If he won, Beraal knew Mara wouldn’t stand a chance. It wouldn’t just be the grizzled tomcat who’d go after the kitten—every able warrior in Nizamuddin would make it their business to kill the intruder, if the opportunity presented itself. Hulo began to inch nearer.
Katar and Miao circled the pair of cats. Up in the branches of the neem, Qawwali yawned and prepared to jump down. “Good fighting,” he commented. “Plenty of fancy footwork, and enough blood spilled to make it an honourable loss.” The cats watched to see what Hulo would do; he could, of course, go for the kill, but he was much more likely to let Beraal off with a warning nip and a scar.
Beraal closed her eyes. It wasn’t that she was afraid to face Hulo’s bite, or his claws. But she wished she could have given Mara a better chance. Before Beraal had left the Bigfeet’s house, the kitten had eagerly shared her milk with the older queen, and rubbed heads, purring loudly and happily. She had padded around and waited for the Bigfeet to open the kitchen door, then bounded down the length of the rooms, guiding Beraal out when the Bigfeet were otherwise occupied. Just before Beraal left, Mara had reached up and head-butted her new friend, and let her small, stubby tail wrap itself around Beraal’s magnificently plumed one.
“Come back, Beraal,” she had said.
Beraal’s whiskers trembled. It felt as though Mara had just said those words, instead of saying them that morning—what was that? “I just woke up! It’s dark here and very stuffy! Where am I? Where are the Bigfeet? Where’s Beraal? No one’s here! Woeisme!”
The voice boomed in her head, making her wince, and Hulo, startled, shied sideways. He had padded up to Beraal and was about to sink his teeth into her throat to claim victory, when Mara’s lamentations filled the air, and thrummed loudly in all of their minds. Hulo’s teeth snapped shut on empty air, and he swore, turning to attack Beraal a second time.
The queen was on her feet, swaying slightly from side to side. She took a wobbly step forward and felt the blood from Hulo’s earlier strike run down her face. Hulo sprang at her, and Beraal hugged the ground, letting her belly go absolutely flat, folding her ears in, looking up at him as the leap brought him within range. Hulo’s claws grazed her belly as she rose up to meet him, but Beraal pushed the pain away.
She yowled once, a feverish battle cry, and closed with her opponent. Hulo’s weight sent them both falling to the ground, the tomcat pinning her down. But he was off-balance, too, scrabbling for leverage with his back legs. On her back, Beraal raked her claws lightly over his forelegs. And then she stretched her head up, pinned down though she was. Hulo’s throat lay exposed in front of her. Beraal bit, taking care to break the skin, but staying far away from the veins.
Miao and Katar unleashed miaows of victory: “A good fight, and both cats may gloat/ As Beraal wins this round of open throat.” The blood ran down Beraal’s flanks, and ruefully, Hulo examined his neck, noting how cleanly his skin had been punctured. The queen and the tom disentangled themselves, Beraal shaking herself back into shape, washing first each paw and then the wounds on her belly and flanks. Hulo sat down, too, grooming his fur back into place, licking at the blood so that the saliva would start healing the wounds. They would both hurt from this fight for a few days.
Beraal reached out and gave him a quick head-rub. “Well fought,” she said. “I remember you teaching me how to go for the throat.”
“I wish I’d taken my own lessons more seriously,” said Hulo wryly, responding with a head-butt of his own. “So you win, but how do you plan to stop that infernal kitten from yowling the place down?”
“Free! Free at last!” said Mara’s happy voice, booming out again over the airwaves. “Thank you, O Bigfeet, thank you for releasing me from the fell captivity of the fearsome sock drawer! See—I have killed a sock for you!”
Beraal sighed. “I think it’ll take a lot of lessons, Hulo,” she said, “but I have an idea that it can be done.”
“I hope you’re right, Beraal,” said Hulo. “Look around you.” Beraal’s whiskers twitched interrogatively. “What do you mean?”
Hulo indicated the restless knots of cats, some leaving the baoli, some lounging on the walls and the trees, all of them with their hackles ever so slightly up.
