by Gabriel King
Sealink wrinkled her brow. What was it old Baron Raticide had said? The kittens go first. But go where? She struggled with her thoughts for a while. Then she asked, ‘Who on earth are the Pestmen?’
The striped cat shrugged. ‘Bad angels. That’s how I t’ink of ’em. Human bein’s, they split down the middle, y’know – the kind and the cruel. I call the cruel ones bad angels; the good ones, kind – and used to be they mostly in the second category till quite recent. Now a cat in mortal danger if it walk the streets wit’ no collar. The Pestmen they drives up in their big vans, grab you up, you ain’t never seen again—’cept in bits, y’know?’
‘Bits?’
‘They sell cat bones to the voodoo shops,’ the tortoishell offered helpfully. ‘And if you got black fur, they’ll mummify your feet for lucky charms; boil your brains for magic.’
Sealink grimaced. ‘Humans sure can be strangely superstitious – but they used to sell this stuff in my time, and it was only ever chickens.’
‘They bin gettin’ real weird.’ Hog shook his head. ‘It’s bin like a freak tide: one day cats is good; the next we all some sort of danger to ’em and they’re crossing themselves in the street if you pass. The next day they stop feedin’ you; and the day after that there’s this big wave of hatred and they want to kill you and your kitties and sell you all for voodoo.’
Sealink fell silent. Why would any cat steal another’s kitten? She thought about events at Tintagel, when cat had fought against cat… ‘Has anyone,’ she asked, her voice raised, her face like stone, ‘mentioned some guy called the Alchemist?’
At the other end of the tomb, Téophine’s head shot up. ‘I heard that name, but not for some time.’
‘How about the Majicou?’
‘We heard the Majicou was dead.’
Sealink considered for a moment, decided against venturing the details. ‘That’s what I heard, too.’
‘Do you know the Mammy?’
Sealink wrinkled her brow. ‘I remember the name.’
‘She used to be the guardian round these parts,’ offered the tortoiseshell.
‘Can’t she help? Seems to me you guys could do with some guardianship.’
Téophine shook her head. ‘She ain’t here no more – she’s way out in the old swamps – in the bayous.’
‘So?’
‘It’s a long way, and it ain’t safe.’
Sealink sensed an adventure, a new kind of journey, one with a clear goal and simple motives; a journey, moreover, that would take her out of a city which she had once loved and which now seemed irrevocably poisoned. ‘Tell me where to find her and I’ll go talk to the Mammy. Someone’s got to do something round here before the whole thing goes to hell in a handcart.’
*
Téophine’s knowledge as to the whereabouts of the Mammy amounted to little more than an awareness of a seldom-used wild road that supposedly led out to the Bayou Gros Bon Ange from the seedy end of Iberville, but she and Red insisted on accompanying the calico at least that far. Red had offered to journey with her into the ancient backwaters, but Sealink could tell from the looks he and the little black-and-white exchanged that his heart was not in it. For a second she felt desperately jealous.
‘Still,’ she muttered, as they trotted down Dauphine, ‘ménage à trois just ain’t my scene.’
Towards the corner of Bienville they found a little ginger and white cat with a pink velour collar wandering disconsolately up and down.
Sealink approached it.
‘Hey, honey, you OK?’
‘Hello! My name’s Candy. I’m a bit lost.’
‘Lost is lost, honey. Sayin’ you’re a bit lost is kinda like sayin’ you’re a bit pregnant, y’know?’
The ginger cat looked shocked, then decided to ignore the big cat’s vulgarity. ‘I think I live quite close to here, but I’ve never been outside before, so I can’t quite figure out which house is mine. My owners took me out in a plastic box last night when it was dark and left me here. I think it must be some kind of test. Do you think it’s a test?’ She regarded the calico optimistically.
‘Maybe—’
Candy tossed her head so that the little gold bell on her collar tinkled. ‘I’ll figure it out soon. I’ve always been intelligent – very good at tricks. I can juggle with a ball of paper; catch a catnip mouse, even if it’s thrown from the end of the room, and open every cupboard door in the kitchen.’ She thought about this for a moment. ‘You don’t have any food about you, do you?’
