Tailchaser's Song (43 page)

“Ah,” she said. “A song of power, that was. After the Days of Fire, the Jugurum used such strong melodies to keep the ocean down in its depth and the sky hanging safely above. My song was but a small one, though, and not so ambitious. ‘Twas meant only to bring you traveler’s luck.”

“Me?” Fritti asked. “Why me? What have I ever done for you?”

“Why, less than nothing, my furry polliwog!” chugged the frog, amused. “I did it as a service to another, to whom I owed a favor—one older even than Mother Rebum. He who asked me to aid you even walked the earth when Jargum the Great, father of my folk, strode the marshes of the elder world—or so I am told. A powerful protector you have, little cat.”

Tailchaser thought he could guess the meaning of her words. So, he was still beneath the guardian shadow. The thought took the cold edge from the wind that blew across the salt mere.

“Do not think, though,” Mother Rebum continued, “to escape entirely free from obligation. Your friend told me that you have been part of the great doings to the northwest, yes?” Fritti assented. “Good, then you shall tell me your story, for the feckless gulls have brought me only snatches and shards. I cannot manage Burum-gurgun, the Marsh at the Center of the World, in a proper fashion unless I am kept informed of current events in the outlands.”

The Marsh at the Center of the World. Fritti smiled to himself, and began his long story.

 

It was almost the Hour of Deepest Quiet when he had finished. Mother Rebum had sat still throughout the entire tale, her goggle eyes watching him closely. As he ended she blinked several times, then sat silent for a moment, her throat puffing in and out.

“Well,” she said finally, “it sounds as though there have indeed been many great splashings in the ponds of the cat-folk.” She paused to pluck a low-flying insect from the night air. “Hearteater was a force, a great force, and his fall shall birth many ripples. I see now why your spirit is troubled, little furback.”

“Troubled? Why do you say that?”

“Why?” Mother Rebum chugged. “Because I know it. I watched you when you saw the water-shadow. I have listened to you sing for half the night. Your heart is in confusion.”

“It is?” Fritti was not sure he liked the turn the conversation had taken.

“Oh, yes, my brave, questing tadpole ... but fear not. If you but take my advice you will find your way happily. Remember this one thing, Tailchaser: all your troubles, all your searching, and wandering, struggling—they are as one small bubble in the world-pool.”

Fritti felt chastened, and a little angry. “What do you mean? Many important things have happened since I left my home. I was not responsible for most of them, but I played a part. It is even possible that things would have gone worse had it not been for me,” he finished with some pride.

“That I will grant you. Please, don’t bristle so!” chuckled the old frog. “But answer me this: has the snow covered Vastnir?”

“I suppose it has by now, yes. What of it? It will be spring soon.”

“Exactly, my minnow. Now, have the birds returned to Ratleaf?”

Tailchaser was not sure he saw the point. “Many of the flafa‘az have made their way back ... that is also true.”

Mother Rebum smiled a green, toothless smile. “Very well, I shall ask you no more questions. I can see for myself, here in my lily-pond home, that the sun still crosses the sky each day. Do you understand yet?”

“No,” said Fritti stubbornly.

“It is this. By the time another winter comes, and passes into another spring, Vastnir Mound and all the works of Hearteater will have disappeared entirely—lingering only in memory. Before too many more winters have come and departed, you and I also will have disappeared, leaving behind only our bones to be the home of tiny creatures. And do you know what, brave Tailchaser? The world-dance will falter not a step for any of these passings.”

She brought herself up heavily to her front legs. “Now, friend cat, I must away and dunk these old bones in a mud bath. I thank you for the pleasure of your company.”

So saying, she hopped to the edge of the pond, half into the stagnant water, then turned and looked back. Her round eyes blinked sleepily.

“Never fear!” she said. “I have woven my song well. If you need help you shall receive it—at least once. Look especially to things that move in water, for there lie most of my powers. Luck to you, Tailchaser!”

With a hop and a splash, Mother Rebum disappeared into the pool.

Wind over the lake: the image of inner truth.

