The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

  The kitten’s concentration broke as, back in her house, the Bigfeet picked her up off the bed, one of them holding her close and offering a new catnip mouse. Mara made her decision; she broke the sending, curling up into her Bigfeet’s arms for comfort. From time to time, her nose twitched as the wind rapped at the window, but the outside was too big for her, the clan of wildings too intimidating. Mara stayed indoors.

  “GO,” GROWLED HULO. “Get out of here and don’t let me see you back in the grounds again!”

  Southpaw quailed in fright as the black tom slashed at him, so surprised at Hulo’s attack that he didn’t realize the tom’s claws were carefully drawn in so as not to cause any hurt. “But Hulo, I’ll stay in the baoli—” he said, his mew almost piteous.

  The tom glared at the kitten. His black fur had matted with the rain and the mud, and when Hulo fluffed it up menacingly, he looked truly terrifying.

  “For once in your life, Southpaw, do as you’re told!” he snarled. “Don’t make me cuff you! There’s a road running along the perimeter of the garden, the one lined with wild-rose hedges—that’s not the one you take, you hear me? Go through the back roads, over the rooftops if you can, to the market. Shelter there or in the park. I don’t want you anywhere near the Shuttered House! Now run along!”

  He smacked Southpaw sharply across his striped backside to give the kitten the best start possible. Then the great black tom frowned and bounded down the muddy path, flying through the puddles of water without so much as shaking his paws out, in order to catch up with the other wildings. Miao and Katar had led the group, Beraal and Qawwali pausing only long enough to send urgent calls to the canal and dargah cats—they were to come to the Shuttered House as soon as they could. Hulo had his doubts that the canal cats would get there any time before sunset—the other side of the canal was a long way off, and too many Bigfeet used the bridge to make the crossing safe for cats during the day

  Qawwali was worried, too; his group of wildings had spent the night awake and would be tired. The Bigfeet were beginning to emerge from their homes, and the dargah cats would have to creep along the alleys and rooftops to avoid them on their way to the Shuttered House. He didn’t think they would be here any time soon, and when he caught Hulo’s worried eyes, he understood what the great tom’s fears were.

  “The birds are not used to the ferals roaming the grounds,” he said to Hulo as they splashed through the puddles, both toms ignoring the rain on their fur. Neither liked being wet, but both were used to the perils of a life outside. “Perhaps it was only an alarm.”

  “More than that,” grunted Hulo. “I’ve never seen Katar move so fast or with such urgency. And the smell of blood in the air makes me uneasy.”

  “Yes, they must have killed a few of the wild rats and mice,” said Qawwali. “Unsporting to do it at daybreak, but the ferals wouldn’t know any better.”

  Hulo grimaced, thinking of how bewildered the prey must have felt, to be caught sleeping. All prey, napping or not, was fair game from twilight to past midnight, but once the inky blackness of the night started lifting, most animals obeyed the silent but deep call to sleep. Few predators would kill at dawn or in the first hours of the morning, unless they were driven by gnawing hunger or were too old to make their kills fairly, when prey was at its most alert. “Ugly to think about it, but I suppose a few ferals couldn’t control themselves, like mannerless kittens on their first hunt.”

  “It would happen to ferals who’d been indoors for a long while,” said Qawwali. “But they can’t have done much damage—their leader would have curbed their claws and teeth before long.”

  The toms slowed down as they approached the Shuttered House, reaching out cautiously with their whiskers to see where the other wildings were. In the thick undergrowth, with the morning light a weak grey in the rain, scent was a better marker than visibility.

  “It reeks of blood,” said Hulo uneasily.

  “They must have killed something large,” said Qawwali warily, wondering if the ferals could possibly have brought down a dog or even a mongoose. But they had heard no barks, none of the typical mongoose alarm calls.

  The two cats moved through the lantana bushes, using their forepaws to push back the branches. Hulo thought he could smell Beraal and Katar ahead, but wondered why the other cats were so silent—perhaps they didn’t want to alert the ferals.

  “It smells as though the hedges are drenched in blood,” said Qawwali. The old cat was not easily scared, but his mew was hoarse, his whiskers trembling in disgust. The two toms turned the corner, into a clearing. Hulo blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light, and then he saw what the ferals had done.

