The Mountain Cage (10 page)

Someone had appeared on the veranda above the window; Hrurr widened his eyes. Two men were perching on the stone barrier surrounding the balcony; one turned and gazed out over the land. Hrurr continued to stare. Suddenly a head appeared next to the two-legs; it had the long muzzle of a large Alsatian dog.

“There she is,” Ylawl said as he strutted over to Hrurr, tail held high. The two-legs had put his hand on the dog’s head and was stroking her affectionately; she opened her mouth, showing her tongue.

“I must speak to you,” Hrurr called out.

The dog rose, paws on the balustrade, and barked.

“I must speak to you,” Hrurr repeated. “Can’t you hear me?”

The Alsatian’s ears twitched as she barked again. Her two-legs rubbed her back as she gazed at him happily. Hrurr, turning his attention to this creature, saw that his dark head fur hung over part of his forehead; a bit of dark fur over his lip marked his otherwise hairless lower face.

“What is she called?” Hrurr asked Ylawl.

“Blondi,” the younger cat answered, tripping a bit over the odd sound. “It is what her two-legs calls her. She, too, has forgotten her name.”

“Blondi!” Hrurr cried. The dog barked again. “Are you so lost to others that you can’t even hear me?” Instead of replying, Blondi disappeared behind the balustrade. “She doesn’t hear.”

“I think she did,” Ylawl said. “Either she doesn’t want to talk to you, or she’s afraid to speak in front of her two-legs.”

“But he can’t hear what she would say.” Hrurr, disappointed, trotted down the hill toward the path leading away from the house. When he looked back, the two-legged creatures had vanished.

He groomed himself for a while, wondering what to do next when a band of two-legged ones rounded the corner of the house, marching toward the path. Blondi, unleashed, was among them. She lifted her nose, sniffing.

“Cats!” she cried as she began to bark. Ylawl was already running toward a tree. The dog raced after him, a blur of light and movement, still barking. Hrurr bounded after Ylawl, following him up the tree trunk toward a limb.

The two cats, trapped, hissed as Blondi danced beneath them. She reared up, putting her paws on the trunk. “Go away,” she said. “Leave master alone. Nothing here for you.”

Her words chilled Hrurr; they were slurred and ill-formed, the sounds of a creature who had hardly learned how to communicate, yet she seemed unaware of that.

“Blondi,” Hrurr said, clinging to the limb, “can you understand what I am saying?”

The dog paused; her forelimbs dropped to the ground. “Too fast,” she replied. “More slow.”

His fur prickled. Ylawl, fur standing on end, showed his teeth, snarling. “You are losing your power of speech,” Hrurr said slowly. “Don’t you know what that means?”

The dog barked.

“You have lived among the two-legged ones for too long, and have given up part of your soul. You’ve drawn too close to them. Listen to me! You must save yourself before it’s too late.”

“I serve master.”

“No, he’s supposed to serve you. Let him feed you and keep you at his side if he must, but when you lose your power of speech, he asks too much. The world will become as silent for you as it is for him. Don’t you understand?”

“Blondi!” The moustached two-legs had stepped away from his group and was calling to her. She hesitated, clearly wanting to harass the cats, then bounded back to him, rolling in the grass as she groveled at his feet. He barked at her and she stood on her hind legs. Picking up a stick, he held it at arm’s length and barked again. The dog leaped over it, then sat on her haunches, tongue out as she panted.

Hrurr, sickened by the slavish display, could hardly bear to watch. Hope had risen in him when he saw the dog without a leash; now he knew that she did not need one, that her master enslaved her without it.

Blondi accepted a pat from her two-legs, then bounded ahead of the group as they began to descend the path, walking in two rows. Blondi’s two-legs, walking next to the fair-furred female Hrurr had seen earlier, was in the lead. Behind him, the man in black offered his arm to another female; the others trailed behind, reminding the cat of a flock of geese.

