Was he disappointed in me? Softly, I muttered, “Am I being a fool?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But Cole said I was looking for trouble, and I thought he had a point.”
“Well, if Cole’s right, he’s right. What’s the use in talking about it?” Jasper purred. He opened his eyes and beckoned to me.
Hesitantly, I pressed my paw to Jasper’s fur, then licked it. Jasper rubbed his face against my ear.
“I don’t know a thing about the boy, but I can say a few words about that nose of yours,” Jasper said.
I perked up my ears. “Oh?”
“The boy didn’t change. You did. You’re about ready to start differentiating.”
“Differentiating what?” I asked.
What a cryptic comment.
Jasper explained, “Your sixth life draws near. Pretty soon you’ll be able to sniff out the nature of human hearts.”
I went still.
“Then what I smelled…” The boy’s heart?
“There’s something on that boy you don’t often smell on the village children.”
“I can’t sense it now.”
I slowly lifted my head, looking down at the boy.
The kids had switched topics. The girl was exclusively interested in talking about muffins, so the boy looked extremely bored. His expression alone told me everything. He wondered if muffins were the most interesting topic to be had in this boring place.
Nothing more, nothing less. Boredom did not a devil make.
Jasper rubbed up against me, mussing my fur. “My nose senses nothing off about the boy either,” he said.
“His heart. Human hearts.”
I believed humans had hearts. Even during my first life I’d been vaguely aware of the idea. Humans gave you food if you begged and would help groom your fur. If you cried in front of the door they’d open it. True, even a dumb, automated device could feed you and groom you and open doors, but humans had moods and free will. Sometimes they’d help, and sometimes they’d refuse. They also lied, so they must have had hearts.
Still, that was all conjecture. Believing in such a weird notion was like the faith humans placed in their God.
“What lies within the human heart?” I asked.
Jasper stood up and said, “You may find this surprising, but the human heart is mostly love.”
“Love?”
My tail twitched. I groaned.
“They have no tails, but they know love?”
“Yes. They have no tails, but they know love.”
“But…they have no tails,” I said.
Love is a troublesome tail.
Every cat knew the meaning of those words.
A first-life cat’s closest friend was their tail. Your tail was always with you, following wherever you went.
In your second life, you noticed the truth. What appeared to be an entertaining friend prone to unexpected movements was actually just part of your own body. If you bit it, you’d hurt yourself.
When a cat made this discovery, they often asked the big question: Are we alone in the universe?
Even poor non-cat creatures felt lonely when faced with this question.
Being alone wasn’t isolation. Being the only one who knew what isolation felt like, now that was isolation. Playing with your tail did not help. Even if one acquired good friends, a mate, and adorable kittens worth fussing over, all those loved ones were no different from tails.
All cats knew love was a troublesome tail.
“If you can smell his heart, why do you say you don’t know the boy?” Jasper asked.
I couldn’t understand the question. It wasn’t that I thought Jasper was wrong, but…
Jasper smiled. “Blights are always born of love,” he said.
His smile faded, but the feel of it remained.
“People’s hearts may grow corrupted. Most humans never discover the worst within themselves, but some fall apart and destroy their own lives in the process.”
“Is this because humans lack tails?”
I wasn’t sure if I was joking or not, but Jasper definitely didn’t think it was funny.
“Maybe,” he said, nodding gravely. “With no tails, humans never realize the extent of their isolation. Perhaps that’s the devil’s origin story. But that’s also exactly why humans seek out love. The power to seek becomes the power to know. Knowledge changes them. Even monstrous, inhuman creatures may take a bride and change. Is that love? Corruption? Are these things as different from each other as the ground and the sky?”
“But we, who already know—” I began.
“Most likely never change,” Jasper said, quietly.
I couldn’t tell if he was speaking out of pride or talking to himself.
A thought seemed to occur to him. He added, “Come to think of it, the king calls the humans she possesses her ‘owners.’”
“I’ve heard as much. It seems a strange way of thinking to me.”
“I actually asked her about it. The king said it means we cats don’t need to change. That to be unchanging was all we could do.”
He left me with one last thought: “This roof is hot! Hmm, ‘cat on a hot roof’ sounds like the title of a third-rate play. I’m gonna find some shade.”
He vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared.
I poked my head over the edge of the roof again. While we’d been talking, the children had both disappeared.
I was alone on the hot roof. My troublesome tail twitched on its own, flitting around the edges of my vision.
I no longer had a reason to follow the boy.
Worrying about the danger he posed was meaningless. Jasper and Cole had both said as much, and I knew that perfectly well myself.
Yet the next day and the day after that, I left my patrol to search for the boy.
