by Gabriel King
Kiki La Doucette was holding court.
Sealink had known her, four or five years ago down on the Mississippi Boardwalk, as a largish cat of indeterminate age, grown a little thick and loose around the midriff from too many litters carried to term. She had walked with a light, aggressive step and her glance had been as sharp as knives. Females had fled from her; even males had cowered. She had ruled the Moonwalk with claws of steel and even Baron Raticide had deferred to her volcanic temper.
The apparition which now confronted her was barely recognizable as that tempestuous high queen. Sealink had never seen any cat so vast. Rolls of fat flowed down her jowls, her neck, her shoulders; fat rippled and bunched across her flanks and belly; it cascaded over her gigantic rear like a gelid sea. Her coat was intensely, preternaturally glossy, as if, in addition to the tribute they brought, the courtiers had licked melted butter all over her. In peculiar contrast to the shambles of flesh which comprised her great body, Kiki’s limbs, protruding stiffly beneath her as if they had simply collapsed there and then under her weight, were stick-thin, her tail hairless as a nutrea rat’s.
Sealink shivered with sudden, instinctive repulsion.
Red hung back, uncertain.
As the calico moved into her line of sight, the yellow queen blinked faster. She squinted, blinked again. A tiny flame of recognition sparked in the depths of those cold amber eyes. Then she yawned, displaying teeth orange with decay, a white-coated tongue.
A strange listlessness now overcame the courtiers. Their dullness sharpened into anticipation. As one they swivelled to regard the newcomer.
‘Eh bien, it is the Delta Queen. I’d heard you were back. It’s been a while, cher. You’ve gotten plus grosse.’
Sealink felt the fur on the back of her neck rearrange itself.
‘I could say the same, and more.’
The yellow queen laughed – the sound of a hacksaw on damp wood. ‘Time has treated me better than you, cher. You look – how can I put this without making le faux pas? A little worn, perhaps: a little longer of tooth and claw, ha? Maybe learned a lesson or two and come back to your hometown sadder and wiser and in need of some help from La Mère?’
‘I’m here to find my kittens.’
A wave of reaction seemed to pass through the yellow queen and on through her courtiers. It was nothing so definite as surprise; rather an acknowledgement, a shared understanding, but there was no warmth in the response. Kiki La Doucette straightened, heaved herself upright. She smiled, so that an evil orange slit opened beneath her wide pink muzzle.
‘Oho, we all want the kittens, cher.’
Sealink stared at her.
‘Do you know where they are?’ she persisted.
Kiki’s eyes glittered.
‘Kittens are like stones on the beach, cher. How should I know which are your brood?’
‘I thought you might know what had happened to them. You know everything that happens in this town.’ Sealink watched as the high-yellow swelled with self-satisfaction.
‘So the Delta Queen is a little less insolent now, eh? Well, I might know a thing or two, ça depend…You come to Kiki for a favour, cher? So – I shall expect something in return. What have you brought me?’
Sealink bridled, but the image of her lost kittens veiled her pride. ‘A calico cat travels light, y’know? I don’t believe I have anything for you.’
‘You cannot expect a high queen to give you something for nothing.’
Sealink considered briefly. ‘I seen the Baron, down on the Moonwalk.’
‘That old muskrat! You think I’m interested in him? He is nothing to me, less than nothing! You are folle. Mad!’ Saliva flew from her mouth. The old temper seemed to flare for a moment, then subsided like a squall at sea.
‘I know some good restaurants…’
‘Ha! You think you can tell me anything I don’t know about this town? Besides, what would I want with more food?’ She gestured at the untouched pile before her.
Sealink blinked. She started to salivate. Food going to waste, while others starved. Something was out of balance in this town. And anything the size of Kiki La Doucette would certainly weigh down those scales…
Kiki stared past the calico, her eyes narrowing. Then she grinned. ‘But maybe I am feeling charitable, cher. Yes, I am in an excellent mood. A small bêtise has amused me. A private joke, bébé. I think you’d enjoy it if I were to share it with you. But no, that would spoil it entirely. I tell you what. You are a strong cat, eh? And your teeth are good, non?’
