BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

  He opened the door to her, skull-masked.

  “Wha’s up?”

  “I need to ask you a couple of things, may I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  Sage’s room looked more liveable, if not by much. At least he had a cosy chair; to which he returned, filling it with knotted giant spider limbs. Fiorinda sat on the thick, cream carpet. The skull was looking gloomy.

  “Will you tell me what really happened to Eval, now I’ve met him?”

  Eval Jackson’s allegations, after his near-fatal accident and the split that followed, had been lurid. The regrouped Heads had been stoical. It amused them to behave like perfect gentlemen. Nothing to add. Can’t comment. If Ev wants to carry on like that, let him…

  The skull curled its non-existent lip. “You were a pre-teen Heads fan. C’me on. What don’t you know?”

  “It was at the end of the Africa tour, Mba Kayere. You were in deepest Uganda, being driven around with an army escort, because of the unrest on the Congo border, or maybe it was Zaire, back then—”

  “It was the DRC. I’m not quite old enough for the Zaire period.”

  “You did a show in a football stadium, then Eval went off on his own to a party with some rich kids who were following the band around. Their jeep crashed. They went off the road into a rocky gorge, and the driver, a university student called Archie Migereko, was killed instantly. The other kids had minor injuries, but Eval, who’d been in front with Archie, was somehow flung clear, onto rocks, and broke his back—”

  “Correct in most details, far as I know or ever found out. And—?”

  “I didn’t believe the conspiracy crap, it was pathetic. But I’ve wondered, why did you guys let Eval trash you the way he did?”

  “Ha. If there wasn’t anything in it: yeah, I see the difficulty.” The giant spider leaned back, the skull sighed, gazing upward. “It wasn’t much of a stadium, we were deep in the sticks. More a football pitch, with wooden stands. I remember red beaten earth, forest all around; I remember that having the army with us had got Eval scared, which made him even more annoying. Cracks were opening, as you know. He’d been shit to deal with the whole tour, because he knew he was losing his grip. But the gig was amazing. I was looking out into a huge copper bowl, miles deep. We were in the suburbs of a city, but it felt endless: forest like the black walls encircling the universe, great veils and wisps of light; my Immix beings flowing through the crowd, an’ it went on forever… But Eval had been jarring on me. On the way back to our villa I was taking the piss: something weird had happened with my fx, I thought maybe I’d woken actual evil? Ancient, pre-human spirits, just like we have in Cornwall, seeking some empty vessel to devour. We had two UPDF officers, that’s the Ugandan army, with us in the van, backing me up enthusiastically… Eval hadn’t made himself popular with our escort.”

  The skull froze blank for a moment: always an eerie effect.

  “I think he went with those kids out of bravado, and then you know what happened. He didn’t just break his back, he was a mess. He’d have died, if half our soldiers hadn’t dutifully been tailing him. As it was, he had battlefield treatment on the spot and a helicopter to Fort Portal, the nearest big city, where the hospital team wanted to put him in an induced coma. Eval was scared, he insisted on an airlift to Cairo instead, and it didn’t work out. He got an infection in his spinal fluid he’s never been rid of. Had a ton of operations, internal damage that’s never really healed. But on the plus side, he was perfectly lucid throughout, and had a project to occupy his mind. So how the fuck could we take that away from him, or crush him with the law, whatever he said—?”

  “Okay,” said Fiorinda, seeing the beaten copper bowl, miles deep. Black forest like the walls of the universe, and the magician, Aoxomoxoa, leaping and dancing behind his desks… Worlds I will never know.

  “I’m not sorry I took his band. It’s the luck of the game. But I wish I hadn’t been telling him horror stories that night.”

  “Mba Kayere,” murmured Fiorinda, “I am passed over… Is that a genuine Herrero expression, or did Thomas Pynchon invent it?”3

  “Look it up, brat. Nursery class is over, I’m tired.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Am I here because I had a slight panic attack, after a very stressful gig, and you and Ax decided to remove me from view as a liability?”

  The skull almost froze again. “Ah, maybe—”

  “Bastards. I knew it. Like you two were in such great mental shape that night, how fucking dare you—!”

