FSF, October-November 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  Grama looked at me with a question in her eyes I didn't want to see. As far as I was concerned, Fortchee had told us to pull back. I was shaking inside. Grama wasn't the one who had felt claws on her haunches.

  All the way back, Grama bit the back of my neck as if carrying me like a mother.

  We nestled down under a wagon behind the windbreak walls. Choova worked her way between us. None of us could sleep even the two hours. We paced and pawed. I stood up and looked out, and saw Leveza standing on watch, unfaltering.

  At dawnsky when she would have most difficulty seeing, I heard shots, repeated. I fought my way out from under the wagon, and jerked my head over the windbreak between the carts where there are only timbers.

  Blank whiteness, blank darkness, and in the middle a lamp glowing like a second sunrise. I could see nothing except swirling smoke and yellow dust and Leveza hunching behind the sides of the wagon, suddenly nipping up to shoot. Someone else glowed orange in that light, firing from the other side.

  Leveza had given a gun to the Cat.

  I saw leaping arms fanning what looked like knives. Everything spiraled in complete silence. The Cats made no sound at all. I was still rearing up my head over the windbreak to look, when suddenly, in complete silence, a Cat's head launched itself at my face. All I saw was snout, yellow eyes, fangs in a blur jammed up close to me. I leapt back behind the windbreak; the thing roared, a paralyzing sound that froze me. I could feel it make me go numb. The numbness takes away the pain as they eat you.

  I couldn't think for a long time after that. I stood there shaking, gradually becoming aware of my pounding heart. Others were up, had begun to work; the sun was high; dawnsky was over. I heard Choova call me, but I couldn't answer. She galloped out to me, crying and weeping. Grama followed, looked concerned, and then began to trot.

  It showed in my face. “Did one of them get in here?” she asked.

  I couldn't answer, just shook my head, no. Choova cried, frightened for me. “It climbed the wall,” I said and realized I'd been holding my breath.

  "Leveza's not in the wagon,” said Grama. We reared up to look over the wall. The slope was grassy, wide, the day bright. The wagon stood alone, with nothing visible in it. Grama looked at me.

  Maybe she'd gone to graze? I scanned the fields, and caught motion from the slopes behind me, turned and my heart shivered with relief. There was Leveza slowly climbing toward us.

  "What's she doing down there, that's where the Cats are!"

  She held something in her mouth. For moment I thought she'd gone back again for Kaway. Then I saw feathers. Birds? As she lowered herself, they swayed limply.

  "She's been hunting,” said Grama.

  "She's gone mad,” I said.

  "I fear so."

  We told Choova to stay where she was and Grama and I trotted out to meet her. “Is that what I think it is? Is it?” I shouted at her. I was weepier than I would normally be, shaken.

  Leveza reared up and took the dead quail out of her mouth. “She needs to eat something,” said Leveza. She was in one of her hearty, blustering moods, cheerful about everything and unstoppable. She strode on two legs. She'd braided her mane and then held it on top of her head with plastic combs, out of her eyes.

  Grama sighed. “We don't take life, Leveza. We value it."

  She looked merry. She shook the quail. “I value thought. These things can't think."

  "That's a horrible thing to say!"

  She swept past us. “You'd rather she ate us, I suppose. Or maybe you want her to die. How does that show you value life?"

  She trooped on toward the cart.

  Grama had an answer. “I'd rather the Cat hunted for herself."

  "Good. I'll give her a gun then."

  I was furious. “She had a gun last night!"

  "Oh. Yes. Well. She was a welcome addition to our resources.” Leveza smiled. “Since I was otherwise on my own.” She looked at me dead in the eye and her meaning was plain enough.

  "If they value life so much, why did they take Kaway then?” I was sorry the instant I said it. I meant that I'd heard her ask the Cat that and I wanted to know the answer too, just like she did.

  "Because I broke the bargain,” she said, so calmly that I was almost frightened.

  I wanted to show her that I was outraged at what they'd done. “What bargain?"

