The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  But today he was one for joy.

  A little later, the fox and the cat sat at the bottom of the lamp-post listening to the magpie, an inventive but fidgety narrator who, as he told his story, strutted about in front of them squawking with amusement or rage, slyly eyeing his audience for signs of approval. Every so often he stopped to shake out his charred feathers with a noise like dry reeds rustling in the wind. Sometimes he drove his beak into them like a bird who has at last located a live-in adversary of considerable age, evasiveness, and durability.

  He began by reminding Tag and Loves a Dustbin how he had burst into the warehouse. ‘That was some window!’ he bragged. ‘Oh, that was a window all right. You needed a skull on you for a window like that!’

  Already disoriented and half stunned by this grand entrance, he had finished himself off with his dramatic assault on the Alchemist. All he remembered of that was the aftermath – pinwheeling across the room at floor level with, as he put it, all the lights going out.

  ‘By then,’ he said, ‘I was well out of it. Well out of it!’

  He had woken half blinded by concussion. The place was full of dancing shadows. ‘Could I make any of it out? Not for the life of me! I was as weak as a chick off the nest.’ He had no idea who had won the fight. He had no idea if the Alchemist was still there. ‘Had he gone? Had he changed? I didn’t want to find out!’ He had reeled about a bit with the underside of his beak on the floor and his wings rotating uselessly until his vision cleared. ‘Well, then I saw! All that was left was the Alchemist’s highway!

  ‘Terror?’ the magpie asked his audience. ‘I was gripped!’ He looked dramatically from Tag to the fox. ‘So, then,’ he invited them, ‘put yourselves in my place! What was I going to do? Leave, of course! Get out! Exit!’ He hopped away across the piazza in his excitement, then back again. ‘Too late!’ he said.

  The false highway had collapsed in on itself as he watched. A plane of fire ripped across the floor half an inch above his head. ‘Before I knew it, my tail was in flames!’ All he could do was hold his breath and wait for the fire to pass. It was an instant, no more – but it was the instant of a magpie’s life, passed in an agony of suspense. ‘I was running out of breath. I was running out of time!’ He thought for a moment. ‘I was running out of tail feathers’.’ In the end he had taken his hope in his wings, launched himself into the burning air, and lunged blindly toward the window he had entered by. His chances of finding it, he knew, were low. ‘But I’m a magpie. So what do I think?’ He paused, bobbed his head, regarded his friends with a beady eye. When they weren’t quick enough to respond, he said triumphantly, ‘I think: You haven’t had it till you’re dead!’

  ‘Very philosophic,’ said the fox. ‘I’m impressed.’ He winked at Tag. But Tag didn’t notice. He was too awed by the magpie’s simple determination.

  ‘What did you do?’ he whispered.

  ‘Little cat, I flew!’

  Out through the window he had gone. Clipped the edge of it. Cartwheeled into the night half conscious and half on fire, until he lost height suddenly and, fainting, fell into a puddle of water somewhere on a trading estate downstream. ‘It put the flames out, anyway!’ He had lain like Lucifer in this puddle until morning woke him. ‘Two cats were moving in on me!’ he exclaimed disgustedly. He eyed Tag. ‘Grubby pair. Thought I was dead!’ He chuckled. ‘Damn near was,’ he said. ‘But I still gave them a seeing-to!’ He took off and perched on top of the lamppost, so they had to crane their necks to look up at him. ‘Damn near was dead!’ He cawed loudly enough for the whole world to hear. ‘But now I’m alive again!’ He raised his head, opened his beak, and flapped his wings.

  Infected by this blatant display of joie de vivre. Loves a Dustbin went back to leaping around the base of the lamppost.

  The bird crowed. The fox danced. Tag egged them on.

  There was a polite noise behind him.

  When he turned around, he found five cats standing in a row watching him curiously.

