The Hundred Names of Darkness Read online

The birds’ voices soared in unison, and to the relief of the cats, Pa and Dha joined in, apparently unharmed by the Bigfeet’s marauding ways.

  Hulo hunched over on his paws beside Beraal, watching keenly as she checked Southpaw for damage.

  “There’s a bad tear in the skin, even if the blood’s clotted,” he noted. “No smell of the Sweet Sickness yet, you young fool, but it could still happen.” If Southpaw’s wounds turned septic, the gangrene would spread across his body. It was easy for the cats to spot a sufferer from the Sweet Sickness; the sepsis rotted the flesh, making it smell sickly sweet before the infection spread from the affected limb to the rest of the body. One of the dargah cats had contracted gangrene in his back paws that monsoon, and when the sickness had seeped far into his limbs, he had asked Qawwali to deliver a killing bite, which was done, to spare him further pain.

  Katar caught and held Southpaw’s eye, though the kitten looked back at the tom defiantly. “Half a moon of pain and discomfort when you won’t be able to rely on that leg,” said Katar. “And the risk that the Bigfeet will attack any cat they see in the area, not just you. Is that a fair price for your fish?”

  Beraal came up to Katar, and nuzzled him gently.

  “Stop,” she said. It hurt her to see the clan leader like this. First Katar had survived the loss of Miao, and she knew he often thought of the Siamese, often wondered what wisdom she would have offered him in this situation. And then he had slowly realized, as had all of them, that it wasn’t only Miao they had lost—it was all of their world.

  For many moons after the battle, the dogcatchers’ vans had patrolled Nizamuddin, forcing the stray cats and dogs into hiding. It sometimes seemed to Katar that he and the Nizamuddin wildings had paid in their own blood and freedom for Datura’s dark war; not just the cats, but all of the strays, the birds and the smaller animals as well. There had been hope in the air in summer, when many of the Bigfeet had forgotten the battle and its aftermath, the pathetic corpses strewn across the grounds of the Shuttered House, Datura and his ferals’ killing spree. But then the old houses had started coming down, and the Bigfeet who lived in the towering new buildings had no liking at all for cats and dogs and other small creatures.

  “You’re being hard on him, because you know he’s right. What are we doing—warriors like you and Southpaw, hunters like me and Hulo—living like rats, scavenging from the garbage heaps? How long can we live like this, Katar?”

  They thought they had gone too far when the tom lowered his whiskers, breaking the link between himself and his friends. Katar sat with his back to them, looking out towards the rooftops that had once been his domain, as much as the trees and the back alleyways. A lone brown speck did sorties through the lines of electricity wires, satellite dishes and the brightly painted signboards. The tom recognized that precise style—that was Tooth slicing through the narrow routes between the rooftops, the cheel who had once come to the aid of the clan in a time of trouble. Tooth’s squadrons weren’t around, but the cheel often flew solo when he was trying to unravel a knotty problem, just as Katar took long walks through Nizamuddin’s alleys when he was worried about the clan’s future.

  He wondered whether Beraal’s kittens would ever know what it was like to stroll from roof to roof, mapping the parapets, measuring the staircases, wary only of a few of the Bigfeet, some of the dogs. The roofs had been theirs, as the sky belonged to Tooth and the cheels, the trees to the bulbuls and babblers, the roads to the colony’s stray dogs. But he hadn’t let the others see his rising bitterness and despair, he had cleaned his sadness off his whiskers rather than share it with his clan. No good would have come of letting everyone know how hopeless their situation was becoming. For months, the cats—and the stray dogs, and the cheels, and the bulbuls, the babblers, the mice—had waited for Nizamuddin to return to normal. But now it was clear that things might never improve.

  He raised his whiskers once more, coming back to them. “Qawwali and Dastan were telling us that the queens at the dargah haven’t kittened this year,” he said. “No litters were born except for Abol and Tabol’s babies, and they didn’t survive.”

  Hulo said, “They talk about leaving. To Humayun’s Tomb, to the roads and parks beyond, where they might find hunting and shelter.”

  “But there have always been cats at the dargah!” said Beraal. Southpaw was silent, watching the other toms.

