Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

Oskar nodded, then looked seriously at Cocoa. "Do you think maybe Cezer's right? That we should put aside our task and remain here?"

She shook her head, as pert in feline form as it had been in human guise. "What kind of animals would we be if we abandoned the one important undertaking we had ever been given? Not by a master: that's only a word. Myself, I always thought of good Evyndd as a friend. A large, clumsy, ungraceful, but well-meaning friend." She nodded once. "I'll see this undertaking through to the end—for my friend."

"Spoken like a true cat," Mamakitty murmured admiringly. Pivoting, she presented her tail. Held high, the tip provided a comfortable perch for the smallest member of their expedition. "I'm sure that once we've located the white light, Cezer will realize where his loyalties lie and come to his senses."

"What 'senses'?" Cocoa growled. "The word doesn't apply to Cezer. Pfft! The only senses that cat possesses are base ones."

"Don't be too harsh on him," Taj told her. "This place calls strongly even to me." He punctuated his point with a brief but joyful burst of song. "The temptations are many."

She sniffed grudgingly, whiskers bobbing. "Then we'd best gather him up and be about our business, before he takes off after some flying scrap of paper or loose piece of string and we have to waste time running him down."

They found Smegden cloistered with a cluster of chipmunks, squirrels, and tree rats. Demonstrating that human hands were not required to carry out higher manipulative functions, they were playing a complicated board game with leaves substituting for squares and different-shaped seeds for markers. Those onlookers not actively engaged in play chattered incessantly—which, considering the characteristic speciation of those present, was to be expected.

As he moved a small oblong seed three leaves forward and one sideways, the aggravated mouse caught sight of his former charges. "Botheration!" he snapped. "Now what? Didn't you get any sleep?"

"Plenty of sleep," Mamakitty assured him. "In fact, we're so well rested that we'd like to see some more of the wonders of the Kingdom of Purple."

"What, do I look like a tour guide to you?" he squeaked in exasperation.

"No," she replied. "You look like breakfast. But I've already eaten. Can't you show us around for a little while? Just enough so that we can get ourselves oriented?"

Shaking his head sadly, Smegden turned his portion of the game over to the chipmunk squatting next to him and hopped over to confront his tormentors. "Babysitter to cats and dogs," he muttered irritably. "Snakes and canary birds." He sighed. "Maybe after one quick tour you'll be ready to settle down. And to leave me alone!"

"Maybe," Oskar agreed enticingly.

"Very well then." Impatiently, Smegden tapped the ground with one foot. Since Mamakitty already was serving as a mobile roost for Taj and since Cezer was not in the best of moods to serve as mount for a mouse, Oskar kneeled down so the mouse could scamper up onto the top of his head.

"Fagh!" Even though his scruffy steed could not see the gesture, Smegden made a production of waving both tiny hands in front of him as if to clear the air from in front of his face. "Cats may be more inherently wicked, but at least they smell better! Oh, well—come on, then. Straight ahead, and take the first right once we're out of the Commons."

For all his confirmed irritability, the acerbic Smegden proved to be as congenial a guide during the day as he had been the previous night. He showed them the Council Hall, afire with purple gems, where the Chosen of Faerie and other enchanted electors met to discuss matters of importance affecting the entire kingdom. They visited the stablelands, home to cloven-footed animal folk, where giraffes raced griffins and antelope streaked with makeup competed in high jumping against gravel-voiced jackaroos. There were well-organized facilities for storing food and water against the rare times of drought, schools where lectures in the fine art of thud-dunning were attended by gangs of aspiring adolescent ogres and trolls, and high-speed flying academies for the effervescent offspring of pixies and sprites, where pedantic dragonflies served as instructors.

And then there was the museum.

A structure grand even by the exalted standards of the illustrious Kingdom of Purple, it rambled off in all directions, adding rooms and displays, corridors and exhibits, according to Smegden, whenever it felt like it.

"You mean," Oskar remarked, "whenever the enchanted folk feel like adding to it."

Reaching down, the mouse gripped the hair above Oskar's eyes to balance himself as he leaned forward to peer into one eye from a distance of little more than an inch. "Did I say anything about the enchanted folk, bone-brain? When the museum is ready to grow, it grows. Do you think only flesh can grow? The museum is quite capable of supervising its own expansion."

Indeed, the edifice they entered breathed and exhaled uncomfortably like a live thing, the tepid air rushing systematically in and out as if it were wheezing softly, the walls quivering in response to unseen stimuli. For all that, it looked like an ordinary building. Oskar resolved not to pee on the floor to test the resemblance further.

There were hundreds, thousands, of displays, all neatly mounted and labeled. None of them, he noted as they explored the myriad rooms and trotted past other visitors, were particularly well protected. As near as he and Mamakitty and Taj could tell, there were no guards. There was no need for any. In paradise, there was no reason to steal.

"This is a wonderful place," Taj commented to their guide. "Is it, perhaps, some kind of temple? A temple that contains examples of everything that is, and everything that can be imagined? Perhaps even such a rarity as—white light?" Recalling the words of the unlamented but knowledgeable Captain Covalt of the Kingdom of Red, the songster's friends held their collective breath.

"Not at all," Smegden replied. "Are you crazy? This is no temple!" Behind him, Mamakitty sighed heavily, Samm let out an attenuated hiss of disappointment, and Cezer, sensing among his companions an emotional line it was better not to cross, bit back the sarcastic observation that begged to be liberated from his lips.

Smegden drew himself up. "Every citizen knows this place. It is not a temple but a museum. The Celebrated Grand Mystic Museum of the Exalted Faerie Kingdom of Purple. Wherein," he concluded importantly, "may be found examples of everything that is, or ever was, or can be imagined."

Unable to stand it any longer, Cezer stepped forward to say something. Before the first word could escape from his lips, Cocoa reached over with her mouth, caught one of his long white whiskers in her teeth, and pulled. The resulting look of shock and pain on his face was more than sufficient to forestall his incipient comment.

"When does it close?" Mamakitty inquired quickly of their guide, adding thoughtfully, "We'd like to get back to the Commons before dark."

"The Celebrated Grand Mystic Museum never closes," Smegden informed her. "Nothing in the kingdom ever does. It wouldn't be fair, or appropriate. There are too many citizens of this land who sleep by day and live by night."

"But the kingdom, the city, is not as busy at night," Oskar speculated innocently.

"I don't believe so, no." Smegden was not in the least suspicious. "You asked about white light. As I said, the museum contains examples of everything that is or was or can be imagined. Compared to some of the exhibits here, white light is of comparative insignificance." He sank deep in thought for a moment, then raised a diminutive foreleg and pointed. "That way. Second left at the first long corridor, right after the special exhibition of embalmed censors and petrified lawyers."