by Tim Susman
He extended a paw to Arabella, and Aran came up to be greeted as well. “It’s very nice to meet you both,” he said, clasping each paw in turn.
“Run on home,” Abel said to the cubs as two rabbits came forward. “I’ll be there presently. Kip, this is Charles Cotton, and his brother Callo.” While Kip was shaking their paws, Abel continued introducing him to some of the other Calatians on the Isle. Gradually the crowd thinned, though Abel remained at Kip’s side, which was a comfort. The rabbits did not speak much out of (Kip thought) suspicion, but a dormouse, Thomas Trewel, chattered merrily when he learned Kip was a Colonial.
“I’ve heard the weather is more temperate in the Colonies. Is that true?”
“Not this time of year,” Kip said.
“And the greenery! I’ve heard it puts our English countrysides to shame.”
“I’ve never seen the English countryside.”
“Oh, you should. It’s delightful. I hear.”
Abel cleared his throat. “Kip, Dotta Lutris lives down this way. May I show you?”
Everyone except the dormouse remained on the docks as Abel led Kip and Thomas into the thick of the town. The little streets of the Isle of Dogs wound like a tangle of string, and without Abel’s guidance, Kip would have been lost after the first turn. Abel tried to cut off Thomas’s chatter to little avail, so Kip answered questions about the colonies as he navigated his way through the narrow streets choked with Calatians.
He’d never in his life been surrounded by so many of his people, but the feeling wasn’t reassuring. Coppy had told him that New Cambridge’s cleanliness was one of the things he loved about it, the “clear air,” and Kip had assumed he’d been talking only about London’s smoke. There was smoke for sure, but it was also clear that many of the Isle’s residents did not bathe and might not even have proper outhouses. In New Cambridge, any Calatian family that allowed their odor to emanate too far from their home was visited by the mayor or a deputy. Here, that was clearly not the case, or else there was someone doing it from sunup to sundown every day.
Abel wore a simple, clean tunic, but many of the clothes Kip saw around him bespoke poverty: dirty, patched, and torn. Many more stubby tails crossed his path, and even when he stopped looking for them, he couldn’t help but see them. Some Calatians met his eyes and smiled, as his neighbors in New Cambridge might, but many saw his robes and looked away, and still others kept their heads down and might never have noticed him at all.
If the crowds and smell were new and unsettling to Kip, the variety of Calatians was familiar to him from New Cambridge; there were no types here he didn’t recognize. There were just so many more of them. Back in New Cambridge Kip had known all the foxes: four families, fifteen total people. Even not counting Abel, he saw more than fifteen foxes on the short walk to the Lutris house, along with otters, dormice, red squirrels, badgers, moles, and rabbits. And then, as Abel said, “It’s just that house there, with the otter cubs playing out front,” and pointed, Kip looked beyond the house to a large figure in the road, like a fox but greyer, thicker, and taller.
He stopped dead, staring, and as Abel turned to see what was the matter, said, “Is that…a wolf?”
Abel tilted his head and then broke into a smile, nodding. “Ah, you don’t have wolves in the Colonies?”
“Not in New Cambridge, at any rate,” Kip said. “Nor Boston. Perhaps New York.”
“They’re few here, too. Ho!” Before Kip could stop him, the other fox raised a paw. “Grinda!”
The wolf perked her ears and looked in their direction. “You don’t have to,” Kip said.
Abel waved him quiet. “She’s a friend. And a good woman, if a bit
“Why?” Kip asked, but Grinda had reached them and Abel introduced Kip as a sorcerer from the Colonies, ignoring the question.
Grinda had a soft, low voice with a persistent growl to it that set Kip’s fur on edge at first, and a powerful scent that he marked as “wolf.” “Pleased,” she said, and gripped Kip’s paw with a huge, soft one as she turned to Abel. “And don’t think I don’t know your scent words. ‘Sour,’ is it?”
Abel widened his eyes innocently as though he’d no idea what she was talking about, and with a huff, Grinda returned her attention to Kip. “Calatian sorcerer? It’s true?”