Sealink shook her head. The ginger-and-white looked disappointed.
‘Ah well, never mind. Goodbye, then.’
And off she went, tail in the air, sniffing each stoop and sill along the street. The three of them watched her go in silence. Then Red said, ‘Do you think we should tell her?’
‘Tell her what, that her humans have got rid of her? That if she even does find her way back, they’ll do it again?’
‘I’ll tell her how to get to the boneyard,’ Téophine said with quiet decisiveness, and set off up the street after Candy.
She had almost caught up with the little ginger-and-white when a large, dark-coloured truck pulled up in front of them and two men in black overalls jumped out. Candy looked up hopefully. The first reached down and picked her up. She hung unresisting between his big gloves while he called something to the second man, his large fingers clumsy on her neck. With a jangle, the pink collar fell to the ground. Téophine, her back against the wall, was doing her best to slide away unnoticed, but the second human had seen her. He unravelled a wide-meshed net and with some expertise cast it out into the shadow where she cowered. At once there was pandemonium. Téophine shrieked and fought the net but the more she struggled, the more the net tangled her limbs.
‘Téo, no!’
Spitting and howling. Red sped up the road towards her, a streak of orange fury. He launched himself at the net-man, fangs bared.
Sealink stared, horrified. Then she, too, fled up the street: in the opposite direction.
*
She ran and ran. She ran until her lungs burned and the pads of her paws felt raw and bruised. And, as she ran, the blood roared in her ears, roared and thundered like a great, dark storm until she could almost feel the fingers of a gigantic black hand reaching out to break the green-gold of a symbol that hung before her like the promise of hope, and she knew that she would have to run for ever to evade it; and that even if she ran from it for ever the world would eventually be eaten away around her so that she would exist in a terrible void, alone save for the hand and the words that had reverberated through her dream; and at last she stopped, her chest heaving, her eyes watering with fear, and shame and horror washing hot and heavy through her veins.
What had she done? She had deserted a cat she had come to think of as more than a friend; and a brave, sick feral who needed all the help she could get. She had run and left them to whatever fate awaited them in the hands of the men in black overalls, men who could only be the Pestmen the boneyard cats had spoken of in hushed tones. Another betrayal.
The image of the pink velour collar on the ground returned sharply to her mind’s eye: a terrible image of innocence traduced.
What was happening in this city? What was happening to her? Had she, too, caught the wasting sickness the feral cats suffered from? Had it perhaps attacked not her flesh, but her very soul? Not for the first time in recent history, Sealink felt nauseated by herself.
Panting, she pressed her throbbing forehead against a window-sill, so that the cool glass soothed her fevered skin. When her breathing had returned to something approaching its normal speed, she opened her eyes and stared about her. She didn’t recognize the alley she now stood in. It was dingy and narrow, and the shopfronts were dusty and ill-lit. She turned to examine the window she had pressed herself against.
It was an odd shop, that was for sure. The window display comprised an extraordinary clutter of unlikely objects: dolls in grass skirts and beads and exagge
rated black eye make-up, bottles and vials of all different colours; alligator teeth in great long swags and ropes; books and cards and candles; silver jewellery, boxes and packets and powders; bones and totems and chickens’ feet; and amid the display, something that made her heart clench as though it had been clamped in a vice. Something – someone – she recognized.
In the very centre of all the arcane paraphernalia of a traditional tourist voodoo shop, on a rotating black velvet stand, sat the head of an animal. The head had been partially flayed on the right-hand side with the greatest care and precision to demonstrate, as if for anatomical discussion by interested veterinarians, the major muscle groups and bone structure surrounding the orbital socket of the species Felis, cattus. The preserved red flesh stretched tightly upwards from a ghastly rictus to an empty eye-cavern. The brain had been removed. On the left-hand side of the head, eye, skin, flesh and fur were all intact.
Sealink sat heavily upon the ground, all breath gone from her lungs.
The macabre carousel rotated gaily once more.
She stared at it with her mouth open and her eyes streaming.
