The Golden Cat

by Gabriel King

  Limping and pausing, panting and dragging, it led him into the back room, where it promptly vanished into the air. Tag followed. They debouched in an alley between two buildings. There was no talk between them. In a little while they came to the river. There, as the day packed itself away into the west, the dog showed him what it had found. At low tide here, a small but well-used highway had its entrance in a filmy grey twist of light between two rotting piles. It was popular with the animals of both banks as a way across the river, and had comprehensive links to much larger roads. Tag stood in the smell of mud and stared at the heap of corpses the dog had brought him to see. There were ten or fifteen of them. They were all cats. Their fur was sodden. Their limbs were entangled as if they had fought panickily with one another at the last. Their eyes bulged so hard that the whites showed. They had died with their ears back.

  ‘How did this happen?’ said Tag.

  The dog looked at him dully.

  ‘The life has been drained out of them,’ it said. ‘Something is wrong with the Old Changing Way. I don’t know what.’

  ‘Go away and learn more.’

  ‘You are not the Majicou,’ grumbled the dog.

  ‘I am the New Majicou. Always come to me when you find something.’

  ‘Yet there is no reward.’

  ‘Find me two golden kittens and we’ll see.’

  The dog turned away with a sigh and dragged itself up the shingle towards the buildings. Something made it stop and say, ‘I am a dog. A dog has a sense of smell. If I did not know better I would say I smelled the Alchemist on that road: I would not use it if I were you.’

  Too late.

  The New Majicou had gingerly negotiated the heap of dead cats and stuck his head in the highway.

  *

  What he found there was not unusual. How can a road go in all directions at once? No-one knows the answer to that. The Old Changing Way, which will take you anywhere in hardly any time at all, is full of ghosts. Nothing more can be said. Unless you know what you are doing it is a dangerous place to be. Even at the best of times.

  ‘Hmm,’ thought Tag.

  He thought, ‘Nothing here.’

  But as soon as he pushed his way inside he knew that the old dog had been right. It was like moving through glue. He was exhausted suddenly, and his bones felt hollow. Worse, something was waiting for him. He couldn’t say how he knew. Only that when the strange, tinny echoes of that place fled away from his feet, something moved among them. It was following him. He stopped. He raised his head, and let the wind talk to his whiskers. As Leo had done in the sea-cave, he opened his mouth to taste the air.

  Nothing. And yet—

  ‘I’ll just go to the other end,’ he thought, ‘and see what things are like there.’

  It was a longer walk than he had anticipated, and with more twists and turns than was proper. He couldn’t shake his lethargy: he felt as if he had been walking all day. By the time he admitted, ‘I could have swum the river quicker than this,’ he knew that he had made a mistake. The inside of the old road was like an accordion-pleated tube of plastic, full of a brown fog you couldn’t smell, only see. It seemed to flex and shift. When you turned, you thought you felt it turn with you. Tag kept calm. ‘I’ve made a mistake,’ he told himself. ‘But I’ve made mistakes before. Things always came out right in the end.’ He closed his eyes and got himself facing back the way he had come. His energy was returning, but he knew he had better not try to run. He knew what might happen to you if you panicked in there.

  ‘I can get out of this,’ he thought.

  Then he heard the follower again.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  When he walked, it walked. When he stopped, it stopped. It was hiding quietly and patiently in his footsteps.

  ‘I can get out of this,’ he told himself.

  He set his ears back and ran until he thought he would burst.

  In a moment, he had reached his start-point and popped back out onto the bank of the river, where he tumbled end over end among the dead cats, spitting and hissing with fear and disgust. The fur bristled along his spine. His teeth bared themselves with no help from him. He got to his feet and turned to face his pursuer, a shriek of rage building up in his throat—

  It was Leonora Whitstand Merril.

  ‘Hello, Tag,’ she said shyly. Then she caught sight of the corpses.

  *

  He took her home immediately, and all the long, long way without a word spoken, so that her parents could scold her roundly in the dim green light of the oceanarium.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’ demanded the Mau. ‘What could you have been thinking of?’ While Ragnar Gustaffson shook his head and – conveniently forgetting his own first acquaintance with the Old Changing Way – said that in his opinion it was a very irresponsible thing, to travel wild roads as a kitten without protection or preparation.

