Galloglass

by Scarlett Thomas

  Malvasia indicated for Neptune to follow her. They went through a room with hundreds of balls of wool, and then another strange, damp-smelling room full of fresh pots of pungent green catnip. Another room had a more meditative air. It was packed with cardboard boxes of different sizes. Many of these boxes had a cat inside, and these cats were lost to the world: asleep, or simply deep in contemplation. Neptune followed Malvasia into a vast hallway, up a few steps onto a mezzanine.

  And then they entered the grand ballroom.

  The place was throbbing and pulsing with loud bass-driven music. In here, the cats were less sober. They were all drinking vintage Pawsecco from golden dishes that were being topped up by butlers, and there were tiaras and top-hats lying on the ground. The cats were up on their hind legs dancing as if they were humans, most of them oblivious to anything apart from the music, which was coming from the small stage at the end of the room. There were strange portraits up in the ballroom. Many of them were oils of a famous cat from the early twenty-first century called Choupette. She had been incredibly beautiful and fluffy, with white fur and deep blue eyes.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Neptune.

  ‘This,’ said Malvasia, ‘is what happens when you give a billion pounds to a cats’ home.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Every cat has his or her own personal butler or maid,’ said Malvasia. ‘Look.’

  Neptune watched as humans bustled in and out of the room, bringing sardines on golden platters, or scrambled eggs, or pickled voles. The butlers and maids picked up the tiaras and top hats that the cats had dropped and tried to put them back on the heads of their masters. Many of the cats were also wearing silk cravats or fur stoles.

  Neptune walked further into the ballroom.

  ‘Get me three grams of catnip, a live mouse and another magnum of Pawsecco,’ a tabby cat in a top hat was saying to his butler. ‘Now!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the butler. ‘Immediately, sir.’

  ‘This actually looks like it could be fun,’ said Neptune, although since being in what the venerable guinea pig had called the Flow, he didn’t much fancy eating meat. He thought he’d like to try the Pawsecco, though. And those clothes looked rather nice. A top hat would look good on him, perhaps with a silk cravat. Maybe yellow, or a deep purple . . .

  ‘Follow me,’ said Malvasia. ‘This is not what it seems.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Neptune.

  ‘Shhh. Just come. And don’t spend too much time looking at them or the spell will get you too.’

  Neptune followed Malvasia towards the stage, where a jolly-looking man was playing his accordion as if it was a particularly energetic dance partner that he was trying to calm down in some way. He was surrounded by a group of people who were alternately playing instruments and tap-dancing. The cats seemed to love it.

  Backstage were three shabby-looking dressing rooms. Malvasia went into one of these and Neptune followed her. Under the dressing-table was a loose piece of skirting board. Malvasia lifted it with her paw, and the two cats entered a dark secret passageway. This they followed until they reached a set of servants’ stairs that had evidently not been used for a very long time. They were covered with dust, and cobwebs dangled everywhere. After going down at least ten flights Neptune realised he was tired and hungry. His energy was flagging. He hadn’t eaten much seaweed in the end before being chased away – and that had happened many hours ago now.

  ‘Malvasia,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry. You said not to eat or drink anything here. But . . .’

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there soon. In the basement we can eat.’

  Neptune followed Malvasia to the bottom of the last flight of stairs, and then through another secret passageway before she finally led him down some more stairs and into a basement. The lobby they had arrived in was dark and quiet, but Neptune could hear something coming from another room nearby. A kind of smoky, sleepy, lazy music with a complex rhythm that seemed to swing in the air around Neptune’s ears.

  Malvasia led the way into what seemed at first glance – and second glance too – to be a jazz club for cats. There were no human butlers or maids down here: every being was decidedly feline. Even the performers were cats. There was a black cat playing clarinet, a white cat on tenor saxophone and a ginger cat on bass. A long-haired Persian cat was currently singing something that resembled the human song ‘Mack the Knife’, but in cat language, about cat things.

