The Hundred Names of Darkness Read online

  “I don’t know,” said Mara. “I don’t know the outside cats much, except for Southpaw and Beraal.”

  She saw Jalebi’s whiskers rise in incredulity, though the plump cat didn’t mew. There was a sudden silence, and overhead, they heard the parrots squawk, as the pair broke out in a squabble. Their green shapes flashed into vivid relief against the old red ramparts.

  “Never mind Chancha and Meechi,” said Begum. “They’ve been together for years and their feathers droop if they haven’t had three arguments a day. So if I understand you correctly, you don’t know the cats in Nizamuddin? You don’t patrol the neighbourhood? Mara, didn’t Beraal or Miao tell you what a Sender does?”

  “I don’t like it outside,” said Mara. “And the cats don’t like me. My Bigfeet love me, so why should I leave the house?”

  “Have you never been outside except through sendings, Mara?” asked Jalebi, the plump cat’s eyes widening in surprise.

  “I went out once,” said Mara, “and I hated it.” She turned to Begum fiercely. “Beraal kept telling me I should go out, but I don’t see why! It’s terrifying! Everything’s so loud, and the dogs seem so ferocious! The Bigfeet outside are mean and noisy. And the other cats really don’t like me. They think I’m a freak. Why should I keep an eye out for them?”

  Begum was looking at her very steadily.

  “Because you’re a Sender, Mara, and they are your clan,” she said. “And that is what a Sender does. It’s not about summoning a tiger during a battle, as impressive as that was. If you’re the Sender, then you’re responsible for the other cats, and that’s the way it is.”

  “I don’t have to be a Sender if I don’t want to,’ said Mara sulkily. ‘You can do what you want, but I’m not going outside.”

  “What a brat!” said Umrrow Jaan. “I thought you were such a heroine after we heard about the battle—making friends with tigers, bringing one of them along to help your friends. We all wanted to meet the Sender of Nizamuddin when we heard, you know? But listen to you! So you’re scared of the outside, as if all of us aren’t! Sending doesn’t protect us from the Bigfeet’s kicks, or from the sharp teeth of the dogs, or the monkeys, but that doesn’t matter, Mara! The reason we have such long whiskers, why we can send and summon, is because we’re supposed to look after the rest. And here you are, whining about how they don’t like you, they think you’re a freak. You think we haven’t felt that way? But we kept going, we didn’t whine about it like spoilt furballs, did we? We were there for the cats of our neighbourhood. But you—you’re so spoiled that you don’t even realize that if your friend Southpaw was stealing fish, he was probably terribly hungry!”

  Umrrow Jaan made a disgusted mew, and turned her back on Mara.

  The young queen’s green eyes had grown large, filling with shock as she heard what Umrrow Jaan had to say. She stared at the Senders, feeling very small all of a sudden.

  “You think Southpaw was stealing because he didn’t have enough to eat?” she said, her mew subdued. It was a horrible thought. Mara’s tail went down as she considered the last few months, and the memories that came back to her were not pleasant.

  Often, she had finished eating by the time Southpaw dropped in; it had never occurred to her to ask her Bigfeet for more food for her friend, because he never said anything, and she assumed he’d hunted well. But she thought of a few occasions when Southpaw had eaten whatever leftovers there were. It came to her, as she sat in the middle of the Circle of Senders, that he had pushed his nose into the bowl with some intensity each time. She thought, too, of how thin he’d been getting, and how when she asked him why his ribs were showing, he’d raised his laughing whiskers and said he’d been overdoing the hunting, leaping and climbing.

  “Umrrow, you’re not wrong, but you’re being too harsh on Mara,” said Begum. “She hasn’t been trained by Senders; there are none left in Nizamuddin. We had to wait till her whiskers had grown to their full length before we could summon her. I’d like to talk to Mara alone, but before I do, instead of scolding her, shall we link whiskers and show her what it really means to be a Sender?”

  Spook, Umrrow, Jalebi, Baoli and the rest mewed in assent. Mara felt power riffle across her whiskers, and then the world changed in the old familiar way.

