Anton and Cecil (14 page)

Hieronymus wasn't a bad listener, either. Anton told him about his adventures since he'd left home, about the vicious birds and about how he came to the ship on a whale. One evening he told the mouse about the eye he'd seen in the sky, most recently with Dave. “Do you know the expression, ‘Where the eye sees the eye, the lost shall be found'?”

“Can't say as I do. Is the eye a cat's eye?” Hieronymus asked.

“It does look like a cat's eye.”

“We have a different expression for that sky. We say, ‘Cat's eye in the sky, a mouse will soon die.' ”

“No, really?” said Anton.

“But I saw that eye once, with my dear father, and he said there was an old legend attached to it that came from before there were even cats in the world.”

“There were no cats in the world?” Anton said wonderingly.

“No, nor mice either. Just fish for some reason. But this eye protects cats; it's special to them. That's why no other animals eat them. No such luck for us mice. We must have been created by a very careless fellow indeed.”

“The clackers were going to eat me,” observed Anton.

“Well, in those days, when cats were new, they were really, really big. Now they're a lot smaller. When humans started taking them to sea, the eye followed to watch over them, and it still watches them and protects them.”

Anton puzzled over this information. A world without cats—he couldn't make sense of that.

The ship sailed on through good weather and bad, and the routine of the sailors hardly varied. We must be going somewhere, Anton thought. We can't just sail forever. But whenever he looked out from the prow, the sea stretched out endlessly. He imagined Cecil raiding a crab party or boring everyone back home with his tales of schooner triumphs. How Anton would love to hear one of those stories right now.

Then, one morning, something extraordinary happened.

All the humans simply disappeared.

CHAPTER 12

Trade Winds

I
n his new life on the pirate ship, Cecil found himself with quite a lot to do. Birds who landed on deck had to be chased off, as they made a terrible mess. If they perched up in the rigging, which they often did to taunt the cats below with cruel and tasteless jokes, then Cecil climbed the maze of ropes attached to the masts to reach them. Mice and rats who sneaked on board during raids had to be disposed of one way or another. And there was a surprising variety of beetles, worms, and spiders to be caught, batted into submission, and devoured; most of these were imported in the food and loot taken from other vessels. Cecil relished his duties, though once he was stung by what he thought was a small crab until Gretchen called it a scorpion, and his paw swelled up to a painful and tremendous size.

Then there was the actual business of pirating, spurts of furious activity for the crew in the midst of long periods of idleness. Sometimes the target ship fought back, its great guns lobbing heavy balls of iron over to the pirate ship, where they landed randomly and sometimes did severe damage. During these occasions the cats found it best to scamper belowdecks and hide. Cecil learned to keep his guard up most of the time, since a passing crewman was just as likely to give a kick of the boot as he was a friendly pat, and one had to keep that knowledge foremost in one's mind as a ship's cat.

One bright day when Cecil and Gretchen were dozing back to back in the sun on the roof of the map room, a pirate approached suddenly, scooped them up, and dropped them neatly into a crate, banging the lid shut with a mallet. Cecil sprang to his feet, yowling as he pushed frantically on the sides of the crate, to no avail. He ran in tight circles wildly until he noticed Gretchen just sitting, an expression of displeasure on her face. He stopped yowling and faced her. “Hey,” he said, breathing heavily. “Why aren't you trying to get out of here?”

She shrugged in resignation, looking moodily out through the slats of the crate. “They've done this sort of thing before. It means we're headed into a port, and they don't want us wandering off.”

“Really? A port?” Cecil asked. He looked out as well, and sure enough spotted a dark lump of land in the distance, growing steadily wider. “This could be my chance,” he said, mostly to himself. “Maybe I'll finally get some news about Anton.”

Gretchen examined the pads of her front paw. “I hope so,” she said.

