by Gabriel King
‘Loves a Dustbin, I—’
‘Wait, little cat! Wait!’
Silence stretched out.
The birds flew stealthily back, perched all over the Tintagel ruins, and began preening their feathers energetically.
‘That’s that then, I guess,’ said Sealink.
As she turned to walk away, Majicou and the Alchemist burst vertically out of the ocean and hurtled up into the radiant dome of the sky until they were nothing but a humming speck. Then, in a last despairing gesture, bound together like Kilkenny cats by the hatred of hundreds of years, they plunged back down to Tintagel Head, where – in an eruption of dirt and vegetation, a hot mist of vaporized rock – they drove themselves into the earth, and the earth sealed itself over them forever.
For a moment, there was a faint, rhythmic rumble, like a train going away into the distance. Then silence.
Silence that went on and on until the day broke, and all that golden light diminished to the pale warm sunshine of early spring, and all those birds began to greet a new dawn.
*
Pertelot Fitzwilliam of Hi-Fashion sprawled with her kittens in the sunshine, and they made themselves busy about her. She was still the most beautiful cat Tag had ever seen.
The fur lay along her slim curved bones like mottled rose-gray velvet watermarked with the faintest of brown stripes. Her face, as accurate as the head of an axe, the face of an ancient feline carved in stone, was turned in blind pleasure to the sun. All Egypt was in those eyes; but the scarab had been sponged from her weary forehead, and her Egyptian dreams no longer consumed her from the inside. Instead, lapped in the light and air of the cliff tops – wrapped in her love and her pride and her adventures, the sum of her life to that point – she was more rested than he had ever seen her.
Standing beside her, his sturdy legs almost hidden by his thick black winter coat, looking robust and ready for the show bench, was a large, squarish cat as big as a fox with forthright eyes, flowing tail, and prominent whiskers. His nose was long and wide and in profile resembled the nose guard of a Norman helmet. Tintagel Court to Tintagel Head, nightmare to reality: the Norsk Skogkatt, Ragnar Gustaffson Cœur de Lion, almost as Tag had first caught sight of him, the very picture of a three-times grand champion!
When he saw Tag, his great mane bristled with pride, and he drew himself up with all the dignity of a King. Then he said anxiously, ‘So. What do you think?’
The kittens were red and sore-looking. They were blind. Tag thought he had never seen anything so strange or paradoxical in his life. He watched them mew and suckle, scraps of heat in a dangerous world. Nothing could be more vulnerable. At the same time they made him think of Ragnar’s tale of the brave queen saving her young from the fire and of the story of Mouse-breath and Havana, and he knew that they were stronger than the headland itself.
Pertelot Fitzwilliam sensed a little of this, perhaps, in his silence. She raised her head. The Nile flashed out at him from her eyes.
‘Well, Mercury?’ she said.
‘I think they’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘Although not as beautiful as their mother.’
After a moment he added, ‘But which one of them is the Golden Cat?’
The Mau laughed softly. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said.
She said, ‘You choose.’
‘Perhaps we’ll be able to tell when they get their fur,’ Tag said.
*
He was bone-weary. Now the excitement of the battle had worn off, his wounds hurt him again. But the kittens had made him think about Cy, so as soon as he could, he went to the place on the cliff top where he had last seen her. There, he sniffed sadly about, quartering the gorse and calling her name. But unless you counted a strangely blackened patch of earth, in which you might in some lights imagine the silhouette of a cat, there was no trace of the tabby. It seemed as if she had been used up, then allowed to blow away into the wind like a handful of ash.
Tag went and sat at the edge of the cliff. He knew he could never imagine the little cat’s pain. Her whole life had been dominated by the Alchemist. But despite that, she had done her best to have a life.
‘We mustn’t let that go. None of us must waste that.’
Later he thought, I miss her already.
For a long time he looked out over the shining sea. Then he heard the others calling him.
