“My paws curl up at the sill of the door every time I leave the house,” she said, feeling a rush of relief at being able to share her experiences with fellow Senders. “And my paw pads sweat in nervousness, but it goes differently with my whiskers, as they scent the air outside.”
Begum made an understanding purr. “They stand up in eagerness, don’t they?”
“Yes,” said Mara. “They tingle, and they whisper to me that the night is young, and the darkness holds much else besides nightmares. And there’s Doginder, or sometimes Hulo—we go out together, so it’s not so bad. My Bigfeet worried about me at first, but now I think they’re used to it; they leave the window open so I can return at the first light of dawn.”
Umrrow and Jalebi caught the same thought on one another’s whiskers—trust the Sender of Nizamuddin to sail forth accompanied by a canine companion!
Begum asked, “You haven’t tried summoning yet, have you, Mara?” The Sender’s dreams had quietened, and there had been no complaints from Magnificat, or from the river cats of Madhya Pradesh, or from the mountain Senders for many moons.
“I have,” said Mara, her ears flicking as she tried to explain, “but not exactly with Senders.” She had dropped in often to chat with Rani and Ozzy, but the great tiger had settled down with his mate, letting the lion cubs amuse him. He no longer pushed so hard against the bars of his cage. She never took Ozzy along for a walk again. But she had once startled the bats by summoning an unsuspecting pair of hyaenas from the zoo in one of her midnight experiments; the hyaenas had appeared high up in the air, and Pola and Helen had bared their pearly fangs at her, squeaking indignantly.
The Sender of Nizamuddin gave the quiet gardens a quick once-over, her whiskers checking for Bigfeet, but in the summer heat, the only residents of this Old Delhi park who were active were the parrots and the peacocks, and a few darting squirrels. Even the cheels were resting, waiting for the relative coolness of the evening before they made their flights.
“Perhaps I could practise here,” she said, and before Begum could stop her, Mara raised her whiskers.
“Wait till you have your first lessons…” Begum began, the calico’s tail waving in alarm, but the Sender’s green eyes were already squinting in concentration.
The earth whispered, and a few grains of dust kicked up as heat waves shimmered in the air.
“Mara, I hope you know what you’re doing!” said Umrrow, her ears pinned far back to her sleek head.
A dry, hot wind rose out of nowhere. The peacocks scattered, calling as dust clouds boiled up, spreading their dull yellow over the green gardens. The heavens opened up, shrieking at them, and the searing winds howled in their ears. There was dust everywhere, in their fur, in their tails, stinging their pink nostrils and getting into their ears, and then the dust formed into a whirling ball. The dustball spun in the hot winds, growing bigger and bigger, and Begum yowled as it formed teeth and whiskers, hissing at them.
The infamous hot wind of Delhi’s summer scorched their paws as a furious white cat shimmered in front of the statue. She held a tiny, wriggling, silver fish speared on the claw of her left paw, and her beautiful tail lashed from side to side.
“I might have known it was too good to last!” Magnificat hissed. “It’s you, isn’t it? Sender of Nizamuddin, what have I ever done to you that you should interrupt the best day of fishing I’ve had in the last two moons?”
Mara’s whiskers flattened in apology, and the dust storm abated, the winds slowing until their fur was no longer on edge.
“I’m so sorry!” she said to Magnificat. “It was an accident! Let me take you back home, Sender!”
“Oh no!” said Begum.
“Careful!” said Jalebi.
But they were too late. The skies opened up, and the Senders felt themselves pulled through the air, as Mara unfurled her whiskers and let the tips reach upwards. The park whirled around them, and dimly, they heard the startled squawk from Chancha and Meechi, the cries of the peacocks, the hoarse alarm from the tree of the cheels. And then the Circle of Senders shimmered and disappeared.
There was a roaring in Mara’s ears, the harsh judder of some sort of machinery, and then the lapping of water. The Sender opened her eyes, gingerly. She could see an orange lifebelt, and hear the lazy cry of an egret somewhere in the distance.
“Well done, Sender,” said Magnificat grimly. “I’ve never had a ferry crossing like this.”
