Everyone stared blankly at the twins. A deep silence filled the area for what seemed like an age.
Grumbuskin finally broke the silence by saying very quietly "What do you mean?"
Coricopat and Tantomile anticipated that the others would not understand them, and they were prepared to answer him. However, they felt it a little unsafe to explain the whole thing while the Siamese were still very close by.
"We'll tell you everything as soon as we put enough distance between ourselves and the Siamese," Coricopat assured everyone, "For now, we must seek shelter."
"Where?" enquired Victor, holding his bandaged left front leg in his right front paw, "Where can we go?"
There was a long silence before Roshedam offered "We could go back to my place. The Siamese don't know of it, and it's the only place in this whole town where I feel completely safe."
The others agreed with his suggestion. Grumbuskin told them "First, there is something I must do."
At that, he turned to Farios' body, picked it up, and approached the sampan that Griddlebone and her group had used to recover Growltiger's body. Then he jumped down into it and gently laid Farios' body on the ground. Grumbuskin took the brown and black tom's two front legs and folded them over his chest. He removed Farios' sword from its sheath and laid it on his chest, right underneath his folded front legs. Then he got back onto the platform with the other members of the group.
Once he was back on the platform, Grumbuskin turned to the sampan and bowed his head in respect. Everyone else did this as well, including Jemima.
Grumbuskin muttered under his breath "This brave sailor is just one of the few that died defending his crew tonight. May the River Thames receive his body into its grasp and honor his memory and his contributions for all-time."
"Aye," stated Victor, Ralpharite, Najalim, and Quaftil.
After a brief moment of silence, Grumbuskin looked up and stepped forward towards the sampan. He gestured for the other sailors to join him. They did, and with their combined force, they pushed the sampan in the direction opposite the Demagogue.
The sampan sailed away, carrying Farios' peaceful body down the river with it.
Grumbuskin turned back to his acquaintances and told them "Now we may leave."
The group of cats started walking back towards Hampton via way of West Molesey. Working together, Quaftil and Najalim carried Growltiger's body with them. Grumbuskin carried Tumblebrutus in his arms. Jemima stayed close to him for the entire walk.
When they came to the trolley, Ralpharite, Roshedam, Dawlimer, Scurtena, Bellazni, Coricopat, and Tantomile handled transporting it manually.
As they walked, Victor told Grumbuskin, "Sir, if it makes you feel better, most of the crew is still alive. They're attending a celebration at Hampton Court which will last about another three hours."
"That is good news," said Grumbuskin, "We'll need to make arrangements to rendezvous with them before they leave."
"Hampton Court is not far from here," stated Ralpharite, "We could rush by there and pick them up."
"No, for now, we need to concentrate on getting Tumblebrutus and the Captain to safety," Grumbuskin stated, "Then we can arrange to meet up with the others and decide where to go from there."
Not another word was spoken until the group arrived at Roshedam's place. Once they got there, they hid the trolley again and one-by-one, they made their way onto the fire escape platform. Victor could not grab onto the ladder with only one paw, so a few extra measures needed to be taken for him to get to the base of the platform. When Ralpharite got onto the platform, he took a rope from his equipment pack and let a great length of it down the ledge. When enough of it reached the ground, Najalim and Quaftil took it and tied it around Victor's waist and shoulders as a harness. With the combined effort of Roshedam, Coricopat, and Tantomile, Ralpharite managed to pull Victor up to the platform. He used the same process to bring up Tumblebrutus and Growltiger.
Once all fifteen cats were on the fire escape platform, they made their way into Roshedam's apartment on the third floor.
Once they were there, they got settled in the living room. Jemima took a washcloth, soaked it in cold water, and used it to clean the wound on Tumblebrutus' head. A few others, like Griddlebone, offered to help her, but she politely declined. At that moment, she only wanted to tend to Tumble by herself.
She thought about how peaceful he looked, even though he had a large bloodstain on the top of his head where Nihaar had struck him. After cleaning off much of the dried blood, she leaned down and kissed his cheek delicately.
After Growltiger's body had been dried, it was placed on a few fresh sheets in the middle of the room. Then everyone turned their attention towards Coricopat and Tantomile.
The twins quickly began explaining what they had said at the docks.
"As you know, both of us are psychic," Tantomile began, "We have the ability to sense the emotions of others and such."
"However, being psychic is not our only otherworldly feature," Coricopat went on, "We are also mystics. We can commit acts that defy the laws of nature."
"Such as?" Griddlebone beckoned them to continue.
"We have the ability to see living beings past their corporeal form," Tantomile stated, "We can actually see the very energy of the soul itself as it emanates off a body. But only when the body is alive."
"Right now, we can see that the energy of Growltiger's soul is still lingering around the body," Coricopat continued for her, "For the moment, the energy is intact. This means that Growltiger's soul is undamaged."
"For the moment, his body and soul are separated from each other," said Tantomile, "But before long, the two of them will meld back together."
