I sniffed at it.
The smell was horribly recognisable. That vile hawkweed! I blamed my grandfather. What a trick to play.
Complex little cross-currents of anger and recrimination chased each other through my head. One day things will be different, I promised myself, and settled back down against Vita. One day I’ll show him. I worked on this idea for a bit longer until, wrapped around in a haze of fur and muscles not yet my own, I fell asleep. And as I slept I dreamed—
I dreamed, oddly enough, that I was awake. I was still in the back sitting room, amid a tumble of cushions, and beside me my sister slept on. Then I became aware that I could see very clearly indeed, although there was hardly any moon; indeed, everything I focused on appeared to be limned with a faint golden light, as if a sun had secretly risen behind the curtain of dark sky.
I rolled over on to my stomach, and then sat up. Beside me, Vita curled closer to Dellifer, as if to make up for the sudden loss of heat.
I leapt lightly down from the sofa, padded across the room and jumped up on to the windowsill to stare out between the curtains. The garden in darkness looked very different to how it looked during the day, somehow bigger, as if the moon-shadows that layered each object added further substance, another dimension that might be explored. I had not been outside in the night before. Dellifer’s advice was always to stay inside, ‘out of harm’s way’. When I’d asked, in all innocence, who Harm was, she had laughed. ‘Harm’s all around, baby cat,’ she’d said softly. ‘All around us, all the time,’ and I had stared fearfully over my shoulder. For a very long time I had pictured Harm as a huge orange tomcat, with mangled ears and a mocking smile. Untrustworthy and prone to lashing out with an angry paw at any small creature in its way. A bit like my grandfather, in fact. Even though I now knew this was a fiction born of a kitten’s fear, I still peered hard through the window in case such a silhouette should suddenly shift among the shadows.
Behind me, something in the room stirred.
My back prickled. A line of fur all the way from the space between my ears to the tip of my tail started to rise, apparently of its own accord.
I whipped around. At first I could see nothing out of the ordinary. Dellifer slept with her back to me, her flanks moving slowly in and out in time with her snores. Vita, too, was still asleep, but above her head, something glowed.
Something at once bright and cloudy.
Fascinated, I found that I was holding my breath. I slipped down from the windowsill and approached the sofa cautiously. I sat on the floor and stared upward. My sister’s eyelids were flickering, backwards and forwards, very fast. Her paws twitched as if she was running. As her paws moved, so the cloud above her head moved, too, vague shapes and colours swirling in the air. I was transfixed. It reminded me of how a couple of weeks ago, I had watched some children walking down the road, clutching little plastic bags in which several golden-orange fish had switched back and forth, distorted by the substance in which they were immersed.
I stared harder and saw something move inside the globe. It was— my catnip mouse! But what was it doing in this strange bubble? Straining towards the cloudy mass, I could make out a blur of paws and the bright red toy flew up and disappeared. A second later a cat’s muzzle quested after it, pressing against the limits of the globe, stretching it outward like a membrane. Another cat – with my toy! And the colouring around its muzzle was rather similar to Vita’s tabby markings...
It was Vita, I realised with a sudden rush of recognition and fury; and at the same time, somehow it wasn’t: for here she was, my sister, fast asleep in front of me, her breath misting the tiny mirrors on the bright cushions.
But I had no time to wonder about this peculiarity, for now the cloud was moving, up and away from me. Rather sadly, I watched it travel across the top of the room, skimming the ceiling, and finally passing through the wall.
I blinked. Then I raced through the door into the hallway, just in time to see the globe slip through the open fanlight and out into the night.
I knew from bitter and embarrassing experience that I could not follow it out of that fanlight, so instead, I rushed down the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen. In there, the yellow light was stronger. The cat-door beckoned me. I stood by the flap for some time, staring through its scratched and misty transparence into the unreadable world outside.
Then I screwed my eyes tight shut and pressed my head through the cat-door, shivering as the hard plastic brushed my back and tail.
I was outside, at night, alone!
I opened my eyes.
