Beasts of New York | Page 4

on your own, Patch. If you talked to others
more you wouldn't always be the last to know."
"The last to know what?"
"The Meadow tribe has offered food to Treetops squirrels. But only if
we join their tribe."
"Join their tribe?" Patch looked at her, perplexed. "Join the Meadow?
That's not possible. We're of the Treetops. We can't become of the
Meadow."
"They say if we swear an oath of allegiance to the Meadow tribe, if we
swear by the moon, then we will become of the Meadow, and then they
will give us food."
After a long moment, Patch asked, his voice now as hushed as that of
Brighteyes, "Swear by the moon?"
This is not the place to explain what the moon means to animals.

Suffice to say that an oath sworn by the moon is even stronger than an
oath sworn on blood. Such an oath can never be broken or unsworn.
"Yes," Brighteyes said, looking away from Patch.
"Tuft has gone to swear by the moon to join the Meadow tribe?"
"Yes. We will all go. We will all swear. Tuft will bring back some food
for the children, and when they are strong enough they will go and
swear themselves."
"You can't do this," Patch said, shocked. "You can't leave the Treetops.
You can't give your children to another tribe."
"We must. We haven't any food, Patch. You see how weak my babies
are. No one else can help us. Silver is gone. Jumper is gone."
"Jumper is gone? Gone where?"
"No one knows. No one has seen him in days. Like no one has seen
Silver. Or any of the other clan leaders."
"The King," Patch said. "We'll go to King Thorn."
"The Ramble is too far. Even if the King sends help, it will never reach
us in time. My babies are starving, Patch. My babies are dying. The
Meadow is our only hope."
After a moment Patch turned away, unable to face Brighteyes, and said,
"I wouldn't have let this happen to you."
"Don't say that. There's nothing Tuft could have done. There's nothing
you could have done if I had chosen you instead."
"There is. If I had known. I know another place to get food."
"Then why are you hungry?" Brighteyes asked.
Patch hesitated. "It's dangerous. It's in the mountains."

"In the mountains? Are you mad?"
Patch was saved from answering by the appearance of his brother Tuft
at the entrance to the drey. Tuft held two acorns against his chest, but
he looked perilously thin, and weak, and tired.
"It's done," Tuft said. His voice was grim. "I have joined the Meadow."
Tuft carried the food in to his family. As the children devoured one
acorn, Brighteyes and Tuft and Patch stood around the other, staring as
if it glowed.
"This one is for you," Tuft said to Brighteyes. "The Meadow gave me
one for myself when I was there."
Patch knew Tuft was lying.
Brighteyes said, "We'll share it. All three of us."
Patch wanted a bite of acorn so much that his whole body trembled
with desire.
"No," he said faintly.
Tuft and Brighteyes turned to him, amazed.
"I will go to the mountains," Patch said.
Right away, before the acorn's temptation became too great to deny, he
turned and fled from his brother's drey. He ran straight down the maple
trunk to the ground. From there Patch ran north and west. His hunger
was a searing flame within him.

Patch and the Birds
It was not entirely true that Patch knew there was food in the mountains.
He had never been to the mountains. No squirrel in all the Center

Kingdom, as far as he knew, had ever been to the mountains. For
between the kingdom and the mountains, surrounding it on all sides
like a moat around a castle, there lay a blasted concrete wasteland, as
wide as fifty squirrels laid nose to tail, and horrific death machines
roared up and down this wasteland at terrifying speeds, all day and
night. What's more, humans and dogs often crossed between the
mountains and the kingdoms. And sometimes the dogs were not
leashed. A squirrel would have to be very desperate indeed to dare the
wastelands.
It was Toro who had told Patch about the food in the mountains. Toro
was Patch's friend. And that itself was extraordinary.
Patch had always talked to birds. The drey he had grown up in --
Silver's old drey, before she became leader of the Seeker clan -- had
been only a few branches away from a nest of robins. Once, in early
spring when he was still a baby, Patch had crawled out of Silver's drey
and into the robin's nest, and had spent a whole day among the chicks
before