  They were in Mehrauli, among the monuments and the flat rooftops of the Bigfeet settlements that barnacled the ancient ruins. Clowders of cats sat lazing on the walls of Zafar’s tomb, and through Umrrow Jaan, they followed the scent trails of contentment and chatter deep into the area. A mother cat played with her litter in the peaceful shadows of Jamali Kamali mosque and tomb; a swaggering gang of toms, led by a proud young queen, made discreet forays on small prey behind the sweetly scented stalls in the flower market. When they saw Umrrow Jaan, their tails went up in glad greeting.

  The air shimmered, Mara’s stomach lurched unpleasantly, and then they were strolling behind the Red Fort in Chandni Chowk, Jalebi’s flanks rolling from side to side as she sauntered down the fragrance-sellers’ lane. Sleek grey cats with a military air about their whiskers sat on the wooden steps of many of the shops, acknowledging her passage with a stiff wave. An old tom marched down a crowded alley, winding through the legs of the unheeding Bigfeet. Four young kittens marched behind him, their stumpy legs waddling in his wake. He sent Jalebi a cheerful salute when he saw her, and the kittens raised their black whiskers, trying with less success to emulate their leader.

  The world changed again. Fat black-and-white cats with sleepy eyes patrolled the grounds of the American Embassy, scouring the hedgerows for bandicoot runs. Further off, grey cats slipped like spooky shadows in and out of the Chinese Embassy, and three Siamese cats exchanged confidential gossip, their whiskers held secretively low. Their ears flickered as Spook passed by, but she didn’t disturb their conclaves.

  Begum took the last sending, heading for the banks of the Yamuna, taking the long way around so that they could see the elephants. Curled up together near the great beasts, a cluster of older cats warmed their bones and snoozed in the straw. The elephants stepped carefully around them. Lower down, on the banks where the Bigfeet grew watermelons and other vegetables in the silty, fertile dirt of the Yamuna’s banks, a clan of fishing cats balanced on the edge of an abandoned boat, scooping tadpoles out of the weed-festooned waters. “Join us, Begum, there’s plenty!” they called. “Thank you,” she called back. “I will, but not today.”

  Travelling in their wake, Mara felt something buried stir inside. There was a distance between all of the Senders and the other cats, for sure, but her whiskers and fur picked up other things: affection, respect. Wherever they went, the Senders were known, sometimes adored, always liked—even if that respect was sometimes tinged with fear, as it was with Begum’s clan. It seemed to Mara that each neighbourhood was held together not just by the clans, and the links between the cats, but by something much deeper, as though the Senders spread a trail of caring as strong as the clans’ scent trails wherever they went. They knew their ranges and territories intimately; the Senders with their far-reaching whiskers gave each clan of cats reassurance and comfort in the world of Bigfeet and predators.

  “All right, Senders,” said Begum. “Time for you to go back. Mara and I will stay a while longer.”

  One by one, the Senders touched their whiskers to Begum’s long grey ones and left, their outlines hanging in the dark winter sky for a few seconds before finally disappearing. Jalebi raised her whiskers jauntily to Mara as she trotted off, but Umrrow’s farewell mew was brisk, almost curt.

  “Don’t mind Umrrow,” said Begum, whose sharp eyes missed very little. “She has romantic ideas about battles and Senders, but she also has a soft heart. Give her time. You’ll like her when you get to know her.”

  Mara’s green eyes were troubled. “I don’t think she wants to get to know me,” she said. “She knows her clan so well, her fur tingles with the names of each kitten and cat. But the Nizamuddin cats and I…”

  The Sende
r’s whiskers drooped. Except for Beraal and Southpaw, she knew so little of her clan. As each Sender had drawn their maps of trails, marked by the clusters which showed colonies of cats, the borders and boundaries of their territories, even the presence of strangers and ferals, Mara had felt her paws clench at the thought that she did not know the Nizamuddin cats at all.

  “Settle down,” said Begum. “If the cold troubles you greatly, don’t draw your flanks in; that will only make you shiver even more. Fluff your fur out, and let the mists touch you, but lightly. Don’t fight the cold and the clouds.”