  “Or maybe not… Fiorinda, I know Tris Venning, and Bel. They’re not bullshitters. Something made them call me down here, and lie to me, and… It’s strange. Your gran’s still a practicing witch, isn’t she?”

  “Practicing con artist.”

  “You know what I mean, and you know what the wolves mean, much as I regret the development. We might need your expertise.”

  Fiorinda stared at him. “I’m going to bed now. Thanks for the story.”

  “You’re welcome… Oh, wait.” He groped around his chair. “You have a bedside lamp. Unplug it and stick this in the socket, instead.”

  She took the eco-tube gadget from him, examining it suspiciously.

  “Why?”

  “The guest suites are wired: Ev likes watching home movies, but that’ll stop him. G’night.”

  Fiorinda skipped breakfast to walk in the palace grounds – and avoid Eval’s staff, who had suddenly appeared all over the place, as if they’d been invisible last night. She thought about her father, and how nobody knew what he was. Everybody knew what he’d done to his daughter, of course. But nobody talked about it except prats like Eval. What would a newly-powerful old-time religion choose as the basis of its worship? She could think of hints, from her family background, and from the dreadful dawn of Ax’s ‘Rock and Roll Reich’, that were not encouraging.

  How would a dead wolf feature? Bearing in mind that anything known as magic innately doesn’t have to make sense.

  Sometimes it seemed as if the black confusion, fear and shame of Fiorinda’s past had broken out of her, on the brink of her escape to fame and fortune, and engulfed the world.

  She was still outdoors, shivering among the exotic conifers, when the Reverend Grace appeared. She watched the bicycle whir by, wondering what was up? She hadn’t yet seen Sage this morning. Then Eval came out onto the sweeping marble approach to his courts, where a ramp had been hacked through the steps, and left raw; in a different, rugged, life support chair. He started screaming at the vicar: who also seemed upset. Sage appeared, but stayed out of the argument. Fiorinda went to join him.

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re going to Recluse Wood,” said Sage. “A local beauty spot. I told Grace, meaning no harm. She says he can’t go; Ev says he’s going.” The skull turned to grin merrily at the vicar. “Never tell Ev a secret. He’s always going to blab, an’ to the worst person.”

  “What’s at ‘Recluse Wood’?”

  “Not much. A little valley with twisty oak trees, a wishing well, an’ a Victorian ruined gothic hermitage. Oh, an’ a dead wolf. So Ev tells me.”

  “Sounds lovely,” said Fiorinda. “Why can’t Eval come?”

  “There was no secret,” said Grace, with hieratic dignity. “I was hoping to escort you both to the wood. It’s just not for Eval.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” screamed Eval.

  “It’s an all-terrain chair,” said Sage. “An’ if it should get stuck on a root down there, I can carry him. Problem solved.”

  The invalid wiped his tears with trembling hands, radiant as a child after a successful tantrum.

  The Chapel in the Haunted Wood, and How They Fared There

  It took a while to get Eval organised – time that Grace, Fiorinda noticed, spent in finalising arrangements of her own, using Eval’s landline. The beauty spot was several miles away by road. It had an empty car park an
d a modern access path, wide enough for Eval, leading down into the abrupt valley. Eval’s driver unlocked the holding bars and lifted the chair, invalid and all, out of the back of his five star luxury tank.

  “If you don’t mind, vicar,” he said. “I’ll stay with the vehicle.”

  “Of course, Bryan,” said Grace. “I understand.”

  Eval glared at her. His cheeks were still flushed, his eyes a little wild. “You’ll stay up here to guard the motor Bryan. Because I said so!”

  “Right, sir.” Bryan then addressed Sage, in a tone of dignified reproof. “Your grandad wouldn’t like you being here, Steve.”

  Sage’s grandfather was a Methodist minister. “Then don’t tell him,” said the skull. “You’ve not got any spy cams down there, Ev?”

  “I don’t fucking trespass,” snarled Eval, and put the chair in gear.

  “I’ll jus’ give you a little lift over the kerb, sir—”

  “Fuck off.” The chair scrambled the obstacle: Eval plunged into the opening of the path and swiftly disappeared.

  Grace hurried after him calling, “Eval! Be careful!”

  “What wouldn’t your grandad like?” asked Fiorinda.

