The Prince Who Fell From the Sky by John Claude Bemis Page B

shoulder, but the highway behind them was empty.
    “Could be a scout,” she grunted. “We must have entered a pack’s territory.”
    Casseomae slept uneasily that night. Every bird woke her. She paced around the sleeping child, catching the occasional waft of the canine scent. The creature had not moved on around them in the night as she had hoped but lurked out there in the darkness.
    She settled near the child, who was splayed in the leaves in the most vulnerable of sleeping positions, on his back with his belly exposed. With her snout, she nudged him onto his side. He didn’t wake, but as hecurled up next to her he reached out to settle a hand on her forepaw. Casseomae licked at his fingers to soothe herself as much as the murmuring cub.
    Strange. They were more similar than she would have thought. His fingers were in many ways like her claws. Not so powerful or deadly, but he could do agile things with those narrow fingers, just as she could pry open a mussel shell or tear off bark. And she and the cub both stood on their hind legs and could walk that way too. Wasn’t it odd that bears could do that when wolves and deer could not?
    The Skinless Ones were ancient enemies of the Forest, but this little cub was so weak. He had none of the natural weapons given to the creatures of the Forest, no fangs or claws or antlers. He hadn’t even been able to smell the cougar and only realized it was there when it was already on him. She supposed it was their devices that had allowed the Skinless Ones to dominate the Forest. But the cub’s little device did nothing more than flash a surprising display of light. That would do little to protect him from the voras who would want him dead.
    Casseomae’s concern for the cub made her restless. It made her want to keep moving, to flee, which was a strange and unfamiliar sensation for a bear. But the impulse to get the cub away from harm, to keep him safe, was some deep-down tug she couldn’t contain.
    In the morning, Casseomae and Dumpster foraged as they traveled, and the child—never close enough to touch Casseomae but never more than a quick dash away—ate one of his lumps of food.
    Casseomae found herself having to listen to Dumpster’s endless lectures on the artifacts and relics they passed: poles strung with wires that carried electricity to feed the Skinless Ones’ devices, billboards that had established territories along the highway like scent markings, gas stations for their vehicles to drink foul-smelling chemicals, and on and on.
    She understood only the vaguest notions of what the rat was talking about, but she endured it all silently and kept a close eye on the cub as she smelled the creature following them.
    By midday, they reached a creek, where the highway rose up again. Once, the highway had spanned the creek in what Dumpster called a bridge, but the bridge had long ago collapsed. As the child filled up his drinking device and Casseomae lapped at the cool water, the rat said, “We’re still being followed, aren’t we?”
    A rumble of aggravation sounded from Casseomae’s throat. “What I want to do is hide the cub and go fight this scout once and for all. Get it off our tails.”
    “The pup would never do that. He might keep his distance, but he’s been stuck to you like a briar since that cougar.”
    “I know,” she growled. “And if I went back after this wolf, it would simply run away.”
    “Only to bring back its pack,” Dumpster added. “But why hasn’t it done that already?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a low ranker who wants to capture the cub and get rewarded. Either way, there’s only one reason I could guess why it hasn’t attacked yet. It waits for an advantage, a moment when I’ll leave the cub alone.”
    Dumpster twitched his whiskers. “Then I scratchin’ suppose you’d better go ahead and do just that.”
    Casseomae nodded. “Tonight, after the cub is asleep, I’ll move away from him … not too far, but enough to