  A little ponderous, a little puzzled this morning, Sealink had led them out onto the piazza, planting her feet as if the ground could be a steadying influence. Now she and Mousebreath stood on one side, Ragnar and Pertelot on the other, and between them, blinking in the daylight but as bright eyed and ready to live as any kitten, was the tabby. She looked like a cat who had had enough sleep to last a lifetime. Thanks to the attentions of Sealink and the Mau her ears were presentable, her coat glossy and dense, its black stripes like polished glass. Her socks had a detergent whiteness. Even the plug in her head glittered brassily in the sun. When she moved, it shed sparks of light. She stood square on her stubby legs, bottom up, tail carried high with the tip waving to and fro. Her yellow eyes danced. As Tag and the fox guttered into an astonished silence, she looked interestedly around and gave a huge yawn.

  ‘Shiny out,’ she remarked. ‘Where’s the wedding?’

  The first thing she saw was One for Sorrow, who, on the arrival of so many hungry-looking Felidae, had prudently resumed his perch below the lamp. Slitting her eyes against the light, she got down on her stomach and began to stalk him with care, flattening herself as if the edges of the setts would provide cover. She gave Tag a hard look.

  ‘My bird,’ she warned him. ‘My bird!’

  The magpie choked with laughter, lost its balance, and had to fly in a wide circle above the piazza to recover its dignity.

  Cy watched it go. ‘You spoiled that,’ she accused Tag. ‘We could have taken it home and planted it.’ She looked up at the fox.

  ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘You smell!’

  The fox could scarcely contain his amusement. ‘So do you,’ he said.

  She told him shyly, ‘When you took my breath from me it was all sparks. All sparks where I was’ – this she almost sang – ‘all dust drifting in rays of light.’ She stretched luxuriously, planting her forepaws, pulling back and up from them. She said, ‘I feel brand-new!’

  And that was how she looked.

  Tag was stunned. Accepting on faith his secondhand magic, Pertelot Fitzwilliam had worked into it from out of her need, from out of her deep dream of Egypt. She had brought the tabby back. All bets, as the Coldheath ferals would have said, were off. Majicou’s world of magic now seemed rather more tangled with the world Tag knew – the magic of home and friends and sunshine, delight in right things happening – than he had thought. That morning, he had wondered how much of it had been a dream.

  Now he would have to think again.

  What the other cats made of these events was difficult to say. After all, the dead are so rarely brought back to life. They had taken refuge in cat nature…

  Only the quick flicker of thoughts from blue eye to orange and back again, from delight to irony to acceptance, betrayed Mousebreath’s surprise.

  The Mau stared voracious and unassuaged at the object of her care. For her, the tabby’s return had resolved a superficial issue. She remained haunted…

  Ragnar Gustaffson could strike only the simplest of attitudes, but his was the most difficult reaction to gauge. He seemed awed but at the same time full of a bubbling, secret excitement. Back and forth went his gaze, like Mousebreath’s thoughts, from Mau to tabby, tabby to Mau, as if he were trying to add something up.

  As for Sealink… ‘Hon,’ she asked Tag, almost plaintively, ‘can you and me have a word?’

  And she led him away from the celebrations, along the bank of the ornamental canal. A few yards down they found a steeply arched bridge so new it still smelled of cut wood and timber preservative. But it had warmed up quickly in the sun, and Sealink sat down comfortably in the middle of it. From there she could maintain a good view of the little group around the lamppost. The magpie had returned to his perch and seemed to be orchestrating the party. The fox chased the tabby around in a circle. The tabby chased him back the other way. The Mau watched like a cat carved on a pyramid. Every so often, she closed her eyes in a long, slow blink. Ragnar was demonstrating for Mousebreath some
move he believed to be specific to the Norsk Skogkatt. It required a turn and a rather elephantine pounce. You could almost hear him trying to explain. These events seemed odd but full of joy. It was a summer image come to winter.

  ‘Don’t they look wonderful?’ Tag said.

  ‘Real wonderful, hon,’ said Sealink. ‘Considering one of them’s been dead for a day. Would you mind if I asked you to explain all this?’

  Tag was at a loss. What could he tell her? Mention me to no one but the fox! the one-eyed cat had warned him. He was uncertain what had happened, anyway.

  ‘I didn’t think it would work,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think she would be able to do it.’

  Sealink sighed. ‘Oh, it worked all right, hon,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t her that done it.’

  She studied the cats in the piazza. Ragnar had given up his attempt to impress Mousebreath and was watching Cy again. Even at a distance his expression could be recognized as one of wonder, possessiveness, and – Tag now saw – pride.

