The Sign of the Cat (19 page)

Fia's meows were furious. Her claws slashed the air while she hissed out all the cat insults she knew.

“She's a feisty little kitty, isn't she? But her eyes are different colors,” mused the earl. He swung her gently back and forth, her tail dangling. “I wonder if that affects the taste.”

“Please. Don't eat her.
Please
, my lord.” Duncan was desperate enough to beg. It didn't matter about his pride.

The earl's smile turned crooked. “Fine. I promise I won't eat her.”

Duncan's fists, which had been clenched by his side, did not relax. How could he believe the earl's promise about anything? Duncan would distract the earl with questions. Maybe the man's grip would loosen and Fia could escape. “Why do you eat cats, sir? I mean, you, of all people…” Duncan swallowed painfully.

“I have my reasons.” The earl's eyes glinted with amusement in the candlelight. “Maybe I want nine lives, like a cat. Maybe if I eat enough cats, I can get a few extra lives for myself!”

The earl couldn't be serious. “But that isn't really true, sir. It's just an old saying.”

Fia mewed, “A
stupid
saying! Made up by bad dogs! By
stupid
sons of
bad
dogs!” She swiped at his wrist with her paw and missed.

“You don't believe the nine lives?” The earl chuckled. “All right, then. Maybe I just like the taste.”

Duncan felt slightly sick. He looked away.

“I can't say I enjoy grown cats,” the earl went on. “Too stringy. But kittens, now. Kittens are tasty. Tender, too.”

Fia's mews were taking on a hysterical note.

Duncan forced himself to keep the earl talking. “But why did you start to eat them in the first place? Was it something stupid, like a dare?”

The earl's face took on a strange intensity. “I eat cats for the noblest of reasons. I eat cats for the sake of my country. But you wouldn't understand; you're just a boy.” He reached for his hat with his free hand, glancing slyly at Duncan. Then he clapped it on his head and strode over the coaming, out to the gallery and the night air.

Duncan followed. He couldn't leave Fia in the earl's hands, but he didn't know how to get her back.

The Earl of Merrick stood at the railing, his head lifted. He seemed to be making a speech to the stars. “Arvidia has an old, sick king and no princess waiting to take the throne. I, the Earl of Merrick, must stand ready to help my country in her hour of need! And eating cats—” He turned to Duncan, grinning crazily. “Eating cats is going to be very useful one of these days. I know the secret, you see.”

“What secret?” Duncan shifted his weight uneasily. The earl was deranged, completely nuts.

“And do you not know?” The earl's eyes were bright. “You seem to feel very strongly about this cat, for example. Is she your
friend
? Do you feel you
understand
her in some special way?”

There was some trap here; Duncan could feel it. Would it be better, or worse, to admit the truth? As he stared at the earl, Grizel came suddenly to mind. She had made him promise never to tell anyone that he spoke Cat. She had told him it was important.

Duncan had been a little careless about promises to his mother. He had found excuses, ways around them.…

He would keep his promise to Grizel.

“She's just my pet,” Duncan said. “And what I understand is that she's
scared
—anyone could see that. Won't you please let her go? Now that you've promised not to eat her?”

Fia had stopped meowing, but she looked at Duncan with pleading, terrified eyes.

“Of course, my boy! The Earl of Merrick is a true nobleman, and a nobleman
always
keeps his promises!” He flung out his hand in a heroic gesture. Fia went flying into the night in a high, soaring arc. There was a tiny splash.

Duncan pressed against the railing in shock.
“Fia!”

“Oh, too bad,” said the earl. “But I hope you notice I kept my promise not to eat her.”

Duncan dashed into the earl's cabin, seized the wooden crate, and ran back out to the railing. “Fia! Swim! Swim to the crate!” He threw it with all his might into the frothing wake of the ship. He could see Fia's tiny form struggling on the surface of the water. The light caught her desperate eyes in pinpoints of amber and gold.

“Bring the ship about!” Duncan cried. In his anguish, he found himself shaking the earl by the arms. “Turn it around!”

The earl shrugged. “It's only a cat.” His smile glittered as he gazed at Duncan. “Of course, when a
person
goes overboard, we
always
go to the rescue.”

Duncan took in a fierce and ragged breath. He climbed up onto the railing and clung there for a moment. “All right, then. You can bring the ship about for
me
,” he said, and leaped.

The water was cold, and salt, and very wet. Duncan plunged beneath the surface, kicked violently, and popped up, gasping. He struck out toward the small scrap of kitten, just barely visible as she struggled to reach the floating crate.

Through some miracle, Fia hadn't drowned yet. Duncan reached the crate first and pulled Fia in close to his chest, warming her with his breath.

The sea was not as calm as it had looked from the ship. Duncan heaved up and down with the swell, his arm hooked through the slats in the crate. Strangely, he had not heard the shout for all hands on deck; the orders to bring the ship about must have happened while he was underwater.

But the ship did not seem to be turning around.

“Hey!” Duncan's voice sounded thin and small across the increasing gap of water. He lifted an arm, waving. “Over here!
HEY
!”

The Earl of Merrick, silhouetted by the light from the cabin, stood perfectly still on the gallery. Then Duncan saw the low, wide-brimmed hat change shape as the earl turned and went inside.

Now the earl would give the alarm. Duncan was watching so intently that he forgot to time his breathing to the waves. He caught a mouthful of salt water and spit it out, coughing. He shook the water from his eyes.

By the time he looked up, he would see the sails shifting, would see the ship's broad side turning toward him, would see the crew hanging over the railings, lowering a boat to pick him up.…

Duncan stared, floating, waiting.

