The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  He felt vague and detached, as if this stuff were happening not quite to him but to someone else called Tag: a near relative.

  ‘I should never have eaten that rat.’

  A memory of the rat’s dry, intelligent voice and greasy fur caused him to heave a couple of times. He blinked to clear his vision. The road swam as if seen through water. It was not the Caribbean Road. Then Cy was shuffling toward him backward, with her bottom stuck in the air. He dimly remembered warning her, ‘The next time you go in the road, stay there.’ Would she ever learn? She had no fear of roads, human or otherwise. She was at home with all of them. Here she was now, patiently dragging something inedible out of this one. He couldn’t quite see what it was.

  ‘Were you born yesterday?’ he called.

  Then he remembered everything.

  Together they pulled the one-eyed cat the last foot or two out of the traffic.

  He seemed light enough. Everything that made him Majicou was gone. It was like pulling an old fur collar through the rain. Every so often he woke up and tried to help, but his spine was broken and he couldn’t get his rear legs under him. He kept trying to help; he kept trying to speak. When they set him down in the bleached grass at the side of the road, he seemed better for a while. Then blood bubbled suddenly from his mouth. He thrashed to and fro in front of them in his anger to live. They darted about helplessly or stood shivering, ignoring each other in their fear of death.

  ‘Tag—’

  ‘Majicou! I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘Tag,’ whispered Majicou. ‘Listen—’

  He lay still, trembling from head to foot with shock, the damp air around him heavy with the iron smell of blood. Tag approached him cautiously, and sniffed.

  ‘Majicou?’

  ‘Come here, Tag. Listen. There is nothing you can do for me now. No. Don’t look away. Listen. Listen to me. Don’t blame the tabby. She has done her best by all of us, and she has one more thing to do.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Listen! Never blame her, Tag. She must be brought to Tintagel.’

  ‘But, Majicou, she—’

  The old cat’s eye was fixed wide open, so dilated that to him the dull afternoon must have seemed like noon on the brightest summer day he had ever known. He shook his head irritably.

  ‘Do as I say, Tag.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘It dazzles me, Tag.’ He said tiredly, ‘I have failed. All is lost.’

  ‘No,’ Tag said.

  ‘Tag, Tag. You weren’t a bad apprentice. What do you know about death?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good. Listen: we couldn’t have life without it.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘How would we know?’ he said. ‘My last life, too. I shall truly die now.’

  Tag couldn’t think how to delay him.

  ‘Don’t die,’ he said. ‘You haven’t told me my real name.’

  The old cat gave the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Haven’t you understood anything?’ he said. ‘Very well then. So far as your breeders knew, Tag, you were an accident. One Saturday afternoon, their Burmese entered the cage of a visiting shaded silver Chinchilla queen.’ He tried to smile again, but it looked more like a snarl. ‘One kitten was born from that short affair. A Burmilla, of course. Bloodlines all confused. Too heavy for the breed standard, and with ridiculous great feet – but a black-tipped Burmilla nevertheless, and a nexus of champion lines. You were ‘petted out’ to Cutting Lane as an embarrassment. They had no idea of your significance. How could they? But before they delivered you into my care – I who had been waiting so many years! – they had to give you a name worth having, and they did:

  ‘Mercurius Realtime DeNeuve.

  ‘Tag, they called you Mercury… and you have as fine a pedigree, in your way, as Ragnar or Pertelot Fitzwilliam.’ The old cat closed his eye. ‘Now leave me alone,’ he said.

  ‘What kind of cat is a Burmilla?’ asked Tag in wonder. He had turned around and was trying to look at himself.

  Majicou laughed. His voice was barely a whisper now, but it was full of unaccustomed warmth. ‘Look in any mirror. A Burmilla cat has honest green eyes and thick silver fur. A Burmilla cat combines mass with naïveté, sturdiness with a limitless capacity for missing the point. When the highways at Cutting Lane first delivered you to me, I wasn’t sure you would serve my purpose. A Burmilla cat does not make the world’s most intelligent apprentice, Tag, but it is beautiful, affectionate, interesting, disobedient, and – above all – optimistic. You weren’t a bad pupil, but I was an absent teacher.’ There was a silence, filled only by the harsh rattle of the old cat’s breath. He said, with considerable effort, ‘Somehow you learned anyway. If you have a talent, Tag, it’s to be yourself.’

