Slaves of the Mastery (12 page)

When the last of the birds’ gifts is received and eaten, they all fly down to land on him once more, covering him completely, and listen for his morning thought.

‘My mother,’ says Dogface, ‘always told me I was a beautiful baby. She made me a little blue bonnet.’

The birds find nothing comical in what Dogface has told them. They don’t know he’s ugly. They don’t know what a bonnet is, either. That makes it all the more interesting.

Mist hears it all from a branch above, but makes no comment, because he’s occupied in hypnotising a sparrow. The unfortunate bird has caught Mist’s eye, and hasn’t been able to
look away. Now Mist creeps up on it, and it sits frozen on its twig, and utters not so much as a squeak when he pounces.

Dogface hears the pounce, and sees Mist bounding away with the bird in his mouth, and shakes his head. When the cat reappears a few minutes later, he makes a gentle complaint.

‘It really is too bad, Mist. I’ve asked you before not to eat my friends.’

‘They’re not
my
friends,’ says Mist, settling down on the hermit’s lap to digest his breakfast.

‘Couldn’t you eat mice or something, as a favour to me?’

‘Why would I want to do a favour to you?’

‘Now, really, Mist, this is all a pose. You know very well I’m your friend.’

‘Friendship is nothing more than habit and convenience,’ says the cat.

‘Listen to you! Purring on my lap!’

‘The human body is a source of warmth.’

‘The human body, indeed! You mean my body. You mean me.’

‘Yes, you are the nearest available person.’

‘So what will you do when I die and my body turns cold?’

‘I shall manage.’

Dogface shakes his head again, and strokes the cat’s back with firm steady strokes, the way he likes it. When they first knew each other, the hermit wasn’t good at stroking, but Mist
set him right. Now being stroked by him is a positive pleasure. He strokes in the right direction, and maintains a regular rhythm, with just the right amount of pressure.

‘Are you proposing to die any day soon?’ asks Mist.

‘When the times comes,’ Dogface replies.

‘Oh, I see. Just the usual run of things.’ The cat loses interest. ‘Don’t stop stroking.’

Dogface says nothing more, not wanting to distress his friend, but in using the phrase ‘when the times comes’ he’s not referring to the usual run of things. Dogface the tree
hermit is one of the Singer people, and like all Singer people, he is waiting for the call. In recent weeks he has felt tremors from far off, shifts and shivers in the pressure of the air, that
make him more alert than usual. It’s coming soon, he’s sure of it.

While the cat dozes on his lap, the hermit does his morning forgetting exercises. He starts at the bottom, by feeling his bare feet, how they dangle in the cool air. Then, moving up his ankles,
he forgets his feet: pushes the thought of them out of his mind, and they’re gone. He feels his shins and calves, tickled by the hem of his robe, and then forgets them in their turn. His
thighs and buttocks, pressed from below by the branch of the tree and from above by the sleeping cat; his stomach, slowly digesting berries and nuts; his lungs, drawing in sweet air; his
slow-beating heart; his arms, one moving, one still; all in turn felt, known, and discarded. Finally his face, the stroke of the breeze, the hiss of the leaves, the brightness in his good eye, and
the very mind that knows these things, all slip away and are forgotten, and he is entirely quiet.

The bright blue butterfly comes dancing round the spreading branches of the yew tree, and settles on the windowsill of the hermit’s house. Here it remains for some
moments, its wings glinting in the sunlight. Then it flutters back up into the air, circles the hermit’s sleeping head, and comes lightly to rest on his left ear.

Dogface wakes with a jerk, nearly toppling off the tree. The cat springs off his lap and stands with his back arched, hissing.

‘What?’ says the hermit, looking round. ‘Who is it?’

Then he feels the tickle on his left ear. He bends his head and becomes silent, as if he’s listening to something. Then he nods.

Mist sees this with concern. Something unusual is happening. The cat dislikes change; particularly change without explanation or warning. He sees the blue butterfly fly away from the hermit,
away over the treeless plains. He sees the clouds streaming by overhead, massing on the far horizon. He sees birds circling, cawing, a flock of rooks. Nothing out of the ordinary in that. But the
hermit is stirring, long before his accustomed time.

