For five thousand years the great Mississippi, Ouachita and Red rivers have wound their way through the broad plains of the South, shifting their courses, meandering lazily across the low ground like a sidewinder snaking across desert sands, in no hurry at all to reach their eventual destination in the Gulf of Mexico, for like Sealink they are aware, in some primeval consciousness beyond thought, that the journey is the life, babe. The journey is the life.
Late, very late, in this geological span, when men came to Louisiana across the sea from the Old World, they discovered a fine natural port and the potential for a great settlement, could the swampland but be drained and controlled. And so they built flood walls and levees to channel the course of the Mississippi, and there founded, according to a plan scratched by swordpoint in the ground, a perfect rectangular grid of a city. New Orleans: a most remarkable testament to human ingenuity and determination, to the power they had to change and rule the natural world.
So one might think even now, looking down upon the modern city, with its glittering towers, its freight liners and docks, the elegant houses of the Garden District, the vast mesh of automobile highways and oak-lined avenues, the fantastic causeway across Lake Pontchartrain. But when they trapped the main channel of the mighty river, the backwaters had their revenge.
For thirty or forty miles around the city of New Orleans, as far north and west as Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and south, down to Thibodaux and the delta coast, lies a fluctuating, fragile, secretive and duplicitous landscape entirely inimical to man. There, the parishes of Iberville, Terrebonne, Lafourche, and Barataria eke out a tenuous existence amongst a maze of channels and quagmires, abandoned river channels, or bayous – dead-end cricks and sloughs, marshes, abandoned ponds and oxbow lakes; an impossible place to map; an easy place to be lost in; a breeding-ground for a billion insects, for fish with teeth as sharp as rats’ fangs, and for creatures seeking larger prey…
And all throughout this five-thousand-year period, and well beyond that meaningless man-made time-scheme, the wild roads of the animals of the South have wound their way across and through this area, oblivious to the temporary changes inflicted upon it by humankind. The territory into which the wild roads debouch is still the treacherous, mystical landscape recognized, and avoided, by most humans; but the wild roads have traditionally offered safe passage through this quaggy labyrinth for those cats and other creatures willing to use them for their journeys. Until now.
When Sealink entered, in a state of blind panic and horror, the wild road whose entrance lay between Iberville and Bienville streets in the old French Quarter of the city of New Orleans, she sensed that something fundamental in the nature of the roads had changed since last she had set foot upon them. For a start, all was dark, and the compass winds which all cats know to be not only themselves, but a gale of souls, were silent.
Where were the ghost cats?
It was too quiet.
She raised her great head. The air inside this highway was sluggish and stale, as if the swamps were extending their domain into the very heart of the city.
Perhaps, then, it was this road alone that was affected and, as Téophine had said, no-one used it any more, perhaps not even the shades of earlier cats. But if the road was long abandoned by living and dead alike, it would soon cease to exist. And if that happened, she would have a long and dangerous journey through the bayous. Better run, then, and make use of it while she could. Great paws striking and flexing with every footfall, Sealink let the powerful chemicals of her primal self absorb and dissipate her doubts and fears.
*
So it was that some time later an observer might have seen a rare sight: a great, striped cat emerging as if from nowhere into the fronded shade of a flooded forest. Luckily for Sealink, however, there were no observers here, at least no humans sighting down their hunting rifles for prey – for, if there had been at that precise moment, they might have bagged the trophy of a lifetime and started a fervour of debate about the natural life of the Louisiana swamplands.
Now, just a second or two later, all anyone would have seen was a much smaller member of the felidae family: albeit a large and well-furred calico cat, its patches of orange and black and white now a far more random and less terrifying camouflage arrangement in that strange twilight than her wild-road pelt.
If there were no humans here, of other life there was no lack. Where the highway had been eerily silent, the bayou was bursting with sound. An extraordinary din of life filled the heavy air – chirrups and peeps, buzzing and rasping and whining – heralding the presence of cigarriens and chiggers; crickets and gnats and ticks, and a thousand bird-voiced tree frogs.
Sealink stared at this unfamiliar new environment. Channels, viscous and bubbling with gas, punctuated by islands of floating water hyacinth and natural levees bound together by mud and mangrove roots like claws. Beyond, a tangle of willow and hickory, dog-oak and sweetgum and myrtle, all swathed in trailing beards of grey Spanish moss. Webs inhabited by spiders as large as her head spanned the branches of a nearby cypress.
Sealink shuddered. Where the hell was she to find Mammy Lafeet amongst all this chaos? She turned a tight circle. In particular, how was she to find the Mammy without getting her feet wet?
At that moment there was a loud whirring and a flash of neon green-and-blue and suddenly a pair of large, prismatic eyes were hovering just in front of the calico’s nose, borne up by a rotor of sparkling, translucent wings. Sealink took a surprised step backwards, and found herself hock-deep in water the colour of tea, water that left a shower of tiny black particles plastered over her fur. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the dragonfly banked away steeply and vanished between the dark trees.
