Children of Bast

by Frederick Fuller

  When I pushed my head in, I saw the outline of a huge amait come down on a rat almost his size. In an instant, the rat’s head disappeared in the amait’s mouth and stopped moving. I couldn’t tell if it was a tom or a mollie, but it looked at me, flattened its ears and growled a warning. Blood oozed from its mouth. I pulled my head out, raced to the nearest dumpster, jumped on top, flattened, moved slowly to the rim and watched as the big amait crawled out of the crack and strolled to the center of the alley, the rat dangling from his mouth.

  In the low yellow streetlight I could see it was a huge, gray tom. He dropped the rat and crouched over it. Holding it with one paw, he ripped its belly open with a snip of his teeth and a quick tear with his claws. I saw the guts roll out and watched him lap them up as he purred like a new car.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Yup, those were the days, all right,” Chubby said, chuckling. “I was raised on rats and mice, and there’s nothing, nothing at all, like a warm, juicy kill. Mmmm!”

  “So, why don’t you indulge now?”

  “Old. We’ve talked about that. No use going over it again. Continue, please.”

  I almost puked remembering what Adele told me about the taste of mice, and I guessed rats would be the same. And watching the guts pour out and watching him lap them up . . . yuk! But, I knew I was watching my teacher. If I made friends with him, I’d learn to hunt and kill. I watched him slurp down the entire rat, and then wash his face.

  Jumping to the top of a trashcan below me and then to the ground, I kept an eye on him as he continued to wash. I slipped around the corner of the dumpster,

  Here goes either my fortune or my death, I thought. I pranced out cheerfully, hoping to catch him off guard. I might not die if he thought I was bonkers. Then, again, maybe not.

  His ears flattened, a growl rumbled from deep down, he hissed, and then dropped to fight position. I didn’t know what to do, so I sank to the ground, rolled on my back, made with a sad look and purred. It worked. His ears came up and he stopped growling although the fighting stance remained.

  “Eih axbār,” I said, still on my back.

  He stood and stared at me. “Who are you?” he said, his voice croaky. “You the one Mutt told me about?”

  “Mutt? I don’t know a Mutt.”

  “Never mind. Who are you, what do you want, I don’t like other amai in my territory, so you better run like hell.” He flattened his ears again, growled and tightened his fighting position.

  “Hold it. I don’t want to invade your territory. I need a teacher.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Okay, Chubby, what’s so funny now? You’re coming apart like a cheap toy.”

  He rolled on his back and gut laughed until I thought he was going to pass out.

  “Okay, let me in on it, you old fart.”

  His words popped to the surface like bubbles in water. “You really said you needed a teacher?” Laughter grabbed him again.

  “Yeah. So, what should I have asked him?”

  “It’s a wonder he didn’t eat you. Gaylord, you’re priceless. An amait like no other: all guts and no brains.”

  I was disgusted. “I gotta dig a hole. I am so thrilled to give you a reason to crack up.”

  “Please hurry. I can’t wait to know what this wild amait did next.”

  I went out and took a beh yeh. He was still laughing when I got back, so I sighed and laid down. “Say, don’t we know a tom who took on a raccoon? With all guts and no brains?”

  “I ate that raccoon. Tell me you ate the wild amait and we’ll be even.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Okay, this wild amait, as you call him, stopped snarling and stood up and looked at me a long time, frowning.

  “You’re wacko, right? You’re from one of those fancy apartments and you got out and now you’re scared khara-less, right? I’ve seen it over and over, but if you scram right now, I won’t tear you to pieces. Dig?” He continued staring at me, but I couldn’t say anything. Suddenly, he ballooned up twice his size and hissed so hard in my face that I felt it ripple. “I said scram, Kith Brain!”

  I cringed and almost puked from his breath, but I found my voice. “I’m not crazy and I’m not from around here, but you’re right, I am scared, khara-less, whatever that means, and I am a kith brain. I need someone to teach me to hunt and kill, and when I watched you from that dumpster over there, I knew you were the one I wanted. Good job, by the way. I mean that rat.” I was shaking like a kilaab passing scrap iron, but I continued to lay there and carry on the bluff.