  *

  Majicou’s death was not kind to him, except in the snatches of unconsciousness it offered. These he accepted gratefully. When he woke, he was so weak he could barely move his head. ‘Tag?’ he whispered once. And when Tag bent close, ‘So many years.’ Tag sat. Cy calmed down. They were able to be beside the old cat so that he wasn’t lonely as the day drew to its close. At the last, the clouds were broken in the west, and a thin line of sun struck down.

  ‘The light!’ cried Majicou. ‘The light!’

  A prolonged convulsion took him up and threw him about. Bright blood filled his mouth. He bit himself. He bit the ground. ‘Tag! Tag! You must be there. It must be done in the presence of—’

  And he was gone.

  Now I’ve lost everyone, Tag thought.

  ‘You’ve still got me,’ said the tabby.

  Tag stared at her.

  ‘I didn’t speak,’ he said.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Go away.’

  She hissed at him resentfully and went to sit a little way away along the side of the road. There, she began to collect things and sing. Every so often she looked up to see if he was watching her. Tag took no notice. He was remembering how it had been when he was a kitten and lived in a wonderful place. The warm kitchen with its yellow walls and red-tiled floor. A red cloth mouse – ‘My mouse!’ Meat-and-liver dinner. How could he ever forget? He remembered how his dulls had blown bubbles for him, and how the bubbles had wobbled through the air like little worlds filled with evening light, to burst with a noise that only he could hear. He remembered how he had thought he was a prince. How the garden birds had laughed at him! How the magpie had jeered! He had been so naïve he didn’t even know what a highway was. I’ve come a long way since then, he thought. And he wished with all his might he had stayed where he was.

  Then he seemed to hear Majicou’s voice, faint and distant. ‘You don’t need the wonderful place, Tag. You carry it with you. Homes are made.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, Majicou,’ he said.

  He turned his face west and began to walk.

  The tabby, busy with her pile of things, looked surprised. After a moment, she abandoned them and followed him.

  ‘I pulled you out of that road, you know!’ she called. ‘When will you ever learn?’

  Part 3

  Where the Wild Roads Meet

  19

  The Ancient Country

  Why are Freyja’s eyes so bright?

  From her eyes it seems that fire doth burn.

  – THE ELDER EDDA

  Later that night, down in the warm cabin with their bellies full of tinned food, the cats found themselves on their own again.

  One for Sorrow had declared himself fit and well. He had spoken at length of what he called ‘bullying’ and ‘superstitious rubbish.’ He had flown landward in a dignified manner, to take Majicou the news of the pregnancy and inform him of Pertelot’s intention to make her way overland to Tintagel once the Guillemot had docked in the ancient country.

  Meanwhile, Old Smoky had dropped anchor in a small harbor town, heaved himself into the tender, and rowed ashore for supplies. He was off, he mu
ttered, to get his clothes dry, and his insides wet, at a local inn.

  Sealink lazed full-length on the vacated bunk, one eye on the old Rex, the other on her own coat, which had now been returned to its full luster by an extended period of attention.

  Pertelot lay dreamily beside the calico. She felt the kittens float into her mind. They were swimming inside her! She purred softly to encourage them, and let them fill her with their strange, subtle motions as they pursued the long water journeys of the womb. Something made her think, ‘the unrepeatable journeys of the womb.’

  She shook herself.

  Everything was so fragile. Everything was so strong.

  ‘Pengelly,’ she said. ‘The silkies…’

  Since the rescue of the old fisherman, Pengelly had been crouched on the cabin steps. It was his compromise between being where he wanted to be – up on deck, watching the waves – and being in the cabin, where Sealink could keep an eye on him. The Mau’s voice roused him from his stupor. His amber eyes in their wildly skewed aspects were dull with misery.

  ‘Neither cat nor fish,’ he said. ‘Why talk?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That was my sister!’ he cried.

  ‘Oh, Pengelly. My poor thing.’

