“Oh,” Cuthbert said. He had to think about that one. It was a daunting notion, implying that a controlling relationship with animals was like trying to control God. He’d certainly been evil toward animals as a child. But did he ever want to control God?
“I’ve wandered the world like a dead creature for many years,” he told the cat. “When I was young, even after being blessed by the otters, even after my gran’s Learning, even after I knew the truth, after Gran died, I was wicked to other animals—and to dogs, in particular. It has spoiled me. It has destroyed my soul, and damned me to alcoholism, then to Flōtism. I thought that by letting the jackals out and whatnot, and then you, too, it might help. Just a little bit of help.”
Muezza began to sniff at a hessian mulch mat set along a trail to protect grass seedlings, then at a long, outstretched hornbeam limb.
“So good, so moral, saliq,” said Muezza. “What you fail to understand, perhaps because you are too English, is that all are welcome on the Green Path. We say, ‘Come, come, whoever you are, no matter how many times you’ve broken your vows.’ The blessing of the otters—oh, you will see. It never ends.”
“I did not take vows, Muezza.”
“No need to complicate matters, saliq. What I mean to tell you is that there are no restrictions now, not even past sins. You’ve been forgiven long ago. But you must take the sacred path, the Tariqat. This, this is the great beginning. You do not understand who you are, do you?” He spoke with an abstracted air, and without looking away from his plant explorations.
“I don’t feel forgiven,” said Cuthbert. “I need help.”
Muezza said: “No one can help you now if you are truly ready. We cannot make you more ready. Your ‘help’ is the droppings of depraved sand mice beside my golden, jeweled ‘This.’ The Tariqat awaits you.”
Then the cat added: “Yet, I must say, if you don’t mind, that though you may follow the Green Line to Allah, the dogs you have mentioned, saliq, I do not understand how you could not see that they are of little importance anyway, in the scheme of things. To kill a dog is no great sin—you know that, don’t you? They are not allowed to set a single paw on the Green Line. And most dogs are dirty idolaters, you may have noticed. They worship lowly human beings. Forget your jackals. Or are you a dog? Of course not!”
Cuthbert didn’t understand Muezza fully, but he knew he didn’t like the cat’s slerting on about dogs or people. His own guilt—for his childhood abuse of a dog, for hurting the penguin tonight, but mostly for nothing at all—stung him hard, goading his indignation into something quite ferocious.
“Are you a dog?” the cat asked again, needling.
He said: “Oh, shut it. That’s ronk, you, and quite hateful, really. To injure a dog is cruelty, plain and simple.” The image of the injured penguin came to mind. “To injure any animal,” he said. He felt angry and charmed and abashed by the cat. “Why don’t you look at me when we’re having a word?”
“I smell you.” Muezza laughed. The cat pushed his snout deeper into the grassy weeds. “Regardless of what you say, it is very bad that the jackals have been released. They are ruthless. The Shayk of Night, I have heard, has had to end the lives of many of them in the old land. But if you released them, that must be correct, brother.”
“Are you just saying that, then?”
Muezza didn’t answer.
Cuthbert felt baffled—and impatient to go. It seemed to him that the cat was either barmy or ill behaved. He stammered, “I don’t know about any Shakey-Fakey-Half-Bakey of Night. But you’re getting on my pip, cat,” said Cuthbert. “I said, it’s rude not to look at someone when they’re speaking. I’ve got to go. The otters—they’ve got to be let out of here. Soon.”
The cat seemed to ignore him—like, in fact, a cat.
Then he said, “Saliq, let me accompany you, for as long as I can. If you will have me? I can show you, as I said, the Green Line, the One True Path, that leads to the Shayk of Night, and from the Shayk you can find the way to . . . a cure, before Allah. If you really want the cure.”
A feeling of sadness pushed up from Cuthbert’s belly, into his throat.
“I think I am beyond a cure. A’m the worst on earth. If it weren’t for my brother, Dryst—and ’e’s gone missing, as I said—I wouldn’t exist at all to any being, apart from my GP a bit.” At that moment, he felt for the first time sure that he would not survive the next twenty-four hours. He had not wanted this, not tonight, not death.
He said, “The soul-grabbers, they are coming to destroy us all. I’ve failed miserably, cat. I was thinking—was it thinking or was it something else?—that if I could let you all out, there might be a way to prevent the cult freaks from wiping out all the animals.”
Muezza paused for a moment, twitching his ears and glancing at Cuthbert, then returning his attention to the weeds.
The cat continued, “Enough of your self-pity, Cuthbert. There is always hope. You, saliq, are carrying the Wonderments. You do not feel it, but you have them, my Al-Madhi.”