Sealink stared at her suspiciously.
‘And your petit ami, too? Come out of the shadows, cher. Yes, you, with the coat like a fall sunset.’
Red made a cautious approach from beneath the banana palm where he’d taken refuge. The calico had seemed rather an intimidating proposition; but this female was a monster! The courtiers parted before him like a sea.
‘I think I seen you before, ha? Ah yes, I remember you well. Kiki La Doucette is renowned for her remarkable memory. I know every cat on my boardwalk better than their own mothers. Hell, I am La Mère – I am the mother of most of those cats! Not you, though, mon ange, not with that ugly visage, that black stain like the devil’s mark! These are my babies—’
She spread a paw wide to indicate her courtiers. A curiously rapacious tenderness informed her features as she surveyed this motley crew. Red followed her gaze. All different sizes they were, with fur of every colour and type that the Great Cat had created. Something was wrong, though. He couldn’t quite hold the thought in his head, but he felt it deep inside. Something was lost here. Something was odd. A mangled tomcat returned Red’s stare, then split lazily from the pack.
‘What you lookin’ at, boy?’
‘You’re wearing a collar.’
‘It’s an honour you gotta earn.’
‘Where I come from, it’s thought kinda demeaning. Only housecats wear collars; no self-respectin’ feral would dream of it.’
‘Well, boy, you can dream on, ’cause you ain’t one of the Queen’s own, and without you ain’t one of us, you don’t got no collar and no food neither. Hell, boy, you don’t got no life!’
All around, the courtiers wheezed and spluttered with laughter, eyes screwed up in derision. The tom strutted back to the group, bony rump swaying.
‘Ferme ta gueule!’ The laughter withered to silence. ‘So,’ she addressed herself to Sealink again. ‘You do one little thing for me, and I’ll tell you something you’ll like. A bargain, ha?’
‘What is it?’
‘You go down to the Golden Scarab, cher, and there you find two young ladies who call theyselves Venus and Sappho—’ a distant wheeze from the retinue ‘—yeah, they got some real airs and graces, given their parentage. You know the Golden Scarab, eh?’
‘The old bookshop on Orleans?’
‘Go there and tell them to give you what they have for La Mère. They know what you mean. You do this one thing for me, I do you a favour, bien?’
Sealink considered. It seemed a simple enough request. Kiki was clearly too fat to shift for herself, her courtiers too degenerate. She came to a decision. It was an indignity she could bear if it meant finding her kittens again.
*
The Golden Scarab lay in faded splendour near the junction with Bourbon Street. Dusty antiquarian books were piled one upon another, spines outward to the window-browser, offering such titles as The Soul of Central Africa; The Killing of the Khazar Kings; Sympathetic Magic: A Practical Reader; The Chase, the Turf and the Road; The Seven Sleepers; The Festival of St John: Ancient Traditions Revisited.
Some little soapstone figurines, squat and intense, were balanced on top of the largest pile, and a box of ornate silver jewellery was propped up further back in the display.
Sealink and Red peered through this collection of artefacts into the dimly-lit shop beyond. Two or three human beings moved slowly through the interior, big and dull and shadowy. Stopping at precarious piles of books they
stood stock-still, heads tilted at an awkward angle like great cranes looking through water for prey.
The door was shut.
‘Now what?’ Red looked anxiously up and down the street. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here anyway.’
‘You gonna tell me you got something more pressing to do?’
‘I still don’t understand why you let that fat old queen diss you like that.’
‘Honey, you ain’t ever been a mother—’
‘That’s for sure—’
‘—so you don’t know what it feels like to lose one of your own, let alone three. And if there’s anything I can do to find them and make up for leaving them to the mercy of this town, I aim to do it.’
