Varjak Paw

by Sf Said

  It was an enclosed courtyard. The sky was hidden here – he'd lost the moon and stars. He could see nothing but big concrete tower blocks, looming all around. Every door and window was shut, as if the people inside were trying to keep something out.

  This place made him nervous. The blocks would be impossible to climb: their walls were smooth and sheer. If something went wrong, if there was trouble, he could easily be trapped. The only way out was the way he'd come in. Still, at least it was shadowy. There were plenty of places to hide. And it was quiet; all he could hear was the muffled rumbling of the city in the distance.

  The smell of meat was potent in this barren place. With grim precision, Varjak tracked it to a metal bin that clanked in the corner, helpless on its side in a murky pool of rain.

  Something brushed against his shoulder.

  Varjak gasped, ducked, swung around. What was it? No one there. Just a rustling sound. A plastic bag, caught by the wind, was circling him as if it was the hunter and he was the prey.

  He let out his breath, told himself not to be so nervous, and turned back to the bin.

  The smell of meat wasn't quite so nice close up. It was rancid, rotten: that was why he'd picked it up from so far away. His nose wrinkled. This wasn't how he'd imagined life Outside. If only he could have a bowl of the Gentleman's caviare now! But this was all he deserved.

  Varjak moved towards the bin – and the world erupted into violence. Out of the shadows, those perfect hiding places, five fully grown tomcats sprang. Not one of them wore a collar.

  Varjak put up his paws to defend himself. They were too fast. In a vicious blur of speed, they slammed him to the ground and pinned him there.

  The biggest, a massive, muscly ginger tom, towered over him. It ripped his cheek with claws as sharp and white as lightning. Varjak howled with pain.

  ‘THESE ARE OUR BINS SONNY!’ yelled the ginger. ‘AND DON'T FORGET IT!’

  Varjak wrenched a paw free and lashed back. He caught the ginger full in the face. It didn't budge; didn't even flinch. It just opened its jaws and spat at him. The other cats poured down on him, a deadly rain of claws and teeth. Varjak screamed. It was agony.

  ‘What do you know about the Vanishings?’ demanded the ginger. It was as big as the Gentleman's cats.

  ‘What Vanishings?’ gasped Varjak.

  ‘Don't pretend.’ Claws raked across Varjak's side. Bony paws pummelled his head. He clenched his eyes tight, and curled into a ball. Off in the distance, he could hear a siren wailing.

  This was it. This was the end. He was going to die alone in this lifeless concrete place, and no one would ever know. A sense of relief washed through him. He was glad it was over. He didn't want to live any more. He didn't deserve to live, not after he'd let everyone down.

  Already it seemed very far away, like it was happening to someone else. His body felt cold and weightless. As if from a great height, through a curtain of pain, he could hear voices talking. He wondered vaguely whose they were.

  ‘Leave him alone, Ginger.’ A gravelly voice.

  ‘Well, look who it is! Friend of yours, is he, Holly?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Down in the darkness, Varjak dreamed.

  He was walking by the river in Mesopotamia. Date palms swayed in the warm breeze. The night air smelled of cinnamon. Jalal walked beside him.

  ‘Jalal! I thought I'd never see you again—’

  ‘Why cinnamon?’ said Jalal, as if he hadn't heard.

  ‘Cinnamon?’

  ‘Perhaps you have noticed the smell, all around us? Now follow me and be silent.’

  Jalal led him down the river bank towards a group of men. They were sitting around a camp fire, cooking food in a sizzling pan. The most wonderful smell in the world came out of that pan. It was toasty warm and cinnamonny, and it drove Varjak wild. His nostrils twitched. His mouth drooled. He was starving.

  A couple of fat, sluggish cats circled the fire. One of the men tossed them something from the pan. Varjak beamed at Jalal. Obviously they were going to join them. He was going to get some of that delicious-smelling food.

  Jalal shook his head. ‘Those are not true cats. They have forgotten how to hunt. They are scavengers, trapped here by their own greed. They have become slaves to the people. They might as well be dead already.’

  Varjak blushed with shame, remembering that scrap of rancid meat he'd wanted so badly in the city. ‘But what if you're hungry and there's nothing else?’ he said.