  ‘It was him,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’ He laughed with delight. ‘It was the King! But how?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a fool, hon; but no King’s half the fool he looks. I watched him watching every move you showed her. Soon as she’s asleep and you’re out the door, he’s over there, blowing in that little cat’s nostrils—’ She stopped suddenly. ‘You been keeping things from us,’ she said. ‘You and that fox. I don’t like that. For one thing, you learned that stuff somewhere. For another, you been on the highway.’ She laughed at Tag’s change of expression. ‘How do I know that? Why, I see it in your eyes! You lost your cherry.’

  Tag looked away. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said miserably. ‘The King, the Queen – It’s—’ He shook himself angrily, ‘Oh, I don’t know what it is – ! All I know is that everything that’s happened to us is only a small part of something else.’ Struggling to convince her, he heard Majicou’s calm voice telling him. This part of it, I believe, has been entrusted to you, and saw suddenly how wonderful a thing it might be.

  ‘Sealink, something amazing is going on. And we’re up to our necks in it!’

  It was the right thing to say. For the calico cat, the world was only worthwhile if an adventure was revealed every time she lifted a corner of it. ‘An ordinary cat,’ she would often claim, ‘avoids intense experience. Calico cat, she seeks out intense experience. That’s the difference, hon.’ Sensing the presence of adventure now, she was ready – at least for the moment – to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, she regarded him with her head on one side, and warned him, ‘Lot of goodness inside you, kitten. Just make sure you spread it about.’ She indicated the party in the piazza. ‘Some of these folks depend on you. Then there’s this: folks help you, they deserve the truth.’ She laughed. ‘What the hell! I figure you’ll tell me in your own time.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But that Mouse-breath’s a different kind of guy. You know? He commits, he wants to know what he’s into—’

  ‘I hardly know what’s going on myself!’

  ‘Hey! Come on, lover, it’s a sunny day! If we’re in something amazing, don’t be so downcast. Let’s walk awhile.’

  The piazza lay on the northern limit of Piper’s Quay, which was developing itself as a maze of waterways and cobbled lanes that served everything from windy apartment blocks – each boasting the cantilevered porch, Chinese roof, or Japanese windows that almost saved it from looking like a brand-new warehouse – to terraced houses with gardens the size of futons. Strolling south, away from the piles of bricks and raw new setts. Tag and Sealink soon found themselves at the heart of the original site, a modest enclave broken up with tiny woods and shallow bowls of grassy open ground supporting a hawthorn tree, a pond, a heron on a stump. The old docks had long been filled in to make a park. Only their great worn granite edges remained to show that this had been a seafaring place at all.

  ‘So, hon,’ said Sealink, as she sailed in her stately way down the chilly perspectives provided by one of these, ‘the highway. Tell me!’

  Tag was delighted by the invitation. But when he thought about it, he could hardly gather his thoughts to begin. ‘I liked the little highways. The places where ordinary cats lived their lives. But the wild roads! Oh, now those! Do you know that thing where the light seems to go into itself like brown smoke? You can see, but you can’t see? And the places where the air echoes and echoes, as if there were a roof somewhere unimaginably high above your head? And—’ Suddenly he couldn’t stop talking. He told her about the cats great and small who had flowed out ahead of him down their road like fierce living water. About the sense he had had of being so much larger than himself. About his glimpse of the ice tiger whose voice had called across ten thousand years.

  Sealink was a good listener. But he soon found out that her attitude to the highways was quite different from Majicou’s.

  ‘Tried them, honey. Didn’t get much from them. Didn’t get that shiver up the spine. You know? Doesn’t seem real in there to me. Oh, I use them when I need to. What else would I do? I’m a cat! But when you tell me, ‘Highways! That’s the way to travel!’ why kitten, I got to disagree.’ She laughed at Tag’s crestfallen expression. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘For me, the highways are a way to travel. Honey, the way to travel – the only way to travel – is in the wheel bay of a Boeing 707 jet airplane. You ever try that?’

  ‘No,’ said Tag, who had no idea what she meant.

