The Wild Road

by Gabriel King

  They cut and jumped together for a while in the uncertain, iron-smelling dark. Then Tag remembered the fight in the warehouse. He laughed and said, ‘Things look bad for us, Sealink.’

  But the calico’s eyes were impassive, and she only answered coldly, ‘I ain’t here for no ‘us,’ hon.’

  ‘Sealink!’

  ‘These cats are goin’ to pay for Mousebreath,’ she said. ‘After that, who cares?’

  ‘Oh, Sealink, Sealink—’

  Shortly afterward she was swept away. He watched her until all he could see was a glint of teeth and claws. Then his own situation was brought home to him so suddenly that he was forced to attend. Throughout the rest of that desperate night, though, he tried to keep an eye open for the calico; and he worried less for her wounds than for her wounded heart.

  *

  The Queen’s defenders fought. But they were driven and diminished. By the dying light of the tabby cat’s crucifixion, a sea of cats tossed back and forth, silent, gleeful, slippery-eyed. The headland heaved with them. Apart from the standing wave, which in good light might be seen to be a calico cat, two centers of resistance remained.

  Perhaps half an hour after he had parted with Sealink, Tag had found himself in the old fort.

  There, from a ledge high up, Jack Fiddle and Fish Head Lil still held the ruins. He joined them because the alchemical cats gave him no choice, and in a lull in the fighting the three of them looked out across the headland. There was a sudden bright flare.

  ‘Look there,’ said Fish Head Lil.

  There was no answer from Jack Fiddle. His coat was matted. He crouched with his head low, as if he were concentrating very hard on some feat of balance; he hadn’t moved for two or three minutes.

  The vision had gone out of Tag’s left eye again, and he thought the ear on that side had probably been tom right off. That was how it felt. Elsewhere, he had dull, deep pains. If he let himself think about them, he remembered Mousebreath’s blood, streaming away into the cold, petrol-blue water, and he was afraid.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Jack Fiddle suddenly.

  No, thought Tag. Not long. We aren’t much to reckon with here.

  But he still had hope. The kittens were still alive. Pertelot Fitzwilliam’s refuge was a column of pure white flame. In the light of it, made small by distance, he could see Ragnar Gustaff-son and Majicou stand back to back to prepare their defense of the Queen. Alchemical cats hemmed them in. Just beyond the circle of light, an immense disintegrating figure trudged back and forth, roaring victoriously and shaking its staff. In response, the air seemed to quake. Lightning flared out to sea, and the blue glowing lattice of the cat catcher’s net came down again over the headland.

  Majicou reared up, one paw raised. His single eye flashed, all colors and none. Tag heard him cry, ‘Never!’ He heard the roar of Ragnar Gustaffson Cœur de Lion. Everything began to slow down…

  Above, in the night sky, something seemed to shift with minute precision. Mercury had slipped into Leo, and the Eye of Horus was celebrating its marriage to the King of the frozen North. As the equinox approached, the stars flared brightly; from the earth, a tenuous white fire flickered up so briefly to meet them that no one saw.

  The first kitten had been born.

  In that moment, something stirred to the east of Tintagel; and animals began to pour joyfully onto the headland from all the gentle landward slopes.

  There were cats of course – city ferals with mangy coats, country cousins from cozy kitchens – and even some dogs, though they looked a little embarrassed. There were great stags like ships, radiating a kind of majestic heat into the night, their antlers gray iron. There were otters with gleaming black button eyes. There were bad-tempered minks who had escaped from cages, and a puzzled raccoon who had escaped from a zoo.

  Badgers came snuffling and ambling down, all black-and-white livery and claws like earthmovers. There were shy, dangerous pine martens; and even a few wildcats, Felis sylvestris of the northern woods, savage-looking and proud, unable to stop themselves snarling at their allies in this unprecedented encounter.

  But most of all, there were foxes.

  Tongues lolling drolly, eyes as yellow as ancient amber, every kind and color of fox, with coats that ranged from brindle to bright red. Garden foxes, heath foxes, foxes from the woods. White socks, white bibs, white stars, long white grins as cunning as the old Reynard himself, they brought their energy and stink and liveliness, their wild and outre night language, to the service of the Queen. They had come for a celebration; they had come for a birth; they had come for what they could find. They had come with high expectations.

  They had come to save the wild roads.

