The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  ‘Great morning,’ he said. ‘I could make a habit of this. You and I should team up.’

  Tag felt a little shy. ‘I’m kind of with someone,’ he explained.

  ‘Hey!’ said the gypsy. ‘No problem!’ And he turned his attention quickly to the gulls, who had given up on the dogfish and were pecking desultorily up and down the tideline again. ‘Look at that! Just ate a condom! Straight down, didn’t even taste it. They’re so stupid it’s a sin not to prey on them.’

  ‘My friend and I?’ Tag said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘We’re heading west—’

  ‘Good move. There’s some brilliant eating down there. Not to mention those peninsula queens with the moon in their eyes!’

  ‘—to a place called Tintagel. As soon as we find out where that is. Do you know the coast ‘round here? Only, I’ve gone wrong so often. Have you ever heard of Tintagel?’

  The ginger tom let his gaze rest gently on the gulls, who had begun squabbling over something they had found in a plastic bag. For some time he said nothing. The palm leaves rustled in the wind. The surf was like breath far out. Then he blinked slowly. ‘Have I heard of Tintagel?’ he asked himself. And when at last he turned his strange, sly, polished eyes on Tag, they caught the light like shields. They might have been cut from brass and copper, so little expression was in them.

  ‘I’m going there myself,’ he said quietly. ‘Now isn’t that a surprise?’

  *

  Before Tag could say anything, Cy turned up, irritable from trying to carry two mackerel heads in one mouth. When she saw the newcomer, she made a point of burying them noisily in the loose earth at the base of the palm tree. Then she walked around him twice with her nose in the air; while for his part he lost interest in the herring gulls and gave her a stare of curiosity and admiration.

  Tag, rather alarmed by the openness of the appraisal, reminded him hastily, ‘This is the friend I was telling you about.’

  The ginger tom laughed. ‘Is she always this dirty?’ he asked Tag.

  Cy, who had been eyeing him – and especially his neck scarf – with interest, looked annoyed. ‘I got these fish,’ she told Tag. ‘But he’s not having any.’

  ‘I was leaving anyway,’ said the gypsy. He stared thoughtfully at Cy’s spark plug, a little dulled by the salt winds but still visible. Then he got to his feet. ‘I had a brilliant time this morning,’ he said to Tag. ‘It was nice to work with one of the real old hands. That other thing, now,’ he said. His eyes, which had become much livelier when he first looked at Cy, were flat and reflective again. ‘We might go tonight, if you wanted.’

  Tag was no longer sure. ‘I don’t understand what you would be doing there,’ he said.

  The ginger tom laughed. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘I heard something would happen there soon.’ He stared at Tag. ‘I heard some cats were going down there for something that would happen. I want to be part of any cat thing.’ He shrugged lightly. ‘It’s no matter,’ he said. ‘I’ll call by.’ He winked at the tabby. ‘About midnight,’ he said. ‘Just about midnight.’

  And he walked off down the seafront, his long tail curled like a question mark. Every line of him was full of life. He seemed to combine action and stasis, motion and repose, so completely that they canceled each other out, and every movement he made – every step he took – was like a dance. He looked new-minted in the sunshine.

  ‘Lick me,’ said Cy to Tag, as they watched him go.

  Tag said, ‘I’m trying to think what to do.’

  ‘No fish until you lick me.’

  *

  Midnight.

  A bright moon lit up a sky full of clouds as thin and iridescent as fish scales. The tide was high, rushing back and forth across the thin remaining strip of shingle and crunching into the seawall. Stiff offshore winds tore at the heads of the rag-mop palms, and sent the halyards of moored boats ringing aimlessly against their masts. It was cold in the bus shelter, and Cy was asleep. Tag stared out across the oily black swell, the breaking surf, and they failed to calm him as they had. His headache was back. When the ginger tom appeared, it was from the shadows, and he was a black shadow himself.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A gypsy cat like me has no name. So will you come?’

  Tag shrugged. ‘What choice have I?’

  ‘It’s only a walk down the coast,’ said the ginger tom quietly. ‘It’s a cat thing.’

  Then he said, ‘After all, you’re a cat.’