—I Ching (The Book of Changes)

 

 

 

 

 

During his last night on the Pawdab, Fritti had a long, strange journey in the dream-fields.

His spirit soared like a fla-fa‘az over the hills and trees and waters, the night winds beating in his face. Like the great Akor that nested in the high mountains, he sailed up, up, up. The night-belly of Meerclar was his field, to travel in where he would.

As he sailed the wind spoke in his ear with the voices of many—Grassnestle, his mother; Bristlejaw and Stretchslow. They all called his name in the fierce howl of the breeze ... but he flew on when Pouncequick’s voice cried out to him, too—not in fear, but in a kind of wonder. As he heard it he swooped down, hurtling into blackness. The roaring airs became the mad yowls of Eatbugs and Scratchnail; the soft tones of Roofshadow intertwined with their screams, speaking his heart name over and over.

“...
Fritti Tailchaser
...
Fritti
...
Fritti ... Fritti Tailchaser
...”

Then the rushing sound of the winds changed, and became a great, ceaseless roar. He was skimming above the Bigwater, so near to it that it seemed he could reach down a paw and skim it in the waves. Salt wind flattened his whiskers, and the night sky around him was empty but for the sounding of Qu‘cef.

A bright flash, like Whitewind’s star, appeared above the horizon. Carried rapidly nearer on the broad back of the wind, he could see the light gleam, then fade, then gleam again.

A great, gray tail stood up from the waters of Qu‘cef. It towered above the waves, and at its summit the light he had seen burned liked sky-fire.

He was rushing toward it—helplessly, now—when he heard the voice of Eyeshimmer the Far-senser echo down the wind:

And suddenly the air currents carried him up again, past the shining light ... and the great, waving tail sank back down into the waters, extinguishing the glow ... and now ... and now another, softer light was kindling, spreading across the lower edge of the night sky ...

It was dawn. Fritti sat up in his bower of cord-grass, and the early-morning marsh wind came moaning through the stalks and weeds. He sood up and stretched, listening to the night insects singing a final chorus.

 

 

So Fritti came up out of the marshlands, crossing the tiny stream—a distant relative of the mighty Caterwaul—that flowed into the southernmost tip of the Bigwater, marking the boundaries of the Pawdab.

Sloping up from the shores of Qu‘cef, windswept meadows with green turf rose gradually on his right flank. Far away across the grasslands he could see the dwellings of M’an: small, and isolated from their neighbors. He was traveling U‘ea-ward now, green fields on his right side and the gravelly sea-strand on his left.

Woolly Erunor grazed all about the hummocky meadows. Their fleecy bodies dotted the downs like fat, dirty clouds that had settled to the ground, too heavy to stay aloft. They regarded him incuriously as he passed, this small orange cat, and when he called out to them they grimaced complacently with yellowed teeth, but did not answer.

 

When Tailchaser first saw the light he thought it was a star.

He had come down from the meadow-track to walk along the shore. The Eye of Meerclar, rapidly approaching fullness, blued the sand and silvered the waves. By its spirit light he had caught a crab, but had been unable to force the wet and slippery shell. In disgust he had watched it limp away—sideways, as if unwilling to turn its back on him. For some time afterward he had paced hungrily up and down the strand, in hopes of finding a more unprotected morsel.

Despairing of his ill-luck, he had looked up and seen the blossoming glow on the northern horizon. After a moment’s glare it was gone, but as he stared into the darkness it returned once more. For a moment it had illuminated the night sky. A heartbeat later, it had vanished again.

Watching raptly, Fritti walked farther up the beach The unusual star repeated its cycle of brilliance and darkness. The words of the Firstborn came back to Tailchaser: “... a strange hill that shines at night ...”

The spot on the horizon flared again, and he remembered his dream: the tail in the sea—the waving tail with the gleaming tip. What was before him?

Dinner on the shore forgotten, he leaped up the rock-strewn slope. Tonight, he wanted to walk. ‘

 

That night and the next he followed the beckoning light; the morning after he came finally into sight of the strange hill.

As Firefoot had said, it rose up from the midst of the Bigwater itself, far from the gravel beach. It was a M‘an-hill, Fritti could tell: it climbed high, and unnaturally straight; it was as white as new snow.