  They had come for a fight.

  Out in front of them all came Loves a Dustbin, and above him came the magpie they called One for Sorrow, and the air was full of birds.

  The Alchemist raised his staff. The alchemical cats wheeled to meet them, but suddenly the headland was aflame. Heat blazed out from Majicou’s angry eye. Pale fire poured up from the Queen’s refuge. The cat catcher’s net of lightning shriveled and withered like burning hair. Under the fierce white stars, the dustbin fox’s strange army raged across Tintagel Head, paused for a moment to sweep up the beleaguered Sealink, and went on to cup the ancient fort like a hand.

  Tag danced on his ledge. ‘Look!’ he told Fish Head Lil. ‘Oh, look!’

  A shadow filled the air above them.

  ‘One for Sorrow!’

  The magpie belled its wings and, with a rush and a clatter and a dusty smell of feathers, set down on the ledge at Tag’s shoulder.

  ‘Call yourself a cat?’ he said.

  ‘Yes! Yes, I do!’

  ‘Raaark!’

  It was a famous meeting. One for Sorrow strutted and preened; Mercurius Realtime DeNeuve stalked him up and down, making little playful darts toward him. A little later, disheveled and reeking, yelping with joy, Loves a Dustbin was among the old stones and all three of them were dancing for joy.

  ‘I’m not seeing this, am I?’ said Fish Head Lil to Jack Fiddle.

  ‘Well, then,’ said the fox, looking down from the ledge at his assembled force. Their smells came up, rank and strong and wild. They were the smells of woods and fields and moors and mountains. ‘What do you think, Majicou’s apprentice? It is not only cats that care.’ The breath of the stags heated the air. A badger bared its teeth, while foxes barked and milled around, and Felis sylvestris watched them all fiercely from its tawny eyes. ‘Have I fulfilled my task or not? I went the length and breadth of the land to collect this lot.’

  ‘You’re late,’ said Tag happily.

  The fox laughed. ‘That’s because I met this useless creature on the road. A sad sight. He claimed that you had just tried to eat him again.’

  ‘Perhaps I had,’ said Tag. ‘I was hungry.’ He made a dash at the magpie. ‘Third time pays for all,’ he said.

  ‘You say.’

  Then Sealink, standing a little apart from their celebration, still uncomfortable with her loss and anger, reminded them, ‘There’s still work to do down there.’

  When he heard of how Mousebreath had died, a black look came into the fox’s eyes. He led them down, and they chased the Alchemist’s cats to and fro across the headland. Behind them, Jack Fiddle closed his eyes for the last time and let his chin rest on his paws.

  It was a fight. Sealink and Fish Head Lil led a team of wildcats to harry the outliers from the boulders and the gorse, cleaning out pockets of resistance. Meanwhile Tag and Loves a Dustbin drove the main body relentlessly back toward the cliff top to where the Alchemist itself roared furiously, waving its human arm angrily and trying to summon lightning from the unsympathetic sky. Above them roamed the magpie and Memory the raven at the head of a black skein of birds. And on the way, they were joined by Majicou and the King.

  ‘Well met, Majicou!’ cried the fox.

  ‘Things are not finished yet,’ Majicou told him. But then he laughed
and said, ‘Well met indeed, fox. Your death didn’t await you, after all, along the wild road?’

  Loves a Dustbin was embarrassed. ‘I feel fine now,’ he said.

  ‘Look!’ cried Ragnar.

  The Alchemist had raised its staff, and with a broad, sweeping motion, pointed out to sea. At once, its cats began to throw themselves off the cliff and into the waves, cartwheeling away into the wind and spray, their limbs outstretched as if at the last minute they had tried to fly. ‘You see, Hobbe?’ it cried. ‘I love cats. They would do anything for me!’

  And suddenly it jumped backward off the cliff and was gone.

  Tag shivered and approached the edge. Nothing could be seen but waves breaking on rocks. It was as if the Alchemist had never been.

  Exhaustion and incomprehension swept over him and he sat down suddenly without meaning to.

  Tintagel Court to Tintagel Head. Dream to nightmare, nightmare to reality: kitten to cat. Friends won and lost, the great task – accomplished? He was worn out, and his head hurt. A salt wind blew in off the sea and smarted in his wounds. He remembered Cy the tabby, and tried to get up. I must find her, he thought. In a minute I’ll get up and find her.