Dogface stands up, and returns to his tree-house. He bundles up his night robe, his jug, and its cord. Mist watches him with irritated surprise.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I have to go,’ says the hermit.

‘Go? Go where?’

‘I have a message to deliver.’

He emerges once more onto the branch that is his front porch, and calls to the birds.

‘Birds! I have to leave you!’

Word spreads rapidly among the birds, and they all come flying down to settle on the branches round him.

‘I’m going now,’ he says to them. ‘Thank you for your kindness to me. I will repay you in my own way.’

Then he steps off the branch, and floats slowly to the ground. This doesn’t surprise the birds, who can all fly, but it astounds the cat. Mist gapes as the hermit’s feet land gently
on the ground below. Hastily he claws his way down the rough bark of the yew’s trunk to follow him. The birds too follow.

‘How did you do that? Humans can’t fly.’

‘Some humans can,’ says Dogface, attempting clumsily to walk for the first time in almost four years.

‘All right,’ says Mist, running beside him, ‘I admit it. Now I’m interested.’

The birds follow overhead in a long stream, calling to each other and to the hermit. Some are saying goodbye, others are asking questions, but they still can’t talk in a way that he can
understand. Dogface, being a Singer, could make contact if he really tried, but all he would hear, after long effort, would be, ‘What’s a blue bonnet?’

As it is, his mind is on other things. He’s excited. If the time has come to deliver the message, then that other time, the time for which he trained, for which he’s been waiting for
so long, must be approaching at last. How far off now? It can only be a matter of weeks. It will take him several days to find the child of the prophet; and then many days more before he can meet
up with the others. He half-regrets having chosen to be a tree hermit. His legs haven’t been exercised enough in the tree, and now, already, they’re aching. He realises he’ll
never complete the journey in time on foot. Under normal circumstances no Singer uses his powers for personal convenience, but Dogface judges this to be a special case.

‘Mist,’ he says to the cat loping beside him, ‘are you coming with me?’

‘What does it look like?’ says the cat.

‘Then you’d better jump up on my shoulders. I’m going to be going too fast for you.’

‘I may not be staying with you long.’

‘All you have to do is say the word, and I’ll stop for you to get off.’

On this understanding, Mist climbs up and settles himself on the hermit’s right shoulder.

‘Hold on tight.’

Dogface focuses his mind carefully, and starts to hum a song the cat hasn’t heard before. Shortly, he rises a few inches into the air, tilts forward at an angle, and begins to glide over
the ground. At first he moves slowly. Then he picks up speed, without gaining height. Soon he’s scooting along as fast as the clouds that stream by overhead.

Mist has all his claws out, gripping tight to the hermit’s robe, but once he’s become accustomed to the speed of their travel, and finds his point of equilibrium, he becomes very
excited.

‘Now this is something!’ he cries. ‘This I like!’

He leans his furry face forward, and feels the speed-wind ruffle his whiskers, and imagines how it would be if he could fly. He pictures the fieldmice rooting in the grass, unaware that
he’s gliding above them. He sees himself floating through the air in absolute silence, unheard, unseen. He sees himself drop, in the perfect inescapable pounce.

‘You must teach me how to do this,’ he says. ‘This I have to learn.’

‘It would take too long,’ says the hermit. ‘We have too far to go. And it wouldn’t get you what you want in the end.’

He doesn’t want to share his secret, the cat reflects, not really surprised. But I shall find it out. And then, ah, then, an end to the arrogance of birds! Let them flap their silly wings
and fly away from me. I’ll rise up and spring, and up! Up! I’ll scoop them from the very clouds!

Mist has found his dream. He will go wherever he must go, he will do whatever he must do, but one day he will be a flying cat.

K
estrel’s travel-stained black clothes were taken away and burned. She now wore the uniform of the Johdila’s servants, a plain pale
green robe with a white head covering. Beneath, on a thin cord hung round her neck, the voice of the wind singer lay close to her skin.

‘Now you look just like Lunki,’ said Sisi. ‘Only thinner.’

Most of the day they spent in the Johdila’s carriage, as it jolted its way over the land. But whenever the Johdila went out, Kestrel went with her. By now the other members of the court
had become used to her, and took her for just one more of the Johdila’s servants.

