The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

  Balancing on three paws, she spread one out carefully, and began tonguing the dirt out from between the claws. Was it with a new family? In a new house? Her tail curled around for easier reach, and she began to groom it absentmindedly. The sendings had grown clearer each time, and so had that unsettling image of a small orange ball of fur, whatever that was. But it didn’t make sense. Why would this powerful Sender crash into the wildings’ neighbourhood and refuse to talk to them?

  As the first glimmers of dawn came up, Beraal thought she knew what she had to do. She had to find a house that Bigfeet had just moved into. Then she had to find out if there were any large cats in the house. She flattened her ears slightly: Beraal didn’t like the idea of going into a strange house inhabited by Bigfeet. And if she found the cat? And if it was the most powerful Sender any one of them had ever seen, and sensed she was there to kill it? Then, she’d see, wouldn’t she?

  Beraal’s first kill had been a cunning old bandicoot rat three times her size, when she was still in her fifth month. That was just the first of many victories. The queen had never failed to make her kill yet, and didn’t think she would this time.

  The most powerful Sender in Indian feline history took two careful steps forward, sat down on her fur-protected behind then propelled with her front paws, scooted the length of the highly polished drawing room floor, and braked with the assistance of the Persian carpet. This was a wonderful game, Mara thought. She was beginning to settle into her new home. She missed her mother, badly, but the nightmare of the drainpipe and the barking dogs was beginning to fade, and curiosity about her territory had replaced some of her fear and sadness.

  The house, which for Beraal or any outside cat would have seemed a confining set of boxes cluttered with all kinds of unnecessary Bigfeet stuff, loomed large to a kitten who had spent her first month under a pile of gunny sacks near the canal, and an entire day holed up in a drainpipe, terrified of the prowling dogs.

  Mara had been too scared to explore the house, but over the space of a few hours, she had relaxed. She liked her bed, which was adorned with cool, soft sheets that made the perfect scratching pad for a small kitten. She wasn’t very sure what she thought of the Bigfeet—they boomed too much, and often picked her up when she didn’t want to be picked up, and didn’t seem to understand her at all. But they were gentle, and they were excellent suppliers of fish and milk. And they didn’t always interfere with her explorations.

  Her whiskers twitched a bit as she attempted to disentangle herself from the carpet, which had unaccountably wrapped itself around her. Mara’s whiskers were striking—unusually long, prematurely white unlike the black that most kittens sported, curved at their tips. She kept them pressed down to her face; the kitten had learned early, in her very first days at the canal, that extending them fully would bring the noise and clatter of the world rushing into her mind.

  “You’re a Sender,” she remembered her mother telling her, the day she had opened her eyes for the first time. Mara had been curled up, a tiny comma against her mother’s warm flank, listening to the giant purr of traffic on the bridge over the canal. Her mother’s blue eyes had been wary, almost sad as the cat washed her tiny kitten’s whiskers, making them tingle.

  “What is a Sender?” Mara had asked. And her mother had answered slowly: “Senders are very unusual, Mara, there’s never more than one in a clan and most of the Delhi clans haven’t seen a Sender in more than three generations. Being a Sender means you can travel without using your paws—your whiskers will take you everywhere. And you can see and hear more than most cats can.” Mara suckled contentedly, drinking her milk as she tried to imagine what she could hear and see that other cats couldn’t. “Even you?” she had asked. “Even me,” her mother had said. “I told you, Senders are rare.”

  They had played patty-paws then, but later, Mara had asked her mother: “What do Senders have to do?” Her mother washed the kitten lovingly. “A lot,” she had said. “Senders guard their clans; every clan hopes they will be lucky enough to have one, especially when times are hard. But it’s not an easy life—” the mother broke off, not wanting to tell her kitten that being a Sender would mark her as different, that her clan members excepted, most other cats would fear her, envy her, challenge her. “It’s an interesting life,” she said instead. “Don’t worry about it, Mara, I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” But then there had been the dogs; and then the Bigfeet had found her, and brought her to this new place, far away from the canal.