*
They had found the magpie, a little way away from the Queen’s retreat. His wings were spread at an experimental angle, as if he had been trying to free himself from the earth in some new way. His beak was open on his strange, gray-purple tongue, in a formless silent cry of pain. They gathered around him, led by his old friend Loves a Dustbin. When he felt them near, he opened one eye and in a sad voice said, ‘Eat me, then.’
‘One for Sorrow,’ said the fox, ‘it’s us. Don’t be afraid. We won’t eat you.’
Silence greeted this.
Then the magpie said, ‘It was a good life. I don’t want to leave. I particularly liked the gardens. I flew a few miles when it came to it – weather good and bad, sun and rain, windy days, thousand-foot air pockets and all. I was good at it. I was One for Sorrow, and I want you to eat me when I’m dead.’
They stared at him.
‘Do you see?’ he said. ‘I did my bit – Majicou, the Alchemist, all that. I never much complained. It’s not much to ask.’
Tag was appalled. ‘You can’t eat your friends,’ he said.
‘Call yourself a cat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cats eat birds!’ And then, more gently, ‘Tag, if you eat me, all of you, I’ll never die. I’ll always be part of you, the kittens, everyone. I’ll be One for Sorrow, and you won’t forget me in a hurry.’
With that he closed his eyes.
A little later, he said, ‘Raaark,’ and died.
The fox picked him up carefully, with velveted mouth, and carried him to the Mau’s refuge, and there they ate him – Tag and Ragnar, Sealink and Pertelot and Loves a Dustbin. He made a mouthful for each of them. He made shining white bones. The wind lifted and distributed his tiny breast feathers, and as they danced away in the morning light, a highway was opened…
Though the animals were looking into it from outside, it seemed to stretch away in all directions at once. Cold winds blew down its long perspectives.
After some time, they became aware of a single black cat, distant at first, then closer, bounding along in a haze of its own heat. No hunger. No weariness. Only the flex and stretch of muscle moving over bone. The great cat’s stride never varied. They knew who he was. They watched with a sense of dread as his huge head turned, and he stared out of the highway at them.
One eye.
They saw it.
Then he was off again, and they were bounding along inside the wild road with him. ‘Jump and eat!’ he commanded them, in that huge and hollow voice.
‘Jump and eat! Jump and eat forever!’
They ran on.
In the slowest of motion, in motion so slow that time seemed to fall into separate installments, a bird flew up in front of them. None but Tag had ever seen a bird like it, with its crest like a scarlet crown and feathers the colors of turquoise and brass. Its beak strained wide with a long and liquid song, the unrepeating song of the bird’s life; and the notes of its song were gold.
‘The highway is yours!’ called the black cat, as he sped away into the darkness.
‘Embrace your lives!’
*
By noon, animals were gathering all over the headland, preparing to return to their woods and fields, their railway banks and street corners. The wildcats had long ago left for the north, melting away with the great stags into the dawn. The eagle had planed amiably over the headland for an hour or two, but he was making everybody nervous, so he had drifted off up the coast to get some lunch. Loves a Dustbin saw off most of his army of foxes, and then, rather shyly, brought one of them over to introduce to his friends.
‘This is Francine,’
he said.
Francine was his match in height, but perhaps a little lighter built. Her fur was thick cream below, the color of mahogany above. She had three black paws, and a diffuse black stain each side of a sharp muzzle. Her narrow yellow eyes followed everything that moved, and her nose was always lifted to the air. She had the look of a vixen who knew what she wanted.
‘It’s nice here,’ she said, gazing around in her sharp, nervous manner, ‘though I’ll be glad to get back to town.’ She laughed. ‘You miss your familiar ways, don’t you?’ She caught a glimpse of the sea and stood close to Loves a Dustbin. ‘I’m sure I’ve never seen so many cats!’ she said. ‘Did you say we’d be going soon?’
Loves a Dustbin stood by, looking at Tag and the others as if to say, Isn’t she splendid? And indeed she did look quite splendid in the midday light.
