The Knot Garden
‘Do tell,’ she purred.
So I told her of my experiences on the highways – how the icy winds blew constantly, howling away into the darkness; how the world outside could still be seen, dimly visible through shades of grey that whirled and flowed, shadows upon shadows, as I barrelled down the tunnels; how magic fuels entered me so that my spirit became that of a great cat, and I could run for ever without exhaustion, powerful muscles bunching and stretching to eat away the ground.
I said nothing about the dreams.
All the while her eyes never left my face.
‘I’ve probably travelled the wild roads more than any other cat in this region, other than old Hawkweed, that is,’ I finished smugly.
At this, a shudder ran through her elegant frame. ‘Hawkweed, you say?’
‘My granfer.’
‘The dreamcatcher?’
I nodded, then watched in dismay as she recoiled.
‘And you go out on the wild roads with him?’
‘I’m still learning—’
‘Typical. The only cat worth talking to in this whole forsaken area and he turns out to be an apprentice dreamcatcher, that most raggle-taggle, untrustworthy and depraved of creatures.’ And with this extraordinary pronouncement, she turned her back on me, laid her head down on her paws and closed her eyes.
I was nonplussed. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and the true temperature of the day abruptly made itself known. I felt its cold shadow fall across my heart. Looking up at the implacable back above me on the deckhouse, I implored: ‘At least tell me your name.’
But the golden shape did not stir.
Sudden realisation dawned on me. ‘It’s Liddy, isn’t it? You’re the one Ginge talked about—’
At this, she turned around, regarded me over one slim shoulder. ‘Actually,’ she sniffed, ‘my name’s Lydia. Only the ignorant call me Liddy.’
I returned her gaze. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘ignorant I may be, but there are many more who use that version of your name without the respect you seem to think you deserve.’
She looked at me as if I had suddenly begun to smell disgusting. ‘How so?’
I composed my face to careful neutrality. ‘I had heard, from a number of Ashmore cats, that a fine remedy for many ills is the sweet lick of a virgin’s tongue.’
She wrinkled her brow in puzzlement.
‘A very specific virgin.’ I watched her closely. ‘Liddy was the name they mentioned. Definitely.’
Her eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open. Then: ‘How dare they – how dare you! Anyway, I’m not—’
Refusing to allow her the satisfaction of the last word, I stalked across the towpath, inserted myself into a gap in the bracken, and disappeared from view.
When I looked back, at a safe distance, and well hidden from view, I could see her staring after me, an unreadable expression on her face.
*
Half an hour later, in a clearing of willow on the edge of the common, my head was still buzzing from the encounter. My body sang to me. It was a most peculiar feeling. I felt more powerful, more alive, than I ever had on the highways, if less in control of myself than I would dare to be in those wild places. My blood danced and frothed in my head, full of messages I didn’t want to hear. It whispered of gold and spice, of feverish delights and primal acts. What a beauty she was, it bubbled, and a challenge, too. Ah, Liddy, Liddy, Lydia...
Then again, I could not decide whether her rise to my barb had meant that she was a virgin or not. Was she a queen, or an untried princess pretending to be a queen? If so, why would she behave so? It was too confusing for an inexperienced lad like myself. The thoughts flew around my skull like trapped butterflies. I felt furious with myself for my pathetic efforts to impress her; furious at her for her imperious dismissal, her withering contempt.
Ah, yes, my blood whispered: maybe she despises the dreamcatcher in you; but what does she truly know of the power of the wild roads? You should drag her there and let the great cat in you have its way...
On they went, these thoughts, speaking to me of acts that sought no permission, acts of violent satisfaction; but I swallowed them down like trapped dreams. They, too, left a bitter aftertaste.
*
That night, when the moon sailed high overhead, I found myself back on the towpath, as if my feet had walked me there entirely of their own accord. Standing at the water’s edge, in the fringe of grass and rushes, I stared out at the planished surface of the canal. The houseboats sat upon the water like great birds with their heads under their wings. I walked along beside them until I came to the one I thought of as Lydia’s. Its small windows were dark and lifeless.
