The Sign of the Cat

by Lynne Jonell

  Old Tom sniffed. “Maybe you’re bright enough to listen to my warnings. The felines on this island never seem to.”

  A pair of Siamese cats strolled past Tom, flicking their whiskers. “Maybe it’s because there are so many warnings,” said one. “Like the droopy-ear syndrome. Or the tail mange that was supposed to make our rumps bald.”

  Tom’s whiskers bristled. “Those were real dangers! There could have been an epidemic!”

  “Or the dangers of catnip for kittens,” said the other, snorting, “when everyone knows that kittens don’t even like it.”

  Tom scowled. “That wasn’t catnip; it was kitnip. A completely different thing.”

  Duncan remembered the catnip-versus-kitnip discussion. Catnip was a kind of mint leaf that could make cats almost crazy. No one worried about its effect on kittens because kittens didn’t even seem to notice it. But according to Tom, a different variety of leaf had been found on one of the islands; it didn’t attract grown-up cats, but kittens would crawl from their mother’s sides to get hold of it. The cat council, curling their tails with impatience, had suggested that Tom bring a sample—if he could find one. Tom never had.

  The first Siamese cat winked at the other. “Do you remember the meeting where he warned us to lower our stress levels or we’d get Twitchy-Tail?”

  Hissing with laughter, the Siamese cats moved on, leaving Old Tom sputtering. “It’s easy to laugh,” he said with indignation, “but I was just doing my duty! That’s why I travel to the other islands on the supply ship—to discover the latest news. And this about the missing kittens is very serious, very serious indeed. I’ve been hearing about it on almost every island.…”

  Duncan had stopped listening. The kittens were being tested on their mousing skills. The moon, high enough to fling its beams through the fork of an old ash tree, dappled the testing ground with silver light.

  A small rubber mouse, tied to a string that was looped over a tree branch, was pulled jerkily along the ground. The line of kittens watched it alertly, every small head turning as the mouse went past.

  The first kitten in line pounced, caught the mouse neatly between its paws, and was given an approving meow-woww from the judging cats. The second kitten did the same. Then a white kitten stepped forward, small and pale in the moonlight.

  The mouse stopped, jerked ahead, and stopped again. The kitten hesitated—pounced—and landed on her nose as the rubber mouse was yanked up and away.

  “Fia kitten, excused from further testing,” intoned the voice of the cat who held the string, and the white kitten stumbled away, swerving to avoid her mother.

  “Perhaps I can assist in this matter,” said Old Tom, moving forward. “I’ve been known to be a comfort to the youngsters, in my day.”

  Fia sidled around a shrub as Old Tom drew near, and fled to the shadows of the graveyard. Her mismatched eyes shone in the dark. They disappeared as she blinked, then shone again, like two tiny lamps.

  Duncan understood why she avoided Tom. Fia had her pride; she didn’t want some old cat making a big fuss over her failure. So when she came closer, seeking refuge behind the gravestone, Duncan pretended she wasn’t there.

  The kittens were practicing their hiss-and-arch. Two more kittens were excused for substandard hissing.

  “I know how to do the hiss-and-arch perfectly,” said a small, lonely voice at Duncan’s elbow. “I can sproing my claws, too. And I would have caught the mouse, but a stupid cricket jumped, and I caught it instead.”

  Duncan made a sympathetic noise. “You’ll pass next time.”

  “But I wanted my Explorer’s permit tonight.” Fia scraped her claws on a fallen branch. “I’m tired of tagging after my mother all the time. It’s boring.”

  The kittens finished their final test—scampering—and those who had passed were announced. Fia narrowed her eyes and began to groom herself. “Tibby, Tabby, and Tuff—it would be,” she muttered, licking behind her right foreleg. “Now they’re going to think they’re better at mousing, too.”

  “What else do they think they’re better at?” Duncan was curious.

  Fia’s blue eye shone amber and her green eye golden as she turned her gaze on Duncan. “Their eyes all match.” She twisted her head to reach a spot on her shoulder and licked it savagely.