Sealink shook out her soaked back legs with an expression of disgust. What sort of place was this that the Mammy had chosen? What the hell kind of cat was she? You’d only retire to this place for pleasure if you were a fish. She rotated her ears back and forth, listened intently; but all she could hear were the tree frogs, gearing up for their evening chorus. The light was fading now, taking with it any semblance of normality.
Cats have remarkable vision, an ability adapted over millennia for efficient hunting. In bright light, the pupil needs only to form the narrowest vertical aperture; in full dark, it will dilate to a full circle to detect and absorb the faintest glow of light, channelling it down thousands of rodshaped cells into the retina and the mirror-like tapetum lucidum, the bright tapestry of feline legend, to give back an extraordinarily clear image of the visual field.
Sealink could feel her eyes adapting to the changing light; but being able to see quite clearly the tangles of vegetation and the wilderness of the bayou made her no happier with her situation. She was, she had to admit, an urban cat; by birth and choice. She liked streetlights. She liked the bright neon of restaurant signs. Even the glare of a pair of car headlamps would have been welcome here.
Instead she was faced with the gathering, unrelieved, foetid darkness of unreconstructed swampland.
She was just about to re-enter the wild road and try a different exit, when a whirring and a disturbance of the air behind her ears alerted her to the return of the dragonfly.
‘Hello, little guy.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally loud. She looked around, feeling more than a little foolish.
Instead of disappearing again on its erratic flight-course, the dragonfly circled her head. It buzzed at her, the lenses of its eyes twinkling furiously, and Sealink almost thought she heard it say something. Then it veered off into a stand of willows, and, even as the calico turned to watch it, it was back, its whirring and buzzing even more insistent. This time, it clipped her nose with a wing-tip, a featherlight brush, and a minute, tinny voice sounded in the back of her ear:
‘Follow.’
Sealink shook her head as if to dislodge a flea. She must be going crazy. Still, why not? She’d fit right in here. Feeling dislocated from her species and her own experience, the calico made a leap from the floating island on which she stood to the more substantial ground where the willows grew. Ahead of her, the dragonfly dipped and darted; and Sealink followed.
*
A short while later, led far into the swampland, Sealink was distracted by an interesting smell. It was quick and sharp and warm-blooded, and not far away. The calico had never been the most skilled of wild hunters: travelling with the Queen of Cats across the desolate moors of Cornwall they might well have starved had it not been for Pertelot’s unexpected talent. Give Sealink a trash can, however, and she would rip the life out of it in seconds; but there weren’t too many of those great symbols of civilized life around here, and, not having eaten for hours, she was, she realized suddenly, ravenous. Let the dragonfly hover for a moment: she’d inspect the food-source.
Some yards to the left, beneath a stand of mallows, there sat a fat rat. Sealink had seen others of its kind in her past, but right now its precise taxonomy seemed unimportant. It sat there, apparently petrified by her presence, the moonlight glinting off its beady black eyes, exuding a fine, strong reek of well-salted food. The calico, delighted with her luck, squatted into stalking mode, waggled her ample bottom until she had the beast properly sighted, and launched herself into the mallows. From its lair, the nutrea rat watched her with alarm, then, as soon as she leapt – a great, ungainly mass of fur and claws – shot neatly into the water.
Sealink paced up and down the bank, hoping that it might have a very short memory, as some more stupid rodents do, and return to its lair, but the water remained smooth and silent in its wake and after some minutes she had to concede that the rat really had vanished.
When she turned around and retraced her steps, so had the dragonfly.
Sealink cursed her stupidity. She was lost, lost, lost. The wild road lay far behind her and would be impossible to locate until morning; perhaps not even then. All she could see in any direction were the dim shapes of trees, the glimmer of water through vegetation. All she could hear were a thousand cicadas serenading one another as if the night was their world alone.
All she could smell was rot.
For no apparent reason she recalled something she’d once heard down on the boardwalk from one of the older toms, about the disappearance of a cat who lived out on a shrimp-boat.
‘Fell in the water, Mama,’ the old white cat had said. ‘Fell into the bayou and his body got et by crawfish.’
And Sealink, with the sublime wit and cheek of youth, had retorted, ‘Ain’t you got that the wrong way round, Chalky?’
Now, with the wisdom of age, the calico recognized the eternal truth in this reversal of nature. Everything got recycled, from the greatest tree to the largest beast. It fell, it rotted, it was eaten by shrimp and the mudbugs and the scavengers; and they fell and died and were eaten in their turn. Just as cats lived and died to fuel the wild roads, so the rest of the natural world made its own simple, elegant economy. But Sealink knew with sudden force that she was not yet ready to submit to that process. She grimaced defiantly into the dark and, all of her senses on the qui vive, walked determinedly on.
