"Don't eat that stuff. It's last week's droppings. Let me get you some fresh." Turning and craning his neck, he called up into the tree. For so small a voice, it carried surprisingly far.
A couple of sleepy squirrels appeared. Though roused from their hollow, they grudgingly complied with Smegden's request. Apparently, the mouse was a person of local importance out of all proportion to his size. Oskar remembered how quickly a host of the rodent's comrades had hopped to his aid.
Working rapidly and efficiently, the two squirrels chewed through the stems that secured several mature fruits to the branches of three adjoining trees. These plunged to the neatly manicured grass below and bounced a couple of times before stopping. Hopping over to the nearest, Smegden took a bite out of one end and chewed reflectively, a minuscule gourmet sampling the latest product of an entirely natural kitchen.
"Not bad tonight." He gestured at Cezer. "Have a taste."
The cat was reluctant. "Rodents are like dogs; they'll eat anything."
"Hey!" Oskar protested.
The swordsman-cat ignored him. "It doesn't look very appetizing. It looks like a vegetable. I hate vegetables."
"I'll make you a deal." A confident Smegden helped himself to another bite and continued speaking with his mouth full. "If you don't like it, you can take a bite out of me."
"Now that's a proposition I can wholeheartedly embrace." Padding forward, Cezer put one paw on the fallen fruit to steady it and bit down tentatively with his strong jaws. As his friends looked on expectantly, he chewed a moment, then swallowed. When he looked back at them, he was smiling as broadly as his cat face would allow.
"Tastes like chicken!" he chortled delightedly, and dove without hesitation back into the elongated pod.
Soon they were all gorging themselves, quest and questions temporarily set aside as they wallowed in the unexpected flavors of the miraculous fruit. The one Cezer handily devoured without assistance did indeed taste like chicken. So did several of the other fruits from the same tree. But those from its neighbor possessed the flavor of fresh beef, while the fruit of the third had a distinctive whiff of fresh fish. By the time they decided they had had enough, not one among them retained a flat belly—Samm being the most prominently engorged of all. Though he had fought to restrain himself, it was in the nature of serpents to eat until they could hardly slither. As for the decidedly uncarnivorous Taj, he had ignored the meat-flavored fruit in favor of the many seeds readily available in the surrounding grass.
Thus most excellently stuffed, they left it to Oskar to consider what they should do next. "We must take some seeds of these trees home with us," he declared, following a resonant canine belch, "and plant them in the yard of Master Evyndd's house. But that's for later. For now, for tonight, where can we sleep?"
Smegden gestured expansively—or as expansively as his diminutive arms would allow. "Why not spend the night here, in the Grand Commons? It's what many animal folk do." Turning, he indicated the lacy towers and spiraling buildings nearby. "Though seemingly capacious, many of these structures are honeycombed with small rooms and chambers fit only for enchanted folk—and sometimes the likes of me. You lot would not be comfortable, squeezing your way through narrow corridors while enveloped in thick odors most strange and peculiar." He trotted away from the base of the fresh fish tree.
"Here you can stretch out and be comfortable. There is plenty of room, the climate is ever amenable, and there is lots to eat. Your fellow animal folk will not bother you." His tiny face wrinkled up in a grimace at the memory of an unpleasant smell. "Who wants to sleep in a troll tenement, anyway?"
Cocoa eyed the florid paths, paved with flat-faceted purple gems. Overhead, a wry and tasteful assortment of branches scattered the stars while the energetic chatter of tree-dwelling animal folk began to fade with the deepening of night. The temperature had not changed since they had arrived on the beach outside the city wall. It all seemed so benign, so accommodating, that it made her nervous. She told their guide as much.
"Oh, piffle!" Putting tiny hands on bulging hips, Smegden let out a squeak of a sigh. "Very well, then. I'll stay one night with you." He did not try to hide his irritation. "Will that put you at ease?"
"Substantially," a relieved Cocoa agreed. Though he had said nothing, she could see that Cezer was silently pleased with the mouse's offer. Nor did any of her other companions offer an objection to their guide's continued presence among them.