  Jalal's eyes blazed amber like the rising sun. ‘A cat is an idea of freedom made flesh,’ he said fiercely. ‘It cannot be tied down. To be truly alive it must be free, and a free cat hunts. It never scavenges or depends on the kindness of people. It depends only on itself.’

  Varjak looked down at the ground. He wished it would swallow him up. ‘I've failed, Jalal. I've failed you. I've failed everyone.’

  ‘It is no failure to make a mistake, my son. What matters is whether you can learn from it.’

  Varjak looked up. The old cat was smiling at him. It was like a ray of sunlight in the night.

  ‘I want to learn how to hunt, Jalal.’

  ‘Then learn you shall. I will restore the knowledge that has been lost. I will teach you Hunting, for it is the Third Skill. Now, show me your Awareness: track down that chirping noise you heard when last you were here.’

  Varjak pricked up his ears, determined not to fail again. The noise came from the river bank. With his sensitive whiskers, he probed the air currents that carried the sound until he'd pinned down its source precisely.

  ‘Crickets,’ he said. ‘Four. Hidden behind that clump of reeds.’

  ‘Correct.’ Jalal glided towards the reeds. Varjak marvelled at the way he moved. He was stealth itself. ‘When you stalk your prey,’ whispered Jalal, ‘you become your prey. You make it a part of yourself. Breathe like it breathes. Think like it thinks. When you and the prey are one, you will know its every movement – and then, you will move first. This is the secret of the Third Skill and why it is done best alone. Try it.’

  The crickets chirped on behind the long reeds as Varjak and Jalal crept up to them. Varjak selected his target. He sat stock still, waiting, watching, letting all his Awareness flow into the cricket. Every time it shifted, his senses went with it, tracking its speed, trajectory, vectors. He took it all in, as if there was nothing else in the world, as if even he didn't exist any more.

  The crickets stirred; they sensed they were being watched. They were about to move – Varjak knew it with absolute certainty.

  His legs tensed like steel springs, tight, tight, until the right moment came. He uncoiled into the air. Claws slid out smoothly, pinning the prey, forcing it down to the ground. He opened his jaws, prepared to sink his teeth—

  ‘ENOUGH! ENOUGH!’ Jalal was shouting. Varjak released the stunned cricket. What had he done wrong now?

  Jalal took a deep breath. ‘It was a splendid attack; you have the Third Skill. But this is only practice. You were going to kill it.’

  ‘It's just a cricket!’

  ‘And we are just cats. Remember: you may cause harm only when there is no alternative, only when your life is at stake. You take enough, and no more. That is the way the world is made.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Jalal,’ said Varjak, tail between his legs. ‘I didn't know.’

  ‘And why did you settle for one cricket? It wouldn't feed a mouse.’

  ‘No one could catch more than one at a time.’

  ‘Oh no?’ Jalal grinned. Varjak looked down at his ancestor's paws. The other three crickets were right there, wriggling on the ground.

  ‘Now pay attention,’ said Jalal. ‘This is how it is done.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  A tongue the texture of gravel licked Varjak's face, calling him up from the dream.

  It scraped a tender spot on his cheek. Blinding colours burst out in his head. He opened his eyes a crack. A black-and-white blur swam into view.

  ‘Hold still,’
commanded a gravelly voice. ‘I know it hurts, but it has to be done.’ Varjak closed his eyes and thought of Mesopotamia, of Jalal, of that delicious cinnamon food he hadn't eaten. Anything, even hunger, was better than this pain.

  ‘There,’ she said at last. ‘You'll never win a cat show, but you'll live. You'd better live.’

  Varjak opened his eyes again. Holly stood above him, Tam behind her.

  They were in a narrow, cobbled alleyway, a quiet path along the backs of city buildings. Iron fire escapes led up to sooty windows, far above. Drainpipes snaked down, through grilles in the ground, to sewers below. Varjak thought he could see something glimmering, moving about beneath the streets – but it was night in the alley and he couldn't be sure.

  In the distance, he could hear those fearsome metal monsters roaring along the roads. He could taste their poison smoke in the air. He could hear, too, the hisses and growls of street cats as they went about their business. But in this alley the three of them were alone. There was no sign of the ginger tom who had nearly killed him.