The garden I knew so well by day was at night transformed into a shifting sea of shadow, and the darkness was punctuated by unfamiliar rustlings and distant cries. At once, I was strongly tempted to forget I’d seen anything odd at all and retreat to my warm sofa to sleep the night away, snores and all. At the same time, I was a cat, and curiosity soon got the better of me. I gritted my teeth and determinedly made my way out on to the road, feeling immensely brave, and at the same time immensely vulnerable in the face of so much dark space. In front of me, the village pond glimmered in the moonlight.
I looked very carefully right and then left and then crossed the road in a swift scatter of paws, until I was on the other side, panting among the bull-rushes.
The surface of the pond shone like oil. Beneath the surface, in the roots of the pondweed, I could make out tantalising yellow shapes, just out of reach. I pushed my way out through a stand of rushes on to a floating island of sweet peppermint and for a moment was so overcome by its extraordinary scent that I had to sit down and close my eyes. When I opened them again, one of the yellow things had sailed close enough to the edge that I knew that if I dipped a quick paw into the water I might catch it. I wriggled down through the vegetation, keeping my profile low: something I’d learned, on those few occasions when I’d been able to sneak off for an hour or two, from a young cat called Ginge, who was an ace at early-season craneflies.
At the edge of the water I hesitated, sighting the yellow glow. Was it a fish? Perhaps even a golden fish? My mouth watered suddenly, and a tiny growl of desire started in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down for fear it would betray my presence to the fish, and then swiped a paw into the water. At once, the yellow glow dissipated into a thousand shimmering wavelets.
I glared into the water, mystified.
The ripples moved out across the pond, disturbing all the other yellow things, and it was only then that I realised that what I had tried to catch was nothing more than a reflection.
Slowly, I stared upwards into the night sky.
It was full of golden lights.
*
I nearly toppled headfirst into the pond in surprise. Goldfish in the sky? It seemed unlikely, even from what cursory knowledge of the world I had so far gleaned. Birds flew in the air: fish swam in water. The world was that simple, or so I thought then.
Then I remembered that I was dreaming, and therefore did not have to make sense of every strange thing I saw. After all, had I not experienced flying dreams myself? And everyone knows cats are not natural travellers of the sky. At once I relaxed, and as I did so, the golden shapes started to converge, slowly at first; then they began to stream towards me with heart-stopping speed.
I flattened myself on the mint and weeds, and the golden lights skimmed overhead, missing me by a whisker. It was if they were taunting me to follow them: but how could I, when they fled across the road, gained enough height to clear the hedge by the pub, and disappeared from sight?
Undaunted, I was off and running and the stream of gold seemed almost as though it hovered, waiting for me to catch up, then it drew itself up like a swarm of bees poised for entry into the hive, and barrelled through the gap between the houses and into the path down which I had that very morning followed Hawkweed.
In the gloom under the canopy they began to spiral and change direction. There appeared to be fewer of them now, I noticed, moving more slowly;
while in the air above the path, little sparkles suggested that some of the golden lights had winked out of existence, as if lacking the will or the energy to continue their journey.
In contrast, I felt full of vigour. I bounded down the cobbles, water splashing where my feet slipped, leaping the bramble runners, the nettles and the thorny dog rose, and lunged up the bank after the lights. This time, I noted with satisfaction, I had no trouble reaching the top. I emerged at exactly the point at which my grandfather had vanished from sight. But the golden lights, too, had disappeared. Instead, at the top of the bank, I was confronted by a disturbance of the air and a strange scent: slightly bitter, rather acidic. I inched forward and suddenly the air pressure tightened against my whiskers. I pushed a little harder, and with a barely audible ‘pop’ the world seemed to release itself to me, and suddenly I found my head occupying a completely different category of space to the rest of my body.
‘Outside’ – if I can put it like that – the air brushed past me softly, with barely any resistance; but ‘inside’ the air hurtled past my head with brutal force. I felt my ears buffeted, my fur flattened against my skull. And it was cold, too: icy cold.
This was all very odd.