  Cy woke with a jump. ‘Who’s this?’ she said. ‘Oh, him. We don’t need him.’

  ‘Wake up,’ Tag told her.

  ‘We’re going to Tintagel,’ he said

  The Eighth Life of Cats

  From the Diary of Mr. Newton

  A single, ancient piece of paper have I discovered, enfolded in the pages of Walter Charleton’s Physiologia Epicuro, while searching the City Library for texts to bolster my hypothesis regarding the nature of the Æthereal Spirit, with which to quell the criticisms of my opponents, Mr Boyle and Mr Hooke. The best of my own books were sadly lost in a terrible Fire, along with many of my experimental subjects, and my dear and faithful cat, Hobbe; which I do privately believe to have been started by volatile materials in my Theatrum Chemicum. It is a miracle that my little house has survived, but its bricks are old and thick. Refurbishment has been remarkably simple; and at least now I have no close neighbours to interfere with my Work. Others believe that the Fire originated in the bakery of Mr Thos. Faryner, which backs onto my premises, and I have refrained from advising them otherwise, for the damage to city and population was quite devastating.

  This sheet of paper has piqued my interest greatly, for I have long sought greater understanding of the Universe: indeed it is a quest that burns within my very Soul. So many scraps of knowledge do I hold already – the fluxions of the Earth and Moon, the array of the planetary masses, how colour is created; I know of magneticall attraction, gravity, and levity – but the Nature of the World itself, the fuel which generates the very spirit of the Universe, that has so far eluded me. I have followed the wisdom of the ancient Adeptists in seeking the Philosopher’s Stone, as have so many before me; but I always felt in my heart that the perfect Matter of the World could be nothing so mundane as Gold, a mere and soulless metal…

  The cat is called in Hebrew, Catul, in Greek, ailouros; and in Latin, Catusjelis. The Egyptians named it mau, for the sound of its voice, and gave it worship. To the Northern peoples, it is a Creature of fertility and fortune; but the Romany call it majicou, and abhor its presence.

  All Cats are of a single nature and agree much in one Shape, though they be of different Magnitude; each being a Beast of Prey, the Wild and the Tame, it being in the opinion of many a diminutive Tyger.

  The most miraculous of Beasts, it walks invisibly and silently the highways of the Earth, and many believe it invested with the Magick of the World.

  The Ancients have prophesied that in every eighty-first generation of the most ancient of the Felidae there shall come a Cat of Power, which shall not be greatest of Magnitude, but possessed of the most exquisite Soul. And the greatest of these shall be the Golden Cat, which shall come only when the ancient north joins with the Eye of Horus, and it shall have the Power to harness the Sunne and the Moon and the Wild Roads, and may render to any so lucky as to possess it the very Key to knowledge of the Natural World.

  – William Herringe, The Diminutive Tyger, 1562

  I had already stumbled on the magical properties of the Brain of the Cat, which the Adeptists have for years used to cure a variety of ills from the Web, the Pin, and the Pearls, to Mad-nesse, Gout, and even Alopecia. I have myself discovered that the digestion of certain parts of a Cat’s anatomy may further one’s appointed time in the World; a welcome discovery to one with so much knowledge to seek. Yet, despite the proximity of my experiments, I had not made the obvious connection! Indeed, the magick of cats must be a source of the Ait he r
eal Spirit that fuels the very World…

  The Golden Cat!

  The key that will open to me the mysteries of Nature itself!

  21

  Beasts of the Moor

  And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory, and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your velvet paws…

  – OSCAR WILDE

  The great beast came to an abrupt halt. He rolled his head, sniffing the air as the pressures changed.

  He had been running.

  He sensed an unfolding, a falling away, as if the highway were closing, fading, dispersing itself into the entire moor.

  He had been running.

  He felt the world come back to him, second by second. Wildness eased out of him. It eased out of his spine as movement ceased.

  He had been running, and the highway was still there, surrounding him with brown air and an endless coppery plain. But now everything before him was indistinct. It was a swirl of white fog, and then what?

