The other gestured downriver with the bottle. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him take her. I didn’t see nothing …”
“I get it. You didn’t see anything happen, right? Your place in the world is to sit here and see nothing.”
“Tha’s right.”
“Where would they have gone?” Bandit got to his feet and took the bottle from the informant’s paws.
The other raccoon looked up desperately as Bandit hovered over him. Pleading watery eyes. That one didn’t have many options. His only option was to be left alone and not get into any trouble.
Bandit waited for the answer to his question with the understanding that it would be the last thing he’d take from this used-up Raccoon.
“I dunno. But I reckon they took her up the Crosstown Creek …”
“Which is where from here …?”
“Down there. Just after the tracks. Where the River turns into the Lake. There’s a boardwalk sorta like this dock. Stretches along the river at the back of the hotel to Crosstown Creek.”
Bandit already knew this route to the Creek. It was the one his mother had used when they went to visit Aunt Pawsense. But he had to hear the Drinker say it to be sure Sensibel had gone that way and that she had been taken.
***
The creek was covered where it discharged into the harbour. Higher upstream it broke into the open, resembling the original forest stream it had been before it served a second use as a stormwater drain. Access at the open stretches allowed raccoons a thoroughfare to avoid the traffic of vehicles on streets. But where did Sensibel’s captors leave the stream? It turned out that people didn’t want to talk about Lockjaw or the abduction of newcomers. One of the things Bandit was coming to learn was that the free and open discourse of the city was punctuated by diplomatic silences.
But he didn’t count on Sensibella’s cunning. He found the first bit of her tail hair on the muddy bank. And another where the stream, having come out into the open air, disappeared into the next extended culvert. And this was the pattern, continued through muck, and bats, and plastic bottles, and dead rodents, and syringes, and shopping carts, and masses of indistinguishable raccoon scents until the creek broke out into a long open stretch through a mini-ravine that ran beside a patio bar.
Here, she left a part of her tail on the bush and another part up the slope at the edge of the patio. It didn’t take long to find a third sign – a wisp of golden hair at the base of a tree that grew beside the brick wall of a building overlooking the patio. The rest would be easy. He could ascend her scent-trail up to the roof.
But what was driving her to sacrifice her tail? Despair, or a cunning attempt to make herself unbeautiful? Or was it trust in the stubborn persistent loyalty of her rescuer?
24
Waking to her second night on the river, Touchwit decided it was time to assert herself. The most direct and courteous way of meeting the Stranger was to swim across to the small island halfway between here and the far shore of the River, where he must have gone to sleep out the day, because he wouldn’t have found any privacy in the city. She’d simply come ashore and introduce herself. Then, with the mystery of him and his Makings cleared up, she could get on with her quest to the West Bank. It might happen that the Stranger would be part of that adventure because he was a Maker like her. Yet it might turn out that he preferred his own company to another’s. Que será, será.
But first, she needed to check if he had come back over to this island while she was sleeping. Besides, she’d be leaving her island for good. She ought to say goodbye to the place. She’d better not make it a lingering farewell because the westerly breeze felt uncertain. The weather was faltering; it wanted to shift around and bring a storm.
Touchwit left her tamarack tree with the Making on its branches and sniffed around the northern point to the Beaver’s house. The giant rodent was already out and about. His work began at dusk and continued through the night. Must be an effort to chew down a tree and guide the trunk with its branches over here. And he had no family to help him. He was a Bank Beaver, not a Lodge Beaver. Uncle Wily once explained the difference. Bank Beavers were solitary, and for that reason couldn’t invest the effort that a family of beavers brought to damming up a stream. The Beavers down at Beaver Creek on the Lake were Lodge Beavers. Maybe the solitary ones, those who preferred to live alone, left the community and became Bank Beavers.
