***
Clutch on the railway bridge with Hala, waiting for the High Guard to come down on them. The City’s young are huddled on the railway tracks, ready to make their last stand, and it will be a brave battle with these Southerners fighting with them.
Instead of the High Guard there came the single face of their enemy, the tyrant Meatbreath. The bully stopped at the entry to the bridge, and saw that his way was blocked. He looked behind him to the west. There stood his son who had ripped off his ear. He looked to the north, back along the way he had come. There stood his daughter holding the ear. He looked south for an escape along the shore of the lake to the cemetery. There stood the mother of these brats. He looked back in front of him again to where he intended to cross the bridge to the East Bank and on to Creek Town. There stood the son who died on a tombstone. Amazing! His son had been reborn.
Meatbreath assumed the attitude of superior indifference that he relied on to shrug off a setback. He looked down into the dark river at his feet. “Well, we’ll see how it turns out,” he said. But first, he had some scores to settle.
“Don’t look so smug,” he said to the one who was a wrestler. “You used a trick. A foreign trick. It wasn’t one of my tricks. You got it from a migrant.”
“It was what you wanted – no holds barred,” Bandit said.
“Anyway, you won unfairly. Now you. The nasty, clever one. You won the riddle contest, but that didn’t do you any good. Because you walked into my charge south of the bridge, and you lost the battle. That’s not very clever.”
“Lost the battle? But you don’t seem to have an army. Where’s your lookalike army?”
“It doesn’t matter where they are. They’re a bunch of losers. Now, you …”
“Me,” Clutch said. “Your nemesis.”
“You think you’re so smart. But you lost because I blew you off the tree limb and you hit your head on a rock. I guess you’re not so smart now.”
“I won the dialogue. I argued cleanly. There was a flaw in your argument, and that flaw exposed the false premise of your sovereignty. In point of fact, the precise flaw was …”
Meatbreath cut him off. “That’s fake reasoning.” He looked around for any further scores to settle. None. He took a deep breath and measured the distance to the surface of the water.
“What about me?” Slypaws said. “And all the others you violated.”
“They don’t exist.”
“They exist in all your cubs. And your cubs have deserted you.”
“Well, they are and ever will be a glory – the High Guard. They won the Battle of the Southern Frontier, the Battle of the Dead Zone, the Battle of the Park, and the Battle of the Ambush at the Bridge. Their conquests will always be remembered.”
With that, the Protector threw himself into the river.
They rushed to the siderails of the bridge to see what would become of him. They saw only this great head floating away on the current, still talking.
“You used a Migrant trick … The riddles … You cheated on the answers … You lost your balance in the Dialogue and fell off the limb … You rigged the outcome … It’s all fake news anyway … I’ll be back …” The voice ranted on into the distance …
It was for Slypaws to make the final comment: “Exit: a colossal migraine.”
57
Clutch knew that until his dying night he was never going to come down from the giddy peak of victory. It was a summit of all the little joys that make up being alive: climbing down from your first roof, standing up to an angry goose, vanquishing a drooler. This victory was like all those smaller triumphs bundled together by an adversary who had compelled him to prove his worth.
But surveying the rejoicing throngs – the Citizens Brigades, the Southerners of Princess Hala, the Creek squadrons, the new citizens from the Heights, and the older townsfolk who had joined with the City’s young – he realized that this achievement wasn’t individual. It was a unison of countless personal triumphs. For everybody here on the grass in front of the stage had in their own way experienced hope, setback, and triumph, just as he had. Opening his heart to their celebration, he felt the power of a moment, a feeling that time stood still. Wasn’t this what Procyonides speaks of in his Dialogue on Statecraft when he tells of when the Great Raccoon God and the Goddess Hapticia founded the first city? They say the heavens moved so close to the Earth that night you could hear the stars singing.
He was at the right end of the stage with his mother and her new friend, Twitchwhisker. The jingling beside him was Hala: she had produced a headdress fringed with tiny silver bells that tinkled each time she tossed her ruff. Then Mindwalker, with a seagull riding on his shoulder, spoke with such an infectious enthusiasm that a group of Southerners on the lawn began dancing spontaneously in a circle. He’d never seen such a display before.
“It is the dance from the Masque of the Defeat of the Storm God by the Spirit of Spring,” Hala explained with a jingle.
Next, his sister Touch, all grown up, waving Meatbreath’s ear to the delight of the crowd and, beside her, Sensibella just as dramatic as when he first met her at the Pond. She had obviously learned good manners at her girls’ school because she was keeping her eyes fixed on Mindwalker, the way a polite listener defers to the speaker who is the centre of attention. Beside Sensibel stood brother Bandit, raccoon of many parts, scowling at something. Well, he had good reason to scowl: one of his ribs was broken. Next to them stood Friskywits with her father Smartwhisker, who had saved the day with his army of Eastern people.
And as far as the eye could see, proud, exhausted raccoons. They had achieved the impossible – they had created a free City. And a diverse one. He remembered the end of the battle when the Southerners from the frontier mingled with the Easterners from the Heights. Though they had differing customs and tongues, they embraced each other as kin in a new Republic. Hala and Mindwalker had walked together, frowning at the bodies of insensate raccoons strewn under the picnic tables, still holding bottles of spirit-sugar.
The park fell silent. Sensibel had stepped forward. She took a deep, self-conscious breath and began.
“Hi, all you darling Citizens. And you up in the trees. And …” she turned her head and looked up “… you up there on the roof. Yes, and you lovely Peoples Corps who have joined us. And you Makers – yes, I see you over there on top of the urinals, deliberating wisely. On behalf of the City, I want to thank each and every one of you, my dear people, for this victory. And for accepting me as your Chief Magistrate …”
Cheering and applause from all the tables of the feasting area, the surrounding trees, the café roof. Clutch glanced at his mother in astonishment. Since when did Sensibel become Chief Magistrate? Slypaws raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
“Freely chosen, let it be said, by you all,” Sensibel said. “Not secretly appointed on some west-end rooftop by the City Elders and Leading Families …”
More applause. Suddenly, there weren’t any Leading Families anymore. They still existed in their privacy, but without the capital L and capital F. The notion of an elite class bred in one locale had become uncustomary, refuted by this new Chief Magistrate who was the daughter of a Migrant and a Creeker.
“And in that spirit of free and open process, I will now share with you one of the new laws I intend to put before City Council. The law defining a wholesome and harmonious Commonwealth.”
Did anyone really want to hear what the law was? For harmonious, they just had to look around; for wholesome, they only had to look at Sensibella, who was now striding back and forth across the stage. Clutch began to frown. There had been no choice of a new leader. No one had elected Sensibella.
“For instance, a law governing risky behaviour. The risk-takers have suddenly realized that the world has become an unsafe place for risk-taking. But since there’s nowhere else to live, unless you want to live on the moon with the Goddess, the risk-takers have discovered that in order for their behaviour to prosper it has to ponder the consequences of what it does. It has to study the impact of a leap before it takes one. Our common task as Citizens is to help that thinking along. Those of you out there who are moms … Where are you? Let’s see those paws!”
All around the audience, mothers raise their paws.
“Bless you! And bless the even more of you than before who’ll become mothers because of our new law giving you more dens and the power to select your mate. Now, don’t you teach your cubs that acts have consequences, that cubs should take responsibility for the results of the risks they take?”
Heads nodding all around in agreement.
“The same thing now applies to risk-takers – it applies especially to risk-takers. They must take responsibility for what they do. They need to stop being cubs and grow up!”
