The Prince Who Fell From the Sky (3 page)

Something stirred deep in Casseomae’s mind. An instinct coursed sharp and hot through her body—an instinct akin to the one that drove her to gorge in the fall or the one that urged her to nestle into her den when cubs had grown inside her. It was a pain within her tied to all those lost litters, all those cubs born breathless, all those cubs she had never been able to raise.

Casseomae bounded down the bluff, reaching the
coyotes in a few leaps. With a swipe of her paw, she caught Rend in the muzzle and sent the coyote tumbling end over end. Casseomae stood on her hind legs and roared. Half of the rout scattered back into the trees. The few that remained received such a volley of blows that they were soon scattered as well. The bear’s jaws caught Rend by the hind leg as she tried to escape and flung the yelping coyote through the bushes and saplings.

Casseomae turned to the creature trembling on the wing. Something strange was happening to its face. Water streamed from its eyes across its cheeks. She gave the cub a little reassuring huff and put her front paws onto the wing. The metal crinkled beneath her weight.

As she leaned forward, the cub—this little creature who was no Devil, no monster, the little youngling who wasn’t skinless at all—did not recoil. It watched her with wide, sky-colored eyes.

She bit it at the shoulder, picking it up in the gentle, firm way a mother bear picks up a cub. Her huge jaws could break a wolf’s leg. But as she lifted the child, her teeth didn’t even pinch it and the cub didn’t cry.

She stepped down from the metal wing with the cub hanging from her jaws, limp and not making a sound. Casseomae lumbered up through the cedars and away from the crashed ship, setting off into the Forest with the first stars of the evening coming out.

T
he Forest was alive with the night. Creeping steps. Flapping wings. Chirps and choruses, buzzes and breathing. In Casseomae’s meadow, the child lay whimpering in the cinder-block den. Casseomae watched it from the crumbled doorway, wishing she knew how to settle the little creature into sleep.

Perhaps it needed to eat. With the moon rising over the treetops, Casseomae went out to forage. She buried her snout in the grass, searching for tender shoots, upturning rotten logs to get at the burrowing grubs. Gathering a mouthful of the grubs in her lips, she lumbered back to the den.

The child stopped crying and watched her with wide eyes. Casseomae made a huff and dropped the grubs
before the child. It looked at the wiggling white larvae and then at her.

“You eat it,” she said. “Doesn’t your kind eat food?”

The child wrinkled its nose and pushed away one of the grubs that was worming closer.

“Maybe you don’t like grubs.” Casseomae sniffed at the child, trying to figure out if it could understand her. “Well, what do you eat anyhow?”

The child’s breathing had settled. It stared at her, wiping its dripping nose with the back of its hand.

“Sure are leaky, aren’t you?” she grumbled, backing out of the den. Once she stepped into the moonlight, the moaning resumed.

Casseomae hadn’t been foraging for long before she realized the child’s pitiful noises had stopped. She went back to the den. The child was sleeping. Casseomae gave a grateful snort and began to eat the grubs. “No,” she said, stopping herself. “Might be hungry when it wakes.” She lumbered out in the meadow, leaving the grubs wiggling in the dirt by the sleeping creature.

She watched her cave from the tall grass. What was she doing bringing this creature back to her den? She knew what these Skinless monsters had done to her kind and to the other clans of the Forest.

She wrestled with these thoughts until dawn broke. The sun was just rising above the trees when something rustled through the brush before her.

“You’ve not been eaten yet?” she said.

“I can take care of myself.” The rat settled on his back legs before her. “What’s your name again, old bear?”

“Casseomae.”

He twitched his whiskers. “I’m Dumpster.”

Casseomae grunted. “So where is the rest of your mischief anyway, Dumpster?”

“Think I’d be here if I knew?” He dipped his nose glumly. “I lost them. I was separated from the rest back in our city. Things were getting bad. Curs and lesser voras had been overrunning the place. Then our skyscraper fell. Busstop and Hydrant were killed right next to me. Who knows how many others? But Stormdrain and lots of the others escaped. I followed their scent out into the Forest—”

“Look, rat,” Casseomae said, shifting her weight between her forepaws. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying. What fell?”

“A skyscraper. It’s an Old Devil building. Like this cinder-block den of yours, except bigger. A lot scratchin’ bigger. They stretch up into the clouds.”