“I’m an apprentice, really,” he said. “Not a sorcerer yet.”
“He can do sorcery, though. Kip’s got a letter to deliver to the Lutrises,” Abel said, “but I thought we might invite him to tea after, eh?”
Grinda’s eyes, piercing blue in the soft grey of her muzzle, studied Kip. “You reckon he’s trustworthy?”
“Far as I’ve been able to judge.” Abel smiled at Kip. “He didn’t drop me into the Thames.”
“Low bar to clear,” Grinda rumbled.
The older fox’s smile brightened. “He’s a Calatian learning sorcery.”
“He’s a sorcerer who happens to be a Calatian,” Grinda replied.
Kip took the letter out of his pouch. “He’s a messenger with a letter.”
“Right, right.” Abel held a paw up to the wolf. “We can have this conversation in a few minutes, when our friend has completed his mission.”
The fox left behind the rest of their little group, pushing his way to the small house he’d pointed out to Kip. “Here we are,” he said, reaching out to the simple curtain that hung in the doorway. He pulled it aside and gestured Kip in.
“Don’t we knock, or…” Kip stepped forward past the curtain into the thick smell of otter and fish. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness, but in that moment he sorted out five individual otter scents, and turned toward the female one that reminded him most of Coppy. “Dotta?”
A stocky shape with a broad tail resolved out of the shadow, rising from a chair. “That’s me. And who are you?”
“Ah, Kip Penfold.” He held out a paw, forgetting he was holding the letter in it, then switched the letter to his left and held the paw out again. “I’m a friend of your son. Coppy?”
Dotta’s fingers didn’t have much grip to them, but the feel and the webbing was very familiar to Kip, and her eyes lit up at the name. “My boy Coppy,” she said, half-wonderingly. “How is he?”
“He’s doing very well.” Kip realized in that moment how much he missed his friend, how much he wanted Coppy to be here with him in the house where he’d grown up. “He sends you this letter.”
“He’s mentioned you. It’s a real pleasure to meet you at last.” She took the folded paper from him and opened it, holding it up to the window. While she read, other otters crowded up around Kip.
“I’m Ella, his sister.”
“I’m Tokka, his sister too!”
“I’m his brother Widdin.”
They ranged from close to Kip’s age—Ella, with an infant in her arms—down to Widdin, who was maybe thirteen, and they all wanted to shake Kip’s paw and welcome him. He grasped each of the small otter paws, and Abel, clearly a friend of the family, clapped Tokka on the back and asked her how the salvage had been that day. Kip didn’t understand what that meant, but Tokka started talking about pieces of old furniture and some clothing, and then Dotta put the letter down and said, “Thank you for bringing this.”
Kip focused on her again. “You’re very welcome. Coppy’s become my best friend and I’m so pleased to meet his family.”
“But this says he’s…learning sorcery.” She met Kip’s eyes. “Is this possible?”
Before Kip could answer, Abel said, “More than possible. Meet the first Calatian sorcerer. He flew me across the Thames so we wouldn’t have to wait for Dillington and his terrible rolling disaster of a boat.” He turned to Kip. “It’s a true miracle how on a completely smooth day the boat can pitch and roll as if it were in the typhoon of the South Seas.”
His humor passed unno
ticed by the otters, all staring with wide gleaming eyes at Kip. “Can you do magic?” Ella whispered.
“Aye.” Kip smiled. “I’m not supposed to when it’s not necessary, but I hope you’ll take Abel’s witness.”
“As I live and breathe, he flew me over.” Abel made grand gestures with his paws.
“Even given Abel’s reputation, I believe we can take that as truth,” Dotta said. She smiled and set the letter aside. “What else can you tell me of Coppy?”
Kip told her about Emily and Malcolm, that Coppy had other friends in the school and was doing well with his studies, that he was under the tutelage of one of the most respected sorcerers there. He left out Coppy’s difficulties and Master Windsor’s demeanor; those would only cause her to worry. He didn’t think himself a good storyteller, but Dotta and the children looked on raptly, and Abel asked helpful questions to prod Kip into telling more interesting details. “He talks often of wanting to come back here and use his sorcery to help. I had wanted to stay in New Cambridge, myself, but now that I’ve seen his home and met his family, I think I would be happy to join him here.”
