," the littlest baby said, in a piteous mewling voice.
"Please, Uncle Patch, do you have any food?"
The other children looked up at Patch with bright, hopeful eyes. As
hungry as he was at that moment, if he had had an acorn, he would
have given it to his nieces and nephews. But he had nothing.
"I'm sorry," Patch said, ashamed. "I haven't found any food for days."
"No one has," Brighteyes said.
"Have you seen Silver?"

"No. She hasn't come to visit since the food ran out."
Patch considered. "Is Tuft out looking for food?"
After a long moment Brighteyes said, very quietly, as if she were
admitting something terribly shameful, "Tuft has gone to the Meadow
tribe."
"The Meadow tribe?" Patch asked, confused. "What for?"
Brighteyes said in a voice hardly louder than a whisper, "To accept
their offer."
"What offer?"
Brighteyes stiffened with surprise. "You haven't heard?"
"Heard what?"
"You spend too much time