Red’s mouth opened, then a thought slid into the patched eye and he promptly shut it again. At that moment another human being appeared, turning the corner by the bar at the end of the street and proceeding towards the Golden Scarab; a tall, gawky man in an ill-fitting linen jacket with creases that looked too random and ingrained to be deliberately casual. Without a glance at the two cats, he pushed at the bookshop door. It strained open on its stiff hinges, and at once the calico was inside, between his feet and straight under a dusty shelf. When Sealink stared back out, she could see Red faintly through the grime on the door, pressing his nose to the pane. His breath flowered and died on the glass.
The humans shuffled out to the back of the shop and disappeared. Sealink glanced cautiously around, then emerged from her hiding-place. She sniffed the air. Cats! At least two distinct scents, and another smell, too, that she could not quite place. Just as she was digesting this information, she caught sight of a plumed tail, switching away high above her. Backing off for a better view, she stared upwards. On the top shelf, stationed between two book-ends in the form of Anubis the jackal-headed god, was a large-furred tabby whose golden eyes shone brightly in the dingy interior. She had been dozing, but now all her attention was fixed on Sealink.
Calico and tabby stared at one another. The tabby bristled. Sealink felt her fur stand on end. Maintaining intense eye contact while staring upwards was something of a strain, Sealink found. After a while, she realized that she could feel the blood draining from her head, leaving it light and empty. Narrowing her eyes, she tried to focus on the cat above her. Black specks began to float in her vision. She felt hot, then cold. The world started to spin. Shadows twisted then fell apart; and all at once her nose was assailed with a complex and familiar scent: civet and attar of roses! Burnt spices! When she stared again into the gloom of the top shelf, the russet tabby had gone. Sitting in its place between the Egyptian book-ends was a creature with the sleek elegance of a completely different kind of cat, a cat with a face as fine and accurate as the head of an axe. Rose-grey fur lay on her bones like velvet. The mark of the scarab was on her forehead; and, when she opened her eyes, they were not gold, but the green of the oldest river in the world.
It was a Mau.
It was Pertelot Fitzwilliam, Queen of Cats.
And her eyes were a well of sorrow.
Sealink felt the Mau’s loss as a raw, hollow place in the pit of her own stomach. She opened her mouth to address her old friend, and, as she did so, there was a brief burst of green light, and then the Queen was gone.
Blinking hard, the calico gazed up into the shadows again. But all she found was the large tabby staring bemusedly back at her.
‘Who are you and what do you think you’re doing in here?’
Sealink shook her head to clear it of the scent of attar.
‘My name is my own; but I’m here on Madame Kiki’s business.’
The tabby hissed. She leapt neatly off the shelf, landed delicately on a tottering pile of books, which swayed as her weight hit then righted itself once more, and onto the floor in front of the intruder. The bell on her collar tinkled as she landed. There was not much to choose between the two of them for size.
The tabby stared at her curiously. ‘You’re not the sort of cat she usually sends,’ it said accusingly. Then it turned imperiously, flicking its tail under Sealink’s nose. ‘This way.’
Between the shelves the tabby wove, with Sealink behind. At the back of the shop was a thick, tapestried curtain. Beyond it, Sealink could hear hushed human voices. Cats have a curious nature: but the calico prided herself on being plain nosy.
A few words of conversation emerged distinctly:
‘…need more traps…’
‘…after the full moon… They’ll say it’s pest control—’
A laugh from all three men, then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. A door opened and the voices retreated, dull, self-satisfied, full of the smugness of conspiracy.
‘…to the Elysian Fields…’
‘…for the Alchemist…’
‘…Faubourg Marigny… kittens…’
Out of this empty mutter, Sealink’s brain picked first ‘Alchemist’ and then ‘kittens’. The world lurched. She stared at the tapestry curtain and a shudder passed through her great frame. What to depend upon among so many dreams and omens, so many uncertain signs? Lost kittens, old friends, past and future intermingled in these Crescent City blues of hers.
‘Hey! You deaf or something?’
She jumped. Another cat had joined the tabby. It was equally large and well-furred and brindled all over with patches of orange and black, like some randomly marked tigress. The two were clearly sisters.
