The Wildings (30 page)

“Your paws sweat with fear, little hunter,” said the mongoose. Tiny droplets of rain trembled on her silver fur, giving her an eerie, almost ghostly aura. “Is it your clan that bloodies the morning? I had not thought to see the day when wildings hunted their prey across the border of sleep.”

Southpaw stared into Kirri’s red eyes, wishing Miao or Hulo were there with him. There was an angry glint in her eyes that he had not seen at their first meeting.

Far away, a mew he recognized all too well called out to some unseen victim: “Run, meat, run if you can—no? Very well, then. Ratsbane, kill him where he stands.” And Southpaw suddenly understood.

“My kind, but not my clan, Madame Mongoose,” he said, trying to keep his fear out of his voice, and wishing his whiskers wouldn’t tremble so hard. “The Shuttered House opened up after the Bigfoot who lives there died, and the ferals came out this morning.”

The mongoose raised her dainty paws with their deadly claws, standing up as she sniffed the air. “So that was the stink, behind the pall of blood,” she said. “I had wondered. And your teacher? The Siamese? Is she not riding into battle? Will your clan not dance with the ferals today?”

For some reason, Kirri’s words made the kitten feel better, until he thought of how small their numbers were. “I think, Madame Mongoose, that they will. But they are outnumbered: there are only a scant handful of wildings today, against the ranks and ranks of ferals whom Datura leads. The rest of the clan is across the canal, though some may come from the dargah.”

The mongoose’s red eyes flared, and she looked longingly towards the Shuttered House. But then she dropped back onto the ground. “This is between your clans,” Kirri said, “between the ferals and the wildings. And besides, I have hunted the night through. Perhaps I will come back once I have rested.”

They heard another set of screams rise, and Southpaw shuddered. “Perhaps I will come back very soon,” said Kirri, the anger dancing like flames in her eyes. “And you, little hunter?” She sized him up, her sleek head reaching out to sniff at him.

“No,” she said. “Old enough for first hunt is not old enough for first battle. But if I were you, I would bring the other cats. The stink tells me that the ferals surround your clan like flies around a broken honeycomb. A handful of wildings cannot do much—well, no, there is one thing they can do. But in your place, boy, I would run for help.”

Southpaw watched as the mongoose trotted away, not sure whether to be relieved that she had left him unharmed or sorry that she would not stay to fight.

“Madame?” he called. “What is the one thing you mentioned that my clan could do?”

The mongoose turned, and her red eyes bore into his hopeful brown ones.

“They could die well,” she said softly, and then her silver shape disappeared into the bougainvillea bushes.

Except for the sound of the rain beating against the walls outside and Mara’s comforting, tiny purr, the room was silent when Southpaw finished. She washed his neck and flanks, soothing him as best as she could, sensing his distress and fear for his clan.

“That’s why I came here,” he said, his mew muffled because he had pressed his whiskers into Mara’s belly as he told the last of his story. “You’ll be safe here,” she said gently. “And my Bigfeet will feed you—if you don’t want to see them, I’ll mew once I’ve finished eating and they’ll fill my bowl again.”

Southpaw squirmed his head out from under her belly. “I didn’t come for your food, Mara,” he said. “I came because everyone says the Sender helps the clan in times of trouble.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed and her short tail waved uncertainly. “Help the clan?” she said. “But what can I do, Southpaw? I can’t fight like Beraal and Hulo! I’ve never even been outside, except for being under the canal bridge, and that’s not much help, is it?”

“You can send,” he said. “The other cats all say you have more powers than them, so can’t you do something? You don’t know how scary Datura is, and that house was crawling with ferals! There were so many of them, Mara, like cockroaches coming out from everywhere, from behind the sofas, and the cupboards, and that filthy courtyard. Miao and Beraal and all can’t possibly fight them.”

Mara was stropping her claws in agitation on the bedspread, poking small holes in the cloth.

“That’s your clan, not mine,” she said, her green eyes sulky. “They don’t even like me. They think I’m a freak.”