  ‘A very irresponsible thing, Leonora.’

  Leo looked abashed for a moment. Then her confidence returned.

  ‘I want my brother and sister back,’ she said.

  ‘We all want that,’ said the Mau tiredly. ‘You could help by not being taken in your turn.’ With a kind of puzzled distaste she looked up at the great tank, where the sharks circled relentlessly in the illuminated water. ‘We live here with these—’ for a moment she seemed lost for words ‘—these fishes, to keep you safe.’

  This only made Leo angry.

  ‘I don’t want to be safe,’ she said.

  She said, ‘No-one is doing anything!’

  ‘I’m doing what I can, Leo,’ said Tag. Now that his fur had settled down, he felt mainly relief that he hadn’t hurt her. Nor could he forget her expression when she saw the grotesque and pathetic heap of fur at the end of the highway. It was hard to stay angry, though Leo seemed to have no difficulty with that. ‘I might have killed you by the river,’ he added quietly. ‘I had no idea who you were.’

  She looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. He could see that she was, but that it wouldn’t change things for now. He felt uncomfortable on her behalf – though he knew she wouldn’t thank him for that either – as she turned and stalked off towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded the Mau.

  ‘All these fish make me hungry,’ said Leonora. ‘I’m going to find Cy and get chips from the tourists.’

  ‘Leonora!’

  ‘It’s quite safe.’

  *

  When she returned in a better mood about two hours later, licking her chops and smelling strongly of hot lard and vinegar, she found Tag waiting for her on the oceanarium doorstep.

  ‘You’ve hurt their feelings, Leo,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll go in and apologize.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Tag. ‘Sit here for a moment.’

  She sat.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said. She began to groom herself absently; then turned her attentions to him. ‘And you’ve let your ears get dirty.’

  ‘Leonora, that wasn’t the first time you’d followed me, was it?’

  She stopped licking him and looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I knew you’d guess in the end. I wanted to learn about the wild roads. They’re such a part of your life, and Ragnar’s, and Pertelot’s. I feel left out. I’m only a kitten, but I want to know things.’

  ‘I wish you’d asked me,’ he said.

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘In fact I’m rather relieved that it was you. Still,’ he chided her gently, ‘you should never take an adult cat by surprise like that. Your mother and father and I, we fought the Alchemist—’ How could he explain? ‘We’ve seen some awful things. We – we were toughened by it, whether we wanted to be or not. You shouldn’t surprise us. And especially not the Majicou. The Majicou can be a more dangerous animal than you imagine.’

  Leonora laughed.

  ‘You didn’t look so dangerous w
hen you fell over,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, now your feelings are hurt too.’

  Tag blinked.

  ‘If you really want to learn things,’ he said, as offhandedly as he could, ‘you’d better start coming out with me.’

  *

  His main argument to Ragnar and Pertelot had been simple: ‘If you forbid her she’ll just keep doing it anyway.’ They had seen the force of this. They had expected him to make promises, of course. Leonora must agree to do what she was told. She must always stay by him. Once all that was sorted out, he had tried to calm their fears further by adding, ‘She’ll soon get bored when she sees how humdrum it all is.’

  ‘Don’t misjudge Leonora,’ the Queen had advised him grimly. Hurt feelings or not (and who could use such a phrase to describe the wells of sorrow and anger, the Egyptian deeps of the Mau’s affections?), she loved her daughter. ‘She’s an untapped soul.’

  In a way, both of them turned out to be right.

  *

  Leonora was soon bored.

