The Wildings (13 page)

She realized that Southpaw’s trembling had intensified, and she laid her muzzle against his small face.

“Never worry, Southpaw,” she said, “until you have to. Besides, we’re not helpless.”

“We aren’t?” said the kitten, wanting to believe Miao but remembering all too clearly the terror that the ferals of the Shuttered House had raised in his mind.

“Not at all,” said Miao. “Katar has led us through many rains and summers, and we have warriors like Beraal and Hulo. It seems we also have a Sender on our side, though she is still very young.”

“As young as me?” said Southpaw, curious. There were no other kittens of his age in Nizamuddin—the rest were a whole
season older or a season younger, and sometimes the kitten wished he had litter mates.

“Yes,” said Miao. “Beraal tells me she’s very small, so perhaps she’s even younger than you. Imagine that, you’re bigger than the Sender!”

“I thought the Sender would be big,” said Southpaw, disappointed. “I thought she would be bigger than Datura—as big as the tigers!” He shuddered, remembering the day when he’d woken up to see Ozzy’s massive, wickedly curved teeth, that gigantic black-and-gold striped face.

Miao’s whiskers and eyebrows shook in silent laughter. “No, she’s just a kitten,” she said. “But all Senders have amazing powers. Tigris, for instance, could speak to the cheels and share their soaring flights.” And washing his whiskers, gentling his fur, telling him stories until he was soothed, the old Siamese managed to lull Southpaw into a deep, healing sleep. He shifted and muttered as his paws kneaded her flank, but he didn’t open his eyes, and Miao felt the tension go out of his small body after a while. Soon, he was dreaming: of happier things, she hoped.

The Siamese remained awake for much of the night, watching the wood owls make their sorties overhead, and listening to the chorus of the bats who lived near the baoli. She stiffened when a mongoose darted out from behind a clump of queen of the night creepers, but it barely glanced at her and Southpaw. Its sleek brown head pointed in the other direction, and Miao wondered whether it was hunting cobras or harmless rat snakes and lizards. She blinked away a buzzing mosquito, and when she opened her eyes again, the predator had melted away into the undergrowth.

Southpaw hooked a paw into her stomach, nuzzling up to the cream-coloured cat like the tiniest of kittens. Miao washed the top of his head until he was purring in his dreams. She drank in the pre-dawn peace of Nizamuddin, the quiet hours before the Bigfeet stirred, and hoped that Datura and his pack would never want to leave the Shuttered House.

T
he weeks passed without incident, until Southpaw landed in trouble yet again, this time with Hulo. The kitten’s complaints were so loud that they reached the ears of even the passing mynahs and cheels. “You’re nipping me! Miao is much gentler.”

“You’re an ungrateful brat,” said Hulo, who was using his rough tongue to clean dried leaves and the remains of a termite’s nest out of Southpaw’s wounds, which were healing quite nicely. “Hold still, there’s a good kitten.”

“Groof!” said Southpaw. “Hulo, that’s my eye!”

“Quit wriggling,” said the tomcat. “If Miao or Katar hear you were climbing trees with those wounds not yet healed, and that too the fig tree, which you were told not to climb …”

“…  because it had snakes in the branches, but it didn’t have any, Hulo,” said Southpaw, trying not to mind the rasping of Hulo’s tongue. “I checked very carefully and there were only
some mynah birds and those babblers, making a racket as usual. They make such a noise, how would any snakes live there? They’d be frightened away, wouldn’t they?”

“But suppose there had been snakes,” Hulo said sternly.

“I would have been so scared!” said Southpaw. “But there weren’t, you know. Just birds. Besides, how was I to know if there were snakes or not without going to see for myself? No one seemed to know for sure, Hulo.”

Hulo left off washing Southpaw and thought, not for the first time, that he didn’t envy Miao and Katar. Southpaw wasn’t the first orphan kitten to be found in Nizamuddin, but he was much more of a handful than most. The tomcat refused to parent Southpaw in any official way, but he kept his whiskers out for news of the kitten, which tended to arrive at distressingly regular intervals.

