"Talk?" The week's worth of silent fretting overflowed, and Bobcat just let it out. "What good's that gonna do? Nobody knows anything, remember? And far as I can tell, that means you, too!"
"Excuse me?" Fisher sat forward.
"Oh, yes! All this time, you've been acting like you've got all the answers, and now I find out you're just as clueless as your precious Curials! You drugged me, dragged me away from my home, rubbed my nose in how everything I ever thought I knew was a lie, and now it turns out you were just as stupid and brainless as me!"
"Oh, no!" Fisher's hackles were rising. "Nobody could be as brainless as you, not if they tried! If you'd just think for one minute--"
"Think?" Bobcat waved a paw. "That's all I've been doing this whole trip! And look where it's got me! Nowhere!"
"Well, maybe if you had a little sense, you--"
"Fisher, Bobcat, please!" Skink's voice burst like a gust of wind into Bobcat's face, and he started back to see the lizard crouched in the dirt, his head twitching back and forth between the two of them. "If you will both calm down, I believe I can clear up this misunderstanding. For, if you recall my discussion when we began, the essential relationship between the Curial powers and earthly folk hinges upon--"
"Oh, gods!" Bobcat clenched his paws into fists, spun away before he felt tempted to use them on Skink. "All your talk, your schools, your theories, and what good is it? Why should I listen? Your Curials don't know what's going on, you don't know what's going on, Fisher doesn't know what's going on, and I sure don't know what's going on! If we're all just stumbling around like idiots, what even is the point?"
"And yet," Skink said from behind him, "your stumbling around managed to save at least half the world's population."
The words struck Bobcat, made him stop and turn back. "What?"
Skink raised a claw. "The words you used in describing yourself to the Lady Dolphin, I believe: 'just stumbling around.' And that is, essentially, all any of us are doing, all any of us can hope to do."
"What?" Bobcat crooked a claw at him. "You told me the Curials were in charge! You told me that they knew--"
"What I told you," Skink said, "and what you heard seem to have been two very different things!"
Bobcat had to blink at the force in the lizard's voice; he glanced around to see if the Lord Eft had come creeping in again, but only Skink sat before him. "Now, please," the lizard went on, "sit quietly, and I will once again try to explain.
"You claim that we do not know what is going on, that we are just stumbling around. In a sense you are very right. Yet in our stumbling, we uncover useful bits of information: that certain foods work well together; that fire, when used prudently, can be lifesaving; that killing one another tends to lead to unfortunate consequences. None of this information is ordained from on high, as you seemed to have thought. It is learned, discovered in our stumblings."
"And it's always changing." Fisher held up a paw. "I mean, we could be sitting by a riverbank tomorrow, and a fish could step out and explain to us that we've been wrong all these generations about fish not being intelligent, that for thousands of years, we've been killing and eating folk just like us. Sure, everything we've ever learned about fish says it's not likely to happen, but, hey, it could." She grinned at him. "It's what makes life exciting."
Skink was staring at her. "An odd analogy," he said after a moment, "but it does illustrate the point." He turned back to Bobcat. "Everything we think we know is based on observations and assumptions. Every answer we find can be questioned, until at last we can only reply that we believe in the things we do because they seem to work. That is why school is important, why the lessons passed down from fisher to fisher have validity." He shrugged and fell silent.
Bobcat looked from him to Fisher and back again. "But... But wait. You told me that the Lord Eft had explained to the elders of the first kiva how everything worked, that those stories were all the things I heard when I was a kit. And, I mean, every one of those stories talks about the Curials being in charge. What? Did the Lord Eft lie to them?"
Skink looked away, and it was Fisher who answered. "Oh, no. It's just that when the elders come out of the kiva to give the gathered reptile communities the Lord Eft's words, no two of them could agree on what he'd said. They'd all heard such different things; some even contradicted each other."
"What?" Bobcat looked from her to Skink.
The lizard rolled his eyes. "Several theories have been advanced to explain--," he began, but Fisher cut him off:
"Yeah, but the story says that they each heard only those things they wanted or expected to hear, disregarded the rest, and each came out convinced that their way of looking at the world was correct, stamped with the Lord Eft's approval. The story ends by stating that the Lord Eft was so disgusted, he withdrew into his current seclusion." She shrugged. "He gave it his best shot, but the poor saps couldn't handle it. Now, who wants breakfast?"
