The Hundred Names of Darkness

by Nilanjana Roy

  Mara whimpered, and backed out of the hedge, trying not to make a noise. She could smell Doginder’s embarrassment. She didn’t want to meet him. “She’s a disgrace to Senders and a disgrace to cats,” she heard, but the young queen didn’t stay to hear the rest of what Hulo had to say. Her whiskers quivering in distress, her pink nose tremulous, she cast a wild look at the road, checking that there was no traffic, and pelted away from the park. She ran flat out, her ears back, pinned to her head, letting her nose and paws guide her. I have to get away, the Sender thought, I have to get away.

  The asphalt cut cruelly into her paw pads, which were soft, unaccustomed to negotiating anything harsher than cool marble and stone or the silken pile of carpets. She ignored the pain, flitting like a ghost under the lines of parked cars, veering once to avoid a cyclist, putting as much distance as she could between herself and that harsh, scornful, contemptuous purr.

  An uncomfortable but insistent part of her asked: Hulo’s words were unkind, but could they be true? She thought of small incidents she had packed away in her memory: Beraal’s gentle mew, asking her to come out and meet the clan; Miao’s understanding eyes as she told her that there was a cost to staying safe; Southpaw’s hurt brown eyes when she refused to come out and play with him, for the umpteenth time. He had stopped asking after that, Mara remembered, and her fur prickled with discomfort.

  She had thought the Nizamuddin cats hated her, and now she knew they did. But, asked the uncomfortable voice in her head, had she given them a chance to get to know her? Beraal and Southpaw had accepted her. Southpaw had given her his friendship. Beraal had given her everything she knew about fighting and war, had patiently borne Mara’s tantrums and fear of the outside, had fought for the Sender’s right to live. Would Hulo have hated her as much if she’d strolled with him on the rooftops, crossed his path when he was out hunting?

  She found a gap between two sets of buildings and turned into a cobbled lane, one of the old snaking alleys that connected the Bigfeet’s homes. The cobblestones were more comfortable under her paws, their rounded surface caressing, but they forced the Sender to slow down. Gradually, she became aware of her surroundings. The clicking sound she had registered came from her own paw pads catching on the cobbles. Above, the Bigfeet sat out on their terraces, or chattered at one another; the windows creaked as shutters were pulled to for the night. There was a subtle, oily trail of scents lining the gutters: she thought of furtive night creatures, slinking about in the dark. It made her uneasy, and she slowed further, not wanting to be caught unawares by another animal.

  Then Mara’s whiskers rose and her heart gave a glad thump as she caught the familiar scent of sun-warmed fur—Doginder was here somewhere! The young queen’s tail rose, her head tilted up and she padded eagerly towards the end of the alley. There he was, silhouetted against the tube lights from a Bigfoot shop. He stood at the entrance of the alley, his plume of a tail raised in friendly fashion.

  “You found me!” she cried, forgetting her embarrassment in the delight of seeing her friend. “I’m sorry I ran off without saying goodbye, but I couldn’t face you and Hulo after what he said. Not that he was entirely wrong, about my never going outside…”

  Her mew trailed off, and her paws skittered on the cobblestones. The dog moved forward. His eyes were a dirty yellow. His fur smelled singed; his tail was raised, not in welcome, but in menacing warning.

  “You’re not…you’re not Doginder,” Mara said, her whiskers tremulous. The fur at the back of her neck was prickling in terror, her claws became so soaked in fear-sweat they started to slide on the cobbles, losing their grip. She had to…

  “Run, prey,” said the dog, his growl deep and terrifying. “Aren’t you going to make a run for it? Most of my prey does, before I catch them. I haven’t seen a cat come down this alley in months, most of them know this is my territory. Mine, you understand?”

  He opened his dreadful mouth, and bared his fangs at her. They were unclean and Mara could smell traces of dried blood on his muzzle; he had already killed once this evening.

  “Please,” she said, “I was…I was lost. I didn’t know this was your territory. Please don’t hurt me.”

  He laughed, a rough sound between a howl and a growl. “Please don’t hurt me!” he mimicked. “What do you think dogs do to cats? Feed them, play with them?”

  Then his muzzle was down and he was barrelling towards Mara, so fast, too fast.

