The Golden Cat

by Gabriel King

  A bonfire.

  A sun of fire.

  A bone-fire.

  On the top its latest victim, unrecognizable in its death-throes, rested on a dozen others whose fur still smouldered and whose glazed eyes reflected ever more dimly the leaping flames. All around moved humans in dark robes.

  As the mule-cart gatecrashed into their gathering, these humans stared at the intruders, mouths open, almost comic in their surprise. Some held cats by the scruff of the neck, bodies drooping, all the fight gone out of them. Others dragged crates closer to the pyre, fiddled with hinges, clumsy in their big leather gloves. Others still poked at the fire, feeding it with a fuel that sent up unnatural-looking flames of green and blue. A smaller group knelt at the back, oblivious to the ruckus, eyes closed, chanting in a language Sealink did not understand. From somewhere in the cavernous room, echoing among the iron girders, came the sound of perverse, arrhythmic music: bells, a reed flute, small drums. A disembodied human voice said, slowly and indistinctly, as though with much effort from a great distance, ‘Bring me the kitten now. Bring her to the fire.’

  Sealink had heard that voice before.

  She looked wildly around the room, but the Alchemist was nowhere to be seen. How could he be? She had seen him die on the clifftops at Tintagel. There was nothing to betray any supernatural presence except for a column of milky light, illuminated from within with dark reds and blues like the arteries and veins of a whole new life-form, pulsing and straining with some horrid birth. Where the column spun close to the pyre, fragments of bone and fur were sucked into its path to join the danse macabre, and with each new arrival the light grew stronger; the voice more demanding.

  ‘Bring it to me NOW!’

  For a moment the smoke cleared and Sealink saw on the other side of the flames a sight that made her heart stop, then beat like hammerblows in her chest.

  A huge ginger cat haloed with fire.

  A cat whose tabby markings swirled like a magnetic field in storms of ochre and orange and cream. A cat with an irregular patch of black which spread from ear to eye, lending him a distinctly untrustworthy air.

  It was Red.

  And by his side a smaller black and white cat: Téophine; bristling with fighting chemicals, her lips drawn back from gapped teeth.

  Between them, a small golden shape, curled into itself like a dead insect.

  Sealink’s heart felt as though it would burst.

  Isis. Oh, Isis. Pertelot’s smallest kitten, lying as though dead.

  The calico’s mouth opened in a wail.

  ‘Isis!’

  At the sound of her name, the kitten’s ears twitched, once; twice. As though awoken from a long, slow dream of Egypt, she stirred.

  The column seemed to become agitated. It flexed, bending from the middle to lour over the kitten. Lights went out within the milky haze.

  Dapples of violet ran like fingers over the golden coat. The kitten stretched her supple backbone. Her tail flicked from side to side. Crouching on her haunches, she extended her front paws, a miniature sphinx. Then she lifted her head and opened her mouth.

  An unearthly sound ripped through the air. It was not discordant. It was not harmonious. It was a sound neither natural nor synthetic; it was a sound that defied interpretation.

  All at once there was pandemonium.

  The mule skittered and the occupants of her cart shot out into the room with their fur on end. Humans clamped hands over ears and their eyes began to water. As if from nowhere, ruptured highways flickered into life on the edges of the room. A dozen cats burst out of these, followed by a dozen more, stolen away from whatever journeys they made on the wild roads of Louisiana. Drawn towards the nexus in the knacker’s yard they came, fur streaming in the highway winds, dwindling second by second from their great cat forms – a leopard here, a lion there: a rosette-coated jaguar; a puma; a lynx…

  As if the advent of these highways had released a new energy into the room, the column of light flared up suddenly, then flew apart into two separate streams. Joined only at the base these danced like two cobras; high in the air, looming up the walls and the tall, barred windows, sending grotesque shadows flying across the floor. Voices could be heard from within, echoing vaguely as if from the depths of a well, indistinct through the kitten’s song; then there came a determined suspension of sound as the two streams fled back together in a sudden rush of air, to twine in violent struggle.

  Isis opened her mouth wider still and the sound swelled. It wavered through a succession of eerie musical registers, finally resolving itself into a single powerful note.