Tailchaser made his way out to a wooded peninsula of land that reached out into the sea like an outstretched paw. From its farthest tip he could make out the island on which the M‘an-mountain grew.

The island sat in the lap of Qu‘cef, rising up from the tumbling waves. Its back was green with grass. Fritti could see tiny Erunor moving slowly on the sward. At the base of the hill-thing—which looked more like some great, white, branchless trunk—crouched a M’an-dwelling of the kind Fritti had lived near, back at the Meeting Wall, so long ago. This was his destination, so close that the scent of the Erunor carried across to him, tickling his whiskers. But between Tailchaser and his heart’s desire stood a thousand jumps of the heaving blue Qu‘cef.

 

Unfolding Dark came, and the blinding light sprang forth once more from the top of the M‘an-hill. Tailchaser felt it as a burning in his heart.

 

Two more days passed. He remained on the peninsula, balked and frustrated, hunting up what little game he could in the bracken and shrubbery. As he patrolled the shore, thinking and scheming furiously, seabirds wheeled and dove in the sky above him. He thought he could hear their mocking voices calling: “Fritti ... Fritti ... Fritti ...”

You are a bug-wit,
he chided himself.
Why can’t you solve this problem?

He remembered the story that Earnotch had told him in the mound about Lord Tangaloor.

Well,
Harar’s shining tail,
he thought,
what good does it do me? The fla-fa‘az owe
me
no favors. They hover and laugh at me.

He looked across the deep waters.

I am not too sure that I would be able to talk a gteat fish out of eating me, either,
he decided.
Besides, they must all know of Firefoot’s famous trick by now.

Depressed, he continued his vigil.

 

On the fourth day since coming to the little tongue of land, he saw something coming toward him over the waves.

Crouching low in the brush at land’s end, he watched as the mysterious object bobbed its way across the Qu‘cef. It looked like half a walnut shell that had been cast away after a Rikchikchik’s meal—but it was bigger. Much bigger.

Something moved inside it. When the shell came nearer to his peninsula, he could see that the moving thing was one of the Big Ones—a M‘an. The Big One was moving two long branches back and forth in the water.

The shell, colored as gray as old tree bark, slid past Fritti’s vantage point and stopped at last on the shores of a small inlet at the base of the peninsula. The M‘an climbed out. After fussing for a while with some sort of long vine, he stamped his feet and walked away across the meadowlands toward the other M’an-dwellings.

Fritti ran excitedly down the peninsula, bounding over roots and stones. When he reached the inlet, he looked cautiously about—the Big One had disappeared—then loped down to examine this strange thing.

He sniffed it. It was obviously no walnut shell, but rather something M‘an-built. It was twice as long as the Big One was tall. The gray color was flaking off on its side, showing wood beneath. It smelled of the Qu’cef, and of M‘an, and of fish, and other things he could not identify. For a long time Fritti walked around it, scenting its strangeness, then leaped up inside. He nosed and probed, trying to discover what made it swim like a great gray pril.

Perhaps it will swim for me,
he thought,
and take me across the water.

But it only lay on the rocky beach—no matter where Fritti stood, or how hard he wished. He lay down on the bottom of the great shell-thing. He thought hard, trying to see a way to make it bear him over to the hill that shined. He thought ... and thought ... and all the pondering, and the warm afternoon sun, made him feel drowsy....

He awoke with a start. Disoriented, he looked wildly around, but could see nothing but the sides of the swimming walnut shell. Footsteps crunched across the gravel toward him. Groggy and confused, frightened of leaping up and revealing himself to the Big One, he dove beneath a pile of rough fabric. It scratched him as he squirmed beneath its comforting heaviness.

The footsteps of the M‘an stopped, and then the whole shell was sliding and scraping along the beach. Surprised, Fritti gripped the wood beneath him with his claws. The scraping stopped abruptly, to be replaced by a sensation of smooth motion. Tailchaser heard the Big One climb weightily over the edge, and then a regular sequence of creaking and splashing.