The pirates had replaced the red pirate flags with less threatening blue-and-white striped ones, and once the ship was tied up at the dock they stomped down the gangplanks in high spirits. The sailor carrying the cat crate brought it to a side street set up with colorful stalls and strewn with chattering brown-skinned people. The air was warm and moist, and the only shade came from odd trees that had all their leaves bursting out at the top. Cecil and Gretchen's crate was placed on top of another in the midst of a group of cages and boxes, each holding a creature of some kind. Some of the creatures turned to look at them with interest; others ignored them. The two cats huddled together in the back of the crate.

“I was afraid of this,” whispered Gretchen. “They call this the ‘markit.' ”

“What's that?” asked Cecil, his eyes darting all around.

“People come to trade, you know, give something and get something else in return. The pirates love trading.”

“What's that got to do with
us
?” Cecil asked, looking at Gretchen nervously, but she only nodded grimly toward the man in the center of the cages. He was speaking rapidly to a strangely dressed sailor, handing him a box with three small turtles inside in exchange for a handful of brightly colored beads. “Oh,” said Cecil softly, slumping down. “Trading.” He turned to Gretchen again and whispered fiercely, “I thought they
liked
us!”

She shook her head. “They like silver more.”

Cecil glared through the slats. “
Now
you tell me.”

The cats could still see the ship from their stall, and they watched in grudging fascination as the pirate crew circulated among many people on the waterfront, talking and gesturing, laughing and arguing. Each sailor seemed to have with him a pouch on a string containing items stolen on raids. They made exchanges with men from the town, who gave them back different items—bottles of liquid, knives or swords, or small pieces of round, flat, shiny metal. Gretchen remarked that these last were what they called “silver,” and the sailors valued them highly, privately counting and stacking them over and over. Cecil saw the captain himself offering the glowing white stone Cecil had brought on board in exchange for a very long cutlass, its blade flashing in the sun.

The cats spoke to the other creatures near them, asking about Anton, the whale, the legend. Several seagulls perched on top of the stall swore they had seen the whale surfacing here and there, though Gretchen later discounted their story, as seagulls, she maintained, were notorious liars. An almond-eyed ferret recited the expression while standing on his hind legs in his cage, his skinny arms outstretched: “Where the eye sees the eye, the lost shall be found.” None of the others had more than that to offer.

“Thank you so much,” said Cecil to each, his spirits gradually falling.

No one had seen or even heard of Anton. An unnaturally large and menacing bird caged on the far side of the stall had been entirely focused on a small lemur in the crate just below it all day, clacking its beak repeatedly and muttering.

“That's a vulture,” Gretchen said.

“Wow,” said Cecil wryly. “You really know your avian classification.”

When a sailor traded for the vulture and set it on his shoulder, held there by a chain attached to its ankle, it looked at Cecil, nodded its head, and croaked, “
Agggk.
Dinner.” As its new owner strolled off, it swayed its huge ugly head from side to side cryptically.

Cecil gulped and turned away. “Did you see the beak on that thing?” he asked Gretchen shakily.

“Don't worry about it,” said Gretchen. “They only eat stuff that's already dead.”

Whenever an interested trader passed the stall and looked in at them, the cats sprawled on their backs with their eyes half-closed, trying to look as unappealing as possible. Life was tolerable on the pirate ship—at least they had enough to eat—and they didn't want to be separated at this point. Also, Cecil thought, if he got stuck on land he might never find Anton. So they tried their best not to be traded. During one of these episodes, as they lay stiffly in the crate, a low, rough voice spoke to them from very close by.

“You're not fooling anyone, you know. You don't look nearly bad enough.”

Cecil and Gretchen lifted their heads and focused their eyes on a large golden-haired dog peering into the crate, tail wagging and pink tongue lolling. The cats stood and took a few steps backward.

Gretchen seemed unable to speak, so Cecil responded. “Hey there, have we met?”

“Name's Remy,” said the dog happily. He was tall and muscular, with floppy ears and long, rippling fur. Cecil noticed that he wore a red headscarf tied around his neck.
That looks so stylish,
thought Cecil, though in the next moment he realized that some human must have put it on him. Then he thought the dog just looked like a clown.

“Are you being traded?” Cecil asked.