The Circle of Senders hovered above the deck of a large ferry boat. The engineer bustled around in the cabin where the orange lifebelts hung in cheerful pairs. Egrets called to one another in consternation at the cats who appeared to float in mid-air. The sun shone down on the river, making its waves dance in the light, and fish leapt to the surface, staring at the Senders, their mouths opening and closing in surprise.
“It’s the fine-tuning,” said Mara desperately. “All I need to do is twitch my whiskers a little more to the side—yes, I think I’ve got it now. Sorry, Magnificat! See you soon. Ah. Perhaps that wasn’t the best way to put it.”
The Senders felt themselves rising again, as though they had been scooped up by one of the fluffy clouds that hung like a tempting loaf of fresh-baked pau over the river, and then they shimmered out of view again, all of them except for Magnificat.
The last thing they heard was Magnificat’s cross mew: “See you soon? See you soon? Don’t you dare, Sender of Nizamuddin, if I see you again in my dreams, I’ll turn you into a tailless Manx or my name isn’t Magnificat!”
Then they were back on the plinth, crouching near the hooves of the statue.
Mara’s paws were trembling.
“Is summoning always so exhausting?” she asked Begum.
Begum stared at the Sender of Nizamuddin.
“Only if,” she said, trying to keep her mew steady, “you try to shift an entire Circle of Senders at one go across a distance of who knows how many whisker lengths!”
Mara’s whiskers were still vibrating from the effort, but they caught her puzzlement.
“Let me explain,” said Jalebi, who had been cautiously grooming her fur just to make sure that nothing of her had been left behind on the river. “Most of us, when we’re working on summoning, do it differently.”
“Yes,” said Umrrow, her whiskers quivering. “We summon one Sender at a time!”
“Sorry,” said Mara. “I guess I’ll have to practise some more.”
“Under supervision,” said Begum hastily. “If this is what you can do as a novice to summoning, I don’t want to know what havoc you’ll create once you’ve had some training.” She washed her paws, and then gave the Sender of Nizamuddin a more kindly glance.
“You should end this sending and get some rest, Mara,” she said. “Your fur smells of exhaustion.”
Mara hadn’t stopped trembling; she didn’t argue with Begum. But she raised her green eyes to meet Begum’s deep brown ones.
“I should go home,” she said. “But perhaps I should ask all of you Senders, before we end this sending: what can the Nizamuddin clan do if things get worse?”
Begum and Jalebi sat back and considered the question. It was what they had been thinking about, before the business of the summoning had distracted them.
“How bad is it in Jangpura, across the canal?” Jalebi asked.
“Worse,” said Mara tersely, not wanting to talk about the pathetically thin strays she’d seen, listlessly mouthing scraps along with the rats and pigs on the canal banks.
“Then they can’t go there,” said Begum. “But from what you’ve shared, the scent of Nizamuddin has turned sour for the clan, has it not?”
“It’s either shift the Bigfeet or shift the clan,” said Umrrow. “Not that clans ever move out of their homes, though. I can’t imagine leaving Mehrauli ever.”
Begum could sense the tiredness on Mara’s whiskers. “We’ll pat the problem around for a bit, Mara,” she said.
The Sender of Nizamuddin shimmered in the air, beginni
ng to fade out. “I have to go,” she said. “My Bigfeet are calling me.”
“Don’t summon them!” said Begum, only half joking. The Senders watched the youngest and most powerful of them leave, and Begum wondered privately what or who Mara would end up summoning next.
“Begum?” asked Jalebi, her tail up. “Have any of the Delhi clans ever died out?”
“Often,” said Begum, “especially the smaller and more vulnerable clans. Many across the river have flourished only for two generations or three and then vanished, when the Bigfeet have built more of their hutches; the Ghaziabad clan dwindled years ago, and the malls killed off half the Gurgaon clans. But the old clans always survive, and Nizamuddin is one of the oldest in Delhi.”
Umrrow’s crossed eyes were sharper than usual.
“Some of the older clans haven’t had Senders for generations, have they?” she said. Her purr was low and thoughtful.
“When times are good,” Begum said, “clans can have generations of litters go by without a Sender. I can smell what you’re thinking, Umrrow, and you’re right: it works the other way around, too. All of us were born at times when our clans had special need of a Sender’s whiskers.”
