Chapter Twenty Seven
“Wait,” said Nevi, as she rushed to catch up with Torus. “Where are we going?”
“Upstairs,” said Torus shortly as he jumped up into the hole in the wall.
“To do what?”
Torus was about to answer when ran headlong into Chello who was coming into the hole from inside the building.
“There you are!” said Chello. “Hey, lookit my new cloak Nevi and her mom made me!” He was wearing a cloak like Torus’s, but without a hood, and instead of being made from a darkly patterned cloth, his was bright red, with the edges trimmed in gold colored thread.
Torus glanced at him for a moment.
“You need a hat,” he said as he passed.
“I have a hat!” said Chello, whipping it out of his pouch. It was red, to match the cloak, with a round crown and a wide brim pinned up on one side. He placed it dramatically on his head and struck a pose with his needle.
“Fear in the hearts of my enemies, right? Hey, wait!”
Torus had slipped around him and was headed back into the building. Nevi followed him, with Chello coming up behind.
“What’s with him?” he asked her when he had caught up.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We were in the alley and he saw some pigeons flying around and all of a sudden he got angry and took off.”
“It wasn’t the pigeons,” said Torus from up ahead without turning back.
“Well what was it then?” said Nevi, sounding irritated. Torus stopped suddenly and turned to face them.
“Didn’t you see him?” he asked. “The hawk, the way he flew. Didn’t you see it?”
Nevi shook her head and said, “I saw him chase some pigeons, I guess, and…” Chello just looked confused.
“Yeah, he chased some pigeons, alright,” said Torus. “He came screaming down out of the sky and blew them away like leaves in the wind.”
“Did he catch one?” asked Chello, hopefully.
“No, but he totally could have if he’d wanted to” said Torus. “It was amazing, and scary, and the pigeons completely freaked out.”
“Yeah,” said Nevi, “but what does that…”
“Did you see the way he flew?” asked Torus impatiently.
“He was…really fast?” said Nevi helpfully.
“No, not that,” said Torus. “He didn’t flap his wings!” He paused to let the importance of his words sink in, but his friends just stared at him. “He didn’t flap his wings at all,” he continued. “He was flying way up high, then he dived down through the pigeon flock, all the way out over the park and then up to the top of the building without flapping once. The pigeons were flapping all over the place, but he was just gliding and he was ten times as fast as them.”
“Okay…” said Chello. Nevi stayed silent.
“Okay, so what was I trying to do with my machine?” asked Torus.
“You were trying to…fly?” said Chello.
“Yeah, but by flapping, remember? Remember what the hawk said about pigeons? He said ‘they clatter in the air like broken things.’ Well what did my machine do? It clattered in the air and broke, just like a pigeon!”
Lights started to come on in his friends’ eyes.
“But the hawk…” said Nevi slowly.
“He glides!” Torus finished. “I know he flaps to take off and stuff, but half the time – more than half the time, maybe – he’s just gliding. I’ve seen him, but I never really noticed it before.” He paused, excited. “I have to figure it out,” he said. “I have to talk to him again.”
With that he turned and rushed away down the tunnel. Chello and Nevi glanced at each other and then followed him.
“Hang on!” called Chello. “What makes you think he’ll talk to you? If you go up there by yourself, or even with the three of us, what makes you think he won’t just eat you? I mean, he didn’t get a pigeon dinner, so maybe he’s hungry.”
“Don’t care,” said Torus without looking back. “You don’t have to come up with me, but I have to talk to him now while I still remember what I saw out there.”
Without any further words, the three wound their way through the building, drawing an occasional puzzled glance from a passing rat, but without any interference. When they got to the vent pipe that led to the roof Torus stopped and spoke to his friends.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen up there. If it’s raining he might not even be there. And if he is, like Chello said, he might be hungry.”
“Don’t worry,” said Chello. “I’m the Red Raider! No one dares eat me!”
“And if that doesn’t work,” said Nevi, “we’ve always got The Panic. It’s saved us before, right?”
Torus shook his head.
“Not this time,” he said. “I don’t want to rely on mindless instinct anymore. I want to think and fight on my own without running blind in the dark.”
“Absolutely!” said Chello, enthusiastically. Nevi nodded gravely.
“Okay, then,” said Torus. He turned and climbed into the vent pipe and began creeping up it, struggling a little with his knife.
“You need a string on that,” said Chello.
“Yeah, I’ll work on that,” muttered Torus.
They crept along in silence for a moment, and then Chello spoke in a tense whisper.
“We’re climbing up through the attic, right? It gives me the heebie jeebies to think about all those pigeons in there! There might be some sitting right next to us, right?”
“I guess so,” said Torus, distractedly. He was trying to work out a plan for getting onto the roof without being seen.
“Gross,” said Chello. “Pigeons are gross.”
“Be quiet!” hissed Nevi from behind. “What if they hear you?”