It was the head of an old black cat.
It was the head of Baron Raticide.
11
The Symbol
The Queen licked her paws for a moment.
‘It was the water again after that,’ she said. ‘Cold currents. The bony, hollow halls of the ocean.’
She sighed.
‘I did not find my children,’ she said softly. ‘But if nothing else, I have seen the Nile.’
It was so quiet in the oceanarium that Tag could hear waves falling on the beach half a mile away. For a moment, he imagined them as the breakers of another, gentler, sea. A dreamy warmth stole over him, full of the life and bustle of strange cities, smells of spices, the taste of things he had never eaten before. He shook himself.
‘But what about Cy?’ he said. ‘If the Great Ray brought all three of you home, where is she?’
The King and Queen looked at one another.
‘Tag, we don’t know,’ admitted Ragnar.
‘Goodbye for now,’ the tabby had said, looking up at the King and Queen in the hard actinic glare of the aquarium lamp. ‘It’s Thousand Island Fever for us, now you guys are safe back from the Egypt package. It’s activity holidays and all, and, you know, reckless navigation. We got more stuff to do, me and this Ray-guy.’ With that, tabby and fish had vanished in a lazy swirl of black water, leaving the amazed royal couple to stare down into the tank, which now seemed shadowy and unbounded, bigger inside than out. For a long time afterwards, the Queen had thought she could still hear Cy’s voice, saying, in a kind of receding echoic whisper, ‘We got more things to see!’
Tag was quiet for a long time when he heard this.
‘She’s very much her own cat, of course,’ he said eventually. ‘But I don’t like to think of her in the care of a fish.’ He blinked. ‘I shall worry about her,’ he told the Queen.
‘Oh Mercury, don’t be sad. She’ll come home again, I’m sure.’
Tag stared into the fish-tank.
‘The worst thing is,’ he said, ‘that I don’t feel as if we are any further forward for it all.’
‘Oh but don’t you see?’ said Pertelot. ‘We are!’
Then she made Ragnar display the silver symbol – the pyramid or open triangle, surmounted by a circle – hanging from the blue sash the fisherman had given him. ‘This is at the heart of things. We were shown it deep in the earth,’ she said, ‘by some ambivalent force, something which helps us with one hand and hinders with the other, something powerful enough to visit the depths of the ocean and there engage a giant fish for us to travel on. Perhaps if we can understand the symbol, we will find Odin and Isis. Look: it seems pleased with its own mystery. Can an object be pleased? It has an oily sheen, like moonlight on a wave at night.
‘The Great Ray took us to Egypt,’ she went on, after a pause. ‘The boats and boatmen helped us home. I have no idea why, except to make sure we understand this sign. Mercury, it is the key.’
In the silence that followed, Tag stared at the symbol. Ragnar, proud of his sash but a little embarrassed to be the centre of attention, scratched behind one ear. The Queen finished grooming herself, stretched, and looked round the oceanarium.
‘Where’s Leo?’ she asked Tag in a lighter voice. ‘I hope she’s been behaving herself.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Ragnar, ‘Leonora!’
And they looked at Tag expectantly.
*
He didn’t know what to say. He had been so captivated by their story he had forgotten his own. The apprentice was still out there somewhere, roaming the wild roads alone. Before he could stop himself he blurted out, ‘I’ve lost her.’
Ragnar chuckled.
‘Gone out for chips,’ he suggested. ‘It will be tomcats next,’ he predicted placidly. The Queen gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Oh, that is one bad daughter,’ he said.
‘I wonder where she learns it?’ Pertelot enquired.
She said to Tag, ‘Don’t worry so, Mercury. You can’t look after her all the time.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Tag. ‘I mean I really have—’ Appalled by their faith in him, he found he couldn’t continue. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘she’s probably down at the Beach-O-Mat now. I’ll go and fetch her. No, no: you stay here.’ And he went off thinking miserably, ‘Now I’ve lied to them, too.’