The wind changed again, and as it picked up, Southpaw and Mara both smelled it—fresh blood, fresh fear.

“Mara, this isn’t the time to argue about whether it’s your clan or not,” said Southpaw, almost growling. “Those are my friends who might—Kirri was right, they might die out there!
And they only think you’re a freak because you’ve never come out and met us. And what about Beraal?”

“Beraal came in to hunt me first!” said Mara, her small nose wrinkling at the memory. “And she only teaches me because I’m the Sender.”

“Beraal fought Hulo so that you would stay alive,” said Southpaw, his whiskers rising fiercely. “And when she won, the rest of the cats left you alone, the way you wanted to be! None of them hunted you! And Beraal spends her time with you when she could be out eating juicy rats or lazing at the fakir’s shrine and now Datura could kill her and you don’t care!”

Mara stared at Southpaw, thinking of the times Beraal had been so patient with her, of the times the older queen had come in for the night even though she hadn’t liked being inside.

“I didn’t know Beraal had fought for my life,” she said, her mew quiet. “But what can I do, Southpaw? I’m not a fighter. All I can do is send, and Datura isn’t going to be frightened off by me showing up in the middle of his battle.”

Despite his worry, Southpaw’s whiskers rose in a grin as he thought of how the white cat would react to a small orange kitten bobbing around as he went through his vicious rituals of slaughter. Then his whiskers slumped, as he thought of the wildings who had brought him up from the time he was a tiny kitten. Miao, Katar and Hulo were the closest he’d ever got to having a family, aside from Mara. And what could she do? It seemed unfair that the Sender, the famous Sender that he had heard the other cats talking so much about, had no special powers.

“You’re right,” he said, collapsing into a sad heap of fur near her paws. “Sending isn’t going to help much. I wish you had
other powers. Like being able to grow seven times your size, or have claws as wickedly curved as Kirri’s, or be able to change yourself into something that would really scare Datura.”

“What would scare Datura?” asked Mara, not convinced that the white feral would be scared by much.

“A giant Bigfoot!” said Southpaw, imagining a massive Bigfoot striding towards Datura, picking up the white cat by his scruff. “Or a very large cat.”

“A large growly cat,” said Mara, growling helpfully as she cuddled up to Southpaw. “Datura would be very scared if a cat six times his size went growling at him, wouldn’t he?”

“I wish we could find a cat six times his size,” said Southpaw sadly.

Mara sat up, her ears suddenly alert. “You know what, Southpaw?” she said. “Perhaps we can.”

T
hough the mouse had a clear view, he turned away, unwilling to watch the carnage.

It had been a mellow night. Jethro had discovered an almost-full plate of chicken biryani in a gutter near one of the Bigfeet houses. He spent a glorious couple of hours tunnelling through his dinner, unmolested by rats for a change. In the hour before dawn, he watched the last of the night bats make swooping sorties over his head as it returned to the ancient stone eaves that overhung the baoli.

When the thunder rumbled and the raindrops grew fatter, the mouse found shelter in the tangle of scrub and silk cotton trees near the Shuttered House. At the other end of the grounds, where a neat row of houses indicated the colony of Nizamuddin proper, he could see a large, well-fledged pariah cheel shaking out his feathers—even at this distance, he could tell that they were well and truly soaked. Jethro shivered in sympathy. He
hated his own short brown fur getting wet, and was glad for the shelter of the tree.

The tree’s wide green leaves spread out like graceful hands above the mouse, offering protection from the worst of the rain. Curling up between the gnarled roots, the mouse let the sounds of the morning seep into his dreams without disturbing his sleep. The Bigfeet began to stir, clumping up and down the canal road by the side of the Shuttered House; he ignored them, as he ignored the sleepy chirps of the squirrels, chasing each other through the branches.

He woke with his fur standing on end in premonition, but Jethro didn’t know why. His minuscule paws curled around the bark. In the hedges, a bandicoot sat up, twitching its grey nose, its eyes wide and startled. The rodents made eye contact, but neither could tell what had woken them. The mouse felt his fur tingle unpleasantly, and he looked nervously at the Shuttered House.