  Mara tucked her paws underneath her stomach, and imitated Begum. The two queens faced each other, comfortably fluffed. “Why is it so cold if this is only a summoning?” she asked. “I don’t feel the air when I’m travelling to the zoo or elsewhere, but I can feel the ground here. It’s hard and damp, too.”

  “We noticed,” said Begum. “And I think Umrrow and Jalebi wondered as well; most of us pay the hunt price for a summoning.” She saw Mara’s whiskers twitch a question, and explained. “The hunt price—that’s the price you pay for anything you want, Mara. If you make a kill, the price is paid in time, and patience, and skill, and sometimes wounds and blood. We Senders pay a price for sending and summoning. Usually, we feel tired afterwards, especially with a tricky sending. It’s easier when we all put our whiskers together, and the burden becomes lighter with time—but there is always a need for sleep, after.”

  Mara thought of how she had taken to her basket for two days after she had brought Ozzy into Nizamuddin, summoning the tiger all the way from the zoo so that he could help the cats in their battle against the ferals the previous winter. Her whiskers had ached with the effort of summoning, and sleep had closed over her like a giant bird’s black wings, blotting out sound, light, the world.

  “But your response to being summoned is unusual. Many creatures react with alarm, and find the journey unpleasant,” said Begum.

  “Ozzy shuddered when I rose with him into the air,” said Mara, remembering how strange that had been. Ozzy the tiger had lain quietly in his den, slumbering behind a pile of stones; and Ozzy her friend had risen, his whiskers shimmering, into the air, his claws shooting out in startled reflex as she had tugged him into the skies. He had kept his eyes closed all through the journey, and she had felt the desperate clutch of his virtual whiskers, as massive as cables, clinging to her own slender vibrissae tightly all through that sending, as the Sender and her friend the tiger had slipped from the zoo to Nizamuddin. It was only when they descended to a height that he could bear that Ozzy opened his eyes—and then he had been delighted. But he had not appeared to react to the space around him; it was as though he padded above the fray, close enough to terrify Datura and his bloodthirsty crew of ferals and yet separate from their world.

  “You travelled like an experienced Sender, one with at least four or five winters worth of summoning in her whiskers, though,” said Begum quietly. “Once you heard us, you came, and if it was hard for you, it didn’t show. You saw what we saw—we didn’t have to urge you to look, or coax you into leaving your world, our world didn’t emerge gradually for you, nor did you emerge gradually in it. We sent, we summoned, and you came. Your whiskers tell me that this world is as real to you as your home and your Bigfeet are; you can smell and feel what we smell and feel.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Mara, her green eyes puzzled. “Isn’t it the same for you when you’re summoned?”

  The calico cocked her ears, and then she rose from the ground. “This way,” she said, stretching herself briskly. “The cricketers will be here, and we don’t want to be in the way. Come to the old house.”

  The ruins of the old house mounted guard over the grounds of Old Delhi, its crumbling brown brick rooftops home to a clan of parakeets whose rose-and-green shapes flashed through the air, lightening the grey skies. Begum padded up the wide stone stairs towards a set of recessed niches, from where they could look out without being seen themselves.

  They settled in, watching the cricketers as they entered—their cheerful cries and the way they bounded in reminded Mara of the Labradors back home. These Bigfeet had the same energy, the same slight floppiness and eager warmth about them. Mara inhaled, letting her whiskers flare as her nose followed the scent trails of the gardens. There were the homing trails left behind by armies of bats, the spoor of pigeons who had made their homes behind the cracked and dirty windows of the abandoned bungalow, the warning but friendly reminder of cheels, the dark busy scents from the burrows of rats and bandicoots. But there were no blood scents, nor were there strong predator trails.

  “The Bigfeet won’t harm us,” said Begum. “They’re quite friendly, but that ball they whack around the field can break bones and paws and leave a bruise. Don’t follow the ball too long with your eyes, Mara, it can have a hypnotic effect, and while we have few predators here, there are one or two birds you need to watch out for. Where were we now? Oh yes, being summoned—no, it’s very different for you and for the rest of us. We take time to settle in. First the place we’re summoned to shimmers slowly into view; the ground will reveal itself little by little, then the summoner comes into focus, and then the skeins of smells around the place will rise up, and then I know it’s all right. But we don’t feel stone, or sun, or winds, or rain, where we have sent ourselves or been summoned.”

