The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

  He was almost through when he heard the loud clump-clump shuffle of a Bigfoot, and the kitten found himself painfully torn. “Quick, get out of here—you’ll reach the door in two shakes of your tail,” said part of his mind. “Please, just one more mouthful, there’s a bit here that tastes of shrimp,” begged the other part of his mind. Unfortunately, it was the louder part, and Southpaw stuck his nose back into the bowl, practically inhaling its contents.

  The Bigfoot was at the entrance to the kitchen. Southpaw leaped back from the bowl and stared up at it—such a long way up. But it wasn’t looking at him, and the kitten, terrified, squeezed himself under the kitchen table, his paws propelling him to the nearest hiding place. Slam! The doors shut, and staring from under the table, Southpaw saw the dark, rain-spattered sky narrow and disappear. He could see the Bigfoot’s shoes, now, and he shook like a leaf under the table, expecting to be discovered at any moment.

  The Bigfoot turned around and left, its shoes booming back along the corridor, the footsteps fading away into the house. “The thing to do,” the frightened kitten said to himself, “is to stay right here and wait until—until they open the door or something.”

  But slowly, as the hand on the kitchen clock ticked over the minutes, Southpaw’s terror began to ebb. Inside the house, it was warm and quiet. There was no sign of the Sender, and the Bigfeet seemed to be on the other side of the house, their voices echoing in the distance. The kitten crawled out from under the table. He padded up to the kitchen door and pushed it with his nose, but it stayed firmly shut. He eyed the open doorway that led back into the house with cautious interest. “I should stay right here,” he told himself. “They’ll open the door in the morning so that the Sender can sit on the stairs. It’s always open when we’re coming back from night prowls. I wonder how far away the morning is?”

  Restless, Southpaw padded around the kitchen, investigating the many different smells, patting at a runaway potato, stropping his claws on the wooden leg of a stool. He stopped once more at the doorway that led to the rest of the house. From here, he could smell the Sender; the most recent scent trail was an exciting one, and indicated that she had tried to climb up to the curtain pelmets. It also indicated that there were points at which she’d been less than successful. He raised his whiskers gingerly, but there was no whiff of the Bigfeet.

  “It wouldn’t do any harm to poke my nose in, just for a second,” he thought. “Would it?”

  Southpaw padded in slowly, and kept going.

  MARA’S DAY HAD BEGUN wonderfully well, with the Great Pelmet Expedition occupying most of the morning. This had gone better than the most recent expedition, the Garbage Can Trawl, which had led to sharp words from both the Bigfeet and a smacking of her bottom. This was deeply injurious to her dignity, and the kitten had heaved out of her Bigfeet’s hands, marching off with her tail, ears and whiskers up to let them know what she thought of the situation. Given that it was a First-class March, with a Flounce thrown in, it was unkind of them to laugh—and by now, she knew exactly when the Bigfeet were laughing at her.

  She had scaled one pelmet after another, revelling in the discovery of dust bunnies and other unexpected surprises—half a bangle, a candle stub that was great fun to roll around on the carpet, a dead beetle that she had eaten and wished she hadn’t. It tickled her stomach and made everything from her morning bowl of milk onwards taste distinctly beetleish. By afternoon, she was curled up on the back-door staircase, purring and ready for Beraal’s company.

  Then the skies opened up unexpectedly. She shot in off the stairs after sticking her paws cautiously out into the rain—Beraal tended to go on about the beauty of the monsoons, but the salient feature of rain was its wetness. Mara disapproved, strongly.

  She sat for a long while at the kitchen door, waiting for the rain to stop and Beraal to come. Neither wish was fulfilled and gradually, Mara’s ears and whiskers began to droop. Her Bigfeet were out, as they often were in the afternoon, and as she padded restlessly around the house, its emptiness gnawed at her. The kitten pounced listlessly at the lizard who sat on the door-frame, but he ran up into the corner and said “Girgit!” to her accusingly.

  She played with her ball, but her heart wasn’t in it. The Bigfeet came back to find the kitten slumped in a corner, and she made no protest when they picked her up with exclamations, cuddled her and finally tucked her into her blankets, thinking that she must be ill.