Bobcat's stomach growled, and Fisher smiled. "I'll take that as a yes. Get the stove out, Bobcat."
Questions continued to swirl as Bobcat undid his backpack. "So, now, wait. The Curials, then, are...are what?"
Skink gave a rustling laugh. "The age-old question. Many in my kiva would answer that they are the true inhabitants of this world, that we are but creatures who developed accidentally. They hold that our devotions to Those Above are useless, that Those Above have no need or concern for us.
"However, certain rituals done in the Curials' names can be efficacious. Prayers for rain, recited in the proper way to the Lady Dolphin, oftentimes lead to cloud formation, all meteorological data to the contrary. Of course, the very nature of the Curial mind is such that these prayers grant no certainty, but after this trip, I believe that I will be able to add my voice constructively to those who argue for Curial concern and intervention."
Bobcat shook his head. "So, then, the stories--"
"Are mostly just stories, like I said before." Fisher was taking the pipes as Bobcat set them down and fitting the stove together, but now she stopped. "The Shroud Islands, though..."
"Indeed." Skink scuttled up onto Bobcat's pack. "How true do you believe your information to be?"
"Me?" Bobcat thought. "Well, Shemka Harr--I mean, the Lady Lioness--didn't deny it. And the Blood Jaguar agreed to give up her whole Plague Year just because I said she could keep me when I died instead of letting me go." He shrugged. "Why would she do that if the Shroud Islands really existed?"
Skink's eyes seemed to whirl. "This will bear much meditating on," he said after a moment.
"Yeah, well, you go right ahead." Bobcat could almost smell Garson now on the breeze from the east. "Me, I wanna put this all behind me and get started on my life."
Fisher looked up from her flint and steel. "Now that's the best idea I've heard yet. Get the pan, will you?"
Then the fire was burning, and soon Fisher had something simmering away. Bobcat swallowed it down, his yawning almost interfering with his chewing. He managed to keep his eyes open long enough to help Skink with the dishes, then settled back against his pack and dropped off.
After a while, though, things began shaking him: voices, wheels creaking, rope on canvas. He tried to ignore them, but they just kept at him till he found his eyes were open.
It seemed to be about midafternoon, and all he could see from where he lay was the open sweep of the prairie, a few wispy clouds stretched through the blue above; the mutterings and clankings all seemed to be coming from behind him. So he rolled over to take a look.
Wagons filled the space across the bridge, at least a dozen, otters and foxes hammering stakes into the ground, stringing up awnings, laying out tables, pennants of green and gold and burgundy fluttering in the breeze. Bobcat sat up, watched otters hauling buckets up from the stream, foxes in chefs' hats squirting fluid over several barbecues.
A vixen popped up from the boxes atop one of the wagons, a satchel bulging over her back. "Hey! You! Riverdog!" she shouted. "Where d'you wa
nt these?"
An otter scurrying by on the road stopped, and Bobcat couldn't believe his eyes. It was Trec Sinpatclin. "Well," Trec said, looking up at the vixen with a paw on his chin, "I rather thought down here where the tables are might be best."
The vixen shrugged, wrapped her paws around the satchel's mouth, and hurled it into the air, plate flying out. "Any available paws!" she shouted; then she leaped off the roof, tucked into a roll, and tumbled into the awning of the wagon across the road. Cables groaned, the framework creaking like a tree about to give way in a windstorm, but the thing held, bounced her back out toward the wagon she'd jumped from, and she snapped out of her roll, slid through the dirt on her knees, and jerked to a halt right under the spot the plates were dropping toward.
Her head came up, she gave a sharp whistle, and foxes were suddenly surrounding her, serried in ranks, their eyes fixed on the falling dishes. Bobcat hardly dared to breathe as the foxes snatched plates out of the air, somehow getting themselves out of the way of the others behind them until each one held two plates, the vixen, still on her knees in their center, clapping her paws closed above her head and catching the last plate between them. She rose then, wheeled to face Trec, and asked, "Down here, you said?"
