“What did he smell of?” Dulcie said. She’d memorized his smell as he stood close above them, his personal male scent overlaid with something she should know but couldn’t identify. Something akin to catnip, only different. When they were certain the RV was gone, they fled around the house to the back. Dulcie bolted up the trellis and in through the bathroom window, frantic to find Joe, but Kit stopped on the balcony behind her, mewling softly to summon Tansy. She listened, then mewled again. She looked down at the yard, studying the dark and crowded bushes. “Tansy?”
There was no answer and no pale movement among the shadows. She looked away toward the hills, worried that the scruffy little cat had gone on through the night alone. Praying that if Tansy was headed home, she would be wary and cautious and safe.
23
WHEN DULCIE HAD hissed at Tansy to run, Tansy obeyed as fast as her thin little legs would carry her. The sight of that man chasing Joe jarred to life every terrified kittenhood memory of such cruel men and sent her streaking away up the stairs and into the bathroom, leaping out the window and scrambling backward down the trellis, catching hanks of fur on the thorns. At the bottom she stood shivering, looking out into the night and watching the darkest shadows. She waited a long time for Kit to follow her, and all the while Dulcie’s words rang in her head, Go! Get out, both of you! And the stink of that man’s anger clung to her. As she listened for the other cats to emerge from the house, her heart pounded with fear for them. But she was too afraid to go back. There was only silence from the house behind her. When after a very long time Kit didn’t come, when no one came, she fled for the far hills and home, running blindly up through the dark village-until she realized she was lost, was crossing un- familiar streets through neighborhoods that she had never seen. She was lost and her sense of direction seemed to have abandoned her.
She stood on an empty sidewalk on an unknown street among houses she was sure she had never seen. She listened. She sniffed the scents of this strange place, trying to smell something familiar, trying to find her direction.
At last her pounding heart eased. At last, reclaiming her good cat sense and determination, she scrambled up the nearest pine tree to the nearest roof where she could see better.
Well, of course! There were the hills, black humps like the backs of huge animals, their familiar curves caught in faintest moonlight against the night sky. There were the hills and there was home, and she ran leaping from roof to roof until the houses stood too far apart, then she scrambled down to the gardens. And away she went, racing through weedy grass and up into the open hills, racing for the ruin’s jagged and protective walls that rose like a palace against the blowing clouds.
Fleeing for home, she wondered why she had ever gone among humans? This always happened, this violence from humans. Her mouth and nose still reeked of the smell of that man, the smell of human rage. On she raced, her senses sharply alert for predators. She was passing the house with dirt piled in its yard when she smelled something other than a predator. She smelled death.
Human death?
She froze in place, looking all around. Why would there be a dead person here? She was frowning, studying the house when she saw something pale stir on the hill above, a small, feeble movement. She crouched warily, looking. She reared up, stretching tall, scenting the air, and it was then that she smelled him. She ran straight up the hill to him, streaked up through the grass and crouched beside him, her paws going cold. “Sage? Oh, Sage.”
He didn’t move or speak, he lay unnaturally hunched. But he was alive, his eyes looked into hers, filled with pain. When she snuggled carefully beside him, touching him with her nose, he pressed against her shivering, his body rigid and tight.
“What?” she said softly. “What happened?” She looked around into the night, but she saw nothing, now, that could have attacked him. She could smell no coyote or other animal, and certainly no human-except for the stench of a dead person that came from the house below.
Above them a raft of clouds blew past, again freeing the fickle moon, and down the hill, the house and the pale drive and the walks brightened. The dirt pile lit up along its side and the tiled roof became a tangle of curved shadows. The smell of death sickened her, and then the wind came straight at her and she smelled that man, too. The man she had run from. How could he be there when he was down in the village in that house?
“A human hurt you…did this to you?”
“He’s gone,” Sage said. “A long time ago.”
“What did he do…what happened?”
“He threw a hard tool at me, a hammer. Threw it through the window where I was watching him. It came through straight at me, broke the glass, I wasn’t quick enough.”
“Why did he?” She licked his face. “What did you do to make him so mad? To make him hurt you?”
Sage rose stiffly and started down the hill, limping badly.
“Stay still, you’ll hurt yourself more.”
Ignoring her, he headed for the house, every line of his body showing pain and anger. She followed him until, approaching the garage, the smell of death hit her so hard she turned away, gagging.
“Come where the window is,” he said impatiently. “Mind the glass. Come where we can see in.” Crawling painfully up onto the stack of lumber, trying to avoid the jagged shards, he put his paws on the sill, looking in between knives of glass. She hopped up beside him.
“See that ditch?”
She looked at the deep fissure. “Why is there a ditch there?” She looked at the dirty concrete floor where earth had been hauled out, at the muddy footprints.
“There’s a dead woman down there. That man went down in the ditch and dug the hole deeper, then he brought her in his car and carried her down the ladder and covered her up with dirt.” Sage turned to look at her, the pupils of his eyes huge and dark-with fear, with anger. “That’s not how humans bury their dead. Even I know that. This was sneaky, stealthy. When he saw me watching, he went white and grabbed the hammer and threw it.”
Tansy looked back at him, surprised not so much by what the man had done-humans would do anything-but because, maybe for the first time in his life, Sage was paying attention to something outside the clowder; he was enraged by something that was not a part of their world. From Sage’s standpoint, the hiding of a dead human would have nothing to do with a cat’s proper business-until the man had hurt him. She guessed that made it his business.
She said, “I saw him earlier, in the village. He was stealing from a house, we watched him. He threw something at Joe Grey and chased him.”
Sage’s eyes widened. “Did he hurt Joe?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking down in shame. “I ran…I should have gone back. But I must go back,” she said. “I have to see if they’re all right, I have to tell them that he came here and that he buried someone. Why would he bury a woman? Unless…Did he kill her? That is a crime in the human world, humans will want to find him and punish him. We-”
But now Sage turned reluctant. “This has nothing to do with us. This is not a matter for cats.”
“Then why did you show me?”
“Because he hurt me. I’m going home where it’s safe.”
She sat looking at him. “You spent weeks among humans when you were hurt before. Humans cared for you, they pampered you, gave you nice things to eat, made soft beds for you-humans saved your life, Sage!”
“Come on, Tansy.” He eased down from the sill and off the lumber pile with a grunt of pain. “We need to go. This is human business.” Expecting her to follow, he limped away, heading up the hill.