  She knew she should turn and run, but she was staring at his jaws, flecked with spittle and blood. She thought about those curving teeth coming down on her hindquarters and flinched; she could almost hear the crunch her broken bones would make, feel her paws snap. It would be her neck next. She stood there, not mewing, her eyes bright green with terror, fixed on the predator’s slavering jaws.

  “Aren’t you going to run then? It makes no difference to the outcome, but it’s more fun for me when prey runs,” said the dog, panting as he clattered across the cobblestones.

  “Prey?” said Mara. He was very close now. She imagined that it would hurt a great deal when his paws slammed into her body, when his jaws snapped down on her neck.

  But that word he had used: prey.

  There was something wrong with it, she thought. It had to do with Kirri. “Our kind,” the mongoose had said. “You’re a predator like me. Do not forget.”

  As if in a dream, she watched the dog open his mouth, heard his victory howl raised to the night skies. “Death!” he called. “Death to rats! Death to cats!”

  And she opened her own pink-tongued mouth in an earsplitting scream. “Nooooot soooooooooooo faaaaaaassst!” she called. Her paws were no longer frozen to the ground. As the dog’s jaws snapped shut, his teeth met only the air. Mara had leaped, just in time.

  “What the blazing bandicoots!” the dog growled. He spun around, seeking the creature.

  “Over here,” said Mara. She stood in the entrance to the alley, her tail lashing back and forth. “You want a piece of me?”

  The dog’s eyes lit up, greedily. This was more like it. She was backlit by the tube lights; he preferred to have a clean view of his kill.

  “Yes!” he growled, bounding towards her.

  Just as he reached, Mara screamed again, right in his face, and he flinched involuntarily, closing his eyes. He only closed them for a second, but it was an expensive mistake.

  Mara felt the dog’s hot stinking breath ruffle her whiskers, pulled her head back so that his teeth narrowly missed grazing her furry neck, and extended all her claws. She slashed twice, raking his muzzle across the snout the first time, leaving five wide scratches across his neck the second time.

  “I’m nobody’s prey,” she said, her mew soft and venomous in his ear. “I may be lost, but I’m a predator, you hear me? The mongoose said so.”

  The dog moaned, scrabbling to get away from her claws. Mara slashed him once over the ear, just to teach him a lesson. He stared at her, his eyes filled with hatred and wariness, but he backed all the same.

  “I’ll remember you,” he said.

  “I can’t say the same for you,” she said. “You’re just another dumb, vicious stray, nothing out of the ordinary.”

  The dog lunged, and she saw the scars on his forelegs, scabbed over, mementos of other fights. Time slowed; as if in a dream, Mara watched her adversary come closer, his claws scrabbling for purchase on the hard cobbles.

  She was flattening her belly to the ground, crouching low. Memory brought her Beraal’s voice, as strong as though the warrior queen who’d been her teacher was standing there, watching from the sidelines. It had been Mara’s second lesson on the Art of the Claw. “You may use the element of surprise only once, Mara, and then, expect to be attacked. Protect your belly. Keep your back rounded, your belly to the ground. Scream when they get close, and then you must run or kill your opponent.” Mara had watched her teacher, her eyes widening at the speed at which Beraal turned, and crouched, and sprang. Her long black fur was a blur
on the steps outside the Sender’s house as she demonstrated defensive positions to her wide-eyed pupil.

  “What if you can’t kill your attacker, if he’s too big? And you can’t run because you’re scared?”

  Beraal had hissed, bringing her head so close to Mara’s that the kitten could see her teeth, and smell the adrenaline in her teacher’s fur. “Then die,” she had said.

  And then there he was, looming over her, so close that she could see the thick matted bristles on the underside of his belly. Mara pressed herself so close to the ground that she felt the cobbles and stones press into her stomach. She heard the dog howl, heard the snap of his teeth, felt a brief searing flash of pain as a clump of fur ripped loose on her flank. He had overshot, but only barely. He would turn, and snap again, and this time, she would lose more than fur.

  Every nerve in her body told her to freeze, to stay still and close her eyes, to hope that her attacker would leave her alone.

