“Rats do not hunt panthers. I eat rats, I know their tastes, their suppers and lunches and snacks. Panthers hunt rats, or they can if they wish.”
“What is a panther?”
“A panther is you, little panther. Four legs, sharp ears, good eyes in night and day, climber of trees, hunter with tooth and claw.”
“What is a tree?”
With this the giant voice huffed and hurred. He fell to the side and scrambled away, hit a wall with his head and sat back down. After a moment he decided the creature was laughing, and he gave the fur on his right foreleg an experimental lick. He would be forever grooming this mess.
“I understand, you are as much out of your proper home as I am, little panther. But I am not like you, furred one. My bones know the sun, sun that warms through and through, sun that warms the water. My bones know the log that shades, the bank that prey step upon, the crunch of bone, the salt of blood!” Instead of speech came a clomp! noise that made him flinch. “I remember, though I have never seen. I know the names of all that swim and fly and walk, and you are panther, though very small. When I caught you, I tasted you, knew your name, brought you to shore.”
“Thank you,” he said, shivering. From the cold, he told himself, though the air was warm. “But you said rats do not hunt panthers. They hunted me. I entered their den to stop them from eating kittens. The rats are many.”
There was a pause when all he could hear was the long, slow breathing of the giant.
“Furry things must learn, they don’t know in the bone like my kind know. If you are not panther, what? Did not your kind teach you?”
“I…” he could not answer. Instead he found himself telling the giant about his kingdom, about the stinking birds he’d learned to eat, about the clawed bird that had knocked him into the air, about the alley and the others that lived there, about the lament, about the stronger king. The giant was patient and waited for silence before answering.
“The clawed bird was a hawk, perhaps even an eagle. And if you are king, you must be king.”
He quailed inside and said in a small voice, “But One-Eye is king. He is big and strong and… tore my ear.”
Again the giant whuffed with laughter. “You told me each day you claimed to be king. If One-Eye is large, you must not fight him as large. You tell me of catching birds with a leap and a bite. You tell me of rats who smell their way through their burrow. You tell me the ways you can be king. If you are panther, or tiny-cousin-of-panther, you know how to be king! Now go, go back to the light and find your way to your kingdom!”
Something moved to his side, and he scrambled away from it. It scraped against the ground in a wide swath around him. He ducked left, ran right, but could not escape and was knocked back into the water, water that felt cold after the warm air.
“And if you think of me, little panther, send rats to the water you fell into, send me many rats to eat!”
As he was swept along in the water, the last thing he heard was the giant’s whuffing laughter. Around him the air grew close and near; then, as the water began to test his strength, he was scraped along a wall. Soon the air lightened around him, and he paddled fiercely, blinking madly against the splashes that covered his face. There was ground ahead, and he made for it as best he could, claws slipping then finding purchase on smooth round shapes at the edge of the water. He hauled himself up, drenched again, and lay panting with the sound of rushing water in his ears.
He shook himself and groomed himself bit by bit. A narrow path led away, and he twisted and turned along it until the light brightened above him. Now the sound of apes walking came to him, their two-footed pattern distinctive even at a distance. He followed the sound and came to a scraping narrow place, then a climbing place that tested his claws. Soon he was peering out into a sunlit day and filling his chest with cool air.
The giant had said to find his kingdom, but how? He sniffed the air but found nothing familiar other than the smell from the end of the alley, taints and wisps of ape and metal, with an undercurrent now and again of ape-food, the kind of thing he’d found in the bags in the alley. He waited and watched, but no inspiration came to him. The light failed and shadows formed. He slunk from shadow to shadow, careful to avoid the apes. A barking, growling thing chased him for a few steps before it yelped in pain and stopped, caught short by an ape it was tied to. “Fool!” he hissed at it before trotting away to a new hiding place.
On his way he stopped and stared. To one side of the street the tall walls full of apes fell away, and instead of bricks there were-things. He crossed the street at a trot and peered at tall poles that rose from ground that was covered not with pavement or tar but with soft ground and thin stalks. “Trees,” he said, “Trees and grass, just as the giant remembered.” Scent told him prey lived here: birds and small scurrying things like rats but less dank and not so oily. And water. There was good water here.
Back on the street he thought again of his wish to return to his old kingdom. He did not know how to get there, and wise as he felt he’d become, he could not think of a way to fight the shrieking bird, be it hawk or eagle, as the giant had said. But the place with trees and grass was promising.
There was an alley, but it wasn’t his alley. He smelled rats, but he didn’t think they were his rats. Their smell was dryer, somehow, less dank and more oily. Tired, he slept in the smallest hiding place he could find, a dreamless sleep that was troubled only by a memory of the bags the apes brought by hand and took away in the snorting, clanking machine.
He woke with a start and heard the machine snort nearby. Stretching quickly, he ignored his flat stomach and raced toward the sound. Apes climbed on and off the machine, which moved in starts and lurches down the street. There was morning light in the sky, and other apes were entering the street again, forcing him to skittle from hiding place to hiding place behind the machine.
He had almost forgotten what victory felt like, but he felt it wash over him when the machine turned into an alley. It was his alley; the scents of the others washed over him, along with the dank smell of his rats. He waited for the apes to finish taking their bags away and strode into the alley, head and tail high. No one noticed him.
He sat in the middle of the alley and waited. The morning light grew stronger. Finally, he filled his chest with air and yowled “I am king! I am king!” The echo had hardly faded when One-Eye came out from behind a box and glared at him.
“I am king!” One-Eye yowled back.
“Bit-Ear!” cried Twitch.
“
I am king!” he yowled again, and a plan formed in his mind. One-Eye was not a stinking bird to be leaped upon, chest to chest. One-Eye was big, too big to leap well. One-Eye would fight him the way he’d fought before, up on his hind legs before crashing down upon him, crushing him backwards. He charged forward, feinted a leap. One-Eye rose on his hind legs, paws wide, jaws agape. There would be no mercy this time. One-Eye would kill or maim him if he could.
Instead of leaping at head height, he leaped low, butted One-Eye in the gut. His long teeth found One-Eye in the upper thigh. He bit and savagely tore left, right, left, ripping the muscle. One-Eye fell upon his back, screaming and clawing and biting, but his back made it hard for One-Eye to gain purchase.
He thrust up and to the right with his rear legs. One-Eye fell over onto his side before scrambling up, rear leg lifted off the ground. He could taste One-Eye in his mouth and grinned at him, long teeth showing red. “There can be only one!” he yowled, and charged again. One-Eye tried to stand and meet the rush but could not, lurched to his injured side. This time he leaped high, came down upon One-Eye like a thunderbolt from the sky. His teeth met through One-Eye’s ear. He closed his eyes and shook his head, nearly deafened by One-Eye’s howls of pain and shame.