Oddest of all was the sight of the golden lights. They occupied the same icy tunnel as my head did: but they appeared to have greater resistance to the wind. They bobbled about in the darkness a foot or so above me, like soap bubbles constrained by some invisible surface. Seeing them up there, trapped yet still in some way still free, I felt an irresistible urge to chase them, to leap up into that night-coloured space and bat them with my paws.
At once, I felt myself moving. I watched my foreleg enter the windy place with some surprise: for as it did so, it appeared to grow. I waved the paw under my nose. It was huge, but it was definitely my paw, for it did what I told it to do. I thought about flexing my toes, to inspect my claws – as pinkly translucent as the shells in Anna’s bedroom – and the enormous new paw spread toes each the dimension of a good-sized mouse, and from the end of each toe sprang talons like black stone. Curious to see if the rest of me would grow so large, I stepped the other foreleg inside.
The wind howled at me.
I wavered there for a few seconds, neither fully a kitten nor yet entirely the creature demanded by this harsh new environment; then suddenly the rest of my body followed of its own accord and I found myself standing in another world, in the midst of a shrieking gale.
My body felt very different in there: larger, more powerful. I looked down at myself, and saw that I was indeed a different beast: tawny and massively muscled. The blood pounded in my head. It was marvellously intoxicating to feel like this: but even so, I felt dwarfed by ferocious elements, as if, even in my brave new guise, I was still too small a cat to enter here.
I shivered, then braced my new shoulders and strode decisively into the jaws of the wind.
8
Something in me should have recognised that by entering this savage place, I would be entering a new phase in my life and, in the process, making an unbreakable bargain with fate. But I did not stop to think, for it is hard for any cat to resist opportunity. On I went, with no idea of where I might pitch up, placing one foot before the next, head high, eyes watering, into a dark tunnel strung with dancing golden lights.
I made the most of those few minutes alone in the wild place. I let the wind riffle my new fur, used its strong currents to intuit my unfamiliar outline. I tested my muscles and tendons by harrying the globes. They evaded me as easily as the butterfly had; but the game was not yet serious.
I was just getting used to the odd gloom when I spied something in the distance. It was large: a dark, blocky mass which broke up the lights and the air currents, and I found that although I was concerned about what it might prove to be, I was unable to prevent myself from approaching. As I closed upon it, perspectives became more confusing, until I realised that whatever it was was moving quite fast towards me, a stream of golden lights racing out in front of it, as if in fear for their existence.
My fur stood on end, prickling all the way down my spine. My heart began to thump, for the shape was huge, and from the way it leapt and bounded, I knew it instinctively to be some great predator engaged upon a hunt. And no sooner had I realised this than I was overcome by a moment of worse terror: for there was nowhere for me to get out of its way. Surely it would crush me like an insect beneath its vast paws.
I had to turn tail and flee the length of the tunnel to save my life; but I discovered with sudden shock that my new body would not obey my thoughts. Instead, I found myself standing foursquare to the advancing creature, my muzzle wrinkled in a ridiculous snarl of defiance.
Whatever is the matter with me? I thought wildly. And then the golden lights spiralled around my head, dazzling me so that I blinked and blinked, and when I opened my eyes again it was just to see the great dark shape gather itself like an oiled spring and leap high over my head. An acrid whiff of something hot and bitter accompanied its passage, and then it was gone into the darkness in pursuit of its prey.
Inexplicably brave in my big new form, I found myself following the great beast.
Its smell was familiar to me – familiar, and yet at the same time very strange, like something known and loved that has in some way changed its nature: like milk that has just turned sour, or fish that has been left in the sun for too long. But what milk! What fish! It was a huge smell, and its familiarity was the most disconcerting thing of all.
Bowled along by winds that in this direction assisted rather than hindered me, I soon caught up with the hunter.
It had managed to trap a number of the lights between an eddy of air and the side of the tunnel and was swatting them with huge, clawed forepaw. They fell, dazed, to the ground, where the creature caught them up in his razored teeth, tossed them into the darkness and swallowed them down, one by one. It stood there, chewing for a moment, then turned to stare at me. Light from the smoking spheres fell upon its face. Huge eyes shone like headlamps in the gloom, yet even as the golden light fell upon it something in me recognised the twisted rictus, the permanent half-snarl of another cat’s face.
