Anton and Cecil (10 page)

As Cecil began walking unsteadily across the deck, he heard a soft voice, barely a whisper, coming from a nearby doorway: “Hey! In here.” Cecil stumbled over to the door and slipped inside. In the dim light of the room he peered at the owner of the voice, hoping it wasn't another strange, insubstantial figure, and it was not. It was a small white cat, a real one, with a band of black fur across her eyes.

“Gretchen?” Cecil asked, astonished.

CHAPTER 9

Marooned

A
nton missed his brother and he missed his home, but it was in his nature to make the best of what he had, and he found much of interest in his new life. For days fair weather and light breezes spurred the
Mary Anne
upon her way. The air was fresh and the sailors in good humor. Anton found the deck a pleasant place for an evening stroll, and when the sailors gathered at the base of the mainmast and the accordion player ran through the scales on his instrument, the small gray cat was always nearby. One afternoon, as he stepped out from the galley door, he saw a marvelous sight—winged silver fish flying over the deck. One, two, three ran afoul of the masts or the sails and flopped onto the deck where the sailors caught them with glee. That night, at dinner, Anton found two tasty heads in his dish.

What amazed him was the expanse of sea that stretched out forever in every direction. He looked out from the prow, from the stern, from atop the cabin, nothing but sea, sea, sea. On some days it was deep blue with little whitecaps. On others it was sparkling with light. One morning he noticed the sailors scampering up the masts and gathering in the sails. He climbed up on the bridge and looked out at the churning water. The sky was dark and the water was the color of lead. Then he felt the first drops of the coming downpour. Cloudy stood in the open doorway, looking up at the sky with a deep frown. Anton hustled past him to his favorite napping place under the sink.

And there Anton stayed while the ship was tossed about like a bauble, rain poured in through the hatches, the wind roared so fiercely the sailors could hardly hear each other, and no food stayed in a pan. No one, including Anton, got anything to eat but hard bread and tinned meat for two days. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the storm ceased, the sky turned bright blue, and the clouds disappeared. The sailors climbed the masts and dropped down great sheets of sail, which were filled out by a fair breeze. Anton came out of the galley and climbed atop the cabin, where he saw a beautiful sight. Dead ahead was the pale outline of an island with trees at the shoreline and mists at the high peaks. It was small, but it was growing larger every minute. A wide beach came into view, a place no doubt rich with crabs. Anton watched attentively as the captain yelled orders and the sailors shifted the booms. The island was their destination.

There was no harbor, so they lowered anchor offshore and commenced dropping small boats into the shallows. The sailors were going ashore and leaving Anton behind. He wanted to run on that beach. As the last boat was being lowered from the side, Anton caught the rope between his front paws and swung down until he was close enough to let go and land in Black Top's lap. A cheerful shout went up among the sailors, and Anton was passed from hand to hand until he was wedged into a seat at the stern, safe from the surging movement of the oars. When the boat's prow rammed into the sand, the sailors clambered out and pulled it onto the shore. Anton leaped out.

He had never really been on a beach. There was a little sand among the big rocks near the lighthouse at home and another bit at the end of the wharf, but this was a meadow of sand. It was surprisingly hot, and his paws sunk into it. He couldn't get any traction, but after a few tries he discovered he could leap by pushing off hard from both back paws. There was a grove of odd trees with bark like shingles and fronds like enormous dark green spiders about fifty leaps away, and Anton set off in their direction. The sailors wading in from the shallows shouted to him, “Mr. Gray, Mr. Gray,” but he paid no heed. It took all his energy and concentration to make his leaping progress out of that miserable sand.