  There had been something odd about last night. What was it? Ah, yes; she’d had the strangest feeling, when she’d been at her most lonesome, that she was being … watched. Heard. That a whole heap of other cats had been listening to her.

  She wriggled, trying to chase her tail and emerge from the carpet at the same time, as stray thoughts floated through her stripy head. Miao … a wise Siamese cat with gentle blue eyes … Hulo was scarred and big, and scornful … Beraal was beautiful, deep green eyes, long black-and-white fur … there were many others, but she couldn’t make them all out. Suddenly she was in mid-air, the carpet still wound round her—Mara poked her head out and stared into the eyes of the she-Bigfoot. The voice sounded scolding today, but also amused. Tentatively, still suspended, she licked the Bigfoot’s hand.

  She was deposited gently on the ground, unravelled from the carpet, patted smartly on her backside—an indignity, but well, she’d probably deserved it—and then the Bigfoot settled down on the ground beside her and began to scratch the difficult spot in the centre of her forehead that she could never reach herself.

  Mara forgot about other cats, strange cats whom she didn’t know; forgot about her plans to go forth on a Bold Expedition, exploring the house more thoroughly. As her Bigfoot scratched her head, she leaned forward, her body almost twanging with ecstasy, and purred, and purred, and purred. Then there was lunch—milk deliciously flavoured with fish—followed by an afternoon nap …

  IT WAS QUITE LATE and very cool when Mara woke up. She’d been shifted from the cushion on the sofa to a small round upholstered basket that she liked instantly, stropping her claws on the wicker as she yawned pinkly. Where were the Bigfeet? She padded out of her basket, intending to find the big bed where she’d slept the previous night, but found that the door to that room had been closed. Time for the Bold Expedition to begin.

  From her position, less than six inches off the floor, the world was a forest of interesting things. There were chair-legs and table-legs rising off the ground and becoming platforms that she would later investigate. There were soft carpets all over, and she idly tested her claws on some of them before padding on. One of the rooms smelled nice, all dusty and musty and filled with interesting cardboard boxes that she had started to rip open. And coming through the kitchen doors—oh my, what were all those smells?

  Mara sat down and closed her eyes, trying to identify them: they were so rich and so strong that they swirled around her head in a thick soup, confusing the kitten till she shook her head to try and clear it. There was … the heavy, brothy odour of garbage coming from downstairs; a scent of many Bigfeet; a sharp smell of iron.

  From further away, the mingled scent of dogs drifted in, making her cringe a bit, but there were also cats, and seven different kinds of earth, from gravel to thick loamy mud; and trees, and flowers, and the soapy odour of Bigfeet clothes mixed with the metallic odour of cars. And they were all coming from outside that screen.

  She patted the wire mesh door, and it swung open, enough for her to go out. The world held mercifully still, though the smells shifted and changed in a constant dance. The kitten was absolutely silent, squeezing as close to the wire mesh door—the back door of the house—as possible. The perfume of rotting garbage rose up from the narrow lane between the back of the house and the park—it was a holiday for the garbage collectors’ that day, so the aroma was richer and stronger than it normally would have been. It was inviting, but Mara hesitated, her tail waving uncertainly from
side to side.

  This was her first real view of the world. Her memories of early kittenhood were fuzzy. Her eyes had been closed for most of the time that she had lived under the canal. She remembered her mother’s comforting flanks, and the way she would be washed until she went to sleep, and the milky scent of her mama’s skin. But there had been a frightening period where her memories blurred: the sharp tug at the skin over her neck, where her mother had carried her, the close fetid stench of the drainpipe, the hours crouched inside, her fur trembling as the dogs snarled and circled outside. The last thing she had heard was her mother’s low, defiant growl, and then she had waited for hours in the dark, but her mama never came back.

  Now that Mara could see and smell the world, she liked it, but she didn’t know if she could trust it. The sense of space made her head swirl. But what if she just went out onto the stairs? The stairs were part of the house, so perhaps they were really inside, not outside. The kitten discovered that if she could pretend she believed this, the dizziness went away, and her spinning head settled down. She rested on the staircase, curling her tail comfortably around herself to use as a cushion on the cool steel steps.

