by Jon Berkeley
But what of Little? The vast dreams that fill her sleep are beyond anything you or I have ever imagined. She is soaring high above the Earth, riding the speeding winds among bright billowing clouds that tower above her as thunder rumbles deep in their bellies. All around her the One Song, of which we have never heard more than a lost echo, fills the skies of her dreams like a braided river of light. She sings as she swoops and climbs, feeling the thrill of speed in her stomach, and the wind sings with her. She becomes aware of two angels, riding on either side of her. They still the wind and silence the Song, and the clouds dissolve into a gray fog. “Silverpoint,” says one. “Where is he?”
“Where is Silverpoint?” echoes the other, and he reaches out and lays a cold hand on her forehead. Little whimpers quietly in her sleep.
And now, if owls are as wise as they say, you will know that it’s time to leave in search of that crunchy mouse you fancied for supper, for the tree in which you are resting is home to a hundred cats. They have begun to slink out along the branches and drop to the ground, and Little is waking from her sky-blown dream.
CHAPTER NINE
THE COUNCIL OF CATS
Miles Wednesday, sleep-muddled and blanket-warmed, woke to find Little shaking him by the shoulder. The tree house seemed quieter and draftier than before. The only sound was the creaking of branches and the soft snores of Lady Partridge, and he realized that the cats had all left.
“Where have they gone?” whispered Miles.
“To their Grand High Council, in the gazebo. They hold it every third full moon. We should go and see what they’re saying.”
Miles stretched and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He pulled Tangerine from his inside pocket, to check that he was all right. Little watched him as she pulled on the old overcoat. “What do you call him?” she asked.
“Tangerine,” said Miles. “He used to be bright orange once, but he’s not too keen on baths.”
“Have you had him for a long time?” said Little.
Miles nodded. “I’ve always had him,” he said. “He’s the only thing I have that my…that I had when I came to the orphanage.”
“Your parents gave him to you?” said Little softly.
“I suppose so,” said Miles. It was something he did not like to talk about, and he shifted uncomfortably on the creaky floorboards. Mrs. Pinchbucket had told him that his parents had left the orphanage laughing and driven away in a shiny car, leaving him on the doorstep. She told this to all the children, and Miles did not believe it. It was hard to imagine what kind of monsters could leave their children with nasty Mrs. Pinchbucket and her brutish husband, and he preferred to believe that his parents were dead. They had been swallowed by time, and his only link to them was Tangerine.
“Can I see him?” Little reached out her hand. Miles hesitated. He had never parted with Tangerine, not even for a moment. It felt strange to be handing him to someone else. Little took the small bear gently and propped him on her knees. She looked into his clouded glass eyes for a long time, as the tree house creaked gently in the breeze, then she leaned close and whispered something into Tangerine’s ear. She whispered very quietly, and as she did so Miles felt a strange sensation, like the warm breath of some invisible giant, passing through the tree house walls and ruffling his hair before disappearing into the night.
Little smiled to herself, and put Tangerine down on the floor. Instead of flopping straight over, Tangerine kept his feet, and as Miles watched in disbelief he began to totter across the Persian carpet toward him. It was a wobbly path that he traced, and he fell over several times, picking himself up each time until he reached Miles’s knee. He began to climb, and Miles reached down instinctively to help him. His threadbare fur and saggy stuffing felt the same as they always had, but he wriggled in Miles’s hand, and when Miles tried to help him into his pocket, Tangerine clung to him and squeezed, just as Miles had hugged him ever since he could remember. Suddenly he felt warmer in his thin jacket. He looked at Little, who was watching him with a smile. “How did you do that?” he whispered.
“I found his name in the One Song,” she said, “and I sang it back to him. Don’t ever tell Silverpoint. He’d be very angry.”
“Can you do that with just anything?”
Little shook her head. “Everything has a name in the One Song, but I am only learning, and there are many things whose names I don’t know. I found Tangerine’s real name there because you brought him to life in your imagination, and you made his name strong and bright, even though you didn’t know it.”
