G howell, p.12
G. Howell, page 12
As the day gradually wound down, fewer and fewer passerbys wandered the quayside below our window. The cool breeze picked up and waves lapped against the worn stone of the dockside.
“It has been a long time since I last through this way,” Tahr abruptly said. “I was little more than a cub. My father brought me here.” She laughed in an abstracted way. “I remember he brought me a top. A top… it is a small toy that spins quickly without falling over. Ahhh, I wonder where that is now.” She leaned back against the window sill and slowly, lazily her ears twitched in a smile. She had happy memories to treasure.
“Your father… he is still alive?” I asked.
“The last news I heard he was,” she said. “He is waiting at Mainport. Saaa! It will be good to see him again.”
“How long have you been away?” I asked.
“Eight years.”
“Eight years?! And you have not seen him in all this time?”
“Oh, a few times,” she was suddenly more subdued. “I sometimes wonder if it was all worth it. Eight years of learning… ” she trailed off with a wrinkle of her muzzle. I stepped aside as she stood and padded across to the bed. The wooden frame creaked and settled as she sank down into the middle of the bowl.
I took a final look out the window. Nothing was happening out there, the sun going through its daily death. “I see the sun, and I say, it’s all right,” I murmured to myself.
“What was that?”
“Not important,” I told her and closed the shutters. With the window blocked the twilight inside the room became a deeper gloom in which Tahr was a shadow against the lighter brown of the sheets. I stripped down to my Calvin Kleins and sat down crosslegged on my pallet, rubbing at my stubble.
“Did you know them?” Tahr suddenly asked from the concealment of her bed. “Who?”
“Your parents. Did you know them?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I was not even two. They had left me with friends while they went away for several days to another city with their parents. There was a… the vehicle they were traveling in crashed. They died along with thirty others. No, I never really knew them, but I do have… had some pictures. Do not know why I kept them, I just hung onto the over the years. It is not often… ” I was babbling. I shut up.
“I am sorry,” Tahr said after a few pause. “I suppose I should not have started it… “
“No. Not your fault. I am not usually so sensitive. It is just… talking to you… ” I started trembling, clenched my hands together. “Tahr… “
“We will speak no more of that tonight,” she said with finality. “Did you enjoy yourself this day?”
I forced myself away from the bout of xenophobia, forced myself to think about her question. “I… Yeah I did.” A memory of the little girl in a coat eight times to large for her in the heat of the afternoon sun. I grinned. “Your cubs are… cute.”
Tahr laughed. “They are also impossible. I suspect they were avoiding their chores.”
“Not a whole lot of difference there,” I grinned as I lay back.
She chuckled again and for a time all was quiet.
Then:
“K’hy?”
“Hmmm? What?”
“Did you have… cubs?”
I sighed and stared at the rafters. A spider was lurking in the silver ghost of its web in a corner. “No,” I replied. “No.”
I wished she hadn’t asked me that. I felt a pang and quickly sidetracked her:
“By the way, what were you doing today?”
Sheets rustled as Tahr stretched out on her bed. “I found passage for us to Mainport aboard a ship.” She waved an obscure hand toward the window and the harbor. “We leave the day after tomorrow.” ******
Her smooth body was hot, like a fire inside, lips finding mine, pressed hard, crushing them, biting at my lower lip. My hands rubbed the small of her back then worked down over her buttocks. I could feel hot skin moving silkily against my own. A delicate nose nuzzled my ear and warm breath whispered:
“Kelly.”
“Kelly.”
“K’hy!”
Someone was shaking me. “K’hy, wake. Please wake.”
I struggled and woke, heart racing, sweating, looking into a pair of concerned goldflecked green eyes, vertical pupils. “You were making noises in your sleep. You are all right?”
I looked down at myself. The groundsheet was around my ankles. My erection peeked out of the top of my underwear. Tahr looked down at the bulge in my jockey shorts. Her nostrils flared.