  “No idea. He’s tolerant of wishing wells. No special opinion on dead wolves, far as I’m aware.”

  Sage strode ahead, to keep in contact with Eval. The Pagan vicar and the Teenage Icon fell into step, footsteps crunching on weedy gravel in a hush that made Fiorinda think of Whitehall: unseen watchers, traps and plots. The oak trees were hunched and gnome-like, with hoary roots like tentacles that clambered over tumbled boulders. Last year’s dry leaves still rattled on their branches at first; but soon grew still.

  “Why didn’t you want Eval to come here?”

  “Like too many of my parishioners, he believes in miracles. This is not the place for him. He’s so vulnerable, poor man.”

  “Have there been any miracles?”

  “Healing miracles are a human idea,” said the vicar, evasively. “That can be powerfully therapeutic, there is no doubt. For myself, though I’m a believing Supernaturalist Pagan, I claim no spooky powers. No more than the average Cof E pastor can change water into wine!”

  “Or blood,” murmured Fiorinda.

  Grace laughed lightly, and stepped solemnly, eyes bright and head high despite the roughness of the path: one hand clasping the Green Man on his cross. Fiorinda had a sudden intuition. You know about my father, she thought. Or my gran, at least. That’s why you’ve been looking so interested, it’s not the abused-teen icon appeal, what a pleasant change—

  “But this place has some kind of reputation?”

  “Well…” Grace became confiding. “There never was a hermit, or ‘recluse’. However, the holy spring is a much older tradition, and many people believe in it, and resort to it. On very little outward evidence, of course. I’m not expecting a dramatic manifestation today!”

  “Nor me,” said Fiorinda. “Manifestation of what?”

  Grace did not reply. They continued the descent in silence. The path had seen robust use recently, despite the utter demise of the Cornish tourist industry. A quad bike, or maybe two or three, had crushed the fallen branches and encroaching greenery: Eval’s chair, which could sometimes be heard whining, ahead of them, would have no trouble with nasty roots. When they reached level ground the path grew wider, and the hermitage stood in sunlight about a hundred metres away, gothic arches rising into a tracery of branches. Behind it, the oaks in their brown tatters scrambled upwards again. In front a few mossy tombs were guarded by ancient-looking yews. Sage was there, standing beside Eval’s chair, the former bandmates both contemplating the tasteful attraction in silence.

  “Before we go any further,” said Grace, “I need to explain: I’m sure what happened was an accident. And nobody had any intention of muddying the waters. Tris may have over-reacted, when he called Sage. But we all did what we honestly thought best—”

  Fiorinda smiled and nodded, looking around her uneasily. The skull did sceptical. “I’m glad to hear it,” said Sage. “But no wiser. I don’t see a dead wolf yet. Where is it?”

  “Under the yews. Go and see.”

  “You coming along, Ev?”

  But the invalid, slumped in his safety harness, had run out of energy. “Nah, too spooky for me. Reckon I’ll watch what happens to you guys.”

  The queen and her knight stepped over a sill of stone, and approached the chapel ruinous. A dog cage had been placed on a table tomb. The greyish, recumbent animal inside was presumably the wolf. Fiorinda was thinking: but why is she so thrilled to meet me? A respectable Pagan vicar should want nothing to do with my gran. Let alone my dad… Suddenly Sage stopped dead, having grasped that the heap of rubbish, confused in shadow, right in front of him – as if dropped from a height – was a pile of blood clotted fleece, narrow gaping jaws, and skinny jutting limbs.

  “Ah—!” he said. “Shit. Of course. ”

  “What is that?” whispered Fiorinda.

  “What it looks like. A pile of violently killed dead sheep. Fuck it.”

  “Maybe they’re all old, barren ewes?”

  “Shut up.”

  Fiorinda looked behind her: they’d acquired a larger audience. The yokels must have parked their quads elsewhere, walked back in and hidden themselves. Tris and Bel were there, with their daughter and maybe fifteen or twenty others. Two distinct parties: wolf fans and wolficides perhaps? Too many for comfort, and the vicar’s hands were moving strangely—

  “Keep going,” she suggested. “Proceed slowly towards the wolf, and hope we think of something on the way.”

  But it’s hard to stretch a hundred metres.