  She lost some kind of patience. “Oh come on, Akwa, you're not a child. The bargain! The one where they don't take children so they grow up nice and fat for them to eat later and we let them take our old and sick. They get to eat, and we get rid of people whose only use is that they are experienced and wise, something Horses can't use, because of course we know everything already. So we don't shoot Cats except to scare them off, and they don't shoot us.” Her eyes looked like the Cats’ reflecting our lamps. “That bargain."

  "I ... I'm sorry."

  "I shot them when they took the old. They saw I was the leader so I was the target."

  Grama and I looked at each other. Grama said, with just a hint of a smile, “You ...?"

  "Yes me. The Cats can see it even if you can't."

  Grama pulled back her lips as if to say, oops, pushed her too far that time. As we followed her Grama butted me gently with her head. It's just Leveza fabricating.

  Leveza strode ahead of us, as if she didn't need us, and it was uncomfortably like she didn't.

  Once at the cart, Leveza took out a knife and began to butcher the quail. I cried and turned away. She pushed the meat toward the Cat, who opened her eyes but did not move. The creature had had to relieve herself in the cart so the stink was worse than ever.

  Leveza dropped onto all fours and trotted to the neck of the cart. “Help me into the yoke?"

  "You've not asked me about Choova."

  "How is she?” She picked up the yoke by herself.

  "Terrified and miserable. She saw the empty cart and thought you were dead."

  Grama helped settle the yoke, slipping in the pin. At once Leveza started to drag the cart forward

  "You're going now?” The camp was not even being dismantled.

  "Stragglers get taken. Today I intend to be in front. We start going downhill."

  "Let's go!” I said to Grama, furious, but she shook her head and walked on beside the cart. “I've got a gun,” she said. “We should guard her."

  I should have gone back to take care of Choova, but it felt wrong somehow to leave someone else guarding my groom-mate. I shouted to Choova as we passed the camp. “Groom-mummy is fine, darling; we're just going with her to make sure she's safe."

  So all of us walked together, the cart jostling and thunking over rocks.

  "So tell them, Mai. Why does the world need predators?"

  I looked into the wagon, and saw that the Cat had clenched about herself like fingers curled up inside a hoof. I could sense waves of illness coming of her. I saw the horrible meat. She hadn't touched it. She looked at me with dead eyes.

  "Go on, Mai; explain!"

  The Cat forced herself to talk, and rolled onto her back, submissively.

  "'ere wasssh a ribber...” she said, toothlessly. “There was a river and there were many goats and many wolves to eat them.” Her voice sounded comic. Everything came out sssh wvuh and boub, like the voices we adopt when we tell jokes. “Verh whuh whvolbss ... there were wolves, and the Ancestors killed all the wolves because they were predators."

  It was exactly as though she were telling a funny story. I was triggered. I started to laugh.

  "And then the rivers started to die. With nothing to eat them, there were too many goats and they ate all the new trees that held the banks together."

  I shook my head to get rid of the laughter. I trembled inside from fear. I wanted to wee.

  The Cat groaned. “Issh nop a zhope!” It's not a joke.

  Leveza craned her neck back, looking as though she was teaching me a lesson, her eyes glinting at me in a strange look of triumph and wonder. “What Memory Sticks d
o Cats have?"

  "We know about the seeds, the seeds inside us."

  Grama's ears stood straight up.

  Leveza's words kept pace with her heavy feet, as if nothing could ever frighten her or hurry her. “Cats know how Ancestors and beasts mingled. They understand how life is made. We could split us up again, Horse and Ancestor. We could give them something else to eat."

  It was all too much for me, as if the Earth were turning in the wind. I was giddy.

  Grama marched head bowed, looking thoughtful. “So ... you know what the other peoples know?"

  Leveza actually laughed aloud too. “She does! She does!"

  "What do Dogs know?” Grama asked.

  The Cat kept telling what sounded like jokes. “Things that are not alive are made of seeds too. Rocks and air and water are all made of tiny things. Dogs know all about those."

  "And goats?"

  "Ah! Goats know how the universe began."

  "And electricity?” Grama actually stepped closer to the Cat. “Everything we know is useless without electricity."