“Let them!” said Chello. “I’ll skewer them and take them up to the hawk as an offering.” He banged the weighted end of his needle against the pipe for emphasis.
“Stop that!” said Torus. “I don’t care if the pigeons hear us, but the hawk is a different thing. If he knows we’re coming he might jump on us from behind and that would be the end of that.”
“Gross…” said Chello quietly.
Once they reached the frame of the roof, Torus went right up through the hole at the top without stopping to find the hawk as they had on their last visit.
“Torus wait!” called Nevi, but he disappeared with a flick of his tail. Chello looked at Nevi and shrugged, then they slipped up onto the roof themselves.
Torus sat up and gazed around. The storm had mostly passed – a brief spring thunderstorm – but it was still raining lightly, and the flat roof was wet, with puddles in places.
“Skeerin!” he called, but there was no sign of the bird. He started off purposefully, looking up at any likely place for the hawk. Finally, as he came around the far side of the chimney, he saw the bird, and at the same time heard its familiar voice.
“What is this now that comes in the rain?” it said. It was sitting with its back to the rats, in the partial shelter of the chimney, looking slightly damp and uncomfortable.
“I’m a rat,” said Torus. “I’m Mr. Nile’s friend.”
“It is the rat that wishes to fly,” said the hawk evenly. “Intolerable.”
“That’s why I’ve come,” said Torus. “May I speak to you about it?”
There was a long pause and Torus started to notice he was getting steadily wetter in the rain. The hawk shook suddenly, shaking water from its wings and body in a wide spray. Then it turned slowly to face the rats.
“Three,” it said, finally. “The Nile is away for three moons, and then sends three rats. Intolerable.”
“Mr. Nile has been ill,” said Nevi. “But he is doing much better now. He…sends his regards,” she finished, uncertainly.
“Nile didn’t send us,” said Chello. “We came on our own.” He gestured toward Torus with his n
eedle. “We came with him.”
Torus stood on the roof between his two friends and looked at the huge bird.
“I saw you flying just a few minutes ago,” he said. “I saw you chasing the pigeons and flying out over the park.” He paused, gazing steadily into the birds yellow eyes. “How do you do it?”
The bird cocked its head to one side and gazed quizzically at Torus.
“Strange,” it said. “A most strange rat, this is.”
“You flew without moving your wings,” Torus persisted. “How do you do that?” He stepped forward toward the hawk. “How does it work?”
“This rat will not fly!” said the hawk sharply. With a sudden lurch it lunged forward, spreading its huge wings and leaping toward the rats. It sped toward them and was nearly on top of them with a single beat of its wings.
Torus caught his breath as the bird approached, and felt a tightness in his stomach and at the back of his neck. He gritted his teeth and prepared to fight the blackness he knew was coming, but instead of going dark, his mind felt suddenly clear, clearer than it had ever been before.
Everything seemed to slow down, and he saw everything around him with perfect clarity – the rough texture of the rooftop, the broken bricks of the chimney and the low wall surrounding the roof, the piles of damp leaves and twigs and bones in the corner, and the hawk, coming at him with its talons outstretched, framed against the blotchy clouds in the sky. The rain had nearly stopped, and the air felt crisp and clean. He took a deep breath that filled him with a tingling energy to the ends of his fingers and the tip of his tail. He planted his feet and gripped the long handle of his knife with both hands, looking the hawk dead in the eye.
At the same moment, he saw, in the corners of his eyes, Chello and Nevi step up on either side of him. Nevi was crouched as if she was ready to spring forward in attack, and Chello stood with his spear thrust forward and his bright cloak swinging in the wind. Even without seeing them clearly, Torus could feel that they felt the same clarity, and the same focused determination that he did. Together the three of them stood and faced the oncoming hawk.
The big bird pulled up abruptly when he saw that the rats were standing to face him. He beat his wing rapidly two or three times to slow his speed, and then came to a stop, landing lightly on the roof directly in front of them. He fixed them with his hard, yellow eyes and regarded them curiously.
“We need to understand,” said Torus, evenly. He spoke quietly, but his voice sounded loud in his ears. “The pigeons are killing us. We have to fight them like you fight them.”
“I do not fight,” said the hawk, coolly. “I hunt, that is all.”
“What were you doing earlier, then?” demanded Torus. “I saw you fly through the flock of pigeons, and you didn’t even try to catch any of them. You just scared them out of your sky.”
The bird stood up straight and looked at Torus in surprise.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” said Torus in a rush. “It’s your sky and you chased them out. Well, they’re in our home, too, and we need to chase them out. I need to understand. I need to know.” He put down his knife and stepped forward, looking intently at the hawk. “Please show me,” he said.
Without warning, the hawk leapt up into the air, spreading his wings and stretching out his talons. He snatched Torus up in a firm grip and with two mighty beats of his powerful wings, he climbed into the air, out over the edge of the building and up into the misty sky. Very briefly, Torus heard the desperate cries of his friends, and then all sound was lost in the whistling of wind in his ears.