There was his brush with the pariah cheel, the Shuttered House episode, and then he’d sneaked off to steal fish from one of the Bigfeet houses while he was supposed to be resting, and now there was the fig tree expedition. If Hulo were Katar, he’d have smacked Southpaw’s bottom so hard that the kitten would be sitting on a smooth behind. Hulo had been the one who’d found Southpaw, stumbling down the canal road with sore paws, mewling and still almost blind—the kitten’s eyes had just about opened. When the tomcat sniffed at him, Southpaw had reared back and tried to fight Hulo, his tiny paws flailing. For some reason, this had amused and touched the tom, who had a weakness for a good brawl. Hulo had picked him up in his jaws and carried him to the other cats, unsure why his instincts told him not to kill the foundling.

Southpaw was holding still now, and Hulo sensed that the kitten was suppressing a whimper as the gash where his whisker had been pulled out was cleaned. The wound had scabbed over, but had to be kept clear of dirt and pus; the cats took turns to wash the kitten. The kitten’s remaining whiskers shot up as a series of mews rang out above their heads, apparently coming from the rooftops.

“But why do you not rejoice, Bigfeet? I have found a game we can both play—see how carefully I push these nasty figurines and doodads off the shelf, just to give you the pleasure of picking them up yourself? We can play for hours—noooooo! Put me down, you beast! How dare you smack my bottom!”

Southpaw started in surprise; it seemed to him that an orange kitten wriggled upside down in the air, suspended from an unseen hand. Her paws swiped at the breeze, and her eyes crossed as she displayed her indignation.
“Waaoooowww!”
she said to the top of Southpaw’s head, and then she was gone.

“What was that?” he said, astonished. His whiskers extended as far as they could—he’d been practising—but there was no kitten-scent in the air, nothing except for the faint, distant hint of rain.

The tomcat’s black scruffy tail was lashing back and forth, and his eyes had gone a vivid green. “That,” he replied, his ears stiff, “is Beraal’s appallingly noisy little pupil.”

Southpaw’s nose wrinkled in disappointment. That was the Sender? A scruffy orange kitten with her paws flailing in mid-air, at the mercy of her Bigfeet? He had thought she would be mysterious and solemn, like a miniature version of Miao.

“So what’s so special about her?” Southpaw asked.

“You’d have to ask Beraal,” the tomcat said. “I don’t know what everyone’s making such a fuss about—aside from interrupting our daily business, she doesn’t seem to do much. And besides, she’s an inside cat. You can’t trust them an inch.”

Southpaw’s tail wavered and went all the way down.

“She’s like Datura?” he said in a small voice, his whiskers trembling ever so faintly. Somehow he didn’t like the idea of the Sender, whom everybody talked about with their whiskers raised in grudging respect, being like Datura and his friends.

“Like Datura—no, no,” said Hulo, “though you have to wonder why she brought the tigers into Nizamuddin, that didn’t seem friendly at all. It’s just that inside cats are different from you and me, Southpaw. What kind of cat would rather live with Bigfeet than have all this?”

“So the house she lives in isn’t like the Shuttered House?” Southpaw said, thinking of the stinking floors and the old, shuffling Bigfoot.

“Not at all!” said Hulo, seeing what was going through the kitten’s mind. “Didn’t you come with me when we did the kitchen raid—”

The tom glanced at Southpaw and saw the kitten’s ears rise in sharpened interest. “Never mind the kitchen expedition,” he said, not wanting to encourage Southpaw to plunge into more trouble. “Most Bigfeet houses are like large, clean cages, and though everyone knows the Bigfeet are mad, building hutch after hutch for themselves like rabbits, some of them seem to like our kind. It’s just that—come on, youngling, let me show you what I mean.”

The tom stretched and, checking for cars and Bigfeet, padded away from the fig tree, back towards the row of houses near the canal. Southpaw followed in his wake, trying hard to imitate Hulo’s swagger, but conscious that what he could manage with his shorter paws was closer to a waddle than a walk.