  The bone-fire collapsed as if it had imploded. Smoke and ash swelled into the air in billowing clouds. The dual streams of light went out, as though someone had thrown a switch. There was a great, dark roar, then a despairing voice could be heard fading to a vibration, like a ghost of itself, in the recesses of their skulls. In the sudden darkness humans wailed and ran out into the street, pursued by the larger cats.

  Somehow, in all this, Shine had lost her cart. It lay now on one side, wheels spinning uselessly. The mule herself, unnerved by the scene she had interrupted, stood motionless at the edge of the pyre, staring into the pile of smouldering corpses.

  ‘Oh my. Were they alive when they came to this?’ she said softly.

  ‘Some of them.’

  Shine swivelled round to face the speaker. A grossly fat cat had appeared behind her. ‘But some of them died of fear before they made it that far!’ It laughed so hard that spittle shot out through yellowed teeth. Jowls wobbled over a shiny collar. Behind this monstrosity stood a collection of well-muscled cats, their coats gleaming with ill-gotten health and vitality.

  ‘I’ve come for my cadeau,’ said Kiki La Doucette, her eyes moving past Shine to the pitiful gathering of cats on the other side of the bone-fire. ‘Now that my master has no further use for it.’ But between her and her goal stood a large calico cat and her friends from the St Louis Cemetery. Kiki curled her lip. Her followers’ whiskers bristled in anticipation.

  ‘My, my.’ La Mère trembled with delight. She raised her voice. ‘Why, I do believe it’s the Delta Queen.’

  Sealink glared at her.

  ‘And look: she has located her own dear daughters. How very… touching. Kill them all.’ She waved a bored paw in their general direction.

  At once a number of Kiki’s band surged forward.

  The calico cat flexed her claws. She looked about her with devastating calm, assessing the odds, and gave a little satisfied smile. ‘Here’s something I understand, at last,’ she said to the little group behind her. ‘I been spoiling for a fight for some time now.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ grunted Hog. He squared his wasted shoulders.

  Two of the collared cats came bounding towards them.

  ‘Come on, then,’ Sealink growled. ‘Come and play with Momma.’

  The two males – a short-haired tabby and a long-haired grey – charged at her, backs arched and fur on end. As thick as kapok wadding, the calico’s Maine Coon coat confounded tooth and claw. She hit the first one hard on the side of his ear and bowled him over. At once, Hog leapt upon him. The second, and smaller of the two, Sealink simply fell on. He went down with a soughing sigh as the air rushed out of his lungs, then lay there in a dazed state.

  The next two came and Celeste hurled herself at one, burying the few teeth she had left in its throat, while Hog and Sealink dealt with the other. Fur and howls of rage flew into the air.

  They came in waves after that. Sealink fought savagely. Like the feral queen she was, she bit and tore: a whirlwind of fury.

  ‘That’s for Mousebreath!’ she muttered grimly, raking the back of a lithe black tomcat now fleeing for its life. ‘And that’s for my lost kitten.’ A patchwork cat was bowled over. ‘You been destroying your own—’ she mumbled through a mouthful of grey fur ‘—so that’s for Azelle—’ a tortie female flew through the air. ‘And that’s for Candy—’ A big black and white cat was t
rampled underfoot.

  Kiki had a large retinue. The promise of food and comfort in a city of starving ferals had brought her new recruits on a daily basis, cats whose morals, like their bodies, had been eroded by their hunger: cats who thought little of stealing kittens and betraying the presence of other cats to gain the favour of their queen. What did they care that the humans wished death upon others of their kind, so long as that enmity did not fall upon them? They had eaten well, these last few months: too well.

  One by one Kiki’s courtiers fell to the teeth and claws of the last free cats of New Orleans, cats carried forward only by the power of their will for revenge. Many lay still, gasping on the stone floor. Many more ran away through the open doors. Shine chased them on their way, getting in a kick here, a nip there. It was still not enough.

  Celeste went down at last under the weight of three of the collared cats. Hog stood over her, teeth red with his opponents’ blood; but it was impossible to withstand the tide. Before long, an exhausted Sealink found herself shoulder to shoulder with Red. Behind them, Hog and Téophine joined forces, Isis a tiny spitting bundle between them. Of Venus and Sappho there was no sign. It didn’t surprise the calico: they just hadn’t been raised right.