  Old Tom was speaking now. His elderly voice came in fits and starts as he turned his head from side to side: “—a disturbing new trend—kittens—seem to be disappearing in record numbers—no indication where they have gone—”

  There was a commanding meow from the edge of the cemetery, and the shadow of an adult cat loomed beyond the last gravestone.

  Fia’s head went up and she scampered off. From a distance, Duncan could hear the mother cat’s scolding.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Fia? Don’t go running off by yourself; it can be dangerous. Weren’t you listening to Old Tom?”

  * * *

  The cemetery road curled around the top of the island like a lock of hair cut off for remembrance. Duncan scuffed down the limestone track, idly kicking at the weeds that grew along the center. Some distance ahead, Grizel crouched, alert, then disappeared into a patch of wild grass. Below him was the sea, stretching out endlessly and full of unknown mysteries.

  He wasn’t afraid of being out in the dark. Of course he wasn’t supposed to leave the house after bedtime, but Duncan had long ago decided that while human rules were fine for the day, cat rules were what counted at night. Although he wasn’t a cat, as Grizel never tired of pointing out, Duncan figured that a boy who could speak Cat should be able to prowl after dark once in a while. Besides, he learned a lot at the cat councils—at least when he could hear what they were saying.

  “Mrrrow?” Duncan called, and Grizel emerged from the weeds with an unlucky mouse dangling from her mouth.

  “What did Old Tom say?” Duncan asked. “I couldn’t pick up most of it.”

  Grizel dropped the mouse and held it under one paw to answer. “He was making a big hiss about nothing. Apparently, on several islands, kittens have wandered off, and their mothers can’t find them. You know kittens—they’re always going on some little adventure or the other.”

  Duncan frowned slightly. “But if the kittens aren’t finding their way back—”

  “Then they’ve probably left home for good.” Grizel gave a small, impatient hiss. “Some mothers are overprotective, if you ask me.”

  Duncan’s thoughts flew to his own overprotective mother. Where had she been going so late at night? He was no closer to the answer, but he intended to find out. “Let’s go, Grizel.”

  “I want to eat my mouse,” Grizel objected. “And I need a rest. My pads are sore from walking all over the whole island today.”

  “We’ll stop at the stone throne,” Duncan said. “We’re almost there.”

  He had discovered the throne last year. It was an outcropping of rock thrust from the western cliffs, shaped like an oversized chair. It was Duncan’s favorite spot on the whole island. By day, he could drop pebbles over the side into the water of a narrow cove far below and count how long they took to make a splash. By night, he could look out and see the glow of Capital City just over the horizon.

  The goat path was not one he cared to descend in the dark, but the throne was at the first turn. Duncan scrambled up and settled against the rock with his legs dangling. Grizel stayed on the path, taking advantage of the pause to eat her mouse. There was a quiet sound of crunching. Far below, there was a faint tinkle, as if the breeze was blowing through hollow reeds or setting the lightest of wind chimes in motion.

  He gazed out at the dark sea and the long, shimmering track of the moon. He loved being out at night; he felt that he could take deeper breaths somehow. He was free at night—he was king of the island. Here on the stone throne, he never had to come in second.

  Duncan’s fingers curled around a small lump of rock, still warm from the day’s sun. The lights of Capital City glowed enchantingly on the
distant edge of the sea. The Academy was there, somewhere.

  His hand tightened on the bit of rock until the edges cut into his palm. Sylvia McKay couldn’t force him to write the wrong answers on the makeup exam. But even if he earned a scholarship, she could still keep him from going to the Academy. There would be papers to sign. There would be things to arrange. He was only eleven—he couldn’t go without her permission.

  The rock broke off in his hand. The breeze blew lightly, drying his cheeks and bringing the faint wind-chime sound to his ears once more. It wasn’t wind chimes, and it wasn’t hollow reeds, but it was familiar somehow.…

  Grizel was halfway through her mouse. She was making a contented noise as she ate—rawr rawr rawr—and Duncan smiled a little. He could eat, too; he still had a chocolate bar in his pocket.

  He had given the two he hadn’t eaten to his mother, but she had handed one back, insisting that he keep it for himself. If he knew her, she would eat only a quarter of hers and give him the rest another day.