*
Some time later she had walked a fair distance and had begun to feel more confident. The starlight clarified the definition of objects whenever there was a gap in the canopy, allowing her to identify a stationary owl upon a branch, the tall white flowers of an arrowroot, a cricket frozen against the bark of a live oak; but when something shifted in her peripheral vision, it seemed to come from the dark hollow between two logs, and, even with her night sight working overtime, she couldn’t quite make out the originator of the movement. She stepped closer, her paws making no sound on the soft leaf-mould underfoot.
Then, suddenly, something shone out of the gloom.
An eye!
She sprang back, swallowing a cry. It was a big, golden eye, glowing in the darkness. With a sigh of relief she recognized the vertical black slit of another cat’s pupil.
‘Mammy Lafeet!’
The relief was immense. It washed through her like hot milk.
‘You sure take some findin’, Momma. Can’t imagine why anyone should want to hide themselves away from civilization to such an extent – not that it’s all that civilized back there at the moment. Which is why I need to talk to you. But first things first, eh, podna? After that trek I sure could do with some nourishment, y’know honey. You don’t happen to have a little something I could chew on while we talk, do you?’
The eye regarded Sealink steadily.
Then, even as she was congratulating herself on locating the Mammy at the dead of night in the midst of this fearsome wilderness, the eye blinked, and the relief curdled in her stomach.
The eye had blinked sideways, like a camera shutter.
Sealink’s mind scrambled to make sense of this observation. Perhaps the Mammy was suffering from some kind of optical disorder. Perhaps she was lying with her head on one side. Perhaps—
Then another detail insinuated itself neatly into this rickety structure of rationalizations. The pupil that split the golden eye was the narrowest of lines, yet she could feel her own pupils distended to full, black circles in this darkness.
Not the Mammy, then.
Not even a cat.
Her paws started to go numb with shock.
Then whatever it was moved, and a second golden eye came into view. The eyes were some distance apart, and did not look straight ahead. They twinkled at her. There was a subtle movement and the starlight picked out rows of crooked ivory gleaming beneath the eyes. They looked like teeth.
Sealink stared. They were teeth. More teeth than she had ever seen on any creature in the world. In a strange empathy of panic, the calico cat suddenly found herself baring her own teeth; but they felt pathetically small in comparison.
Then it spoke. Its voice was loud and cultured, deep and French and definitely male.
‘Eating is good.’
It paused. Sealink could feel its cold stare assessing her snack-value.
‘I like to eat, as do all the beasts of the earth, for the sin of our existence.’
Its lower jaw dropped down. Sealink stared into the depths of a vast, glistening maw. The stench was overwhelming. Perversely, she found herself examining its dental array. Some of the teeth were sharp and pointed. But others, many others, were broad and inturned, and little scraps of something indefinable were wedged between them. The word ‘alligator’ slowly permeated the calico’s brain and she felt her joints turn to water. Then the jaws snapped shut with an echoing thud an inch or two away from her nose. The alligator grinned.
‘Dead things have the most subtle bouquet, I find. Especially dead things which I have stored away in the bayou for a week or two, down beneath the roots of the mangrove. When they have marinated in the tannin of these fine brackish waters they have…’ the alligator considered ‘…a certain piquancy. A certain je ne sais quoi. Would you like to visit my secret store, little cat?’
One eye blinked for a second then focused sharply on her again. Sealink realized, with a sudden twinge of hope, that it had winked at her. She struggled to find her voice.
‘Er, not right now, babe. Maybe some other time?’
The grin widened a crack.
‘That’s a shame, chérie. I have a nook down there that’s just your size. Unfortunately I visited my store only a short while ago and gorged myself on the most succulent little white-tailed deer you could ever imagine. Ciel!’ It smacked its chops together appreciatively. ‘Sheer bliss.’ It pushed itself up on its stubby arms so that Sealink could observe the great swell of its scaly belly. ‘Indeed, I am so full it hurts. I couldn’t fit in another morsel. Vraiment, c’est dommage, it is a profound pity, mon ange: it has been such a long time since I had the pleasure of partaking of the subtle flesh of a feline friend.’
Sealink decided to push her luck.
‘You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find a very old, and I’m sure extremely stringy, feline known as the Mammy Lafeet, would you?’
The alligator laughed, a strange creaking sound like a dead branch sawing in the wind. ‘Even creatures of the greatest age and gristle become tender when subjected to my fine Louisiana marinade, chérie.’
‘Oh.’
