Under the Empyrean Sky Read Free Page A

SHUCK RAT’S LITTLE SECRET
     
    CAEL CRASHES THROUGH the stalks. The rat darts ahead of him, squealing.
    This shuck rat is, like all shuck rats, fat—but that doesn’t mean it can’t run. These rats have longer, leaner legs: they can stand up at the stalk like a dog begging for food, their long tongues searching out low-hanging cobs to pull close so they can get a nibble. Cael sees a flash of the rat’s banded tail, a tail that looks like the Carruthers rat snake, a serpent introduced about ten years back in order to control the population of shuck rats. Back then the shuck rat’s tail was pink and wormy. Then the snake came along, and a year or two later, the rats start popping up with a different kind of tail. The tail confuses the snake, makes the snake think it’schasing one of its buddies, and so it gives up the hunt and the rat gets away. (And as a result, the snake has to change its food source, which means the Carruthers rat snakes decided to go ahead and eat up all the birds.)
    The thing about survival,
Pop always says,
is that it’s not about who’s fastest or strongest but who can adapt to changing situations.
    Right now, Cael aims to disprove his father’s words and show this rat who’s stronger and faster. Killing this shuck rat will put food on the table tonight and maybe tomorrow.
    Cael sees another glimpse of the rat’s tail and shoulders his way through the corn, chin to his chest so as not to cut himself up further. He’s got the slingshot in his hand, a ball bearing from an old, broken-down motorvator pinched between thumb and forefinger in the pocket of the sling. His forearm is tensed.
    The rat darts right, then left, zigzagging. Cael struggles to keep up.
    He sees a flash of gray—how’d the rat get over there?
    He hurries after it. Then another flash of gray to his right.
How the hell?
    Then he realizes: he’s tracking a
pair
of them.
    Dinner for
days
! His mouth waters, and he bounds after the animals.
    Cael skids to a halt as he sees the two rats come togetherin a clearing. He has the slingshot drawn, the ball bearing ready to let fly, a second metal marble already tucked in the palm of his hand—
    And he stops. His jaw slackens: a look his father calls his “flycatcher” look.
    “Whoa,” he says, a smile spreading across his face.
    One of the rats squeals—a sound that always cuts to Cael’s marrow when he hears it, like fingers on a chalkboard but so much worse because it’s coming up out of the throat of a howling, screaming mangy-ass rat—and bolts for the margin of the clearing. Cael’s so stunned that he misses the shot, but the second rat isn’t so lucky. Cael’s brain catches up with his hand, and he opens his thumb and forefinger. The metal marble
thwacks
the rat in the head.
    The rat gives him one last sad look before toppling over.
    Cael laughs. Then he calls to his friends. Because they’re going to want to see this.
    The first thing that draws Cael’s eyes are the red bell peppers, fat and swollen like breasts. They hang so low they’re almost touching the ground. But soon his eyes move to see the bulging green beans, the jaunty onion tops, the round cabbage so richly purple it matches the iridescent back of a caviling grackle bird.
    “Ohhhh” is all Rigo can say.
    Lane is more verbose. “It’s a garden. A glorious, no-shit, shouldn’t-be-here, how-the-hell-can-it-survive garden.”
    Cael laughs, nudges the dead shuck rat aside with his foot, and grabs a red pepper. He twists it, and it pops off the plant. Then he takes a deep bite.
    His teeth puncture the tough skin with a
pop
, and his mouth floods with the pepper’s juices. It’s sweet and bitter at the same time. Wet, crisp, crunchy—as refreshing as anything he can remember. Cael closes his eyes, listens to the corn rustling and whispering. Feels the warm sun at the top of his head and the cool breeze brushing across his brow. A moment of bliss. Then he’s jolted out of it as Rigo hops over and