Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

"Lie down, why don't you, and for a little while at least, put your mind at ease—if you can."

Still anxious to be on their way, she hesitated. Then she sat down, reluctantly, and stretched out. The sensation of the fine, warm granules against her overstressed back and legs was not simply relaxing: it was positively sensuous. Against her better judgment, she allowed herself to be seduced by sun and sand.

Come evening, there was not one among them who did not feel better, indeed revitalized, from the afternoon spent lazing on the beach. There on the sand, they shared a meal that for the first time in days did not involve holding food and water clear of the shallow saltiness that was the Eye. Oskar didn't even mind the occasional grain of sand that crept into his makeshift sandwich of dry flatbread and jerked fish. How he longed for a bone, any kind of bone, to chew on!

The temptation, following the meal and given the sun's downward path, was to remain where they were and sleep the sleep of the just until the morrow. But Mamakitty would have none of it. She had struck a bargain and held her silence on the matter until evening. That time was nigh, and they would use it to make an entry into the city.

"Besides," she encouraged her companions, "if there are any guards on duty, we will catch them at the end of their shift, when their attention is wavering and their principal interest lies in relinquishing their posts."

But there were no guards. Every couple of hundred yards, a vaulted purple archway granted unimpeded ingress to the metropolis. Beneath the ceremonial arches there were no tall gates of wood or metal; nothing to bar travelers from entering or restrain citizens from leaving. For that matter, the splendidly decorated wall the arches connected, with its ornate bas-reliefs of contented folk of many kinds, was low enough for a determined visitor to scale.

Several much taller structures rose on the other side of the wall, overlooking both the city proper and the beach that marked the line where the Kingdom of Purple met the Kingdom of Blue. As the silent travelers wandered in through the nearest arch, they saw that these structures boasted porches that overhung the street. Strands of fine linen and embroidered clothing hung from lines that stretched from building to building like so many very personal pennants from the rigging of a ship. The cobbled paving they soon encountered was pleasantly dry underfoot. For this Oskar was inordinately grateful. He had seen enough of water, even shallow water, to last him a lifetime.

Or at least, he reminded himself, until they had to recross the sea of optic fluid that covered the Eye on their way back.

They had advanced only a short distance into the conurbation when he felt the hair beginning to stiffen on the back of his neck. The cause of this follicular erectation was twofold: first, because of what he was seeing around him, and second, because he no longer had that many hairs on the back of his neck.

Mamakitty was staring back at him. Staring back at him out of the eyes of a deceptively muscular, mature, female black cat. Prominent as ever was the white patch that ran from her nose back toward her left eye. Her ears twitched as she spoke. The hair on top of her head had been noticeably thinned.

"By the tail of the all-consuming Great Tiger, you're a dog again!"

"Look down at yourself," he advised her. "If it's a retransmogrification you're referring to, I'm not alone."

Murmurs of astonishment, agitation, and not a little fear rose from the group. They stood there in the street, all of them except Samm (who had nothing to stand with) and examined themselves. Without warning, without sign or sorceral signification, without dazzle of light or thunder of word, they had reverted to their antecedent animal forms. Their bulky human attire lay in limp piles around them. All that remained of the miraculous transformation that had been elicited by the Master Evyndd's passing was the power of speech. Unsurprisingly, it was Cezer who was first to employ it in his restored feline form. His familiar voice summarized the confused emotions that were racing through them one and all.

"What," the handsome, thickly furred, reddish blond cat ventured through jaws that had broken the back of many an unlucky rodent, "the hell are we going to do now?"

This time, not even Mamakitty had an answer. One thing they could not do, it was generally agreed, was allow themselves to be confronted in their present animal form by the still unseen inhabitants of this kingdom. At least, not until they had become more acquainted with those as yet unseen inhabitants, and had learned something of the lay of the land. There were places, Oskar recalled Master Evyndd saying during their visit to the city of Zelevin, where animals unassociated with humans were rounded up and disposed of without a thought, like trash. While the attitude toward strays might be quite different in the city that dominated the Kingdom of Purple, they could take no chances.

Needing time to collect their thoughts, they decided to return to the beach. Oskar and his feline companions were glad to be back on all fours, and Samm could slither forward at a surprising speed. But of them all, diminutive Taj was the most relieved. In the course of the bewildering shape reversion he had gone from being the weakest and slowest among them to the fastest.

Skimming along overhead, he scouted the route back the way they had come. It was still devoid of citizens, still deserted. Here on the edge of the great city, it appeared, evening was not a time for visiting the border between kingdoms. Or perhaps they had simply been lucky enough to come ashore at a location that was little frequented by the inhabitants.

They raced back through the same arch that had admitted them. Back on the sand, the usually surefooted Oskar unaccountably tripped. He went down in an unceremonious tumble, head over heels. So did every one of his four-legged companions.

They were human again.

Spitting sand, Oskar looked up in response to a pained moan from nearby. Taj was sitting up and holding his head. It was fortunate for the canary, Oskar realized, that he had not been flying too high at the moment of remetamorphosis. The soft sand had cushioned the impact of his fall from the sky, and the songster was only bruised.

"If this kind of rapid transformation is to occur periodically," Samm surmised gravely as he brushed sand from his massive form, "life could become exceedingly confusing."

Cocoa's nude female shape stood silhouetted against the setting sun as she straightened and looked back into the Kingdom of Purple. "Something acted upon us as soon as we entered the city. Some kind of permanent enchantment that is attached to this place. If we go back inside, we might change back all over again."

"Then we have a new problem." Wincing, Taj rose. "I don't see how as our animal selves we can hope to obtain the white light. No one will pay any attention to the demands of a bunch of animals, even if we can make ourselves and our wants understood."

"The magic that returned us to our natural forms left us with the power of speech," Mamakitty observed solemnly. "If that is a constant, then we will be able to explain to the citizens of this place what it is that we want. No matter our appearance, we have to go and find what we have come for. Don't be so disparaging of your natural selves." Seeing the discouragement in their faces, she tried to cheer them. "There are times when cats and dogs can go where humans cannot." She nodded in Samm's direction. "A snake can explore small places, and a bird can give us an overview no human could hope to match. Two legs or four, we'll get what we came for—and leave with it. I've not come all this way to be dissuaded by something as simple as a little change of shape."