Nothing stirred, or made a sound, except for the blood that ticked and boiled around my head.
I sniffed the air and caught the smell of caulked planking, stagnant water in the bilges, a faint trace of spices as from a dish of curry not completely eaten; humans, male and female; and – there! Her scent, rank and heady, an intact queen in her first flush of power. The scent filled my brain, flushed through it like some exotic substance, making me dizzy and stupid.
Lydia, Lydia: Liddy!
I stared into the darkness, overcome. She was there, though out of sight. At once I felt furious: with her arrogance, her teasing, the hauteur with which she had turned her back on me. My muscles twitched with intent, but even as I contemplated leaping on to the deck of the boat, it shifted slightly in the water, like a sleeper stirring. Ripples of water undulated between the hull and the bank. Timbers creaked softly, like a yawn in the wood. On the other side of the canal, the two swans who had created the wavelets sailed serenely past, white ghosts against the intense black of the water.
I watched them go, my head light, a heavy fire around my pelvis. Then I turned from the boat and, cocking my tail high into the air, sprayed the area around the mooring post with a copious stream of urine. This act gave me considerable satisfaction. It was as strong and true a jet as ever I had seen old Hawkweed produce. The grass broadcast the acrid scent so that it hung in the night air like a war pennant.
*
Orlando’s mooring, it stated. Orlando’s houseboat. And by inference: Orlando’s queen.
Moments later, my body started to shiver with apprehension. The fur that ran from the tuft on the crown of my head to the very tip of my tail was suddenly stiff and bristling; my spine itched.
For good reason.
Out of the shadows, from the bracken and the ferns and the long grass; from the decks and wheelhouses and galleys of the sleeping boats, came cats. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all different shapes and sizes: all different colours. A patchy black-and-white bruiser with half an ear missing, some nondescript tabbies and tortoiseshells, their markings camouflaging their outlines in the undependable light. One silver tabby, its coat a riot of furls and flames; another ginger cat like myself, only smaller and meaner-looking, its face as sharp as a door-wedge. They were a motley crowd, it was true, but what they had in common was the singularity of their focus: me.
And up on the deck of the nearest houseboat, Lydia: looking down upon us all with her paws and tail demurely folded together, and her pretty pink mouth quirking into a grin. Her nose twitched. Hopeless, avid males, the lot of us, we stared back, hearts skipping a beat, ready and willing to sacrifice ourselves to her favour. Her nonchalant gaze at last upon me; and then she winked. She might as well have dropped a flag for the commencement of battle.
*
Snarling, the big black-and-white with the tattered ear launched himself upon me. At such unnatural proximity I could see two of him: a nighmarish effect for a cat whose first serious fight this was. The play-fights of my youth and the lessons I had learned then dwindled to insignificance. Miraculously, other instincts took over. Without a second’s conscious thought I found myself lying on my back, claws extended to rake and tear, and then the black-and-white was gone and a cloud of tabby fur was in my face and I was up and spitting, dancing high on my toes, my
limbs filled with liquid fire.
After this, the battle became a blur. I remembered sinking my teeth into an opponent’s shoulder, the howl of outrage and the twist of pain that accompanied this action. I recalled someone else’s teeth meeting in the soft flesh of my ear: how I had rounded upon my attacker in a bloody mist and was rewarded by the glimpse of fear in another’s green eyes, the fleeing brush of a white tail. At one point I saw ginger fur in front of my nose and for a moment was unsure whether this was some part of myself, adrift and oddly placed. Then the scent came to me: unfamiliar and hostile, and I bit down and was sharply gratified to hear a shriek of agony. Through it all a high-pitched howl wove about me, through my ears and round my skull and back out into the night air: a fierce, resistant war cry that spoke of determination and defiance, desire and frustration and raw red fury.