The quiet trill of cycle bells and the sounds of Bigfeet hawkers pushing their handcarts down the canal road restored some sense of normalcy. The rain had let up a little, and the steady patter of the drops on the leaves calmed the mouse down. Up on the roof where the mouse had first seen him, the cheel seemed to be testing his pinions, fluttering his feathers like large sails that furled and unfurled in the wind.

Jethro never saw the cats come out, they moved so fast and so silently. It was only when the bandicoot shrieked that the mouse peered in its direction. He squeaked in horror as the bandicoot—a young one, just a baby—twisted in the air, its rump held fast in the jaws of a white cat, its back
legs scrabbling to get free. Then a black cat snapped at its neck, and the poor creature’s cry turned into a gurgle as the blood spilled. “The black should deliver the killing bite,” thought the mouse. “His kill, since he’s closer than the white.”

But to Jethro’s shock, neither cat made any attempt to kill the bandicoot cleanly. Instead, the animal continued to shriek and gurgle as the two cats played with it. “Oh, don’t!” said the mouse. He froze when the white cat turned. Datura’s yellow eye blazed at him, the pupil narrow, black and vindictive. “The meat speaks,” said the cat. “All the meat speaks here, Ratsbane.”

“They’ll shut up when we bite their beaks and snouts off, Datura,” said the black cat, toying with the bandicoot, which lay limply on the hedge between the two cats. “Shall I get the mouse?”

“Later,” said Datura. “First the hedges, then the trees. Does everybody understand? If you find any cats, don’t stop to talk. Kill them. Play with the rest.”

The mouse felt his fur tingle again and raised his eyes from the awful sight of the bandicoot to see a sea of cats fan outwards from the Shuttered House. They were silent as they eddied out, a wave of ferals creeping into the hedges and the gardens: they carried malevolence on their whiskers.

The mouse hesitated, weighing the risks. This was not his battle, and he was too small to take on the ferals. But then he looked again at the limp corpse of the bandicoot, and at the baby squirrels that were poking their alarmed heads out of a hole in the tree, and the mouse made his decision. He stretched his shoelace of a tail around him, his black eyes wary as he called in the loudest squeak he could manage: “The ferals are
out! Run for your lives! Defend yourselves! The Shuttered House is open! The ferals are out!” At the very top of the tree, a cuckoo heard him, stared in disbelief at the ferals, and took up his call. The bulbuls picked up the cuckoo’s alarm, and soon the mynah birds and the sparrows had joined in. Whatever advantage the ferals had hoped to gain by padding out from the Shuttered House in silence had been neutralized by the shrill chorus rising from the trees.

Datura climbed a tree, shaking the squirrels out of the branches to be slaughtered by the cats below. “You have no idea,” he said to the mouse down below, “how good it feels to hunt little, soft, squealing things. It’ll be your turn soon.” The white cat watched Ratsbane go after a nest of screaming bulbuls.

The cats were moving in tight clusters of three or four, quartering the grounds, killing anything they found. The cries of the hedge creatures were piteous, and as if he had read Jethro’s mind, Datura said, “It’ll be even better once we’ve warmed up, meat.” The cat’s tongue hung out of his mouth, as he padded up and down, watching his troops.

The ferals were crazed with blood-fever. The mouse had seen this happen once before, with a clutch of white mice who had been kept as pets. A boy running through the crowded alleys of the dargah had sent their cage crashing down, and the mice had escaped into the maze of perfume shops and biryani sellers. Unused to hunting for their prey, once they had started, they hadn’t been able to stop. They had marauded up and down until one bit the cheek of a Bigfoot baby, and then the Bigfeet had turned on the mice, trapping and slaughtering them. Blood always seemed to draw more blood towards itself.

Ratsbane and three cats had circled an old squirrel who stood his ground, trapped in the roots of a tree. He couldn’t go back up, because a cat sat in the branches, watching him; he couldn’t go forward, where the big black cat lay in wait. The mouse expected him to beg, but instead, the squirrel raised his tail over his head and waited for the cats, his striped face defiant.