‘Although I pride myself on being a true gourmand—’ he leered ‘—even I must draw the line somewhere. And the Mammy has, how you say, “laid the bones upon me”. I eat her: I die of the bellyache. This is what she promises me. Not a friendly gesture in this cruel and hostile world. Not the sort of hospitality one would expect from a neighbour. Alors, I think she is not to my taste, pour le déjeuner, or as company! You however…’ he paused.
The calico watched him distrustfully, flight plans formulating swiftly in her head.
‘…may keep on walking. She’s somewhere out there.’ He waved a tiny, clawed hand airily. ‘Eh bien, it is time now for my swim. Life on the levee is hard and lonely. Do visit with me again, bébé, when you are passing in this direction.’ He finished with a toothy grin, ‘I will be sure to make you welcome, chérie.’
Then, with a slither and a great splash, the alligator launched himself into the bayou. He lay there in the murky water, his eyes just above the surface. After a few moments he winked again – a wink of vast and deliberate irony – and was gone with a flick of the tail.
The calico watched the water for some time to make sure he was not suddenly going to erupt out of the bayou in a thunder of spray and down her in a single gulp, then, affecting nonchalance, strolled with stiff-legged anxiety through the alligator’s reeking domain and into the dark vegetation on the other side of the logs.
A narrow escape, that.
She shook her head irritably.
The damned dragonfly was back. She heard it well before she saw it, descending from above the canopy as if homing in on a target. A few seconds later she realized that the target was her. Then she thought: what the hell is a dragonfly doing out and about at night? Like other bugs they liked the sunlight, used its warm rays to stir to life their cold insectile blood.
She stared up into the darkness. ‘Come near me, fishbait, and you’re history!’ The whirring continued, grew louder. She snapped at the air. ‘I ain’t kiddin’. You led me right into that set of jaws on legs, so get too close and I’ll have me a little bitty crunchy snack.’
‘Follow!’
This time the voice was unmistakable; and beneath the high-pitched buzzing there was even inflection and cadence.
But how could it speak, let alone intonate? No bug she’d ever ate even had vocal chords…
Sealink shivered. Perhaps it was all in her head. Certainly, something weird was going on here.
The fly was visible now, its magnificent wings iridescent in the starlight, hovering about a foot above her head.
‘Come at once. Want to drown, foolish cat? I lead you and what you do? Take eye off me. You chase rat. You miss it! Then you get lost!’ It tutted. Sealink could almost see it shake its tiny head in vexation. When it continued its tone was severe. ‘Walk into Monsignor Gutbag. Greed meets greed. And you blame me! Ingrate.’ A pause. Then, so softly that Sealink could barely catch it, ‘Not called fishbait.’
That was it. She was definitely losing it. She was lost in the most horrible wilderness she could ever have imagined; an alligator had nearly had her as a postprandial treat, and now she was getting lectured by a dragonfly!
‘Mammy close. Follow now. Pay attention this time.’
Sealink sighed and followed as instructed.
*
The dead time between day and night, those two or three hours that precede the rising of the sun, when humans lie in the deepest trenches of their sleep and diurnal beings take to their burrows, is the time when the felidae and other creatures of the night tend to be at their most active and acute.
Sealink, however, preferred to sleep at this time, particularly when there was no food to be had. It took her mind off things. She would also have been the first to concede that full dark could make her a little edgy. She was not, therefore, in the best frame of mind for her next discovery.
On the barely discernible track along which the dragonfly led her there had been at intervals a number of partially rotted and foul-smelling objects which might once have been small rodents or reptiles. A few yards further and there was a small turtle shell, minus its occupant. Then cat and dragonfly rounded a bend and emerged out into a small clearing, in the middle of which lay two large identically round stones like garden ornaments, and something else…
This object stood higher than her head and seemed to soak up all the available starlight, which it gave back in a great albescent glow, illuminating its component parts: an intricate, obsessive jigsaw of skulls and ribcages, spinal columns and hip-bones; fishbones and rigid claws; open beaks and empty orbital sockets – the ghastly remains of a thousand soulless bodies.
Sealink stared, for a moment trapped motionless in her native curiosity. She sniffed at the bone-mountain. Then she tapped it cautiously with a paw. At once, the entire heap collapsed, sending tiny skulls and skeletons skittering down upon her, as cold and smooth and light as a shower of dead beetles.
The calico recoiled as if shot, fetching up against one of the large round stones; but as soon as she bumped into it, the stone also started to move.
Not sure which way to run next, Sealink stared wildly around her. What sort of place was this where nothing was as it seemed?
Overhead, the dragonfly zigzagged furiously, buzzing like a creature possessed, then made itself scarce in the dark canopy beyond the clearing.
The stone continued to uncurl itself – as a rock should not – revealing a number of stout armour-plates which now expanded and flexed; and suddenly produced some feet, followed by a long, delicate-looking snout and a pair of eyes which blinked in bewilderment. Whatever it was smelled quite strongly of earth and swamp, and, when it finally saw the calico cat, all four of its little clawed feet left the ground at the same time and it leapt high in the air in a parody of terror, all the time wailing, ‘I wasn’t asleep! I wasn’t!’
