Beasts of New York

ed and fled from his brother's drey. He ran straight down the maple trunk to the ground. From there Patch ran north and west. His hunger was a searing flame within him.

Patch and the Birds

It was not entirely true that Patch knew there was food in the mountains. He had never been to the mountains. No squirrel in all the Center Kingdom, as far as he knew, had ever been to the mountains. For between the kingdom and the mountains, surrounding it on all sides like a moat around a castle, there lay a blasted concrete wasteland, as wide as fifty squirrels laid nose to tail, and horrific death machines roared up and down this wasteland at terrifying speeds, all day and night. What's more, humans and dogs often crossed between the mountains and the kingdoms. And sometimes the dogs were not leashed. A squirrel would have to be very desperate indeed to dare the wastelands.

It was Toro who had told Patch about the food in the mountains. Toro was Patch's friend. And that itself was extr