It was something to see Smegden curl up, utterly unafraid, next to the coiled bulk of Samm, a traditional predator. But the powerful constrictor was stuffed like a striped sausage with pounds of meatfruit and was already asleep, digesting silently. Given the quantity of food the serpent had just ingested, Oskar was grateful that snakes did not snore. Choosing a suitable tree, he paced half a dozen circles before settling down at its base, nose to tail. Cezer went off a little by himself, as did Cocoa, while Taj sought a suitably cozy branch on which to spend the night.
Mamakitty settled herself down next to the disheveled dog who was their nominal leader. Oskar tried to ignore her unblinking gaze, but one might as well hope to slip-slide into another dimension as avoid the stare of a determined cat.
"All right." He yawned, suddenly aware of how tired he really was. "What is it now, Miss Worry-whiskers?"
"This Kingdom of Purple is a beautiful and benign place."
"And that upsets you?" Dog or no, he could still raise a querulous eyebrow. Given the amount of gray fur attached to the flap of flesh in question, it was a gesture of some substance.
"No. If we're ever going to find the white light that we need to take back with us, this certainly does seem like the place—just as we were told long ago by that otherwise disagreeable Captain Covalt."
"Then what's your problem?" He yawned impressively, the yawn passing as a quiver down the entire length of his body to finally conclude with a twitch of his short tail.
"There are questions we avoided in the course of our journey that we can no longer put off. Suppose we find it? How do we acquire it? We have no money, and if we did, it most likely wouldn't be good here. Assuming that we do manage to obtain it, how do we transport it home? How do you package light?"
"With a pouch made of moonbeams, maybe. How should I know?" Trying not to sound too cross, he let his head flop back down on his crossed forepaws. "Can't we worry about it tomorrow?"
"That's what we've been doing for weeks. But I guess it will have to wait one day longer. Everyone else is already asleep." Raising her head slightly, she searched out each remaining member of their exhausted little party. "It's just that, so near to the goal we've fought so hard to reach, I find myself more fretful than ever."
"Fine," he told her. "Fret all you want. But I'm not worrying about anything, including the future of the world, until tomorrow." He managed a canine smile. "That's an advantage we dogs have over cats and humans. We don't suffer overmuch from stress. Except for purebreds, and I've always pitied them." Turning his head slightly and closing his eyes, he shut her out of his thoughts. If all her kind worried half as much as Mamakitty, he reflected sleepily, it was no wonder felines had so many internal problems.
His last glimpse was of the affable Smegden, comfortably curled up in one of Samm's brawny coils, indifferent to the proximity of powerful, fanged jaws that on another occasion might have devoured him as easily as a whale would swallow an eel.
EIGHTEEN
Oskar felt as if he awoke only moments later. But though he did not know the duration of the local night, it seemed unlikely that it should vary much from what they had encountered in other kingdoms. Overhead, the amethyst-hued sun was shining with a clarity born of crystal. It was not the shimmering sunshine that had awakened him, however, nor any prodding or chiding from his companions.
It was the music.
And such music! It spilled forth from thousands of throats, all chorusing together, not one out of tune—throats capable not only of imitating and surpassing the songs of hum
ankind but of reproducing almost any harmony imaginable.
There must have been ten thousand bird-folk awakening in the trees of the Grand Commons, and their joyous hymn to the morning was truly something to behold.
Birds of paradise trilled sensuously alongside dozens of smaller songbird-folk. Cranes and crows supplied percussion, while macaws and parrots counterfeited human voices as perfectly as if they had possessed hands instead of wings. The smaller birds provided woodwindlike accompaniment, while a rustling of raptors surged in counterpoint to the elegiac central motif.
Rolling onto his back on the soft grass and crunchy leaves, all four legs waving in the air, Oskar stretched and delighted in the majestic swell of music. Only after the magnificent overture to the sun had crescendoed and begun to fade, drifting away into the distance as soft as down from a newly fledged chick, did an exultant Taj glide down from his branch to greet his friends. He had been participating wholeheartedly in the concert.