Tangerine wriggled into his accustomed place in Miles’s pocket. With his head swimming, Miles buttoned his jacket carefully and followed Little down the rope ladder into the swaying weeds below. She set off around the empty mansion, still limping on her bandaged ankle. On the far side of the house the path curved away between the trees and around an old pond, choked now with weeds and long since abandoned by the swans. A small ornamental house with an open front perched on the edge of the pond, where Lady Partridge and her visitors had once sat on summer afternoons, fanning themselves and watching the swans sail among the water lilies. This was the gazebo, and in its dilapidated ruins the last few stragglers were just arriving to attend the Council of Cats. Lady Partridge’s hundred cats had been joined by several stocky mousers from the surrounding farms, a number of strays, and a delegation of town cats from the tall houses of Larde.
Little put her finger to her lips and beckoned to Miles. He followed her to a willow tree beside the pond, whose feathery branches hung to the ground, making a sort of leafy cavern. They ducked under the tree and sat themselves on a carpet of dry leaves. Between the branches that trailed in the water’s edge, they could see across the pond and into the gazebo, which was so packed with cats that those on the lip of the pond were in danger of falling into the water. A beam of moonlight shone through a hole in the roof and picked out a large tomcat. He was completely white except for a black tail and ears, as though he had been dipped in ink at both ends. He sat on top of an oblong of sandstone, carved with a tangle of leaves and a horned face, that stood on its end in the middle of the gazebo.
The black-eared cat opened his mouth and let out a low yowl, which silenced the others for a moment. Little sat forward as though to hear better. For some minutes the cats meowed and growled back and forth as cats will, especially when they are outside your window and you are trying to get to sleep. Miles listened as carefully as he could, but he could make no sense from the sounds the cats were making. “What are they saying?” he asked Little. She put her finger to her lips again, and leaned over to whisper in his ear. “We must be quiet. We would not be welcome if they knew we were here.”
“I can’t understand a thing,” said Miles.
“You are listening too hard. You must stop trying to listen before you can hear. The voices are there, and they’re not that different from your own.”
Miles tried to grasp what she was saying, but it made little more sense to him than the mewing of the cats. He sat and listened for a while longer, but soon became sleepy and bored. He felt in his pocket for Tangerine, who grabbed his finger and lifted himself out. Miles put him down, and Tangerine crawled about happily, rummaging among the crackling leaves and tossing the furry willow seeds at Miles when he found them. In the distance a voice was saying, “The circus cats have a right to hunt our fields, provided their stay is short.”
Somehow Miles knew, without even looking, that this voice belonged to the black-eared cat perched on his sandstone throne. He forgot Tangerine for a moment and stared in amazement at the moonlit figure in the center of the gazebo. The cat’s voice sounded just the same as it had before, and he couldn’t understand why the meaning had not been clear to him all along.
“What right is that?” called a bony black cat who was wedged into a corner at the back. “There’s three and more big cats hunting our fields since yesterday. Fat fellows they are too, living well enough on circus leftovers. Why they need t
o be muscling in on our pickings is beyond me.”
A large cat, stretched out on the gazebo roof, chuckled quietly at this. “No one tells us where we can hunt and where we can lie. We are citizens of the road and guests of every town. Besides, as you say yourself, there are plenty of scraps to be had at the circus, if you have the teeth to ask for them.”
Several of the cats that crowded the roof and the surrounding trees sat up to look at the speaker. One hissed at him and stalked to the other end of the roof, his tail held high. “I wouldn’t share food with a circus cat, nor would I turn my back on one for a second. I’ve heard it said…” He hesitated.
“Go on,” said the circus cat, in a slow voice with a hint of amusement. “What’s the chatter among the gutters and alleys?”
“It’s no laughing matter,” said the other, whose name was Tiptoe. “I heard that…that a king of cats was killed in that circus, some years ago.”