Dotta smiled. “You’ve been a capital friend to him and now you do us the service of bringing us his letter in person. We’re so grateful. It’s been two months with no letters. He had sent back money every month, but we hadn’t heard from him since October. Right around Halloween the last letter arrived, and we have been wondering why there wasn’t another one.”
Of course Coppy had been sending money home. Kip knew that; the otter had mentioned it early on, but not in the last several months and not since they’d been studying magic. When, of course, his father hadn’t been paying Coppy a salary from the store. Letters could take two months to travel from the colonies to England, so Coppy’s last letter, before they’d enrolled at the College, would have been the one Dotta spoke of.
Kip had never thought that going to school would deprive Coppy’s family of income. Coppy had never mentioned it. He’d just joined up with Kip, being a good friend, knowing Kip needed someone to protect him from Farley. “No,” he said. “Students don’t get paid. And he decided very suddenly. I was joining and he was kind of…he helped me out a lot. There was a bully who tormented Calatians in New Cambridge.”
“Just one?” Abel said.
“Ah, well, no, uh.” The room had fallen silent. And Kip, looking around, felt the implications of the question beyond the simple two words. “There, we live together with humans. Well, not ‘together,’ but we don’t have our own town, our own neighborhood.”
The otters all looked at each other and again silence fell in the cabin. “You live out on farms? We hear there’s a lot of farms out in the Colonies.”
“Some do, but no, my father has a shop.”
“Yes, the one Coppy worked at.” Dotta smiled. “It sounds so wonderful. You know, three of our friends took passage to the New World after reading his letters.”
“And don’t forget Hannibal Black, who walked the Road.” Ella sounded wistful. “I know it takes longer but it must be so interesting, walking along the ocean like that. And you could drop in for a swim whenever you wanted.”
“The salt water’s not good for your fur,” Dotta said.
“I’m not going to bathe in it,” Ella said. “And anyway I know that I can’t go along the Road.”
“That’s right.”
“Not until I marry Byron Merrick and we emigrate together.” The young otter tossed her head.
Dotta patted her. “And have you discussed walking the Road with Byron or would he work passage on a ship and be there in a third the time, like a sensible otter?”
Abel took Kip’s arm again. “If you’ll excuse me, I would like to steal our guest away. There are a few others who would like to meet him.”
He left to a profusion of embraces and whiskered muzzles against his own, cries of, “Come back soon!” and many, many thanks. When Dotta clasped his paws, she said, “You are welcome anytime. Do tell our Coppy how much we miss him.”
“If he comes to visit me, I’ll be sure to bring him over.” Kip held her warm paws in return. “He can bring himself over, come to that.”
He left the cabin with her bright smile etched in his mind and Abel’s arm on his paw. “I have to be back by sundown,” Kip said as they emerged into the street.
“No worries,” the other fox assured him. “We won’t keep you very long. Sunset won’t be for a couple hours still, and it would mean a lot to these people to meet you.”
The wolf and dormouse rejoined them as Abel took Kip down the winding street to an intersection with a larger one. “One question,” Abel said casually. “Your fire sorcerer, he isn’t listening to you or anything right now, is he?”
“No, not to my knowledge.” This sounded vaguely ominous. “He’s not a spiritual sorcerer.” And if he were listening, he would have known that Kip had gotten trapped in Mr. Gibbet’s closet far sooner than he had.
“All right.” The other fox’s tone remained light. “There’s nothing serious going on, just a few calyxes talking about calyx things, and sometimes the sorcerers don’t like us to share them. But it’s nothing we don’t already know. I just want to be sure I’m not getting anyone in trouble.” He scanned the skies. “On occasion we are summoned by raven, but I see none of those sorcerer puppets about now.”
“No, of course not,” Kip said. “I won’t tell them.”
Grinda growled something unintelligible. “Course you won’t,” Thomas said. “You’re one of us, just more talented in the magic department.”