  From the branches of the mango tree, Beraal watched the tiny orange kitten who’d bounced out onto the staircase with idle interest. It seemed new to the neighbourhood, but then the Bigfeet were always bringing in parrots, puppies, babies, kittens—as though they needed to underline their large clumping size by collecting small creatures for their houses.

  Beraal and Hulo had spent most of the afternoon working backwards from the cow shelter, using their whiskers to try and pinpoint where the sendings had come from. The cows, who had lived in the large yard for years after the Bigfeet had constructed a refuge for lost city cows and bulls near the local temple, watched the two cats with interest before returning to their lunch of mango peels and rice straw. Beraal had narrowed her search down to the park, but she wasn’t sure whether the Sender would still be here. “If it’s a house cat, Hulo, it’ll be somewhere in this area,” she’d told the tom.

  “Perhaps,” said Hulo, his tail flicking back and forth dubiously, “but I’m going to go and see if I can find any new scents. That’s been gnawing at my mind, Beraal. If we’re talking about a tomcat or queen with these levels of aggression, there must be scent markings somewhere in the area.” His nose quivered. Just one spray, even if it were hours or days old, would tell him more about the stranger than any of the sendings had been able to. It might tell him how aggressive the other cat was, and would definitely tell him how much territory it claimed—perhaps even where the intruder was located. Hulo rubbed heads affectionately with Beraal and prowled off, careful to avoid the Bigfeet boys, who were playing a rough game of catch in the park.

  Beraal used her fluffy tail to cushion her belly against the rough bark of the tree. Her ears and whiskers were tuned to pick up the smallest, tiniest hint that any of the houses surrounding the park contained the intruder. The cat settled in for a long wait, amusing herself by watching the squirrels as they ran up and down the branches, their tails like feathery sails that propelled them effortlessly along. They gave her a wide and respectful berth, sticking to the other half of the mango tree, and she yawned, her eyes narrowing to little green slits as she calculated her chances of killing at least one—very high, if she focused on the tiniest one. It would have the least meat on its bones, but it would be the most easily frightened; fear turned prey witless, causing them to freeze in their tracks, and run the wrong way.

  As she waited, she watched the kitten. It was playing with the tip of its tail, and it had a very comical way of going about it that reminded Beraal of one of the kittens she had had a year ago. That one had died young, sadly, falling to a cheel’s sharp beak, but it had had a similarly solemn approach to the delicate task of catching and trapping one’s tail.

  The orange kitten triumphantly pounced on its tail, fell over forwards, narrowly avoided bumping its nose and went tumbling down three stairs before it managed to use its bum as a brake. Beraal found her whiskers radiating a smile at the way in which the kitten carefully checked each paw to see if it was in working order before climbing back up and settling down again.

  “That was scary!” a voice said in her head. “Mara could have gone rolling and tumbling all the way down! And now my bottom hurts!”

  The voice was very loud, and Beraal felt her whiskers trembling like leaves in a storm. She stared at the kitten, and the hunter’s whiskers straightened in incredulous fury as it all began to make sense. A Sender who didn’t know she was sending, who wanted her mother, who didn’t know how to receive signals or understand a cat network—because she was just a kitten, a wet behind the whiskers brat who’d sent an entire neighbourhood of cats into a frenzy.

  It was only when the squirrels chittered anxiously, flying up to the safety of the very top of the tree, that Beraal realized her claws were out, stropping the bark, and that she was growling under her breath, her teeth chattering in the prelude to the killing bite. The cat licked her lips and shifted, trying to calm herself.

  “And that would have been a long, long way down,” the voice continued. “Oh look—a butterfly! Two butterflies! Maybe I can catch both if I leap up with all my paws out in the air at the same time—oh! mrraargh!—bad idea!”