  He heard Sealink say, ‘Just deserts. They got their just deserts.’

  Ragnar Gustaffson Cœur de Lion, King among cats, replied, ‘I cannot find it in my heart to blame them for what the Alchemist made them—’

  Then Majicou was ordering, ‘Listen! Nothing is finished. This—’

  ‘Majicou,’ said the fox. ‘I think we’d better—’

  Too late.

  Lightning. A soft, apologetic cough in the air above the cliff, like a voice in a closed room. For a second, Tag could hear a thin and whining music of flutes and cymbals, cut off as if someone had closed a door at the end of an ancient corridor. A smell of incense and resin, abruptly extinguished. Then the familiar laugh, curdled and disintegrating.

  ‘Hobbe! Ha-ha! Hobbe!’

  Inland, the gorse blazed up and ran molten with light the color of Tag’s fur, projecting long thin shadows across the headland. Shedding the whitened skulls of cats, jigging clumsily from foot to foot as its jaguar cape unraveled, fortified by the sacrifice of its army, the Alchemist tottered above Pertelot Fitzwilliam’s refuge. It waved its staff and sang. As it sang, the protective fire dimmed and went out. The Alchemist reached down and, with its human arm, ripped the gorse bushes aside.

  Tag was given a moment to see her there, a tiny indistinct figure exhausted by labor not yet over. He watched as the Alchemist bent over her, and she vanished from view. Then he was running. Behind him ran Ragnar and Majicou and Sealink. As they hurled themselves across the headland, their bodies blurred and lengthened, shedding strange, expanding rainbow rings into the shimmering sky.

  Great Cats, cats of the highways, the rich, powerful scent of them filled the air.

  Long muscles stretched and flexed, stretched and flexed. Huge paws thudded soft and rhythmic on the cold dusty ground. Light spilled off shiny fur, eyes like stones, teeth curved like sabers. Body heat poured away into the withering air, effort shed with a profligate contempt for pain, weariness, or the nearness of death.

  Majicou, Ragnar, Sealink, and Mercury.

  Their heat, their rage, their sheer energy, their ferocious denial of the emptiness of the world.

  Great Cats.

  But they were going to be too late…

  Sixty yards. Forty. The Alchemist’s human arm reached down.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty!’

  Thirty yards.

  ‘Majicou!’

  ‘Run, Tag. Run!’

  Twenty yards. Even their huge hearts weren’t enough. Twenty yards was too soon to leap, and the clump of fingers had reached for Pertelot’s scruff.

  ‘Come to me.’

  Her eyes flashed emerald. Beneath the rose-gray fur, her body rippled and shifted with the anger of the inner cat.

  Then a kitten mewed, and she was Pertelot again.

  ‘Ragnar! Help!’

  Too late…

  *

  Something had filled the air above the Alchemist’s head like a cloud of smoke. Closer to. Tag saw that it was a wheeling, crying mass of wings.

  Individual birds whirled and dipped like bits of newspaper on a windy day. They stooped and bobbed. They shrieked and spun. They were big birds, who had flown all night from roosts in churchyard, barn, and coppice – crows and owls, rooks and ravens. Gulls hovered and dipped and squealed. Kestrels planed above the melee or made sudden, precipitous descents. A single eagle hung above it all on wings like planks, awaiting its moment.

  ‘Come to me. Come on then. Up you come.’

  Suddenly, birds were spurting through the air like a shower of broken glass. Through the shards, vague at first but gathering speed and mass as it came, appeared a mysterious violent shape: a bird of fire trailing fantails of sparks that plunged out of the mob and slammed into the back of the Alchemist’s neck. Great wings battered at its head and shoulders. A pitted gray beak, old as the hills and hard as a stone, shuck for its eyes. Detritus flew off.

  ‘Raaaark!’

  It was One for Sorrow: the bird behind the bird. Brought down by the force of his attack, the Alchemist struggled for a moment – bent forward, its weight shared between its forehead and its knees – in front of the Mau and her litter. Then it laughed and sprang upright again. Feathers flew. The magpie made a noise like an old football rattle and shuck at its fingers.