It came to rest in front of Sealink. It blinked myopically at her.
‘You ain’t the Mammy.’
‘I know that.’
‘I wasn’t asleep. Honest.’ It looked sly.
‘Honey, I don’t give a damn—’
At this point the second ‘stone’ began to move. Sealink watched it with suspicion in case it revealed some other strange ability apart from imitating rocks and vertical jumping.
Unfurling itself with greater dignity than its partner, alerted perhaps to the presence of a stranger by the recent kerfuffle, the second ‘stone’ came to its feet smartly and declared, ‘Reporting for duty, ma’am.’
‘What?’
It gave her a hard, evaluating squint.
‘Thought you might be official.’
‘?’
‘From the Mammy – checking up on us.’
Sealink felt a strange wash of emotions: relief that Mammy Lafeet must finally be close by; rapidly followed by disorientation and self-doubt.
‘Who the hell are you and what are you talking about?’
‘How do we know this isn’t a test?’ It sidled closer, snuffling. Sealink put a paw out defensively. Her claws popped from their sheaths and gleamed in the cold light.
‘Back off, buddy.’ Definitely not as fearsome as the alligator. She decided to take a stern tone with it. ‘Look, I’m here to see the Mammy. I ain’t here to play games. Please go find her and tell her she has a visitor.’
‘You knocked over our pile.’
The first guard now had its back to Sealink and its companion and was trundling disconsolately around the debris, gathering skulls into one heap, fishbones into another.
‘Er, yes. Sorry.’
‘Took us ages, that did.’
It started to stack bones haphazardly. The new foundations reached a height of perhaps five inches, tottered and collapsed. At once the second guard waddled over, muttering disapprovingly, ‘Not like that. Don’t you ever learn? Start with these…’
She’d get no sense out of these guys. Shaking her head, Sealink left them to it.
*
Some yards beyond the clearing, the calico found herself at the water’s edge again and out in clear, if stifling, air. A dull glow in the eastern sky announced that dawn might not be far off, for which she found she was truly grateful. She sat down to await the new day, staring out over the spreading ripples of rising fish. Eventually, new light lent colour to her strange surroundings. It infused the pink of the mallow flowers and the lilac of the water hyacinths. It delineated the leaves of the dog-oak and the fronds of the buckler fern and crept into the duckweed on the surface of the bayou to light it to a phosphorescent, neon green. It marked out a snapping turtle on a rotting log, long neck stretched out to catch the first of the rays, his mouth as leathery and puckered and downturned as that of a toothless old man.
Sealink was just about to address the turtle when a voice above and behind her made her jump.
‘Que veux-tu – what you at?’
The speaker was positioned precariously upon the boughs of a moss-shrouded tree, the angularity of her posture enhancing the dry dustiness of her sparse fur. Her claws, buried in the deeply fissure bark, were as yellowed and gnarled and horny as old tortoiseshell and her coat was fiercely brindled – a dull orange which must once have been tiger-bright, overlain with a complex patchwork of black. Her eyes were hidden in shadow, and Sealink found herself suddenly and unexpectedly as unsure as a kitten.
‘Que veux-tu?’ the cat in the tree rasped again.
‘I— I came to seek the Mammy Lafeet.’
‘What your bidness?’
‘The cats of the French Quarter need help – they’re dying. It’s all gone crazy…’
The old cat cackled. ‘We all crazy, honey; and we’s all dyin’, too. You had a long and wasted journey, chile.’
‘Are you the Mammy?’
‘The Six-Toed Cat. Kadiska. The Watcher at the Threshold. Madame Lafeet. The Mammy. T’ey call me many names.’ She leapt down from the branch with an agility surprising in one so aged. The rising sun revealed eyes veiled in milky cataracts, but she fixed the calico squarely with her gaze and pronounced, ‘Maybe I let you call me Eponine.’
‘Merci bien, madame.’ She bowed her head. Even Sealink knew enough to remember her manners in the presence of a Guardian, however fallen. But to refer to her as Eponine, an ordinary, if antiquated, Cajun name, seemed faintly sacrilegious, or even dangerous. Was this some sort of test? Then she realized that an anticipatory silence had fallen and that the Mammy was regarding her sharply. ‘They call me many things too. I was known as Rocket when I lived in Houston, and Amibelle in Missouri. In Alaska a guy called me Trouble. And in Europe— hell, I forget. Down on the Moonwalk I had the name of the Delta Queen. My friends—’ she paused. What friends? Who was she kidding? She cleared her throat, started again. ‘Folks mostly call me Sealink. After a boat I once came in on.’