  He stretched out. Cold, wet cobblestones dug into his ribs. His body was a pulp of pain. Yet strangely, he didn't feel too bad inside. He was glad he was still alive; glad this cat with the gravelly voice had rescued him.

  ‘You all right, Varjak?’ said Holly. ‘You've been out for ages.’

  ‘I thought you didn't want friends,’ he said.

  ‘We're not friends,’ she snapped. ‘Tam just made me feel bad about leaving you.’

  ‘Me?’ laughed Tam. ‘As if I could make her do anything.’

  ‘Anyway, Ginger's gang went too far,’ said Holly.

  Varjak stood up, unsteadily. ‘You stopped them, didn't you? I think you saved my life.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Holly sounded embarrassed; she wouldn't look him in the eye. With one leap, she pounced onto a brick ledge high on the wall, and started to stalk away, spiky as ever.

  Varjak wasn't about to lose her again. Without a second thought, he went after her. One moment he was down on the cobbles, the next he was on the ledge. His body seemed to know what to do: he only had to follow Holly. Tam came behind him.

  He padded between them to the edge of the wall, where Holly stopped to look up at the sky. Varjak followed her gaze. A white wedge of moon glimmered there. It had grown since he last saw it: it was changing, becoming bigger and brighter.

  Varjak looked down from the sky. ‘Where are we, exactly?’

  ‘We're in the centre of the city,’ said Holly. ‘No one else knows about these alleys. You're safe here.’

  ‘Safe from what?’

  ‘From the gangs, stupid. On this side of the park, only the centre is neutral ground. Ginger's gang runs the East. Sally Bones is Boss of the West. Whatever you do, don't try and fight her like you did with Ginger. I don't think anyone could help you if you did that. Ginger's rough, but deep down he's still one of us. Sally Bones – she's something else.’

  ‘Ssh!’ hissed Tam. ‘She'll hear you!’

  ‘Don't be stupid,’ said Holly.

  ‘She's everywhere,’ whispered Tam.

  ‘No one's everywhere. It doesn't make sense.’

  ‘Then how else do you explain it?’ said Tam. ‘You said it yourself – she's not one of us. She's something else.’

  Varjak wondered what she meant. ‘Not one of us' – that was what his own family used to tell him. ‘What's so bad about that?’ he said.

  Tam's eyes widened as she spoke. ‘ She's… all… white.’

  Holly snorted. ‘Big deal. You're all brown. So what?’

  ‘She can do things no cat can do,’ said Tam darkly.

  ‘What sort of things?’ said Varjak.

  Tam shuddered. ‘It's dangerous to even think about it!’

  Holly rolled her eyes. Varjak smiled. Tam was always so dramatic.

  ‘I won't tell anyone,’ he promised. ‘I can keep a secret.’

  ‘Well—’ Tam glanced around nervously. ‘All right. One thing. She can become invisible. She'll just appear out of thin air, and you don't see her coming till it's too late. That's why no one can beat her in a fight.’

  ‘That's just tales,’ said Holly, ‘and I don't believe them. But she's the toughest cat in the city, no question. Even Ginger fears Sally Bones—’

  ‘Please!’ begged Tam. ‘Don't say her name!’

  ‘Her gang's cornering all the food, too,’ continued Holly. ‘Which is why we need to keep these places secret.’ She jumped down from the wall. Varjak and Tam followed her. They shimmied under a low, iron railing into another alley. It would have kept him out if he hadn't seen Holly sneak through first.

  ‘They're moving in on Ginger's turf now. That's why he was so rough when you went for his bins,’ she said.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Tam. ‘What are we eating? I'm hungry.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Varjak.

  Holly shrugged. ‘There's nothing here, I've checked already. We could search the park. Or we could go hunting.’

  ‘Hunting means splitting up and going it alone,’ said Tam. ‘I want to do something all together.’ She looked down. ‘Besides, hunting's difficult,’ she muttered.

  ‘It's not so hard,’ said Varjak.

  ‘You?’ said Holly, squaring up to him. ‘You know how to hunt?’

  He wasn't sure. He felt like he did, but he'd only ever hunted in a dream. ‘I think so.’

  Holly laughed. ‘You either can or you can't. And I've never met a pet who could.’ She stared at Tam. ‘Plenty of street cats can't.’

