Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry
Chapter Two
Well, this obsession doesn't seem to be going anywhere so here's chapter two. Enjoy, people who are probably just me.
…..
"Three more shows. Just three more, and then we're gone."
Jerrie knew she didn't believe him. He'd been saying it for too long.
Rumpleteazer had ended up with heatstroke twice now, and with Mungojerrie not doing any shows at all the lion's share of their allocated food was going to Teazer. It hardly mattered though because in the run-up to each show Teazer couldn't bring herself to eat and just gave her food to Jerrie, leaving them both on the edge of starving.
Jerrie was worried sick. Along with not eating, she was over-grooming bald patches into her fur and had pulled out half of her whiskers. She wasn't sleeping enough and when she did sleep, she had nightmares. If they left it much longer, she wouldn't be in any fit state to run.
The carnies were starting to eye Jerrie up for the stew pot. They'd already eaten one of the horses from the old show, the one who was too old to sell. The snake charmer had left and taken her snake with her, and he was still too small to make a proper meal, but in lean times while he wasn't working he was just another mouth to feed. He knew they were just keeping him around in case something happened to Teazer, and if he got much thinner he'd be prime material for the Kitten Dumpling.
They needed to leave. Soon.
But...
Neither of them remembered much before the circus. They had never had to hunt or scavenge, for all the hard work they had put into their acts they were given food and shelter. As bad as the circus had become, what was outside of it was unknown and frightening. They were hungry, but they still slept in the same bed of rags in the storage crate and it was warm and comfortable.
Three more shows. Three more would allow them to build up their strength, and their nerve. Just three more and they would be gone. He repeated it when three shows had gone, and then six, and then nine.
In the end, the decision was made for them.
…..
"Teazer! Wake up!"
She grumbled, worn out from yet another show and weak from hunger.
"We're going. Right now," he hissed.
"Wha...?" she stammered, rubbing her eyes. "Right now?"
"Yes!" he hissed back. "Listen, I heard them talking...they're shutting down for good. They're selling everything they can and dumping the rest. The manager's going to run out on the carnies."
She got up, with difficulty. She was still recovering from another bout of heatstroke, and her legs shook with the effort.
"I packed a few things," Jerrie told her, nodding towards a handkerchief tied with a knot. "We'll make for the trees on the other side of the stream, if we make it that far they won't bother looking for us."
"And what then?" she asked. It all sounded very good, but Jerrie's ideas always sounded good until they hit the first hurdle.
"We'll go to London," he announced, beaming with pride.
"London? Why?"
"That old magic bloke was always banging on about how great London is," Jerrie shrugged. "Why not? It's full of cats, I heard. Must be a good life for the having if there's so many."
"How do you think we're going to get there?"
"We just follow the road," he answered, a little annoyed at her questioning. "South, as far as we can. Once the roads get more crowded, we're in London."
She didn't say anything more, but in the dark he saw her frowning, looking down at their bed of rags.
"If we don't go now, we're in the stew pot," he told her firmly. "Manager is taking the animals he can sell, and that's not us. We should take our chances in the woods."
Finally, thankfully, she seemed to agree. She tottered over to the crate entrance beside him, and they both peered out.
It wouldn't be their first escape attempt. They had always been caught before, by the yard dogs or the line strung up with tin cans around the campsite or even just the creak of the carriage door. They had been punished for those attempts, but there would be no punishments this time. They had to get it right in one go. The yard dogs were hungry enough to not just stop them but eat them.
But...
While Mungojerrie dropped silently to the ground below the storage carriage, Rumpleteazer tumbled out awkwardly a moment afterwards, hitting the dirt hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Beside the camp fire, he saw the ears of a yard dog prick up. They crouched, low and silent, until the dog seemed less alert.
"Get on my back," Jerrie instructed, dropping the bundle.
"But what about..."
"Never mind that stuff, we can manage without it," he told her. "You can't run, just hang on tight. Once we get to the trees we're free."
She did as she was told.
By the time they passed under the tin can line and the dogs realized that they were on the run, it was too late. They were halfway across the bridge when the carnies discovered that they were missing, and when the first torch was lit they were already hunkered down in an abandoned rabbit warren under an enormous oak tree.
That first night was cold and drafty, but for the first time in a long time they slept soundly.
…..
Forest, field, farm.
Farm, forest, field.
Small village, farm, forest.