  The calico expanded her chest. A rich, sonorous purr broke forth. ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘walk right up alongside me here for a minute or two, kitten, and let me tell you all about the real thing…’

  And from a filled-in dock, a quay that would send no one sailing again, she took him on a journey. She described the boats she had stowed away on, large and small, from ports as different as Galveston and Marseilles. How she had once ridden halfway across Texas in the engine compartment of a metallic blue Ford Galaxy. ‘Was it noisy?’ ‘Noisy? I don’t know, hon. It sure stank. I was sick for days after!’ How she had spent a season as a railway cat at a station in Nepal. ‘Developed a taste for onion bhaji there. Ate some real exotic rodents.’ How in Saigon she had met a lilac Oriental called Tom Yang, the love of her life – who, she said, ‘led me nothing but a dance. But, honey, he was just such a male. You know?’ – only to lose him again to cat flu in South Korea. She told him her theory that cats in Thailand could still talk to human beings. ‘They been doing things a different way to us for centuries.’ And how Tokyo housecats wore neckerchiefs instead of flea collars. She took Tag around the world on ships and trains and airplanes, only to end up in Alaska again – forty below – with Pete the pipeliner. ‘Strange days!’ as she said. Strange days indeed, each with a moment of something at the end of it – happiness, perhaps. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes sadness, sometimes real tears.

  ‘Travel’s hard. You got to take the knocks. You got to walk your feet off. Oh, them highways are interesting all right – don’t get me wrong. You’ll have a time or two on those before you’re through. But to me they don’t seem a real part of the world. I’m a modem girl, I guess. Takes a different kind of determination to smuggle yourself on board a Boeing, hon. Tell me about it! But it’s sure a lot of fun.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t find many folks agree on that,’ she said.

  A moment later she was drawing Tag’s attention to an irregular patch of bright blue sky visible between two steadily closing gray clouds. She had spotted a fine white trail curving across it, just like a whisker. Like a whisker it seemed sharp, delineated, intensely itself. Like a whisker it thickened toward one end, where if you squinted you could make out the silver jet itself, forging its way north and west through the unimaginable cold, the icy sunshine of the upper air. Sealink sighed. Her big, comfortable body seemed to quiver. Then she was dancing about like a kitten on her hind legs.

  ‘Look! Look! Tag, honey, look! I been up there! I been all the way up there! Ain’t that a life! Ain’t it a life?’
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  Then the jet was gone. The sky shut behind it like a door. Sealink became more thoughtful. ‘I been tiny like that,’ she said quietly. ‘So tiny you’d be like to lose me in a snail shell.’ She shook her head in wonder. Then she said, ‘Tag, I just got to get to Russia before I die!’ And, as if the two concepts were related, ‘I smell weather.’ Clouds were running in from the north on a cold dry airstream. They were deeply folded, white on top, undersides gray and scuffed. ‘Can’t say I like the way the wind sits. We should go back.’ She stared up a minute more, then shook herself regretfully. ‘Don’t keep too many things from me, hon. I like to know where I am.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ Tag promised.

  Sealink hurried him back through the dense, souk-like alleys of Piper’s Quay, returning now and then to the canal – which she crossed and recrossed by its narrow ornamental bridges – to orient herself. If she seemed fraught, that rarely prevented her from making sarcastic comments about the architecture. Tag was content to follow her. She had made him happy again. Her very presence grounded him and gave him back the Tag he knew.

  As she had predicted, the weather closed in on them. The sun went in. The wind got up, bringing air from the arctic. The temperature dropped so suddenly that fragile, transparent flowers of ice bloomed on the surface of the canal, and puddles froze where they stood. Suddenly, the air was gray and full of hard, dry pellets of hail. They bounced and scut-tered across the cobbles in the wind. Thunder growled, away to the north. The sky darkened further. ‘Thunder and ice!’ grumbled Sealink. ‘Something not right here, hon. Let’s hurry!’ And the hail thickened even as she spoke, hissing and sputtering furiously on the pavements. It stung their faces. It lodged next to their skin. ‘Come on, kitten!’ They plunged down a narrow cut between empty-looking apartment buildings, scuttled across an intersection. They quivered for a couple of minutes beneath a wind-racked awning. Lightning flashed. The thunder chimed out. The familiar line of lampposts drew into view at last, and Tag was beginning to race toward it, slithering on the ice.