It was impossible to tell how long all this took. It felt to me as if time had been slowed down to a sticky slug-trail of events; but to an onlooker, the battle was no doubt over in moments, and cats who had been in the thick of the action, biting and scratching and yowling their heads off one second, were suddenly sitting calmly in ones and twos, licking their wounds with unhurried poise, or disappearing into the undergrowth, embarrassed at their lack of prowess, their sudden loss of nerve.
I sat in the middle of the scene, bleeding from a dozen different bites and cuts, but my head was high and my vision was clear. Swatches of multicoloured fur littered the ground. Some of it was probably mine. And as I thought this, a cold wave of loss swept over me. I had the feeling that I had somehow, in the midst of this fight, lost a part of myself.
Disorientated, I stared around, and indeed there it was – a forlorn tuft of ginger fur, pale against the ground, and the night air was cool against a patch of uncovered skin at the base of my neck. I felt a dull, aching sorrow for the loss of that small mouthful of fur: daily grooming had made me intimate with every square inch of my coat, and it was impossibly sad to think that bit would never be licked clean again. Had I examined this feeling more closely, I might have realised that it was not the tuft of fur I was mourning for at all, but something far more integral and interior.
I looked up then, and Liddy was watching me. There was a glint in her eye: of fear, elation or contempt? Then one eyelid closed again with deliberate languor. She stood up, turned around, and her tail rose into the air like a question mark. The last thing I saw was her tawny rump in all its glory disappearing down the galley steps.
No invitation could have been clearer.
With a single bound, I found myself on the deck, following her delicious scent into the belly of the boat.
*
Down there, it was warm and musty, alive with smells. But my nose was interested in only one: the enticing rapture of Lydia. It drew me as if I was attached to her by an invisible wire, a wire that penetrated my nostrils and ran, silver-white with heat, along my spine and into my erect penis. The tiny barbs on its exposed tip tingled in the pressing air.
At the far end of the boat, in the soft lighting of a single gimballed brass lamp, she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me, her golden eyes dark and clouded with lust. She growled softly, a husky rumble which thrummed in the spaces between my ribs. Dropping her front end, she waved her rear provocatively, and I could help myself no longer. With a growl of my own, I leapt upon her back, catching the thick skin at her neck between my teeth to stop myself slipping from her sheer and glossy coat.
Ah, the bliss of that moment. Even now I can return to it, perfect in every detail in mind’s eye. I shall treasure it always. I may have to—
Two seconds later, a door in the galley opened and a tall, dark man walked out, rubbing his eyes.
Lydia tensed.
I, who until that second had been entirely intent on locating and penetrating the exact target of my desire, looked up.
Above and behind the man’s head, and still attached to it by a thread, like a child’s balloon on a string, caught by the low doorway and bobbing unsteadily in the dim light, was a dream. It was large and fiery gold, its edges tinged with a dark corona of red and black.
It spoke to me. Not in words, of course: but far more invasively. It spoke to me of violence and destruction. I recognised its type from my granfer’s lectures: ‘Watch out for those with an edge of fire to them,’ he’d said. ‘They’re the ones that want to destroy: the ones born of terror and loathing.’ If I were to let it go, I knew it would make at once for the highways, wild with all the images it contained, there to wreak terrible damage. If I let it go, a wild road might die, and with it every natural creature that used that right of way; more: a whole network of roads might be caught in its death throes, a whole village – my village – fall under its dark influence. I could not ignore it.
I felt as if I were being physically torn in two. My physical body, my heart, my cells, wanted, with primal, selfish desperation, to continue my congress with Liddy; but the dreamcatcher part of me, like a parasite in my brain, drove towards the strong dream.
Like a fool, I havered.
And then – as if the dreamcatcher in me had taken control of my limbs, and all else – I fell gracelessly from Lydia on to the wooden floor.
The dream trembled with the anticipation of the chase. It pressed itself through the doorway, and gaining the main body of the narrowboat, sailed free of its originator, up the stairs and out into the night.