  Each round table had on it a pitcher of water with ice, and plates of a strange-looking food that Neptune had never seen before. It looked like dry kibble, which he normally didn’t like, but it smelled sort of different. Nicer. A bit like the seaweed and miso, in fact.

  ‘Vegan cat food,’ said Malvasia. ‘Dig in.’

  ‘Vegan?’ said Neptune.

  ‘It means we don’t have to eat any animal products,’ said Malvasia.

  ‘But—’

  ‘They put dead cats in cat food,’ said Malvasia. ‘It’s gross. And so is eating mammal flesh of any kind. The only way we can be sure of not eating other creatures is to have vegan cat food. Not all of us are total vegans all the time, mind you. Some of the Free Cats League believe eating wild fish is OK, as long as you catch them yourself. I’m not sure the fish agree, but that’s a whole other debate. But we don’t eat commercial pet food. And we certainly don’t drink cow’s milk out of saucers.’

  ‘I met this guinea pig . . .’ began Neptune.

  ‘The venerable guinea pig?’

  ‘Yes. He taught me things. I can’t exactly put it into words, but I sort of know what you mean.’

  ‘Not “he”. Use “they”. Or “it”.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The venerable guinea pig wishes to remain genderless. Says it gets in the way of its teachings. It prefers “it”, but it can also go by “they”.’

  Neptune didn’t understand much of this. He sat back and let the cool jazz wash over him. He drank some water, and then tried some of the kibble. It wasn’t bad. It was nowhere near as nice as hot seaweed and did not do much to dispel the memory of the meat Neptune used to be fed at the Tusitala School. But his life had changed. Things were different now.

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard about the spell?’ said Malvasia.

  ‘What spell?’ said Neptune.

  ‘Ah. The guinea pig didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No,’ said Neptune. ‘I don’t think so. He – um, I mean it – told me to find you. I didn’t really know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I set out looking for all the missing cats.’

  ‘Yes. We have to help our fellow cats,’ said Malvasia.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve noticed, I presume, that there are no cats left in this town, outside this establishment?’

  ‘I’d noticed all the cats had gone,’ said Neptune. ‘That’s why I set off on my adventure. And yes, I see what you mean. They’re obviously all here.’

  ‘Why do you think they are all here?’

  Neptune took a bite of the vegan kibble. ‘For the amazing free food, the butler service, the—’

  ‘They have been lured here to be killed,’ said Malvasia.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘There is a spell that only works at Midwinter that requires hundreds of live cats. We think that a group in this town are working on getting the ingredients for this spell. And how do you think you manage to acquire such a lot of cats? Invest in the local cats’ home. Provide butlers and tiaras and Pawsecco and pictures of Choupette and watch them all come running. Every cat in town would rather live the high life here than endure another night of half-hearted tummy-rubs and tinned food in some dark, poorly heated hovel.’

  ‘But we can’t stand by and let that happen!’ declared Neptune.

  ‘And indeed we aren’t going to.’

  ‘We need to tell the cats what’s going on.’

  ‘Indeed. But most of them won’t believe us. They will think we’re only telling them stori
es so that we can take their place here and steal their butler or their stash of pickled voles. No. We have to be clever about it.’

  ‘How?’ said Neptune.

  ‘Stick around,’ said Malvasia. ‘And you’ll see.’

  When Effie woke up, her chest felt unusually heavy. She soon realised that this was because she’d fallen asleep while reading the large hardback volume Otherworld Customs and Traditions: A Modern Traveller’s Guide. She put the giant book down on the floor beside the other books she’d borrowed from the University Library: a slimmer tome called Travelling on the Mainland and a paperback edition of Subterranean Geography 101.

  She wasn’t even sure what she’d learned from these books. The world described in Otherworld Customs and Traditions: A Modern Traveller’s Guide was an old-fashioned place that might have existed once – but Effie had certainly never been there. According to the book, everyone in the Otherworld spoke Old Bastard English and Cretian all the time – although everybody knew (according to Travelling on the Mainland) that nowadays they all spoke Rosian or, in the bigger cities, Milano.