  Some time later the waves parted and there was the yellow queen, the size of three cats, with candleflames flickering off her pale eyes.

  ‘Might have known you’d still be alive in the midst of this carnage,’ the calico hissed.

  ‘Why, cher: no need to be so unfriendly—’

  Kiki rolled forward: an unnatural motion like some great hovercraft fashioned of flesh and fur. Her eyes grew round and greedy at the sight of the golden kitten. A scorched reek of grease and decay wafted in her vanguard. Sealink recoiled at the stench.

  ‘—I only came for what’s mine—’

  Red confronted the monstrous queen. ‘Come any closer,’ he said grimly, ‘and you’ll be crapping teeth for a week.’

  She roared with laughter.

  ‘You ain’t takin’ this kitten; not without you take me first.’ And without hesitation he lunged at her.

  Kiki La Doucette raised a languid paw and raked it down his face. The ginger cat rolled in agony at her feet, blood spurting between his claws. Immediately, Sealink hurled herself to his defence.

  La Mère cackled. ‘Very maternal, ma chère, very moving. Still you got a lot to make up for, leavin’ your only son to the mercies of the Pestmen!’ She started to laugh so hard that waves of fat rolled across her body and collided with one another like cross-currents in a sea. Sealink, for once in her life, was dumbstruck. Red, her son. A son. Not a sun. A son of fire. And here he was, her fifth kitten, neither in life, nor yet out of it. Kiki inched forward so that she was within a foot of the calico and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘For, bébé, this fine creature here, whose beauty I just so unfortunately marred,’ she examined a broken claw: stripped it carefully between ivory teeth, ‘this here’s the lad I dragged up from the Mississippi shoreline on that cold and misty day and fed on my own milk for you – didn’t you re – a – lize when you was hanging together? What you got for a brain, honey? A ant?’ She guffawed, then clapped a paw to her mouth. She winked at the calico. ‘I hope you didn’t – you know – get too friendly, down there on the boardwalk…’

  A movement from the floor. A sudden flash of bright fur; a determined, bloodstained face. With a roar of defiance. Red launched himself at La Mère’s throat. Sealink leapt for the yellow queen’s back. Mother and son struck together.

  That oily fur gave no purchase: Kiki shook them off like fleas, laughing all the while. As powerful as a tank, she shouldered past a helpless Téo and Hog and loomed over the golden kitten.

  ‘Good to see you awake at last, cher,’ she leered. ‘Come to Mother.’

  Isis faced her resolutely, the lines of her head as accurate as an axe. With all the courage of her parentage, she lifted her chin and spat neatly into the yellow queen’s eye.

  ‘I am not for you,’ she said clearly. ‘Not in this, or any other, life.’

  She opened her mouth, and out came the song. It soared into the iron rafters, drew to its singer the power of the deaths suffered in that room. Many, so many: too many over the years. She felt their pain, and the power of their will to live. She drew it in; harnessing, shaping. The note swelled.

  Sealink fell over, with Red beneath her. Other cats fled for the doors. Téophine dropped like a stone. Hog, with a groan, closed his eyes and slid to the floor. Shine kicked up her heels and bolted out into the street. Kiki, suddenly, clutched her head.

  A highway pulsed in the air above them. There was a flash of light, and, without further warning, a cat appeared twenty feet above their heads. Plummeting groundwards, it twisted in mid-air, righted itself and struck the stone floor on all fours.

  It was the Mammy.

  Isis sat back, panting. The song died.

  Eponine Lafeet looked around her. She gazed at Isis with her milky eyes. She smiled. ‘Bonsoir, mon ange. It is a pleasure to be back in my own town. And,’ she bobbed her head, ‘it is a pleasure and a privilege to meet you.’

  She walked past the golden kitten and stared with disgust at the heap of greasy fur in front of her. She extended a claw. ‘Vas t’en!’

