> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ann-cudworth-writes.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Song of the City (part 2 of 2) - URL: https://www.ann-cudworth-writes.com/song-of-the-city-part-2-of-2/ - Published: 2026-08-04T13:49:13.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-04T13:49:13.000Z - Author: Ann Cudworth For days, Rat built her nest, pressing each bit of masticated paper into a shallow bowl. Above the nest, humming metal walls twisted upward into darkness. Below her nest, a sliver of light poked in through a hole too small for anyone but Rat. She worked constantly, compelled to finish before she ate or slept again. Rat squeaked and the walls echoed. When her nest was finished, Rat burrowed under a pile of shreds, grunting with pain as her belly contracted. She pancaked her body, trying to get comfortable. A stray bread crust, abandoned days ago, didn't tempt her, nor did the smell of water puddling around the walls. She pressed her body flatter and pushed again. Something twisted through her back end. She growled with pain, pushing repeatedly until her first pup slid out. Instinct made her lick the blind pup clean. The process restarted, and six more times she delivered a live pup, cleaned it, and pushed another out. She squeaked softly to soothe her wriggling pups. Then, she lay exhausted, half asleep, with eight new pups sucking at her teats. She devoured the crust, but she couldn't leave her newborn pups to seek more food. Not yet. Rat fell asleep as they suckled, and the surrounding walls hummed softly. # The weather turned on the night the rat pups were born. Winds rose to a persistent gale as the pups lay nursing from their mother. Rain slashed my face as gusts of wind punched my body from all sides. More of my gilding flaked off, and where it did, water penetrated. The temperature dropped. Ice dams formed, warping the welds between the plates on my surface. I intensified my counter-humming and, through the night’s coldest hours, held my body together. Near dawn, the wind’s relentless pressure increased, howling like a full moon choir at the state hospital. My left arm twisted against its framework, straining to uphold an ornate crown. I counter-hummed the movement, and for an hour more, I kept my body together. But the storm attacked again. A vicious gust slammed into my back with the suddenness of a mousetrap, and my left arm snapped off my body. The wind screamed across the empty socket of my shoulder, and seconds later, the building recoiled as if it had been kicked. I wept gilded tears. Eventually, the sun pushed a dim warmth onto my back. The winds slowed, and the ice melted from the loosened welds. I rested, grateful to still be standing on the roof. Two days later, multiple sets of footsteps shook my balcony. Ropes were thrown, and men climbed onto my perch. “Mother Mary. What an effin’ mess.” Wads of damp trash fell from my skin as his boots kicked them away. “Her effin’ arm fell through the cafeteria skylight—good thing it was in the middle of the night,” said another, grunting as he secured straps around my neck and waist. They climbed me like a tree and buckled themselves into position around my broken arm. The rest of their words drowned under the clatter of chains as winches groaned with a new load. Soon my body shuddered from hammer blows as they pounded metal spikes into my shoulder to reattach my arm. At noon they climbed back to the roof for lunch. My grandson, the mayor, arrived with Lenny in mid-afternoon. My right hand thrummed as he spoke. “What’s the verdict, Lenny?” “Department of Buildings says she’s a hazard. They’ve issued a class 1 violation order, and Landmarks will be here later to assess. They’ll want to restore her.” “And how should we pay for it, Lenny? With my reelection funds?” Lenny said nothing. “Thought so,” said the mayor. # So quietly that none of her pups woke from their sleeping pile, Rat left her nest to find food. The light was golden; her shadow was long. She ransacked the workers’ trash and found a flattened cup coated with stew. Rat forced her head into the cup to lick the damp remains. She missed a shadow’s flicker as the beak and claws passed overhead. The shadow paused, getting larger as the beak and claws dived at her. The claws scrabbled, trying to rip the cup and snatch Rat away. The beak screamed with frustration as Rat escaped. The claws rose to attack again. Rat dashed for safety, but she was slow from deprivation. The beak returned, claws grazed her back, and would have grabbed her but for a vent pipe. Rat screamed in fear. Her pups roused and echoed back. Rat cowered in the tiny space, trapped by the beak and claws. Through her whiskers, a vibration like engines and wheels emanated from the metal around her nest. Her pups’ calls were overwhelmed as the sound swelled to a thundering roll. The beak and claws screamed, clung to the pipe for a moment more, and then launched into the sky, vanishing on the wind. # The pups grew, got out of the nest, and scampered across the roof. On the street below, traffic surged as regularly as the tides. More of my gold leaf coating flaked off, and my voice became hollow, filled with the background clatter from plates that had become too loose for me to control. I was disintegrating. Now and then, I heard the mayor’s voice booming from radios inside the building below, exhorting people to cast their votes for him. Times were hard; there was talk of a war to come. I waited and flaked and hummed to the rats as I measured the days. # Winter had arrived. I was standing silent when the door on my balcony cracked the coating of ice and opened. Squeaking urgently, the rats—I had a robust colony now—ran for their hiding places, some for their old nest inside my heel, some along the rooftop ribs, and some to the spotlight housings arrayed around me. My grandson had returned, and he moved slowly along the balcony. “Nana? Are you here?” His voice was hoarse. I managed a faint buzz in response. “I won. They want me for another term.” I hummed