The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

  “Himself?” said Katar, wondering whether this was a cat or a mouse. “Himself,” said the mouse. “The Bigfoot who lived there with the cats. Can’t you smell it? He was ill and he’s dead, and now there isn’t anyone to keep those cats inside.”

  Katar could smell it now, the unmistakeable odour of death riding down to them on the back of the rain.

  “Perhaps the cats will stay where they are,” he said. “They’ve never left the Shuttered House in all of their lives, mouse. What makes you think they’ll leave?”

  The mouse sighed; it came out in a small squeak.

  “I was born there myself,” it said. “The pickings were rich, for us mice and rats, but the cats had kittens, and more cats came, and over the years, the cats turned sour.”

  Katar knew what the mouse meant; he was listening intently. “So you left?” he asked.

  “I left, though many of us made sorties there for food from time to time,” said the mouse. “The ferals had nothing to do inside except play games. You might say they learned some very nasty games, O Cat.”

  Katar glanced at the house. The wails had deepened into a chorus. His fur was standing up, and it had nothing to do with the cold and the rain—every time the ferals inside the house keened, he could feel a shiver in his bones. The door of the house opened again, and a sour stench gusted out. The mouse was telling the truth; the old Bigfoot who lived in the house was dead.

  “I’m Katar,” he said. “Forgive me, but I don’t know your name, mouse. Tell me why you think they won’t stay inside the house. They’ve never wanted to come outside before.”

  The brown mouse considered him intently, its short whiskers questioning.

  “They call me Jethro,” he said. “I have never exchanged names with a cat before. I will remember your courtesy, Katar. The cats won’t stay because there’ll be no one to feed them, and because the Bigfeet will open up the Shuttered House—look, the door is already open.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Katar. “Even if the house is opened up, it would still be their territory, wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t they hunt in these grounds—excuse my bluntness—and continue to live there?”

  The mouse’s ears rose. “Because once Datura comes out and sees what the outside is like,” said Jethro, “he’ll want to come out to play.”

  The Bigfeet were leaving the house now, carrying something huddled on a stretcher. A few Bigfeet remained. The door shut; the wailings abruptly stopped, cutting off in mid-dirge. Katar found that more unsettling than if they had continued.

  There was silence again, and except for the lights, the Shuttered House seemed the same as always. The tomcat wondered if the mouse hadn’t been too scared, too timid—he was only a mouse, after all, and they weren’t known for their courage. The house looked its usual shuttered, closed self. Perhaps the Bigfeet would take Datura and the other cats away, or perhaps some other Bigfoot would move in. But his tail continued to flick back and forth, and as he padded away, intending to discuss this with Miao and Hulo, he was uneasy.

  He had got less than a few paw’s lengths away when the wailing started up again, and this time, there was an edge to it, a menace that made his hackles rise. Katar turned, unwillingly, and stared at the Shuttered House. If the ferals did come out, would they stay in the grounds and keep to themselves? Would Datura be willing to behave the way the Nizamuddin cats did—would he keep the peace between the clans? The image of Southpaw shivering as Katar and Hulo cleaned the wound where his whisker had been pulled out came back to the tom’s mind, and the cat flinched.

  The wind changed direction, driving the stench from the Shuttered House into the cat’s nostrils. It filled Katar with dread.

  The keening rose again, and from the trees, the barbet sounded its alarm once more. From near his front paws, Jethro spoke. “Datura took my siblings and my mother, and his friends took my first four litters,” he said. “I don’t think you and your cats would like the games he plays at all—no, Katar, I don’t think you’d like it one little bit.” The brown head melted away into the shadows. Behind Katar, as he padded steadily away from the Shuttered House, the wails rose to a crescendo.

  Perched next to the stone gargoyle that decorated the rusting wrought iron railings on the roof, Tooth looked a bit like a gargoyle himself: a wet, feathery, angry gargoyle.

  The great pariah cheel could feel his fleas digging deeper under the pinions of his feathers, searching for a warmth and dryness that eluded both parasite and host.