  ‘No one should have to see that! It fair hurts my soul to think of her down there. Here I am in warmth and comfort, with a kind man to feed me, while she wanders the cold dark sea with the rest of them that drowned. When I die I’ll go peaceful down the wild road; but she’ll swim forever, looking for land.’

  ‘My poor Pengelly.’

  ‘Aye, poor Pengelly – his sister’s neither cat nor fish. A silkie… I never thought to see one, let alone one of my own flesh and blood…’

  He mused.

  ‘Silkies,’ he said. ‘I never believed in them, till now. They say you can hear them howl on stormy nights, warning the big ships off the rocks. I’m told they lie all day in the sun on the high-tide line and groom their fur like you or me, and deck themselves out with seaweed, and live on the souls of fish the fishermen throw back into the sea.’

  There was an empty pause. Sealink shrugged. She said, gently, ‘It’s a fife, hon. Maybe that’s a life we can’t know.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed the old Rex. ‘It’s a life. What a life that is, eh? She’ll never catch a mouse or sleep curled with another warm creature or have kits of her own. And she’ll never know this: I wish I’d died that day instead of she. It should be me down there, not her… The guilt of it has never left me. And now I shall never see her again…’

  He raised his head and wailed.

  ‘Never look at a silkie,’ he said. ‘It’ll be one of your own, and you’ll regret it forever…’

  ‘Please don’t, Pengelly,’ cried Pertelot.

  She jumped up from the bunk and curled herself around him. ‘Please don’t. Wriggle came to save Old Smoky in return for his help all those years ago. She’s happy you’re alive. She’s happy for us all.’

  ‘How do you know she’s happy?’

  ‘Because all kittens begin in a sea. I have mine here in me. Your silkie sister would not begrudge them a life above the waves. My heartfelt thanks to her. And their thanks too.’

  She purred suddenly.

  Pengelly looked from her to Sealink.

  ‘You’re right, I know,’ he admitted.

  But at the mention of kittens, Sealink rearranged herself into a tight ball, her face stiff with some visible but untranslatable emotion.

  ‘Don’t dwell on the past, old tom,’ she advised him. ‘Never cry over lost kittens or spilled milk. Keep looking forward, take what you can, remember who you are. The world can’t trick you then.’

  With that she refused to countenance any further talk. Crabs, silkies, things in the wild night: they were all one to her, she implied. She would rather be on her way to Mother Russia in a jet.

  *

  The next few days brought no drama. With the sail up, they drifted along the coast. As they passed through the shoals of mackerel, Old Smoky pulled up string upon string. Sealink and Pertelot stood over the flapping bodies as the old fisherman tossed them into the boat, fascinated by their sunlit tabby stripes, the fading iridescence of their scales.

  They tasted good too.

  As the image of his silkie sister waned, Pengelly spent his time following Old Smoky around the boat, rubbing his cheek against the new Wellington boots, until they had a proper place in the scent map of his territory. He was perhaps a little aimless, a little insecure.

  By day, the wintry sun offered early promise of spring as it split the last of the clouds and fanned out over the sea in sheaves of golden light. A brisk breeze drove them ever closer to their destination.

  All night, the stars wheeled overhead, as sharp as claw marks in a velvet sky. Pengelly sat on the deck and gazed at them. He could never get enough stars. Pertelot stretched out by him, so that the kittens could feel the starlight on her belly. She wanted them to be at home in the dark.

  ‘Stars on the brine,’ Pengelly told the Mau with a kind of companionable authority, ‘tomorrow sunshine. That’s what they say. Clear skies, see: stars are beautiful bright. Did you know that you can find your way by the stars?’

  This bewildered the Queen of Cats.

  ‘But there are so many. How can you tell them apart?’

  The old Rex smiled.

  ‘See, there, halfway up the southern sky, a creature with four legs running across the heavens, tail stretched out in the wind?’

  Pertelot squinted. A shape sprang out of the confusion.

  ‘It has a glowing eye!’ she exclaimed. She was delighted.

