The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  ‘I felt responsible. He’s such a fool!’

  ‘You haven’t been so clever yourself. Did you find him?’

  Tag hung his head. ‘No.’

  ‘He is not here,’ said Majicou gently. ‘I would know if he was.’

  ‘Then he must have got shut in the van again! Oh, Majicou, how will he get home? He misses the Queen.’ Loneliness swept over Tag suddenly and made him add, ‘How will any of us get home? We none of us have homes anymore.’

  ‘Homes are made,’ said Majicou without much compassion, and took him back to the barn. Inside, it was four whitewashed walls covered with dusty gray cobwebs like letters in an alphabet, two or three low wooden partitions whose function was unclear, and in the corner a pile of ancient bits and pieces made of leather, wood, and rusty metal. It was barely warmer than the hillside. One for Sorrow was hopping about in the rafters, croaking glumly to himself. Mousebreath, hunched up on some old straw, stared angrily at Tag and refused to speak. Only the tabby seemed happy to be there; and she was rooting so busily about in the corner that she hardly noticed them come in.

  Majicou looked up at the bird.

  ‘Is there any news?’

  The magpie descended, his wings loud in the confined space.

  ‘It’s an hour each way from Piper’s Quay,’ he said. ‘Fly at a decent height and your main coverts ice up. Try it. It’s winter out there, Majicou. At least ask me if I’m alive.’

  ‘No news, then.’

  ‘No more than before.’

  ‘Hello, One for Sorrow,’ said Tag.

  ‘Come and join the party,’ the bird greeted him. ‘You can dance with your cheerful friend.’ He jabbed his beak in Mouse-breath’s direction and, receiving only a deadly look in return, hopped away. He was never still – always bobbing up and down, turning his head from side to side, fluffing up his feathers to produce a brief dry rustle that made Tag shiver. Seduced by this sound, Cy backed out of the clutter – from which she had been trying to extract a bit of blackened leather smelling of horse and linseed – and, flattening herself quietly on the dusty floor, began to inch forward with her bottom in the air. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ the magpie warned her.

  ‘Majicou,’ he reported, ‘there was nothing. Blood on the walls, some tracks in the snow which were filling as I got there – might have been the fox, might equally have been a stray dog. If he was alive, he didn’t stay around to be hurt again. As for the other two—’ he shrugged eloquently ‘—nothing. If they hid, they’re still hidden. If they’re together, we don’t know.’

  ‘Why did I bother to send you back?’

  Like the other animals, the magpie had been disoriented by the violence of events at Piper’s Quay. Suddenly unsure of himself, a condition he barely recognized, he had flown aimlessly over the city – erratic sweeps and sorties that added nothing to his understanding of the situation. Conditions were bad, even for Corvidae, known to be clever and daring flyers: overlapping fronts, masses of cold northeastern air, turbulence. Contact with Majicou had proved difficult. Then – more by luck than design, blown west by an airstream as brutal as black glass – he had spotted the cat catchers’ van! As a reward, Majicou had promptly sent him back to Piper’s Quay to look for the fox. This search had to be abandoned in the small hours. By the time he returned to the barn, just before the arrival of Tag and Majicou, One for Sorrow had been flying for eight hours without rest. At one point, a pocket of low pressure over Hounds Low had dropped him eight hundred feet straight down, like a ball of cleaning rags thrown out of a tenth-floor window. Normally, that would have been something to boast about. Now he was only aching, hungry, and depressed. He sighed.

  ‘Master,’ he reminded Majicou gently, ‘there was no one else to send.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Majicou. ‘A vagus is loose on the highway for the first time in four hundred years. Who knows what else it will liberate before I can put it back? Things become less and less dependable. I sit at the center of it all and watch the wild roads turn into a knot of snakes. Yet the Alchemist is still vulnerable. I could stop him now, if every tool did not break in my hand—’

  ‘I’m not your tool, mate,’ interrupted Mousebreath suddenly. ‘And neither is the calico. We come along for decency’s sake. Every turn, we done the decent thing—’

  ‘Mousebreath—’ Tag began.

  The tortoiseshell gave him a bitter look.

  ‘And not one of you had the decency to explain what we was into—’

  ‘Mousebreath, I—’

  ‘And now you’ve got her killed.’