  The wolf lay curled nose to tail, a bowl of dog biscuit and another of water beside him. His pelt gleamed wet. Close by the tomb, a silver spire rose, dancing, from a worn stone basin. Fiorinda began to open the cage, and in the same moment knew what Grace up to; realised she was being used, and understood that she was not a helpless vessel. Not any more.

  She could stop this—

  The holy spring chuckled, the world skipped a beat.

  Fiorinda opened the cage. The wolf had been given dog biscuit, and a bowl of water, but the body already smelt of decay. Tris and Bel’s daughter, Demzel, detached herself from the crowd and ran to Fiorinda’s side with a shy smile. Sage checked the tattoo: it matched Tris’s phone photo. “I could’ve done without the fucking mystification,” he growled. “But there you go. The world gets stranger...”

  Not if I can help it, thought Fiorinda.

  Demzel stroked the wolf. “I hoped it wouldn’t work. It was a creepy idea, anyway. He’s properly dead now, isn’t he?”

  “Absolutely,” said Fiorinda. “Trust me.”

  Eval crossed the clearing, pausing, with a malign grin, to inspect the sheep heap. “Oooh, this looks bad! Told you. That Wolfwatch is a fucking fake: total Green Nazi propaganda—”

  He turned his chair, looking around. “It’s nice here, though. I’m glad I came. Will you give me some water, kiddie? I’ve got thirst on.”

  “Sure thing,” said Demzel. “But there’s no cup.”

  “Jest a drop. In your little hands, that’ll do me.”

  Here Begin the Terrors, Here Begin the Marvels

  Late that evening Sage drove to Smallstones, the short way. He talked to Bel in the chilly farm office, over a glass of home-brewed ale. Tris was helping Demzel with her homework in the kitchen. Sage wore the masks, for this formal discussion. “One of the wolves turned out to be worrier,” he said. “That’s not in the contract. Someone dealt with it, unilaterally, and dumped the remains on your doorstep. So you two had to figure something out in a hurry. Just tell me, set my mind at rest. Did you really think the wolf could be brought back to life?”

  Bel sipped ale and shook her head. “I tried to kill Dem’s rapist bastard father with magic once.” She wasn’t referring to Tris. “It didn’t work. None of that stuff ever works. There is no power.”

/>   “Did anyone?”

  “Hard to say, people believe some funny things these days. I’ll promise you one thing: if Grace had succeeded there’d’ve been trouble. Mayhem, if she’d raised the sacred wolf and not the sheep! But she’s all right you know; usually. Just a bit keen. She does a lot of good, and it could’ve been worse. She could’ve gone Roman.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  “Well… Tris called you, to cover us. We took the wolf to Recluse Wood, and a few of us got onto the vicar, talking-up the magic spring. Grace was easy to persuade, and you guys were great witnesses. It was a gesture, Steve, I mean Sage. Nothing more, but it seemed like a gesture worth making. We’d killed a wolf, there are no excuses… and we didn’t tell you because you’d’ve stopped it. We’ve had the Hard Greens through here once. We don’t want that again.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t mean we’re not proud of our wolves. They’re a symbol of Ax’s England, and the return of Nature. We genuinely do want them here. We need the income, part from anything else—”

  Silence for a moment or two.

  “All clear enough,” said Sage. “But why the Beast of Bodmin, for fuck’s sake? Nothing to be gained by naming names, I’m fine with that, but was she the best er, scapegoat you could come up with?”

  “Oh, no,” said Bel. “That was true.”

  The skull stared at her.

  “You know what he’s like. Tris was telling the truth, and he sticks to it. A big cat dumped the wolf here. He saw her.”

  “Okay,” said Sage, after another silence. “When we’ve confirmed ownership of the killed sheep for compensation, all the dead animals get incinerated. I haven’t examined the bodies, and I’m not going to, nor is anyone else. I don’t see any call for autopsies. Bodmin Wolfwatch needs a shake up, which will happen. Meanwhile, if the Commons Council, of which you are a member, finds popular support for leaving the rest of the pack on the moor, that’s probably the best outcome, as you’ve already decided. And we’ll see how it goes. If you need to talk again I’m at Ev’s for now. Will that do?”