Trec still stood with his paw on his chin. "Yeah," he said. "On the tables, if you wouldn't mind."
"No problem." The satchel had fluttered down by now, and she tucked her plate into it, then held the thing out in front of her.
The other foxes trooped past, setting the plates in so carefully, Bobcat could scarcely hear them clatter, until the satchel was bulging again. The vixen gave Trec a dazzling smile, slung the satchel over her back, and started for the wagon where the fires were just starting to smoke.
Bobcat shook his head and padded across the bridge. "They're all bloody acrobats," he heard the otter mutter.
"Tell me about it."
Trec turned, and the astonished look on his face made Bobcat grin. "Bobby?" And then Trec had slid up next to him, was pounding him on the back. "What're you doing here?"
"Just on my way home." Seeing Trec brought so many memories bursting over him, Bobcat couldn't stop grinning: late nights at the pubs along the West Channel; water polo games won and lost; the songs and the laughter and the company, at least when he wasn't too catnipped up to join in. "How's town? I've, uhh, I've been away awhile."
Trec nodded. "Thought I hadn't seen you about of late. Town's much the same, though; least it was when we scurried off this morning." He waved a paw at the wagons. "Another rush job, civilization coming to an end if these crates don't reach Meerkat Town by yesterday. Just the sort of thing I relish getting punted out of bed before dawn about."
"Oh." No ride back, then. "You're off to Kazirazif?"
"No, no. Only foxes through the Kingdom of the Buffalo these days. We meet a crew of 'em here with a load bound for the Beaverpool docks, swap wagons, party all night, then head back into town." He stroked his whiskers. "If I'd had a bit more notice, I'd've brought the good china."
An accordion off in the direction of the cook fires broke into a rolling hornpipe; a mandolin and fiddle joined it, and Trec's paws began shuffling on the pavement. "You're invited, of course, Bobcat, and whoever you're traveling with, but if you'll excuse me, I've got to put on my host hat now." With that, he slipped past Bobcat and between two of the wagons.
A buzz of voices began rising from beyond the caravan to Bobcat's right. He chuckled, then turned and headed back across the bridge to where he'd left the others. Skink was already awake, staring at the camp with wide eyes, Fisher just starting to stir. "What...," she said, sitting up and blinking. "What on earth..."
Bobcat laughed. "A party's breaking out. Interested?"
Fisher smiled, rubbed her eyes. "Friends of yours?"
"Some of 'em." He turned to Skink. "You coming?"
The lizard was moving with the music. "I have never been able to resist a well-played accordion, I'm afraid."
Bobcat stuck out a paw. "Climb on, then."
Skink scurried up and settled in the fur at his shoulder blades; then Bobcat hurried to catch up with Fisher, already crossing the bridge. The largest awning was stretched over the barbecues, a few tables and the little bandstand there, a cleared area before it for dancing. Foxes of every type mixed with the otters, the laughter and the music and the smells of the fish frying almost overwhelming. Bobcat had to stop at the edge, let it all wash over him for a moment.
Fisher's paws were tapping. "Now this is a party."
Trec came sliding up. "Fisher! Gods! You hanging about with this character?" He thumped Bobcat on the back.
"Trec..." Fisher passed a paw over her brow. "It is a long, weird story, one that, I believe, will soon be coming to an end. What's it take to get some food around here?"
All it took was Trec pushing them through the crowd. "Beer and wine are at the next wagon up!" Trec called over the din. "You're my guests here, so anyone gives you guff, well, you give it right back to 'em!"
And by the time the afternoon had turned to evening, Bobcat had eaten, danced, put away a few beers, and was generally feeling pretty good about this whole adventure. He was lying behind the band, out under the stars slowly winking overhead, the smoke from the fires bringing delightful scents of more food, and was just thinking about home, about rushing out to see Garson, sweeping her into his paws...when a slight, spicy scent started tickling his whiskers, made his ears cant back and his stomach muscles clench.
Catnip. Somewhere. And getting stronger.