  Hardly anyone under the age of a hundred and fifty said ‘Greetings and Blessings’ any more, according to the thinner book, but the larger book maintained that this was still how every single conversation began. Nowadays, the small volume said, people were more likely to use the Milano word Allora to begin a conversation. Not that it meant ‘hello’. It sort of meant ‘well, then’.

  The most interesting section of Travelling on the Mainland had been its recipes. Effie hadn’t realised that aquafaba was made of bean water, or how many things you could make out of cloudcurd. Then there were all the ingredients she had never heard of, like fiddlehead ferns, chrysanthemum flowers, penny bun mushrooms and yuzu. Effie had learned from the book on subterranean geography that everything in the Otherworld that looked like leather was actually made from the skin of enormous mushrooms mainly grown in the Underworld. And everything that looked like silk was actually created from the outsides of seeds by faeries.

  Effie had completely forgotten about the day of extreme selfishness until she had got Luna up, changed her and taken her through to the kitchen for breakfast. What had happened? All was different. Someone had cleaned everything, and there were fresh chocolate muffins on a plate on the table.

  ‘What’s all this?’ said Orwell, entering the kitchen just after Effie had strapped Luna into her high chair.

  Effie shrugged. ‘Search me,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you’re up!’ said Cait. ‘I’m so excited about our day of extreme selfishness that I’ve actually baked muffins.’

  ‘How is that selfish, exactly?’ asked Orwell suspiciously.

  ‘I wanted to eat them,’ said Cait. ‘So I made them. You can’t make just one muffin, so there’s enough for everyone.’

  ‘Aha! Already proving me right,’ said Orwell, smugly, reaching for one of the muffins. ‘It’s the trickle-down theory.’

  ‘Yes, well, here’s a napkin to prevent any trickling down,’ said Cait, passing Orwell a turquoise linen square. ‘I got out the best ones. Why hide them away for guests when we can use them ourselves?’

  ‘On the subject of guests,’ said Orwell, ‘our new friend Terrence Deer-Hart is coming over on Monday night. Can you get some nice wine at the market?’

  ‘Didn’t he turn out to be an evil whatchamacallit?’ said Cait.

  ‘No, it was that ridiculous woman he was going out with. The publisher. The one who tried to kill me? Anyway, I think he’s over all that now,’ said Orwell. ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘OK, fine,’ said Cait. ‘But you can get your wine yourself. I’m only buying things I actually want today.’

  ‘All right,’ said Orwell. ‘Fair enough. I’ll probably get better wine than you anyway.’

  Once Effie had eaten her second muffin she got dressed in her warmest clothes and her sturdiest boots. It was freezing outside, although it hadn’t snowed again.

  ‘Ready?’ said Cait.

  ‘Yep,’ said Effie.

  Effie never knew exactly what to talk about with Cait. But today that didn’t seem to matter. Cait insisted that being selfish involved getting a mini-cab to the Winter Fair Market, which meant they were there in under ten minutes. The whole place was throbbing and pulsing with activity. It reminded Effie of the Edgelands Market when she’d first met Festus.

  ‘Right,’ said Cait. ‘Here’s ten pounds. Buy whatever you like. Meet you back here in an hour?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Effie, taking the money.

  ‘Oh yes. No offence, but I like shopping by myself.’

  ‘Me too, I think,’ said Effie.

  ‘I’m actually quite enjoying this day of selfishness,’ said Cait. ‘It feels a lot more honest somehow. Normally me and your father would be back and forth endlessly over who was going to do what for whom. It’s so much simpler just to act for yourself and let other people do the same. I do hope he doesn’t turn out to be right about all this. But it is fun for a day. Anyway . . . One hour?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Effie. ‘See you then. Thanks again.’

  ‘And we can have lunch together if you like, too.’