Casseomae wondered if this could even be true, but then she’d never been to one of the Skinless’s cities. “So where were they headed?”

Dumpster twitched his whiskers. “They’d talked about trying to find the Havenlands.”

“Well, can’t you find them there?”

“I could if there was such a place,” he said with a sigh.

Casseomae grunted with confusion. “Why would your mischief go there if it isn’t real?”

“Because without their Memory to advise them, they get idiotic. Stormdrain will never keep them thinking straight without me around. No, they’re looking for the Havenlands for the same reason all those other featherbrained viand tribes are.”

Dumpster blinked his beady eyes at Casseomae’s confused expression. “Haven’t you heard of the Havenlands? Of course you haven’t. You’re a vora. Well, rumors of the Havenlands have been circulating around the viands for a sun’s age. Some say it’s a mountainous city. Others say it’s a meadow surrounded by impassable brambles. But all agree it’s by the Wide Waters, and all agree the Havenlands is a place without voras. Herds and tribes of viands living unmolested. Plenty to eat and no danger can reach you.”

Casseomae snorted. “A place where the wolves don’t rule?”

“Yeah, I know,” Dumpster said. “Sounds too good to be true. But Stormdrain is set on finding it. I’ve got to find them. Just like my da and his da before, I’m the Memory for the mischief. My rats need me.”

“I don’t understand,” Casseomae said. “Memory of what?”

“Of the stinkin’ Old Devils, you mushroom-brained bear.” Dumpster snapped his tail irritably. “What’ve I been telling you? There isn’t another clan of creatures, vora or viand, that knows more about the Old Devils than our kind. Our survival depended on it before the Turning and sure as spittin’ depends on it now! Back in the last age, we lived among those Devils. We ate from their caches. We slept in the warmth of their dens. I’m not saying we were Faithful like some flea-ravaged cur or puss. We were thieves! And spittin’ proud of it.”

Dumpster rose as high as he could on his hind legs and wiggled his nose at Casseomae. “Since the Turning, we’ve gotten by on what was left behind. There’s still Old Devil food to be eaten, if you know how to open a can. We do! We’ve figured out their water tunnels and valves, figured out how to open their boxes and doors, and figured out how to spill canisters of poisons to throw off pursuing voras.”

Casseomae listened with interest but understood barely a word the rat was saying.

“Knowledge,” Dumpster said. “That’s our edge. You see? Like knowing Vorago. It’s how we’ve survived. And to think of my mischief out there alone without me …” His words trailed off.

“So you know about these Skinless?” Casseomae grunted.

“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?” Dumpster squeaked.

“You know what they eat?” the bear asked.

“Been eating it my whole life,” the rat replied with a cocky wiggle of his whiskers. “Or at least when I can get my paws on it.”

“Come with me, then.” Casseomae lumbered to her den.

Dumpster hesitated at the door. He lifted one paw and sniffed, letting his nose guide him up on his hind legs.

“What in the name of Lord Murk is in there?” Dumpster asked.

“The cub,” Casseomae said.

“The … the Old Devil pup?” the rat piped. He was in a frenzy of agitation, circling back and forth, hopping and slapping his tail to the dirt. “You—you—no, you didn’t! What’s it doing here?”

“I brought it here.”

Dumpster looked up at Casseomae, his bulging black eyes blinking in disbelief. “What did you do that for?”

“Rend’s guard was going to kill it.”

“So?”

Casseomae extended her lips irritably and gave a woof. “It’s just a cub.”

“It’s a Skinless!” the rat shrieked. “An Old Devil. Do you have any idea what its kind did to us? Of course you don’t. You mushroom-brained bears can’t remember last moon.”

“We have stories about the age before the Turning,” she said.

“Then you should know what those Old Devil hunters did!”

“
That
cub didn’t do anything,” Casseomae growled. “You ought to have heard it moaning all night. Poor thing’s hungry. Needs to drink too, I’d reckon. But all it’s done is whimper like a blind newborn.”

“What are you planning to do with it?” Dumpster asked.

Casseomae stood still. She hadn’t thought exactly what she planned on doing with the creature. All she had known was that the coyotes would have killed it if she hadn’t saved it. It was a cub, after all, not so different from the ones she had lost.

“It needs food,” Casseomae said at last. “You know what its kind eats. Can you—”

A roar came from the far side of the glade. Casseomae turned and rose up on her hind legs to sniff. She dropped back down and said, “It’s Alioth, my sloth’s chief. You’d best—”

But the rat had already disappeared.

