The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  ‘That was a ride!’ he would boast later. ‘I can tell you!’ All curves and re-entrants here, like a river in a valley bottom, the highways drew him in and pulled him along and passed him from one to the next at such breakneck speed that his fur flew back in the airstream and he felt as dizzy as a funfair cat on a Friday night. ‘I could steer, but it was as you say ‘a damn near thing’! It was more like flying than running!’ Empty of traffic, echoing with speed, they smoothed his way south, to the coast. There they spat him out. He staggered a little in the teeth of the wind at the top of a crumbling chalk cliff. A huge storm was in progress. Clouds roared past the moon. All around him, the night danced and flickered and multiplied itself with lightning. In the instant before each discharge could be heard a wheezing, sputtering sound like drops of water vaporized on a hotplate. Each great forked blue-white bolt left the earth a-tumble with phosphorescent yellow sparks cooling to red as they fell. The wind cracked like a wet sheet. The rain blew in almost horizontally from the sea.

  The sea!

  Benighted, heaving, cold and unforgiving, licked with fitful gleams of light, it stretched away to meet the boiling clouds, the gibbous moon – and then, he knew, away again. The sea went on forever. It was cold, and it moved as if it was alive. He could smell it, as salty as blood. He could hear it, like part of the storm, smashing on the rocks two hundred feet below him in the windy, lunatic dark. Ragnar was appalled.

  His southward drive had led him nowhere.

  ‘Pertelot!’ he cried. ‘Pertelot, where are you?’

  He stood there on the wild cliff top in the wind – a new King, a creature of the highway, still massive with all his journeys – and felt in quick succession puzzlement, despair, anger. But a sudden optimism replaced them all. He stared out across the water.

  After all, he thought, the one place she can’t be is out there! At least I needn’t worry about that. That is not a thing to worry about.

  And he began to walk west along the cliff top.

  The Sixth Life of Cats

  Kettie and Vinegar Tom watched the scene below from the boughs of the oak tree in the pig field.

  The humans from the farm were behaving oddly again.

  They had taken off their clothes and were dancing around the field in the early light, their big bare feet tracing dark patterns through the dew-pale grass. They had found and eaten some mushrooms in the fallow field that had somehow convinced them they were invisible and capable of flight. Some whirled and flapped; others leapt and pounced in strange parody. The cool morning air had raised gooseflesh along their limbs.

  ‘Whatever are they doing?’ Kettie asked.

  Vinegar Tom shook his head sadly.

  ‘They’ve prayed to Mahu the Great Cat. They’ve asked for the power to travel wild roads. They’ve shed their human skins, they think, and now they think they’re animal enough to make the journey.’

  This bewildered Kettie further. ‘But the upright ones can’t use the highways.’

  They watched in silence fora while.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Vinegar Tom, ‘they’re on heat and this is a mating rite.’

  ‘Oh, you,’ said Kettie.

  The humans were slowing down now. The farmer’s wife had collapsed puffing onto the grass, her face red and shiny with unwonted exercise. The dungboy was warding his head confusedly from some unseen attacker; while the kitchenmaid and her master had taken to coupling, oblivious of the thistle patch in which they lay.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Vinegar Tom.

  Suddenly, there was a great commotion. A crowd of fully clothed people burst into the field, shrieking, ‘Witches!’ They laid about the bemused revelers with cudgels. Failing to detect the menace in the air, the dungboy laughed and wiped his nose.

  The two cats looked on. ‘Let’s go now,’ begged Kettie.

  ‘They won’t climb up here, Kettie,’ said Vinegar Tom. ‘We’re safer here.’

  But the little tortoiseshell was already climbing warily down the oak. Belly low, she slunk through the long grass at the edge of the field and trotted swiftly out into the lane. Straight into the waiting arms of a man in black.