  Majicou stared absently at Mousebreath, as if he had forgotten who he was or why he was there. The tortoiseshell turned away in disgust and began to lick his behind ostentatiously.

  The old cat blinked. ‘We have this comfort, at least,’ he went on. ‘The Alchemist knows as little as we do. He too has lost the King and Queen. His means of locating them are as limited as ours. His proxies are as scattered. He cannot enter the highways.’

  ‘Yet,’ said the magpie.

  Majicou acknowledged this. ‘Oh, if he cultures the Golden Cat, everything is finished. But until then, we are all only kittens shuttling wool between the legs of a chair.’ This idea seemed to put him in a better mood. ‘Rest as long as you need,’ he invited the magpie. ‘Then go out and find them for me!’

  The bird flew back up into the rafters and began to peck about savagely in its wing feathers.

  ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

  Mousebreath, it was clear, hated to be ignored. Resentment, hatched in his orange eye, soon swam into the other, where it froze in blue ice. But he waited until Majicou had finished his exchange with the bird before he said, ‘This Alchemist of yours. He’s here, he’s there, you don’t know where he is. All we know is it’s personal between the two of you.’

  Then he added quietly, ‘Kittens shuttling wool.’

  At this, Majicou drew himself up. ‘It’s not a game,’ he said.

  ‘You called it that yourself. Not two minutes ago.’

  ‘I’ve already explained what’s at stake.’

  ‘Oh, you have. And how that entitles you to play with other people’s lives. Just like him. You’ve explained all that.’ Mouse-breath got up and stalked toward the door of the barn, brushing contemptuously past the black cat as he went. ‘I admire you. You’ve fought the good fight, cat and kitten. My word. How impressive. A fat bird gets to call you ‘Master. ‘‘

  ‘Be careful,’ warned the magpie.

  Mousebreath laughed. ‘Make me,’ he said.

  ‘Wait!’ ordered Majicou.

  ‘Stuff you,’ suggested Mousebreath.

  For a moment it looked as if they would kill each other.

  ‘Please!’ said Tag.

  He got between them.

  ‘Mousebreath,’ he begged, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what was happening. But now you know, won’t you help? Sealink—’

  ‘Sealink! What would you know about her!’

  ‘She was happy to join in.’

  Even Mousebreath’s blue eye was angry; the orange one didn’t bear looking at.

  He said, ‘Look where it got her. She’d been all over the world, that cat. Get out of my way.’

  Tag felt as if he had been pushed aside by a bag of concrete. But he followed determinedly.

  It wasn’t the sort of morning either of them had expected. Whether Mousebreath wanted it or not, they were forced to stand together for a moment while their eyes adjusted to the brilliant light. The sun had broken through a lid of ruched gray cloud and reached down with huge fingers to dapple the fields and hills. The red brick walls of the barn glowed warmly. Drops of water glistened on the barren elder twigs where the snow had melted. The bracken was a pale fire. A little way above the woods proper, a young tree stood alone in a circle of green grass and dusty beech mast. All its elegant gray limbs but one were posed as if it had just that minute raised them to the sun; that one had broken near
the trunk, and now hung down near the ground. Mousebreath went and crouched beneath it, staring out toward the village. Every time Tag tried to sit down near him, he got up and moved away. Tag wouldn’t be put off.

  ‘Mousebreath.’

  ‘Stuff off.’

  ‘Mousebreath, please!’

  ‘Tell you what: if you’d been a bit more forthcoming it wouldn’t have hurt.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Sealink wanted you to help!’

  ‘Well, she’s dead.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Look, Mousebreath, come with me to Tintagel! She knew we were going there. She’ll make her own way, I know it!’

  Mousebreath regarded him grimly. ‘Nah. They shot the fox. For all we know, they shot her too. She’s dead. That’s all.’

  ‘Mousebreath, this is silly!’

  ‘She’s dead, and I’m off back to town.’

  Frustrated and wretched, Tag watched him walk away down the hill. ‘Oh, Mousebreath,’ he whispered. ‘You never did leave the barges.’ After a moment or two, he sighed and stretched out beneath the broken branch with his head on his front paws. The sun was quite strong. As the beech mast warmed, it gave out a tarry, almost appetizing smell. Birds sang. Insects began to buzz past, on long, sleepy trajectories. It was winter. Why were they flying? They had no idea. Tag dozed. Before he knew it, he had slept, and Majicou was waking him gently.