“And this Sender,” said Jalebi, catching on, “has very long whiskers indeed. Long, and powerful.”
Begum and the Senders were silent for a few moments, considering the matter.
“The Sender of Nizamuddin is the most powerful Sender Delhi has seen in years, isn’t she?” said Umrrow.
“Yes,” said Begum, her whiskers reflecting what was on all their minds. “And if the clan of Nizamuddin is in the kind of trouble where they need a Sender with such long whiskers…”
The calico didn’t complete her mew. She stretched, and jumped down from the plinth. The other Senders left with her, but though they shimmered out of the park, their shapes melting back into the air, the scent of unease hovered in the Garden of the Cheels and clung like dust to the leaves for a long time.
Southpaw clung to the branches of the neem tree, ignoring the sharp tugs at his fur from the dust storm that had sprung up a few moments ago. The sudden wind had brought the car to a standstill, and they had huddled inside, the Bigfeet and Southpaw, waiting for the dust storm to pass. “Jackal winds” Miao used to call them; the first of the hot, dry storms that signalled the end of winter, the start of summer. A jackal wind slid in sneakily like the beast it was named after, blinding everyone in its path with fine, grey clouds of dust.
If it hadn’t been for the cyclist, he might have stayed in the car. But one of the Bigfeet had got out to check on Southpaw, worried that the cage would be covered in dust. Inside the cage, the tom’s fear had increased when the Bigfoot began to pull a sheet over the container. “Stop!” he’d mewed. “I can’t see and it cuts down on what I can smell—please don’t, I’m suffocating.” But the Bigfoot had murmured something incomprehensible.
It had happened so fast. Southpaw, mewing and turning in the cage, trying to reach his paws out to tell the Bigfoot he was scared, felt the cyclist come up near the open car door. But he wasn’t prepared for the bell, and the sound made him panic. He lunged for the door—and pushed it open. For a moment, he and the Bigfoot were at eye level, and then Southpaw had cried out in terror, as the cyclist peered into the car. He fought his way out from under the sheet, wriggling and yowling, and shot out from under the Bigfeet’s arm. The dust scoured his whiskers, confusing him. The other Bigfoot called out, urgently; he bolted away from the roar and clatter of the traffic on the road, heading for the neem tree that grew out of a brick wall.
The branches swayed dangerously in the breeze, but the tom stayed where he was, wrapping his paws around its trunk and digging his claws in. He looked down and his whiskers rose in incredulity. The dust howled across a vast expanse of green, but before he could take in the rolling acres of grass, the endless lines of trees and scrub, a high eldritch screech rang out, making the fur on his ears tremble.
It sounded close by, as though it had come from under the rose-and-black dome of the monument that stood alongside the neem tree. It was not a friendly sound, and the tom shivered, wondering what creatures lived here.
There was silence for the next few minutes, and slowly, Southpaw began to relax. He moved his bottom more snugly into a knot of hard wood on the trunk, and settling himself so that he wouldn’t slip, the tom allowed his eyes to close for what felt like the first time since he’d been placed in the cage and taken to the vet. His injured paw throbbed slightly, but when he flexed the limb, it seemed to be doing all right.
The wind shifted, and to his relief, the dust clouds veered the other way. Where were the Bigfeet? The tom turned to look at the road, and his heart gave a great thump.
Cars stood like lines of shiny beetles on the side of the road. Bigfeet walked up and down the pavements, many of them. He could not tell which ones belonged to the Sender’s Bigfeet. Perhaps they would be angry with him for running away. They had never hit him or Mara, but they had shouted when he’d left, and he didn’t want to risk finding out whether they would be just like the other Bigfeet in Nizamuddin, after all.
He wondered whether he could settle in the tree for the night; trees made for excellent climbing, but bad shelter. There didn’t seem to be birds roosting in the high branches, but Southpaw had a feeling they would come back when twilight fell over this place. Nor could he sleep in the branches; he would fall out. But he could rest, he thought, and the tom placed his head down on the bark, giving his whiskers and fur time to get back to normal. He had been flehmening; his teeth were still bared, and he realized he was growling. He stopped, and he did what Miao had taught him to do on their hunts. The tom brought his attention to the tips of his whiskers, concentrating on calming them down. He felt his breathing slow and come back to normal. The storm was passing; soon, there would be only the fading glow of the day’s heat. These branches were as good a place as any to rest; he could climb down once he was over his shock. At least, the tom told himself, there were no predators.