“You might persuade me and Miao and Katar to leave your noisy young protégé alone,” he said. “And I promise you I won’t harm her—so long as she doesn’t come out too far into my territory. But how will you persuade them?”
Beraal tuned into the whispers. “Demoniacal!” Qawwali was saying. “It shouldn’t be allowed.” Abol yawned and washed his plump flanks. “You can never trust an inside cat, everyone says so,” he agreed. Qawwali pushed past both of them, his ears pinned back. “Can’t get a decent night’s sleep these days,” he snapped. “Don’t know what the neighbourhood’s coming to.”
“All I’m saying, Beraal,” said Hulo, “is that your young friend had better stay inside, even if she does manage to turn the volume down.” Katar and Miao came up to offer Beraal their congratulations, but as she turned away to rub noses with them, and Hulo limped off, Beraal was troubled.
“Freeeeeeeeeeedommmmm!!!” said the voice of a happy kitten in all of their heads.
Lessons had better begin at once, thought Beraal.
The sleeping kitten added a touch of colour to the steel sculptures decorating the table near the kitchen window.
From time to time, her snores made her fur ripple.
Beraal adjusted her rump sharply on the ledge, and made an exasperated blowing noise. “I wish she would wake up!” the black-and-white hunter said to the world at large. “I’ve been mewing at her for ages!”
There was a flutter of wings and a cross chirp from the ashoka tree nearby. “We know,” said a shrill voice. “Probably everyone in the neighbourhood for miles and miles around does. How my fledglings are ever going to get any sleep, I don’t know.”
“Shut up, Tuntuni,” said Beraal. Mara’s refusal to wake up had tried her temper sorely. “Or I’ll put your damned twittering nestlings to sleep between my jaws.”
A whirring in the hedge below indicated that Tuntuni’s indignation had spread.
“Well I never …” said Sa.
“In all my years …” said Re.
“Thought I’d have to …” said Ga.
“Remind a Nizamuddin …” said Ma.
“Cat what it owed …” said Pa.
“To its own sense of dignity …” said Dha.
“Carrying on like an unschooled …” said Ni.
“Kitten, the very idea!” finished Sa.
As the oldest of the grey-plumaged flock known collectively as the ‘seven sisters’ to their friends and ‘those blasted babblers’ to their critics, Sa always took it upon herself to start and finish sentences.
Beraal, stung by the criticism, all the more because it was justified—she’d been mewing at the sleeping Mara for ages now, just like a mannerless kitten might—snarled. “You could help, you know,” she hissed at the ruffled birds. “Flutter by and caw or something.”
The babblers fluffed up their feathers, and Beraal sighed. She was in for it now. Typically, Sa led the way.
Sa: “Caw!”
Re: “Like a common crow!”
Ga: “We have never—”
Ma: “Well, hardly ever …”
Pa: “Been so offended”
Dha: “(Our feelings rended)”
Ni: “We form a Babble,”
Sa: “Not like those rabble.”
Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni in chorus: “Cats more gracious and more wise
Would think it time to apologize
Say sorry now
And we’ll forget—somehow
But only if
You interrupt this riff
To say you’re very very sorry
You’re truly very sorry
You couldn’t be more sorry …”
And Sa, her voice soaring to an impossible pitch, sang: “Nnnnnnowwwwwwwwww!”
>
First came a tinkling sound, and then the high ping and clatter of crystal glasses breaking into a thousand tiny little pieces from inside the house. The kitten shot off the table in an orange blur, skimmed lightly over the floor and came to earth under the pantry cupboards.
“Now look what you’ve done!” said Beraal crossly. She caught the look in Sa’s eyes and fluffed the fur on her neck in irritation—while the Seven Sisters might qualify as legitimate prey under certain circumstances, there was an unspoken agreement between the cats and the birds to share territories as best as they could for the most part. “All right, all right, I’m sorry,” Beraal said ungraciously.
“Don’t mention it, I’m sure,” said Sa, and Re, and Ga, and Ma, and Pa, and Dha and Ni, politely but with an undercurrent of triumph. Beraal gave in. “Well, without your penetrating singing, I would never have woken Mara up.” The babblers looked pleased, and Sa clacked her beak happily.
