Teddycats (4 page)

“STOP BLURTING NONSENSE
and just tell me what's wrong!” Maia said.

But the more Bill said, the less Maia understood.

He was out of breath and borderline hysterical, and all he could do was break the news into small, single words and let her connect them.

“Elena. Jungle. Cage. Human.”

“Oh no,” Maia said. She began to shake.

“I'm so, so sorry,” Bill said.

“How could this happen, Bill?” she wailed. “What did you do?”

It was the exact response he had been dreading. Maia looked like she might be sick.

“I didn't realize she had followed me down from the Crook. I didn't see her. I didn't know.”

His mind buzzed with guilt and fear. He honestly couldn't recall his life before Elena fell out of the tree, that surreal moment when she slipped through
his grasp and into a whole new, terrifying world. Until that moment, real disasters had been only hypothetical. Boring history lessons, gloomy warnings from Elders.

“Maia, I promise I'll do whatever it takes to get your sister back.”

“You can't do anything now!” Maia said fiercely. “You've done more than enough already. We are going straight to the Elders. I'm not covering for you anymore, Bill. Don't you dare ask me to. I can't believe I've let you slide all this time. I let you put my family in danger!”

But then the anger in Maia's voice fell away, and she broke down and started crying.

“Oh no,” she said. “This is all my fault.”

The idea that Maia could blame herself for Elena's fate made Bill wince. “Please don't say that,” Bill said. “It was me. I couldn't save her. There wasn't enough time. It just . . . happened.”

But Maia didn't want to—or couldn't—listen. She took off running toward the Fountain, most definitely to go find an Elder.

As he watched her go, Bill let out a holler to clear his head. He had to focus on the next steps. He had to figure out a way to get Elena back.

But even if he could find a way to do that, Joe and his gang of humans had seen the Teddycats. How long would it take for them to discover Cloud Kingdom? What would they learn from Elena, and how?

Bill felt squished and helpless. A warm, dry wind blew across the Kingdom. He went to wipe his tears, but found that they had already been swept away.

A CROWD OF
angry Teddycats gathered at the Fountain and formed a circle around Maia's family. Her mother, already frail, was stunned with panic and lingering disbelief. Her father was a coiled mess, pacing and darting with a barely contained fury.

Marisol and Big Bill were huddled with the Elders, nodding solemnly, while Bill was under strict orders to sit down and stay quiet. Everyone was staring at him, but nobody would meet his eye. The day still did not feel completely real. He really didn't want to cry again. Every few minutes a numbness crept into his mind, and he had to chase it away over and over again. He felt like he deserved the pain, like it was the least he could do.

Bill's biggest fear was that Elena was gone for good. His second was that the Elders wouldn't give him permission to help with the rescue mission. Rumors about what had happened, and what would happen because of it, were already whipping through the crowd, and with each one there were renewed calls for Bill's banishment.

Not that banishment meant much anymore if the humans were already onto them.

Bill tried not to be defensive. The truth was that he had knowingly pushed the boundaries of Cloud Kingdom. He had been a bad influence on younger, more impressionable Teddycats. He knew deep down that he didn't mean for Elena to get hurt, but he had to admit that she wouldn't have been captured had it not been for him.

He needed to get Elena back. He would do anything to get Elena back. Of course, he couldn't say any of this aloud. He could only sit off to the side, on the edge of a mob, feeling very alone. A memory came to him, from a long time ago, when he had just been a little kitten. Bill had accidentally snapped a branch that swatted Maia right in her snout. While she ran around the Kingdom screaming, Bill zipped off into some deep brush behind his den and hid there the rest of the afternoon. Finally, his mother found him. She explained that Maia was fine, she was just scared and a little bit hurt, but now everything was back to normal. He apologized to Maia, who even apologized to him, and they shared a hug and a snack.

But during those hours he'd spent in the brush, thinking he was going to get kicked out for hurting a fellow Teddycat, he had tried to prepare himself for a whole new life.

Bill used to think that day in the brush was the absolute worst he could ever feel.

He wished he still believed that.

And just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, Omar approached. He wore a disappointed pout. Bill eyed him warily, but he was in no position to lash out. The space between them was clammy and clumsy with unspoken aggression.

“You really let us down today, Bill,” Omar finally said, shaking his head. “You really let all of us down big-time.”

“I'm sorry,” said Bill, through gritted teeth.

“What are you going to do now? Where are you going to
live
?”

Bill stood up. They were snout-to-snout, and Omar didn't back down. He was definitely feeling more confident than he had the last time they spoke. And he definitely knew that Bill couldn't afford to look cruel or reckless right now. Bill glanced over at his parents, who were still whispering with the Elders. Big Bill had taught him to stand up for himself, but he'd also warned him never to fight. But what should he do in times like these, when it seemed the only way to stand up for himself was to fight? This was the kind of question that drove Bill batty. But today it didn't even matter. There was no way he could force Omar to see things another way, or even just shut him up.

“I'm not going anywhere,” Bill said finally.

“We'll see about that,” Omar said through a pinched smile.