  Against all the laws of nature, the yellow queen began to levitate. Up she went, up into the mouth of broken highway from which the Mammy had issued. There was a sudden flurry of activity as Kiki returned to consciousness and realized where she was; then the highway took her into its maw, and vanished.

  Eponine smiled. ‘See how she likes de bayous. Hah!’

  Isis stared at the Mammy round-eyed.

  ‘Well!’ she said. ‘That was a good trick. Can you teach it to me?’

  *

  It was two days later, and the survivors had gathered in the early-morning sun down on the Moonwalk. Behind them, the Mississippi river rolled past as if nothing in the world had changed.

  ‘We’re going back to the old country,’ the calico explained to all present.

  The golden kitten, restored to itself, blinked shyly. A Nile-green fire sparked from those elongated, oriental eyes. ‘Sealink’s taking me on a plane!’

  Suddenly overcome by this idea, she hopped excitedly from foot to foot.

  Sealink placed a restraining paw on Isis’s neck. ‘Take it easy, babe,’ she advised. ‘Or you’ll be travelling in the hold.’ It was ironic really, she thought: she’d come to her home town to find her own kittens: had instead found some grown cats and was leaving with one of Pertelot’s. With a purr like a pneumatic drill, she rubbed her head against Red’s unscarred cheek. ‘Take care of Téophine, won’t you?’

  She felt very grown-up, bestowing her approval like this.

  The pair of them, ragged and unsightly from a dozen healing wounds, grinned from ear to ear. Téo touched noses with the calico. ‘Don’t you worry none, cher. I’ll make sure he gives me plenty kittens.’ Red looked embarrassed. He wasn’t used to having a mother, let alone one in cahoots with his mate.

  ‘Eh bien, Rumby-Pumby: better start now, eh?’ Celeste, leaning on Hog for support, smiled lazily.

  From the fencepost behind them, the Mammy surveyed the scene with satisfaction. It was good to be back in her home town, good to have some of her own to look after again. A couple of dozen ferals and a few homeless domestic cats had made their way across the city to the boardwalk. She recognized some as former members of her daughter’s retinue; but the malice had gone out of their eyes, just as the worst of the madness had gone out of the city. Two large-furred tabbies had arrived just that morning, bearing, respectively, a shrimp and a crab-claw, heads bowed; rather shamefaced. And later that day she had watched, from a safe place, as a woman she remembered as Rita came down to the Moonwalk, followed cautiously by a yellow dog, to empty cans of strong-smelling tuna-fish in the old place by the steps.

  Eponine Lafeet smiled. It was a start. A good start.

  She wave
d the calico cat and her golden charge on their way.

  18

  That was the River, This is the Sea

  Animal X enjoyed his time in the village. Life there suited him. He ate a lot, though not as much as Stilton. By day he shared the church doorway with the golden kitten, or wandered through the graveyard as far as the lych-gate and curled up on the low grey wall to watch the world go by. ‘The thing is,’ he told himself, ‘to do no more than you have to. That’s the thing.’ He felt that if he took care of himself he would get better. To an extent that was true. His weight increased. The soft place inside his head seemed to retreat, until it was like a remote pool he had once visited in a wood somewhere. But his memory did not improve, and he was still troubled by dreams from which he woke in fear. He was too embarrassed to admit this to Amelie, whose beauty and determination sometimes left him feeling shy.

  As he improved, the old cat Cottonreel sought him out, and they began to walk together in the afternoons. They made an odd couple. Despite her age, Cottonreel still loved male cats, and would look up at him with undisguised delight in her eyes as they strolled along, her admiration mixed with a kind of teasing gallantry. Nevertheless, it was some days before she made clear what it was she wanted from him.

  ‘How I envy you great brutes!’ she said. ‘You traipse about from place to place, taking your lives as they come, never a care in the world. I was always such a stay-at-home, little velvet collar and all!’

  It was hot. The village street being all dazzle and bake, they had taken the narrow staircase to the top of the old church tower instead. There, while they sat on the wide parapet and waited for a breeze, they could gaze out across the neglected rear section of the churchyard – where the graves were tossed like little boats on a sea of the tangled grass, like no other grass in the world, that mats all churchyards – and over the wall into a rather neat garden, with clumps of yellow poppies.