  The Winter Fair Market was both hot and cold at the same time. There was steam and smoke everywhere. Most stalls had some sort of little fire going in a portable stove or wood-burner. Effie bought a small paper bag of hot chestnuts, and another of soft, gooey pink and white toasted marshmallows. It began to snow as she walked from stall to stall, with big fluffy flakes falling as if in slow motion.

  The majority of people in the Realworld ignored magic for most of the year, claiming that it was just a fiction, a mass delusion clung to only by the feeble-minded. But Midwinter was a time when everybody liked to feel a little bit more magical, and so people tended to indulge whatever small piece of esoteric belief they had, however deeply it was buried.

  At Midwinter, everyone brought in a tree from outside and adorned it with candles and winter flowers. People bought one another cards decorated with pictures of cauldrons, creatures from folklore, phases of the moon or witches on old-fashioned broomsticks. It had also become standard for these cards to have real spells printed in them. Sometimes the right people tried the right spells and accidentally epiphanised, which made this time of year very busy for the Guild, who did not like the epiphanised to go unacknowledged.

  The epiphanised can, of course, see many things that are almost invisible to others. For example, as she finished the last of her marshmallows, and savoured her final hot chestnut, Effie took in the part of the medicinal tonic stall that carried real, enchanted remedies of the sort Lexy made, and she easily found her way to the slightly warmer section of the large covered bookstall that stocked real magical books. For normal people, these areas did exist, sort of, but just looked very, very boring, or were too dark to properly see.

  Effie scanned the bookstall – she was always unable to resist any kind of bookstall, shop or library – but her eyes were soon distracted. Right next to the bookstall, sitting on the cold floor with a thin blanket over her legs, was a woman who looked as if she’d been sleeping rough for a long time. Effie could see that she had once been very beautiful. There was something in her eyes, some glow to her skin. Maybe it wasn’t beauty exactly, but something else . . . Effie smiled, and the woman smiled back, but it was a weak, sad smile. What had happened to her? Drugs? Drink? A run of bad luck? Or . . .

  Or maybe she’d set off one night to go to the Otherworld and then the worldquake had happened and she had got lost somehow. Maybe she’d forgotten her home, and her family, and that she had a daughter . . .

  Effie suddenly ached for her mother. Was she also lost and alone out there somewhere, waiting for someone to help her? Before she knew what she was doing, Effie had given the woman on the floor the eight pounds she had left. It would at least buy her a couple of days’ worth of food and some hot drinks. Effie wished she could do more. She held the woman’s hand for a few seconds and looked into her e
yes. The woman looked back and . . .

  When people give charitably to others, there are many ways it can go wrong. The person giving may feel superior, puffed up and important. Effie didn’t yet know this, but there was a lengthy section on charitable mishaps in Jupiter Peacock’s introduction to his translation of “Galloglass”. Peacock had gone so far as to declare real charity impossible because, he argued, people only give to make themselves feel better and never because they genuinely love others.

  What Jupiter Peacock did not know is that there is a tiny, tiny exception to this: an aperture that opens – rather similar to the apertures mages find in great art – in a very small number of charitable acts. It is almost impossible to describe in words, but it happens when someone gives something because they don’t really think it is theirs, and because they no longer believe in the separation between you and me, and . . .

  Effie suddenly felt warm, beautifully and wholly warm, as if her body was made of syrup: a sweet, very dark purple syrup that flowed out from her into the entire universe. It felt very tickly: that moment when you are laughing so hard you can’t even beg the person who is tickling you to stop, but gentler and more comfortable. It was like floating in water slightly heavier than normal, which was also soft, and in some way magnificent.

  It was actually quite similar to the feeling Effie’d had when Suri had cast the spell on her – or whatever it was she had done – and then said that thing about Effie having no resistance. All at once Effie was afraid of the feeling, and it left instantly: a genie pouring itself back into a bottle; a great storm turning one last time, gathering its skirts around itself and going home.