FINALLY, THE ELDERS
spoke to the crowd. The scouts had been dispatched; their thoughts and prayers were with Elena and her family. The crowd dispersed, unsatisfied and still riled.

Back at the den, Bill sat glumly with his mother. Neither spoke for a long time. Outside they could hear Big Bill puttering around, applying fresh mud to the walls. This was the way he always worked through his anger. The angrier he was, the more dangerous the job he would take on. The last time Bill really messed up (he'd helped himself to someone else's garden), his father stayed on the roof of their den for almost two days, supposedly addressing a problem with the ventilation. Bill noticed that he always seemed to choose projects that were especially noisy. Bill would be curled up in his straw, feeling down, and the scrape and rip of his father's efforts would echo endlessly through the den. There was no escape, nothing to do
but wait until he was ready to scold his son.

Bill started honing in on the very real, and very scary, possibility that his father might never speak to him again.

He glanced longingly out to the lane and was startled to see Felix strolling past in a slow, creaky prowl. The jaguar stopped just outside the den and, locking eyes with Bill, beckoned him outside to the lane.

Bill pointed at himself. “Me?” he said aloud.

His mother raised her head and considered him curiously, and Bill shut his mouth and resumed his sad, silent repose. When Marisol got tired of staring him down, she rose and began to assemble dinner, and Bill managed another look outside. Felix was still out on the lane, still staring right at him. Bill looked over at his mother, her shoulder thrusting with each punishing downstroke. Those roots were going to be well mashed. Confident that she wouldn't be able to hear him, Bill slipped out of the den and joined the jaguar down the lane.

“Tough day, Bill?” Felix said. His voice was deep, his eyes wide and penetrating.

“I guess I'm the worst Teddycat in the world,” Bill said.

“Bad things happen to everyone,” Felix said. “It doesn't mean they are deserved, or that it's always somebody's fault. Your parents, your friends, the Elders, they're scared right now. They have been away from the jungle for a long time, and they aren't ready to
acknowledge just how easily this sort of thing can happen. They're in shock. All they can focus on is the pain.”

“And what about you?” Bill asked. “You can see through the pain?”

Felix laughed gingerly. “I'm always in pain,” he said, clutching his side. “You get used to it. The trick is to stop looking for someone to blame and start looking for solutions.”

“All I want to do is get Elena back,” Bill said. “That's the only way I can fix this, get Maia's forgiveness, and maybe save Cloud Kingdom from the humans.”

“That's a tall order,” Felix said, a hint of approval in his eyes. “What do you know about humans, Bill?”

“Humans?” said Bill. He rubbed his chin. “Let's see. Basic bipedal formation. Gangly appendages. Hair about the head . . . region.”

“So, not too much,” said Felix.

“Well, I know Joe, of course,” Bill said. “Dressed in stolen snakeskins and furs, mouth full of gold.”

“Well, I've had some run-ins with humans over the years,” Felix said. “And I've found that, roughly, they can be divided into two camps. The first is a straight-ahead predator, here to wreak destruction for fun or profit. These types will burn down whole valleys just to smoke you out. They're here for the tusks and the hides and whatever else they can sell. You understand?”

“Sure,” Bill said. “That's Joe.”

“Right. Joe. Now, if Elena fell into one of his traps,
well, I hate to say it, but she may be long gone by now. These Joe types don't tend to stick around after they've snagged something. They want to get it back to their den so another human—a different kind, one that never ventures into the jungle—can tell them if it's worth anything. But that doesn't mean Elena's lost forever. I've tracked my share of humans over the years, and the bad ones are especially sloppy about hiding their paths. So we could follow along and find their base. If we get there quickly enough, Elena might still be in her cage, a little frightened but no worse for wear.”

Bill nodded. It sounded dangerous, almost thrilling, but more important, it sounded possible. “Wait,” he said. “What are the other types of humans?”

“The others are a more . . . clinical sort,” said Felix. “It's hard to explain. They don't have the smoke and razzle of the bad set. Rather, they are methodical, with better equipment, which makes them harder to track.”

“I don't get it,” Bill said. “What do they want?”

“My impression is that they want to study the jungle. Their intentions may be decent, but they are still powerful predators. And of course it's impossible to know for sure what these creatures want.”

Felix smiled and shifted his weight. His joints made an audible creak.

“Listen, Bill. I love Cloud Kingdom. The Teddycats have been good to me. But you can't run away from the jungle. There will always be something hunting you.
That's the way the world works. Sooner or later, the Teddycats will have to figure that out.”

“Felix, do you know any Olingos?” Bill asked after a contemplative silence.

“Several.”

“They're a good crew, the Olingos,” Bill said. “You met my friend Luke. The two of us are building a fort. There's gonna be a swimming hole and everything. Well, there was gonna be one, before things got all messed up.”

“The fort—is it another place to hide?”

Bill thought about it for a moment.

“I guess not,” he said finally. “When we first started work on it, maybe. But now I see it as a place to come together, if that makes sense.”

