ass,” the black cat growled, and nipped at Kir’s ankle reproachfully.
“Ow!” Kir checked her ankle, but the cat had not broken the skin. “You don’t have to be so mean! You could have given me rabies or something! Anyway I said I was sorry.”
“That’s enough, Spark,” Mister Tibbs batted at the black cat’s face. He had a gentlemanly voice that was surprisingly deep for a cat of his small stature. “Leave the girl be. I didn’t bring her here for you to torment.”
Spark flattened her ears downward sulkily and backed away from Kir, saying nothing more. Warlord Tibbs gazed up at Kir with all the seriousness he could muster.
“Thank you for coming, child. The Brackwater Alliance owes you a great debt of gratitude for your future actions on our behalf.”
“You want me to do something for you?” Kir could not conjure in her mind a single scenario in which a couple of alley cats needed her help for anything.
“It was foretold,” Spark murmured behind her. Tibbs nodded once.
“I watched you, beneath the orange tree,” he explained. “You wove a crown from bitter greens and a spotted cat protects you.”
“Who, Pepper Lord?” Kir blinked and withdrew the toy from her pocket, half-expecting him to start talking as well.
“That’s him,” Tibbs said.
“This is a toy,” Kir spoke the words slowly, as if she were explaining the concept of a plaything to someone incredibly dim. Spark growled impatiently and Kir reflexively tugged the pants of her overalls down to better cover her ankles.
“The precise form does not matter.” Tibbs swatted irately at a mosquito, impaling it neatly on his claws. “Our cleric has seen your coming in her dreams and we have prepared accordingly. We need you to be our champion.”
“Uh....” Said Kir.
“We need you to defeat the Grendish.” Tibbs went on, talking around mouthfuls of bug. “Come, the cleric will explain everything.”
Kir clutched Pepper Lord tightly and followed the two cats across the empty wasteland of the parking lot. She looked over her shoulder once, wondering if there might still be time to make a run for it through the tunnel, but she could find no sign of the entrance. The hedge was a rustling, impenetrable wall of green and the butterflies in her stomach grew bigger.
On the other side of the parking lot, the cats led Kir up a weed-grown path to a wide, derelict, three-story building. The structure had needed a fresh coat of paint for decades and the parts that hadn’t peeled off had been thoroughly covered with graffiti from several eras. Kir could make out a large sign above the gaping front door that read ‘The Mangrove.’
“Keep quiet as you can,” Spark hissed. “The Grendish’s agents are everywhere. We don’t want to alert him of your presence just yet.”
Kir nodded silently, eyes wide, and tip-toed up the stairs after her guides. The soggy boards sagged under her weight, but thankfully made little noise. Her brain looped in circles, replaying memories of every animal she had ever seen pictures of, but it was no use. Never had she heard of a grendish. Whatever its shape, a grendish must be very mean if the cats needed to find outside help. It seemed to Kir that those cats stood a better chance in a fight than she ever would, and she wondered again what it was the cats expected her to do about their problem.
The trio entered the large foyer and Kir squinted in the musty darkness to better see her surroundings. Behind her, light spilled in weakly from the parking lot lamps, but inside there were no such luxuries. The windows had been boarded up as well. Most of the furniture in the hotel lobby had been removed, but Kir could still make out the check-in desk and a stack of broken chairs in one corner. She heard the receding footsteps of the cats to her left and, panicking, Kir forgot Spark’s warning about quiet.
“Wait!” She cried. “I can’t see you!”
A soft, warm body threw itself against her leg, and she felt a little nip through the fabric of her overalls.
“Be quiet!” Spark, of course. Kir was glad she hadn’t decided to wear shorts that morning. “We will guide you, just keep it down.”
Slowly, Kir took stumbling steps forward and found that the cats now flanked her, pushing at her calves gently with their furry heads to lead her down the halls.
“Stairs,” Tibbs warned her just as she bumped her shin into the lowest step.
Kir groped at the walls as she climbed and felt something cold and liquid clinging to the wallpaper in the humid building. Quickly she pulled away, hastily wiping her hand on her pants. The cats nudged her upwards and onwards to the next landing, down a long stretch of hallway, then up more stairs and another hall until at last they escorted her into a room where the windows had not been barred. Moon and streetlight poured in, illuminating a hotel suite filled with a miniature zoo.