  Mara listened to the rain, wondering when Beraal would come and see her next. If the rains continued like this, would the cat stay away for days? She tucked herself deeper into her blankets, thinking of Beraal and the many cats her mentor had mentioned—Miao and Hulo, Katar and Southpaw.

  Mara’s only memories of her own clan were confused. She remembered squirming bodies, the pleasure of drinking warm milk, the rasp of a loving tongue over her still-closed eyes. It was so different from the Nizamuddin cats—except for Beraal, their wariness and their dislike of her bristled across the link. She could smell the unease and ever since she’d become aware of it, the kitten had linked less and less to the cats, preferring to watch the squirrels and the mynah birds.

  Mara washed herself and tried to go to sleep, but her mind wandered restlessly. She found the crash of thunder and the flare of lightning terrifying, yet another reminder that the world outside her house was a dark place, filled with unknown perils. The kitten wondered what it would be like to have a friend who said more than “Girgit!” and who didn’t come here just because she was the Sender. She thought she’d like to have a friend she could actually cuddle up to—a friend who was a kitten like her.

  The plastic bucket of toys in the corner of the room made a thundering, clattering sound as it overturned. Mara opened her eyes and stared at the striped brown kitten who had cannoned straight into the bucket.

  Then she closed her eyes again. Beraal had said that the problem with being a Sender was learning to control one’s imagination as well as one’s talents. It was clear to Mara that she’d been thinking so hard about having a friend that she’d conjured up an imaginary one.

  “Sorry!” mewed the imaginary kitten. “I didn’t mean to knock things over—um, will your Bigfeet hear that and come running in and beat me up or something? I was about to leave anyway, I just didn’t know where to leave from. Um. Or to. I’ve never been in a house like this before.”

  Mara stared at the imaginary kitten, who looked far more solid than one might expect from a creature who existed only in her mind.

  He had the most bedraggled coat she had seen, and his brown fur was streaked with dirt, while showers of bark and rain fell in a very unimaginary way on her carpet.

  “I can see that,” she said with a sharp lift to her whiskers, getting up and arching her back in some menace. “You must be an outside cat. How did you get here?”

  Southpaw ducked the question, intent on explaining himself fully. “Also, I ate the food in the bowl at the back. Sorry. I was starving. I’ll—er, kill you a rat and bring it in tomorrow.” He could see the Sender’s stiffly curved back, and hoped he wouldn’t have to fight her—or worse, surrender. As the intruder, every instinct told him to be polite, but the thought of rolling over and exposing his throat to this tiny orange puffball was more than a little humiliating.

  Mara hopped down from the bed and walked up to him, her gait stiff-legged.

  Southpaw kept his head down, watching her out of the corner of his eyes. He hoped she wouldn’t start spitting and screaming—he found out-and-out brawls a much happier way of settling the intruder issue.

  Mara extended a claw and poinked him delicately on his left flank. “Mrrraaawwwwppp!” he howled, forgetting the Bigfeet.

  “You’re definitely real,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to do that—yes, of course I’m real, what did you think I was? What are you doing? Gerroff!”

  Mara was sniffing him all over with immense curiosity. Since he’d intruded into her territory, she didn’t have to be po
lite, and she found the smells rising off his wet fur fascinating. Southpaw wriggled around, protesting, as Mara started to walk up his flank, her nose buried in his fur.

  “Is this some kind of surrender ritual?” he mewed, his whiskers and ears twitching uneasily. “Because Katar and Miao said that if you go into another cat’s territory, you have to surrender, but they didn’t say it would be this ticklish.”

  Standing on his flank as Southpaw lay on the ground, doing his best to lie still and surrender properly, Mara sniffed at the top of his head one last time, and then she jumped off and stretched her paws, her eyes slightly distant.

  “You were with another cat—a bigger fellow, a really big tom, in the rain, and before that you were in the trees (and you didn’t wash the bark and mealy bugs off, either) and you went to see a dog together,” she said. “Something like that? And you were in a tree where you weren’t supposed to be, and just thinking of all the places you’ve been to outside in a single day makes my head spin. Don’t you ever sit still and think?”

