Night of the Animals(68)

“I don’t feel forgiven,” said Cuthbert. “I need help.”

Muezza said: “No one can help you now if you are truly ready. We cannot make you more ready. Your ‘help’ is the droppings of depraved sand mice beside my golden, jeweled ‘This.’ The Tariqat awaits you.”

Then the cat added: “Yet, I must say, if you don’t mind, that though you may follow the Green Line to Allah, the dogs you have mentioned, saliq, I do not understand how you could not see that they are of little importance anyway, in the scheme of things. To kill a dog is no great sin—you know that, don’t you? They are not allowed to set a single paw on the Green Line. And most dogs are dirty idolaters, you may have noticed. They worship lowly human beings. Forget your jackals. Or are you a dog? Of course not!”

Cuthbert didn’t understand Muezza fully, but he knew he didn’t like the cat’s slerting on about dogs or people. His own guilt—for his childhood abuse of a dog, for hurting the penguin tonight, but mostly for nothing at all—stung him hard, goading his indignation into something quite ferocious.

“Are you a dog?” the cat asked again, needling.

He said: “Oh, shut it. That’s ronk, you, and quite hateful, really. To injure a dog is cruelty, plain and simple.” The image of the injured penguin came to mind. “To injure any animal,” he said. He felt angry and charmed and abashed by the cat. “Why don’t you look at me when we’re having a word?”

“I smell you.” Muezza laughed. The cat pushed his snout deeper into the grassy weeds. “Regardless of what you say, it is very bad that the jackals have been released. They are ruthless. The Shayk of Night, I have heard, has had to end the lives of many of them in the old land. But if you released them, that must be correct, brother.”

“Are you just saying that, then?”

Muezza didn’t answer.

Cuthbert felt baffled—and impatient to go. It seemed to him that the cat was either barmy or ill behaved. He stammered, “I don’t know about any Shakey-Fakey-Half-Bakey of Night. But you’re getting on my pip, cat,” said Cuthbert. “I said, it’s rude not to look at someone when they’re speaking. I’ve got to go. The otters—they’ve got to be let out of here. Soon.”

The cat seemed to ignore him—like, in fact, a cat.

Then he said, “Saliq, let me accompany you, for as long as I can. If you will have me? I can show you, as I said, the Green Line, the One True Path, that leads to the Shayk of Night, and from the Shayk you can find the way to . . . a cure, before Allah. If you really want the cure.”

A feeling of sadness pushed up from Cuthbert’s belly, into his throat.

“I think I am beyond a cure. A’m the worst on earth. If it weren’t for my brother, Dryst—and ’e’s gone missing, as I said—I wouldn’t exist at all to any being, apart from my GP a bit.” At that moment, he felt for the first time sure that he would not survive the next twenty-four hours. He had not wanted this, not tonight, not death.

He said, “The soul-grabbers, they are coming to destroy us all. I’ve failed miserably, cat. I was thinking—was it thinking or was it something else?—that if I could let you all out, there might be a way to prevent the cult freaks from wiping out all the animals.”

Muezza paused for a moment, twitching his ears and glancing at Cuthbert, then returning his attention to the weeds.

The cat continued, “Enough of your self-pity, Cuthbert. There is always hope. You, saliq, are carrying the Wonderments. You do not feel it, but you have them, my Al-Madhi.”

“You mean my brother, cat. I am not gifted in the least.”

“I do not. I mean you, Cuthbert—the last holder of the sacred knowledge of animal speech.”

“’A corr do this,” he said.

The cat pointed at his bolt cutters.

“But you are doing it, saliq,” said Muezza, “and you must do it. The world of cats depends on it.”

A siren sounded in the distance. Behind the cat, fringing his golden fur, the strong yellow and blue lights from the edge of the zoo popped open like flowers hungry for night. It was clear to Cuthbert now that someone—police officers? the Watch?—outside the zoo had arrived. His time was running out.





britain’s true cats


“YET FOCUS ON YOUR INSIDES, NOT ON THE COMET infidels,” Muezza was saying. It was as if Cuthbert ought simply to ignore the perturbing lights. “You are the one who will save us, saliq. They are coming soon—be sure—the ‘Neuters,’ as they call themselves, one of the arrogant Luciferian species. But look to your Shayk for help. Forget the dangers of the night. The Shayk may feel like a knife on your neck, but he is truly the sweet finger of the Almighty within. It is good to feel him, brother. He will give you the strength you need. Feel it, saliq. Fear not. It is the end of Self.”

“All I feel right now,” said Cuthbert, “is torment. And impatience. And cravings for Flōt. I wish I did fear something.”

“Oh-ho, no, saliq. There is much to fear ahead tonight. When the white Altar of Lost Chances awakes,” the cat continued, “and when all its dead dreams come to slake the thirst of dead souls, and clouds of white seabirds swoop for cheap lures, when the Altar’s machinery of lies bursts open, like a fatal ghost flower, and it begins sucking in the souls of all—that is when he will come, as we always hear and as it is written, like ‘a thief in the night,’ and he will attack without mercy, and he will sort the good and the evil. And because he is a cat, he will rip away the veils on all hearts—and on your cat heart, especially.”