  "Bovines,” said the Cat. “I've never seen one. But I've heard. You go south and you know you are there because they have lights that glow with electricity!"

  "We could make a new kind of herd,” Leveza said. “A herd of all the peoples that joins together. We could piece it all together, all that knowledge."

  The Cat rolled on her belly and covered her eyes. Grama looked at her and at me, and we thought the same thing. Wounded, no food, no water—I felt nausea, the Cat's sickness in my own belly. Why didn't Leveza?

  Grama said, almost as if defending the Cat. “We'd have to all stay together though, all the time. All of us mixed. Or we'd forget it all."

  The Cat rumbled. “The Bears have something called writing. It records. But only the big white ones in the south."

  "Really!” Leveza said. “If we could do that, we could send knowledge everywhere."

  "I've thought that,” the Cat said quietly. “Calling all of us together. But my people would eat them all."

  It was one of those too-bright days that cloud over, but for now, the sun dazzled.

  "The dolphins in the sea,” murmured the Cat as if dreaming. “They know how stars are made and stay in the sky. They use them to navigate."

  Sun and wind.

  "Sea turtles understand all the different elements, how to mix them."

  Grama said, “She needs water."

  Leveza sniffed. “We've crossed a watershed. We're going downhill; there'll be a stream soon.” We marched on, toward cauliflower clouds.

  Grama and I took over pulling the wagon for a time. I don't know what hauling it uphill is like, but going downhill, the whole weight of it pushes into your shoulders and your legs go rubbery pushing back to stop it rolling out of control.

  It's worrying being yoked: you can't run as fast; you're trapped with the cart. I looked back ‘round and saw Leveza in the cart fast asleep, side by side with a Cat.

  I found myself thinking like Leveza, and said to Grama. “I can't aim a gun. You better keep watch."

  So I ended up pulling the cart alone, while Grama stood in the wagon with a gun, and I didn't know which one of us was the biggest target.

  The slope steepened, and we entered a gully, a dry wash between crags. The wind changed direction constantly, buffeting us with the scent of Cat.

  "They're back,” I said to Grama.

  The scent woke up Leveza. “Thank you,” she said. “The two of you should go join the others.” She dropped heavily down out of the cart. She searched me with her eyes, some kind of apology in them. “Choova's alone."

  Grama's chin tapped me twice. Leveza was right. As we climbed together uphill toward the herd, I said, “Cats don't go out of their territory."

  "They're following Leveza. They want Mai, they want her.” In other words, Leveza was pulling the Cats with her.

  "Don't tell the others,” I said.

  The wall of faces above us on the hill opened up to admit us, and then closed again behind. We found Choova, who had been having fun with playmates. She'd forgotten Cats, Leveza, everything, and was full of giggles and teasing, pulling my mane. As we walked, the herd gradually caught up with Leveza, and we could hear her and the Cat murmuring to each other.

  "What on earth do they find to talk about?” said Raio, my cousin.

  "How delicious horseflesh is,” said Ventoo.

  Choova scowled. “Everybody says that Leveza is bad.” I stroked her and tried to explain it and found that I could not. All I could say was, “Leveza wants to learn."

  The trail crossed a stream and Fortchee signaled a break. Leveza's cart was already there with Leveza still in harness reaching down to drink. The trickling sound of safe, shallow water triggered a rush. We crowded round the creek, leaning down and thrusting each other's head out of the way. Grama trotted up the hill to make room and found herself the farthest one out, the most exposed. I was about to say, Grama get back.

  Three Cats pounced on her. The entire herd pulled back and away from her, swiftly, like smoke blown by wind. Two Cats gripped her hind legs; one was trying to tear out her throat. She was dead, Grama was dead, I was sure of it. I kept leaping forward and back in some kind of impulse to help. Then came a crackle of gunfire. The two Cats on her hindquarters yowled and were thrown back. One spun away and ran; one flipped over backward and was still.

  Then one miraculous shot: it sliced through the Cat in front without touching Grama. I looked back in the cart and saw that Leveza had been held down in harness, unable to stand up or reach for her gun.

  In the back of the wagon, head and rifle over the sides, was Mother Cat.

