by Gabriel King
‘Is that me in there?’
‘That is you. And next to you, me. Do you see? You’re not frightened by this? Some of them are frightened.’
‘I’m not frightened,’ said Animal X.
‘Then what do you see?’ she asked him.
‘Something in my head,’ he said. ‘Something metal in my head.’
‘They all have that,’ she said.
Animal X contemplated this in silence. Then he said, ‘They put something metal in my head.’ He said, as much to her as to himself, ‘They put something metal in my head, but I feel it less these days. The gap it made is not so big.’ He said, ‘I like standing next to you like this.’
‘And what else do you see,’ asked Amelie, ‘when you look at yourself?’
‘I see a cat like any other.’
‘No cat is like any other,’ she said.
She said, ‘You have some way to go yet.’
‘The river will bring me somewhere in the end.’
‘I did not mean it in a geographical sense.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Though if you keep following the river it will take you to the sea. That may be no bad thing.’
‘What is “the sea”?’
‘Well, I will tell you, because I was once there. I caught a glimpse of it from a carrying basket, somewhere between a cat show and a car park. It was late afternoon. The air was so different! Behind me was a hall full of cats – the least of them had been judged and found acceptable. In front, a sky so bright it seemed to go on for ever!’ She closed her eyes. Opened them again. ‘You can see further there,’ she said. ‘But the sea, the sea— For one thing, it smells of salt, and cooked fish, and items which have been dead for quite a long time. For another, there are huge white birds there: birds as big as a cat, that make the loneliest noise you have ever heard. They hover for a moment, then swing away on the wind and disappear among the rooftops. The sea— The main thing to remember about the sea is that it is more water than you can ever imagine. It is so big that it heaves up and down, grey and blue, with a kind of cotton wool floating on it.’ She thought for a moment. ‘What else? There is always an old man leading two dogs. Oh, and at the sea, human beings walk around waving their arms and pointing things out to one another.’ She cast about for one last thing to add. ‘All that day I smelled fried onions,’ she said. ‘I was first in my class, best in show.’
When he heard about the sea, Animal X felt himself fill up like a clear glass with excitement. ‘I was always going there,’ he thought. He had no idea why. ‘Whatever I was, I was going there.’ Suddenly he thought, ‘Even though I am frightened of so much water.’
To Amelie he said, ‘That is where I am bound to go. That “sea”.’
‘Well then,’ said Amelie, ‘how lucky I am to have hit on it so soon. Sleep well.’
And she left him to the mirror.
*
He woke perhaps an hour later to find her looking down at him from the back of the chair, where she was balanced with the unconcern of a performer. He had the feeling that she had been there for some time. The moon was down, but an odd back-light or afterglow, filtered through the yews in the churchyard outside, gave her face with its metallic orange eyes a disturbing look – at once unworldly and fiercely honest. Her ears, he noted, were small, round-tipped. When she saw that he was awake, she continued to study him for a moment, then jumped quietly off the chair, so that he was compelled to look down at her. Her tail was up. She seemed expectant. He looked away from her, yawned suddenly, and washed one paw.
‘Your friend ate so much he was sick,’ she said. ‘He is overexcited, and talks constantly about some kind of cheese no-one here has heard of.’
‘He isn’t used to other cats.’
‘Clearly.’
‘What about the kitten?’
‘It is the biggest kitten anyone has ever seen. Only Cottonreel dare approach it. Even Cottonreel cannot get it to speak. It seems rather attached to you. At this moment it is lying across the church doorway in case we hurt you; or, I suspect, in case you think of leaving without it.’
‘Ah.’
‘No human being has plugged anything into that animal’s brain.’
‘Its anger is all its own,’ agreed Animal X.
There was a pause, during which Amelie walked up and down in front of him, waving her tail to and fro as if she couldn’t make up her mind about something. Animal X watched her uneasily, wondering why she had woken him up in the middle of the night. Suddenly she said, with an impatience less directed at him, perhaps, than herself, ‘Am I attractive to you?’