The road to London was a parade of sameness. They stayed off the road itself, as far from humans as they could manage. They were still useless at hunting, but crouching in tight corners and tiptoeing across tightropes had made them excellent thieves, and thieves prospered in these places. They stole eggs from bird's nests in the trees, sandwiches from field labourers, smoked meat from storehouses, pies from windowsills and milk from schoolhouses.
They had just about enough to feed themselves, but it was always risky. Sometimes they were shot at, sometimes they would be chased by a dog and forced to drop what they'd taken to get away. Mungojerrie got shut in the larder of a schoolhouse for an entire weekend, escaping out the window to the laughter of thirty small children and the screaming of their teacher.
They slept where they could find safety; old warrens and burrows, under troughs and in barns, in the ruins of ancient castles and in the foundations of newly-built houses. They walked by the road at night, all night, until they were too exhausted to go on.
When they were forced to stay in any one place, by weather or other circumstances, they resumed their old game. Whoever went out to get food always brought something unusual back with them, something to sniff and bat and wonder over. Old bones, strange flowers, pieces of cloth, ragged newsletters, a child's shoe, usually by the time they were ready to leave they had built up quite a collection.
Another element joined in their play; when Rumpleteazer raided a farmhouse for some turkey, she accidentally caught a piece of jewelry dangling from the water tap and the farmer's wife went into hysterics. Teazer found the whole thing tremendously funny and it stood to reason that the jewelry must have been worth a lot for the farmer's wife to have lost her mind the way she did.
After that, they made a concentrated effort to target items the owners found valuable. Whether they got them or not didn't matter, how much trouble they could cause in the taking did.
…..
"Pigeon. Definitely."
"Too big to be a pigeon. It's a pheasant."
"How would you know? You ever seen a pheasant?"
"'Course I have!"
"Plucked and cooked don't count, you never...augh!"
Their little argument was cut off with a rush of metal slicing through the air and hitting fur. Mungojerrie managed to keep his scream of pain contained to that one little yelp; a sound of distress would attract the local carnivores faster than the smell of blood. Rumpleteazer flattened against the grass, wildly glancing around for the threat.
"What?" she whispered, when she couldn't see what had attacked him. "What is it?"
"It's got my leg," Jerrie gasped.
Cautiously, she crept across to the patch of grass that was holding Jerrie's paw. For a moment, she was confused. She couldn't see anything...
...and then something thin and silver shimmered lightly in the moonlight, and she tracked it to the ground. A wire, tied to a wooden stake, the other end wrapped tightly around Jerrie's paw, so tight it had cut into the flesh. The paw was bent at an odd angle, most likely broken by the force of the trap being triggered.
"Oh dear," a silky voice sounded from behind them.
Teazer wheeled around and hissed in the voice's direction. Someone had responded to the sound of an animal in distress, but they wouldn't find easy prey.
The fox simply chuckled lightly. Her black eyes shone bright in the moonlight, she was not a young vixen and large, full of sleek muscle. She was more than twice Teazer's size, and with Mungojerrie in no shape to fight it would be difficult to chase her off.
"You were fortunate," the vixen said, licking her lips. "It's supposed to break your neck, not your paw. You went into it backwards. The rabbits usually go the other way."
"Who put it here?" Teazer asked, backing away towards Jerrie, whose breathing was sounding more and more ragged.
"Poachers," the vixen answered. "They'll be quite annoyed that you're not a fat little rabbit. Though I'm not so picky..."
She advanced, slightly, and Teazer hissed and swiped at her.
"Stay back!" she warned, arching her back in an attempt to look bigger than she was.
The vixen smiled, rows of yellow fangs glimmered faintly in her open mouth.
"I can wait," she said with a little sniff. "The snare is unbreakable. If you want to get out of it, you'll have to chew the paw clean off. If you make it that long."
A rustle in the underbrush, and she was gone. The air was thick with the scent of blood, and Jerrie was sucking in breaths frantically, wheezing into the darkness.
"Calm down," Teazer told him sharply. "She's gone, but she'll be back. We have to get you out fast."
"You're not going to chew my foot off, are you?" Jerrie gasped. "She said..."
"Never mind what she said," Teazer hissed. "She's a wild animal, she doesn't know humans like we do. They have to have some way to get these things loose themselves, don't they? All we have to do is figure it out!"
That was all Rumpleteazer had to do. Mungojerrie was in no state to do anything more than lie panting in the grass. Shock, blood loss, pain and panic had rendered him almost comatose. They were on the outskirts of the woods, without enough trees to cover them from owls or kestrels, and within sight of a nearby homestead reeking with the scent of dogs. The vixen would be back, and she wasn't the only predator in the woods. All around, beady eyes and twitching noses kept a vigil around them.