  ‘Love the world, Leo,’ Tag would advise her. ‘That’s the secret of success. Love the world and follow your nose.’ This axiom gave rise less to a search of the wild roads than a communion with them, less an interrogation of their denizens than a conversation. It hardly suited the Leonine temperament. True, she enjoyed learning how to find and navigate her chosen highway, how to recognize a safe or a difficult entrance, how to read the ever-changing smoky light. It was an adventure. ‘Quick now, Leonora!’ Tag would urge. ‘Follow close!’ Or, ‘Wait! Wait here and make no sound!’ She soon learned to listen for that edge in his voice, that promise of excitement and danger. And she soon fell in love with the bizarre and eccentric animals he knew – the ‘creatures of Majicou’ who had acted as agents, informants, proxies to the original guardian of the wild roads. She loved the marginal places they lived in, and the odd relationships they seemed to have with each other or with human beings. All this was rather exciting. But it was broken up by long periods at Cutting Lane, during which her teacher sat among the spiderwebs and seemed to do nothing at all.

  Instead of changing his plan when it produced no discernible results, Tag only became thoughtful. On their third day along the Old Changing Way, he took her to some city gardens. There, he spent an afternoon in the sunshine, on the lawn in front of a house with weatherbeaten blue paintwork. He lay sprawled out on the warm grass, all creamy-white and silver, watching amiably the huge bees that zizzed and bumbled in long arcs through the summery air. He was silent for so long she thought he had gone to sleep.

  ‘Tag,’ she said, after some time, ‘why have we come here?’

  ‘I often come here to think.’

  There was another long pause.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said eventually, ‘I used to live here. Or somewhere like it. Two rather dull but very generous human beings bought me from a pet shop, and I lived a good life.’ He laughed. ‘I ate some things!’ he said. ‘Tuna-fish mayonnaise. Meat-and-liver dinner. Chicken and game casserole. (Chicken and game casserole was my downfall, in the end.) I don’t suppose you’ve had any of those?’

  ‘No,’ said Leo.

  ‘Or mackerel pâté, which is like a whole shoal of fish in a tin. Silver fish in a tin: that’s something!’

  ‘Now you’re just teasing me,’ Leo said primly; and added, having perhaps forgotten her passion for chips, ‘Pertelot says convenience food is bad for us anyway. And if you were having such a good time, why did you leave?’

  ‘Well,’ Tag said, ‘I can’t say I went of my own accord. But I did leave. The Majicou saw to that. He and his magpie, they gave me no rest until I did. One thing led to another, and we sorted things out, and here I am. It was a big fight, the day you were born and the Majicou died.’

  ‘Was he wonderful?’

  ‘He was big. I never saw a bigger cat, or heard a more convincing one.’

  ‘You were his apprentice.’

  ‘I suppose I was.’

  ‘And did you love him?’

  Tag looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know if love’s the word,’ he said. ‘He was full of anger and good advice. One of the last things he told me was this: “The wonderful place is inside you, and it goes wherever you go. Homes are made.” But you know, even though he was right, and I’ve made a new life for myself, sometimes I miss the home I had. So I come here, or go to one of the other gardens I remember, and scout about for it. I would recognize the voices of those dulls, I’m sure. Although what I’d do if I found them I’ve no idea. Does that seem odd to you?’

  ‘I think I’m too young to have an opinion.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tag. ‘Of course.’

  He turned his attention back to the house. After a while he raised his left hind foot and scratched vigorously beneath the ear on that side. Leo, meanwhile, launched herself after a passing cabbage-white butterfly, missed comprehensively, and turned the leap into a grave, complex little dance – a series of enchained steps, a spring, a turn. She loved to dance. I’ll never learn to hunt if I keep doing this, she thought. She thought, Odin is the hunter. I wonder where he is now?

  ‘Anyway,’ said Tag suddenly. ‘That was how it was explained to me. Home is what you make.’

  Leo, who had already suspected this, continued her dance.

  ‘Am I your apprentice?’ she asked lightly, so that he shouldn’t see how important it was to her.

  Tag yawned.

  ‘Time to get you home again,’ he said.

  Then he added, in rather a surprised way, ‘Do you want to be?’

  ‘Oh, only if you would like it too.’

  ‘There is one thing more we could try,’ Tag told her, ‘before we go home. We could visit the Domain of Uroum Bashou, the cat they call the Elephant.’

  Leo shivered.

  ‘Is he called Elephant because he’s very big?’

  Tag stared at her.

