WITH TEARS FILLING his eyes, Giacomo lifted Papa Katto onto his back. He was so light, a frail shell of the tomcat he once was, and already blisters and boils were erupting over his body. As Giacomo carried him up to the bedroom, clumps of fur fell onto the stairs, and by the time he’d laid him on the bed, egg-like lumps had swollen his groin and armpits. Most worryingly of all, his breaths were shallow and raspy. A tear ran down Giacomo’s cheek, dripping onto the old cat’s forehead.
Papa Katto blinked and tried to lift his head, but he was too weak. When he finally managed to talk he was barely audible. “Only you can save the village,” he said. The exertion induced a fit of coughing that Giacomo thought would end his days right there and then. It was some time before Papa Katto had the strength to continue. “The plague is a symptom, not a cause, of our sufferings. This village is dying because the Wisdom is lost.”
Giacomo despaired at what had befallen his father. Such was his grief he could barely reply. “What must I do?”
Papa Katto summoned the last reserves of his strength. “You must search for your lost Chalice and drink the Milk of Life. The Ultimate Secret will be revealed. You will understand why cats have nine lives.” He took another moment to pause. “Show others what must be done and save them from the pestilence,” he gasped. “You were born to fulfill this quest. It’s your destiny.”
Exhausted, his head sank back into the pillows. For one horrible moment Giacomo thought that he had died, but Papa Katto was only resting and he raised his head to speak again. “Follow your heart to the Catdom of your birth. Let it be your guide.” His words were so faint, Giacomo strained to hear. “You must trust your heart. Believe and you will succeed.”
“I’m not sure I know how to follow my heart,” he said. Another tear dripped from his cheek.
“You’ll never learn if you’re always given the answers. Some things a cat has to do alone.” He raised a withered paw to stroke Giacomo’s cheek, then it dropped to his side. A smile appeared on the old face, and he said something so softly that Giacomo barely caught it: “Hello, my darling.”
From the corner of his eye, Giacomo thought he saw the faint outline of beautiful femme-cat with long, white fur, but when he faced the mysterious stranger, he could no longer see her, as if she were an illusion, a figment of his bereaved imaginings. When he looked again, his father was dead.
Giacomo threw back his head and wept, his long, painful katerwaul mingling with the wails across the village. He wiped his eyes, suddenly noticing the scent of fire. Smoke was seeping up through the floorboards like dirty mist. He stumbled to the window and stuck his head outside to see what was happening. To his horror, flames were engulfing the whole lower floor of the house, lighting up the immediate surrounds of Mia Miko in the pre-dawn dimness, the heat so intense it singed his whiskers.
On the doorstep below, the last vigilante held a burning torch up high, his face contorted with insanity and rage. Father Miasma’s limbs were blistered, and patches of bald skin were clearly visible on his scalp. A cough racked his lungs. “Death to the sinners!” he screamed, not realizing he was addressing only himself. “Burn in hell!”
He stumbled forward and brushed against the burning doorframe. His pelt was consumed, a living torch from which was spewing a gabble of madness, then he collapsed in a flaming bundle.
When the priest fell silent, Giacomo heard someone calling for him and Papa Katto from inside the house. He leant out of the window, took three deep breaths, and ran to the door through the smoke, now a suffocating, grey-brown cloud. When he reached for the handle, however, it wasn’t there. He panicked and began groping for it, and when he thought he couldn’t hold his breath for much longer, the door opened. Without waiting another second he darted through, but Lucinda de Mewcat was entering from the corridor and they collided.
Lucinda got up, slightly winded by the collision, and told him to hurry. “The front’s in flames,” she said. “Follow me!”
She grabbed Giacomo’s paw, leading him downstairs and out to the back where Felicia was waiting in the alleyway. Giacomo’s lungs burned with every breath. He tried to suppress the urge to cough while Lucinda informed him of what had been happening. Most of the villagers had either fled or died from the plague, and half the buildings had been set on fire; the village was all but destroyed.
He saw Lucinda look anxiously at the burning house. Now completely engulfed, thick black smoke funneled into the sky and drifted overhead like an angry thundercloud. “Don’t bother,” he said, and tears welled in his eyes. “Papa Katto’s dead. The plague.”
Lucinda gaped with shock. Her gaze fell onto the golden bell around his neck. “I’m so sorry, Giacomo,” she said, after a moment. “What will you do now?” She glanced back at the house, then said, “Why don’t you stay with us? You’ve always been part of the family.”
Giacomo shook his head and gripped the bell. “I have to leave Purr Meowni. There’s something I must do to rectify what’s happened.”
He faced Felicia. Her eyes were big and round, crystal pools in which he felt he could swim forever, but her smile, though nonetheless beautiful, was tense, as if there were feelings rising to the surface that she’d been suppressing for some while. He thought he sensed what they were. Like the house, he was afire with feelings that burned more intensely the more he gazed upon her. Could it be these feelings were reciprocated?
“I’ll be back one day,” he said. “You’ll see.”
She wiped away a tear with her paw. “Why do you have to leave now? You’ve never left the village in all your life,” she said.
A moment of awkward silence passed between them. Felicia began to sob. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” he said.
She sniffed and shook her head. “I’m needed here with mama. We also have to try and put right what’s happened.”
Giacomo understood. He rubbed her cheeks, and when he pulled away she momentarily shied her eyes, as if his departing was too unbearable to witness. Saying no more, he turned and headed toward the Mia Miko, but as he passed the burning house, Felicia yelled a sudden warning to look out.
Giacomo stopped and looked back, hoping, perhaps, that she’d decided to accompany him on his journey after all. At that moment, a piece of burning timber crashed to the ground with a solid-sounding crunch! Thousands of sparks were tossed into the air, swirling haphazardly like orange snowflakes. Giacomo stared at the beam with mild bemusement, little concerned that one more step and he would have been crushed to death. He jumped over the flaming piece of wood, onto the unguarded gates.
He didn’t look back.