Mickey continued. “If you ever come back, you will find this thing, your possession, which you gave to me. It was my favorite toy, and when I played with it, I thought of you. This will prove that I came back to look for you—that I never forgot you or stopped loving you.”

Mickey turned away from the place he’d once called his home. Lucky felt certain he’d never lay eyes on it again.

Lucky led the way along the broad, leafy streets lined with sleeping loudcages. Mickey padded behind him. They stayed in the center of the street, keeping away from the leaning houses, which creaked and groaned. Lucky feared that they might collapse at any moment, just as Mickey’s longpaws’ house had. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, he thought.

Ears pricked, he listened to the growls and groans of the buildings. He was surprised when he caught a distant rumbling sound, not from the streets or the ground, but from above him. His eyes shot up, searching for rain clouds. The sky was clear and blue, and the air was warm following the showers of the previous night. Even the black cloud had disappeared, its poison ash spewed in dark pools or clinging to trees in the forest. Still, there was a whirr and grumble in the air, and Lucky shot Mickey a worried look.

“Thunder!” barked Mickey, a fearful look crossing his face. “The Sky-Dogs are angry again!”

Lucky needed Mickey to keep calm. He turned to sniff the air. It was dry. “I don’t think so. . . .” Lucky’s hackles rose and his ears twisted, trying to understand the whirring sounds.

Mickey’s tail froze. “What’s that?”

Lucky spun around. High over the jagged horizon of buildings, he could now see something huge, as big as a loudcage, bobbing in the sky. Was it a bird? As he and Mickey watched, another one came into view, darting down lower and hovering above some houses, proceeding with jerky, angry swoops. Their huge wings spun over their heads in circles, slicing the air with a noise like thunder.

“I don’t like it,” Mickey whined. His eyes flicked wildly across the road. “We should get out of here.”

“Hold on,” said Lucky. As the birds looped overhead, they whipped up a wind that tore the leaves from trees and set the dogs’ hairs on end. But Lucky yelped as he saw there was something even stranger about these huge birds. Their bodies were shiny and smooth and they both had deep holes in their flanks where their insides were exposed to the open air.

Lucky could see right inside their bellies!

He craned his neck. Something yellow was moving about in there. The color . . . he knew that color.

Longpaws!