The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

  The words the kitten was about to say, the grand defiance he had thought his whiskers would carry to the sea of cats around him, all of it died in the face of the pain that went through his small body. His face felt as though it was on fire, and he wriggled only once; the pain doubled, and Southpaw realized that any movement would hurt him even more. Datura’s face was so close to his own that he could see right into the cat’s strange blue eye. Far off, he heard an animal screaming in pain, and as blood gushed out of the hole where his whisker had been, he realized the screams were coming from his own throat. He tried to stop, but what came out were choked mews. Somewhere at the back of his head, he thought he could hear a loud thumping from upstairs, but the kitten was in too much pain to try to make sense of anything.

  “First blood,” said Aconite, her voice greedy.

  “If you ask nicely, Aconite, I’ll let you do his tail,” said Datura. The white cat was still holding Southpaw down with a heavy paw, examining the kitten dispassionately. It seemed to the kitten that Datura relished each one of his involuntary mews of pain and fear, and once again, he tried to stop himself from crying out.

  “What about me?” said Ratsbane.

  “I said we’d do him slowly,” said Datura. “You’ll have plenty of time to play.” Southpaw’s shock grew. He could hear Miao’s voice in his head, telling the older kittens as they went out for their first hunt: “The best hunters make a clean kill, and will make it fast. Play with your prey to tire it out, if it’s injured and dangerous. But in all other circumstances, remember that the best kills are clean, fast and painless.”

  Then Datura’s claw stabbed through the very tip of his ear, shredding it, and Southpaw screamed again. He felt rather than heard the Nizamuddin cats respond, and realized that he had finally linked to them, probably propelled by the pain and distress, though he had no idea how.

  Datura shifted position, sinking his teeth into the scruff of Southpaw’s neck. He lifted the kitten, who felt the tender skin on the back of his neck tear, felt the blood start to trickle down his throat. He slammed the kitten down on the ground. Southpaw tried to roll, but Datura was too quick for him. The white cat’s massive paws held him pinned, and he heard Aconite come up behind him. Her eyes were feverish, filled with bloodlust, and the kitten—pinned and helpless on the ground—decided he would try and provoke her to kill him fast.

  His face throbbed; he couldn’t stand much more pain. A slow tapping noise from the stairs became audible, and a part of his exhausted mind feared that it might be more ferals, coming down to join in Datura’s game.

  “Shall we begin?” said Datura. And Southpaw shuddered, closing his eyes. He thought of Miao and the way she often washed him to sleep, the comfort of her rough tongue on his fur; he thought of the times he had followed Katar around Nizamuddin, learning how to be a tomcat from the bravest, kindest tomcat of them all. He tried to think of how the sunlight felt on his whiskers, of the taste of fresh, juicy mouse, of the fun of chasing squirrels in the branches of the trees, of all the things he loved about his world. As Datura’s teeth filled his vision, Southpaw tried to think of anything but where he was. “There you are, pussycat!” said a quavering voice from the stairs. Southpaw felt his fur rise in alarm; Datura’s whiskers trembled and the white cat jerked away, though he held the kitten pinned. The kitten couldn’t see anything, but he smelled a Bigfoot. His nose told him this was what he had smelled earlier: the smell of old age and the unmistakeable stench of illness.

  “Naughty kitty,” the voice continued. “I called and called, but you didn’t come, Fluffy. Why weren’t you listening to your Papa? Bad, bad Fluffy!”

  “Fluffy?” Southpaw thought, despite his pain. The expression on Datura’s face, hunted and truculent, was priceless.

  “What’s that you’ve caught? Is it a nasty mouse, then? Or—Fluffy! It”s a kitten! Get away from it right this minute, you bad kitty!”

  Southpaw found himself staring into the wrinkled face of the oldest Bigfoot he’d ever seen. He leaned on a walking stick, and looked down at Datura—Fluffy. Southpaw was once again struck by the blindness of Bigfeet, he had never seen a less Fluffy-like cat in his life. Datura’s paws came off his chest as the old Bigfoot picked up the white cat, and Southpaw realized that the circle of ferals was quietly dispersing. Ratsbane and Aconite had slunk off under the stairs, and the rest were creeping back into the corridors and the large hall.