And then quickly, before he could answer, ‘Because I am beginning to be on heat. Tomorrow I will be calling and calling, and any half-decent tom will be able to come to me and Welcome. But tonight I should like it to be you.’
‘Ah,’ said Animal X, who had suspected something like it.
‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I am not certain I remember all that. I have not had the opportunity to do it for some time.’
She looked back down the length of her body at him.
‘I will begin to think you are stupid,’ she said softly.
*
Later, they stood side by side again, looking into the mirror, and she told him, ‘A great change is coming about in the world. I have felt that since I was a kitten. I work here now to help it happen; or perhaps just to be ready for it. I forget which.’
‘What was it like to be a kitten?’
‘I was all success in those days,’ she said.
She examined her image, next to Animal X’s in the mirror.
‘But nothing lasts. We Persians find it hard to give up our youth, especially after a career on the show bench. If we aren’t careful we become sulky, narcissistic, demanding.’
‘You look beautiful to me,’ said Animal X.
She rubbed her face against his.
‘Oh, this body is a little too cobby now, and the fur goes in need of a groom longer than it should—’ She saw that he was no longer listening and laughed to show she didn’t mind. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he said. ‘We will be the last cats who come down the river.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Something destroyed that place for good,’ he said. ‘Broke it to pieces. Many of them died. We were the last to leave.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He said, ‘Something broke it open one morning, right in front of me, some green fire, I wasn’t sure if it was there or not. Have you ever seen anything like that?’ After a moment, when she didn’t answer, he added, ‘I’m sorry it took us so long to get here. We didn’t know much about being outside.’
He said, looking in front of him, ‘We’ll be the last of them now. You will need to tell the white cat that.’
Amelie stretched.
‘I’ll tell her in the morning,’ she said.
Later, she slept curled in her beautiful fur, while Animal X, suddenly feeling as if their roles were reversed, watched over her; or, staring out of the vestry window into the warm night, thought puzzledly, ‘I am a cat who fears water and yet is drawn to the sea.’
*
The Dog had observed all these comings and goings, right from the moment the woods first filled with rain. Rain held no terrors for the Dog. It had been rained on many times in a long life, four legs and three. It preferred a doorway if it could find one, but generally rain was nothing to a dog like itself. The cat, though, had rushed about in circles in the water-meadow. Its friends called to it. Foam was coming out of its mouth, other cats came and fetched it. The things cats did were always inexplicable. Why they made this fuss, the Dog had been unable to understand. It is only a cat falling down, it had thought: but, being a dog, followed them all into the village.
The Dog watched. No-one knew it was there. Things it saw: trees. Shadows. Shadows of trees. A tree is a good thing, you can always use a tree. It saw the gold
en kitten, guarding the door of the church all night. It saw the blue-cream cat go in and out. Various noises came from the vestry. When the Dog had looked in through the vestry window, an hour or two before, it had not understood what it saw. Who knew what cats did to each other anyway? You would never want to be a cat. The difference between dogs and cats was simple. A dog had a coat, it had a smell. Being a dog was something you could rely on. When you’re a dog you have a very strong face, which you can push under things; or you can rag them about with your mouth. A dog never need let go. A dog’s teeth will hang on.
‘And another thing—’ it thought. But it had forgotten what that was.
Later, it thought, ‘No-one ever gives me any food.’
And, later still, ‘How did I come to be the Dog?’ It thought, ‘I have been the Dog for too long now to remember.’ It had been the Dog for a long time. ‘Too long to remember how,’ it concluded. ‘Far too long.’
Then it thought, ‘Still only one golden kitten.’
It would keep watching until dawn. It would keep watching all the next day if that proved necessary. ‘A dog can watch for ever,’ it thought.
It thought, ‘What else is there to do?’