“Blondi!” Hrurr called out once more, but the dog kept near her two-legs, leaping up whenever he gestured to her.

Ylawl hunkered down on the tree limb. “You just had to speak to her. You wouldn’t listen to me. Now we’re trapped. I don’t know how we’re going to get down.”

Hrurr was already backing away toward the trunk. He clung to the bark with his claws, moving backward down the tree. His paws slipped. He tumbled, arching his body, and managed to land on his feet. “Come on down.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be such a kitten.”

“I can’t.” The younger cat began to meow piteously as Hrurr fidgeted below.

They had drawn the attention of the two black-clothed creatures near the house, who were now approaching. Hrurr hissed as one of the strangers clucked at him, and retreated a bit, feeling threatened.

One two-legs held out his hands as he boosted his companion, who reached up, grabbed Ylawl by the scruff of the neck, then jumped down. The small cat suddenly dug his claws into his rescuer’s arm; the man dropped him, kicking at him with one leather-clad leg. Ylawl dodged him, then ran, disappearing around the side of the house.

One two-legs knelt, holding out a hand to Hrurr as his lips moved. The cat tensed, transfixed by the man’s pale eyes and the tiny, gleaming skull on his head covering. His memory stirred. Another man in such a head covering had towered over him as his black-clothed companions had dragged Hrurr’s two-legged creatures from their house. He shivered.

“Where are my people?” he asked, forgetting that they could not hear him. The kneeling man bared his teeth; the other began to circle around the cat.

Hrurr leaped up and ran down the hill, the two creatures in pursuit. As he came to a tree, he turned and noticed that the pair had halted. One waved his arms. Giving up the chase, the two climbed back toward the chalet.

Hrurr settled himself under the tree. Had his people been taken to this place? If so, the black-clad men might only have wanted to return him to them. He licked his fur while pondering that possibility. One of his female two-legged ones had screamed, nearly deafening Hrurr as the black-clothed ones dragged her outside; another of his people had been kicked as he lay on the ground. Wherever they were now, he was sure that they would not have wanted him with them; they had not even called out the name they used for him. They must have known that he would be better off on his own.

He should never have come to this place, this cage. He now knew what the broken mirror in the road had meant; his world was shattering, and the black-clad men would rule it along with other creatures who could not hear or speak. He was lost unless he could find his way out of this world.

The two-legged ones were walking up the path, Blondi bounding ahead of them. Hrurr stretched. He had one last chance to speak. Summoning his courage, he sprang out into the dusky light and stood above the approaching people.

Blondi growled, about to leap up the slope toward the cat when her two-legs seized her by the collar, trying to restrain her. Hrurr struggled with himself, wanting to flee.

“Foolish dog,” Hrurr said, raising his fur and arching his back. “Strike at me if you can. At least then I’ll be free of this world, and become one of the spirits who stalk the night.”

The dog hesitated at his words.

“Free yourself,” Hrurr went on. “Leave your two-legs before it’s too late. Go into the forest and restore yourself before you can no longer hear our words.”

“Free?” Blondi replied. “Free now.”

“You’re a prisoner, like the one who holds you. You are both imprisoned on this mountain.”

Blondi bounced on her front paws, then crouched. Her two-legs knelt next to her, still holding her while his companions murmured and gestured at the cat. “Brave, isn’t it?” one man said. “What more could you ask of a German cat?”

The two-legs lifted his head, staring at Hrurr with pale eyes. The cat’s tail dropped, pressing against his side. He suddenly felt as though the man had heard his words, could indeed see into his soul and rob him of it, as he had robbed Blondi of hers. Hrurr’s ears flattened. The man’s gaze seemed to turn inward then, almost as if he contained the world inside himself.

“Blondi!” Hrurr’s heart thumped against his chest. “I see death. I see death in the pale face of your master. Save yourself. I see wild dreams in his eyes.”