  He tried to stand up, but now that the fear was subsiding, the pain hit him in waves. The kitten refused to mew, though, and struggled to his feet. The Bigfoot had scooped up Datura and now held him in his arms. The cat’s blue and yellow eyes bulged in anger, but he lay limp as the Bigfoot crooned endearments to him.

  Southpaw eyed the door, which seemed very far away. “Let me look at you,” the Bigfoot said. “Where did you come from, then, little one?” He placed the white cat on a nearby sideboard, Datura’s paws stirring up the dust and making a line of black beetles scatter back into the rotting wood. Southpaw cringed when the Bigfoot bent down, but he couldn’t run. He yowled when he was picked up, unused to any kind of contact with Bigfeet. His heart was hammering so hard he could feel his ribs contract. The old Bigfoot held him gently, though, cupped between his papery, soft hands; his eyes were kind and inquiring.

  “They’ve had a go at you, have they, little fellow?” he said. Gently, he stroked the kitten’s fur, his hands trembling with fever. Southpaw didn’t always understand what the Bigfeet were saying, but like all cats, he could sense their intentions. This Bigfoot meant him no harm, and his touch was soothing, though he smelled very sick. He looked around at Aconite and Datura, and then his gaze travelled to Ratsbane, who sat sullenly on a windowsill, his eyes blazing.

  “We can’t keep you,” he said to Southpaw. “I think they would kill you, even my darling Fluffy.”

  Stiffly, with some difficulty, he walked over to the window near the door, and opened the shutters. They creaked as the rust came off the bolts, and the glorious, rich scents of the outside world reached the kitten’s twitching nose. He drank them in gratefully and mewed.

  “Go, little one,” the Bigfoot said, placing Southpaw on the windowsill. The kitten hesitated, but the grounds appeared to be clear. The dog had gone; he couldn’t see Miao, Katar or the other cats, but he knew he would be able to link now that he was out of the Shuttered House. He took a tentative step, and then gingerly nudged the Bigfeet’s hand, to say thank you.

  The Bigfoot limped back into the house, and picked up Datura. “Fluffy’s been a wicked, bad cat,” he heard him say. And then Datura’s voice came across the distance that separated them, silent and cold as the white cat’s whiskers twitched.

  “This isn’t over, meat,” said Datura, his voice rasping. “He won’t last. You smelled the sickness. And when he goes, we might want to make you run, and pull out the rest of those impertinent whiskers.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” said Southpaw, and it was, surprisingly, true.

  “But you will be,” said Datura.

  “You will be,” said Ratsbane.

  “When we start playing with you and the rest of your miserable lot, you will be,” said Aconite. The stink of the Shuttered House stayed in Southpaw’s nose for a long time, even though his paws unfurled with gratitude at the fine, clean earth beneath them. Overhead, a cheel circled and called out, his hunting voice sharp and clear, but it didn’t come down to disturb the kitten’s glad return to freedom.

  IT WAS LATE AT NIGHT by the time Miao and Katar had finished dealing with Southpaw’s wounds. For Miao, the wait had been terrible. The dog had held them at bay for a long while until it finally scented other prey and bounded off.

  Just as Hulo and some of the other cats joined Miao and Katar, all of them had to lie low as a marriage procession went by outside the Shuttered House. The raucous cries of the Bigfeet didn’t worry the Nizamuddin cats, nor did the fireworks they set off. They found these unpleasant, but it was part and parcel of living
in the Bigfeet’s world. The problem was the number of Bigfeet who strayed, every so often, into the usually silent grounds of the Shuttered House. There was no opportunity for the cats to plan a counter-attack; and the crowds had only started to clear when they received Southpaw’s anguished linkings.

  Katar had been agitated, but Miao was calmer. She had lost enough litters of kittens to know how difficult life was for the young ones. “It’s up to Southpaw,” she told Katar. “We can only wait, and hope.” Going into the Shuttered House was out of the question, she reminded them. It was not their territory; even Hulo didn’t leave his scent on its walls and porches. It smelled unmistakeably of ferals, and while Southpaw had entered in extremis and was entitled to sanctuary, the cats of the Shuttered House would tear other intruders to bits. “As would we, if outsiders invaded our territory, claimed our rooftops,” Miao said. And yet, Katar almost broke the unspoken but ancient pact between the ferals of the Shuttered House and the wildings of Nizamuddin. Hulo held him back. “No,” he said. “If anything happens to the young fellow, it’s our fault for not teaching him to hunt, but we can’t intrude. Would you save him from every dog that snapped at his paws? Will you be there when some cruel Bigfoot brands his tail, or breaks his paws? If you go into their territory, you could start a war between our clan and the ferals. You can’t take that risk, Katar.”