  He put the broken rock in his pocket, took out the candy bar, and unwrapped it. One bite, two bites, three bites … he held the chocolate on his tongue and let it slowly melt, flooding his mouth with a taste he wished could last forever. He tipped back his head to look at the stars, great swaths of them flung across the sky like a fishing net.

  It was hard to be mad at someone who loved him so much she would go without food for his sake. But he needed more than love from his mother.

  A swift, whirling gust blew up from the cliffs and brought the tinkling sound with it, louder and clearer than before. Duncan leaned over the throne’s broad ledge. Of course! The sound was the wind singing thinly through taut wires, the faint tinkling rattle of metal shackles in a sailboat’s rigging. Below him, in a cove so narrow that he hadn’t thought of it as a bay at all, was a boat with a single mast. The sails were furled, but the moon’s light caught at mast, hull, and shrouds, and sketched the boat in lines of silver. It was the sailboat he had seen earlier that day, the one he’d thought had passed the island by.

  Grizel’s crunching suddenly stopped. There was a muffled sound of voices on the path below, and a gleam of light from a shaded lantern.

  “Thank you,” came the voice of Duncan’s mother. “It’s not so steep here—I can get home without your light.”

  Duncan slid back into the shadows.

  A low, gruff voice said, “I might not return for some time. I think I’ve been watched lately. And the money—I know it’s not enough—”

  “What you bring is very helpful,” said Sylvia McKay.

  She was saying something else that Duncan could not hear. He listened with every nerve strained, but the fitful breeze spiraled up again from the cliffs with a sound of rustling bushes and rattling rigging, and the noise of voices mixed with the murmur of the sea. Then the breeze died down, and in the lull the voices came clear again.

  “—like to see the lad before I go.”

  There was silence for a heartbeat. The sea crashed and hissed on the rocks far below.

  “Come quietly, then,” said Duncan’s mother, and the dark shape of a bush changed as she turned and brushed past it. “Just for a moment, no more. You can look in while he’s sleeping.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A Visitor in the Night

  DUNCAN HELD PERFECTLY STILL. He heard the bushes rustle on the goat path, then the crunch of limestone as his mother and the strange man reached the cliff road.

  He waited for the footsteps to fade. “Come on,” he said to Grizel. “We can still beat them if we skip the road and take the cat’s way home.”

  Grizel followed him up the goat path, complaining. “I’m an old cat, remember? I can’t run that fast.”

  Duncan scooped her up in his arms and trotted across the limestone road. “I’ll carry you—ooof!” His foot landed on something that rolled, and he staggered.

  “Your night vision isn’t good enough for running,” Grizel warned.

  “But yours is.” Duncan held her so she could see the ground ahead. “Warn me if something is in my way.”

  He cut through the scrub beyond the road, prime cat-hunting ground with low junipers and plenty of cover for mice. Between the moon’s light and Grizel’s night vision, he managed to avoid running into anything too solid. At the lip of a small bluff overlooking his neighborhood, he slid down on his heels, half squatting, one hand sliding along the steep ground for balance. When he reached the street, he had dirt in his socks and a rip in his pants. It didn’t matter; he could see his house ahead, and the street was clear. He had made it.

  Duncan galloped to his front door, fumbled in his pocket for the key, and pulled it out in a hurry. The key went flying. He heard the tinkle of metal against stone.

  He patted the cobblestones frantically in the dark.

  “Better hurry up,” meowed Grizel. “I hear footsteps.”

  “I can’t find the key!”

  Grizel gave a hissing sigh. “Hold me up to the door, then. I can pick the lock.”

  Duncan stared. “You can?” He lifted Grizel and watched in astonishment as she put her claw in the keyhole and delicately twisted it right, then left.

  Click. Click. The door opened, and Duncan locked it quickly behind him.

  “I never knew you could pick locks!” He tore up the stairs, leaped into bed, and pulled the covers over his clothes.

  “I have many skills that you don’t know about,” Grizel said. “Most cats can do far more than humans realize. For instance, Cat Trick #32.”