  “Yes, I do—no, actually I don’t, it’s really boring sitting still, besides there’s so much to explore, even if Katar can be really horrid if I explore the bits that he says I shouldn’t—wait a minute.” Southpaw raised his head and stared at her, his ears alert. This kitten with the fascinating monsoon green eyes might be smaller than him, but she was full of surprises.

  “How did you know all that just from smelling my fur?”

  “It’s all there,” said Mara, digging her claws into his neck as she tried to balance on his spine. “First there’s the smells, and then they separate into pictures.”

  “Really?” said Southpaw, forgetting that he had surrendered. He scrambled to his paws, and Mara slid down his back, landing with a small thump on the ground. Southpaw sniffed at her with interest, and drew back his nose in disappointment.

  “I can’t smell where you’ve been today,” he said. “But you do smell really—clean. Oh well, I guess that counts as an introduction: I’m Southpaw, and you must be the Sender.”

  “Just call me Mara,” said the kitten. Her natural exuberance was washing over her again, brought back by the surprise visitor. “You’re the first cat who’s ever come to visit, except Beraal, but she came to kill me, so that doesn’t count. How clever of you to find me, was it very hard?”

  “Not at all,” said Southpaw. He saw the adoration in Mara’s eyes dim. His ears drooped. He thought fast, wanting to see those lovely green eyes light up again. “I mean, yes! I’ve been wanting to come here for many, many moons, but Katar and Miao said the house was off limits—I mean, they vilely prevented me from coming here, and it was only after many battles and skirmishes that I made my way to you, battling this fearsome storm.” He wondered whether he’d overdone it, but Mara’s eyes shone with admiration and a small but distinct purr rumbled up from her stomach.

  “How brave of you,” she said, her whiskers oozing adoration. “I had the tigers to play with, but it’s been so lonely not having friends of my own. You wouldn’t understand, though, you have so many cats to play with outside.”

  “Play with?” said Southpaw uncertainly. He thought about Hulo and their excursions, of the sorties and raids he’d made stealthily in imitation of Katar and Miao, of their affectionate lessons and scoldings. Mara was purring and rubbing up against his stomach.

  Southpaw felt a surprising surge of protectiveness towards this odd cat who preferred being locked up to exploring the outside, and whose unusual talents hadn’t helped her find any friends in Nizamuddin. He rubbed heads with her, and brushed whiskers gently, and then he sprawled on the floor, curling himself around the kitten. Her fur was so soft that he felt like staying there forever.

  “I have many teachers outside, Mara,” he said, “but I have no littermates and no friends the same size as me. So I guess you’re not the only one who’s lonely. Tell me about your Bigfeet, then, and tell me what you do all day.”

  The two kittens conversed for a long time, Mara asking questions about what it was like to be outside (and shuddering sometimes at the answers), Southpaw curious about the life of an inside cat. They played a wonderful game of chase, and when the Bigfeet clumped in to the room to check on Mara, Southpaw played hide and seek so well that neither of the Bigfeet saw him. (“Poor things,” said Mara. “They can’t smell very well, or see very clearly in the dark. You have to be very patient with Bigfeet.”) But though Mara was delighted, and happy to share her bed with Southpaw, the brown kitten woke up restless and uneasy just before dawn. The warmth and softness of the blankets was unbelievably luxurious—he hadn’t been this comfortable since he’d been a very tiny kitten, cradled in the warmth of his mother’s fur. And Mara was a pleasant sleeping companion, giving him enough space to wriggle in his sleep and fight rats in his dreams.

  But it was being inside a house that made him uncomfortable. Without the orientation of the sky above, he had lost his bearings and felt as though he had fallen into a pit. The distant chirpings of the birds in the trees made him realize that he’d missed an entire night’s hunting, and the air inside was too still, too tamely scented.

  “I have to go,” he told Mara after she’d coaxed her Bigfeet into bringing her a second helping of breakfast. “The other cats will wonder where I’ve been, and I should let them know I’m safe.”

  “No problem,” she said, cleaning fish off her whiskers with a dainty paw. “I’ll tell Beraal through the link, shall I? Then you can spend the day with me, and perhaps the Bigfeet won’t mind if you stay. They’re very nice to me, so I don’t think they’d mind one more cat.”