  Poor Kettie! She was grasped firmly by the scruff and waved above his head so that her paws swung wildly in the air and her mouth opened in terrified protest. ‘Behold the fiend!’ the man shouted, as the farm folk were herded out into the lane. ‘See here the demon they summoned during their evil rites: a vile, sneaking feline which insinuates itself into the world to promote fornication and madness.’ And with his free hand he touched himself four times: forehead, belly, and twice upon the chest.

  Kettie squirmed.

  Vinegar Tom trembled on his branch, afraid to show himself.

  ‘Know ye the face of the Devil himself! This is the very creature worshiped by the ancient pagans, which came into being when Satan tried to ape our Lord God’s creative powers. This—’ Kettie howled as his fingers dug deeper ‘—is all that Satan’s will could spawn. It owes even the fur that conceals its nakedness to the gentle pity of St Peter himself: for when that saint saw the mewling creature Lucifer had conjured, shivering in the Lord’s world, he made for it a fit covering. But though the hand of St Peter has touched its outward body, still its soul belongs to its master, whose bidding it does when conjured by such dangerous fools as these.’ He gestured wildly at the prisoners.

  The disoriented farm folk tried to cover their nakedness from chill morning and prurient eye.

  An old woman ran forward, finger outstretched at the cowering kitchenmaid. ‘I saw her leap in at my son-in-law’s window when he lay a-bed; and when I looked in on him next his spirit had departed.’ She looked around at her neighbors. ‘His body were covered in boils,’ she said. ‘It’s true!’

  The growing crowd muttered. A neighboring farmer pushed his way forward. ‘Six of my herd lie swollen and rotting. Cats have sucked on their teats and infected them with the Devil’s taint.’

  After that, everyone started shouting.

  ‘I’ve been wracked by terrible dreams—’

  ‘My babby perished in the cot. The cat got its breath.’

  ‘A man climbed into my room last week andforced himself upon me. He bit my paps, he were in such a frenzy. When he were done he leapt from me in the form of a great black cat. I’ve the scratches to prove it!’

  ‘Such bad dreams—’

  ‘Burn them!’

  This cry came initially from somewhere at the back of the crowd but was soon taken up by all. ‘Burn the witches and their foul imp!’

  ‘Jesus himself wouldn’t know where to turn from such dreams—’

  ‘Burn the cats wherever you find them!’

  *

  The next day a vast bonfire was made in the town square. Eight stakes stood upon it: one for the oldfarmer and his wife and two for their daughters: one for the dung boy; one for the milkmaid; one for the cowherd and two for the serving maids, barely sixteen and wetting themselves like children.

  People gathered from far and wide, crying damnation down upon their erstwhile friends and neighbors, for fear that they themselves would be accused. And as the man in the long black robe flourished the silver cross on the chain around his neck and proclaimed that the scourging flames would sanctify the souls of the nine humans they burned alive that day, Vinegar Tom bore silent witness from the bell tower of the church.

  He watched, too, as they brought in the cats: cats from farms that earned their keep freeing the barns and foodstores of vermin; cats from homes where children petted them; cats from the streets, who did a service no one understood.

  Cats – black-and-white, ginger, and tortoiseshell; striped and spotted and tabby – were flung, shrieking in terror, onto the fire. He watched as flesh and fur caught light. He heard them perish, his friends, his enemies, his family, and little Kettie who never did a moment’s harm in the six sweet months of her life.

  He watched as the fire sent their souls down the wild roads to the Great Cat. He watche
d the clouds of smoke that billowed into the air to coat the nearby buildings with a squalid film of blackened, liquid fat.

  He watched, and then he ran.

  Down the stairs from the bell tower, swift and silent, through the deserted streets away from the square – visions of horror in his head, his ears full of cries. He ran away and left his Kettie, and he carried the news far and wide, and behind him fires sprang up from town to town.

  They drove the Felidae to the edge of extinction in those days.

  Vinegar Tom escaped the slaughter, and carried the news, and died quietly at his proper time in the roots of a beech tree two hundred miles from his home.