  Tooth loosened his grip on the body of the rat that he’d killed the previous day; the carrion flesh was too sodden with rain to be appetizing. Miserably, he ruffled his feathers, trying to shake off at least the worst of the wet. He closed his eyes and thought of a warm nest of twigs and bones, high on the very end of a friendly telegraph pole, a nest where the air would eddy and swirl around his feathers in breaking waves, each different gust carrying news and scents and warmth with it. Then he huddled closer to the stone gargoyle—it was only cold stone, but it was something to lean against.

  He closed his eyes, tightened his claws around the railing and was almost asleep when he heard a mew. Instinctively, Tooth stabbed, his claws with their wicked talons slashing upwards.

  But the cat—an elderly Siamese with a quizzical look on her face—had stayed well back. Tooth’s talons and beak closed on thin air. The cheel overbalanced and plummeted off the railing, doing a hasty three-point turn just in time to avoid falling into the potted plants on the balcony below.

  “What the bleeding fleas and ticks?” he spluttered. “Back off, you flearidden old—Miao? What’s up?”

  “If you’re awake now, Tooth, may we speak? On truce terms, all right? It’s important,” said the Siamese.

  Tooth was suddenly wide awake. He had known—and hunted—Miao from the time she’d been the fastest six-weeker in her litter, and over time, he’d grown … well, he wasn’t sure. Pariah cheels didn’t make friends with cats. Everyone knew that. But he and Miao had seen a lot of monsoons come and go in Nizamuddin, and they’d developed a silent truce; he rarely stooped or hunted her these days. For one, he knew that she might have trouble with her left hip, but she still had a wickedly fast paw. And then, if he was honest, he’d have to admit it had been fun watching her grow up. Still, they’d spoken face-to-face perhaps thrice in the last fifteen years.

  “Come up, Miao,” he said. “Rules of truce: in this circle, for this time, may the winds hear my rhyme; all the laws of host and guest shall hold fast and be blessed. Safe from talon, safe from claw; I’ll harm neither whisker nor paw. Enter then and have your say; you are my honoured guest today.”

  On the stairs, Miao let her whiskers relax. She had hoped for this response, but predator birds were often of uncertain temper, and she hadn’t been confident of Tooth. The rhythm of the age-old words brought her comfort.

  The roof was wet, but she sat down near the gargoyle, looking up at Tooth. “It’s about the Shuttered House …” she began. And then she told him everything she knew, starting from the history of the house, to Katar’s news from the previous night.

  “… so that’s the situation,” she finished. “We need the Alliance, Tooth, and I’m asking you to mobilize the pariah cheels.”

  The hunter hooded his eyes. “This is cat business, Miao. I understand your concern, but I don’t see what it has to do with us. Different species. Not our fight.”

  Miao flickered her ears in gentle disagreement. “See it differently, Tooth,” she said. “Whatever those creatures in the Shuttered House may have been when they first went in, they aren’t cats any more. You know what happens when a dog goes rabid, or a cat goes feral, or a cheel goes rogue. Now imagine that happening over two generations.

  “Imagine kittens who have never known what it is to be kittens, who have never known anything but this twisted, unnatural life. Imagine a pack of cats—Tooth, a pack, like a pack of wild dogs or hyaenas—trained to hate all the other creatures who live in Nizamudd
in. They’ll start fights; not individual fights but carefully targeted attacks. Not just on the cats, Tooth, but on dogs. On the sparrows, the crows, on the Bigfeet’s pets. On you and on your mate Claw’s hatchlings, whenever she has her next batch. What we’re facing is not a bunch of strays coming out of a Bigfeet house and fighting for space; we may be facing a feral invasion. And we need you. Without you, the rest of the birds will do nothing.”

  Tooth preened his feathers, thinking. Then the hunter turned towards Miao. “They’re still cats, Miao. This is your fight. We have the skies to go to, the winds will take us sailing wherever we please. The birds are not earth-held, and we don’t fight the earthbound. It seems like a classic stray versus stray territorial bust-up to me. But even if I thought there was some danger from these ferals, what do we of the high winds have to do with this? The truce holds if you like, Miao; I’ll get Claw to lay off attacking the cats for as long as you want, but we’re not getting our talons in a tangle.”