The tomcat took a shortcut up a massive Bengal quince tree, ducking the large globes of fruit that hung from its branches, waiting for the kitten to make his way through. The two cats made their way through the branches, Hulo sending a quick twitch of his whiskers to clear the way, and also to let the tree’s inhabitants know that they weren’t on the hunt. Southpaw loved walking through the green, papery leaves, high above the world, the bark massaging his paw pads. The winds were picking up now, and he could smell the sharp change in the air: a storm was on its way, making the walk through the tree that much more exhilarating. He was almost sorry when the tom dropped down from the Bengal quince onto a gatepost, moving easily from there to a window ledge.

Hulo made room for Southpaw and they settled down behind a row of flowerpots, the kitten batting aside the dahlias so that he could see better. They were looking directly into a courtyard attached to one of the Bigfeet houses, and an Alsatian pup looked up sharply when he heard the leaves in the Bengal quince tree rustle, but the cats had moved fast, and all he saw were the squirrels running along the branches. His black-tipped ears, creamy on the inside, stayed cocked for a while, but then the dog relaxed and settled down again.

A young Bigfoot woman came out with a large red plastic bowl of food. Though he was perched so far up, Southpaw
could smell the meat and his whiskers rose in greed. The dog jumped up, barking happily, and rubbed his head against the Bigfoot’s hands. She settled down, petting him. Up on the parapet, the two cats watched as the dog ate his food in great gulps. Southpaw’s stomach emitted a hopeful gurgle, but Hulo glared at him, and the kitten flattened his stomach against the ledge, hoping it would shut up.

“Now watch!” Hulo signalled.

The Bigfoot picked up the empty bowl and left. The dog whined and stared at her, clearly willing her to come back with more food. The screen door that led back into the house shut with a click.

The Alsatian pup stared at the place where his food had been set down. Then he stared at the door, and Southpaw could tell he was willing it to open again.

It stayed shut.

The Alsatian began barking. When no one came out, his barks grew louder and louder, until, losing patience, he lunged towards the door and was brought up short by his leash. He growled and then, his tail held expectantly still, he resumed barking.

The door swung open, and a different Bigfoot came out. Southpaw wished he could tell the pup to shut up. Something about the way the Bigfoot was standing, arms folded across his chest, spelled trouble. “If he’d had a tail, it would be twitching,” Southpaw thought, and Hulo’s whiskers twitched, acknowledging the truth of this.

The Bigfoot was staring down at the pup, who was barking hysterically now, tugging at his leash.

The Bigfoot smacked the pup hard across his nose. Southpaw ducked back behind the dahlias and rested his whiskery chin on the flower’s soft petals. He didn’t like dogs, but it was hard to hear the pup’s sorrowful little whines without feeling sorry for the creature. Hulo was impassive, but his fur stood up just enough for Southpaw to think that perhaps the tom felt it too.

THE DAY WAS ALMOST AT A CLOSE
when they came back to the park in the centre of Nizamuddin, crossing over the rooftops, taking the stairs and the long route through the gardens and the lantana hedges. Southpaw loved coming over the roofs, especially those that were festooned with clotheslines: there was something about the scent of clean Bigfeet clothes that made him want to rub his face against them, and he was happy to dry his wet fur on some of the larger bedsheets and tablecloths. Sometimes, the Bigfeet could be surprisingly thoughtful.

The kitten’s stomach rumbled again. He’d been so busy climbing the fig tree and then going on the excursion with Hulo that he hadn’t been able to forage in the garbage dump for a meal. It had been raining steadily for a while, and it seemed to him that it would go on all night. The stars were coming out, and with the rain pelting down like this, Southpaw knew it was unlikely that they would be able to hunt.

Hulo stopped at his favourite spot, a corrugated tin roof that lay like a crooked hat over an abandoned garage. There was enough crawl space under its overlapping tin sheets to provide cover for the two cats after their long, wet trek. It was close enough to the houses and the park for him to keep an eye on the
movements of the Bigfeet and other animals, and isolated enough to be a comfortable resting place.

They listened to the fierce rat-a-tat of the rain on the roof, so loud now that it drowned out all the other sounds of the park at night. The headlights from the Bigfeet’s passing cars lit up the road every so often, and Southpaw shivered when he saw how the water ran off the streets in small rivers. He wondered if the pup had been taken into the house for shelter; he hoped so.