‘Sealink.’ The old cat savoured the word in her soft Creole. ‘It is good that we trade names with one another, chile. It is a matter of trust, hein? Cats’ names are important: they are words of power. So, Sealink. A traveller. One who bridges many worlds. Un voyageur. A cat bearing news and a gift of gold who crosses oceans – an ocean of salt, and of fire.’
‘Fire?’ Sealink was alarmed.
‘I have myself passed through fire. I have smelled the smell of fire,’ pronounced Eponine in a singsong voice. She turned a serene face to her visitor. ‘Viens.’
Without checking to make sure the calico was following she disappeared abruptly into the dense undergrowth and, stepping neatly between aerial roots and knots of vegetation, made her way unerringly to another, hidden shore of the bayou, and the upturned hull of a small wooden boat, its timbers weathered to silver by the passing seasons.
All around the skiff lay an assortment of tiny bones and feathers, some arranged in curious patterns, others scattered as if at random, all making a stark contrast against the peaty ground. The Mammy sat down and began to pat some loose bones into a small pile. She looked up at the calico and her mouth parted to reveal a few sharp, white teeth in what might have been a smile; or maybe it was just senility. Sealink found it hard to tell.
‘Eh bien, cher: you made a long journey down old roads to get here. You taken your life like a mouse in your mouth – une souris dans ta bouche – and held it tight but gentle through fear and peril. You been through hazard to reach me, alors, je pense que t’as bonne raison. I figure you got just cause. And even though you ain’t brung the Mammy no cadeau, because I sense you got troubles, I’m gonna allow you to ax me three silver questions, and in exchange I give you three silver answers.’
The calico looked bewildered.
‘Honeychile, you gets to ax three questions. Don’t you ever listen to no stories?’
‘I’m sorry I don’t have a gift for you. But only three questions? I got hundreds.’ Sealink was appalled.
‘Got plenty to choose from then, cher.’
Sealink thought about this for a minute. Her stomach growled. If she were to ask the Mammy for some food, would that count as one of her three questions? It seemed rather harsh. Perhaps she could phrase it in a different fashion…
Eponine cackled, a short, staccato sound like an old cat dislodging hairballs. ‘You don’t need to waste no questions, honey: your belly is most eloquent. First we eat: t’en we consult the bones.’
*
They ate. The Mammy appeared to have an enormous and secret cache of food. She had vanished into the undergrowth and re-emerged a few moments later dragging the best part of a dead catfish, its eyes white with glaze and a querulous bottom lip protruding, as if out of disappointment at its fate. And while they ate, they talked: or rather, the Mammy, who had an appetite like a bird, talked while Sealink tore at the catfish and listened, making sure to ask no inopportune questions. It seemed there were still creatures who wished to seek advice from an old, wise cat. And when they came, they brought gifts and tributes – little offerings of food and dead things to add to the old cat’s bone-pile; not just as payment for the favour they asked, but to appease the bad spirits that might surround so powerful a seer. They came from out of the swamps, where they shared a house, or at least a garbage can, with the fragile fishing communities, making a small living from the brackish waters of the bayous where freshwater met salt and they netted the shrimp and crawfish, sheepheads and drumfish, redfish and bass that sold to the restaurants and markets of the city. Some even hunted and skinned alligators.
‘I encountered an alligator on my way here.’
‘I know dat, honey. You met wit’ Monsignor Gutbag.’ Despite the fish-scales around her mouth, the Mammy looked supremely serene, in control of a whole world of knowledge to which the calico had no hope of access.
Monsignor Gutbag: the very name the dragonfly had applied to the beast. A deep furrow scored Sealink’s forehead, but she kept her lip buttoned.
Eponine regarded her through slitted eyes. A tiny buzzing sound rose from her throat, followed by a tiny voice barely more than a reverberation.
A gasp of amazement escaped from the calico. It was an uncanny piece of mimicry. But how could a cat use an insect thus? Sealink had the sense of being teased.
‘I have my ways. Proxies can be very useful to a cat wit’ bones as old as mine, but I got to take what I can – flies, armadillos… T’ey ain’t too smart, but when you stuck out here you don’t get much choice. Even so,’ she fixed Sealink with a gimlet stare, ‘it takes two to work: one to guide and one to follow; and if the one who follows don’t pay attention – bouff!’ She expelled a great cheekful of air that bespoke irritation and waste. ‘You take my meanin’? So when you ax your t’ree questions, cher, you listen real good, ’cos when da bones talk t’ey can be real obscure.’
So saying, the Mammy retrieved a collection of bones from beneath the timbers of the boat. They lay in morning light, pale against the dark ground.
‘Touch da bones, chile.’
Sealink sniffed at them but they gave back no clue of their origin. They looked smooth and polished with wear, their ends yellowing with age.