“Damn it! Get away from me!” I snapped, yanking the blanket up. She drew away from me, looked hurt. “I was just trying to help.”
“You were … Shit.” I shook my head, shifting my legs. “Sorry.”
“You were calling out.” She looked around at the walls, up at the ceiling, at me. “I hope you did not waken anyone.”
I closed my eyes and held my hands over my face, rubbed my eyes. Then turned to the barely-visible slivers of night sky through the tiny slits in the shutters: anything to escape her questioning gaze. “What was I saying?”
“I could not understand. It was in your way of speaking… but your noises, just the way you were… it was obvious enough. K’hy, I worry about you.”
I didn’t say anything. She continued:
“You are very like our males in some ways.” Her eyes flickered as she gathered her thoughts. “I know… I know that a Sathe… I do not think a Sathe could live properly without… another. A male completely alone.” Then softly: “I think I would fear for his sanity.”
She rubbed her muzzle, then stared at me. “Are you the same?”
I sat up, wrapping my arms about my knees and resting my chin on them. How to answer that? Did I know? How did I feel as each day passed and home was no closer?
Alone. That I can handle, but knowing it’s going to be the same day after day, year on year, for the rest of my life, that thought clutched at my guts with a cold hand.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I could be.”
“K’hy, what are you going to do?”
I hesitated. “Try to find a way home.”
“And if you cannot?”
I looked in her eyes: Deep, feline, beautiful… and felt a knot of fear clutch at my guts. “I do not know, Tahr. I do not know.”
She put an arm around my bare shoulders and hugged me close, a familiar gesture I could understand, one that filled and empty space deep inside me. Her fur was warm, with a close, musty scent: like sun-dried straw. “I will help you,” she said. “I will do all I can.”
There was silence.
She got to her feet and made her way back to her bed. “Try to sleep, we may not get many more nights on land for a while. Ships are not the best places to close your eyes.”
I sat in silence. For how long I don’t know. Finally I rolled over and managed to get to sleep.
Thank God, I didn’t dream. ******
The next day passed slowly. I spent it in our room cleaning my equipment, preparing for a long sea voyage, and doing my best to shave while outside a light rain fell from leaden skies. Tahr catnapped for most of the day, in the late afternoon she went out into the drizzle. I waited, then fell asleep.
I groggily lifted my head as Tahr was closing the door behind her. The open window showed only night sky and my watch said 22:32. So, I must have been asleep for hours.
“Come on, get up,” she urged me as she pushed my gear under the bed, so with luck anyone glancing in the door would miss it. No locks on the doors in these hotels. Pulling on my jacket I asked her, “Where are we going?”
“To get you some proper clothes.”
Thanks a lot. That explains everything.
The streets were dark and all but deserted; we only saw two figures off in the distance in the dim streets. The drizzle had tapered off to a damp mist hanging in the air.
Tahr’s pads were silent on the damp paving stones, but my boots made a muted scuffing sound as I walked. Dim lights shone through the shutters on a few of the houses while others were as dark as abandoned buildings. Without electric lighting most folks rose and went to bed with the sun. So much for cats being nocturnal.
Tahr led us to the door of a shop on one of the smaller streets. She didn’t knock, instead scratched with her claws on the rough wood. A few seconds passed before it opened a crack, spilling a strip of orange-tinted light onto the street.
“Only me,” Tahr said.
The elderly Sathe behind the door hissed, then bade her, “Come in,” as he released a chain on the other side. His facial fur was graying and wiry, one ear was torn and ragged and his left foot was twisted, looking crushed. But that didn’t stop him from jumping back in alarm the instant he laid eyes on me.
“It is all right, good sir,” soothed Tahr. “This is the one I ordered the item for.”
He stared at me. “That?! What in the name of my Ancestors IS it?”
Tahr gave a sigh through her nostrils. “The tale is too long. It would take all night to tell, but I can assure you, he is friendly. I would not be walking around these streets at night with him if he were not.”