  Mara rose, slashed at the dog’s back paws, put her ears back and ran without waiting to see if he would follow or not. Her desperate swing had connected; she had felt the telling tug of tissue as she yanked her paw free, and part of one claw had broken off, left in her attacker’s flesh. A small part of her mind hoped it would leave a festering scar, but then the little queen let her nostrils flare, let her whiskers ride up and out, concentrating on escape.

  She was running past a line of shops, the corrugated steel of their shutters forming crisp barriers. A startled goat popped its head out of a lane, bleating sleepily as she went past. Mara flattened her ears and tried to lengthen her stride, hoping that its bleats would not alert the dogs.

  Far behind her, she heard her former assailant bark, once, twice, questioningly; then another dog joined in, and a third. An image from the past flashed in front of Mara’s eyes—the memory of a time when a pack of strays had surrounded a bandicoot in the park behind her house, stalking it, playing with it, killing the creature. She shot around the corner, another line of shops to her left, a large Bigfeet taxi stand sprawling to her right. The pack howled; it seemed to her that they were getting dangerously closer.

  She changed direction, heading for the taxi stand. Her paws were aching, and though she didn’t want to stop to check, she could feel the warm trickle of blood on her paw pads.

  There was a blare, so loud that it thrummed through her bones, making her head spin, and the glare of white lights rushing towards her. Mara mewed, a piteous sound. She was only halfway across the road. The car had turned fast down the road that led from the petrol pump; it rushed towards the cat at high speed. She could smell the acrid fumes from its engine. They choked her; the lights blinded her; her paws would not carry her as fast as she needed to go. The car’s horn sounded again, hurting her ears and making the hairs in them stand up painfully; the howling of the dogs was far too close.

  The car would hit her, Mara thought. It would all end here, and she felt a sudden pang of loss, for her Bigfeet, for Southpaw’s beloved brown-striped face, for the Nizamuddin she had never explored. The Sender turned to face the car; she raised her whiskers, whether in defiance or out of some reflex, she could not say; and she tried to send a plea to the car’s engine. Now she could see the steel grill, like a maniac’s grin. She could smell the anger of the dogs, who stood on the corner of the pavement she had pelted across from, their frustration that their prey had found another, cleaner death. Then she saw only the car’s burning white lights, bearing down on her, and Mara closed her eyes.

  Something hit her squarely in the ribs, knocking the breath out of her small body. She felt herself borne into the air. It must have been a short flight, but it felt endless to the little queen. “Am I dying?” she wondered. “Is this what dying feels like?” Her whiskers tingled and then she opened her eyes. The world spun around, the ground one way, the black sky another; then it righted itself and she came down with a thump that shook her thin frame.

  The car roared past. She saw the treads of its massive black tires, noticed a triangular grey pebble stuck between two of the grooves, smelled the astonishment of the Bigfeet who were jabbering at each other inside the car. The dogs were scattering on the other side of the road, their attention caught by the appearance of a pack of grey rats who had swarmed out of an empty concrete pipe. The rats bolted; the dogs, barking and howling, followed their quarry, leaving the roads empty again.

  Mara wondered why her bones hadn’t broken. Her ribs felt sore, she didn’t have the breath to summon up half a mew, but she was lying on something soft. Something soft, and wriggling, and swearing in fluent, ripe-from-the-gutter, street-cat curses.

  Mara scrabbled, and found that her claws were caught in a tangle—more like a thicket—of black, matted fur. Whatever was under her undulated and shook, and another rich stream of oaths—some of which she hadn’t heard even on her visits to the monkey house at the zoo—poured forth. The breath came back into her lungs, painfully, but she could move her paws, and Mara got to her feet. She had landed a short distance from the taxi stand, at the edge of the road. She appeared to be standing on a large, fur-covered sack. Gingerly, she walked forwards.

  “Gerroff my head!” said the sack crossly.

  “Sorry!” said Mara, backing as fast as she could.

  “Gerroff my tail!” said the sack, heaving. “You’re tickling me,” it added.

  Mara stepped off just as the sack stood up. They stared at each other, the orange cat with the green eyes, the black-furred warrior tom with the crumpled ears and the battered face.