  It was Miao who caught Southpaw’s scent first, and it was the old Siamese who came out first from the ramshackle pipes at the side of the Shuttered House. She and Katar had taken up their vigil there, hoping against hope that the kitten might have survived whatever was happening inside.

  And now Southpaw curled into her warm, furry belly, happy to be safe and home with his own kind, despite the pain from his various wounds. Katar had licked and licked steadily at the hole left by the missing whisker, until it felt cooler and the ache lessened to a dull sting. Miao had washed his torn ear and gently used her teeth to nibble and suck at his throat until the puncture marks were clean of all dirt and of Datura’s saliva. Southpaw lay between the two cats, looking up at the stars in the night sky, remembering the grim, dusty, cobwebbed ceiling of the Shuttered House.

  The cats rested, drowsing in the cool, calm night. Katar disappeared for a brief while and returned with fresh kill—a large bandicoot, enough for all three of them—and they ate well, the two older cats nudging Southpaw towards the best and tastiest morsels.

  Fed, warm and safe, Southpaw slept against Miao’s comfortable flank, too tired to join Katar and the others in the night’s activities, even though a first-class prowl had been planned for the evening.

  He slept only briefly, and the moon was still high in the night sky when he woke. It was a murky moon, the light from it a mottled orange and yellow, and it gave the kitten bad dreams, so that his paws cycled in his sleep and he yelped once or twice. Miao washed his head and his ears gently, knowing that Southpaw’s nightmares would continue for a while.

  “Miao,” said Southpaw when he was properly awake, “will the Shuttered House ever be opened?”

  The Siamese looked up, and then over in the direction of the strange house that the ferals called home.

  “Don’t let it give you bad dreams,” she said.

  “But will it be?” Southpaw persisted. “Datura said the old Bigfoot wouldn’t be there, and then they would come out—but they’ve never come out before. So why would they come out at all? Why wouldn’t they just stay there?”

  Miao snuggled closer to the kitten, and decided that after everything he had witnessed and survived that day, he could be told the truth—even if it was a harsh truth.

  “You’ve never known ferals, have you, Southpaw?” she said. “They’re different from us wildings. We have our brawls and our territories, but, mostly, we live in peace with each other. Ferals are always strange creatures, Southpaw. Can you imagine what it would be like to grow up in the Shuttered House, without the thumping of the Bigfeet world, or the feel of the rain and the wind in your fur, or parks and gardens to roam in, trees to climb, roofs to defend and claim?”

  Southpaw’s eyes went opaque as he recalled the thought that had come to him in his moment of danger, how it had given him that tiny reprieve that had undoubtedly kept him alive. He refocused on what Miao was saying. “They think food comes from Bigfeet, and they only ever hunt old, lame rats or diseased beetles, Southpaw,” said Miao. “And living inside, shut up all the time, something warps in them. Their minds scurry in circles, like the grubs you’ve seen living under tree bark—here and there, here and there, never going anywhere. So if their Bigfoot dies, because that’s what Datura was talking about, they won’t have any food left after a while. And perhaps other Bigfeet won’t let them stay inside the Shuttered House, Southpaw.”

  “Then what will they do?” asked the kitten, trembling just a little as he thought of Datura, and Aconite, and Ratsbane, and the hatred in their whiskers as they made their final threats.

  Miao stared out across the park, her eyes not quite seeing what was ahead of them.

  “Then they’ll either break out and try to kill us, or turn on each other in a killing frenzy,” she said. What the Siamese didn’t tell the kitten was that neither outcome would be good for the Nizamuddin cats. Anything that drew the attention of the Bigfeet to their small colony of wildings would be bad for them.

  She realized that Southpaw’s trembling had intensified, and she laid her muzzle against his small face.

  “Never worry, Southpaw,” she said, “until you have to. Besides, we’re not helpless.”

  “We aren’t?” said the kitten, wanting to believe Miao but remembering all too clearly the terror that the ferals of the Shuttered House had raised in his mind.

  “Not at all,” said Miao. “Katar has led us through many rains and summers, and we have warriors like Beraal and Hulo. It seems we also have a Sender on our side, though she is still very young.”