  “Your maama didn’t teach you?” He sat again and looked puzzled.

  “No. I was imprisoned from birth and only escaped a short while ago.”

  “Aw, man. A stupid, pampered, soft-as-khara house amait” He frowned and growled again. “I hate your kind worst of all. Snobbish, lookin’ down your nose—you’re all alike. Now scram while I’m not hungry and in a good mood.”

  “All I want is for you to teach me how to hunt and kill. I’ll leave as soon as you do.”

  He started toward me. “Go back to your dry food, your canned meat that looks like the khara it’ll become and stinks worse. Guys like you’ll never have the guts for what we do. Git!”

  I was paralyzed. If he was going to kill me, I’d have to lay there and . . . die. He loomed over me. I smelled his breath again, like old metal, like rats, and I looked at his matted gray faraawi that stunk like his breath. Scars like yours, Chubby, lined his face, and his right shoulder had a big plug of skin ripped out. He stood for a long time breathing on me and growling. Suddenly, he laughed and sprawled on his side. “You ain’t afraid, are you? You are nuts, a friggin’ wacko staring at a’maar. What’s your name?”

  “Gaylord.”

  He lurched back and eyed me carefully. “Gaylord? Now I know you’re nuts and you’re lyin’. Gaylord is not an amait name. Is that what your owners called you?”

  “Amai are not owned,” I heard myself say in a flat voice.

  “You’re so stupid. Some of you kith brains even wear collars. I seen your kind sashaying along the street or being carried in some kind of basket. Fat, spoiled, coddled—you disgust me.”

  “I never asked to be spoiled or coddled, and I don’t think I’m fat.” I didn’t know where I was getting the sass, Chubby, but it didn’t impress him. “Listen. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “None of your damned business.” He licked between the toes of a paw. “Fergus.”

  “Fergus?”

  “Yeah, my maama was a Lap, but my old man was part serval and I got his ears.” He smiled, looked away a moment, watching a memory, then said, “Now, there was a tough alley amait, my father. Saw him bite into a cop once and live to tell about it.”

  I gaped a moment because I was getting my head around an amait biting a cop, or any bašar, for that matter.

  “Okay, listen, Fergus, I think I could be a real amait if you’d teach me. You can kill me, sure, and you’ll find it easy. But think what a reputation you’d have if you’d turn a soft-as-khara house amait into a real alley amait and real fighter and killer. Huh? What would your friends say then?” I felt I had to keep the baloney flowing or die.

  “I don’t have any friends.” He frowned an washed his toes again. “Well, maybe Mutt.”

  “Okay, who’s Mutt?”

  “None of your business.”

  He looked at me again and I could tell he was deciding whether to rip my throat out or beat the life out of me with his paws. “You got guts, Pretty Tom, so I’m taking you on. One week from now, you learn what I know, or you become a lot of dried faraawi in the gutter. Deal?” It was the only deal I had, so I went for it. “But we can’t tell the amai around here your name’s Gaylord. You must have an amait name. What’d your maama call you?”

  “Nebibi, after some wild amait that lived in the woods.” I thanked my soused maama as I said it.

  “Not much better’n Gaylord, but okay, Nebibi. Just so you don’t go honkin’
me off or you’ll really be in the woods . . . dead.’’

  He hissed in my face again, but this time the whiff I got of his breath wasn’t as bad. Maybe I was used to it already. “I get it, Fergus. I get it.”

  I hoped I could make it because I found out this ragged tom had a messed up mind, twisted and disturbed. That’s why he was the best teacher I could have found.

  Chapter 9

  I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days. Bill Dana

  Tuyuur Song broke when we settled onto chair cushions on the porch of an apartment.

  Fergus said, “I sleep around a lot because I don’t want some hare-brained bašar to grab me and try to make a pet outta me, or kill me because he hates amai,”

  He took a quick bath, but it didn’t seem to help either his appearance or smell. He was gray with white around his face and chest. His faraawi was curly, and he had a splash of orange between his yellow eyes. His muscles rippled along his lean body, but he was beat up, like I said. And, his ears were huge, just a little smaller than araanib ears. They made him look surprised all the time.