‘How will you go?’ Tag asked Loves a Dustbin. He wanted to say, Don’t go. He wanted to say, Remember the day you gave me the chicken? Remember how we danced ‘round the lamp-post! He wanted to say. Stay a few minutes more.
‘The wild roads will heal themselves now,’ said the fox. ‘All we have to do is travel them.’ He hung out his tongue. ‘I plan to do that. I plan to travel, now it’s over.’
‘Well I should think you’ve had enough of that,’ announced Francine to the company in general. ‘I know I would have.’
Sealink stepped forward.
‘Me and Fish Head Lil here, we was thinking of going back to the city with them,’ she said. ‘See a few sights, work out what to do next.’ She glinted at Francine. ‘I ain’t never traveled with a fox’s mate before, hon. You’re a real cosmopolitan.’
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Francine.
‘Take care, little cat,’ said the fox to Tag. ‘We’ll all meet again. I know we will.’
‘My name’s Tag. Not ‘little cat.’’
The fox laughed. ‘Watch out for mirrors,’ was all he said.
*
Before she left, Sealink suggested to Tag that they take a walk together.
‘Take a turn around,’ she said, ‘and talk.’
‘Where can we go?’ Tag said.
‘You missed the point again, hon. Let’s let the journey decide, huh? Before we waste half our lives choosing on a place to go!’
And so they ambled northward along the cliff tops for half an hour or so, until a steep path led them down to the beach below. A little bay curved away beneath the cliffs to a village with a pier. The sand was the color of Pertelot Fitzwilliam’s coat, and the tidewrack smelled rank and full of promise. Out to sea, a white ship was moored beneath the cerulean sky, and around its stem a thousand herring gulls dipped and squawked.
‘Look at this. Ships. And shells. And seafood! Oh, Tag, honey, I could die just thinking of some of the seafood I’ve et!’ A huge purr broke from her, then faded slowly.
Tag breathed in the air.
Just to be with Sealink made him feel better. Her fur shone, and her voice was gold dissolved in honey. He felt that just to be with her was to be transported to some blissful yet bravura land.
‘Your life still seems huge to me,’ he admitted. ‘It seems like a place in itself.’
Sealink looked upon the ocean for a while. Her face was terribly sad. Then she said, ‘They call you Mercury now, babe. In a while they’ll call you the Majicou. People look up to you. You got your own light to shine. Use it.’
A bit chastened, he asked shyly, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Travel, same as you. You take the knocks, you wait your turn, you walk the road.’
‘Where did it end?’ Tag wanted to know.
Sealink laughed. ‘Ain’t no ending, but it’s a new beginning.’
Tag laughed too. ‘Where would you begin again, if you could? Mother Russia?’
‘I ain’t so certain anymore,’ she said softly, and they walked on.
The village, nestling in the curve of the bay, welcomed them. They smelled the fish and chip shop. They heard the people. They saw the water, green and lucent as a cat’s eye, washing around the stanchions of the pier. ‘You feel that, hon? That’s the feel of iron, dissolving in the air!’ They smelled the tidewrack, spread in a five-or ten-foot band above the waterline. The upper part of the beach was covered with perfectly smooth stones, a polished speckled pink. Birds were busy there among the hanks of weed, dipping and bobbing, choosing and casting aside. The stony wrack was packed with exotic objects washed ashore from boats – cans and bottles and lumps of tar and great tangled hanks of blue and orange rope, bits of graying wood with shapes you only ever saw in dreams.
‘Hey, hon. Who’s this?’
Ferreting about among it all with her bottom in the air was a small tabby cat.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said. ‘You took your time. Are we living here now?’
Tag stared.
‘But—’ he said.
‘Because they do good chips,’ she said.
Tag stared at her.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Oh, I was dead. Jack. I was down there dead-dog naked in it. They had me, wires and all. I was, you know, ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ I was down the tubes. But I seen the New Black King, and now I’m brand-new too,’
She said, ‘How can I explain? Oh, Silver, I was on some white-tiled highway. I seen – It was bad things all the way. That’s where he found me, and he licked me clean. I seen lights. Such things!’ She shrugged. She said, ‘I was there and then I was here. You lick me now,’ and offered the top of her head as a place to start.