Remy woofed a short laugh, causing Gretchen to flinch. “Not a chance,” he said. “I'm with him,” and he gestured with his black nose back over his shoulder toward the market master. As he did so, the cats spotted a leather collar circling his neck, tucked under the scarf.

“So,” said Gretchen, regaining her voice and stepping forward. “You're not . . . free. Right? That man owns you?”

Remy chuckled again as his deep brown eyes appraised the crate. “More free than
you,
eh? We don't get that many cats in here; usually they're pretty well-liked by their owners. Were you no good at your job on the ship?” He seemed genuinely interested.

“We were
great,
” replied Gretchen pointedly, arching her back. “But it's a crew of pirates . . .”

Remy nodded and smiled. “Gotcha.”

A small gray monkey began shrieking hysterically in a cage across from the cats. In a flash the dog darted to the monkey's cage and issued several sharp barks and one long growl, frightening the monkey into cowering silence. Remy trotted back and sat next to the cats' crate.

“Not bad,” said Cecil quietly.

“I'm good at my job,” said Remy.

“He's not going to let us out of here, if that's why you're flattering him,” Gretchen murmured to Cecil. Remy woofed in agreement.

“Okay,” said Cecil, “then have you seen any large old whales around here by chance? Or a mysterious eye, up in the sky?”

Remy snorted. “Whales don't usually pull up to the dock to visit, so that's a big no,” he said. “As for an eye . . .” He paused, panting. “A couple of nights ago I did see something like that. A bright cloud, could have been a trick of the moonlight. I'm not sure.”

Gretchen stepped up to the front of the crate and pressed her face against the slats. “Did it speak to you? Do you remember any more?”

“It passed over me, blew right by. But there was one odd thing about it,” he said, staring at Gretchen's face. “It looked just like
your
eye.”

A dreadful squawking rose from a cage down the row containing a fearsome white-headed bird. It had beaten its wings against the cage door until the thin reeds gave way, and now the bird stumbled out, furious, its sharp beak slashing the air. Remy leaped and in one motion brought the bird to the ground, firmly but carefully and without crushing it. The market master rushed over and wrestled the bird into another cage as Remy stepped back.

Cecil noticed a deep scratch on the dog's foreleg from the bird's beak and felt his heart pound. In a strange way he envied that scratch. Even though Remy was “owned,” he was free to run away if he wanted to; he was in charge of his own destiny. Cecil, at this point, felt his freedom slipping away.

That evening as the pirate ship left port and sailed smoothly out on the dark open sea, Cecil, though relieved he and Gretchen had not been traded, was quietly miserable. He wondered how many other ports there were like that one, and whether Anton could have gotten off his ship at one of them and started a new life in a village somewhere, giving up the idea of getting home. How could Cecil find him then? Or worse—the encounter with the vulture was the first time he had reckoned with the idea that Anton might not even be alive anymore.

“Where are you, brother?” he said softly to the horizon.

Gretchen crouched next to him on a box by the deck rail, not knowing what to say. She could not say that it would all work out in the end, because at this point, she didn't see how it would. So she curled her tail carefully around behind him and sat silently, watching the empty ocean and the wide starless sky, waiting with him for a sign.

Days and nights went by without sighting a single other ship or land of any kind. This was quite unusual, and the crew of the
Leone
began to get restless. There was some concern over the supply of fresh water on board, and indeed whether they had fallen off course somehow. The captain strode up and down the deck, growling at his men as they took measurements by the weak sun and consulted charts and maps. The stars, their usual steadfast guide, were obscured by swirling clouds night after night until the crewmen threw up their hands, helpless. Pointing up at the sun and then straight off the starboard side, the captain barked an order to head in that direction, but the wind was so light that the sails barely caught enough to turn the ship.

Gretchen and Cecil tried to escape the late afternoon heat under the shelter of a canvas tarp.

“I mean,” said Cecil, exasperated, “the saying is, ‘Where the eye
sees
the eye,' right? So: that's two eyes. I think one of the eyes has to be the one in the sky, from the legend.”