I no longer bothered to hide, instead choosing to lie in plain sight where the boy could see me. The boy always moaned when he noticed me. When he saw other cats, he let out a cry. After two days, he was walking around town on his own. A cat-hating human was all wrong for Ulthar, and humans tended to isolate what they felt was wrong.
I’d never really understood the problem with being left alone. What was so bad about isolation? We were all alone in the universe, but were humans that unhappy unless they formed little groups?
Cats formed groups as well, of course. We congregated to protect one another, to patrol, to help deliver and raise kittens, to serve our king… But no one was ever as close to us as our own tails.
Love?
Love was a curse humans clung to in place of their tails.
Perhaps I just wanted to talk to mine.
No one criticized me for it. Cats never critiqued strange behavior. They either ignored it or joined in.
In time, cats began bringing me rumors of the odd child.
“Apparently, he came here fleeing a curse,” one of them whispered. I watched the boy standing by the creek, doing nothing in particular.
“A curse?”
“They were unable to annul a contract with evil blood.”
Hook-tailed Giovanni wasn’t the type to tease other cats.
“If they’re fleeing a curse,” I said, “is this child the sacrifice? The one offered?”
“Maybe so. He seems rather frail. Doubt he could even catch a mouse.”
“That’s true of most humans. No matter how many catches you bring them, they all just scream.”
If human nature was so changeable, you’d think they would learn more easily. Well, that was beside the point.
“You planning to keep up this surveillance?” Giovanni asked.
I neither confirmed nor denied. All I said was, “Well, we see a world that’s invisible to humans. Perhaps they, too, have a world we can’t see.”
Giovanni snorted, a standard cat reaction.
“Humans are simple creatures. They can’t hide anything from cats,” he said.
A yell interrupted him.
“I-I’m sorry!” the boy said.
Mackowick was lying on the ground, breathing heavily. He waved his sweaty arms around and swore.
“You little brat! Where are you even from?!” he snarled.
Apparently, Mackowick had bumped into the boy while jogging. Unsurprising, as the boy seemed pretty out of it.
“I’m sorry, really!” the boy said.
He backed up, looking ready to cry. He seemed nothing like the sullen kid with a grudge against cats.
Looking at him, Giovanni muttered, “Wrong way to handle this.”
“Yep,” I said. Even if you were to blame, you should never apologize to Mackowick. He’d feel free to get even angrier.
“Man’s been alive fifty years without ever running once,” Giovanni said. “Drunk himself half to death and now he’s jogging out of desperation. You know why he suddenly took up running last week?”
“No.”
“He scoffed at fate. Now he’s paying the price.” Giovanni wrapped his hooked tail around himself, wearing a spiteful grin. “A long time ago, he had his eye on a single mother. The kid was in the way, so he conspired to send the boy off to military school. It worked out well for him, and he married the woman. Ten years later, that boy’s a big man who’s been trained to kill, and he’s coming home next week.”
I could see why Mackowick would be desperate. His rage was dangerous. Normally he’d yell a bit and be satisfied, but now he’d grabbed the boy and was screaming.
“You’re one creepy little kid! Can’t tell what you’re thinking! I said, where do you live? Can’t you even answer a simple question?” the man shouted.
Maybe we should step in?
Giovanni and I glanced at each other, then a new voice chimed in.
“What are you doing?”
It was Mrs. Mackowick.
She had Tika’s girl with her. They must have heard the yelling.
Mackowick didn’t seem to notice the girl, but when he saw his wife he leapt like…well, like a startled cat.
“What? Why are you—” he started.
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re yelling so loud the whole village can hear you!”
“B-but this little brat… I’m trying really hard here, and he mocked me for it!”
“Mocked you for what? Embarrassing yourself in front of the whole village? Everyone’s laughing about the crying barrel that rolls through town!”
“Erp…”
This deflated him.
“Fine then! I’ll never run again! To think I married you hoping for comfort in times of struggle! I quit!”
“Thank God! If you got all healthy and outlived me, how would you ever fend for yourself? Don’t make me worry about what’ll happen to you when I’m gone!”
Her husband collapsed in a flood of tears. She dragged him away.
I watched them go and whispered, “Love, huh?”
“What?” Giovanni said, puzzled.
I just shook my head.
It didn’t matter what humans did.
Mackowick and his yelling wife had vanished, but the boy continued sobbing. The girl hesitantly put her arm on his shoulders.
He just sobbed loudly. He didn’t even thank the girl, who’d clearly gone to fetch help. But I didn’t think he was being rude on purpose. He was so shaken he couldn’t even speak.
“Is it usual to cry that much?” Giovanni asked.
I had no way of answering, but I swore I caught that particular scent from the boy again.