The Stranger was a Bank Raccoon, if there was such a thing. He hadn’t come to the northerly tip of the island, so she began a search of its western shoreline down to the channel. She snacked on clams, then swam the channel and continued down the shoreline of the South Island to where it sloped into the river and became a cattail swamp. Why not say goodbye to her Making? The curious thing about these hand-made objects was that they seemed like people with minds of their own. The Stranger had created the face of a person in his Making. Hers was just a ring that could be worn around the neck, acquiring its personality through contact with its wearer. Perhaps her ring was waiting for a wearer.
But what’s this? An object standing at the place where she had positioned her Making? Where had it come from? She felt her hackles rise. Whatever you don’t know is not to be trusted. She didn’t feel comfortable on the South Island in the first place.
Touchwit approached the Something warily. It smelled of forest pickings – grapevines and bulrushes, so it couldn’t be a threat. It was plainly an Animacy.
Then, as she approached closer, it showed the ears of a Raccoon – yes, it was a Raccoon facing south, towards the lake. A Making. The Stranger had fashioned a second Making. Beside hers.
And it was wearing her wreath around its neck!
How? When? He must have fashioned it the previous night after eating his fish, when he left the channel to go down to the South Island. He’d discovered her wreath and constructed a second Raccoon to wear it.
The message went deep into her heart. For the first time in her life, she felt confusion. That confusion was a fluster of feelings trying to speak all at once. She resisted the impulse to force them into unison. Had he been tracking her all this while? How much did he know about her? Why did he care about her at all? – he was a loner. He’d have known from the scent of her paws on her Making that she wasn’t in the mood to mate. Yet he’d told of a kinship with her by fashioning this likeness beside her wreath and linking the two Makings so that together they created a new being.
Touchwit came around to the front of the Object and examined it with her nose. No distinguishable scent. How could that be? Still, the Making was patently his. The same silver clam shells for eyes, giving it a special, far-seeing power of vision. Those familiar high, alert ears on a skull so broad that she wanted to pet it. The Making must be an image of its Maker.
“Do you like it?”
Touchwit peered around the statue toward the speaker. Her nostrils dilated, her ears flattened, her back arched. Nobody. There was no one to see or smell.
“It’s okay to relax yourself. I’m not a threat.”
The voice seemed to come from a crabapple tree at the verge of the forest. Four or five pounces away. Though she couldn’t see him, she’d grabbed enough of his speech to analyse. Calm, reasonable speech. Youthful in its straightforwardness. Not earnest, like Clutch. Not ironic, like Bandit. But deep-down male. She hadn’t met a grown-up male except for Uncle Wily and he was an oddity. She sensed a power in this one’s voice that came from his toes. Why didn’t he show himself? The breeze blew his scent off him and carried it away from her.
“I appreciate that you don’t want to be seen,” Touchwit said to the tree. “I’m a visitor here too, and I walk lightly. But we should really figure out some way we can greet each other.”
Laughter from the tree. It seemed the whole tree was shaking.
“Sorry,” the tree said. “I’m not good with people.”
He was shy. Touchwit understood. Shy and vulnerable. He probably didn’t have roughhouse brothers to play with when he grew up. He might have been an orphan cub. She’d heard of orphans left to grow up on their own in the world, their parents trapped in a cage and taken away by Primates. She’d have to assume the lead in this conversation. What should she say? Touchwit looked in the direction of her house. What would her mother say?
“I like your Making. It does your speaking for you. However did you learn to fashion such a cunning resemblance?” She listened for his reply. It was growing darker quickly. He could come out in the open and not be easily seen. Maybe he was embarrassed about his smell. He didn’t leave his scent lying around.
“There is a school where Raccoons learn to Make things – don’t you know? I attended the school.”
A school for Makers? What’s that? Her school had been a chimney. Aunt Pawsense’s daughters had gone to all kinds of schools, and the education they received made them superior. The Stranger didn’t sound superior. Yet he had attended a school and learned to make a well-proportioned Making. “I have not been schooled in Making,” she said. “I trust my little wreath is well-proportioned and meets a standard.”
“It is a good Making. Especially if it is spontaneous and untaught, as yours is.”
Now she’d got him talking.