With an apologetic glance back at Liddy, I turned tail.
*
The dream was easy to follow. Its fiery corona left a trail of afterimage in its wake, and the weight of its cargo kept its trajectory low and unstable.
It progressed up the towpath for a few hundred yards, then drifted over the canal, shedding light like some grotesque sun. I pounded after it. I crossed the canal at the little brick bridge, skidded down the steps on the other side, and followed the dream around a gorse thicket, through a haze of young birch, across a field of sleeping cattle, over a five-barred gate, down a long, pot-holed lane and eventually found myself confronted by a tall, dense yew hedge.
The dream, apparently unconcerned by my pursuit, wobbled over the top of the hedge and disappeared from view, rising as it went.
I ran leftwards, looking for an opening; but finding none, turned and ran in the opposite direction. Still nothing. I tried brute force on the yew, but the ancient hedge was having none of it and repelled me with ease. My heart pounded with frustration. First, to ruin my mating with Liddy; now this! I could not give up so easily: something vital, I felt, was at stake here, and not just my pride.
Redoubling my efforts I fled down the length of the hedge, finally coming upon a tall wrought-iron gate. A flick left, then right, and I was through the ornamental fretwork and standing amid a vast expanse of gravel, bordered by lawns and flowerbeds that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Far ahead, betrayed by a dull orange glow, I saw the dream float into the branches of a vast cedar, and lodge there, twisting uncomfortably.
I crossed the dewy glass, leaving a trail of silvery footprints. I came to the foot of the tree and stared up. I shuddered. I’d done a little tree-climbing in my time: a couple of small spruces with horizontal branches like ladders to their tops; the apple tree in the next-door garden in which a pair of nuthatches had made their nest; and once, for a bet, I and Ginge had made it halfway up the big oak tree by the church, both chickening out at exactly the same point. This cedar, in comparison, was a monster.
I walked around its great trunk a couple of times, staring up into sturdy black branches that started such a long way up the bole. The dream swayed in the top of the tree, as if struggling to escape. I sighed. I walked backwards, keeping my eye on the dream, shifted slightly sideways to get the best possible line, then ran at the trunk and leapt as high as I could, all four paws outstretched, toes spread wide, claws extended. The bark was thick and heavily striated: all my claws sank in and up I went. Almost sick with commitment, I reached the first branch. Already the gr
ound was a long way below me. If I looked up (which seemed preferable to looking down) I could still make out the glow of the dream high above. I climbed for several minutes, slowly and steadily, refusing to think about the lethal distance I was opening out between myself and the ground, resting where I could on the spreading branches. At the height of about thirty feet, a sudden panic as to how I would get down again flitted across my mind and I seized upon the thought before it could grow larger, and chased it off into the dark, bony cavity of my skull where I kept such fears, refusing to examine it further.
At perhaps fifty feet, the dream came clearly into focus. It was still a long way above, almost as far again as I had already climbed, but I gritted my teeth and ascended stoically.
Some minutes later, I found myself at the junction between the trunk and the branch in which the dream was caught. Going up, I soon found, was far easier, for all the stress it had placed on my muscles and sinews, than the precarious traverse I now had to make. Typically, the dream was lodged amongst the small twigs at the end of the branch, where it tapered to a fan of spiky blue-green foliage and a cluster of tightly furled cones. With obsessive care, I shuffled out towards it. The foliage danced and whispered.
The movement was all the dream had been waiting for. One moment it appeared trapped for all time; the next it had sailed free of its sylvan cage. Furious to see my prey escaping, I forgot where I was and leapt at it. I connected with the dream, sinking my teeth and front claws deep into its soft casing, and bit down. Warm, rancid juices trickled down my chin and lodged in the short, thick fur of my chest. A jumble of extraordinary images pressed themselves against me. For a second, I found myself engulfed in a tangle of human arms and legs, moans and sighs, heat and humidity and unfamiliar sexual organs; then my hind feet were scraping frantically for a foothold, and I was airborne.