  THE RAIN SLOWED, turning from downpour to gentle shower in the abrupt fashion typical of Delhi weather. Mara’s Bigfeet opened the windows, letting the breeze cool the house. The kitten stirred uneasily. The whiskers over her eyes tingled painfully each time she smelled the iron stink of blood, and she heard the squirrels and the babblers asking each other if they knew what was going on.

  She considered getting onto the Nizamuddin Link, but if she didn’t find Beraal, she’d have to talk to the other wildings. Mara cringed at the thought, and Southpaw’s words came back to her: “You’re such a freak!” he had said. Southpaw knew her; they had played together, slept paw-to-tummy and eaten from the same bowl. If he thought she was a freak, what would the other wildings think?

  She missed Southpaw. With Rudra and Tantara, she had never been able to play hunt-the-paw or chase-your-whiskers, and though she wished Southpaw was better at his grooming, she loved digging her nose under his belly, making him yelp when she gently bit his tail.

  She found his stories of the rooftops and the excursions with Hulo fascinating, even if she secretly thought the way he swaggered sometimes in imitation of the older toms was very funny—instead of the menacing swagger Southpaw aimed for, he often ended with an undignified waddle, though Mara would never tell him that. She could almost smell his wet fur, imagine that the scrabbling outside was him balancing on the parapet as he came through the window.

  And then, there he was. Southpaw jumped down from the sill, his brown eyes filled with terror. “I missed you so much!” mewed Mara delightedly, forgetting all about their quarrel. She rushed up, her tail raised in happiness, eagerly rubbing her whiskers along his furry face, feeling the rain and the mud and the quiver of fear that ran through his small body. Southpaw was trembling so hard that Mara could feel him shaking before she touched him.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “Is Beraal all right? Why does the rain smell of blood today?”

  The brown kitten allowed himself to be gently nudged onto a cushion, and made no demur when Mara started to wash him, using her rough pink tongue as a sponge.

  “Beraal’s all right, I think,” he said. “Though I don’t know how long she and the others will be safe—oh, Mara, it’s terrible out there. The ferals—”

  Instead of telling his friend what had happened, Southpaw reverted to early kittenhood, wrapping his black whiskers tight around Mara’s white ones. He shivered as he let her retrace his travels.

  AFTER HULO HAD ROUNDED ON HIM, Southpaw meant to go back to the park by the market route, except that the road that led away from the Shuttered House, across the clusters of homes that stood back-to-back, was waterlogged. The kitten stared at the road in dismay, wondering how he could possibly cross. In the shrubbery nearby, a family of beetles traipsed wearily away from the muddy water that threatened to drown them.

  The sun was behind a rack of grey clouds, but it was high in the sky, as by now it was well into mid-morning. When he trotted left, trying to see if he could go through the hedges instead of across the waterlogged road, the rain dripped insistently onto his neck from the lantana leaves, and tiny spiky thorns pushed into his stomach and back.

  There was nothing in front of him except for a stink-beetle clicking its mandibles inquisitively. Southpaw had the distinctly unpleasant sense that the ground under his
flattened belly was turning to mud and slush. He wriggled forwards, only to be brought up short by another line of ants, marching in the opposite direction.

  “Do.not.step.across.this.line,” droned the ants in a quiet monotone that drilled through the kitten’s head. “Do.not.attempt.to.pass. We.have. spray.in.four.strengths: pepper.chilli.jalapeno.bhutjolokia and.we.are.not.afraid.to.use.it.” Southpaw froze, but the ants kept marching and as they came closer, the kitten had to wriggle ignominiously out of the hedge, his striped brown backside picking up quantities of mud.

  Southpaw couldn’t stay in the baoli—if Hulo found him afterwards, the tom would tan his bottom until the stripes fell off his fur, as he had once memorably threatened. Gingerly, staying close to the perimeter, the kitten began to crawl through the acacia and the grass, hoping that Hulo wouldn’t see him if he stuck to the perimeter of the Shuttered House. The kitten had padded more than halfway up the perimeter, pushing through the tangled bushes, making his stubby legs stretch to clamber over the old fat tree roots, when he heard the screams break out. He couldn’t see what was screaming, but it sounded horribly like very young prey—baby mice, fledglings—and then more screams joined in.