  ‘Just because you know a lot,’ said Tam, ‘doesn't mean you're great. I'd rather everyone loved me than be some boring know-it-all.’

  ‘But I do love you, Tam,’ grinned Holly. Her mustard eyes sparkled with mischief.

  ‘You do?’ said Tam suspiciously.

  ‘Of course I do.’ Holly sounded very sincere. Tam relaxed and smiled. ‘Everyone does,’ continued Holly. Tam's smile grew wider. ‘And you know who loves you most of all?’

  ‘Who?’ said Tam. ‘Who, Holly? Tell me, who?’

  ‘SALLY BONES!’ shouted Holly.

  Tam leaped back, startled. Holly laughed at the shocked expression on her face. Varjak chuckled. Behind her mustard eyes, Holly had a sense of humour. But poor Tam hadn't seen it coming, and her shaggy brown coat was standing on end.

  ‘That's not very funny,’ said Tam as her fur slowly settled.

  ‘Come on,’ smiled Holly. ‘Let's see what we can find in the park.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  They emerged from Holly's secret alleys into a back street. The city was louder here. Varjak could hear the shrieks and roars of those metal monsters close by. There were people too; their long, striding shadows flickered on the walls and their shoes click-clacked on the pavement.

  ‘Keep your head down,’ said Holly as she led the way through black, rain-soaked streets. ‘Don't get seen. You can't be too careful in this part of town.’

  ‘This is where a lot of Vanishings happened,’ added Tam.

  That word again: Vanishings. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. ‘What's a Vanishing?’ said Varjak.

  ‘It happens all over the city,’ Tam whispered, ‘but especially here. One day, a cat's there. The next, they're gone. With no trace, nothing: just gone. Vanished.’ Her brown eyes closed in dread. ‘Some say it's her.’

  Varjak smiled and looked at Holly, expecting that she'd make a joke of it. But even Holly's tail swished anxiously.

  ‘The truth is, no one knows,’ she said, black-and-white fur prickling. ‘It's another reason why Ginger and his gang are so edgy right now. They've lost a lot of good cats. Who's next? That's the question.’

  The question made Varjak think about home. Who'd be next for the Gentleman and his cats now the Elder Paw was gone? He shivered at the thought. The world he came from and this world Outside were so different. The Gentleman and the Blues meant nothing here; the Contessa's house had no gangs or Vanishings. Was he all that conn
ected the two worlds? So who was he? And where did he belong?

  He couldn't go home without a dog, that much he knew. What would it take to make a new life Outside?

  ‘Maybe I should be in a gang,’ mused Varjak. In a gang, it wouldn't matter that he wasn't a proper Mesopotamian Blue or that he'd failed his family. No one would know; no one would care. He could be himself, he could be part of something, he could even have friends.

  ‘Gangs are always pushing you around, telling you what to do,’ said Holly. ‘It's nothing but “Yes Boss” this and “Yes Boss” that.’

  ‘My gang would be different,’ said Varjak. ‘You could do what you liked in my gang.’

  ‘And who's going to be in this gang with you?’

  ‘Well, there's you two. And me. That's a start.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ said Tam.

  Holly laughed. ‘You think so? And what about the small problem that one of our gang doesn't have a clue what he's doing?’

  Varjak stopped and stood up straight. ‘There were five of them!’ he protested.

  ‘I don't mean that. I mean – well, everything; everything you need to know to survive in the city. How to find food and shelter. How to stay out of trouble. How to—’

  ‘I can find food. I'm a hunter.’ He knew she didn't believe him, but he couldn't stop now. ‘I'm the greatest hunter in the world!’

  ‘The greatest hunter in the world?’ she scoffed. ‘You? Pet cat Varjak? You couldn't even get your own breakfast—’

  But Varjak wasn't listening any more. Stung by Holly's words, he followed his senses down a turning off the street. He was going to show her.

  ‘Why are you so mean to him?’ said Tam. ‘It's obvious he can't hunt, but there's no need—’

  ‘I haven't finished yet! Hey, Varjak, come back! You're not safe on your own! Where are you going?’

  ‘To get my own breakfast,’ he growled.

  He could hear the buzz of streetlights, the roaring of dogs, the rumbling of the city that never stopped. But above all this he could sense something else; something close, drawing him on.