The old one looked me up and down with an intensely critical eye, as though I was something he’d found stuck in his fur. “All right,” he grudgingly conceded. “Come in.”
Well, if he wasn’t a tailor I was Michael Jordan. Clothing and scraps of cloth in various stages of construction and repair hung from hooks and covered spare surfaces. Knives of all shapes and sizes hung on racks and lay on tables, whetstones handy. Bobbins and spools of thread hung from racks of wooden pegs. A small loom squatted in a corner and there wasn’t a sign of any sewing machines. All work must have been done painstakingly, by hand.
The elderly tailor walked over to a bench and picked up a parcel of folded darkgreen cloth. “This is what you asked for.” He looked at me critically and muttered, “I can see why you were vague about the sizes.”
I almost said something, but Tahr’s look made me be content with sulking to myself. The tailor unfurled the object. Holding it up at arms length, he managed to keep the edges of the cloak from dragging on the ground.
Tahr took the cloak from him and handed it to me. “Put it on.”
I settled the cloak and fastened the neck clasp. The weight of the fabric was heavy on my shoulders; heavy and warm. There was a thin cotton lining and the weave was coarse wool. Weights had been sewn into the hem to stop it blowing around to much. My first piece of Sathe clothing… Obi-wan, eat your heart out. I felt like an idiot.
“It is a little short around the hood,” the tailor mused, picking up a pincushion lacerated with needles and thread, also choosing a thin knife. I hastily turned to watch him when he tried to get behind me. One thing I’m still not that fond of is an armed Sathe behind me. I’ve already got a few too many scars.
“K’hy,” Tahr reprimanded me. “Let him work.“The tailor bobbed his head at her and I stood still while he scurried behind me and hands started tugging at the fabric around my shoulders, shifting the hood. I could feel him fixing the seam with one of those oversized needles. Finally there was a snap of thread being cut and he said, “That will hold.”
“Good.” Tahr nodded approvingly.
“Ow!” Something stuck in my arm. I pulled out a ridiculously long pin that had been holding a seam together. I rubbed my arm and handed the near nail-sized sliver of metal to the tailor who took it dubiously.
Tahr looked me up and down, took a couple of steps backward to squint at me, then turned to the tailor. “I will take it,” she said, fishing in the canvas belt pouch she was using as a purse and crossed his palm with silver: “Here is the cost of your time.” She tossed over another gold piece, “And that should cover the cost of your silence.
He grabbed at the silver and gold. “I know it is none of my business, but why clothes for an animal?”
Tahr paused in the doorway. “You are right, it is none of your business. Farewell.” Out on the street: “Why do I need this anyway?” I asked, fingering the coarse weave. “I feel ridiculous.”
“It may be wise if you are… ah… less conspicuous at times. And it looks better than those strange things you wear.”
“Yeah? Well, at least they do not itch.”
She twitched her ears and we walked. It’d started drizzling again and a trickle of water wound its way down the center of the street.
A disguise? Well it might work, in dim light and at a distance - say two kilometers. At least it kept the drizzle off my neck. But why would she want me to wear a disguise? Damnation, I didn’t want to get involved in any of the politics here. I thought we’d made an agreement, however long ago that was; I’d help her get where she was going, then…
“K’hy.” Tahr caught my arm, pulling me up short. “Wait.”
“Hey… “
“No, wait.” She cocked her head to one side and hissed, “Listen!”
Her hearing was better than mine. “I cannot hear anything. I… Hey! wait!” But then she was off, ducking down a side alley, a dark blur. I followed, cursing as my boots slipped on the slime coating the wet cobblestones, dodging around piles of garbage, well into the alleyway before I heard the sounds: Muffled squeals and yelps, Sathe curses, grunts, snarling…
“Damnation! Is this any of our business?”
I rounded a corner and drew up short, hugging the shadows while I blinked and tried to see just what the hell was going on.