  The old Siamese flicked the rain off her paws, washing them absently. There was no defeat in her posture, though her eyes had filmed over with a mist that was more than age; she was looking back in time, looking back through memory.

  Tooth wished she would go. It made him uncomfortable to say no to Miao but he really didn’t see how this was any of his business. The winds were whipping up again, and a grey drizzle had begun to fall. The air smelled of storm and gale, and he wanted to be out surfing the thunder.

  “Do you remember your mother, Tooth?” Miao said. The cheel turned, startled.

  “Stoop was a good friend of mine,” the cat continued. “I didn’t get on that well with her mate, Conquer; he didn’t have much time for cats. But many’s the time Stoop and I sat up here and talked. You remind me a lot of her.”

  “I do?” said Tooth. He shuffled uncomfortably, his talons gripping the balcony a little tighter. His mother had been a legendary flier and fighter, the warrior queen of the air waves. He had spent the first part of his life as a fierce fledgling trying to be her, and the second part of his life as a stellar Wing Commander who understood that he would always fall short of Stoop’s standards, but tried to do his best anyway.

  “Yes, you do,” said Miao gently. “You have her sense of justice, but perhaps not the recklessness.”

  Tooth chirred in warning and involuntarily, his feathers ruffled. “My mother wasn’t reckless,” the cheel said.

  Miao laughed quietly to herself. She had seen the warning flare at the back of Tooth’s eyes, the red ring around his pupils lighting up just for an instant.

  “Stoop was fearless,” she said. “She was the best fighter of her batch—the one with the most kills, the one who flew out of the sun straight at her enemies, the one who never refused a fight. And she had a large and generous heart, she looked after her fledglings very well indeed, and she knew the last tail feather of every member of her squadron.”

  Miao stopped to wash the very tip of her tail.

  “But she was reckless, Tooth. Do you know how she died?”

  The pariah cheel said nothing, though pain flickered for a second in his eyes.

  CONQUER HAD COME BACK HOME one night with a gash in his wing, his talons in shreds. He had watched Tooth come jerkily out of a fast dive, saying nothing. Then he’d said, “You’ll have to do better than that if you lead the squadron, son. Your mother trained them all herself, down to the last raptor, and they’ll be watching you for mistakes when you join as Flight Lieutenant—no, that’s too junior, better make it Group Captain. Be ready to take over as Wingco in three months.”

  The young Tooth had asked, “I’m joining the squad? I thought there wasn’t a vacancy until next monsoon?”

  Conquer had been licking his wounds, trying to seal the ends of the torn feathers in his wing. There was no expression in the grey hawk’s eyes as he looked at his son.

  “There is now,” he said. “Stoop died this afternoon.”

  Tooth had never known how it happened. He asked his father about it once, and was cuffed so soundly that he flew with a slight downwards dip for a while, from the rip that Conquer’s talons had left in his right wing. He did not inquire again.

  Now, his own feathers greying ever so slightly at the tips, he faced the cat who had been such a good friend to his mother. “Will you tell me the story, Miao?” he said.

  The cat’s smoky eyes looked deep into his golden ones. “Are you sure you want to know?” she said.

  Tooth stared up at the grey skies, letting his feathers rise and fall as he thought it over. “Yes,” he said finally. “It’s time I knew what happened.”

  Miao settled down, a judicious distance from Tooth, her gaze drifting out over the rooftops.” Do you remember Tigris?” she said.

  “Your Sender?” said Tooth. “Yes, my father spoke often of her when he told us stories of his fledgling years. She was a Far-Seer of the old school, wasn’t she? I haven’t met too many like her, among the cheels or the cats.”

  “It was Tigris’s first year as a Sender,” said Miao. “Her mother had discovered her abilities that winter, when she realized that Tigris’s whiskers let her reach further than any other kitten in the litter—further even than any of the adult cats.”

  The hunter listened intently, his eyes hooded, his talons relaxed, as the Siamese spun her tale.