  Southpaw, who’d been doing a perfunctory lick-and-promise instead of a proper toilette, stopped washing his ears and thought very hard.

  “Mara,” he said, going over to the orange kitten and giving her an affectionate face-wash, “that’s such a sweet offer.”

  Mara ducked out from under his paw. Her whiskers were stiffening. “I hear a ‘but’ coming,” she said.

  Southpaw’s brown eyes were thoughtful and a little sad. “I’m an outside cat,” he said. “The way you feel about coming outside is the way I feel about being inside all the time. So I can’t stay.”

  The kitten said nothing, but he could tell from her tail and whiskers that she didn’t want to hear this. He went over and touched his face to her little orange one, watching the golden flecks in her ravishing green eyes.

  “I’ll come back this afternoon, before I go on the evening sorties with the other cats,” he said. “And if you’ll let me, I’ll come and see you as often as I can, Mara. Deal?”

  The Sender’s whiskers sprang back to life, and she head-butted him with such vigour that he almost fell over.

  “I don’t know what it is that you like about being outside,” she said, “it seems smelly and scary to me. But come back when you can. I’ve never had a friend like you before.”

  Southpaw heard the kitchen door open, and listened for the Bigfeet to leave so that he could make his exit.

  “Neither have I, Mara,” he said. “Keep your whiskers up, little one. I’ll be back soon.”

  He didn’t know that the Sender watched him from her windowsill as he bounded down the wrought iron staircase, and ran madly through the park in search of Hulo and the rest. She watched him until all she could see was a brown smudge disappearing into the green hedges, their leaves washed and gleaming from the night’s rain.

  Sitting on top of the bookcase, Mara surveyed her kingdom with a strong sense of triumph. It had taken her three attempts to scale the bookshelves. The first had been summarily interrupted by her Bigfeet, who had plucked her off the last but one shelf from the top, restored the books she had knocked down in her mountaineering efforts and grumbled at her good-naturedly.

  The second was rendered unsuccessful when she decided to try to scale the bookcase from the back. She soon found herself suspended in mid-air from a shelf, holding on with her front paws and cycling furiously with her hind legs to try
to get her bottom back on the shelf after the encyclopaedias fell forwards, depriving Mara of a foothold. On her third try, the kitten considered the books on the shelves carefully before charting a path over the paperbacks and the leather-bound volumes of Tagore, giving the loose-leaf manuscripts a wide berth. She made it up to the top and stared at the room, enchanted by the way it all looked so different from her new perch.

  One of her Bigfeet walked by, and Mara had to restrain herself from jumping onto his shoulder. She thought she could make it if she used her claws to find purchase, but previous leaping-on-Bigfeet exercises had been met with a certain lack of enthusiasm. Besides, it felt good being up on top of the bookcase. It made the kitten feel like the queen of explorers, and her Bigfeet would find it hard to reach her, unless she wanted them to.

  After swatting at a fly, and eating a cobweb, and surveying her kingdom yet again, Mara silently admitted the truth: she was bored. Her morning was spent with the Bigfeet, who were slow learners and resisted most of her efforts to train them. Beraal usually came by in the late evening for training exercises—it had taken them several tries until Mara could go for her walks without sending the Nizamuddin cats into a tizzy, but she’d finally got the hang of it. This left the whole afternoon, and there were only so many catnaps she could take. And Southpaw hadn’t reappeared, and she didn’t know where to find him.

  As she pondered her options, her whiskers rose thoughtfully. There was one place she could go, she thought. She would like to see Rudra The Great And Many Striped or whatever his name was, but would the other cats make a fuss if his father roared at them again? They probably would; but what if she tried her hand at sending without linking to the general band of cats?

  Mara chased her tail, almost catching it several times, and stirring the dust on top of the bookshelves, while she thought about this. Beraal had managed to teach her not to broadcast her status updates on an hourly basis to the entire cat community. It was something to do with whisker and nostril control, and Mara wasn’t quite sure how she did it, but when she twitched her whiskers a little to the left and screwed up her nose a little to the right, she seemed to be able to control her linking better. Sending and not linking, though, would probably require whisker, nose and ear control at the same time—something she and Beraal had practised separately, but never put together. No time like the present to try, she decided, and shut her eyes.