  Mumbling through a yawn, he said, “This is the best place to sleep during the day because they don’t seem to care. Never come out; never chase me, nothing. So I’m here a lot. Make yourself cozy, Sweet Cakes, and sleep. We’ll visit Mutt tonight, and it’ll be party time. With Mutt it’s always party time.” He laughed and yawned again. “It’ll be lesson one.” He was asleep before his mouth closed.

  I was really burnt, but my mind raced. Pretending to sleep, I mulled over again what I had done and I was pretty proud of myself. I couldn’t wait to tell you and Adele. But, then I remembered Adele saying never to come back and I got furious. Who the hell was she, anyway, I thought.

  She didn’t make sense. She told me to learn how to make it on my own because she might not be there in the future. So when I said I wanted to be a real amait, to hunt and kill my food, she said, no. What? I have to do it her way, or it’s a meow, an insult and goodbye? I decided right then I would go back to see her and show her I was no . . . what did Fergus call me? . . . a kith brain. I might even whip up on her to bring the point home, but, of course, knew, even if I could, I’d ever fight her.

  The sun got higher and hotter, I dozed. Then right before Time of Owls I felt Fergus’ warty tongue slather across my face, leaving a trail of stinking spit.

  “Up and at ‘em. We got places to go.” He stretched, yawned and blinked his eyes. I felt better; he’d accepted me, maybe.

  I did a quick swipe of my face and followed. It was cool, but the sky was broken up in red and blue that changed fast as the End of Light settled in. Fergus led me across a park and down to the shore of a lake where he drank and took a whiz. I did the same.

  Fergus looked my way. “Ever wonder how much amait beh yeh been left here? I’ll bet enough to fill that lake.”

  “No, I’ve never thought about it.” I said. “You must be a philosopher.”

  “Where’d you pick up that word?”

  “From the bašar I lived with at a university.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Look, Nebibi, don’t try to impress me with fancy bašar words, okay. I don’t know what a university is and I don’t care. What was that you called me?”

  “A philosopher. Someone with great ideas, I think.”

  “Well, just keep it to yourself. I’m an alley amait, that’s all. And, so are you right now, I might add. Keep it simple.”

  I smiled and ran after him as he took off down the beach.

  Mutt lived in a grove of bushes near the shore. Fergus chirped and Mutt appeared. He was a scruffy, battered tom with odd eyes, one yellow and one blue-white. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or signaling.

  His chest and front legs were white with gray and orange splotches across his back and down his tail, which was sort of short and thick. His back legs were white, too, as was most of his face except for more orange and gray splotches on his ears and the top of his head. Like Fergus and you, Chubby, his face was crossed with scars along with his slim muscular body where the scars tangled like tree branches.

  When I got to know him, I found out he was very bright and very disturbed. Whenever we saw a bašar, maybe walking along the park or lounging on the grass, Mutt would go into his deranged act. With his eyes blinking, he gave out this nose purr that sounded like twigs snapping, or like he was clearing his throat and gagging. He’d go up to them, stagger a bit and pretend to be friendly and sweet, rubbing against their legs and scent marking with his jaw. Of course, pushovers as they are, they’d fall for it, pet him and always find something to feed him. In the end he’d take off like a streak, laughing and cackling. He was loony, but funny; I liked him right off.

  But there was something sad about him, too, because offbeat types like him, as you know, are considered unusual by us and rare by bašar, like they are royalty. I wondered why he was on the street. He’d been abandoned, was my guess, or had gotten lost, and it had made him crazy. I planned to ask Fergus later.

  But that first night I was a student, and Fergus and Mutt were my teachers. We went into Fergus’ territory, the alley where I’d met him, and did a rat apiece, as they put it. Do a rat. That was their lingo for pulling something off, like pull off doing a rat. Okay, I don’t know what it means, but we went and did a rat. Killed one. Ate it. Dig?

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Go ahead, laugh, Chubby. I’m used to it.”

  “You are so funny. You picked up all that mumbo-jumbo from them, right?”

  “Right. I’m a street amait, now, so I need to talk like one.”