  “As young as me?” said Southpaw, curious. There were no other kittens of his age in Nizamuddin—the rest were a whole season older or a season younger, and sometimes the kitten wished he had litter mates.

  “Yes,” said Miao. “Beraal tells me she’s very small, so perhaps she’s even younger than you. Imagine that, you’re bigger than the Sender!”

  “I thought the Sender would be big,” said Southpaw, disappointed. “I thought she would be bigger than Datura—as big as the tigers!” He shuddered, remembering the day when he’d woken up to see Ozzy’s massive, wickedly curved teeth, that gigantic black-and-gold striped face.

  Miao’s whiskers and eyebrows shook in silent laughter. “No, she’s just a kitten,” she said. “But all Senders have amazing powers. Tigris, for instance, could speak to the cheels and share their soaring flights.” And washing his whiskers, gentling his fur, telling him stories until he was soothed, the old Siamese managed to lull Southpaw into a deep, healing sleep. He shifted and muttered as his paws kneaded her flank, but he didn’t open his eyes, and Miao felt the tension go out of his small body after a while. Soon, he was dreaming: of happier things, she hoped.

  The Siamese remained awake for much of the night, watching the wood owls make their sorties overhead, and listening to the chorus of the bats who lived near the baoli. She stiffened when a mongoose darted out from behind a clump of queen of the night creepers, but it barely glanced at her and Southpaw. Its sleek brown head pointed in the other direction, and Miao wondered whether it was hunting cobras or harmless rat snakes and lizards. She blinked away a buzzing mosquito, and when she opened her eyes again, the predator had melted away into the undergrowth.

  Southpaw hooked a paw into her stomach, nuzzling up to the cream-coloured cat like the tiniest of kittens. Miao washed the top of his head until he was purring in his dreams. She drank in the pre-dawn peace of Nizamuddin, the quiet hours before the Bigfeet stirred, and hoped that Datura and his pack would never want to leave the Shuttered House.

  The weeks passed without incident, until Southpaw landed in tr
ouble yet again, this time with Hulo. The kitten’s complaints were so loud that they reached the ears of even the passing mynahs and cheels. “You’re nipping me! Miao is much gentler.”

  “You’re an ungrateful brat,” said Hulo, who was using his rough tongue to clean dried leaves and the remains of a termite’s nest out of Southpaw’s wounds, which were healing quite nicely. “Hold still, there’s a good kitten.”

  “Groof!” said Southpaw. “Hulo, that’s my eye!”

  “Quit wriggling,” said the tomcat. “If Miao or Katar hear you were climbing trees with those wounds not yet healed, and that too the fig tree, which you were told not to climb …”

  “… because it had snakes in the branches, but it didn’t have any, Hulo,” said Southpaw, trying not to mind the rasping of Hulo’s tongue. “I checked very carefully and there were only some mynah birds and those babblers, making a racket as usual. They make such a noise, how would any snakes live there? They’d be frightened away, wouldn’t they?”

  “But suppose there had been snakes,” Hulo said sternly.

  “I would have been so scared!” said Southpaw. “But there weren’t, you know. Just birds. Besides, how was I to know if there were snakes or not without going to see for myself? No one seemed to know for sure, Hulo.”

  Hulo left off washing Southpaw and thought, not for the first time, that he didn’t envy Miao and Katar. Southpaw wasn’t the first orphan kitten to be found in Nizamuddin, but he was much more of a handful than most. The tomcat refused to parent Southpaw in any official way, but he kept his whiskers out for news of the kitten, which tended to arrive at distressingly regular intervals.

  There was his brush with the pariah cheel, the Shuttered House episode, and then he’d sneaked off to steal fish from one of the Bigfeet houses while he was supposed to be resting, and now there was the fig tree expedition. If Hulo were Katar, he’d have smacked Southpaw’s bottom so hard that the kitten would be sitting on a smooth behind. Hulo had been the one who’d found Southpaw, stumbling down the canal road with sore paws, mewling and still almost blind—the kitten’s eyes had just about opened. When the tomcat sniffed at him, Southpaw had reared back and tried to fight Hulo, his tiny paws flailing. For some reason, this had amused and touched the tom, who had a weakness for a good brawl. Hulo had picked him up in his jaws and carried him to the other cats, unsure why his instincts told him not to kill the foundling.