Harsh and wild, piercing through the silence, the high, terrible screech rang out again. It was coming from right under Southpaw’s tree. Very carefully, he opened his eyes, and quickly shut them again. His paws quivered as he tightened his grip on the tree, grateful that his injury had healed well, and he could feel the fast, ratatatat thumping of his heartbeat. He looked down…into a mottled blue face, surmounted by electric blue plumes, a sharp pearly beak and a cold, considering pair of brown eyes, with a dashing streak of white under each eye. The creature’s plumes were the size of the giant rose bushes back in Nizamuddin, and they formed a shimmering, vivid blue-green cloak, moving every time it took a step forwards or backwards. It was the largest bird Southpaw had ever seen, monstrous and beautiful.
Its beak clacked, and Southpaw cringed, his sensitive paw pads clutching the bark of the tree. Then the bird opened its beak, and to the tom’s surprise, he spoke in Junglee.
“Right,” he said, “step down guards at the sixteenth hole, no cause for worry. It seems to be a tomcat, probably didn’t know that it was tripping the alarms—what? No, not one of our regulars, this one’s probably an outsider, m’yes, of course I’ll check. Tell Any and Much to relax the bunker guards, there’s a good girl.”
The feathers swung splendidly as the bird gestured with a flick of its neck at Southpaw. “Come on down,” he said, “I think we’d better have a wee chat, what?”
Southpaw stayed right where he was. Katar had said nothing to him on the rules of engagement when it came to monsters, and after the day he’d had, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take any more chances.
The bird let out a sharp hiss and stabbed, successfully, at a luckless earwig. “Come on, then,” it said. “I’m not going to eat you—peacocks sup on rat snakes, kraits, finer fare than kittens, mmmm? It’s hurting my neck, all this squinting upwards: wrinkles, y’know. Mustn’t risk wrinkles, doesn’t look good. Now, suppose you scoot down that tree chop-chop and we find
you a decent billet for the night, whatsay?”
Southpaw relaxed his paws a trifle and considered the offer. He could take his chances with the bird—there seemed to be only one of the monster within view, and he was sure he could run for it if he really had to. Or he could stay in the tree. Which, given the whippy nature of neem branches and his natural curiosity, wasn’t the best option.
Cautiously, he scooted down to the fork of the tree, where he was more or less at eye level with the peacock. It was even more impressive, and even more terrifying, close up—each feather was larger than his head. But the eyes, though they were keen and considering, seemed kind.
“I’m Southpaw,” he ventured. “I’m not really from here.”
The peacock nodded. “So it would seem, young Southpaw, so it would seem. The name’s Thomas—Thomas Mor, but feel free to call me Thomas. Not Tommy. Can’t abide nicknames. Ate the last feller who tried to call me Tommy.” He caught the hesitation vibrating on Southpaw’s whiskers as the cat began to wonder whether he should scoot back up the tree after all. “Bug,” he explained. “Or beetle. Damned Madagascar hissing cockroach—blighter travelled here in some Japanese golfer’s set of clubs, found him perched on the feller’s niblick, a nine-iron, hissing at my brother Henry in an over-familiar sorta way. Nothing to do once he called me Tommy but eat the feller. Damned odd taste.”
Southpaw’s head began to spin. He had no idea what a “golfer” or a “niblick” was, but it seemed clear that the peacock—Thomas—was trying to reassure him. Gingerly, he attempted to scoot the rest of the way down, hit an unforeseen knot with his bottom, yelped, and landed in an undignified heap at Thomas’s clawed feet.
Thomas sighed, but he pretended to look the other way, preening three of his many feathers absently, as Southpaw attempted to apologize, licking his tail into shape, and getting bark out of his fur.
“So,” said Thomas once Southpaw was done. “Tour of the place—tararumpumpum! We’re on the eighth hole, so we’ll double back via the fourth and the third to the first, and you can meet the other fellers. Got lost, did you?”
The Hundred Names of Darkness Page 20