‘Touch da bones.’ The Mammy’s voice was suddenly fierce. ‘Touch dem and t’ink about your questions. Concentrate wit’ the wildest part of yourself. Make dem a part of you. Believe in da bones.’
Sealink tried to clear her mind of all but those questions that demanded answers, but her thoughts milled about subversively – thoughts of times long gone, pointless memories of meals she had eaten, places she had been. She remembered eating noodles with Tom Yang outside a Bangkok temple; sharing fried chicken with the cats on the boardwalk. She remembered mates she had taken and friends she had made. She remembered Cy and Pertelot and an old seacat by the name of Pengelly and how he had been good to her when she had been less than kind to him; she remembered Dustbin and Francine – and cut the thought off before the guilt came. Then there came through the mêlée of images a pair of mismatched eyes, one cool blue and one a lively orange: eyes that gleamed at her with love and pride and amazed delight out of a brindled face, and suddenly she could think of nothing but an old scarred tomcat with frilled ears and a taciturn manner; a cat called Mousebreath, of his taste and his smell and how they had lain together under the arches at Coldheath, and how after that first mating he had stolen for her two cooked sausages off the plate of a surprised man in a café behind the market, and, legs pumping, had raced all the way back so out of breath and full of adrenalin that he couldn’t say a word, but only dropped them, steaming with flavour, at her feet, with saliva dripping off his chin and a wicked look in his orange eye… and all at once her heart contracted in a single pulse of agony as the memory of her loss tore through her for the first time since that terrible meeting at Tintagel, when Tag had told her how he died; and she opened her mouth and wailed as if her heart would burst.
The sound ripped out into the quiet, sticky air of the bayou, and was gone: absorbed by the moss and the waters; and suddenly Sealink felt a profound calm settle over her. It was not acceptance, but something more, something that would bear examination at a later time, perhaps. Then another face swam into her mind. Silver and barred with a darker shade, eyes of lambent green: eyes filled with anxiety and a vast responsibility. It was Tag; but why she should think of him at such a time, she could not imagine.
Tintagel and the King and Queen lay far behind her now. The journeys they had made; the battle they had fought, like stories from another age. She was in the New World now, or so humans termed it: but what did they know? All the world was old, as ancient as the Great Cat from which it sprang. And something was very wrong with it, something which made her bones sing out to the bones on the ground beneath her paws; and all at once some of the responsibility she had seen shining in a silver cat’s eyes had found a home inside her, and she knew what her first question must be. She opened her eyes and stared at the Mammy.
‘Eponine. Tell me: what was gone so wrong in the world that the cats of the city are sick and persecuted?’
The Mammy closed her eyes and fell amongst the bones. She rubbed her cheek-glands upon them. She rolled onto her back and twisted her spine against them. She leapt to her feet and danced upon them, and Sealink had a fleeting memory of the jig that she and Baron Raticide had shared down on the Moonwalk only a few days before. Then the Mammy scooped up the bones and juggled them with clever paws. Balanced between momentum and gravity for a moment they hung, freighted with magic; then fell in a series of dry clicks to the ground, where they made a curious, disjointed creature, a creature with three legs and a single round of vertebra for a head.
Eponine looked at the pattern the fall of bones had made, then jumped away from the symbol as if scalded. She started to murmur to herself, agitated little grunts and grimaces; but the calico could make out not a word.
At last, Sealink could bear it no longer. ‘What do the bones say?’
The Mammy stared right through her. Then in the strange singsong voice she had adopted earlier, she announced, ‘Dans le coeur… Isaac le Noir et le Chat Noir… la danse macabre. Bon ’ti ange et gros ’ti ange, ils dansent toujours. Ils mangent le monde jusqu’à la mort… Les rues sauvages se meurent… Ça ne finit pas… Tempora mutantur… Et les rêves—’
‘Speak English!’ Sealink was beside herself with frustration.
But the Mammy was oblivious.
‘Les trois. Les trois sont perdus. Ils doivent être retrouvés. C’est tout ou rien. All or nothing.’
Now the Mammy fell silent. Sealink stared at her. ‘What? I don’t understand – I don’t speak that stuff. C’mon, be fair. I got the “all or nothing” bit, and I can kinda see it’s a desperate situation out there, but that sure don’t help me understand things.’
The brindled cat said nothing. Sealink felt a wave of despair. After everything, was this all she would leave with? A few words of broken French she didn’t understand? Suddenly she was furious. Running across the bones, she grabbed Mammy Lafeet by the scruff of the neck and shook her like a rat.
‘I ain’t got no time for all this voodoo shit, Granma. Make it plain English or I’ll eat your heart out.’
The Mammy gurgled something. Sealink set her down, sides heaving with spent fury. Then she realized the old cat was laughing.