They walked out along the larger street past Calatians hurrying in the other direction, many carrying small parcels that gave out a food odor when they came close to Kip. He looked up to where everyone was rushing in from, and pointed ahead. “Are we going to that gate?”
“Ha,” Abel said.
Thomas came up along the other side of Kip. “That way’s London proper. We only go out there when we’ve work to do.”
“Or shopping,” Abel reminded him. “The merchants on Darrow Street will take our custom.”
“Aye,” Thomas said. “But beyond Darrow Street, best not to be out in the city unless you have a work order. Sometimes even with.”
Kip imagined a city full of Farleys and forced himself not to look at Abel’s stub of a tail. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” Abel tapped his elbow. “This way.”
They turned down a small side street, the least crowded one they’d yet walked down. Every house they passed had only a curtained doorway, and at some of them the curtains were drawn aside so that the breeze brought Kip the scents of the people inside. This was something he was not familiar with from New Cambridge, where the Calatians followed the human tradition of closed-up houses. As he walked down the street, his nose told him who was at home, or would have if he could identify the three to five scents that drifted out of each house. It felt oppressive to him, but Abel called out greetings as he passed, so the openness served a purpose as well.
“Here,” Abel said, coming around another corner to a small pub, where the smell of ale and cooking meat—but not good meat, not any meat Kip could identify—filled the street over the scent of the people milling about in it. The sign outside the pub, crudely made compared to the others Kip had seen in London this week, had only a picture of a goose on it. “Welcome to The Goose’s Tayle.”
Inside, the smoke of cooking fires obscured both the detail of the old scarred furniture and the scents of the patrons seated thereupon. Kip followed Abel, disoriented in the dim haze, through tables of various sizes and shapes to the back left corner of the small pub. There, in a corner partially walled off from the rest of the bar, the two rabbits Kip had met at the dock sat along with an otter and a polecat. Abel gestured for Kip to take the remaining chair, and he, the dormouse, and the wolf all crowded around behind it. Three mugs sat on the table, which listed toward the rabbits so that everyone had to keep a paw on their mug lest it s
lide to the floor.
“Ho, all,” Abel said cheerfully, and took the otter’s mug. “What are you drinking, Pierce?”
“Ah,” the otter said with equal cheer. “I’ve asked the barkeep for some of her private reserve, crafted by the finest brewmasters in Germany and carried up here to our doorstep for the pleasure of our most refined palates.”
Abel took a swig and made a show of swishing it around in his muzzle. “Most excellent,” he said. Upon putting it back down, he caught Kip’s look of polite interest, and hid a cough behind his paw. “Er, no. Until you’ve had much more practice with your imagination, I wouldn’t recommend sampling anything here, not if you’re used to the fare they serve up in the College.”
“Oh,” one of the rabbits said, “now you’ve done it, Pierce. He’s going to go on about the time he was treated to a meal by Master Sweatlodge.”
“His proper name is Sweatpodge.” Abel leaned against the wall behind Kip and mimed a pot belly. “Do have some respect, Callo.”
Callo was the rabbit on the left, so the one on the right must be…Kip searched his memory. Charles. And he knew Grinda and Thomas, so the only ones he hadn’t been introduced to were the otter and the polecat. “Pierce?” he said, extending a paw to the otter. “Kip Penfold.”
“Oh aye.” The otter shook his paw. “Been told about you already by the Cottons here. And this is Barnard.”
The polecat, the youngest of the seven, also was missing most of his tail. As Kip shook his paw, he said, “Is it true you can do magic?”
“It’s true,” Abel said. “He’s not going to demonstrate here in the Tayle, though, is he?”
“Just a small trick?” The otter scraped his mug across the table. “Set the table right?”
Kip shook his head. “I shouldn’t.” Part of him wanted to show off, but after the situation with Mr. Gibbet, he couldn’t afford to risk any kind of problem on this trip if he wanted Master Cott to approve any more travel down here. “You can come watch when I fly back, if you like.”
“That’d do just fine, thank you,” the otter said.