At last he arrived in the pleasant grove. The soil was sandy but hard, and a soft breeze rustled the trees. Anton walked around a tree, enjoying ground that didn't shift under his paws. How wonderful to be on land. He sat down on a smooth rock that seemed designed for a cat's comfort, and, slowly turning his head, he took in the scene. There was a thin stream running toward the sea in easy reach, lined by tall grasses that nearly hid it from view. In those grasses, Anton thought, he would find something crunchy, and in the stream perhaps little minnows to scoop up and swallow whole. So this was where the great ships went, and no wonder. It was warm, and there was water and fresh, delicious food. If you stayed off the beach, it was paradise.

Suddenly, Anton heard a noise that made his fur stand on end. It came from above, a screech such as a mouse might emit on capture, but a thousand times as loud. Anton sat up and followed the sound with his eyes. There, awkwardly balanced on one of the tree fronds, was the biggest and strangest bird he'd ever seen. Its neck was long, like a dull gray snake. Its plumage was black. Its head looked like it was made of pink rubber, with swollen raisins for eyes and a brown beak thick as a horse's hoof and curved to a sharp point. Its claws were as big as Anton's paws. It was a monster of a bird. As Anton watched, it opened and closed its pincerlike beak. It let out another screech. “Dinner is served,” it croaked. Then it dived right at Anton.

Maybe not paradise.

Anton made a dash for the grass as the bird strafed him from above. It let out another scream in pursuit, but couldn't pull itself out of the dive and crashed into a bramble bush, croaking and thrashing hysterically.
What a poorly designed bird,
Anton thought as he crept toward the water, keeping his head down. His instinct proved a sound one, for there were flat rocks in the burbling water of the stream, which made it easy to scamper to the other side, where a grove of real trees with limbs promised both shade and shelter. The bird had evidently given up for now.

Anton stopped and had a long drink of the cool water, then sauntered into the trees. In the distance he could hear the sailors calling to one another on the shore, busy with some collecting enterprise. There was a comfortable seat of mossy roots at the base of a tree, and he settled there thinking a nap might be in order before heading back to the beach. Almost at once sleep came over him. He dreamed he was with Sonya and Cecil, curled up by the lighthouse while the water lapped at the rocks. Then there was rustling nearby, something drawing close to them in the dark, and he thought it was a rat.

Anton opened his eyes as a shudder ran up his spine. There
was
a rustling sound, and it was coming from all around him. He sat up and slowly turned his head from one side to the other. He was surrounded by the huge, ungainly birds. They were closing in on him, clacking their beaks and rustling their wings as they approached.

“Hungry, hungry, hungry,” they chanted in their eerie, humanlike voices. Without a thought, Anton took the nearest exit—straight up the tree. The birds paced around the trunk, gazing up at him and screeching. One, then another, tried to fly up, but they were awkward and clumsy, like turkeys. Anton had wedged himself in the crook of a limb where they couldn't quite get at him. One made it to the end of the limb and sat there eyeing him, but not moving. “Oh hungry,” he said. “Dinner, dinner.” Anton swatted the bird with all his strength and every claw out, and the bird, dodging the blow, lost his grip and tumbled down the tree to join his friends below. He could keep them at bay, one by one, Anton thought, but how was he going to get down from the tree?

Hours passed. The ugly birds had staked him out at the bottom of the tree and they seemed indifferent to time. Sometimes a few new ones arrived and a few went away. At one point three of them flew up over the tree and circled in the air lazily. Anton couldn't see the beach from his perch, but he could hear the sailors moving about, shouting to one another. As the sun began to set, he heard a sound that frightened him; it was Cloudy, walking along the shore calling, “Mr. Gray, Mr. Gray.”

Anton cried out, “Here, I'm here,” but the breeze was against him and carried his voice away. Shadows began to creep across the floor of the woods, and the birds grew quiet. Anton stayed in his treetop perch, battling sleep all through the long night. He could hear them moving about, cackling at one another. They had one subject: hunger. Toward dawn the world grew quiet, and the only sound was the distant water combing and combing the shore. At last a pale green light flushed up from the forest floor, and Anton looked down to see that the birds were gone.