  Her legs stiff, her whiskers lowered in distress, Mara began to back away.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” said Hulo. “I’m not going chasing after you a second time, you blasted brat, you might galumph around the colony making as much noise as the bloody goats, but you run fast! Damn nuisance trying to catch up with you! If it hadn’t been for the mouse—Jethro Tail, you’ve met him? Decent fellow, told me where I might find you. Oh, don’t look like that. No, no, there’s no need for your whiskers to quiver. No! I said no running off, and I meant it!”

  Before Mara could run away again, Hulo tackled her. An orange-and-black blur rolled along the earth, coming to rest near one of the taxi cabs. The orange was underneath.

  “Gerroff me!” cried Mara.

  “Yes, yes,” said Hulo, a little worried because Mara was so much smaller than him that she had disappeared. He didn’t want to smother the brat, he grumbled to himself crossly, just to stop her from sauntering away. “First, promise you’re not going to run off.”

  “Mmmmrffff!” said Mara.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” said Hulo cautiously.

  A pair of orange ears popped out from under his stomach, and Mara spat.

  “Your fur was in my mouth!” she said. “Don’t you ever comb it? And yes.”

  “Of course I comb my fur,” said Hulo, stung by a complaint that one or the other of the Nizamuddin cats had made all too often. “Once or even twice a week. No need to overdo these things, I’m not a blasted poodle.”

  “I said, ‘Yes!’ ” said Mara’s head, the mew exasperated. Hulo felt her squirming under his belly. It was not a pleasant sensation.

  “Yes, you’re going to run off, or yes, you’re not going to run off?” he asked.

  “Yes, you big fat furbag,” said Mara, squirming harder. “I mean, yes, I promise I won’t run off—now get off me, I can’t breathe!”

  Hulo hastily rose.

  “Had to make certain,” he said. “Couldn’t have you bobbing around and around the place again, what with the dogs—what was the need to go off and have a fight with Motu, while we’re on the subject? He’s the nastiest of the lot!”

  “I didn’t start the fight,” said Mara indignantly, trying to comb some of Hulo’s black fur out of her own. Hulo’s fur had a tendency to come off in clumps and migrate everywhere, like the silk cotton balls that would herald the coming of summer.

  “Well, he sure as hell knew he’d been in a fight b
y the time you’d finished with him,” said Hulo with some respect. He’d seen Motu’s torn ears and scratched muzzle. It was, he thought, excellent work for a novice who’d never been out of her house.

  “Really?” said Mara. “You saw him?”

  “He was whimpering in a corner, complaining to his filthy pack of curs that he’d been set upon by an entire coven of tomcats,” Hulo said in disgust. He had no liking for cowards, of any species. “But I saw the marks on his nose and his face. Nicely spaced, and he’ll carry the scars for the rest of his time. You’re a natural, Mara.”

  The Sender’s tail flicked back and forth uncertainly. Her eyes glowed with pleasure, but her whiskers radiated wariness. She licked the fur down on her neck where it was standing up, and Hulo could tell that she was wondering whether to stay or go.

  “Looks like we started off on the wrong paw,” he said gruffly. Awkwardly, he approached the little queen, lightly brushing his furry cheek against hers in a tentative head rub. Mara’s ears went up, the fine whiskers over her eyes shaking in surprise.

  “Can’t do this touchy-feely business,” Hulo mumbled. “Sender, I’m Hulo, from your clan. I’m sorry you heard what I said about you in the park. I hide nothing behind my whiskers. I carry my feelings on my fur. But I was just grumbling to Doginder; my mews were not for your ears. When you ran away, I was sorry that you’d heard.”

  He blew gently at her through his nostrils, a gesture of heartfelt apology. She smelled his sincerity on his fur. The tomcat, rough as he was, hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  Two Bigfeet motorbikes roared into the neighbourhood, and both cats ducked instinctively.

  “Get under the car if more of them come in,” Hulo said urgently to her. “Sometimes they’ll veer so that they can hit us, if they see us in their headlights. Many of the dargah cats have been badly hurt that way, you know.”

  It was warmer under the car. Mara caught the scent of Bigfeet, but when she raised her whiskers questioningly at Hulo, he was reassuring: “They’re sleeping—out there, on the sturdy woven-rope cots. Besides, the taxi drivers are friendly enough, for Bigfeet. They don’t feed us, but they rarely harm us. More bikes; we’ll have to wait here till they’ve all gone by.”