  ‘I’m One for Sorrow I am,’ he croaked. ‘You won’t forget me in a hurry!’ And he wrapped his wings like a feathered caul around the defaced head. The Alchemist staggered through the gorse, laughing and plucking at its face. The magpie clung tenaciously, and bit its fingers. Then it was over. There was a shriek and a snapping noise. The wings are the bird. When they go, the bird is gone. The Alchemist held up in triumph a writhing, cawing bunch of feathers. Its mouth opened wide.

  ‘Ha-ha, Hobbe. Got your bird!’

  One for Sorrow was thrown into the gorse, where he became still. Above him, his comrades wheeled puzzledly in the air.

  ‘She’s mine, Hobbe, and I’ll have her back!’

  It was as much a cry of madness and terror as of triumph. Around the Alchemist, the headland heaved and rattled with bad light. Cold stars looked down. Hundreds of years of thought had narrowed in the end to this. Disorientation, decomposition, an old meaningless music ringing in the ears – its own voice driving it on and on, however malformed, however disgusted, however tired. Hundreds of years of glory. A million experiments. All the wires and eyepieces. All the cats in their cages.

  ‘Hundreds of years of first-class thought, Hobbe. The interventions of a god. I was a god.’

  Raw black winds tore in from the sea. Earth withered to black ash that coated the Alchemist’s lungs as it tottered above Pertelot and her litter.

  ‘I spared myself nothing for this! Hobbe? Do you hear? Do you think I spared myself anything?’

  It stared down into Pertelot’s refuge.

  An expression of wonder transfigured its decaying face.

  ‘But how beautiful,’ it whispered. ‘How beautiful.’

  And then, ‘No. NO!’

  There was a single note of music. A delighted laugh. Tremulous as a dream, transparent as summer sunlight in a glass of water, slowly at first, then growing in strength and confidence, a fountain of golden light burst up out of the gorse.

  It was light the tawny gold of cats. It was light substantial: solid light. Where it touched, it transformed, and nothing could ever be the same again.

  In that light, the Alchemist was lost: all those endless years to possess something that cannot be possessed.

  ‘Hobbe, I never knew—’

  In that light, the Majicou struck: an eon-spanning leap across time. The sound he made was the sound of rocks in the tide.

  They met, those two, embraced, tottered together in the backsplash of golden light. The great cat drove his claws deep between
shoulder blade and tendon, pulling the Alchemist’s head toward him. With a single pass of the camassials, like a domestic cat at a bowl of meat, he cleaned one side of the face down to the bone. There was a grunt. A thick gurgle. Silence.

  Then, ‘Oh, Hobbe. That hurt.’

  ‘You will hurt more.’

  ‘Walk like a cat, Hobbe.’

  The black staff swept out of nowhere in a flat lethal curve, and the Majicou was knocked back on all fours in a flash of electricity and a mist of his own blood. There he crouched for a moment, lashing his tail and shaking his head; then up he leapt. They met again, the one-eyed cat and his master: they met and they merged.

  Tit for tat, blow for blow, faster and faster, until they were at each other in an exchange too dizzying to interpret. Around them, out of the night wind, out of their own stubbornness, they seemed to spin a concealing web. Faster and faster, like a dust devil in a windy corner, until Tag could no longer tell which was Majicou and which his opponent. Faster and faster, until, with a noise like the humming of power lines, a single new creature raged across Tintagel Head, ripping up rocks the size of houses and throwing them into the air.

  All across the headland, birds and animals drew together for comfort. The sky was refulgent, bare, no longer a sky but a radiant inverted bowl the color of the inside of an eggshell. Up from Tintagel Head poured the golden light. Down to meet it crackled rainbows and lightning. The air was warm. The earth was purring with fear or readiness, a low, steady, rumbling noise as if the cliff were preparing to slip into the sea.

  Tag took a pace back – and found his friends grouped close behind him.

  ‘How can we help him?’ he whispered.

  It was the fox who answered. ‘We are required to do nothing more, Tag. Majicou foresaw this long ago. I warned him against it, but he meant to do it all along.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘Watch!’

  As they watched, the new creature seemed to lose patience with the land. Rage drove it into the air above the cliff top, where it hung for a second, scattering birds to all corners of the compass, then shot out to sea along a flat, vicious arc, as fast as a cat’s eye could follow. There it plunged into the water in an explosion of heat and vapor. Steam boiled into the air. When it had cleared, the surface of the ocean was as calm as a pond.