  “What’s that?” Duncan was still breathing hard from his run.

  “I just told you. Lock picking. And speaking of tricks, you’ll never convince your mother that you’re sleeping if you pant like a dog. Breathe like a cat. Take air in delicately. Keep the whiskers still.”

  Duncan didn’t have whiskers, but he didn’t argue the point. He took in a deep draft of air and tried to calm his pounding heart, but his breath was still loud and ragged when he heard his mother’s key in the lock.

  Grizel waved her tail. “No matter. I will delay them on the stairs with Cat Trick #17: Getting in the Way. I am particularly good at that.”

  This turned out to be true. Duncan heard stumbling on the stairs, a loud irate mrrrraaaoww!, and then low, soothing, apologetic voices.

  It was enough time to get his breath under control. By the time his mother was at his bedroom door with the strange man—Duncan saw their silhouettes in the doorway through his lashes—he was breathing deeply, as if he had been asleep for hours.

  “Stand in the shadows,” came his mother’s voice in a whisper.

  There was a soft scraping of metal as a slide opened in a dark lantern and a ray of light speared out. The reddish glow through Duncan’s eyelids told him when the light touched his face.

  From the shadowed corner of the room came a low intake of breath. Duncan felt the floorboards tremble beneath the bed as someone moved silently closer. There was a fragrant, oddly familiar smell of salt, pipe tobacco, and dried sweat, and then a low, rough whisper—“He looks more like his father than ever. I would have known him anywhere.”

  The metal slide scraped and the lantern went dark. “He looks far too much like his father,” said Duncan’s mother. “Especially this year.”

  “You could color his hair,” the man said slowly. “But of course you’d have to keep on doing it. All the hair dyes I’ve seen fade with time, and hair keeps growing out.”

  “It costs too much,” Duncan’s mother whispered with an edge of exasperation. “Shall I pay for dye and have no money to buy his food? And what could I give for the reason? He already has too many questions about things I dare not explain. Come away, now, you’ll wake him.”

  The man didn’t move. “He knows nothing yet?”

  “Come away!” The whisper was urgent.

  Duncan had an overpowering desire to open his eyes. He rolled his head to one side, as if in sleep, and stole a glance from beneath his lashes. He could
see the middle third of the man, silhouetted in the light from the window—a thick pair of breeches, a frayed shirtsleeve, a gnarled set of knuckles.

  There was silence for a full minute after Duncan moved. Then the man spoke again, very low. “He should know there’s danger, or he can’t protect himself.”

  “I protect him!” said Duncan’s mother. “If he keeps to my rules, the danger is small.”

  “But when are you going to tell him?”

  She whispered something under her breath. Duncan thought the word was “never.” Then she said, “Not for years, anyway. I want to keep him safe and free of this—this burden—for as long as I can.”

  Duncan’s thoughts tumbled over each other like angry cats. Years? He couldn’t wait years! Should he sit up this minute and demand to know everything? He had a right to know. But he was still in his clothes; his mother would know he had sneaked out of the house in the night. He might find out more if he kept silent.

  Duncan lay tense and alert; his whole body strained to listen. He could still see the dark bulk of the man just outside the bedroom door.

  The hall floorboards creaked under the man’s shifting weight. “You want to keep him safe, my lady? A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what a ship is made for.”

  Duncan stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling while the voices murmured indistinctly in the hall.

  All this had something to do with his father. Over the years, his mother had told him a few things. Did they add up to any sort of clue?

  His father had owned a boat. Duncan’s mother had told him that on his seventh birthday. The following year, Duncan had spent a lot of time around the local fishing boats, learning to mend nets and spear fish in the shallows. Grizel had been very pleased with the fish heads that had come her way.

  The next year, Sylvia McKay told him that his father had not been a fisherman. That was the year Duncan decided his father had been a sailor. He was not allowed to go to the wharf when a strange ship docked, but there were plenty of small craft that sailed the bay and around the island, and their owners often needed an extra pair of hands on a windy day. Duncan had learned to tie reef knots and bowlines, to trim a sail and to steer, and generally to make himself useful.