T
he bear chief blinked up at the bright sunlight, then stopped several lengths from where Casseomae sat in the doorway to her den. Alioth lowered his head, growing stiff-legged.

“You stink of it,” he growled.

Casseomae watched him silently, showing respectful submission but not groveling or moving away.

“I suppose it’s true, then,” Alioth said. “The coyotes are telling of a living Skinless One that they captured and that you stole from them.”

“They didn’t capture the cub,” Casseomae said.

“A
cub
, is it?” Alioth grunted. “How do you know it was a cub?”

“There’s no mistaking it, Big One,” Casseomae said, feeling she would know better than a battle-scarred
male, even if he was wise like her chief. “The rest of its pack are dead. They fell from the sky in a relic just out there in the Forest. You can see it for yourself.”

“I already did,” Alioth said.

“Does the Ogeema know?” Casseomae asked.

“Rend was heading that way when I crossed paths with her.” The bear chief stiffened angrily. “When she told me what you had done, I said that it was not possible. That my clan keeps nothing from me.”

“Big One—” Casseomae began anxiously.

“My bears keep nothing from me!” Alioth roared. “We forage freely in the Ogeema’s realm. Old Chief Megrez fought to secure that. We don’t need to give the Ogeema a reason to revoke our pact.”

“The Ogeema is a wicked fool,” she grumbled.

“That may be, but do you want it like it used to be? Like it was for my mother?”

“No,” Casseomae said softly. “I’m sorry. I should have come to you, Alioth.”

The bear chief’s stance slackened. He came closer and gave a forgiving snort. “Yes, you should have. You are dear to me, Casseomae, and I worry how you are treated by the rest of the clan. You cannot risk making yourself more of an outcast.”

Alioth settled back on his haunches, sniffing once more at the air. “The creature’s stink seems to have stuck to your glade. Did you kill it here?”

Casseomae hesitated. “I didn’t kill it.”

“What?” The chief lunged up onto all four paws. “You let it go?”

“No,” Casseomae replied. “It is here. In my den. It sleeps.”

A growl rumbled in Alioth’s huge chest as he walked toward her. “Then move aside! So I can kill it and have this bothersome business over with.”

Casseomae lunged at her chief. “You will do no such thing!” she roared.

Alioth quartered his stance, edging sideways from her. “You forget yourself.”

“It is you who forgets, Alioth,” Casseomae said. “Don’t you remember? You were once like that little one in there. Alone. Helpless. In need.”

“That is not the same—”

“Who protected you?” Casseomae continued. “Who got you through that winter? Who kept Megrez’s jealous brothers from tearing you apart? I had just lost my first litter, and you were just an orphaned cub, thanks to the old Ogeema. I suckled you, Alioth, because you were just a tiny thing. And if I hadn’t …”

Casseomae let her back muscles relax. Her bristled fur lowered. She eased a few steps out of the doorway. “If I had not taken the Skinless cub, Rend and her vermin would have killed it. I could not let that happen.”

“No, they would not have killed it,” the chief said
“They would have brought the cub to Ogeema Dire as is demanded by law. You know as well as I that any of the Faithful must be brought before him. It is part of the pact.”

“It’s not a cur,” Casseomae said.

“Exactly!” Alioth said. “This is much worse. Don’t you realize the threat this creature poses to the Ogeema … to the entire Forest?”

“It’s just a cub!”

“It’s one of the Skinless. Those monsters drove the clans into the farthest reaches of the Forest. They killed us by the droves. If you think the Ogeema’s rule is brutal, it is nothing compared to the cruelty of the Skinless Ones. We should be thankful to the Ogeema’s ancestors for ridding the Forest of their kind.”

“Those are nothing but lies,” Casseomae said. “Legends spun by the wolves for their subjects. We don’t know what the world was like before the Turning.”

“Nevertheless, the Ogeema will learn of the cub before long.”

“I’ll fight whatever wolves the Ogeema sends,” Casseomae growled.

“You are brave, old bear,” Alioth said. “And strong. No doubt you could fight off many of their guard. But you remember why you had to take me in as a cub. My mother defied the old Ogeema. How many wolves did he send against her? Even if we stood beside you, our
clan could not stand against the tide of wolves and voras that Dire commands. We would lose much more than our foraging privileges.”