  ‘To be frank, I’m not entirely sure what an elephant is,’ he said. ‘I only know—’

  ‘It’s something very big,’ Leo told him. ‘Don’t you know anything?’ She added matter-of-factly, ‘Mother dreams of them sometimes. She dreams almost every night.’ She thought for a moment. ‘One day,’ she said with a kind of careless hauteur, ‘I shall dream of elephants too.’

  Tag continued to stare at her. He wondered if he had been as impenetrable at her age. ‘I only know that he can read,’ he finished. ‘Would you call someone Elephant because he can read?’

  ‘What’s reading?’

  Tag wasn’t entirely certain about that, either.

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said.

  He only knew what Uroum Bashou had told him: that human beings kept what they called ‘books’, and that the Reading Cat was able to sense the meaning of the ‘words’ these books contained by passing his paw quickly along each line of the text; or sometimes by licking it; or even by using his whiskers to sense faint changes in pressure caused by the movement of the air across the print. Uroum Bashou rarely used his eyes now that he had grown older – although of course that was how he had learned to read as a kitten, sitting on his owner’s shoulder as his owner turned the pages of some interesting volume – Birds of the Green Forest, or Small Rodents of the Northern World: Their Habits.

  ‘I’m tired of waiting and seeing,’ said Leonora. ‘Actually.’

  For a moment, Tag looked amused.

  ‘Oh you actually are, are you?’ he said. He jumped to his feet with an empty-eyed suddenness that startled her, snapped at a passing bee, and went bounding across the lawn, scattering last year’s leaves as he went. ‘Then try and follow me if you can!’ he called over his shoulder; and, with that, vanished.

  She caught a twist of light in the corner of her eye, dived into the highway before it closed after him. The world tipped sideways, righted itself, ghosts streamed past, the compass wind howled around her. She could see Tag in the middle distance, running tirelessly along in a kind of slow motion. Echoes flew up from his pads in the sh
ape of small brown birds. ‘Call yourself a cat?’ he taunted. And without warning he turned at right angles into the wall of the world and vanished again. Leonora stood among the echoes, panting. ‘What now?’ she thought. ‘What now?’ the echoes said, as they fluttered round her muzzle. ‘Oh go away!’ she told them. Off she went again, and this time caught up with him a little sooner. ‘I do call myself a cat!’ she said; but he answered, ‘Do you indeed? Then you already know the way. Such a clever animal doesn’t need any lessons,’ and disappeared again. So it went, from the huge ancient highways laid down by sabre-tooths after the ice receded, to the little local mazes made by domestic cats, Tag always ahead, always allowing her to catch up, until she was thoroughly out of breath and out of temper, and they stood in the cluttered yard of an abandoned red brick house somewhere in the Midlands, where early-evening light lay in slanting gold bars against the boarded-up windows, the scuffed and sun-bleached back door.

  Into the door was set an old-fashioned wooden cat flap, scratched and battered and grubby with the passage of many cats. Above that, a smaller hole had been gouged in the door itself, perhaps so that the occupants could look out without themselves being seen. Behind the door, the air was disturbed by a stealthy movement, and a rank smell. One amber eye appeared in the hole and stared out at Tag and Leo. Its surface had an oily iridescence. Its pupil was dilated.

  Leo rubbed her head nervously along the side of Tag’s head. ‘Is it Uroum Bashou?’ she whispered.

  ‘Go away,’ said the animal behind the door.

  ‘No,’ said Tag to Leo. ‘It is his guardian, Kater Murr.’

  ‘Go away,’ said Kater Murr again. Its voice was reasonable and dangerous. Its breath was bad.

  ‘I am the Majicou,’ Tag said. ‘You know me, Kater Murr.’

  ‘I know no-one.’

  The amber eye was removed suddenly. Leo had a sense of something ponderous and ill-favoured shifting its weight in the gloom.

  ‘Kater Murr, let us in,’ said Tag patiently.

  A contemptuous laugh came from behind the door.

  ‘He is not seeing anyone today.’

  ‘Stand away from the entrance.’

  There was a pause. Then the voice said, ‘Very well. I will not harm you if you come in.’