The others were intrigued by what they had just been told. Several of them – most notably Griddlebone and her children – seemed joyful to know that Growltiger had a chance to live. But most of them were still confused.
"How is that possible?" inquired Ralpharite, "Growltiger was lying face down in the water for more than twenty minutes. No one could have lived through that."
"We had something to do with that, as well," Coricopat answered, "Another of our supernatural gifts is the ability to seek out a soul and separate it from its host body."
"This is arguably the hardest and most complicated trick that any mystic can perform," Tantomile explained, "It can only be performed every once in a while. And it can only be performed on someone who is in mortal peril."
"What does it involve?" asked Victor.
"First, my sister and I must seek out one mind in particular and focus all our concentration on it," Coricopat explicated, "Once we have accomplished this, we must imagine that the soul separates itself from the body. Then, we must believe that it has done so. Then the soul separates and creates a type of natural shield around the body to keep it safe from any harm."
"When your Captain was forced to walk the plank, my brother and I knew that we could not just let him die," Tantomile continued, "So we did this exactly to your Captain. That is why he went from violently struggling in the water to becoming completely listless so abruptly."
Again, everyone needed a moment to absorb all this information. Finally, Dawlimer looked down at his father's body and asked "If you could see his soul's energy this whole time, then we didn't you tell us this beforehand?"
"Because the protective shield that energy creates renders the soul invisible, unless the body is viewed up-close," responded Coricopat, "By that, I mean very close. That's why we needed physical contact with the body."
"Have you ever done this before?" queried Bellazni.
"Yes, five times," said Coricopat, "All of those individuals were complete strangers to us at the time, and we encountered them just by travelling together in the city. All of they were in mortal peril when we met them. One of them had been attacked and severely beaten by a group of Pollicle dogs, barely escaping with her life. Another was in danger of burning to death in a fire. Another had been injected with a slow-working poison by his sadistic animal-abusing owner. Another was suffering from a terminal illness. The last one had been trapped in a room with a limited oxygen supply."
"Even though they were complete strangers, we felt obligated to help them," Tantomile remarked.
"What happened to them?" inquired Scurtena.
"Three of them died within twenty-four hours," Tantomile promptly responded. Upon seeing the horrified countenances of a few of their acquaintances, she quickly added "But the other two survived, and their souls managed to remerge with their bodies overtime. You need not worry; Growltiger will live."
"How can you be sure?" enquired Quaftil.
"Which ones were the ones that survived?" questioned Najalim.
"Both those questions have the same answer," Coricopat replied, "The ones that died shortly after we performed the mystical act on them were the one that had been brutalized by dogs, the one that had been injected with poison, and the terminally-ill tom. We noticed that they all had a similar feature – they were dying beforehand because of a direct problem with their bodies. You see, the charm does not protect the body from internal threats or fatal damages already done to it. In fact, it actually quickens the damages' effects. That's why it took less than a day for those three to die."
"However, the other two lived." Tantomile took over in the explanation, "The tom that had been in a fire lost both of his owners to the arsonist that had started it, but he himself had miraculously survived without a single burn mark on his body. You see, the fire was an external threat. It could not harm that tom because it was not a part of his body. The same thing goes for the queen that had been locked in a room that had no ventilation system at all by her abusive former mate. She had been screaming and begging for someone to help her, and luckily, we just happened to arrive outside that building. We tried to open up some of the windows or break them open, but that did not work. Finally, we decided that performing the charm was the only way to save her. Even after the room ran out of oxygen, her soul remained behind. That gave us time to find a heavy object, break open a window, and get her out of there."
"In both those cases, the individual was being threatened by an external hazard," Coricopat continued, "And both those times, the shield created by their soul's energy protected them from any further harm. In that same way, the energy shield of Growltiger's soul protected him from a death by drowning. The water was literally repelled by the shield. And that is precisely why Growltiger will live."
Everyone was amazed by everything they had just heard. It seemed completely unbelievable, yet strangely enough it all made sense at the same time.
"You said something about the soul and the body remerging together," commented Victor.
"Yes, we did," nodded Coricopat.
"How will that happen?" asked the cream and brown tom.
"It's a long process," explained Tantomile, "The soul's energy will gradual fuse itself back into the host's body, and unfortunately, there's nothing we can do to speed up the reintegration process. The body will just be in a very unusual type of coma as that happens."
"So, how long are we talking about here?" asked Griddlebone hastily.
The twins shrugged simultaneously. Coricopat stated "Alas, we have no clue."
Tantomile added "We took the other two to our home to keep their bodies safe until they recovered completely. The other two took months until they regained consciousness."
"Months?" Griddlebone breathed quietly.
"I'm afraid so, milady," Coricopat confirmed, "However, just because it took the other two such a long time to recover, it does not necessarily mean that Growltiger will be comatose for that long as well."
"But we still do not know how long it could take," Tantomile emphasized, "His body and soul just might remerge sooner than that."