  Though he witnessed the death of his Kettie, he wasn’t there to witness the Festival of St John, held every summer in town squares the length and breadth of the civilized world, in which the upright ones burned alive hundreds of thousands of cats on iron grates in the name of their religion.

  Nor was he there to watch the creeping tide of plague that rode the backs of the rats those cats would have eaten, had they lived…

  16

  Cy for Cyber

  Contemporary physics is based on concepts somewhat analogous to the smile of the absent cat.

  – ALBERT EINSTEIN

  When Tag woke up and saw the Alchemist’s cats swirling across the dim lawn toward him, he quickly woke Mousebreath and Loves a Dustbin.

  The conservatory was furnished with a scrubbed deal table and a stack of cardboard boxes. There were some well-kept but dusty gardening tools, and one or two terra-cotta tubs packed with hardened dirt. The trunk of an old vine made its way out of one of these tubs, up the back wall, and across the glass roof. It was contorted and muscular, dead-looking but of a rich gold color in the moonlight that broke between the high quick clouds.

  Easy enough for the two cats to climb the vine and make their way out through broken panes onto the roof of the conservatory.

  Not so easy for the fox.

  Instead, he skulked quietly among the cardboard boxes, his yellow eyes turned away from the room so they didn’t pick up the moonlight. All he could do was wait.

  Motionless on the glass roof, Tag stared down at the alchemical cats.

  They flowed backward and forward along the base of the conservatory like water up and down a trough. On every pass one or another of them would jump up silently and look inside. Then they found the hole and poured through it. Once inside, they nosed about perplexedly. They stared up at the vine. Encumbered by their experimental limbs and add-on senses, they knocked over a garden fork. Instead of running away from the noise like proper cats, they just stared owlishly as the fork bounced and rang on the concrete floor. Their acid, unfeline odors wafted up through the broken panes.

  Though they hadn’t found him yet, they were all around the fox, raising their heads to sniff, nosing about in the cardboard boxes. He bore them patiently for a minute. Then a spasm of disgust made his lips peel back. Canine teeth glittered in the moonlight. There was an explosion of snarling and barking, boxes tumbled one way and another, and the fox shot out of his hiding place and fell down. He got up with an effort and began to drag himself across the conservatory floor. Half a dozen cats were fastened onto his face. They had jumped on his grin. They were silent. Their eyes were like mirrors. Every so often one of them shifted its grip.

  Tag was so appalled he couldn’t move.

  ‘They’re pulling him down!’

  ‘Come on!’ said Mousebreath, and gave Tag a rough shove. ‘We can’t just let him die.’

  Surprise wasn’t the issue now. They ran down the vine stem, yowling and spitting and making as much noise as they could. Distracted, the alchemical cats looked up from their victim. He threw them off and laid about him with the same white teeth that had given him away. He was like a dog with rats. A quick dart forward, a snap of jaws, one quick shake of the victim before he tossed it over his back and passed on to the next.

  Mousebreath was impressed. ‘Stuffing hell,’ he said. Prudently, he remained out of reach, four or five feet up the vine. ‘Look at that.’

  Tag had let the rush of adrenaline carry him all the way to the floor. Now he found himself backed into a corner by two Sphinxes and a large silent yellow tom whose smell was almost as frightening as his mouth. The Sphinxes regarded Tag steadily, almost curiously, pulses flickering and racing in the webby blue veins under their bald, folded skin. The tom’s mouth had been wired open on an experimental denture. They were a team. He was blind, but they had eyes like fishbowls.

  ‘Mousebreath,’ said Tag.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Would you mind fighting and not just watching?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mousebreath absentmindedly. He leapt down. ‘Didn’t I know you once?’ he asked the tom. But it was the Sphinxes who answered, in unison. ‘You’ll know us now,’ they said.

  Behind them, the fox could be seen running around and around in a tight circle, trying to throw off the single cat that remained fastened to his face. The rest of the intruders had left him to it and were quietly packing the corner in support of the yellow tom, who now gargled at Mousebreath round his new teeth, ‘You know me. I’m the king!’