Shadows changed, sliding over the cul-de-sac as the moon tried to peep through the clouds. Among a pile of trash in the dead end five figures were clustered around one on the ground, four held it down while another…
“Hai!” Tahr snarled, going down into a crouch. “Get away from her!” she literally spat the words out.
The five figures jumped to their feet while the one on the ground gathered the remains of its… her cloak around herself and scrambled for the illusion of protection offered by the shadows.
“Let her go!” Tahr hissed, not a trace of humour in that sound. “Then get out of here!”
“Hah! It is only one more female,” one of the others observed, his words slurred. He growled something to his friends and they began moving to circle Tahr, blocking her retreat.
“You are drunk,” she snarled, moving to try and watch all of them. “Get out of here. Now. Before you get hurt.”
“Saaa, don’t worry about us,” one of them said. “We will be very careful. “There was hissing laughter.
Damnation Tahr!
So we WERE involved now, and this type, human or non, was a sort I held little love for. The nearest of the drunks heard something and turned just as I reached him and grabbed him by his collar, swung him around and half-threw him across the alley where his head hit a rain barrel with a solid thonk and left him sprawled on the ground, moaning and clutching at his face.
One down… But for the mewling of the female in the shadows there was no sound as the drunken Sathe stared at me. In that dimness, with my hood up against the drizzle, they probably had trouble understanding just what they were seeing
“Saaa!” The one who seemed to have some sway over the others hissed. “He is only one. Who wants to kill him?”
“All right,” I tossed back my hood to give them a better look, “Who wants to try first? Come on, do not be shy.”
One of the Sathe broke and stumbled away, swearing off drink forever. The leader gave a bit of ground, then held firm and grinned back; large, white fangs and rain-damped fur gleaming in the dim light. He was too pissed or too stupid to be scared.
“Uhhh, Creshr,” one of the others ventured. “Do you not think it is… ” “I can handle it,” he snarled, waving them back.
“Listen to your friends and get out of here before I kill you,” I said, surprised to find I meant it.
His ears went back and his pupils went to pinpricks, then he yowled and threw himself at me.
Even drunk he was fast and strong. His claws slashed at my arm, catching and tearing through two layers of thick cloth to scratch my skin. He danced back a step and looked at my hands. “Saaa! No claws! You have no claws!”
Then he rushed me again and claws raked for my face.
This time I caught his right arm and twisted. He yowled and doubled over as I pulled it straight out and kept twisting, then he screamed in pain as I kicked his elbow. There was an audible snap. I kicked him again in the stomach and his scream turned to a choking gurgle.
I dropped him retching into a puddle and turned back to the other thugs. The one I had flattened first was only just starting to stir. He vomited loudly.
“Who is next?” I hissed.
They scattered into the night.
I picked the moaning Sathe with the broken arm up by the scruff of his neck and slammed him face-first up against a wall, his feet a couple of inches off the ground, his arm dangling uselessly by his side and whispered in his pointed ear, “Try this again, and I will come back. I will rip out your heart. I will show it to you before I eat it. Do you understand?”
“Yes! Yes!” His hoarse answer was a bit muffled by the fact his face was being flattened by the wall.
“Bastard!” I spat then carried him to the mouth of the alley and threw him on his face. I waited until he’d hauled himself to his feet and staggered off into the dark streets, then dusted off my hands and went over to join Tahr who was comforting the victim.
She was young; probably attractive. Her soft facial fur was marred by blood trickling from one nostril and she had claw marks on her arms, chest, and stomach. More wetness glistened on her thighs and between her legs where Tahr was examining her. Not pretty.
My foot bumped against a tattered pair of breeches lying on the cobbles. I picked them up, wringing water out, then offering them to Tahr. “Is she all right?”
The trembling young Sathe shrank back, her claws sliding out. Tahr put her hands over the young female’s and stroked her temples, avoiding the scratches across her muzzle. “It is all right, he will not hurt you,” Tahr assured her. “He did save your life. Here, your breeches.”
