Anyway, we have found out how to beat the Slavers. We have no idea what is going on in the other of the Ten Worlds, or even in the rest of Sveridge, but there are fifty more Worm Reserves around the world, and Lewin says there must be stray Dragonate units, too, who might think of using dragons against Slavers. We want to move out and take over some of the farms again soon. The dragons are having far too much fun with the sheep. They keep flying over with woolly bundles dangling from their claws, watched by a gloomy crowd of everyone’s shepherds. “Green dot,” the shepherds say. “The brutes are raiding Hightop now.” They are very annoyed with Orm because Orm just gives his mad cackle and lets the dragons go on.
Orm isn’t mad at all. He’s afraid of people knowing he’s heg; he still won’t admit he is. I think that’s why he left Mother, and Mother doesn’t admit she was ever married to him. Not that Mother minds. I get the feeling she and Orm understand one another rather well. But Mother married Donal, you see, after Timas. Donal, and Yan, too, have both told me that the fact that I’m heg makes no difference to them, but you should see the way they both look at me! I’m not fooled. I don’t blame Orm for being scared stiff Donal would find out he was heg. But I’m not sure I shall ever like Orm, all the same.
I am putting all this down on what is left of Palino’s memo block. Lewin wanted me to, in case there is still some history yet to come. He has made his official version on the recorder. I’m leaning the block on Huffle’s forefoot. Huffle is my friend now. Leaning on a dragon is the best way to keep warm on a chilly evening like this, when you’re forced to camp out in the Reserve. Huffle is letting Lewin lean on him, too, beyond Neal, because Lewin’s ribs still pain him. There is a lot of leaning space along the side of a dragon. Orm has just stepped across Huffle’s tail, into the light, chortling and rubbing his hands in his most irritating way.
“Your mother’s on the warpath,” he says. “Oh, I do love a good quarrel!”
And here comes Mother, ominously upright, and with her arms folded. It’s not Orm she wants. It’s Lewin. “Listen, you,” she says. “What the dickens is the Dragonate thinking of, beheading hegs all these years? They can’t help what they are. And they’re the only people who can stand up to the Thrallers.”
Orm is cheated of his quarrel. Lewin looked up, crumpled into the most friendly smile. “I do so agree with you,” he said. “I’ve just said so in my report. And I’d have got your daughter off somehow, you know.”
Orm is cackling like the she-drake’s young ones. Mother’s mouth is open, and I really think that for once in her life she has no idea what to say.
WHAT THE CAT TOLD ME
I am a cat. I am a cat like anything. Keep stroking me. I came in here because I knew you were good at stroking. But put your knees together so I can sit properly, front paws under. That’s better. Now keep stroking, don’t forget to rub my ears, and I will purr and tell.
I am going to tell you how I came to be so very old. When I was a kitten, humans dressed differently, and they had great stamping horses to pull their cars and buses. The Old Man in the house where I lived used to light a hissing gas on the wall when it got dark. He wore a long black coat. The Boy who was nice to me wore shabby breeches that only came to his knees, and he mostly went without shoes, just like me. We slept in a cupboard under the stairs, Boy and I. We kept one another warm. We kept one another fed, too, later on. The Old Man did not like cats or boys. He only kept us because we were useful.
I was more useful than Boy. I had to sit in a five-pointed star. The Boy would help Old Man mix things that smoked and made me sneeze. I had to sneeze three times. After that things happened. Sometimes big purple cloud things came and sat beside me in the star. Fur stood up on me, and I spat, but the things only went away when Old Man hit the star with his stick and told them, “Begone!” in a loud voice. At other times the things that came were small, real things you could hit with your paw: boxes, or strings of shiny stones no one could eat, or bright rings that fell tink beside me out of nowhere. I did not mind those things. The things I really hated were the third kind. Those came inside me and used my mouth to speak. They were nasty things with hateful thoughts, and they made me hateful. And my mouth does not like to speak. It ached afterward, and my tongue and throat were so sore that I could not wash the hatefulness off me for hours.
I so hated those inside-speaking things that I used to run away and hide when I saw Old Man drawing the star on the cellar floor. I am good at hiding. Sometimes it took Boy half the day to find me. Then Old Man would shout and curse and hit Boy and call him a fool. Boy cried at night in the cupboard afterward. I did not like that, so after a while I scratched Old Man instead. I knew none of it was Boy’s fault. Boy made Old Man give me nice things to eat after I had sat in the star. He said it was the only way to get me to sit there.
Boy was clever, you see. Old Man thought he was a fool, but Boy told me—at night in the cupboard—that he only pretended to be stupid. Boy was an orphan like me. Old Man had bought him for a shilling from a baby farmer ages before I was even a kitten, because his hair was orange, like the ginger patches on me, and that is supposed to be a good color for magic. Old Man paid a whole farthing for me, for much the same reason, because I am brindled. And Boy had been with Old Man ever since, learning things. It was not only magic that Boy learned. Old Man was away quite a lot when Boy was small. Boy used to read Old Man’s books in the room upstairs, and the newspapers, and anything else he could find. He told me he wanted to learn magic in order to escape from Old Man, and he learned the other things so that he could manage in the wide world when he did escape; but he had been a prisoner in the house for years now, and although he knew a great deal, he still could not break the spell Old Man had put on him to keep him inside the house. “And I really hate him,” Boy said to me, “because of the cat before you. I want to stop him doing any more magic before I leave.”
And I said—
What was that? How could Boy and I talk together? Do you think I am a stupid cat, or something? I am nearly as clever as Boy. How do you think I am telling you all this? Let me roll over. My stomach needs rubbing. Oh, you rub well! I really like you. Well— No, let me sit up again now. I think the talking must be something to do with those inside-speaking things. When I was a kitten, I could understand what people said, of course, but I couldn’t do it back, not at first, until I had been lived in and been spoken through by quite a lot of Things. Boy thought they stretched my mind. And I was clever to start with, not like the cat before me.
Old Man killed the cat before me somehow. Boy would not tell me how. It was a stupid cat, he said, but he loved it. After he told me that, I would not go near Boy for a whole day. It was not just that I was nervous about being killed, too. How could he love any cat that wasn’t me? Boy caught me a pigeon off the roof, but I still wouldn’t speak to him. So he stole me a saucer of milk and swore he would make sure Old Man didn’t kill me, too. He liked me a lot better than the other cat, he said, because I was clever. Anyway, Old Man killed the other cat doing magic he would not be able to work again without a certain special powder. Besides, the other cat was black and did not look as interesting as me.