Up and up, in the hard clutches of the bird’s talons, Torus rode up into the sky. For a moment, he thought he might throw up, and then, for another moment, he was sure he was about to be killed and eaten. He briefly wished for the blackness to come back, but, of course, it didn’t. If anything, as he rose up into the air, his mind and his perceptions became increasingly sharp and clear. He was aware of the power of the hawk’s wings, scooping through the air, pulling them up higher and higher. The wind rushing past him had a definite texture and smell he had never experienced before.
He was dimly aware of the pressure of the birds claws around his shoulders and hips, and a tiny part of his mind reflected that if the bird was going to kill him he would certainly have done so already. For the most part, though, his attention was taken up with the immediate moment of his awareness.
As the hawk climbed, Torus could see the shapes of the clouds, like huge crumpled wads of fog in the sky. As they broke apart after the rain, they were lit by the angled rays of the late sun. They were blazed and frosted with amazing colors, pinks and creams and oranges and deep purple reds underneath. He could see wisps of rain falling from some clouds far away, like sheets of mist blowing down in the wind. And further still, where the sky was almost dark, he saw flashes of lightening tearing among the charcoal clouds.
As he reached a height nearly level with the cloud tops, the hawk stopped flapping, and spread his wings wide, gliding silently through the air. Torus knew they must still be moving with great speed, but it felt perfectly still and calm, with the wind softened to a whisper of a breeze. They moved in long, slow arcs through beams of sunlight broken by clouds, and after a long moment of silence, the hawk spoke.
“This is the sky,” he said. His voice was low and calm, with none of the strange, shrill tone that had confused the rats in the past.
“It’s beautiful,” said Torus, full of wonder. “You truly belong here.”
“You are foolish,” said the hawk, not unkindly. “I am not worthy of the sky. But it tolerates me.”
Torus then looked down for the first time. When he did, a strange thing happened to his vision. Although they were very high in the sky, he found he could see quite clearly all the way to the ground. There, far below, was the black square of the roof of his building, the dark shadow of the alleyway on one side and a parking lot on the other. Then more buildings, and the long vacant lot behind them all that was off limits to all rats. There was the wide street, streaming with big human machines, and across from that, the park, a huge expanse of treetops and grassy areas. He could see the dumpster, still swarmed by pigeons in the fading light.
And all around that, the city continued, building after building, block after block, for miles and miles, a distance further than Torus had ever imagined. In one direction, the city disappeared under the rain clouds. In the other direction, toward the setting sun, it spread out almost to the horizon, where it stopped at a bright ribbon of water that glimmered yellow in the evening light. On the far side of the river was what looked like wild country that stretched out until it was lost in the haze of sunset.
Torus felt the hawk bank into the wind and change direction. He reached out with his arms and felt the air moving over them. He suddenly sensed the air as a real substance, something to be held and manipulated, like the cardboard and wire and tape he was used to. He squinted his eyes and looked out through the sky again. He knew then that the air was always moving, billowing up and flowing down, like water shaken in a bottle. He could sense huge pillows of wind and feel how the hawk angled his wings against them to control his flight.
As if sensing his thoughts, the hawk spoke.
“As you walk over the ground,” he said. “Move through the air and with the air.”
Torus nodded, silently.
“Let it do what it will, and it may let you do what you will,” the hawk continued. “Do not fight the air. Pigeons fight the air,” he said, disdainfully. “They fight and always they will lose. They are not worthy.” He circled smoothly and began descending. “They are intolerable.”
They coasted down in a wide spiral, and before long Torus could see the tiny specks that were his friends, waiting on the roof. There was a red speck that kept skittering around and gesticulating wildly at a dark speck that seemed frozen in panic. When they were close enough to see each
other’s faces, he saw Nevi point up at them and Chello shout something that was lost in the distance between them. He waved and smiled, and Nevi waved back while Chello stomped away and then stomped back immediately.
After one last wide circle, the hawk glided in over the roof top and plopped Torus down gently next to his friends before flying up and perching on the top of the chimney to face the last gleam of the setting sun.
“What in the name of cheesy cat scat was that?” demanded Chello.
Torus ignored him, instead calling up to the hawk, “Thank you, Skeerin. I will honor the sky if I can. I will try my best.”
The hawk spoke without looking down at them.
“Tell the Nile it may visit me. Tell it…to come and mark the moon.”
“I will tell him,” said Torus. “Thank you.”
He felt dazed and drained, as if all the thrill of his adventure had washed everything out of him, and he was empty inside and perfectly clear, like a clean glass bottle. He turned away and led the way back to the hole in the roof, followed by his confused friends. The hawk remained silent while they moved away, but when they had dropped down into the darkness of the roof frame, he let out a high, piercing skree that thrilled Torus right to the tip of his tail.
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