‘So, I ask you again, you have come for La Mère’s petit cadeau – you come to collect her gift, eh, cher?’
The newcomer’s tone was hard but cultivated. Were they both daughters of Kiki La Doucette? Their father must have been some vast tomcat, Sealink thought, to have produced two such strapping offspring from a female who had once been as skinny as the high queen of the boardwalk.
Sealink looked the brindled cat up and down. Like the tabby, she wore a collar. Little charms and bells hung from it so that each motion produced a faint jingling. Housecats, she thought, derisively. Nothing more than pampered pets.
‘Ain’t no call to cher me, honey. I ain’t running errands out of politeness.’
The brindled cat blinked superciliously at her. The tabby sniffed. ‘There’s no call for rudeness, either, especially from some renegade.’
‘Who you calling renegade?’ Sealink’s tone was dangerous.
‘Cher, you don’t have no owner, you don’t have no protector. You wear no collar, you not one of the saved. You not going last long in this town. What’s the matter – you new around here or something?’ The brindled cat – Sappho, as her name-tag proclaimed her – regarded Sealink with undisguised contempt.
Sealink returned the look in spades. ‘Honey, I was born in this town. I’ve roamed free as a cat should and I know every rooftop, every café, every boneyard. I been all around the world. All you been is here, which ain’t much.’
The tabby made a howl of protest, but the calico went right on, ‘And what’s all this with kittens?’
The two sisters regarded her with narrowed eyes.
‘Don’t know what you talking about—’ said one.
‘None of your business—’ said the other, at exactly the same time.
Sealink curled her lip. ‘Hell, they humans sure got you by the short’n’curlies—’
The tabby stared at her in mock amazement. ‘Humans – they’re wonderful. How else you going to come by poached fish and velvet cushions?’
‘Won’t hear a word against them,’ declared Sappho with finality.
The calico fixed them with a steady, contemptuous gaze. ‘May as well give me the damn “cadeau” and let me get on with life out in the free world, then.’
The brindled cat returned Sealink’s stare coolly. ‘Come with me.’
A little book-lined corridor ran past the tapestried doorway and into a storeroom. Out here it was cooler, the air damp and musty. Spiders had colonized the upper reaches of the room so that great swags of web hung from the rafters like
Spanish moss. Layer upon layer of dust covered stacks of cartons and boxes: dust which spiralled lazily into the air as they passed. In the centre of the room sat a great wooden chest in an ornate African style – twirls of carved leaves and birds making a complex fretwork of dark wood into which was inlaid gleaming ivory and mother-of-pearl. Despite the intricacy of the decoration the chest looked massive and dense: a mighty catafalque. Sealink walked around the object, sniffing curiously. She stood up on her hind legs and examined the lid. Of all the objects in the storeroom, its surface alone was free of dust. Light falling from some obscure source had formed a golden pattern upon it, a tall triangle with a round head, somewhat like an old-fashioned keyhole, or the sun rising over a pyramid.
Sappho elbowed past her and started to lever at the heavy lid. The pattern of light dispersed into the general gloom. ‘Lend a paw, Venus,’ she hissed.
The second tabby looked startled and immediately leapt to her sister’s aid. After some puffing and genteel swearing, the lid fell back with a creak and sat upright in the air, supported by two heavy leather hinges. Two furry rumps heaved at something within the chest, then emerged backwards, dragging some amorphous package with their teeth. Out in the uncertain light of the storeroom it looked like a badly-wrapped package – layers of creased brown paper coming away in flakes, girded around with lengths of chewed string. Sealink nosed at it. The object emitted a strange smell, rather like old carpet. Overlying this fustiness was a dense perfume which made her cough and sneeze. It was heavy and felt hard to the touch.
‘Take this to La Mère. And be very careful with it.’
The two sisters exchanged a glance, the dull light flicking off their golden eyes. They turned to stare at the calico, their expressions identically opaque.
‘If you meddle with it you will be sorry.’
‘La Mère will make it so.’
Sealink met their stare unblinking.
‘She don’t scare me. This is just a job of work; means to an end.’