  Mara’s ears went down. The young queen thought, even here, even among the Senders, I am still different. She said nothing, but Begum watched her keenly, and the calico came to certain private conclusions.

  “You have a gift, Mara,” she said gently. “What most of us aspire to do with years of training and effort, you can do without effort. It took Tigris four winters to slip so easily from one place to another, to send herself so that she floated between all these worlds; you’ve done it in your first real summoning. It took Umrrow and Jalebi three or four winters of hard training before they could begin to sense rather than just smell and see when they travelled as Senders. But your whiskers reached out to ours, your whiskers sent power to us, and you took in our world without blinking. It was so real to you that you can feel everything I feel. You imagine the cold so well that your fur catches the damp from your imagination, little one. You aren’t different from us, but you are special.”

  “Special,” said Mara softly. It sounded better to her than the other words, the ones Southpaw had used, and that she had heard some of the Nizamuddin cats use: “special” was better than either “different” or “freak.”

  Begum’s brown eyes were thoughtful.

  “Yes, special,” she said. “Nizamuddin yields very special Senders, indeed; Tigris had made friends with the tribes in the air, her whiskers reaching out to sparrows, and bats, and cheels, as much as to her own clan. And now there’s you: the only Sender in the history of Delhi who could send to all of the city’s cats before she had touched six moons, who could summon a tiger before she had completed a full winter—very special indeed. But you are also, like me and like your clan in Nizamuddin, a cat. You have whiskers, fur, tail and four paws, just like all of us.”

  She saw Mara’s whiskers rise, but she said no more. The two cats, the calico and the young orange queen, watched the cricket match, Mara’s eyes widening in pleasure as she tracked the ball, never losing sight of its journey as it arced from bat to hand. Begum kept an eye out for cheels, but allowed herself to slip into a half-drowse. Behind them, Bigfeet chattered as they ambled through the open grounds towards the tangle of alleys that led to the first of many Bigfeet colonies.

  Far above the wall, four black specks circled, barely visible against the grey clouds. But the fur in Begum’s ears stood up, and she turned to Mara: “Overhead,” she said quietly.

  As the cheel flapped its wings and plunged into a racing dive, riding the breeze down towards the niche where Mara sat, the orange cat did no more than press her belly down, flattening herself against the crumbling black flagstones that lay scattered across the g
rounds. Begum had moved back onto her haunches, and was staring at the sky, daring the cheel to come in closer.

  The underside of its wings was visible now, the tiny feathers on its stomach flashing white, and so were its claws, their curved talons etched sharply against the dull skies. Mara’s tail twitched at its tip, and her green eyes narrowed. She didn’t move, nor did she blink as she took in the cheel. It had covered half the gap between sky and earth. It would be with them soon.

  Begum rose, hissing, and slashed in the cheel’s direction, her paws scything in the air. The bird stayed on course. It was making a dead set for Mara, but the orange cat stayed where she was.

  The cheel’s claws grabbed at the ruff of orange fur on the Sender’s neck; then the bird called out, screeching in confusion, as its talons went right through the cat, brushing roughly against the stones of the wall. It screeched again, tilting as it veered sharply to avoid colliding with the crumbling stones, and then it was off and away, rising into the skies, receding rapidly until all they could see was a tiny black dot.

  “Ugh,” said Mara, “I didn’t think he would get that close. Gives me the shivers when they go through me.” She licked her fur back into shape, shaking her ears and her whiskers a little to get rid of the feel of the cheel’s talons.

  “You let the cheel go right through you,” Begum said, her mew disbelieving. She was remembering her first brush with a dog as a Sender—a puppy had gambolled into her when she was out on an early sending, in her second winter learning the ropes. Her stomach lurched when the pup’s nose passed through her body, and she had broken the sending as fast as she could, leaving with the sound of the young dog’s astonished barks behind her. Senders could slip easily through the world they were sending to, but a collision with anything in that world made them feel sick, as she knew—and yet, Mara was washing herself as calmly as though nothing had happened.