  It was something else. It was something open and fluid: a scent on the mist, wild and tangy. It made his head feel heavy. He was aware of himself as a creature cased in his own head. He was aware of his head – the ropes of muscle at the hinge of the jaw, the thump and rush of blood around the great skull, the sabred fangs that cut the air.

  He had been running the highway.

  First there was something unfamiliar about himself; then there was something familiar in this alien place. How did he find himself here?

  A familiar thing: and an unfamiliar self.

  It made his whiskers twitch and his thick blood race, tiny electrical messages running the length of his spine so that a ridge of fur sprang up from the wide space between his ears to the very tip of his tufted tail. A sudden craving washed through him, a hunger so sharp it felt like a physical pain.

  Prey?

  No. It was a scent more delicate. It was a scent more terrifying.

  He bent his head further.

  Predator?

  No. It was an ancient, complex scent. But what he felt was not fear so much as awe. A huge and terrible awe.

  Attar and civet. Spice and blood.

  All at once his heart was afire. The scent of the blood filled his body, so that his own pulsed in response. As if it, too, were joined in this purpose, the highway twitched and sighed around him. A golden light filled his eyes, and thoughts tumbled through the echoing spaces of his ancient skull. ‘Our blood is a book!’

  The beast lifted his head and roared. The air trembled at the sound. His world dwindled and fell into focus, yet became, in the same gesture, diffuse and colossal; and as the mass of his flesh melted away, he found himself nose to nose with a creature of heat and fire: a female cat! Fine-boned with fur of delicate rose-taupe stretched taut across the barrel of her body. Her ears were laid flat back at the sight of him. Her eyes snapped with fear, and she stood high on her toes in defiance.

  The blood roared through his head as Ragnar Gustaffson felt the rags of the highway fall away from him, and he was himself again after another unknowable journey, exhausted and cold, trembling with shock and delight.

  ‘Pertelot…

  The Queen of Cats beside Dozmary Pool.

  At last the terror went out of her eyes.

  ‘Ragnar…

  King of Cats: he stared at the beautiful apparition before him – swollen belly, sodden fur, bedraggled paws, and all.

  They huddled together – Ragnar Gustaffson, Pertelot Fitzwilliam, and Sealink the calico in a comforting heap of multicolored fur. Ragnar gently licked the mud from Pertelot’s face, then carefully groomed her coat from top to tail, inhaling the familiar scent of her with wild joy. When he reached the swell of her belly, he lingered to trace the tiny forms there. In their turn they moved beneath the pressure of his great, rough tongue, and a vast rumble of pride and pleasure rose from his throat.

  All his trials, all his journeys, had prepared him for this discovery.

  ‘Now I feel like a King at last,’ said Ragnar. And he tried to explain to them how his adventures had brought him to this moment.

  He told them how he had journeyed with Tag and Mouse-breath and the little tabby until circumstances had split them up. How he had feared for Pertelot’s life, and in that fear learned to spring locks from the cat called Cottonreel. How he had freed cats and bitten a dog. Sealink regarded him admiringly. He described his long trek: how the water froze on his face. How not to cross a river. Exhaustion and hunger. The Mau wept silently as he told the story of the fire, and the sixth kitten, beyond help in the linen cupboard. He related in such detail his encounter with the old lady and her marvelous food – melted butter and poached fish – that Sealink began to drool.

  ‘Oh, it was hard to leave her, Pertelot; but I heard your voice in a dream. I cannot explain this. I heard our kittens call me, as if they were all the kittens in the world. I knew something then. Life was before me. Life had hold of me, and it drew me to the coast.’

  He told them how he had walked the cliff tops, his gaze inexorably drawn out to sea.

  ‘Though I knew of course you could not be out there!’

  Pertelot stared. ‘But, Rags, we were.’

  Sealink said, ‘Hey! We saw you!’

  Suddenly they were all trying to talk at once.

  ‘Up on the cliff tops, during the storm, we saw a huge cat—’

  ‘Silhouetted against the sky—’

  ‘Lit up by the lightning—’

  ‘We were on a boat—’

  Ragnar was delighted. He ran about in an excited circle. ‘I looked out to sea,’ he said, ‘but you must have teen no bigger than an acorn!’ He laughed. ‘I had just come off a highway. I was – This is so interesting. Don’t you find this interesting?’