AN HOUR LATER, Beraal was huffing, stropping her claws irritably on the side of the staircase. Mara just didn’t seem to be getting the hang of long-distance linking today, and it was frustrating trying to teach a kitten who wandered off into the rooms of the house whenever she got bored.
And Mara had so much to learn. The kitten’s powers grew as rapidly as her whiskers and fur. Unfortunately, her control didn’t match her abilities.
Neither Katar nor Miao had been especially amused when images of a small kitten twitching and dreaming that some Bigfoot had removed her favourite marrow bones began to invade their personal dreams. Miao, combing out her ruffled whiskers, told Katar that it was a pity Mara was an orphan. “Tigris’s mother trained her from the time her eyes lost their blue,” Miao said. “In all the fables about Senders, none of them has the smallest mew to share about what to do with orphan Senders!”
And even Beraal had been distinctly ruffled when the “WAOWW!” of a kitten in distress had apparently emanated from her right ear, waking her out of a much-needed afternoon nap. (“Sorry, Beraal,” Mara had said contritely. “I was just experimenting with volume control.”)
Qawwali and the dargah cats grumbled to Beraal after Mara accidentally interrupted one of the biggest and most avidly anticipated brawls of the season with a range of vocal exercises.
No self-respecting tom or queen who’d progressed past their second set of scars could work up the same lust for battle after a kitten had projected its image right across the dusty open field where these battles were held and sung, oblivious to the magnificent war cries already in progress, “Mrraow, mrraow, mrraow-ow-ow, miao-miao-mi-mi-mi.” The really frustrating part was that Mara had the force of an adult Sender, but the short attention span of most kittens. The grumbling of the cats bored her, and she often left the link if she was playing with her Bigfeet, so none of the feline reprimands and curses sent her way were effective.
“… and that’s why estimating the range of your signals is so important,” finished Beraal, only to discover that her chief audience was a buzzing bluebottle. Mara was chasing her tail up and down and over and under and around the furniture. Beraal, her temper sliding out of control, switched from mew to whisker, administering a rebuke so stinging that she could practically feel the invisible wires between her and Mara crackle.
Mara fell with a thump onto a cushion, bounced once, and scrambled hastily to her side of the wire screen. Her whiskers radiated meekness, for a change. “If we’re quite ready, Mara? Here’s what I want you to do—ignore me, or any of the other Nizamuddin cats, you’ve got that?”
“Yes, Beraal,” said Mara, quite subdued now.
“Just reach outward, as far as you can go—within your levels of comfort, of course. If you meet any other cats, send them a formal greeting, but move on. When you’re tired, just end the sending. Got that? Any questions?”
“Well,” said Mara, “I was wondering … how will you know how far I’ve got?”
“I’ll be linking as well,” said Beraal. “Remember, you’ll be using the general bandwidth, so anyone who’s interested can link—without disturbing you, of course. We’ll be able to tell how far you’re moving away from Nizamuddin, though we may not be able to see as much as you do—it depends on how strongly you can send while you’re exploring the limits of your territory.”
BERAAL SETTLED DOWN against the kitchen door, on the outside of the stairs; the kitten curled up on the inside. Beraal’s head sank down onto her chest. The hunter appeared to be drowsing, though her eyes were shut in concentration and all of her senses were on alert. Her whiskers stayed up, ready to warn her if any Bigfeet or predators came too close. She focused on the link.
The kitten had slumped into a furry heap. She was concentrating so hard on sending she had tuned out everything happening around her. The incessant cheep-cheep of Tuntuni’s brood demanding their evening meal was lost on her, as was the clatter from the drawing room, where the Bigfeet were wondering how their crystal had shattered behind the locked doors of the cabinet.
Her long whiskers rose, vibrating slightly. The whiskers above her eyes tilted forward. Mara let them extend, the way Beraal’s whiskers or Miao’s whiskers would extend when they wanted to link.
Beraal felt the prickle in her own whiskers so strongly that she almost flinched. The hunter opened one eye to stare at the kitten: so much force from such a tiny creature!