The spark plug was gone.
‘I don’t wear that old thing anymore,’ she said. ‘That new King, he licked it right away. You know, there’s a mouse under this piece of wood. It’s a tide mouse. Do you want to help me kill it?’
Tag had never felt so happy in his life.
‘Sealink, I don’t understand this,’ he said.
No answer.
‘Sealink?’
He turned, and she was twenty yards down the beach, stately haunches propelling her toward Tintagel even as he watched.
‘Sealink? Sealink!’
The calico cat paused a moment. ‘Sometime, you ask Ragnar about that,’ she called. ‘He’s got a hell of a tongue on him. But I’d bet she healed herself, you ask me. I told you she was the toughest thing you’d ever take on, honey!’
Epilogue
The kittens all turned out gold – not the gold of alchemical metal, but the tawny gold of cats – with deep, thick-piled fur that glowed in the evening sun. As spring moved to summer and they grew, this color deepened to a shade the King and Queen had never seen before, even on the lush Abyssinians and Somalis of the show bench.
They were called, respectively: Isis and Odin and Leonora Whitstand Merril – which Sealink had once claimed was her mother’s name.
They lived out of the sight of human beings in the gorse of Tintagel Head. Their lives were filled with sun and rain, and the smell of the rock and the spicy scent of the yellow gorse flowers was like a message to them – be well, be strong, always love.
They watched the white gulls wheel overhead. They watched the violet sea.
‘They’re all Golden Kittens,’ said Pertelot with satisfaction.
‘I think I would say this is true.’
‘You would, would you?’
‘Although that one looks like me.’
‘Rags, you idiot.’
Tag and Cy lived north along the coast, where Cy charmed the fishermen, and Tag charmed the tourists; and in the evening they stared out to sea together at the sunset on the water.
They visited Tintagel as often as they could.
There, the royal kittens crowded around, pushing and shoving and bowling one another over. They followed Tag proudly about. He claimed he couldn’t understand why.
‘We’ve heard about you.’
‘We’ve heard all about you.’
‘We’ve heard everything.’
‘Tell us about Loves a Dustbin a
nd the Tandoori Magpie.’
‘Tell us about bacon rinds.’
‘Tell us about rats.’
‘Never eat a rat,’ said Tag. ‘You may regret it.’ And he began the story he always told them, the one he called ‘The Wild Road, or, The Ninth Life of Cats.’
Odin listened quietly until Tag was near the end; then he jumped up and finished it himself.
‘And that was how Majicou defeated the Alchemist!’
There was a quiet pause.
‘Do you know,’ said Tag, ‘I don’t think they’ll ever defeat each other, those two. As much as the cat and the human, they’re the body and mind: they’re the wild and the tame, deep in each of us, never balanced except by their own struggle. Humans aren’t bad – they’re only human. Cats – well, not all cats are Great Cats.’
He gave Odin a smart cuff.
‘I tell the stories here,’ he said. ‘Actually, I was going to finish like this: And that is the strange tale of a cat called Tag. How he came to lose his first home. How he traveled the Great Highways with a magpie, a majicou, and a calico queen called Sealink. How he became the only cat of his generation to have a fox for a friend. How he came to take part in the most magical time of the world for cats – even counting their heyday in ancient Egypt. And how he met the most irritating tabby cat in the world.’
‘Your head in my mouth,’ said Cy comfortably.
‘Wow,’ said the kittens to one another. ‘She bit him.’
There was a silence, after which Leonora approached Tag gravely and said, ‘I’m a princess.’
‘So you are.’
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘I have to tell you this. Of course, you may have noticed.’
‘What?’
‘They’re still down there. Under the ground. Still fighting. I hear them at night.’
‘The waves!’ Isis laughed. ‘You hear the waves against the cliff, that’s all.’
‘I hear them,’ said Leonora Whitstand Merril.