14
Old Friends
The wild roads were tangled and elusive: they withheld themselves. The endless rush of cat souls seemed diminished. A mournful light crawled down the long perspectives. It was cold, but not, Tag saw now, the cold of winter, the kind of cold he remembered from those early journeys in the service of the Old Majicou. Rather, the tearstricken, blurry light sucked at your heat and energy as you ran. At each successive turning of the ways Tag found himself more exhausted, asked himself, ‘What is happening here?’ and received no answer. ‘The wild roads are no longer giving,’ he thought. ‘Instead they are taking away. It’s very sudden.’ It was nothing he had been warned about. It was nothing in his experience. ‘We’re lost, Leo,’ he told her, as they stood shivering in some damp mist somewhere he did not recognize, with a sound like sad human singing in his ears. But then Leonora danced for them, and suddenly everything seemed to unglue again, and they felt a little stronger, and soon they stood in the sunshine before the House of Uroum Bashou. There, it was Leo who faltered.
‘I’m afraid to go in,’ she said.
She shivered.
‘It looks so wrong inside,’ she said.
She said, ‘Something has happened here. The great brass animal I met on the stairs: was it Kater Murr?’
‘I’m rather afraid it was,’ Tag said.
She looked depressed.
‘Adult life is more complex than I imagined.’
‘You often find that.’
‘In the kitchen of this house, then,’ she said, ‘that was the two of you. You fought over me.’
‘It didn’t come to fighting,’ said Tag.
‘But you were the other cat.’
‘I suppose I was,’ Tag said. He admitted, ‘I haven’t been altogether fair to you, Leonora.’ He had intended to explain further, but she seemed so disheartened it made him shy. He looked away from her, and in the end all he could think of to say was, ‘You don’t have to be right all the time, you know. Life isn’t a test.’
‘Even so,’ she said. ‘I feel a fool.’
‘You will never be a fool, Leonora,’ he said as severely as he could. ‘That side of things – how we are when the wild roads change us – well, it’s sometimes hard for a kitten to accept. I’m the one to tell you about that: I hated those roads when I was young! They seemed so pitiless to me. You haven’t quite found yourself yet, out there on the Old Changing Way. When you do, you will be something to be reckoned with. You have all your father in you, and much of your mother. You should see them when they are over there, Leo! They are the two most beautiful and terrifying animals in the world!’
She purred suddenly.
‘You’re my favourite animal,’ she said.
‘I am only Tag.’
‘Tag is a lot. Tag is a very great deal.’
After this exchange both of them became thoughtful, and, in the absence of anything to say, studied the house of Uroum Bashou, the back door of which had been shoved outwards off its hinges and now leaned cheerfully awry into the garden, encouraging the sunshine to stream inside. From where he sat, Tag had an oblique view down the passageway to the bottom of the stairs. Everything in there seemed broken. The light fell on scratched paintwork, torn-up linoleum. Objects lay as if they had been thrown about – a broom-handle, a shoe ripped almost in half, a broken picture-frame. ‘I warned him, I warned him,’ Tag thought. ‘Nothing good has gone on here.’ Even the passage wainscoting had been bruised, as if something heavy had blundered into it, cracking the tongue-and-groove boards as easily as matchsticks as it passed out of the house.
Paper fluttered loose in the draughts, moving by fits and starts towards the doorway. Here and there, a sheet had already floated down into the garden from the broken windows at the very top of the house. Tag looked up; blinked in the light; thought again, ‘There is nothing good in this.’
Leo startled him by saying suddenly, ‘We have to go in.’
He considered this.
‘You wouldn’t prefer it if I went alone?’ he suggested.
‘No,’ said Leo decisively. ‘I am worried about the Reading Cat, and I want to see what has happened.’