Mara let her mind float, prepared for the way her stomach lurched when the sending began. She had to knead her paws to bring her tummy back to normal. Then it was like stepping into the sky, and feeling herself soar across distances, able to move in any direction she wanted. But her whiskers could also sense currents eddying back and forth, and invisible channels that she could follow or not as she became more proficient.
Eyes half-closed, the kitten let out a long purr as she felt her way through. There, like a broad band of silver, was the cat network, gleaming and blinking with flurries of cat activity. Winding through this was a pulsing ribbon that indicated the Nizamuddin link. Mara reached her whiskers out, soaring between the two. “It’s the way the pariah cheels fly,” she had told Beraal when she was trying to explain sending to her teacher. “They don’t see the empty sky we do. They see roads and pathways and intricate webs that tell them where to go, and how far away they are over the tops of the trees, and when to swoop and when to hitch a passing current.”
Beraal felt her own stomach churn as she—and, the hunter sensed, some of the other Nizamuddin cats—followed Mara into territory that for them was new and uncharted. The whisker link was an extension of their scent trails, leading as far as they could smell and see. But Mara went further, travelling rather than linking, as though her whiskers could reach all the way across the colony to the other side, like a slender, vibrating bridge to the sky.
Slowly, meditatively, the kitten washed her paws, one after another. She found that sending became easier if she was washing herself, so she let her tongue rasp a steady rhythm, allowing her to concentrate on where she was going and what she could see.
Chasing after a bright-red rubber ball in the park, a Dalmatian, two Labradors and a couple of frisky mongrel pups faltered for a moment and looked at one another. Then a passing Dachschund nudged the ball back to the bunch, and the game began again.
“That’s strange,” the Dalmatian said to the older Labrador as they trotted off to the far end of the park, “I could’ve sworn an orange kitten brushed by my flank just now, but I didn’t see a thing.” The Lab sniffed the air. “I had the same feeling,” he admitted, “but it would have left a scent, and the only cat scents here are ages old.” The rubber ball came bounding their way, and in the scuffle to reach it, the two forgot the incident.
An ambling cow in the small marketplace paused in the process of abstracting a cabbage leaf from the vegetable seller’s stall and ruminated briefly. She was sure a little kitten had leapt lightly onto her back, then trotted off down the road, but there wasn’t a hint of the creature anywhere that she could see. She turned back to t
he stall, but the seller had tucked the cabbage smartly out of her reach. Philosophically, she sniffed at a discarded garland of marigolds instead. She tended to take life pretty much as she found it, kittens or no kittens.
The squabbling of the sparrows tucked away in a nest high up on the crest of Humayun’s tomb ceased abruptly. The hen and the cock ducked instinctively, positive that they had just seen an orange kitten move swiftly along the dark crumbling roofs of the tombs. But there were no signs of predators, and after a minute or two, they relaxed their vigilance. “Sunte Ho, I told you to build a little bit higher,” said the hen to her mate. Sunte Ho sulked.
“Higher, still higher, what you want, that we should sit out there and tell the cheels to come and get us?” And soon they were bickering amiably again.
STRETCHED OUT NEAR THE KITCHEN STAIRS, Mara appeared to be half-asleep. She barely noticed the cats who were linking in droves—from the dargah, the market, the rooftops and the alleys of Nizamuddin. The kitten skipped over entire colonies as though they were no more than puddles in her path, and she registered a larger world opening up in sudden sharp glimpses full of glorious, confusing colours, sounds and smells. Her sendings were smoothening out. The greetings to the astonished cats who felt or saw her as she went by were becoming easier, more automatic.
She felt cats receiving her hurried twitch of greeting in Nizamuddin, at Humayun’s Tomb, in Jangpura, in far-flung Delhi colonies whose names she had never heard of. Calico cats, tortoiseshell cats, pedigreed cats, strays; neighbourhoods where cats roamed on vast manicured lawns; areas where their territory was a twisting mass of bylanes brimming over with filth and abundant life; old scarred fighters’ faces, blinking kitten faces, furry maternal faces; she could hear them all as a distant, humming noise in the background. Despite the effort, Mara was having fun, on what was the longest and the most fascinating walk of her life this far.
The Wildings Page 5