He was down the tree in a moment and on the run to the beach. He bounded through the marsh grass at the edge of the stream, thinking about nothing but getting back on the boat. But when he came at last to the water's edge, he saw that not only the small boat but the
Mary Anne
herself was gone. He was marooned.

All that day and the next Anton fended for himself, ever on the alert for the birds. He hid in the grasses by the stream and caught various tiny fish and shellfish, which were actually tasty, and the water was fresh, so he had plenty to drink. At night he crouched under a large piece of driftwood near the beach. It was damp and very cold, but he was safe there—the birds didn't like the beach any better than he did—so there he stayed. On the third day he found a picked-over skeleton of some animal near the stream. It looked like a very large gopher, with a flat leathery tail—the only piece the monster birds hadn't stripped away from the bones.

Anton went back to his driftwood lair. Just before dark he came out again. As he was poking about in the shallows of the stream, he glanced up to see a circlet of black feathers, rising above a mass of fern at the edge of the forest. The monster birds.

Anton froze, one paw in the air, his head lowered, bringing his haunches down low so that he could bolt in any direction. He turned his ears forward and listened with all his attention, but the sound he heard didn't make sense. It wasn't a noise the birds made, but rather a faint
th-th-th-th-th
and then
grmmp,
like water running down a clogged drain. The feathers rustled in the faint breeze, moved forward, then stopped. “
Th-th-th-th-th-th. Grmmp.
” Anton was perfectly motionless, in a state of pure alertness that could outlast anything alive. “
Th-th-th-th-th. Grmmp.
Ugh.” The ferns parted, and the strangest animal he'd ever seen stepped out into the open.

Anton did recall a much smaller, featherless version of this creature. When he and Cecil were kittens, Cecil had caught and eaten a few as they dashed among the stones at the base of the lighthouse, but even Cecil found them indigestible. Lizards they were called, but those were skittery brownish things, no longer than a claw, with tiny heads and detachable tails. This one was as big as a dog. Its skin was wrinkly and greenish blue. The protruding black eyes operated independently, the mouth stretched halfway round the oblong head, and the tongue was a blood-red whip, which flicked out distractedly. It was the flicking tongue that made the
th-th-th
sound. Strangest of all, the creature's cheeks, neck, and shoulders were studded with black feathers. The lizard took another step, one eye coming to rest on Anton while the other focused on its own fearsomely clawed front foot. “Good grief. What are you?” the lizard said. “Some kind of weasel?”

Anton put his paw down and lifted his head. “I'm a cat,” he said.

The lizard opened its mouth, showing the red roof of its palate, then closed it again and flicked the tongue out and in. “Never heard of that,” it said.

“I was on a ship and I got stranded here.”

“That explains it. No telling what comes off those things. A creature that called himself a weasel got left here once. He had fur like you. He didn't last long.”

“He died?”

“He did. And then the clackers got him.” The lizard's eyes spun up and around, scanning the sky and the brush. “What's your name?” it asked.

“Anton.”

“I'm Dave,” said the lizard.

“Why do you have feathers? Are you part—what do you call them?”

“I don't know their real name,” Dave admitted. “I just call them the clackers because they never shut up.” He opened and closed his mouth again. Anton couldn't tell if it was purposeful or just a tic. “And no, I'm no bird,” Dave concluded. “It's just that I like to eat clacker eggs. They're really good. Have you tried them?”

“I've just been trying not to wind up like the weasel.”

“Right. Well, I'm a lot bigger than you. And the truth is the stupid clackers make a lot of threats, but they never kill anything. They just chase you and circle around you and try to scare you to death, and then they pick your bones. That's what they did to the weasel. I don't pay any attention to them; I just want the eggs, so they get all excited and I have to fight them off, and their feathers are really sticky. If I get a few in my mouth it takes all day to pull them out, and it hurts.”

“But the eggs are worth it.”

“Well, there's not a lot of variety on this island.”

Anton considered this. “And if you eat the eggs, there are fewer clackers.”