"Did you hear it? Oh, did you hear, Oskar?" The jubilant canary hopped an ecstatic circle around an imaginary axis. "Wasn't it splendid? Wasn't it glorious?"
A familiar voice interrupted from nearby. "Doesn't this town let a visitor sleep?" Rising, a rested but exasperated Cezer stretched, digging his front claws purposefully into the ground, his chin scraping the grass between them.
"Always the complainer." Nearby, Cocoa had risen and was using her right paw to inspect a freshly fallen meatfruit. "Who's for breakfast?"
Gathering around a pile of suitable eats, they fell to discoursing freely among themselves while dining at their leisure. Smegden joined them, in no hurry to rush off before eating. Indeed, Oskar mused, there seemed to be no reason for animal folk to hurry anywhere in this relative paradise. What real work there was to be done fell within the province of the much more active enchanted ones.
"You know," mouthed Cezer, his cheeks bulging with the meatfruit of the moment as he ruminated reflectively, "this is a pretty nice place."
"Very nice," agreed Samm from somewhere within his coils.
"Exceedingly nice," Cocoa added unnecessarily.
"It's so nice," Cezer continued, "that we might consider staying here."
Oskar eyed his companion narrowly. "You mean, you might consider returning after we've carried the white light back to the Gowdlands."
Instead of meeting the dog's eyes, the golden feline contemplated the sky through branches heavy with lavender-tinged leaves and fruit. "Not exactly. I was thinking that this might be the most propitious possible ending to our journey."
"What about the inhabitants of the Gowdlands?" Mamakitty's tone was accusing, but Cezer refused to back down.
"What about them? I know all of this was discussed earlier, but that was before we had risked our lives ten times over, and long before we knew a land such as the Kingdom of Purple existed outside the country of wishful thinking. What if our luck is running out? How many narrow escapes can we reasonably be expected to survive? This place has everything we could want: free food that falls from trees, clean air, pure water, and industrious enchanted folk to keep everything running smoothly. It's more than a refuge; it's a kind of heaven. A singularly purple heaven, to be sure, but a heaven nonetheless.
"As for the people of the Gowdlands, what did they ever do for us? I'm sorry they're suffering—I don't like to see anyone suffer. But to tell the truth, I feel no especial affection for them. They're humans; we're not."
"You were once," Oskar reminded him, "and can be again."
"Why?" This time Cezer raised his gaze to meet those of his friends. "From everything we've experienced and everything I remember from my life as a cat, humans have a tough time of it." He spread both forelegs as wide as his quadrupedal shape would allow. "I'm more used to being a cat than I am to being a man. This isn't such a bad way to spend one's life. Of course," he added thoughtfully, "if I was forced to spend it as a dog…"
Mamakitty stepped between them. "That isn't the point.
We swore to carry out Master Evyndd's last wish, which was to aid those in need. What about that, Cezer?"
The tomcat looked uncomfortable. "Master Evyndd was a good person, even if he wasn't cat. But Master Evyndd is dead. We're not."
"So you think that cancels out the debt?" Oskar challenged him.
Cezer held his ground. "Spoken like a true dog. A fawning, slavishly affectionate, drool-dripping dog who'll cut off his left ear in return for a pat on the head."
Mamakitty spoke before an increasingly angry Oskar could reply. "There are among cats those for whom the word loyalty is not only for dogs."
Cocoa joined the discussion. "By my count, you owe Master Evyndd for about two thousand bowls of milk, a hundred and fifty pounds of meat, uncounted table scraps, assorted chunks of cheese, and enough catnip to stun a cougar. Have you no gratitude, no sense of honor?"
"I couldn't turn my back on the Master's last wish," Samm announced with finality.
Cezer glared at the python. "Do you even have a back? Oh, all right!" he hissed. "I refuse to have my honor as a cat impugned by a snake. But I think you're all mad." Turning, he trotted off toward a tree where some wallabies were playing ball with a coterie of meerkats and bonobos.
Oskar remembered the smallest member of their party. "Well," he asked the songster, "we haven't heard from you, Taj. What's your opinion?"