  ‘Tag, I must go.’

  Tag looked around. The sun had gone in. It was cold again. The whole short winter day was passing, and soft gray flakes of snow were falling through the glassy air.

  ‘Was I asleep? Majicou, I—’

  ‘There is work to do, and I can do none of it here. The magpie has already gone.’

  ‘How will I get to Tintagel?’

  ‘With ease.’

  ‘I’m no good at all this.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘You had to save me from the vagus.’

  ‘The vagus was gone when I found you. I think you bored it.’ Majicou laughed grimly. Then he admitted, ‘If I had been forced to confront it there and then, I don’t know who would have won the encounter.’

  ‘But you are the Majicou.’

  ‘The Majicou was once a cat like you. Tag, Tag. None of this was your fault. In fact most of it was mine. In a way, Mousebreath is right. Fear and confusion make us all arrogant: Why should I be immune? I chafe. I expect too much of others. But nothing is lost unless you despair. Tag, look!’

  Majicou stood up suddenly on his hind legs and, gripping the end of the broken branch in his teeth, pulled it down so that Tag could see. Among the twigs were clusters of empty beechnut husks, flared, hard, juiceless, brittle, used up. But inside the nearest, Tag glimpsed a speck of red. ‘Majicou, what is it?’ He peered in. Huddled together in the old shell were six perfect ladybirds, their legs curled tightly beneath them and their glossy backs so bright they seemed to send a light of their own into the gray air as they waited patiently for the long winter to end. For a moment, the world was full of weight and order and magic.

  Majicou released the branch.

  ‘Tag, you must continue west. Look after the tabby. Wait at Tintagel for your friends. All this will end well. I know it!’

  ‘It didn’t end well for Mousebreath.’

  Majicou laughed.

  ‘Mousebreath is sitting down there in the wood, sulking. I can see him from here.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then you don’t understand his heart or yours. Mousebreath may yet be defeated by his own life, but not if you or his calico queen are there to change his mind! I’ll apologize to him as I leave. Make him come with you to Tintagel. They will be there. The magpie will bring news. Take care!’

  And the black cat was off through the flying snow.

  Tag watched for a long time, wondering what would become of them all. Slowly, it grew dark, and the stars came out over the ridge. Silence prevailed, but Tag sat on. Eventually Mouse-breath returned. For a while the two of them stood on the cold hill’s side, not knowing quite what to say to each other. Then the tortoiseshell suggested, ‘May as well get in out of the cold.’

  ‘May as well.’

  Inside the barn, the tabby offered them a share in her piece of leather.

  ‘Have some,’ she encouraged. ‘It’s good.’

  13

  The Raw and the Cooked

  My cats are compromised. I do not entirely trust them – they may be spies, like dolphins, reporting to some unknown authority.

  – JAN MORRIS

  They slept in the barn that night. Mousebreath woke Tag about two hours before dawn.

  ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Look!’

  The air was bitterly cold. The darkness had a faint, hard luminescence to it, as if it had been lacquered. Flakes of snow were blowing in through the partly open door, then floating toward a peculiar smoky twist of light that had established itself between the cobwebby walls of the opposite corner. Every so often this apparition fizzed quietly and shifted on its axis, an adjustment accompanied by a small convulsion that raised dust from the floor beneath it.

  ‘What is it?’ said Mousebreath.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Tag told him. ‘How long’s it been here?’

  ‘I been awake fifteen, twenty minutes.’

  They watched for perhaps another five. Nothing else happened. Then the light flared up with a kind of silent crackle, a current of warm air passed across the floor of the barn, and everything returned to normal. Warily, Tag approached the corner. A few snowflakes had been left blowing about the concrete in the drafts. When he tried to touch them with his nose, they turned out to be little gray sparks of light. There was a faint smell of burnt cobweb.

  ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he told Mousebreath. ‘It won’t come back tonight. But we should leave as soon as we can.’