“That makes perfect sense to me,” Felix said. “And it's a goal worthy of much risk.”

“Risk meaning . . . adventure?” Bill asked, lowering his voice.

“In my experience,” Felix said, “the two often go hand in hand.”

“So,” Bill said, immeasurably grateful to Felix for giving him a reason to feel more hopeful. “We need to figure out which kind of humans took Elena and track them back to their den.”

“Yes,” said Felix. “And hopefully before they figure out what they've got.”

BUT BACK IN
the den, Bill realized that, despite the invigorating conversation with Felix, nothing had really changed.

The Elders wouldn't care what a jaguar had to say. He wasn't a Teddycat. In fact, he was in debt to them. And there was still the matter of Big Bill, who had yet to speak so much as a single word to his son since Elena's abduction.

Bill curled up in his straw, plugged his ears, and watched the pall he had created stretch and settle across the Kingdom. He wished he could go to Diego Bribon, a sinewy Teddycat scout with a wild mane, a pink scar where his left eye used to be, and an allergy to authority, for advice. The Elders tolerated Diego's salty disposition because he was an excellent scout and had most likely saved each of their lives at one time or another.

Diego lived in a dilapidated bachelor's den in the shady section of Cloud Kingdom. Sometimes, in the late
afternoon, when he knew he could find Diego at home, whittling, Bill would pepper him with questions about the jungle. Diego was a warrior and, more than that, he was different from any other Teddycat Bill had ever known. Even Big Bill himself encouraged Bill's fascination with Diego. The respect was obvious in Big Bill's voice when he talked about Diego's bravery and service over the years, and Bill knew better than just about anyone how hard it was to win the respect of his father.

Unless it was an absolute emergency, it was best not to bother Diego before noon. But Bill knew he would be up and about today, having been sent out by the Elders to check the perimeter for signs of encroaching humans. He tried to shake off a descent into deeper doldrums by concentrating on a plan: He would wait until Diego returned, get his attention, and relay what Felix had told him. Surely there was no way such a seasoned scout would ignore valuable intelligence, even if it was from an outsider.

Suddenly, a commotion cut through the heavy quiet, and for a brief moment, Bill's heart flared with hope.
They'd found Elena!
But, no, it was just the rolling fireball of gossip accompanying the return of Diego and his partner, Jack, from their morning hitch.

Bill flew out of the den, and Marisol didn't try to stop him.

The Fountain area was filled with huddles of skittish Teddycats waiting for Diego to finish briefing the
Elders. Bill spotted Maia but was too ashamed to even seek her eye.

Soon, a simple question started rippling through the crowd.
Where was Jack?

The Teddycats were on the verge of panic. They began to cry out, demanding answers.

After what felt like far too long, Ramon, a hunchbacked Elder with a tangled gray beard, climbed the stone perch and signaled for silence. Diego stood beside him, steely and serious.

“In light of recent events,” Ramon said, “we sent our scouts out early this morning to assess our security. The news they've brought back is not encouraging. A human attacked our scouts, capturing one. What's more, the attack exposed a scout's claw.”

Diego's wiry frame slumped into a downcast expression, and Bill knew that Jack must have been the one captured.

“Our claws have long been symbols of our tenacity and perseverance,” Ramon said. “They are a testament to our willingness and ability to fight for survival in a dangerous world. We protect our claws with strict rules because they are so valuable and, therefore, dangerous. Based on what we have recently witnessed, it's clear that our species, and our home and our way of life, is under attack. Therefore, the Elders have decided to place Cloud Kingdom on emergency lockdown, effective immediately. Please return to your dens and limit
all noise and movement. We will share pertinent developments as they become available.”

Ramon sighed.

“Be safe, and bless Cloud Kingdom.”

MAIA WAILED
.
Bill rushed over to her side. She was crumpled over and weeping. This was bad. A lockdown meant no more scouts or rescue parties. It also meant that the Elders had decided that losing Elena and Jack was an acceptable price for their communal safety. But sitting around silently and waiting didn't seem like too sound a strategy to Bill, especially considering everything he'd learned from Felix. There was still so much about their situation they didn't know! What humans did Diego and Jack encounter? Were they the same humans that took Elena? And was it humans that had driven the Teddycats out of Horizon Cove?

But Bill had to put all that aside for the moment and focus on his friend.

Maia was still weeping, but the sobs were dry. She was wrung out, exhausted, and depleted. “So much for the rescue party,” she said, resting her head on Bill's shoulder. “I had my mind all made up to head down there no matter what. Now, even if I found Elena, I wouldn't be allowed back home! How does that make any sense at all? How can they
banish
me just for
risking my life to save another Teddycat? Explain that to me, Bill.”

“I can't explain it,” Bill said. “You're right. It makes no sense.”

He wanted to tell her that they had the same plan; that in a perfect world, they would go find Elena together and find a new place to live; that Cloud Kingdom felt shriveled up, its glory sapped, its physical beauty at jagged odds with the dour dread and fear that had seeped in and overtaken the place. Instead, he just let her rest.