Unknown - Cat_shining_bright_Merfi_630007

Young Courtney pretended to nap until everyone was off on their own business, Clyde walking Rock, Wilma helping Kate and the volunteers, her mama sound asleep in the bedroom. When Joe Grey quit pacing and left the shelter to be near Scotty and his phone, Courtney opened her eyes, leaped to the floor, and eased the outer door open with stubborn paws. Slipping out, pulling the door closed behind her, she was off on her own adventure. She could hear Scotty and Ryan and their two carpenters at work, could see Joe sitting atop Scotty’s truck. She could see Clyde far up the hills taking Rock for a run. Quietly she headed through the tall grass behind the Pamillon mansion, into its tangled gardens, fallen stone walls, its vine-invaded rooms, into the magical places where the feral cats lived.

Crossing the grassy berm she kept glancing back, but she was quite alone. She prowled the little courtyard where, Kit had said, Wilma and Charlie had dug up that valuable book, the book that Wilma had later burned. She knew nothing of the exact location and circumstances of that amazing find. It was the courtyard with its shadowy, overgrown bushes, walled on three sides by the old house, that drew her, a tangled garden mysterious and appealing, that smelled of the feral cats.

Leaping onto a boulder facing the patio, she sat as tall and straight as a small princess, looking into the old garden with its masses of roses and vines. In that fairy-tale world she watched for the feral, speaking cats, praying they would come out, praying they would be curious and acknowledge her.

She had waited a long time when a pale tabby appeared quite suddenly from the bushes beside the house. He leaped to a windowsill, his cream coat blending with the light stone. That was Sage, she knew from Kit’s description. Kit and Sage had almost been lovers, had almost become a pair—until Kit rejected him. Oh my, she thought, such a handsome cat. Farther along the wall Willow appeared, her bleached calico fur, too, matching the colors of the rock-walled house. Both cats watched Courtney, not with hissing confrontation, but with a look of amazement; both gave her ear gestures of greeting and a flicking of tails.

Should she come down off the boulder and approach them, or would they come to her? She felt shy and then bold. She was filled with awe at these cats who must know so much more than she of the history of their own race, more than Kit or her parents had ever told her. Willow approached first.

Willow knew, watching her, that this kitten had a secret. Whether the kitten herself knew, was another matter. A secret larger, even, than her heritage of speech. She is the image of the young queen, Willow thought, the once queen. And Sage was thinking the same.

The two cats came close through the grass, approaching the stone where she sat. She shivered at their look of intensity. They reared up and sniffed noses with her, they purred for her. They looked carefully at her markings of orange and black laid artfully across her white patches, they looked a long time at her three black bracelets.

“Joe Grey and Dulcie’s child,” Willow said. She said no more. Whatever she was thinking, Courtney was silenced by the wonder she saw in Willow’s eyes.

Willow was thinking of the Netherworld where she and Sage had traveled with the band of ferals, the hidden land that was part of the speaking cats’ past—and that was part of this kitten’s heritage. Though Willow would never tell her—that was for her parents to reveal, if they even knew. Much more of the speaking cats’ history, and thus Courtney’s history, lay in times and countries far more distant than the caves below this coast, lay in medieval lands in ancient times.

But, Willow thought, Kit and Pan know about the lower world, they have seen the old, old pictures there of a cat who looks like Courtney—pictures, Kit says, the same as the paintings and tapestries in books in the village library. Has Courtney seen those pictures? As young as she is, does she remember anything of those long-ago lives?

Sitting on the rock with Courtney, Willow licked the kitten’s ears, as she had mothered so many of the feral clowder. Then she and Sage led the young cat among the ruins, showed her secret dens and hiding places. But at last when they heard someone shout from below and heard a car take off, Courtney, frightened and expecting a scolding, streaked for Kate’s apartment, where she was supposed to be asleep.

21

The morning was growing bright and warm as Joe Grey slipped into the cavernous barn, but inside it was cool and dim. The vast space was high ceilinged and hollow, its distant rafters festooned with cobwebs as dirty gray as rotting lace curtains. The noise from within intrigued and puzzled him: a clawing, tearing sound.

Slipping into the shadows, he froze in place.

Across the barn was the giant of all rats. A monster rat chewing and clawing at a cardboard box, making so much noise it didn’t hear him, so preoccupied it didn’t see him in the darkness beside the door.

The box stood near the pile of baled hay, some of the bales so blackened with age they were unfit to feed any animal. But what matter, when Voletta let her donkey and goats graze on the neighbors’ gardens? The two stolen cars that remained were parked beside the hay, half hidden against the barn wall—a big gray Lincoln Town Car and a tiny black Mini Cooper left over from last night when Egan and Randall hadn’t shown up to drive. Beside the cardboard box, bubble wrap and white Styrofoam packing spilled out, littering the floor.

Was this the box from the BMW? Had the men tossed it aside thinking it was worthless? Joe could see where it had been slit open then taped closed again by human hands. Now the rat had opened it once more and was at it tooth and claw.

The rat himself looked almost as big as the Lincoln, Joe had never seen such a beast—bigger and heavier than Joe’s nearly grown kittens and looked a thousand times tougher. Where it had torn away one side of the box, scattering the wrappings, tiny white flecks shone on the dirt all around, like fallen stars, and led in a path under the Lincoln. What was in its simple mind? Nest making? Was it making a nest in the Lincoln? With its back to Joe, busily clawing and chewing, it still didn’t know it was watched—didn’t know it was stalked until Joe Grey, slipping up behind him, leaped on his back, dug all his claws in, and bit hard into his throat, expecting the beast to gurgle and fight for breath.

Lightning fast the rat flipped Joe over. Now it was on top and somehow, despite Joe’s teeth in its throat, it managed to grab Joe’s face. Its teeth were like razors. Joe bit deeper. The rat choked and tried to squeal. Joe raked him in the belly, and bit harder. They flipped again, now Joe was on top and then on the bottom—blood was flying when something grabbed the rat. It screamed once and went still and limp.

Someone pulled the rat’s teeth gently from Joe’s face, pulled the rat away. Clyde. Clyde knelt beside him, his handkerchief stanching the blood, his own face white with shock. Rock, his mouth bloody, picked the rat up again where Clyde had dropped it, stood with it in his mouth once more like any good retriever, his ears up, his short tail wagging. How can a dog smile with a dead rat in its mouth? Shakily Joe stood up, put his face up so Clyde could clean it more easily. How could he let a rat get the best of him? He was ashamed and embarrassed and mad. “How bad is it?” Would he be marred for life? Or maybe infected with some horrifying and incurable disease? Joe and Dulcie never listened when Clyde warned them about the foolishness of hunting rats.

“It’s not bad,” Clyde lied. “Just bloody, must have hit a vein.” Reaching in his pocket for his phone, he called Ryan. “Bring the Jag down to the barn. Can you leave your work? We need to go to the vet. It’s not serious, but … Bring soap and water and towels from the shelter. And a heavy plastic bag.”