…..
Sixteen hours.
If they'd had any way of telling the time, they would have known that it took sixteen hours to get Mungojerrie out of the snare.
Rumpleteazer had tried chewing through the wire until her jaw hurt too much to continue. Then she tried pulling at the loop around the injured paw, but it wouldn't come loose. Finally she realized that the stake it was tied to would have to come up to loosen the wire, but it was firmly stuck into the ground. She began to dig as the sun was rising.
The vixen returned and tried to get closer, to see what was going on, but Teazer put up a furious threat display and she thought the better of it. A young kestrel swooped on Jerrie as he lay flattened in the grass, but all it got was Teazer's claws in its wing for its trouble. Gradually, the curious eyes and noses faded away as they realized there was easier prey to be had.
Just as the dogs on the homestead were being let out for a run, Teazer managed to get the stake out of the ground, and the wire finally came loose. Exhausted as she was, she still slung Jerrie across her back and dragged him to a thick tangle of roots under a sycamore tree, not enough shelter to be truly safe but just enough for Jerrie to recover so they could move on.
Mungojerrie slipped in and out of unconsciousness over the next few days, with only snippets of the time he spent there being registered in his mind. He knew that Rumpleteazer was keeping his wound clean, he woke up sometimes as she was washing him, and her face smeared with his blood would be a memory he would keep forever.
She brought him food. He couldn't remember eating it, but he could remember Teazer ripping it to tiny shreds so he could swallow easily. On the coldest and wettest nights she covered his body with her own to keep him warm and dry. When the homestead dogs finally found their hiding place, she hissed and screamed at them for hours until they gave up.
Eventually, Mungojerrie recovered enough to walk away from the woods, although his paw would never be the way it once was. He just counted himself lucky that he managed to survive at all.
…..
The journey to London had taken a long time, but they were still a long ways from fully grown when they finally made it there. Gradually the air became foggier and the birdsong and rustle of trees faded into the sounds of people and machines at work. It was an ugly, damp place, but for a cat it held the promise of a thousand hiding places, a thousand sources of food, a thousand different ways to live.
It was Paradise.
There was no need, really, to keep thieving. They could have lived a perfectly good life scavenging from bins like the rest of the city's strays, or alternatively they were still young and cute enough to be adopted by some wealthy family's children.
But by then, thieving had moved past a necessity and become a way of life. London's humans had a vast array of fascinating objects, things that smelled interesting or glimmered in the light nicely or made very comfortable beds. And the way they howled when either cat nicked those things was still hilarious.
One of their favourite tricks was a holdover from the circus trick of the teleporting box. One kitten would allow the human to trap them under a wash basin or a towel or a bucket, only to have the other one saunter out in front of them, fooling the human into thinking they'd escaped. They would lift the basin or towel or bucket to trap them again, and the one originally trapped would hide, waiting for their doppelganger to get stuck so they could trick the human again. Sometimes they kept it up for hours, to the despair of housekeepers across the city.
…..
"It smells awful."
"Well, the woman who had it shouted like billy-o when I nicked it, so..."
"I don't care, I'm not eating that."
"It's what proper Londoners eat!"
"I'm not hungry."
"Sod that, you're always hungry!"
Rumpleteazer took another cautious sniff, batted at the mysterious 'stuff' leaking from the stolen pie, and backed away from it.
"I'm not that hungry,"she sniffed.
"Like hell," Mungojerrie huffed, yanking a chunk of eel out of the pie. "I'm not going back out, you can sort out your own supper."
"Ahem..."
The two of them wheeled around in the direction of the cleared voice, knocking the pie off of the butter tub they were using as a table. It was an enormous cat, long and thin with sparse fur and a squint in one eye. He grinned at them with the few teeth he had left.
"Eel pie, is it? My favourite," he said, sauntering forward to grab one of the chunks on the floor. "Although I didn't come here to break bread with you...I have a proposition for you two."
They looked at each other. All things considered, they could probably take him in a fight if they worked together, but...
"I'm sure you know you've got something of a reputation around here. And in less than a month, impressive," the stranger cat said through a mouthful of eel. "My boss has taken notice. He wants a word with you."
"Boss?" Mungojerrie queried.
"I'm sure you've heard of him," the stranger cat replied. "Goes by the name of Macavity."