  ‘Aye, that’s She. That’s the Great Cat – Felis Major, my dear, and her they call the Cat Star – humans know it as the Dog Star, for their ignorance. There, in the middle, veiled as it heads for its northernmost aspect, the Eye of Horus.’

  The Mau shivered; but Pengelly, warmed to his subject, did not notice.

  ‘And just to the east that’s Felis Minor, the Kitten. See how close they lie. Unusual, that. And there—’ he stretched out a wiry paw ‘—soaring up landward, there’s the Heart of the Lion, guardian to all travelers on the wild roads. Shining faintly down at the horizon, that’s the Lynx. You won’t see the Wolf or the Leopard for a little while yet; they’ll rise later in the night.’

  He looked perplexed for a moment. ‘Curious, that,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Looks as if they’ll converge, come vernal equinox.’

  Then he shook his head and trotted below deck to curl up with Old Smoky, leaving Pertelot to stare into the skies and wonder.

  I feel my kittens turn in the light of the Great Cat’s smile, she thought.

  But in the dark recesses of her skull, some other idea trembled. She felt it. She pushed it down.

  ‘I am a cat,’ she whispered defiantly. ‘I am a cat like other cats; and these kittens will be like other kittens. I will carry them with me to Tintagel and give birth to them like any mother. I shall feed them and guard them—’ she lifted her head to the blazing sky ‘—and not even you will take them from me while I live.’

  Late the next afternoon they sailed into harbor.

  Old Smoky stowed the canvas, started the engine, and threaded the boat neatly between the rocky outcrops that bracketed the estuary. The town rose up on either side of a wide river dotted with moored boats and colorful buoys. Nestling between evergreens at the eastern entrance to the town was a ruined fort, its walls gray and foursquare against the foliage. The remains of its companion guarded the western bank. Houses had been piled, it seemed, one upon another, street upon street, from the water’s edge to the top of the hill. Quays and a boatyard passed on one side, a deserted beach on the other. Then a marina full of bobbing pleasure craft. Smells wove a tapestry in the air to catch the attention of the three cats: a distinct but not overwhelming odor of humans and their vehicles, estuarine salt, sharp tang of fish, wood smoke and coal fires – a bustle of life.

 
; Pengelly drew it all down into his lungs and sighed.

  ‘I love this town. It smells like home to me.’

  Pertelot was curious. ‘I thought the Guillemot was your home?’

  ‘Aye, ‘tis, my dear, when we’m away. But when we’m home, well, this is home,’ he said simply.

  Sealink leaned across to the Queen. ‘Make what you like of that, hon,’ she said.

  ‘I shall miss it,’ said Pengelly.

  And he gazed sentimentally at the passing jetties draped with emerald weed, the golden light streaming from uncurtained windows.

  The Mau gave Sealink a look. ‘What?’

  Sealink shrugged and shook her head. ‘Aren’t you staying, then?’

  ‘How can I, my dear? My duty’s clear. ‘Twouldn’t be right to let two females cross those moors on their own!’

  Sealink growled. ‘My,’ she said, ‘this sure is old-world down here.’

  She stuck her face into Pengelly’s.

  ‘I’ve traveled all my life with no help from males. As for Queenie here, well, she may be thin but she’s from old stock, an’ they got this far on their own. You been real kind, sir, in allowing us to share your boat and your food and all. Even if it was because you fancied the fur off me.’

  The growl turned into a brief, throaty purr.

  ‘And maybe that’s okay, and I’ll come by here again when I’ve visited this Tintagel place. But Pertelot and me’ll be on our way tonight, without help from no randy old tom.’

  Pengelly received this diatribe looking at once forlorn and hopeful. The first of these emotions advertised itself in the eye that considered the calico full-on, the second lurked in the one that peered craftily up and away.

  ‘You may have your joke, my dear,’ he said, ‘but you’ll need all the help you can get. The moors are old and treacherous, and her ladyship here has kits to think of…’

  Pertelot regarded him thoughtfully.

  She would miss his gentle humor and his old-fashioned manners. But he mustn’t go with them. He was an old cat, and she would not put him in danger. Of course, he had already sensed that. It was his pride that was at risk, not his chance to dance with a calico queen in her prime. Or perhaps it was both.