  Beraal felt her whiskers crackle again as the Nizamuddin link sprang to life. “Our Sender is a kitten?” Katar snarled. “Nothing but a mangy kitten?” Even though he was miles away, on the dusty road at the far end of the canal, his whiskers rang with indignation, and the other cats began to chime in.

  The kitten, hopping along a stair, hesitated and looked up. Her wide green eyes, the colour of new leaves in the monsoon, stared straight at Beraal. “Shut it!” Beraal said quietly. “There’s just a chance that it might be able to hear us—Katar, I’ll get back on the link later. Keep the airwaves clear.”

  The kitten had her head cocked to one side, and she was giving Beraal a considering look—surprising, thought the hunter, coming from such a little one. There was no help for it. Beraal would have preferred to avoid the risk of Bigfeet reprisal, but this was definitely the Sender.

  She stared at the staircase, evaluating the possibility of a clean kill. It wouldn’t be easy. She would have to scale the wall below, make the jump on to the stairs without being noticed by either Bigfeet or the kitten. If that went off well, she would still have to make her kill, and the staircase was used quite often by Bigfeet.

  Beraal gauged her escape routes; perhaps it would be best to use a paralyzing bite on the kitten’s neck and carry it up to the roof to complete the kill. If she got it right, she might even kill the kitten with the first bite. She had done that often enough. And even if she didn’t, it was best to get the body out of the way—less chance that her Bigfeet would intervene, more chance that Beraal would make a clean and safe getaway. The dappled branches of a neem tree and the friendly, yellow-flamed branches of a laburnum tree hung invitingly over the roof; it was perfect. And the kitten’s attention had wandered; its head bobbed up and down as it followed the flight of one of the butterflies.

  Cautiously, since they were so close, the mango tree a distance of three leaps away from the staircase, Beraal began to pad down the branch, towards the kitten, as silently as she could. The young queen didn’t want to risk the chance that the kitten would see a strange and much bigger cat approaching her with hostile intent and run for her life. Gingerly, she stepped onto the stairs.

  The kitten froze, pivoted and peered across at her. That’s done it, thought Beraal, now she’ll be inside the house in a flash and it might be days before I get a second chance.

  “Rats!” she said crossly.

  “Hello there!” said the kitten, scrambling to her feet.

  Beraal blinked. The kitten was supposed to run for her life—that’s the way the world worked.

  “You really are a cat!” the kitten said. “Oh my, your fur’s so beautiful! Isn’t it scary being in a
tree? I would be scared if I was high up in a tree! My mother’s not here—she was in the drainpipe with me, of course, but then the dogs came, and then the Bigfeet came—never mind that. This is my first time outside, but I expect you’re used to it. I’m not, it makes me dizzy, and I was just going to go inside. My name is Mara, what’s yours? Do you want to come over and chat? Please come, there’s room on the stairs for both of us.”

  Beraal felt her head swimming. But there were no Bigfeet on the stairs, and all of Beraal’s instincts were telling her that this was the best shot she would get at killing the kitten. She padded up the stairs, evaluating her prey.

  “You’re the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen!” said Mara. “Though honestly, I haven’t seen that many. I was born under the bridge over the canal, and then there was the drainpipe, you see. But what lovely fur you have, it looks so soft!”

  Beraal decided she’d had enough, this kitten was making her head spin … She laid her ears flat, hissed once in warning and let her claws slide out, preparing to spring.

  “… why are you making that face? That’s really scary! You’re frightening me! You’re a mean old ugly cat, and you were supposed to be my friend. I want my mother NOW!!!!!”

  Beraal blinked, shaking her head to try and get the noise out of it. Up close, Mara’s broadcasting volume was unbelievably loud; it was as though someone had set off firecrackers in her head, and it hurt so much that she had had to stop in mid-pounce.

  She became aware that she was being watched by Mara, who had backed up and was within easy reach of the kitchen doors. If Beraal moved too soon, she had little doubt that Mara would dart for safety through the doors. The only question was why she hadn’t done so already. The big cat stared at the kitten, puzzled, and found herself looking into Mara’s reproachful eyes.