‘Eating the heart out. Yes, yes, very good. C’est la même chose. It’s all the same. You understand without knowing it. Ha ha ha!’
Sealink sat down in confusion.
‘Eh bien, cher. Your second question?’
‘What the hell’s the point of my asking anything if the answers come back in gibberish?’
The old cat considered. ‘You know, honey: you locked into somet’ing here and you don’t even know it.’ She mused, eyes half-shut. ‘I once met a cat, chile, a cat who read and he tole me some oddities. Gibberish – ah, t’at’s an interestin’ one. Dat word come from a human man called Geber, an ancient alchemist who hid his knowledge in a secret language which no other human could make sense of.’ She fell silent for a moment, then her eyes opened wide.
‘I feel the hand of an alchemist in this. I feel the hand of a human who cannot leave the secrets of the world untouched.’
‘But the Alchemist is dead. I saw him die. Him and the Majicou together.’
‘What your eyes see is not always the beginning and end of truth.’
This was enough of metaphysics for Sealink. She was a cat who trusted the evidence of her eyes. ‘Can’t believe nothin’ else,’ she’d always said, and there was still a part of herself which felt this whole journey was no more than a foolish charade, the casting of the bones a ridiculous, superstitious game. Another question was hovering. It seemed inconsequential in comparison to the first, but even so—
‘What was in the cadeau I brought to Kiki La Doucette?’
The Mammy regarded the calico with suspicion.
‘You a friend of Kiki’s?’
‘Er, no… not exactly.’
‘Because if you are, ça finit ici – it ends here.’
‘I’m not, truly.’
Eponine dealt the bones again. This time she cast them high in the air, and when they came down they had formed a rough circle with a single dot of a bone in its centre.
‘Gold. It is the symbol for gold.’
‘Oh.’
So there it was. She had dragged a lump of gold through the streets of the French Quarter. But what cat would have a use for inert metal? Her brain struggled with metaphors, then gave up. She’d had an answer in plain English, and she was still no closer. So much for her attempt to seek wisdom, to find the knowledge that would free the cats of New Orleans from the strange affliction that had them in its grasp; so much for understanding why the humans of the city had started to hate them so. Téophine would be disappointed. Téophine, and Red.
A twists of the stomach, a flush of shame. After the Pestmen had done with them, there would be no Téophine and Red to explain all this to…
Her last question. Giving up all pretence at selflessness, Sealink decided on this: ‘I had five kittens once upon a time. I believe I know about four of ’em. But if the last is still alive, where can I find it?’
For the final time, Mammy Lafeet cast the bones. They landed all over the place. She shuffled around them, putting her head on one side then the other. She screwed her face up as if trying to focus on something very small. At last she pronounced:
‘Two are with the Great Cat
Two are with La Mère.
The fifth lies between.’
‘Look. I know you can only tell me what the bones tell you, but at least try to give me some help here,’ Sealink pleaded. ‘This is my kittens we’re talking about. I travelled half the world to find my family.’
The Mammy sighed. ‘Chile, I tole you the bones could be obscure. But kittens are special. I know that, for my pain.’ She brushed her paw over the bones again. When it reached a particular outlier she groaned. She passed the paw back and forth across it, gazed at it till her eyes crossed. Then she said:
‘Seek for a sun of fire in the Fields of the Blessed.’
Sealink stared hopelessly at her. Then she shrugged. ‘What the hell? I ain’t never believed in any of this stuff in my life. It probably don’t work for disbelievers, huh?’
Eponine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, chile. I tried.’
She leaned across the space between them, the sacred space of the bones, and touched the calico lightly on the muzzle.
‘I see somet’ing else, too.’
She looked the younger cat in the eye and Sealink thought that for a second the Mammy’s milky cataracts seemed to clear, like clouds moving slowly across a moon.
‘Sometimes da bones offer a gift, chile. La Verte te bénisse. The Great One must be watchin’ over you. She says you will be healed, cher. Oh yes, your heart will be healed.’
‘It ain’t broke.’ At once the calico was all defence, fur bristling.
The Mammy smiled knowingly. ‘Da bones never lie.’
‘Yeah, well they can be damned obscure with the so-called truth. Anyway,’ Sealink deflected hurriedly, ‘what did you mean about it finishing here if I was a friend of Kiki’s?’
The Mammy rubbed a paw across her face. She looked old and very weary.
‘You stay away from Kiki La Doucette. You have a good heart, cher, for all your impatience. And Kiki is – how shall I say? – traîtresse. She is poison, honey: a traitor – to all cats, and especially to me.’
‘How do you know that, way out here? Did you read it in the bones?’
‘How do I know? Didn’t she usurp my position and drive me out of my city? Why you t’ink I’m out here and she’s queening around callin’ herself La Mère? I know her poison better than most. I should; for I bore her. Elle est la mienne. I am her mother.’