Moonlight Brigade by C. Alexander London

Author:C. Alexander London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-08-21T11:49:48+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

THE CARNIVAL OF CROWS

THE Crows’ Carnival opened on the first day of the leaf-changing season and went far into the cold days of winter. It was held in a part of the city beneath the Slivered Sky where People rarely gathered, but where they made giant mountains from the things they tossed away.

Declan and the other bats dropped off Kit’s class just after sunset that night. All of their bellies were grumbling with hunger, but Mr. Timinson acted like he didn’t hear it.

He had to hear it, Kit thought.

“They call this place a dump,” Mr. Timinson explained to them as he led the class quickly to a high hedge across the road. “It is a treasure trove for our kind, filled with food and scraps and all manner of useful things, but you will have to resist your natural urges to steal. The crows love a game and a gamble, but they do not take kindly to stealing the way folks in Ankle Snap Alley do. They don’t see the fun in it, and they’ve got long beaks and quick wings. Thieves don’t make it out of the carnival with their eyes intact, understood?”

“Understood,” said everyone in the class together, as none of them wanted to be pecked to pieces by a carnival of crows.

Mr. Timinson cocked his head at Eeni, whose voice had been strangely absent from the class’s response. Kit elbowed her in the side.

“Understood.” She shook her head sadly. “What fun is a carnival if you can’t pick a pocket or two? We could show back up at home with a few seeds and nuts to spread around.”

Kit had to laugh. No matter what bad luck came her way, Eeni was always true to herself: a sneaky little rat with a fearsome streak of loyalty to her neighborhood.

“No stealing. Period,” Mr. Timinson said. “The crows can be generous birds, when generosity is shown to them, but with thieves they are cruelest of all the creatures. Not even the Flealess dare steal from crows.”

Mr. Timinson sniffed the cold air and watched a single leaf fall, fluttering, from a high branch. Then he peered around a set of trash cans and turned back to the class. “We’ll have to cross the street here. We go one at a time. When you see one of those big rolling Rumblers speeding at you, for the good of your guts, do not stop. I can’t tell you how many of our animal folk get squashed flat beneath the wheels of Rumblers because they panic in the lights and freeze. Think of this big concrete street like a river. If you stop swimming you’ll drown. And of course, by drown, I mean ‘have your insides flattened against the pavement and your bones pulverized into dust.’”

“Do we really have to cross?” one of the Liney sisters asked nervously.

“I’ll help you,” Fergus, a frog with a constant bubble of slime on his nose, offered. She scowled at him and whispered with her sisters, giggling.

“You can help me cross,” Eeni offered, and the frog smiled.

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