The canary pushed out his purplish yellow chest. "I owe Master Evyndd everything. If not for him I would be nothing more than a bird in a cage. I mean," he added quickly, "I would not have been given the opportunity to participate in so important a journey."
Oskar nodded, then looked seriously at Cocoa. "Do you think maybe Cezer's right? That we should put aside our task and remain here?"
She shook her head, as pert in feline form as it had been in human guise. "What kind of animals would we be if we abandoned the one important undertaking we had ever been given? Not by a master: that's only a word. Myself, I always thought of good Evyndd as a friend. A large, clumsy, ungraceful, but well-meaning friend." She nodded once. "I'll see this undertaking through to the end—for my friend."
"Spoken like a true cat," Mamakitty murmured admiringly. Pivoting, she presented her tail. Held high, the tip provided a comfortable perch for the smallest member of their expedition. "I'm sure that once we've located the white light, Cezer will realize where his loyalties lie and come to his senses."
"What 'senses'?" Cocoa growled. "The word doesn't apply to Cezer. Pfft! The only senses that cat possesses are base ones."
"Don't be too harsh on him," Taj told her. "This place calls strongly even to me." He punctuated his point with a brief but joyful burst of song. "The temptations are many."
She sniffed grudgingly, whiskers bobbing. "Then we'd best gather him up and be about our business, before he takes off after some flying scrap of paper or loose piece of string and we have to waste time running him down."
They found Smegden cloistered with a cluster of chipmunks, squirrels, and tree rats. Demonstrating that human hands were not required to carry out higher manipulative functions, they were playing a complicated board game with leaves substituting for squares and different-shaped seeds for markers. Those onlookers not actively engaged in play chattered incessantly—which, considering the characteristic speciation of those present, was to be expected.
As he moved a small oblong seed three leaves forward and one sideways, the aggravated mouse caught sight of his former charges. "Botheration!" he snapped. "Now what? Didn't you get any sleep?"
"Plenty of sleep," Mamakitty assured him. "In fact, we're so well rested that we'd like to see some more of the wonders of the Kingdom of Purple."
"What, do I look like a tour guide to you?" he squeaked in exasperation.
"No," she replied. "You look like breakfast. But I've already eaten. Can't you show us around for a little while? Just enough so that we can get ourselves oriented?"
Shaking his head sadly, Smegden turned his portion of the game over to th
e chipmunk squatting next to him and hopped over to confront his tormentors. "Babysitter to cats and dogs," he muttered irritably. "Snakes and canary birds." He sighed. "Maybe after one quick tour you'll be ready to settle down. And to leave me alone!"
"Maybe," Oskar agreed enticingly.
"Very well then." Impatiently, Smegden tapped the ground with one foot. Since Mamakitty already was serving as a mobile roost for Taj and since Cezer was not in the best of moods to serve as mount for a mouse, Oskar kneeled down so the mouse could scamper up onto the top of his head.
"Fagh!" Even though his scruffy steed could not see the gesture, Smegden made a production of waving both tiny hands in front of him as if to clear the air from in front of his face. "Cats may be more inherently wicked, but at least they smell better! Oh, well—come on, then. Straight ahead, and take the first right once we're out of the Commons."
For all his confirmed irritability, the acerbic Smegden proved to be as congenial a guide during the day as he had been the previous night. He showed them the Council Hall, afire with purple gems, where the Chosen of Faerie and other enchanted electors met to discuss matters of importance affecting the entire kingdom. They visited the stablelands, home to cloven-footed animal folk, where giraffes raced griffins and antelope streaked with makeup competed in high jumping against gravel-voiced jackaroos. There were well-organized facilities for storing food and water against the rare times of drought, schools where lectures in the fine art of thud-dunning were attended by gangs of aspiring adolescent ogres and trolls, and high-speed flying academies for the effervescent offspring of pixies and sprites, where pedantic dragonflies served as instructors.
And then there was the museum.
A structure grand even by the exalted standards of the illustrious Kingdom of Purple, it rambled off in all directions, adding rooms and displays, corridors and exhibits, according to Smegden, whenever it felt like it.
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