The circus cat was on his feet in a flash, and had swiped at Tiptoe before he had a chance to move, almost knocking him from the roof. “You heard wrong. There are no tigers in this circus,” he hissed, “and there never were.”
“I thought,” said a fluffy cat from a low branch in a nearby tree, “that the lion was the king of cats.”
The entire council erupted into yowls of laughter at this. There were cries of “Shame!” and the unfortunate cat began to clean his whiskers busily, pretending that it was someone else who had spoken.
“You’ve spent too much time among humans,” said Blackears. “Every cat knows that the tiger wears the mark of royalty. Lions are braggarts with big hair, but there is no royal blood in their veins, no more than in mine or yours. However”—he looked up through the broken roof to where the circus cat stood—“this is a serious allegation, and it is the council’s decision that you will come down here and present your case before the bench. You will not find yourselves welcomed among the local cats while such suspicions hang over your kind.”
The circus cat dropped through the roof onto the carved column, right beside Blackears. He was a heavy gray cat with a large head, and he put his face close to the other cat and sniffed at him, before dropping casually to the ground. The other cats made a space for him hurriedly.
“Well?” said the circus cat.
“Is it true,” said Blackears, “that a tiger met an unnatural death in your circus?”
“It’s not my circus. And there has been no tiger there in my time.”
“And how long might that be?”
“I’m three and more winters old,” said the gray cat, who in common with all cats could count no further than three.
“Surely you would have heard of such a terrible crime.”
“No doubt,” said the gray cat, yawning. “Which simply bears out that it never happened. There never was a tiger with the Circus Oscuro.”
“There’s a tiger on the poster,” said the bony black cat in the corner. “They’re all over town.”
“That’s right,” said Tiptoe. “How do you explain that?”
The gray cat got to his feet and began to thread his way through the crowd toward the door of the gazebo. “It’s obvious you know nothing about the ways of the circus,” he said over his shoulder. “Every circus, even if it consists of nothing more than a pair of poodles and a clown, has a tiger on its poster. It’s tradition, and circus folk would sooner blow themselves from a cannon than depart from tradition.”
The circus cat left the gazebo and made his way around the edge of the pond, his tail high in the air. Blackears called the council to order and began a discussion on the strange rumors of a sheep-eating monster that some of the stray cats had reported. Miles picked up Tangerine, who appeared to have fallen asleep, and put him back in his pocket.
“Come on,” he said to Little. “We had better get back. The sun will be up in a couple of hours.” They made their way back through the overgrown garden and climbed the ladder to the tree house. Little fell asleep almost immediately, but Miles sat quietly by the fire, his head abuzz with strange happenings. Outside the tree house a chorus of birds sang the sun into place, just below the rim of the world.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SURLY HEN
Miles Wednesday, clean-shirted and cat-surrounded, spooned hot porridge into his mouth in the half-light before dawn, while Lady Partridge rubbed soot from the hearth into Little’s hair. The result was a dirty, dark gray that would pass for black if you didn’t look too closely. Against the dark hair her skin was white as a pearl.
Little was dressed in a boy’s jacket, shirt and trousers that Lady Partridge had produced from an old leather trunk in the corner. They were a few sizes too big, but with the trousers turned up and the shirtsleeves rolled they fit her well enough. “These,” said Lady Partridge, “belonged to Will, the gardener’s boy. I used to pass them on to the orphanage when he outgrew them, until I discovered that horrible Pinchbucket woman was selling them to a stallholder at the market and keeping the few pennies for herself.” She had rummaged again in the trunk and found an ice-cream-free shirt for Miles, and a cap that would at least partly hide his face. The shirt felt clean and a little stiff, as he spooned the last of the porridge from his bowl. He felt in his jacket pocket, but Tangerine was sleeping.