  At that moment, Cy walked into the conservatory. Motes began to pour out of her eyes like grayish-yellow snow and drift about the room. Wherever they touched one of the alchemical cats, it stopped what it was doing. One or two of them wandered aimlessly off until they were halted by a wall or some other object that claimed their attention. The rest sat down suddenly and stared at the tabby. Soon, she was surrounded.

  ‘Now listen to me, boys,’ she began.

  Suddenly, she seemed to lose control of her head, which shook itself rapidly from side to side. She said, ‘Brrraugh!’ She reached down suddenly and bit one of her own front legs. ‘No. Gar. I – Quick, Silver!’ Bits of white foam appeared at the corners of her mouth. She whimpered. ‘Quicksilver, I—’ A few more motes issued, slow and stale-looking, from her eyes. She blinked and fell on her face. ‘Go home, boys,’ she said tiredly. ‘This ain’t the way we do things in Gunstnoke.’ At this, the Alchemist’s cats stood up, gathered themselves, and – whirling around her unconscious form like cornstalks in a hot summer wind – poured out of the conservatory.

  Tag ran after them, nipping at back legs.

  ‘Let them go,’ said the fox. ‘They won’t bother us again tonight.’

  Even so, they sat up until dawn.

  Tag and Mousebreath talked. The fox inspected his new injuries. The tabby remained unconscious where she had fallen, sprawled on the sour concrete floor like a road accident, her eyes disconcertingly open, her mouth open, too, in a quiet gape of astonishment. She wasn’t dead, but she had about her a feel of distant travel. Mousebreath huddled up to her on one side, Tag on the other, as if their warmth might sustain her wherever she was now. Occasionally, one or the other of them tried to groom her. Puzzled and, in the end, unsure what had happened, Tag asked, ‘How did she bring them here? And what for—’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘—if not to kill us?’

  ‘All I know is that it weren’t her fault.’

  This was so palpably untrue Tag couldn’t think of a reply. The fox looked up from his bruises and bites. Before he could speak, Mousebreath had added quickly, ‘She can’t help herself. She could never help herself.’

  ‘She is a proxy of the Alchemist,’ the fox explained to Tag. ‘What she does – the thing with the lights – is a kind of magic. We’re at risk now every minute she remains—’ he paused ‘—with us,’ he finished, although clearly he had planned to say something else.

  ‘But the cats—’ began Tag.

  Mousebreath intervened. ‘We’re not leaving her,’ he told the fox.

  The fox ignored him. ‘The cats were a scouting party,’ he said. ‘Now the Alchemist knows where to find us, they’ll stay close. They’ll never harm us badly – only enough to remind us of our plight – but they’ll follow us down the wild road
s forever. Or until we meet the King and Queen.’

  Mousebreath said, ‘We’re not leaving her. She’s not to blame for the thing in her head.’

  ‘Blame’s not the issue,’ said the fox. ‘She’s a proxy. I believe he can see through her eyes. He was watching us at Piper’s Quay. He knew the Queen was there. I would never forgive myself if he found her again that way.’ He was quiet for a moment. Then he added, ‘Majicou would never forgive me, either.’

  Mousebreath said, ‘The Queen’s not here.’

  ‘But she’ll be at Tintagel,’ said the fox. ‘Do you want to lead him there?’

  ‘Tintagel,’ said Mousebreath scornfully.

  ‘I’m trying to talk to Tag,’ the fox said.

  ‘Talk to me,’ said Mousebreath.

  ‘Shut up, Mousebreath,’ ordered Tag. Then he told the fox, ‘Cy’s been with us all along. We look after her. If you can’t agree to that, too bad. But there’s something else. Majicou always knew about this. I think he wants us to keep her.’ The fox tried to interrupt, but Tag wouldn’t let him. ‘I can’t see why, either,’ he admitted. ‘But it will be my responsibility if this turns out to be a mistake. Not yours.’