  He had stopped, almost paralyzed with fear, his paws sweating. It seemed to him that the rain dripped with blood.

  Mara curled around Southpaw as he told this part of the tale, and he was grateful for her steady, comforting purr. And then the kitten felt his blood chill again, as a familiar scent came like an arrowhead towards him—the thick aroma of damp fur and cedar, a powerful, warning smell. The bistendu leaves rustled, and Kirri stepped into Southpaw’s path.

  “Your paws sweat with fear, little hunter,” said the mongoose. Tiny droplets of rain trembled on her silver fur, giving her an eerie, almost ghostly aura. “Is it your clan that bloodies the morning? I had not thought to see the day when wildings hunted their prey across the border of sleep.”

  Southpaw stared into Kirri’s red eyes, wishing Miao or Hulo were there with him. There was an angry glint in her eyes that he had not seen at their first meeting.

  Far away, a mew he recognized all too well called out to some unseen victim: “Run, meat, run if you can—no? Very well, then. Ratsbane, kill him where he stands.” And Southpaw suddenly understood.

  “My kind, but not my clan, Madame Mongoose,” he said, trying to keep his fear out of his voice, and wishing his whiskers wouldn’t tremble so hard. “The Shuttered House opened up after the Bigfoot who lives there died, and the ferals came out this morning.”

  The mongoose raised her dainty paws with their deadly claws, standing up as she sniffed the air. “So that was the stink, behind the pall of blood,” she said. “I had wondered. And your teacher? The Siamese? Is she not riding into battle? Will your clan not dance with the ferals today?”

  For some reason, Kirri’s words made the kitten feel better, until he thought of how small their numbers were. “I think, Madame Mongoose, that they will. But they are outnumbered: there are only a scant handful of wildings today, against the ranks and ranks of ferals whom Datura leads. The rest of the clan is across the canal, though some may come from the dargah.”

  The mongoose’s red eyes flared, and she looked longingly towards the Shuttered House. But then she dropped back onto the ground. “This is between your clans,” Kirri said, “between the ferals and the wildings. And besides, I have hunted the night through. Perhaps I will come back once I have rested.”

  They heard another set of screams rise, and Southpaw shuddered. “Perhaps I will come back very soon,” said Kirri, the anger dancing like flames in her eyes. “And you, little hunter?” She sized him up, her sleek head reaching out to sniff at him.

  “No,” she said. “Old enough for first hunt is not old enough for first battle. But if I were you, I would bring the other cats. The stink tells me that the ferals surround your clan like flies around a broken honeycomb. A handful of wildings cannot do much—well, no, there is one thing they can do. But in your place, boy, I would run for help.”

  Southpaw watched as the mongoose trotted away, not sure whether to be relieved that she had left him unharmed or sorry that she would not stay to fight.

  “Madame?” he called. “What is the one thing you mentioned that my clan could do?”

  The mongoose turned, and her red eyes bore into his hopeful brown ones.

  “They could die well,” she said softly, and then her silver shape disappeared into the bougainvillea bushes.

  Except for the sound of the rain beating against the walls outside and Mara’s comforting, tiny purr, the room was silent when Southpaw finished. She washed his neck and flanks, soothing him as best as she could, sensing his distress and fear for his clan.

  “That’s why I came here,” he said, his mew muffled because he had pressed his whiskers into Mara’s belly as he told the last of his story. “You’ll be safe here,” she said gently. “And my Bigfeet will feed you—if you don’t want to see them, I’ll mew once I’ve finished eating and they’ll fill my bowl again.”

  Southpaw squirmed his head out from under her belly. “I didn’t come for your food, Mara,” he said. “I came because everyone says the Sender helps the clan in times of trouble.”

  Mara’s eyes narrowed and her short tail waved uncertainly. “Help the clan?” she said. “But what can I do, Southpaw? I can’t fight like Beraal and Hulo! I’ve never even been outside, except for being under the canal bridge, and that’s not much help, is it?”