  “Oh, brother! By the way, I do know how to do a rat. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mutt pulled me aside before we went in. “Now listen, Tenderfoot, rats are dangerous, mean, strong, and their bite can make you so sick you wanna die. They got these long front teeth like knives, so don’t ever corner one, or it’ll chew you to pieces. They’re scared of us, but they ain’t cowards. Okay?” Mutt, the coach, was wound up. “And they got hearing almost as good as us, so you gotta be even quieter than you usually are. Their noses are okay but nothing to brag about. We can smell a rat and know it’s a rat. But they just smell stuff. So, we smell like rats purposely so they can’t sniff us out. Bet you wondered about that: why Fergus and me smell like rats. Huh?”

  “Yeah, well, it crossed my mind, and my nose. You guys are disgusting. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s good,” Fergus said. “The more we stink like rats, the more they can’t find us. They don’t see too good, either.”

  “Let’s go,” Mutt whispered.

  Squeezing through an opening where two bricks were missing, my eyes adjusted immediately, and I could see shadows darting around like balls. I love chasing balls, so I started for one. Mutt’s big paw landed on my neck and pushed me down.

  “Wait for them to come to you,” he murmured in my ear. “Grab the head and bite hard. Take ‘em like you do a mouse only clamp down as hard as you can so’s you can kill ‘em quick.” I was glad he told me because I’d never done a mouse.

  Twisting and squirming on his belly, Fergus slithered across the floor behind a jar that lay on its side where he became a statue. Mutt kept close to me, but we turned just so our rumps were touching, making a v-trap. We waited. All we could hear was soft shuffling of the shadowy balls that scampered all around.

  No sound came from Fergus, but we saw him move quickly toward the hole to the outside, and we could see the rat dangling from his mouth. My mouth dropped open. He was good.

  When I looked back, Mutt was gone and I was staring straight into the face of the biggest rat I’d ever seen; actually, the first rat I’d seen eyeball to eyeball. Like slow motion in a dream, I snapped the rat’s head in my mouth and bit with all I could. Blood spewed into my mouth and gagged me, but I swallowed and started out.
I hate it when she’s right, but Adele had described the taste on the mark: it was like licking a rusty drainpipe.

  Just as I jumped through the opening, Mutt bolted out with his catch. We ran to the side of a dumpster and dropped our kills on the ground.

  Fergus gave me a firm lick on the ear, and said, “Good work, Blue Bells. You might make it out of here alive after all. Shall we dine?”

  As I’d seen him do the night before, Fergus held the rat down and ripped the belly open with his teeth. Mutt did the same. Watching them lap the guts did not inspire me to do the same.

  “Hey. You gonna eat?” Mutt asked, his mouth stuffed with bloody rat meat. “What’s wrong?”

  Fergus answered, “The kid’s never ate a rat before, have you Kid?” He looked at me and smiled, bloody juices running out the sides of his mouth. “Here, lemme help.” He slid over and took my rat. “Okay, paw on the rat’s head. Go ahead.” I did as he said. “Now, right under the chin here is a flap of skin. Grab it in your front teeth. I usually hook a fang in it so’s it won’t slip, then pull. Opens right up. Go ahead.”

  I took the flap in my teeth and pulled, and like he said, it opened up. Gushed out is better. Or, maybe exploded is even better because the gory splash went up my nose and over my face. Talk about the smell of rust; it was horrible. I ran to the middle of the alley and puked like I had a hairball the size of my head. I dry-heaved until my eyes watered and my nose ran. Mutt and Fergus laughed so hard they screamed.

  When he could, Fergus yelled, “It’s an acquired taste, Sweet Thing. You’ll get use to it.” They returned to laughing while I washed my face furiously and had to taste that muck each time I wet my paws.

  “Eat really fast, kid,” Mutt said. “Just get the food inside. We don’t much like the taste either, but it keeps us alive. So, don’t take time to taste, just gulp.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  “They were right about it being an acquired taste,” Chubby said. “Hold on. I gotta beh yeh.”

  While I waited, I thought of Adele and how she hated the smell of rat on me when I came back, but I hope she admired me for learning what I learned.