  “The Bigfeet sent the fakir away some moons ago,” Hulo said. “The Bigfeet at the dargah don’t feed us or Qawwali’s crew any more.” The toms had kept this from Beraal, not wanting her to worry. The queen mewed softly, and groomed her kittens as it all fell into place. She understood why the toms had grown so thin that swiftly over the last few moons. Her hunter’s mind walked through the lanes of Nizamuddin, seeing with clarity how hard it must have been for them. No hunter could hunt while being hunted himself. And without the small blessing of the meals the fakir used to share with them, they would have had less and less energy to find prey, unless they risked moving into the territory of the Jangpura cats.

  “It’s no better over there,” said Katar. “That clan is sadly diminished. Some have left. Some…” He didn’t have to tell the other cats what could happen to half-starved strays.

  Beraal’s deep green eyes turned from one tom to another, moving from Hulo to Katar. What Katar wanted to share with them was trembling on the tips of his whiskers.

  The first of the trucks rumbled by, carrying construction material for the new Bigfeet houses. They would come in a convoy for the next few hours, and then the rumble and clang of building would form the backbeat to Nizamuddin’s day.

  “We can’t stay on,” said Katar. He had known it in his bones for over a moon now. “We have to find another home. Across the canal, in the dargah—somewhere, but not here.”

  From their whiskers, eddies of emotions came flooding out—everything that the cats had thought, but not said through the long dry heat of summer, the harsh monsoon rains, the bitter, early winter. Hulo said, “This is our home, why should we leave, no matter what the Bigfeet do?” at the same time that Southpaw said, “We have to leave. This doesn’t feel like home any more.”

  Before the young and the old tom could argue, Beraal stepped in. “It doesn’t smell like home to me,” she said. And all three cats let their whiskers flare, to take in the truth of what she had said. The scents of the colony were amplified in the winter air. It brought to them the smells from the construction sites: the spoiled-earth scent of the concrete mixers, the sullen metal stink from the welder’s torches, and above all, the black, tarry stench that spoke of the Bigfeet’s dislike for the rest of the animals.

  “Katar,” she said, and then her head dropped. “I wish Miao was here.”

  The tom brushed his head gently against hers. “I miss her too,” he said. “Sometimes I see her in my sleep, not the way she was after the battle, but out there, on the edge of the canal, hunting silently, watching all of us, her whiskers whispering the stories she used to tell us when we were kittens.”

  Hulo blew air out through his nostrils. “Even she couldn’t have stopped the Bigfeet,” he said. The grizzled tom had stayed close to Katar over the turning seasons, sensing that the leader of the clan missed Miao much more than he would share.

  “Miao isn’t here,” said Katar, and the way he said it made it final.

  Beraal’s kittens stirred, Tumble raising her paw and turning over, her thin ribs showing. The cats didn’t have to say it aloud, but their whiskers rippled with the same thought: what kind of world would Beraal’s children think of as home?

  “I don’t get it,” said Hulo, cutting in. “You’re saying we have to move. Where? We can’t go with Qawwali and Dastan—they would welcome us, give us refuge, but Humayun’s Tomb already has its own clan of cats—Ghalib and Ghazal’s gang—and they can’t have all of us moving in, won’t be enough space. Jangpura has the same problems with their Bigfeet that we do. So where do we go, and how will these little ones trave
l, not to mention the others?”

  “But Miao wasn’t the only one we had to turn to,” said Katar. His whiskers were sparkling with life again.

  Southpaw was the first to understand. “That’s what she used to tell us,” he said. “In the dark times, in the lean years, that’s when…”

  “…Senders are born,” Katar finished what he was saying. “And that’s what we should have done before—asked the Sender what the clan should do.”

  For a moment, as she washed one of her kittens gently, holding the small form close against her stomach so that the little thing could feel the warmth, Beraal felt hope rise.

  Then Hulo said, “Ask the Sender? Rubbish! The Sender doesn’t even know the clan! She’s never stepped outside her Bigfeet’s stinking house! What kind of answer would a Sender give when she doesn’t know our scent and hasn’t even stepped into Nizamuddin once?”

  It was all true, Beraal thought. Southpaw’s whiskers, like hers, drooped, and his tail switched from side to side in confusion.