  Grama shook and shivered, her whole hide twitching independently from the muscles underneath, her eyes ringed round with white. She wasn't even breathing, she was so panicked. I knew exactly how awful that felt. I ronfled the comfort sound over and over as I picked my way to her, touched her. She heaved a huge, painful-sounding breath. I got hold of the back of her neck. “Come on darling, come on baby,” I said through clenched teeth. I coaxed her back downstream toward the others. Her rattling breath came in sobs.

  There were no sympathy nitters. The other Horses actually pulled back from us as if we carried live flame. Grama nodded that she was all right and I let her go. She still shivered, but she stepped gently back and forth to test her torn rear legs. I lifted the healer's pack from her shoulders and took out the bark water to wash her.

  I was angry at the others and shouted at them. “It's all right, all of you, leave her be. Just leave her alone. She's nursed you often enough."

  Fortchee stepped toward us, breathed in her scent to see how badly hurt she was.

  Then he looked over in the direction of the Cat, who still held the gun. He calmly turned and walked toward the cart. Leveza had finally succeeded in slipping out of the yoke and begun to climb the hill back toward him.

  I tried to coax Grama back to our wagons, but she firmly shook her head. She wanted to listen to what Fortchee said.

  I couldn't quite hear him, but I certainly could hear Leveza. “She has just as much reason to escape them as you do!"

  Fortchee's voice went harsher, giving an order.

  "No,” said Leveza. He said something else, and Leveza replied. “It seems she's done a good job of protecting us."

  His voice was loud. “Out, now! You or her or both of you."

  "I'm already out. Haven't you noticed?"

  She stepped back toward the long neck of the cart and slammed back on the yoke. “I don't need you, and I don't have you!"

  She wrenched herself round, almost dragging the cart sideways, turning it down to follow the stream itself. Fortchee shouted for a break. “Afriradors, guard everyone while they drink.” To my surprise, Grama began to limp as fast as she could after Leveza's wagon.

  I couldn't let her go alone, so I followed, taking Choova with me. As we trooped down the hill, we passed Fortchee trudging up the slope,
his head hanging. He ignored us. A Head Man cannot afford to be defied to his face too often.

  I caught up to Grama. We hobbled over rocks, or splashed through shallow pools. Choova rubbed her chin against my flank for comfort. Leveza saw us behind her and stopped.

  "Hello, darling,” Leveza called back to Choova, who clattered forward, glad to see her. They interlaced their heads, breathed each other's breath. I pressed in close, and felt my eyes sting. We were still a family.

  Grama stuck her head over the sides of the wagon. “Thank you,” she told Mai.

  "You nursed me,” said the Cat.

  "Mai?” said Leveza. “This is my groom-daughter Choova."

  "Choova,” said the Cat and smiled, and crawled up the wagon to be nearer. “I have a boy, Choova, a little boy.” Choova looked uncertain and edged back.

  "Is he back ... with the pride?” Leveza asked.

  "Yesh. But he won't want to know me now.” Mai slumped back down in the wagon. “Everything with us is the hunt. Nobody thinks about anything else.” She shrugged. “He's getting mature now, he would have been driven off soon anyway."

  Leveza stopped pulling. “You should drink some water."

  As slow as molten metal, the Cat poured herself out of the cart, halting on tender paws. She drank, but not enough, looked weary, and then wove her unsteady way back toward the wagon. She started to laugh. “I can't get back in."

  Leveza slipped out of harness and we all helped roll Mai onto Leveza's back. Grama sprang back up into the cart, and helped pull up the Cat.

  "Good to be among friends,” Mai whispered.

  Leveza stroked her head. “Neither one of us can go back home,” she said, staring at Mai with a sad smile. Then she looked at me, with an expression that seemed to say, I think she's going to die.

  I wanted to say, I'm supposed to care about a Cat?

  "Don't you get pushed out too,” she said to me, and jerked her head in the direction of the herd. She asked us to bring her lots of lamp fuel, and Grama promised that she would. As we walked toward the others, I couldn't stop myself saying in front of Choova. “She's in love with that bloody Cat!"

  * * * *