  ‘And then when you came out of the highway like that, in front of us, out of the mist, we thought you were—’

  ‘The Beast of the Moor.’

  Ragnar laughed. ‘Perhaps I am,’ he said. He considered this. ‘Perhaps we all are.’

  He sat down suddenly and resumed his grooming of the Queen. Under his scrupulous attentions she soon fell into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

  *

  After some time, Sealink, who had taken up position with her head resting on the King’s flank, shifted luxuriously and said, ‘My, my, honey, you sure do generate some warmth!’ She stretched, winced. ‘Cold gets in this damn leg,’ she said, looking down at it accusingly.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ observed the King.

  ‘Dog bite, hon. Worst damn thing you can have. Still, he’d have got away with the rest of me without I had help.’

  And she told him about the trek across the ancient country – dwelling on bad weather, hard knocks, and, particularly, lack of decent food. When she came to the farmyard raid and its consequences – how she had woken up in Pertelot’s mouth, being bumped up the side of a mountain in the dark – Ragnar said, ‘I would reply if asked, ‘This is something quite hard to believe.’’

  ‘You would, would you?’ Sealink thought for a minute. ‘You keep an eye on her in the clinches, hon,’ she said, ‘that’s my advice. She’s small but she’s real tough, the Queen.’

  She looked down at herself. ‘Whereas I am generous in many senses of that word.’

  She gave him a direct look.

  ‘Much like yourself, I guess,’ she said.

  What Ragnar made of this was unclear, since he had chosen that moment to examine her wounded leg. It was swollen and not a good color.

  ‘Hm,’ he said.

  He began to pass his tongue across the affected area in long, firm sweeps. Waves of pleasant heat swept up through Sealink’s haunch and flank, swirled up into her stomach and neck, then her head, until even her thoughts felt warm. After a little time, the King sat back and observed her professionally. Her eyes were half-closed and she gave a strange double purr – deep muffled vibrations at the base of her throat counterpointed by a light trilling like distant birdsong. He nodded to h
imself. Sealink shook herself deliciously – she felt as limber as a kitten again! – and flexed the damaged leg, which extended itself in a single lithe movement. She stared at it in astonishment, then transferred her gaze to the King.

  Ragnar Gustaffson Cœur de Lion regarded his handiwork thoughtfully.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That is good.’

  Sealink stared at him.

  ‘Hon,’ she said, ‘it seems a waste that you don’t share yourself around a bit more.’

  Ragnar looked abashed.

  The Queen of Cats awoke with a start just then, her head coming up sharply from deep sleep, so that at one moment her face was blind and still, the next alive with anxiety. Then her gaze lit upon Ragnar’s shaggy coat, and the nightmare passed.

  ‘Oh, Rags!’

  They contemplated each other with such passion that Sealink felt a sudden need to examine a clump of sedge some feet away. Once there, she relieved herself discreetly, covered the place with loose peat, and watched the pair with narrowed pupils and a contraction of the heart. The mist had dispersed, leaving behind it a swathe of desolate moor. Rags and Pertelot sat by the shining moonlit mirror of a lake fringed with icy reeds and bulrushes; their world had, for the moment at least, shrunk to an envelope of warm fur and hot breath. Sealink had a sudden, fleeting memory of a pair of mismatched eyes, and muscular haunches packing out a rough tortoiseshell coat.

  She sat stock-still and sniffed.

  ‘What?’ she asked the air.

  It was the broken highway from which Ragnar had emerged, an apologetic twist of light shimmering and buzzing uncertainly in the damp air. Sealink put her nose to it.

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered, as if it were alive.

  And then, ‘Mousebreath!’

  She half expected to see his silhouette emerge, dwindling gradually from his wild form to the one she knew so well. A thrill of electricity shot the length of her spine; her tail rose to welcome him.

  Nothing.

  She inspected the highway curiously.

  It was frayed and ruptured, spilling itself into the ground at her feet, pooling and evaporating like the spilt milk of a million years. But there was life in there, even now. They were still trying to travel. She could hear them, confused and hurt, a distant but discernible murmur.