  Mousebreath curled up, grumbling. Alone with his thoughts, Tag licked his paws until his eyes closed of their own accord. The tabby, who had followed all this with lively interest from the darkness, waited until she was sure they were both asleep again. Then she crept carefully into the empty corner, sniffed it thoroughly, and sat there like a china ornament on a mantelpiece, her eyes wide open and alert. After a moment, the snow began to drift in through the open door toward her.

  *

  First light, Tag led his little band up the side of the ridge.

  The snow had consolidated itself while they slept, piling up quietly on an east wind so that in places it was higher than Mousebreath’s shoulder. Through it protruded the occasional thin shaft of reed grass. Powder, whipped off the crest of each drift, hissed away across the empty fields. At first it was fun to bound and tumble through the cold spindrift. But they soon grew tired – especially Cy, who could hardly keep her nose above it – and settled for a steadier pace. Tag and Mousebreath took turns to force the way. They were soon soaked to the skin and panting for breath. Their feet grew numb and somehow at the same time tender. When they stopped an hour later, two hundred feet below the crest of the ridge, Tag saw that they had ploughed one long, untidy furrow across the flank of the hill. Either side of it, acres of unturned snow glowed frail pink and gold in the rays of the risen sun. He shivered in delight. He wanted to race away into it forever. No streets, no walls, no gardens or houses: just a great snowy sweep of downs as far as you could see. He felt bigger than his own body.

  ‘Look at that, Mousebreath! Isn’t it beautiful?’

  Mousebreath gazed anxiously around.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ he urged. ‘We stick out like a sore foot here.’

  Up on the crest, emptiness roared away in all directions. No track was visible, only the ridge, which curled and dipped like the scarp of a huge snowdrift. The sky was bitter and endless, blue-gray. The airstream broke and roiled across the path, encasing everything that stood above the snow in transparent ice. It was as if the very vastness of it all had sucked the war
mth away. As they arrived, the weather tightened its grip. Thick gray clouds drew in. Spindrift was whipped off the ridge. Tag felt ice forming on his whiskers. The wind was so loud he could hardly hear himself think, but he held his ground and looked it in the eye. The colder it blew, the taller he felt himself stand. Mouse-breath stared into the west in shock; the tabby huddled close to Tag’s shoulder for comfort, rubbing her face repeatedly against his fur and advising him, ‘It’s raw-John blind here; it’s rime-eyed-Jack! I see white iron ahead. Ice time, Tiger! There’s a wide wind up here!’

  Tag barely noticed her. They were in a bad place for small animals. He wondered why he felt so little fear.

  After a moment, he shook himself. ‘We must run,’ he said.

  Easier said than done. They floundered along, stumbling into icy ruts. Balked by gusts of wind like walls, they rocked back yowling on their haunches or flattened themselves in fear. The ridge had vanished. Only the weather was left. How could they find the highway in this? How could they be cats when they were cold and scared and soaked through like this? When the air was full of the voices of dead animals? Everything streamed to white before their eyes. They ran and ran, and nothing happened. Then the spindrift parted like a curtain, and Tag glimpsed a ghostly tiger of the ice, loping out purposefully ahead of them in a hollow in the wind! What journey had he been on, so long ago? His thick white pelt was gray striped, tipped with pewter. His huge paws were silent and sure. His breath smoked in the freezing air. He was soon gone; but while he lasted, he had filled the world with a rank, careless heat, a jungle in the snow, and Tag, suddenly running and jumping like a kitten in his wake, was filled with joy just to have seen him. Tag raised his face to the blowing ice.

  ‘This way!’ his friends heard him call. ‘Come on!’

  Their hearts lifted. The highway had recognized them, and welcomed them in.

  *

  Chalk hills echoed away east and west, their features blurred and indistinguishable beneath the ancient lives that flowed across them. Only the land endured; everything else was a living, shifting knap, and if there were towns, weather, people, it would have been hard to point them out. Metallic light lay across these ghost lands, as if someone had long ago tipped a silent cup of sky over everything. It was a color none of them could name: not Mousebreath, not Tag, not Cy. Though the tabby warned herself when she thought no one was listening, ‘I never said I’d walk on this apple-tree moon. Whoo!’ It was a million skies, a million days and nights, a million colors running into liquid bronzy-gray.