“At your peril, then,” the Chief warned, and stalked past the flickering street lamp. His brusque tone continued, plunged into the gloom. “My detectives are fishing for clues as they can. Let’s hope they’ve found what direction the battle must take.”
The nexus that had beaten Scamper before now appeared to have swallowed the entire alley. Its hectic growth had not abated, although Chief had dispatched his best reinforcements. Copper cats now attacked the morass in numbers, tearing off scraps with their teeth. For each bite they took, the whirlwind swelled faster. Now fed by its own spinning impetus, thoughts shadows boiled into existence faster than any trained corps could reduce them.
A fat yellow Persian named Sarge oversaw, perched on a trashcan lid to one side. When the Chief sauntered up, he summarized his frustration with a deep growl of annoyance.
Chief’s emerald eye glinted. “Report!”
“The whole stinking list?” Fat Sarge yawned, his stiff silver whiskers raked back. “Petty as flea rash! First off, the human perp’s female. Nagged the living hair off the head of her mate. The poor, mangled creature finally regained his sanity and got a divorce. Since then, the exwife harps on about his allegedly faithless betrayal. We’ve logged her whining complaints by the thousands: that he was a drunk who lounged on the sofa, too lazy to hang up the paper roll next to the toilet! Ten thoughts a minute, she insists how she’s wronged: that the world’s going to ruin; that the rent won’t be paid; or that the fancy new shoes for her kid cost more than her child support.” Sarge heaved a sigh. “You’d think, overhearing, that no patch of soil grows any flowers. Or that toddlers don’t laugh in the park! Who cares a hoot for a label, by gosh? Can a brand-name sneaker matter so much if the kid’s going to splash in the mud puddles?”
“Some folks would refuse to hear the birds sing, even if one perched smack on their noggin!” Chief scratched his jaw, worried. “No clue, yet, what abandoned fragment of happiness lies buried beneath the moil?”
“Not so far.” Sarge paused, on the case as three coppers strolled up. Each one carried a shred of the darkness, torn off and pinned in clenched teeth.
“Good work!” The Chief accepted their offerings, nailed them under a claw, then smacked them with cat-magic to disgorge the misery of their content. Ears back, the cats listened: through strings of obscenities that maligned the weather, then more annoyed words on the dirt dropped by pigeons, and bills that some wretched bean counter had attached with a surcharge for overdue payment.
The Chief hissed, disgusted. “This depression’s entrenched! Defensively held. We’ll face a fight, guaranteed, to lay bare the seed of the problem.”
“Then you’ll storm the core?” Sarge ventured, his yellow eyes bright with concern.
“Yes, but not here.” The Chief cast a keen glance at the pall that lapped toward the bins where they held hurried consultation. “The battle must be taken out of this world, and into the realm of true dreams.”
Fat Sarge slashed his tail. “Whom can you send?” He and the other old timers still mourned the tragedy caused by the last sorry incident. Then, four copper cats dispatched into the breach had died in the line of duty. Their team leader had not been agile enough to salvage the wrecked dream before the harebrained case of human depression blew his brains out with a shotgun. “Who has the cleverness to slip through a wrack this aggressive?”
The Chief looked to Scamper. “You’re the quickest paw we have in the corps. Have you the courage to venture the dream realm? From there, we must try to unravel the thread that’s devouring this woman’s hope. If we find the source, and if we can rip a hole in the cause, a cat who’s quick has to slip through the gap and revive her abandoned enthusiasm.”
As Scamper stepped up, Bouncer also shoved in, “If he goes, I stay with him!”
“What’s the use?” snapped the Chief. “If I can’t tear a large enough breach in the problem, the whole situation will go fur-balls up!”
“Just stop me!” Nose to nose and fur bristling, Bouncer glared until the Chief blinked and backed down.
“I’ll hold the rear guard from here,” Fat Sarge soothed, in no mood himself to knock Bouncer’s bulk back in line. He watched the three felines take up the fray, with the wily Chief in the lead.
The dark-doing had become no less voracious, despite the copper cats’ diligence. Scamper was forced to twist this way and that, streaking after the Chiefs orange tail and with Bouncer a bounding gray blur beside him. The hideous blot would have defeated their rush, had their strategy aimed for avoidance. But this stand would not be made here and now, on the solid ground of the world. Chief did not pounce to wrestle but, instead, charged headlong at the morass with the brave intent to pass through.
Scamper and Bouncer jumped just behind. Their leap plunged them into the heart of the darkness and hurled them into forever. For the dream realm by its nature was boundless, wrought of the fantastical stuff that gave rise to perhaps, what if, and maybe-every rainbow color, and more, that the wakeful eye could not see. Here was brilliant light that could dazzle or burn. All shapes of foolhardy fancy and delight, and shadows too, veiled in the beauty of enchanted mystery, or ghastly with ugliness.
Dream-stuff, spun by humans who were alive, seethed with spontaneous intensity. But not here, where year upon year of suppression had hampered the impulse of playful exuberance. The woman’s despair had eaten away both the bright and the dark. What remained was the clutter and waste of neglect, shrouded in dust and cobwebs. Scamper and his companions picked their way between piles of broken toys. Here they passed a bicycle going to rust and there a rowboat with a hole in it. They rattled through sheets of crumpled paper, discarded ideas piled like fallen leaves. They passed storybooks, abandoned in puddles of tears, soggy pages dissolved into pulp.
Scamper sniffed at the misted air. Its scentless cold numbed his nerve ends. Unlike on the streets, where thought-patterns were vibrant, he had no clue where to begin.
“Listen up!” the Chief urged, set on edge himself. “Somewhere under here there will be a force, an old memory that steals away happiness. We must seek out what’s choking the life from this pattern before we can shoulder the fight.”
Scamper pricked up his ears, widened his pupils, and sharpened his feline senses. He peered into the future and saw only tangle: a dreary array of boring activity, obligation, and burdensome days. The detritus of passionless memories closed in, sharp and relentless as traps. Scamper was slight enough to slip through, but Chief and Bouncer needed to squeeze to force themselves past the tight spots. The way grew more dangerous. Fog, and then drizzle, drenched the cats to the skin. More than once they shied back from the crash, as loose objects tumbled and threatened to crush them.
Though the cats were only a whisker apart, leaden silence wrapped them in isolation. They became wrung by pervasive loneliness until feline spirits pined for sunshine and wind, even a storm to shatter the dreadful oppression.
“We have to go deeper,” insisted the Chief. “No matter how hard, there’s no choice. Give in, and we’ll never escape this.”
Icy rain became a torrential downpour. Scamper shook the wet from his ears, more weary than he could remember. Through the barrage, he heard a voice, far off and terribly faint.
Bouncer heard, too, and the Chief turned that way, shoving into a murk, thick as slush, that hampered his mincing steps forward.
“Look at this!” Scamper scraped at the stuff with his claws, freeing a forgotten tatter of praise and encouragement. Even as the drowned figment emerged, a strident old woman’s scolding arose, overpowering the wisp his cat’s paw reawakened.
“Scrub your face! Don’t touch, you’ll break something! That’s disgusting behavior. Don’t do that, stupid, your hands are filthy! Stop tracking mud on the floor! Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? That’s a horrible way to treat your younger brother. Never mind if he hit you, be nice! No, you can’t have a pet! They carry disease! Never play on the far side of the street, you could be killed by a car!”