*
Sunshine lay callous and bland across the wreckage of the Library, which reeked not just of one tomcat, but of two or three. Not an object was unbroken. Not a book remained whole. Their pages wrenched and torn, their spines cracked and split, they were littered across the blackened floorboards like waste paper in an empty street. Tag stared at them. He remembered the Reading Cat claiming with pride, ‘In those days I read everything that came to me. I read: “weasels”. I read: “smoke”. I read: “meringue”, “mystery!”’ He wondered if those things lay somewhere in front of him among the pages, as if they had an existence of their own there; he wondered what they were.
Heaped in the middle of it all were the maroon plush cushions from which Uroum Bashou used to hold audience. They had been slashed open with a kind of insane care. The Reading Cat lay quietly on his side among rolls of greyish stuffing, his head stretched forward a little so that his throat seemed to be bared to whatever might happen, his body relaxed, as if he had been caught rolling in the morning sun. The fur on his belly was thus revealed to be more brown than black, in places so thinned-out by age that the flesh beneath lent it a pinkish tone. There wasn’t a mark on him, but his eyes bulged out of his head in an expression of fear and determination. Even as he died, he had been scrabbling in the dust with his forepaws. Tag and Leo stared helplessly at the marks he had made:
It was an effort even to look at them.
‘Is it a message, Leo? Are they “words”?’
Leonora shook her head.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘This was bound to happen,’ said Tag sadly; then, thinking of Kater Murr, ‘As for that poor, deranged animal, where will he go now? Who will look after him?’
Leo shuddered. ‘No-one, I hope!’ she said.
There was no point in staying. Tag let her mourn for a moment, then led her away from the Reading Cat’s stiffening form. At the door she turned for one last look, as if by that she could fix the old cat in her mind for ever.
‘His tail!’ she cried. ‘Look at his tail!’
‘What?’
‘The knot is gone out of it. The world has got its memory back.’ She gave the wreckage a bitter look. ‘I hate the way things are,’ she said. ‘Oh, Tag, he was so happy to be able to help me. When I last saw him here his shadow looked like ink, thrown by the moonlight on his scattered books.’
*
The journey to the oceanarium was silent, fraught. Since no news had arrived there of the missing tabby, Tag left Leo with her parents and took to the wild roads on his own. The news from Egypt, along with the accidental discoveries
of Uroum Bashou and Leonora Whitstand Merril, had enabled him to understand several pieces of the puzzle. But they were of such strange, nightmarish shapes that they made no recognizable whole. The harder he tried to join them up, the more they resisted. How was the disease of the wild roads linked to the thing Ragnar and Pertelot had fled from in Egypt? He had a growing – and appalled – suspicion that he knew who had taken the kittens; but he had no idea how that could be, or how it fitted with the rest! Something was missing: he couldn’t find it, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying to fit things together without it. His worst fear was for Isis and Odin: if he was right, they were in fearful danger. Yet he could do nothing! Frustrated and driven, fuelled by anger, impatience with his own intellect (which did not seem to be up to the task his mentor had bequeathed him) and a” sense of imminent disaster, he flickered briefly into existence at a dozen points along the coast, a lonely silver cat standing square into the wind, gazing out to sea from a beach, a cove, an outcrop of rock high above the waves. He visited St Madryn’s church, and the caves beneath.
Nothing.
Local pathways, he discovered, were the easiest to travel. They seemed to tire him less. Based on the traditional comings and goings of cats – benign pursuit of love or mice – they remained the sunny trickles of history they had always been. ‘Powerless little roads,’ he remembered his old mentor saying. ‘But I preferred them from the start: there was more power in them than Majicou ever saw.’ He stitched them together to make the longer journeys. Even here, though, cunning failed and exhaustion set in; and he could not dance like Leonora Whitstand Merril. Instead, he came to depend on the fierce certainties – the steady heats and angers – within. When the worst came to the worst, head down into the sucking cold, he could push on through. He was the New Majicou! His great striped mask swung from side to side as he stalked along. He lashed his tail, an echoing snarl came up out of his chest, and the drizzle turned to steam where it touched him.