Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

Arhu simply vanished.

Rhiow and Hwaith looked at each other. “Don’t ask me,” Rhiow said. “I want a drink. And a bath. Let’s go: he’ll explain himself to us soon enough.”

One after another, the People and Helen vanished from the shattered hillside; where, after a decent interval, now that the cats were gone, the evening birds recovered their voices and their composure and began to sing.

Down in the flatter part of Los Angeles, in the residential neighborhoods just off Wilshire, the earthquake had initially been received with the usual combination of terror and resigned annoyance. In the stores that ran up and down Wilshire and the apartments in the side streets, when things started walking off shelves and windows started jittering and shattering in their frames, people ran out into the street or stood in streetside doorways, waiting to see how bad it would get and how far they needed to run.

The quake would later be referred to in some parts of the neighborhood as “that really long one”, as its severity had increased slowly over several minutes, and it had reached a point where people started getting really frightened and the screaming broke out from those who’d run into the streets. Some of those who weren’t entirely focused on the ugly and insistent way the earth was moving also noticed a strange cold that settled over the evening, and more than the usual amount of dust kicked up, so that everything got very dim for a while.

But then suddenly something broke, something changed – a shift in the whole atmosphere, the way a thunderstorm changes the whole feel of the air when it finally breaks and lets loose with the lightning. This effect was particularly noticeable down by the corner of Wilshire and South Curzon, where a lot of people who’d run into the park were sitting out on the open ground waiting for the shaking to stop. And it did – but not before something else happened.

Some of them thought lightning actually did strike the small Page Museum facility across the street, and the little fenced-off patch of open ground next to it. Lightning wasn’t unheard of during earthquakes… but what followed struck even the seasoned Angelenos watching as unusual.

The open ground had a low wooden palisade around it, just enough to keep people from falling into the sticky ooze inside. Though there was no light or fire or anything that could normally have been associated with an explosion, nonetheless an explosion happened, throwing mud and water and other noisome-smelling muck for many yards out onto the streets. As usual, the curiosity of a few people overcame their concern over any possible danger, and they ran across Curson Avenue to see what had happened.

The sight of a huge reptilian form shouldering its way up out of the very disturbed contents of the La Brea Tar Pits made most of these people stop right where they were and stand very still to watch… for even the least scientifically-minded of them understood that this was absolutely the reverse of the way things could normally be expected to go. The massive creature was plainly a tyrannosaurus of some kind – an impression reinforced by the fact that they couldn’t see its striking orange, red and yellow stripes, these being almost completely covered by tar.

The man who’d ventured closest to this apparition while it was still standing in the pit and trying fruitlessly to scrape the tar off itself was absolutely sure about the tyrannosaurus part, especially when – while looking around itself as if trying to figure out where it was — it noticed him noticing it, and bent down over him. For a terrible moment the man thought his curiosity was about to be the end of him. As he found himself staring into huge toothy jaws nearly the length of his upper body, the man – a gas station attendant from Pasadena who’d taken the Red Car into town for a night out at the local bars – wondered if he was finally going to find fame and fortune in a manner he’d never contemplated.

The tyrannosaurus, bent down even closer and fixed him with one golden eye. “This is most unfortunate,” it said in a gentle and cultured voice, “most unfortunate. I seem to have disrupted something, but it seems also to have disrupted me. Could you kindly point me, sir, in the direction of Hollywood?”

The man pointed.

“My thanks,” said the tyrannosaurus, walked away up Curson for a few strides, then said something under its breath that the man didn’t understand, and vanished.

The gas station attendant stood there for a moment, flummoxed. Then he muttered to himself, “Typical. Everybody wants to be a star…”

In the Silent Man’s house, it was as if nothing whatsoever had happened: not so much as a glass had walked off the shelves in the kitchen pantry. When Rhiow and the group returned, they found the Silent Man rather more disturbed than this than they’d expected. The neighbors’ places all have cracks in the sidewalks and the walls, he said. You should do something about the sidewalk, anyway… treat it the same. Otherwise people are going to think I’m even weirder than they think I am already…

Urruah laughed at that. “We’ll take care of it.”

So what happened?

“That’s going to take a night’s worth of telling,” Rhiow said. “We didn’t exactly get out without a scratch… but our problems are small compared to what we stopped from happening.” She flopped down on the floor, glad to take the weight off her hind legs: they were still bothering her. “And we’ve brought you another house guest, though only temporarily. After her injury has a little time to stabilize, we’ll need to install some false memories in her to match what the authorities will find once they start cleaning up the site at Dagenham’s.”

“It’ll make sensational reading,” Urruah said, “we can tell you that much. The scandal rags will have a field day with it… at least, the parts they can figure out…”

A sudden chorus of shocked yowling went up from outside, from some guest-People who were visiting the buffet. The Silent Man rolled his eyes. They’ve been doing that ever since the excitement started, he said. Everybody’s nerves are on edge. I’ll go see what the problem is now…

He went out the French doors. Rhiow, now that she had a moment to do so, gave Helen an amused look. “You might have mentioned that Helen Walks Softly wasn’t just a tribal name…!”

Helen smiled. “No name without a reason…”

“But this is why mass isn’t an issue for you,” Urruah said, “at least not in the wizardly sense. You’re a shapewalker; it’s a whole different level of matter management, and it comes to you naturally…”

Helen nodded. “There’s a question among the elders in my band,” she said. “Am I a were-puma, or a puma-woman?” She shrugged. “I’ll take it up with the Powers some day. Right now there’s too much going on…”

The Silent Man came back inside and stood by his desk for a moment, looking rattled: the first time Rhiow could remember seeing him wearing such an expression. I’m sorry, he said, rubbing his face. But there appears to be a dinosaur in the back yard. I assume he’s something to do with you?

Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi and Helen and Rhiow all looked at each other. A moment later, a huge saurian face was looking in one of the French doors, and Arhu jumped down off his head and slipped inside, shouldering the door open so that Ith could get at least his head in.

“I found him on Hollywood Boulevard, asking directions,” Arhu said, “and got him out of there before too much damage was done.” He shrugged his tail. “He was right over by the Chinese. They’ll probably think he was some kind of promotion.”

Rhiow got up again and went over to the door, gazing up at Ith. “What on Earth brought you all the way back here?” she said.