Lady Partridge stepped back to admire her handiwork. “You look like you’ve just fallen off the back of a coal truck, my dear, but I don’t think anyone would recognize you too easily.” She wiped her hands on an old cloth that hung from the tree trunk beside her. She looked from one to the other. “Now then,” she said, “the longest journey begins with a single step. It’s time you were going, the two of you, or you’ll miss your train.” She blew her nose loudly. “And remember,” she said from behind her handkerchief, “wherever your road takes you, stick together and look out for each other. Really, if I weren’t so generous of figure I would like nothing better than to shin down that ladder and come with you.”
They dropped from the ladder into an early-morning mist that blanketed the deserted garden. The dark shape of the old mansion seemed to float among the trees, and the air felt cold and damp after the warmth of the tree house. Little still limped slightly. They clambered out through the gap in the wall, but took a different route through the woods, skirting around the bottom of the hill until they reached the lane that led to the train station.
They walked quickly along the lane between the tall hedges. Just as they reached the station the sun broke over the mountains, lighting the tops of the ornate chimney pots on the station-house roof. An old train stood at the platform. Its coaches were a dark mossy green and rather tattered. The platform was deserted except for the stationmaster, a tall gray-haired man who walked with a stoop, as though he carried an invisible sack on his shoulders. He was making his way along the platform, shutting the train doors as he went—slam…slam…slam. He did not seem in any hurry.
Miles opened the station gate. It squeaked loudly, but the stationmaster continued along the platform without a backward glance. “Excuse me,” said Miles. The stationmaster slammed another door. “Hello?” said Miles. The stationmaster shuffled onward, his frayed gray trousers dusting the platform.
“Maybe he’s deaf,” said Little. The stationmaster stopped. He slammed one more door, then turned around slowly to face them.
“Not deaf, busy,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of doors to close here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“We just want to know if this is the train for the Palace of Laughter,” said Miles.
The old man sucked his teeth. He had very few teeth left, and when he sucked them, his wrinkled lips wrapped around them like gray curtains. “The Palace of Laughter,” he repeated.
“That’s right,” said Miles. The stationmaster scratched his head. Miles produced the silver ticket from his pocket and held it out. The stationmaster barely glanced at it. “Says tomorrow,” he said.
Miles looked again at the ticket. “Train leaves at dawn tomorrow,” it said alo
ng the bottom. “But this is tomorrow,” he said. “I got the ticket yesterday.”
“Today is today, son,” said the stationmaster patiently, “and tomorrow is tomorrow. Least it was when I went to school. Train leaves at dawn tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow this ticket will still say ‘tomorrow,’” said Miles. “Tomorrow is always tomorrow!”
“Aye,” said the old man. “You’re catching on, lad. And dawn tomorrow is when your train leaves.”
“How can we be sure?” persisted Miles.
The stationmaster sighed, his lips flapping slightly in the draft. “Because it says so on the ticket. But don’t take my word for it, ask them odd folk at the circus. Them’s the ones who give out the tickets. Now if you don’t mind, I have a busy day ahead of me.” He turned and slammed another door. It was a long train, and there seemed to be no one aboard.
“What do we do now?” asked Little as they walked back along the platform.
“I don’t know,” said Miles. “We can’t wait around another day, and it might be a good thing if we could get to the Palace of Laughter before the train does anyhow.”
“It might, but we still don’t know where it is.”
“I think,” said Miles, “our best chance might be for me to sneak into the circus again, and see if I can find out anything more. You’ll have to keep out of sight when we get closer. They might recognize you, soot or no soot.”
They followed the rutted road as it curved around the base of the hill toward the long field. Birds chattered and sang in the trees by the roadside, but the sun had not yet begun to warm the air. As they came within sight of the field, Miles stopped dead in the long shadow of a poplar tree. The red and black tent was nowhere to be seen, and the trucks and wagons of the strange circus had packed up in the night, as silently and unexpectedly as they had arrived. Not a hoop or a bucket or a rusty peg remained. A large oval patch of trampled ground was all the evidence that was left of the Circus Oscuro—that and the tangle of wheel ruts that curved from the field and out along the road toward the mountains.