  But Katar sat up on his haunches. “Hulo, it’s true that the Sender doesn’t know us, and she doesn’t come out of her house at all.”

  “Exactly,” growled Hulo. “How can she advise cats she doesn’t know?”

  “She loves Southpaw, though, and shares her food and life with him,” he said, his mew soft. “If he needs help with that broken paw and the risk of the Sweet Sickness, Mara will do what she can for him. She knows Beraal and she knows Southpaw. And when we needed her, during the battle with the ferals last year, she came, even if she hasn’t returned since. Perhaps it’s time we went to meet the Sender. She might be able to help Southpaw, and she might even be able to help us.”

  The day was cold and dreary. Mara wound around her Bigfeet’s legs, getting in their way, and batted a paper ball around in a desultory fashion. She had waited all morning for the Chief Bigfoot to arrive, but though the doorbell rang several times, the most important Bigfoot in the world remained missing.

  There was little to see in the park, and the Bigfeet didn’t seem to want her to help with the papers they were sorting. In fact, after the third time she had helped them, dividing the stacks of paper into smaller piles and chewing the corners of some of the documents that appeared to be upsetting them, they politely refused her assistance, setting her down from the table.

  This ruffled Mara’s sense of dignity. The Bigfeet didn’t seem to realize that she belonged on the sofas and on the desks (and in the cupboards) every bit as much as they did, and she left, her tail raised stiffly to indicate her disapproval. Back in her room, she batted around her toys for a while, but it was no fun being on her own. She sat at the window of her room, and the cold air tickled her whiskers, reminding her that she hadn’t visited Ozzy at the zoo in a while. The tiger and Mara had become friends after the Sender’s first explorations. She extended her whiskers, letting their tips tremble in the air. This was the part of sending that never grew stale, no matter how often she did it: the moment of lift-off, when she felt herself walk along the comfortable, everyday routes of sense and smell the Nizamuddin cats used, and then walk further, until the skies opened up for her. Her whiskers created a pathway into the world.

  When the Bigfeet checked on her, they found that Mara had curled up into a heap, and was fast asleep, her paws wrapped around an old soft toy—her battered orange monkey—for comfort. They had no working whiskers of their own, so they had no way of knowing that the Sender had roamed far away and was almost at the zoo.

  —

  MARA HEARD OZZY’S ROARS before she saw the tiger; she was hovering over the langur cage, chatting with her old friend Tantara when the growls tore through the air.

  “He’s been as grumpy as the bears for the last few days,” said Tantara. The monkey’s fur had gone a shade whiter in the winter chill, and it threw her beautiful black skin into relief. Mara curled her tail into a question mark.

  “The Bigfeet cut the cage in half to make room for a fresh litter of lion cubs,” Tantara explained. “Rani doesn’t mind so much, but Ozzy likes to pace. And the cubs make him miss Rudra. You should go over and meet him, it might take the edge off his growl. He’s making all of us nervous, especially Eddie.” Edward was the youngest of the hoolock gibbons, a solemn ape given to whooping mournfully when he was anxious.

  The zoo had shifted Ozzy and Rani’s son to the other side of the premises, where he and his mate, Tawny, lived near the sloth bears, in the shade of the towering ramparts of the Old Fort. Mara would have liked to visit Rudra more often, but his mate didn’t approve of big cats consorting with real cats, especially Senders who hovered in mid-air. Instead, Mara and Rudra stayed in touch through Tantara and Ozzy; they had met and made friends when they were kitten and cub, and the link between their whiskers remained strong.

  Ozzy’s roars sounded much grumpier close up. Mara hovered behind the tiger, watching as he paced up and down.

  “I don’t care whether the bars say it’s your territory!” he roared at the lion cubs who goggled at the tiger with great interest. “I marked all of it, you understand? All of it! Raise your stupid heads and take a whiff! That’s my land! Mine! Aaarroooof!”

  He had paced with such majesty, and speed, that he went smack into the bars.

  “He’s been doing that a lot,” said Rani to Mara. “Then his nose gets hurt and he growls even more.”

  Ozzy shook his great head from side to side and roared in frustration, the sound making Mara’s fur shiver, even after nearly two years. “Whoop! Whoop!” called Edward in the distance. Then the hyaenas started off with their jittery laughter, and they set off the langurs, and soon the zoo was as noisy as the Delhi traffic outside.