“Have food,” the dog said. “Have shelter. No prisoner. Go where he goes, not stay here always. Black-clad ones and gray-clad ones serve him, as I do, as all do. I follow him all my life. Free. What is free?”

The two-legs reached inside his jacket, pulled out a leash, and attached it to Blondi’s collar. The dog licked his hand.

The procession continued toward the house. Hrurr leaped out of their way, then trailed them at a distance, hearing Blondi’s intermittent, senseless barks. Her two-legs turned around to glance down the mountain, waving a hand limply at the vista below.

“There is the mountain where Charlemagne is said to lie,” the two-legs said, indicating another peak. “It is said he will rise again when he is needed. It is no accident that I have my residence opposite it.”

“What does it mean?” Hrurr cried out, imagining that Blondi might know.

“That he rule everything,” Blondi replied, “and that I serve, wherever he goes.”

“We shall win this war,” the two-legs said. Behind him, two other creatures were shaking their heads. The fair-furred woman touched his arm.

“Let us go inside, my Fuehrer,” one man said.

The chalet’s picture window was bright with light. Hrurr sat below, watching silhouetted shapes flutter across the panes. Earlier in the night, the fair-furred woman had appeared on the balcony above; she had kindly dropped a few bits of food, glancing around nervously as if afraid someone might see her. “Well?”

Hrurr turned his head. Ylawl was slinking toward him, eyes gleaming in the dark. “I see that Blondi’s still there.” The dog, a shadow outlined by the light, was now gazing out the window.

“Her master still holds her,” Hrurr said. “I think she would even die for him.” He paused. “Come with me, Ylawl.”

“Where will you go?”

“Down to the valley, I suppose.” He thought of returning to Mewleen, wondering if he would ever find her again.

“It’s a long way.”

“I wish I could go to a place where there are no two-legged ones.”

“They are everywhere. You’ll never escape them. They’ll swallow the world, at least for a time. Best to take what they offer and ignore them otherwise.”

“They serve no one except themselves, Ylawl. They don’t even realize how blind and deaf they are.” Hrurr stretched. “I must leave.”

The smaller cat lingered for a moment, then slipped away. “Goodbye, then,” Ylawl whispered.

Hrurr made his way down the slope, keeping away from the roads, feeling his way through the night with his whiskers. The mindless bark of a guard dog in the distance occasionally echoed through the wood; the creature did not even bother to sound warnings in the animals’ tongue. He thought of Blondi, who seemed to know her two-legs’s language better than her own.

By morning, he had come to the barbed-wire fence; slipping under it, he left the enclosure. The birds were singing, gossiping of the sights they had seen and the grubs they had caught and chirping warnings to intruders on their territory.

“Birds!” Hrurr called out. “You’ve flown far. You must know where I would be safe. Where should I go?”

“Cat! Cat!” the birds replied mockingly. No one answered his question.

He came to the road where he had left Mewleen and paced along it, seeking. At last he understood that the broken mirror was gone; the omen had vanished. He sat down, wondering what it meant.

Something purred in the distance. He started up as the procession of metal beasts passed him, moving in the direction of the distant town. For a moment, he was sure he had seen Blondi inside one beast’s belly, her nose pressed against a transparent shield, death in her eyes.

When the herd had rolled past, he saw Mewleen gazing at him from across the road, bright eyes flickering. He ran to her, bounding over the road, legs stretching as he displayed his speed and grace. Rolling onto his back, he nipped at her fur as she held him with her paws; her purring and his became one sound.

“The fragments are gone,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’m in my own world again, and the dog has been taken from the cage.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Mewleen asked.

He rolled away. “It’s nothing,” he replied, scrambling to his feet. He could not tell Mewleen what he had seen; better not to burden her with his dark vision.

“Look at you,” she chided. “So ungroomed—I imagine you’re hungry as well.” She nuzzled at his fur. “Do you want to come home with me now? They may shoo you away at first, but when they understand that you have no place to go, they’ll let you stay.”