Kir stood blinking in the sudden light at the menagerie of cats and seagulls, pelicans, plovers, iguanas, smaller lizards whose taxonomy Kir did not know, spotted skunks, a pair of wide-eyed raccoons, and even a flamingo. When Sparks and Tibbs entered the room, all the animals lowered their heads in deference, save for the flamingo, who continued to gaze intently at Kir with one little eye.
“Be at ease,” Tibbs said, and the animals all stopped bowing.
“What have you brought us, Warlord?” One of the skunks asked. “A sacrifice to appease the Grendish?”
“What a clever plan!” A plover chirped. “A nice-sized sacrifice such as this one should keep the old boot off our backs for at least a week!”
Kir froze in place, uncertain if she should try her luck running back down the stairs by herself or just start kicking the nearest animals in the head until they let her go. Either way, her brain screamed at her, there would be no sacrificing!
“Hmph,” one of the racoons looked Kir up and down appraisingly. “A week, hardly. She’s more of a snackrifice, I’d say. The Grendish would gobble her up in one bite and demand seconds just for breakfast.”
“Everyone shut up!” Spark snarled. Kir took a step backwards in surprise to see the black cat’s fur standing on end. “This little girl is not for eating, do you understand? Not for the Grendish or any of his fiends. She’s here to help. She’s going to be our Champion.”
A stunned silence followed, then one little vole broke into tiny peals of laughter. A stork followed, and soon the entire room was in an uproar of hilarity. Kir could feel her cheeks burning. She hadn’t put much stock in herself as a champion of any kind, she admitted, but it was the most humiliating thing in the world to find out that a bunch of stray pets felt the same way. Tears started to form in her eyes, stinging and threatening to spill, but she puffed up her cheeks and exhaled slowly like her mom had taught her: It was important to always keep one’s cool in the presence of strangers. Tibbs cleared his throat and the laughter died down.
“I’m glad you all think our situation is so funny,” he chided. “Perhaps one of you might like to take over as Warlord and get us out of this mess?”
“Begging your pardon, Warlord,” one of the iguanas crawled forward to speak up, “but she’s just a little girl. And a human girl at that. She hasn’t got claws or fangs, or nasty sprays, or sharp beaks, or... anything. Right? So with all due respect, we’re having a bit of trouble getting behind this idea. Your Warship.”
“I understand your trepidation, Misk,” Tibbs answered, “but nevertheless, this is the girl the clerics spoke of in the prophecy.”
“And when it comes down to it, which one of us has a better chance of growing up to be an astronaut?” Kir added defensively.
The flamingo strode forward on its spindly legs, flapping smaller creatures out of its way as it joined Kir and the cats up front. The bird looked Kir up and down, cocking its head one way and then the other. Kir steeled herself as it lowered its huge beak down to inspect Pepper Lord, held tightly in her grasp. The flamingo blinked rapidly, then shook itself and turned to face the others.
“The Warlord speaks true, this is the one I saw in the vision of victory.”<
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The animals murmured among themselves at that declaration. When the cleric had a vision, she was never wrong. Still, a human girl—even a mouthy thing such as the one before them--did not make a very inspiring champion. Kir was tired of all the doubting. It was late, she had been out in the sun all day, and she had yet to have lunch or a nap. She had come a long way to help them, and that’s what she would do.
“Excuse me,” she said, speaking more to Tibbs and the cleric than anyone else. “Maybe you should start by telling me who the Grendish is? And why is he attacking you? How did you all get in here, anyway?”
The room quieted down again. Kir settled onto a relatively clean patch of floor and pulled out a packet of cheddar-peanut butter cracker sandwiches. She offered one to a nearby raccoon who accepted it cheerfully and scooted closer to nibble it next to her. Tibbs looked soberly up at the flamingo and nodded.
“It’s best you explain, Veraska. You and Rogiere have been watching the Grendish longer than any of us.”
Veraska bowed her long neck and nodded.
“The Elder Grendish is known by some as the Lord of the Brackwater,” she began. “He is fierce, deadly, and ancient. My mother used to warn me of him back when I was just a young chick. How long he has tormented the land is not for me to say. Perhaps since the beginning of time, perhaps only for decades. Some say he is a demon in the guise of an alligator, but
Elder Grendish Page 2