  “You can send,” he said. “The other cats all say you have more powers than them, so can’t you do something? You don’t know how scary Datura is, and that house was crawling with ferals! There were so many of them, Mara, like cockroaches coming out from everywhere, from behind the sofas, and the cupboards, and that filthy courtyard. Miao and Beraal and all can’t possibly fight them.”

  Mara was stropping her claws in agitation on the bedspread, poking small holes in the cloth.

  “That’s your clan, not mine,” she said, her green eyes sulky. “They don’t even like me. They think I’m a freak.”

  The wind changed again, and as it picked up, Southpaw and Mara both smelled it—fresh blood, fresh fear.

  “Mara, this isn’t the time to argue about whether it’s your clan or not,” said Southpaw, almost growling. “Those are my friends who might—Kirri was right, they might die out there! And they only think you’re a freak because you’ve never come out and met us. And what about Beraal?”

  “Beraal came in to hunt me first!” said Mara, her small nose wrinkling at the memory. “And she only teaches me because I’m the Sender.”

  “Beraal fought Hulo so that you would stay alive,” said Southpaw, his whiskers rising fiercely. “And when she won, the rest of the cats left you alone, the way you wanted to be! None of them hunted you! And Beraal spends her time with you when she could be out eating juicy rats or lazing at the fakir’s shrine and now Datura could kill her and you don’t care!”

  Mara stared at Southpaw, thinking of the times Beraal had been so patient with her, of the times the older queen had come in for the night even though she hadn’t liked being inside.

  “I didn’t know Beraal had fought for my life,” she said, her mew quiet. “But what can I do, Southpaw? I’m not a fighter. All I can do is send, and Datura isn’t going to be frightened off by me showing up in the middle of his battle.”

  Despite his worry, Southpaw’s whiskers rose in a grin as he thought of how the white cat would react to a small orange kitten bobbing around as he went through his vicious rituals of slaughter. Then his whiskers slumped, as he thought of the wildings who had brought him up from the time he was a tiny kitten. Miao, Katar and Hulo were the closest he’d ever got to having a family, aside from Mara. And what could she do? It seemed unfair that the Sender, the famous Sender that he had heard the other cats talking so much about, had no special powers.

  “You’re right,” he said, collapsing into a sad heap of fur near her paws. “Sendi
ng isn’t going to help much. I wish you had other powers. Like being able to grow seven times your size, or have claws as wickedly curved as Kirri’s, or be able to change yourself into something that would really scare Datura.”

  “What would scare Datura?” asked Mara, not convinced that the white feral would be scared by much.

  “A giant Bigfoot!” said Southpaw, imagining a massive Bigfoot striding towards Datura, picking up the white cat by his scruff. “Or a very large cat.”

  “A large growly cat,” said Mara, growling helpfully as she cuddled up to Southpaw. “Datura would be very scared if a cat six times his size went growling at him, wouldn’t he?”

  “I wish we could find a cat six times his size,” said Southpaw sadly.

  Mara sat up, her ears suddenly alert. “You know what, Southpaw?” she said. “Perhaps we can.”

  Though the mouse had a clear view, he turned away, unwilling to watch the carnage.

  It had been a mellow night. Jethro had discovered an almost-full plate of chicken biryani in a gutter near one of the Bigfeet houses. He spent a glorious couple of hours tunnelling through his dinner, unmolested by rats for a change. In the hour before dawn, he watched the last of the night bats make swooping sorties over his head as it returned to the ancient stone eaves that overhung the baoli.

  When the thunder rumbled and the raindrops grew fatter, the mouse found shelter in the tangle of scrub and silk cotton trees near the Shuttered House. At the other end of the grounds, where a neat row of houses indicated the colony of Nizamuddin proper, he could see a large, well-fledged pariah cheel shaking out his feathers—even at this distance, he could tell that they were well and truly soaked. Jethro shivered in sympathy. He hated his own short brown fur getting wet, and was glad for the shelter of the tree.

  The tree’s wide green leaves spread out like graceful hands above the mouse, offering protection from the worst of the rain. Curling up between the gnarled roots, the mouse let the sounds of the morning seep into his dreams without disturbing his sleep. The Bigfeet began to stir, clumping up and down the canal road by the side of the Shuttered House; he ignored them, as he ignored the sleepy chirps of the squirrels, chasing each other through the branches.