At once, I felt like the small kitten I truly was, the bravado born of adventure dwindling in the blaze of the great cat’s burning eyes.
‘Who are you?’ I felt myself saying, gripped by cold dread.
But the beast stared at me implacably and gave no answer. Then its huge jaws fell agape into a vast lopsided grin, a grin in which sharp white teeth gleamed like stalactites in a giant cave; a grin at once taunting and familiar, and I had the peculiar feeling that I knew the creature before me well: while at the same time I did not know it at all.
Then it yawned and in the depths of its throat, I caught sight of something golden and quivering, slipping down and down, its glowing light dying even as I stared.
‘Who are you?’ I asked again tremulously.
Now the creature looked crafty. Its eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you know me, laddie?’ it crooned, and a great vibration rose up and seemed to lodged itself in my breastbone.
I shook my head wildly.
‘No, sir, I do not.’
‘Think again, Orlando.’
I stared and stared.
‘Some outside refer to me as Hawkweed,’ said the dark cat, and its voice was a deep well of sound. ‘But here, they know me as the Dreamcatcher.’
*
‘Grandfather?’
The great beast reared up, and I found myself cringing away, but all he did was to pluck one more dancing light out of the dark space above my ears. This one gave off no pungent smoke, but seemed as acquiescent as other globes were volatile. He hooked it with gleaming claws, flicked it with practised skill, and laid it at my feet, where it quivered under his great dark paw like a trapped bird. Cocking his head first left, then right, he considered it briefly. Then, as if dismissing it, he tossed it to me. Despite being taken unawares I managed to catch the thing – more by instinct
than by judgement – between my teeth. It felt appalling. Quickly, I dropped it on the ground and trod on it quickly, before it could escape. I stared at it.
I could feel its horrible, slow pulse between my toes.
The wind battered at me with a roar, then subsided. Into the sudden silence, the old cat said: ‘Well then, laddie. What now?’
I looked up at him. ‘I don’t know.’ And I didn’t. What would you do with a sac of gibbous yellow pulsing away under your foot?
The dark giant craned its head at me until he was so close that his fearsome, mangled face lost all definition.
‘You EAT it, laddie!’
Even in the midst of my dream, I recognised the pattern of this coercion. I remembered the bitter taste of the yellow flowers I had been forced to chew down that afternoon. I remembered the bad consequences of that action.
‘I won’t.’
I waited for an explosion, but it didn’t come.
After a while, the dark cat appeared to shrug. ‘More fool you, then.’
So saying, it dragged the throbbing light out from beneath my unresisting paw, and tossed it high into the air. As it fell, end over end, spinning in the gloom, I could make out half-familiar shapes within the gold.
A child; another’s hand; one toy: a minor battle.
I thought I recognised one of them as the boy-half of the fair-haired twins from the cottage down the road; then child, hand and toy were inside the maw of the dark cat, and disappeared from sight.
The great cat licked his chops. He washed his face. He ran his tongue over one side of his paw and rubbed it across a cheek, through his whiskers and down his muzzle. He sighed.
‘Ah, a sweet one, that. You missed a treat there, laddie.’ As if lost in some private, dreamy thought, he started to wash the other side of his face. ‘The little ones are always the sweetest. Not strictly part of the job, though, if you know what I mean. Now some of the others—’ the old cat went on, fixing me with a stern eye, ‘the ones that smoke and sputter: they’re the ones you want to watch out for, with their dangerous fumes, their corrosive intent. They don’t taste half so good: oh, no. They’re no treat at all. Quite the opposite. A bitter harvest to reap. A sour fruit from a twisted tree, those old ones. Especially the oldest of them all, filled up as it is with all its years of terror and hate. Now that’s a hard swallow to be made.’ He paused. ‘Not that you want to know about the worst there is in store yet, eh, laddie?’