  All through that winter, Tigris saw dark visions. She dreamed of black clouds coming down from the sky until they became shrouds for the wildings. She was anxious—first she asked the wildings to consider leaving Nizamuddin, and then she grew more insistent. But who would make a clan shift because of the dreams of a young cat just over a year old? Even her mother, Neferkitty, who was the clan’s most fierce queen, refused to take Tigris’s demands seriously.

  In spring, the dreams that haunted Tigris grew more vivid, but it was one of the most beautiful springs we had seen. One of those rare ones, where the nights were jasmine-drenched, the prey thick on the ground, and the Bigfeet left us alone for a change.

  If it was a perfect spring, the following season was anything but, for that summer was the summer of the crows.

  First there was just one flock, and then two, and then more and more, settling raucously in the hedges and trees of Nizamuddin. We wildings were indifferent—crows had always been part of the colony—and then, as more and more of them came in, wary. You know what crows are like, Tooth: loud and bustling and given to throwing parties every evening with brawls between the younger lot. And they can be mean, and some of them are very clever thieves—they’ll wait for a cat or a cheel to make the kill, and then sneak in and swipe the lot.

  But they’re also fun: look at Blackwing and Brightbeak and their brood, and the way they keep watch for all of us here. These crows, though, were different. They came in like the gathering monsoon clouds, masses of them, shrouding the trees in black and grey, filling the skies with their relentless cawing and squabbling. And then the clan remembered Tigris’ visions, and in our hearts and whiskers, we were afraid.

  At first, Stoop paid them no mind. She went on her daily patrols as always and stayed far away, on the highest gables, roosting in the trees in the wild, unclaimed lot. Conquer wasn’t happy when she issued an order that all cheels were to leave Nizamuddin and make their homes as far away from the crows as possible, in Humayun’s Tomb and across the canal in Jangpura, but he obeyed her, coming back himself for flying visits.

  I was puzzled too, it wasn’t like Stoop to cede territory—she was always one for a good fight, your mother. But she told me one day when our paths crossed, “I don’t understand this, Miao, there’s something behind the crows’ behaviour. It’s not your normal invasion—they’ve run away, they don’t have real leaders or tribes and that makes them dangerous. I need to think about how to get them out of here.”

  She tried to speak to their leaders, but Bitterbite and Bakbuk flapped out of their nests at her and cawed their threats furiously, refusing to answer questions. Stoop parried their darts at he
r easily, rising into the feathery embrace of the nimbus clouds, and didn’t try to engage them again.

  We missed the cheels. Your family sometimes preys on kittens, or old cats, or ones that are sick, but mostly they leave our kind alone—and we raid their nests when we can find one on lower ground, we’ve killed fledglings too. There’s no real enmity between us, though, and the tradition you grew up in, Tooth, where we leave part of the kill for you and you for us in lean hunting weather—it goes back to the first cats and cheels who settled in the old alleys of Nizamuddin.

  I sometimes looked up at the sky, and I’d see a tiny, faraway speck against the sun—Stoop, gliding above us, looking down at Nizamuddin, quartering her turf. I often wondered what she saw, and when her shadow floated over me, darkening the ground for a fleeting second, I missed her.

  The crows were becoming bolder. They stole from us, attacked our kittens until we had to keep all of them, nine-weekers and younger, carefully corralled in the tiny park at the back, with the toms guarding them, and even so we lost quite a few. They harried the lizards and the mice, the rats and the bandicoots, and then they began to attack the Bigfeet’s homes and their pets—and this was dangerous for all of us, Tooth.

  Six of the crows got into one of the homes, opened up the cage of these guinea pigs who were kept as pets, and killed them all. Poor things. They were silly little creatures with no conversation at all: “I gots food! I not gots food! I gots more food than you gots!” was about as much as they could manage. But they didn’t deserve that ending, and there was no need for it—the crows who did it weren’t even looking for food. They were just bored.

  After a pair of hutch rabbits went the same way, and the crows attacked a Bigfoot child, we saw that the Bigfeet were getting restless, and angry. And we were fearful, because we didn’t know what they would do, but we were sure it wouldn’t be anything good.

  I would have gone to Stoop then, but she had disappeared. Oh, her patrol was there all right, but they flew further and further away, only circling Nizamuddin once during the day, and Stoop was nowhere to be seen.