*
Out on the cobbles in the quiet night, he turned right instead of left, and soon stood on a wooden bench on the clifftop above the village. He welcomed the chilly onshore breeze, with its odours of iodine and salt. The cottages fell away from him among flights of steps, narrow alleys, stone-cropped walls. The big sky was planished with moonlight, the ocean a litter of small waves breaking Chinese-white on charcoal. Far out on the horizon, the inshore fishing-boats were at work in a scatter of lights. He imagined the fishermen drawing in the nets, water pouring over the decks, then the slithering silver haul spilt out, mixed with shells, starfish, weeds and bits of plastic rubbish. But that only made him think of Cy, eyeing him with her head on one side and saying, ‘Tag, we got stargazey pie!’ She loved fish, and now she had gone off with one. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear to have lost two cats in one night. He jumped off the bench and ran down the hill to Cy’s bus shelter of choice, where he encountered two or three hard-favoured village toms, boasting away the midsection of the night as they waited for the fishing-boats to return. When they saw who he was they quietly took themselves elsewhere. He was rather hurt by this, nevertheless watched them intently as they backed away, as if to catch something unawares in their blank, reflectant eyes. He sat there for some time. After an hour or so, mist formed in the bay and sent cold fingers the colour of poached egg-white up across the water and into the town. Tag got up and walked about to get warm. Mist-loom made the palms, the chip shops and amusement arcades, the lifeboat station, look bigger than they were – they thrust themselves upon him suddenly, in a space full not of echoes but the opposite of echoes. Then, out of the cold, just after dawn, walking down the long, empty esplanade in the hallucinatory light, he saw a young cat coming towards him. Its gait was limping and tired. Its sandy fur was matted with pigeon dung and worse. It was Leonora Whitstand Merril.
She stood in front of him.
‘If you don’t tell them I was lost,’ she offered, ‘I won’t tell them you lost me.’
*
‘We’ll see,’ was all he could promise.
‘It’s the best deal you’re going to get.’
He stared at her with unusual severity. He said, ‘Just tell me what happened to you, Leonora.’
She stared back.
‘I’m freezing,’ she said.
He took her to the twenty-four-hour Beach-O-Mat, with its neat yellow benches, black and white linoleum and shiny machines. Cats love clean linen, even when there is no chance to sit on it. They love warmth even more, and as a place to get
warm the Beach-O-Mat was a byword in the town. (It was, as Cy had once told Tag, ‘a must-have, Jack: a major item in everyone’s wardrobe.’ And, when he stared at her in puzzlement, ‘Hey! So what did I say?’) Even after a long empty night it retained much of the previous day’s steamy atmosphere. So there they sat, in the drum of an open tumble-drier, while, sneezing fastidiously, Tag applied his tongue to the kitten’s dirty coat, and Leo stared thoughtfully ahead of herself as if she had learned rather more than she wanted to about the world. After a minute or two she said, ‘You aren’t going to like this—’
‘Get on with it now, Leo.’
‘—not this first bit, anyway. After you abandoned me on the Old Changing Way—’
‘Leonora!’
‘After I got lost, something really strange happened. I mean, stranger than it usually is over there. It was cold and damp where I was, like a lot of empty passageways going off in all directions. Water was dripping all around me, but I knew it was a kind night out in the real world, the sky clear, the fields giving up the heat of the day. I could almost hear the mice, cupped in nests of warm grass: yet there I stood, with this raw damp cold in the bones. Tag—’ she stared intently at him, as if she would recognize an answer whether he spoke or not ‘—have you ever felt as if your life was draining out of you? As if you were poisoned, or—’ she thought for a moment ‘—fading out somehow?’ She shivered with the memory of it. ‘I’ll tell you, I was a scared kitten at that point. I was lost. I was cold. I was going to sleep without wanting to. If you had turned up to show me the way home at that moment I just wouldn’t have had the energy to take it.’
She eyed him shrewdly.
‘Of course, you didn’t,’ she reminded him. ‘Turn up, I mean.’
Tag decided to ignore this.
‘Lassitude,’ he said. ‘Feelings of vagueness. I’ve never heard of anything like it. But there were many things I never had a chance to learn. And then again, perhaps it is something quite new.’