  “That land is my land, you misbegotten, stripeless whelps!” Ozzy growled. “What do you have to say to that?”

  The three lion cubs regarded him solemnly. Then the oldest sniffed the air.

  “That’s where I put my mark,” said Ozzy, his roar triumphant. “Yep, right over there, on that rock, and on all of the others—wait! What do you think you’re doing? How dare you! Stop that immediately!”

  The biggest of the lion cubs was carefully adding her scent, in a copious stream, right over Ozzy’s. She finished, and strolled away to her mother without a backward look at the tiger. Her siblings yawned, baring their small sharp teeth, and emulated their sister. One of them turned around and offered Ozzy a polite woof; the other bounded away when he was done.

  “Oh no, Ozzy, you’re not charging at anyone today,” said Rani firmly, padding up to her mate. The white tiger positioned herself so that Ozzy would have to brush past her in order to get to the bars again. “Last time around, the Bigfeet sent in their team with tranquilizers, and I don’t want to be knocked out because of your stubbornness. Let them be. It’s their cage now.”

  “Mine!” roared Ozzy mutinously. “Wait till the wind changes and the spring winds come in, then I’ll send them enough scent to drench the blasted place, cubs and all!”

  “Hey, Ozzy,” said Mara, judging that this was as good a time as any to talk to her friend.

  The tiger turned, and the Sender felt a sense of shock—now that they faced each other, she could see how greatly he had changed. Ozzy’s roars masked the amount of weight he had lost, and his fur seemed rough, unkempt. There was dust from the dry winter ground that he hadn’t bothered to brush or wash off, covering the underside of his usually immaculate chin. His gold and black stripes were dull, and for once, they didn’t stand out against the grey bars and the clouded skies. He acknowledged Mara with a brief flick of his tail, but it was Rani he addressed.

  “We had the jungles to ourselves, Rani,” he said, “you in the Sunderbans, while I made the ravines shake with my tread. We learned to measure our paces here, didn’t we? We learned to live behind these bars. They took our son, he has cubs you and I have never seen, and now the Bigfeet would erase his scent, would let lion cubs—lions, Rani, not even tigers—place their paws over his pawprints. Must I mi
nce like a wild dog or a jackal around my own home? Aaarooof!”

  The tiger’s agitation had made him pick up his pace again, and now he began slamming into the bars on the other side.

  “Ozzy…” began Mara.

  “MAY THE GNATS BITE YOUR FURRY LITTLE NOSES OFF!” Ozzy roared at the lion cubs, who had lined up to watch him as he sat back on his haunches, shaking his massive head from side to side to try and ease his aching jaws. He growled again, opening his mouth so wide Mara could see all the way back to his carnassials.

  “Ozzy, all you have to do is recalibrate,” said Mara, hovering right in front of his whiskers so that he couldn’t ignore her.

  “AND MAY THE BURRS STICK TO YOUR HIDES!” Ozzy growled. “What was that, Mara? Recalibrate?”

  “It’s what you do in small spaces when the Bigfeet move their furniture,” Mara said patiently. “You let your whiskers lead you around the perimeter until they know the way by feel, and you let your paws learn the new path. It’s not so bad, having to learn new things; otherwise you’d always be pacing around in the same old, boring way. Aren’t you bored? You’ve known that old route—twelve paces to the front, fourteen to the left—for so long, your paws can take you around the enclosure in your sleep. It might be fun, trying out new steps.”

  “But I can’t run through the jungle!” said Ozzy, sulking.

  “Ozzy,” said Rani, strolling back to the shelter by their pool where she liked to spend the afternoons napping to recover from whatever mayhem her mate had caused in the morning, “we’ve left the jungle far behind. Don’t let your memories darken the cage. The lion cubs are smarter than you, they might live behind bars, but they don’t let that stop them from playing.”

  “But they’re taking over Rudra’s playground!” said Ozzy to Mara, his ears flicking contemptuously in the direction of the cubs.

  “You’ve been missing him, haven’t you?” said Mara, her whiskers offering the great cat her sympathy.

  “Yes,” said Ozzy, his tail sweeping the dust in a pathetic sort of way.