"Ah!" a sloppy voice called behind him, and Bobcat jumped straight up, his whole body twitching. He landed, spun, and a red fox was standing there, a knotted shawl over his shoulders, a wide grin on his muzzle, an unmistakable smell wafting from him, stale wine and damp earth mixed with it. "Well met, my friend!"
Bobcat tried to move, tried to back away, but the scent, the scent, the...scent... It ruffled his fur like soft claws, caressed the ache he'd almost forgotten. The fox staggered forward, flopped a paw over Bobcat's back, fumbled at his shawl with the other, and pulled a sweet, spicy bag from it. "Choice Santiran, cut in the fields this week." He squeezed the bag, a cloud puffing over Bobcat's whiskers like a cudgel slammed into his face. "Special caravan price, my friend."
The blood pounded in his ears, the urge twisting his insides, and Bobcat's last effort to pull away was just failing when a sudden tingling swept down from between his ears, a rush of pinpricks that shocked him, let him stumble back, shake his head, and scramble off into the darkness.
Spots pulsed before his eyes, something like a scream echoing beneath his fur, and it wasn't until the ground sloped under his paws and sent him tumbling into the stream that he even knew where he was. His stomach yawed and flipped, a hot pressure at the back of his throat, and he just managed to get his face out of the water before he threw up, muscles heaving and heaving, all the way down to his toes.
The tingling stayed, and he clung to it, clung to it with all his desire not to slip back and become what he'd been before. The rest of the night he lay there, the tingling finally pushing the urge far enough away so he could fall asleep.
Sunrise woke him, light creeping between his eyelids and making him blink. He sat up on the stream bank, winced at his own stink, and waded in. When he crawled out, he shook himself, padded up the slope, and caught the more welcome smell of Fisher's stew in the air.
Half the wagons were already gone, only otters milling about the six or eight that remained. Most were busy pulling up stakes and taking down awnings, but another group stood off to one side gathered around five or six little stoves, Fisher and Skink among them, Fisher stirring a pan over her stove while Skink supervised a large pot of coffee nearby.
His paws actually carried him all the way, and he slumped to the ground, heard Fisher's chuckle. "Well, I've seen you look worse."
"Thank you so much." He cleared his throat and spat off into the field. "Now that you mention it, I've felt worse." Sure, he
was bleary-eyed, his sides ached, his throat still burned a little, but his fur wasn't too tight around him, his brain nowhere near as shaky as a night of catnip always left it. And all because of the Blood Jaguar's mark....
Fisher interrupted his thoughts. "Trec's invited us to join the caravan back, if we want."
"Definitely." Bobcat rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I've had enough of walking for a while."
"Indeed," Skink said from his perch overlooking the coffee. "I am anxious to see my family again, and the chance of arriving in time for vespers is more than enticement enough."
Otters were starting to wander over now, Trec weaving among them. "Eat up, all!" he called out. "We're to be in Flatrock by midmorning." With a cheer, the otters converged, dipping bowls into the pots, grabbing the coffee dishes from Skink's station as they passed. Bobcat waited for the rush to settle a bit, then got himself some breakfast, found a spot that didn't have too many otters lolling over it, stretched himself out, and had just taken a mouthful when Trec slid up next to him, his own bowl balanced in one paw.
"Ah..." The otter took a deep whiff of the steam rising from his stew. "Nothing like chowder on the open plains of a morning." He took a few slurps, then looked over at Bobcat. "You have a good time last night?"
Bobcat chewed and swallowed. "Yeah. Not bad, I guess."
"Good." Trec nodded. "When I heard there was a catnip dealer traveling with those foxes, I pointed him in your direction. I know how much you like the first taste of the new crop when we bring it into town."
It took some control for Bobcat not to smash his bowl over Trec's head. "I'm off the stuff now, Trec," he said when he felt steady enough. "For good, I hope."
"Really?" Trec cocked his head. "Well, glad to hear it. Never have understood why folks muddy themselves up with anything like that. I mean, unless it's beer, of course."
Bobcat had to laugh. "Of course."
Trec drank down the rest of his stew. "Well, must dash; things to do and all. We'll be off quick as we can."
The Blood Jaguar Page 25