The windows of the great cabin shone gold in the night. The luminous squares dwindled in size as the ship sailed steadily away.

“He's leaving me,” Duncan said in disbelief. “He's leaving me all alone out here!”

The dark blot of the ship faded in the distance. The lights winked out.

“Not
all
alone,” said Fia, and she licked his cheek with her sandpapery tongue.

 

CHAPTER 15

Lost at Sea

T
HE MOON SHONE COLD AND DISTANT
on the wide, dark sea. The heaving swell moved up and down as if some huge, watery animal were breathing in and out. Small and almost invisible on its vast surface floated a wooden crate, and clinging to that crate was a boy. On the boy's head was a kitten.

Duncan wedged his hands more firmly between the slats of the rough wooden crate. His scalp hurt. Fia's claws were hooked into his cap, but she couldn't seem to help digging her claws in deeper when an unexpected wave smacked into her. Still, the top of Duncan's head was a better place for her than the half-sunken crate. At least his head was out of the water most of the time.

The air at the water's surface was warmer than it had been at the height of the maintop—and after the first shocking plunge, the water seemed even warmer than the air. But all the same, by the time the moon set, Duncan was chilled and shivering.

The sea was inky black. Duncan wondered what sea creatures were below him and if any of them had teeth. He had a sudden image of something large, dark, and hungry swimming toward his legs, mouth gaping wide.

He wrenched his mind forcibly from this thought and looked up. At least the clouds had blown away; he could see the stars, crushed across the heavens like tiny bits of broken glass. They were beautiful, but they were very far off, and somehow they made him feel even more lost. The world was a bigger and more heartless place than he had ever imagined. And he could not understand why the earl had left him to drown.

It was a long and miserable night. Duncan did not dare to shut his eyes—what if his grip relaxed and he let go of the crate?—but he was very tired. Finally he thought of his belt. Carefully, he took it off and laced the end through the slats of the fruit crate. Then he worked the loop around his body and under both arms, so that when he buckled the belt again, he hung in a sort of sling. At last he closed his eyes, worn out from effort and cold and loss. He slept.

He woke with a cramp in his arm, an empty feeling in his stomach, and a sensation of warmth on his cheek. He blinked. In the east the sun was rising in a blaze of pink and gold. He turned his stiff neck, scanning the horizon. Surely somewhere was an island he could swim toward.

He squinted in all directions; he could see nothing but water. East, south, west, and north, the sea was an endless circle with him at its center. And though the warmth of the sun was welcome after his cold and shivering night, before long he wished it was not quite so warm.

The day wore on in heat and blinding sun. Fia climbed down from his cap and into the front of his shirt, where the seawater cooled her and the cloth protected her sensitive ears and nose from sunburn. After a while Duncan took off his pants and carefully arranged them around his head like some strange, wet turban, draping the trouser legs over his cheeks and the back of his neck. He needed protection from the sun, and he could swim better in just his shorts, anyway. His shoes had fallen off long ago.

Were he and Fia getting somewhere? Or just bobbing up and down? Duncan couldn't tell. His eyebrows were crusted with salt, and his eyes hurt from the reflected light, yet he had to keep a sharp lookout for anything that might be an island. They were at the very southwest edge of the mapped sea, which of course meant that islands were few and far between. But he didn't say this to Fia. He told her that the Arvidian Sea was full of islands.

“Jammed with them,” he said. “There are so many, no one's ever counted them all. So of course we're bound to run into one sooner or later.”

“Will it have water?” asked Fia faintly. “And food?”

Duncan's stomach growled at the thought. He had missed meals before, but never two in a row, and his stomach was letting him know it. Still, water was what he wanted more than anything. He swallowed the dryness in his throat to answer Fia's question. “There will be mice, maybe, and birds for sure. How good are you at catching birds?”

“I only ever practiced on mice,” said Fia a little nervously. “Birds are advanced.”

“You'll figure it out.” Duncan hoped so. He would be happy to eat a roasted bird—a mouse, not so much. Of course, first they had to find an island.

The sun was more than halfway down on its journey to the west. Duncan's thirst grew until it dominated his every thought. If only the water all around him were fresh! But the briny sea was full of salt, and he spit it out every time he happened to get a mouthful. He was not tempted to swallow, because he knew what happened to becalmed sailors who drank seawater. They went crazy.

Fia had to be just as thirsty, if not more so. When Duncan listened, he could hear the tiny wheezing whimper that came out with each breath, as if her misery couldn't quite be contained in her small body.

He tried to distract her. “You know a lot of bad words, for a kitten,” he said.

“What?” Fia lifted her small, weary face to his.

“All those cat insults you meowed at the earl! I didn't know there were so many ways to call someone a stupid, scabby, stinking, slobbering dog. Did you have to learn them for your kitten examinations?”

“Not … really. I just made them up for when Tibby, Tabby, and Tuff were mean.” Fia's meow was hoarse, and she made an obvious effort to swallow. “They were fun to use on the dog at the corner, too.”

Duncan looked fondly at the kitten. No cat was attractive when wet, and Fia was perhaps the most limp, bedraggled-looking kitten he had ever seen. Her fur, where it wasn't plastered to her skin, stuck out in random tufts, and her blue and green eyes looked bigger than ever atop her skinny, unfluffed body. But she still had plenty of spark, though it was a little subdued after almost a whole day afloat.

“It's amazing,” Duncan said, “how much you know for how young you are.”

Fia said, “Kittens learn much faster than human babies. Human babies don't even take their first
steps
until they're maybe a whole year old, but we kittens are running around in weeks. We learn faster, we grow faster, our hearts beat faster—”