with the only plate remaining on my right hand. He continued speaking. “Nana, this is a wonderful city because of you.” I hummed again, varying my pitch for human ears. “Gr-r-r-n-d?” His feet shifted on the balcony, but he wasn’t listening. “—son?” “When they approve the funds, we will restore you.” “S-s-s?” My metal parts lying on the roof rattled as he paced. I waited a few moments until he returned. When he settled, I tried again. “Gr—and-s-o-n.” He stopped pacing with a suppressed sob. I hummed, trying to get another word out, but the plate on my right hand loosened and fell off onto the roof. “We’ll fix you, Nana,” he said, sniffing in the cold. I couldn’t reply. My grandson left. His grandfather would have said more, but he was dead. # Rat watched as her busiest offspring worked on a new project. He loved to chew on the old photographs moldering inside the wooden cabinets in the cupola. Every day, with his mouth full of photo scraps, he darted across the roof and pasted them into the spotlight housings. Periodically, another ungilded section fell off the metal framework and rolled down the roof, falling to the balcony. The claws and beaks lurked overhead but never attacked again. The sixth spotlight nest was half-finished when the men returned. Her offspring dropped the photo scraps he carried and dived for the closest hidey-hole before the balcony door slammed open and rattled a pile of metal parts nearby. “We should have done this sooner,” said the architect, gently pinging his fingertip against the metal hand. “Rebuild her or scrap her? Cost is about the same,” said the comptroller, shuffling up to the architect, staying well away from the railing. “The mayor has funds for rebuilding—so who can argue? Gonna be a bitch to move her, though.” The architect tapped the rusty framework. “Yeah, it's going to be a bitch,” he repeated. Rat and her children waited until the men’s footsteps blended into the hum of the building before they reemerged. She pulled her whiskers to get the men’s scent from her nose and watched her offspring paste another photo scrap onto the spotlight lens with his tiny pink paws. # I arrived at the Navy shipyard in 500 pieces. They laid me out around my armature, which they’d clamped to a welder’s platform. The air shimmered like a cymbal as the welders’ torches blazed. My armature stiffened as my right side skirt plate was clicked in place. Another jiggle and a click happened as they attached one more. Moving upward, they rehung my plates. I had a new-shoe tightness all over my body. My welds were thickened as they made certain no wind would rattle me apart. I should have been joyous at my reassembly—but no one waited for me on the roof but those mad, photo-eating rats. When I was complete, they painted me with sable brushes and gold leaf, and I shone like a flame. I was built to last, but there was no part of me loose enough to hum with—I’d lost my voice. Like Cleopatra on the Nile, I floated back on a barge, surrounded by my tugboat attendants. At the wharf, a helicopter lifted me to the roof of the municipal building. I twisted slowly above the spectators, feeling the sun warm my body. The crowd cheered as I landed on the roof. I pushed against my too-tight skin, wanting to vibrate with song, but nothing happened. The riggers bolted me down as the helicopter’s rotors washed wind over my surface. Finally, they finished, and I was alone again. # Rat hid in the vent when the humans returned. She squeaked with anxiety—afraid for her nests. “Put the lights on,” said the architect, climbing onto the roof and turning to look at the statue. The riggers watched silently; the cables and harnesses that held them on the roof clinked softly in the wind. Rat’s paws tingled as the current surged through the thinly insulated cables that ran inside the vent where she was hiding. The old bulbs inside the spotlights glowed amber and then flared with sheets of white light. An old picture appeared, projected onto the golden skin of Civic Fame. She was a woman whose face matched the statue. The image darkened and shriveled as Rat’s nests burned. The rat colony abandoned the roof, repelled by the smoke, and moved down the building in search of a new place to build their nests. # I knew the mayor had come to visit, like a tree knows there's a squirrel in its branches. He wanted to talk. “Nana? Are you there?” I couldn’t answer; the statue was my new canvas jacket. I needed vibrations and to hum. My awareness flowed onto the surface of the statue’s golden skin. An ocean’s breeze lifted me from my gilded container. My spirit moved toward the bay to harmonize with the oysters peeping as the tide came in. I hummed with the bridges spanning the rivers and zithered with the fountains as children played in their flow. The city was my instrument now. I was its music. I was the song of the city. --- Song of the City (part 2) Song of the City is a contemporary fantasy featuring possession, a haunted object, and an unlikely narrator. It follows the experiences of a woman who wakes inside the statue she modeled for in decades past with no memory of how she got there, and Rat, who's looking for somewhere safe to live and raise her pups. Previously in Song of the City: The statue explores the city through its sensations and learns how to speak to the mayor and other visitors. Rat prepares for the arrival of her pups and together they work to survive. Ann Cudworth (also writing as A. C. Worth) is the author of short fiction in Metaphorosis Magazine, Exterus, and Sci-Fi Lampoon, and the anthologies Score—An SFF Anthology, Radicle, and Sages of Metaphorosis. She writes science fiction and urban fantasy, shaped by workshops at Odyssey Writing Workshop and the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, as well as Futurescapes and the Juniper Writing Institute. Copyright 2026 Ann Cudworth. All rights reserved. Read more at [https://www.acworthwriter.com/](https://www.acworthwriter.com/?ref=ann-cudworth-writes.com) My stories are written by hand and edited with ProWritingAid.