‘You mustn’t mind, darling. They don’t understand about friends. It would only confuse them.’

‘I don’t mind.’

When not required by the Johdila, she would sit and gaze out of the carriage window.

‘Why do you look out of the window all the time?’ Sisi asked her. It wasn’t that she objected: she simply wanted to know. Everything Kestrel did fascinated her.

‘Because my people came this way.’

Every day Kestrel saw the signs. They were following the same road as the march.

‘Oh!’ said Sisi, surprised. ‘Do you still care about your people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even though you’ve got me now?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t care about them more than me, do you? I’m terribly nice to you. Lunki says I spoil you.’

‘Yes, I care about them more than you. Just as you care about your father and mother more than you care about me.’

Sisi thought about that. She did love her father and mother, she supposed, quite a lot really, only they weren’t at all interesting, and if they were to be taken away, as Kestrel’s
father and mother had been taken away, she wasn’t sure she’d miss them so very terribly.

‘But your people are gone, darling,’ she pointed out. ‘And I’m not. So really and truly, I think I’m more important now.’

Kestrel turned her great dark eyes on her, and Sisi felt the thrill she always felt at her friend’s strength and mystery. It was as if however long she looked she could never see to the
bottom of her.

‘I have a brother,’ said Kestrel, ‘a twin brother, who’s as close to me as I am to myself. He knows what I’m feeling without me having to say it. If he died, I
would die. But he’s alive. Every day, I come closer to him. Soon we’ll be together again, as we have been from the day we were born.’

Tears came into Sisi’s eyes as she heard this.

‘I wish I had a twin brother,’ she said.

‘No, you don’t. It’s not good to be so close to another person.’

‘Why not?’

‘It makes you not need other people.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Oh, Sisi,’ said Kestrel. ‘However are you going to cope with being married?’

Sisi shrugged. It was a subject she preferred not to think about.

‘They’ll tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. That’s how it is when you’re a princess.’

Kestrel looked away out of the window once more, saying as casually as she could,

‘Wouldn’t you rather marry one of your own people?’

‘One of my own people?’ The question surprised Sisi. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. There must be some young man who’s caught your eye.’

‘No. There isn’t. Who would there be?’

‘Well –’ Kestrel didn’t want Sisi to see through her motives, and cast round in her mind for some plausible candidates. It wasn’t easy. ‘Ozoh the
augur?’ she said at last.

‘Ozoh? He’s half-snake!’

‘Barzan?’

‘Old, dull, and married.’

‘Zohon?’

‘He’s always smiling when there’s nothing to smile about. And anyway, he only loves himself.’

Kestrel was impressed. She hadn’t realised Sisi was so sensible.

‘And there’s another thing, darling,’ Sisi went on. ‘All my people are inferior to me, because I’m a princess, and my husband has to be superior to me, so
he’ll have to come from somewhere else.’

‘He doesn’t have to be superior to you.’

‘Would you marry an inferior husband? Don’t be silly, darling. It wouldn’t work at all.’

‘He could be superior in some ways, and you could be superior in others.’

Sisi thought about that.

‘Yes, that would work. I think I’d quite like that. Only there still isn’t anybody, is there? So I might as well marry this man my parents have chosen for me.’

‘Well,’ said Kestrel, feeling she’d done all she could, ‘I’m just glad I’m not a princess.’

After a short silence, Sisi said in a quiet voice,

‘It isn’t at all what people think. Nobody ever tells you anything. You never go anywhere. You never meet anybody. You’re supposed to be better than everyone else but really
you’re a sort of doll in a doll’s house.’

Kestrel was touched.

‘You could always stop being a princess.’

‘What else am I good for? I’ve never been taught to do anything for myself. All I know is how to be beautiful.’

‘Oh, Sisi.’

‘Don’t tell anyone I talk like this. They wouldn’t understand. The doll princess is supposed to be radiant, and happy, and –’

She gave Kestrel the oddest smile, and turned her head away.

While they had been talking, the long column of carriages had rumbled to a halt. It was time for the Johdila’s dancing lesson. Soon they heard the dancing master’s tap on the door,
and Sisi groaned and lowered her veil.