Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Sixteen: A Narrow Escape

Millicent was lying on her side, her face jammed into a pillow, the pillow jammed up against the wall. Greg opened the door as softly as he could, but she heard him. She jolted upright, with fury in her eyes—but when she saw who it was, her face immediately softened.

"Close the bloody door," she said.

Greg closed the bloody door and stepped into the room. It was a small room, with a low, sloping ceiling and a narrow window made blue and luminous by the moonlight.

"It's laugh at me you came to, I shouldn't wonder," said Millicent archly, pulling her legs up under her and leaning her back against the wall. "Bold, proud Millicent Lamley, weeping her inwards out into a pillow like the last kitten ever born."

"I'm not laughing," said Greg. It was true. He wasn't.

Millicent sighed and turned her face to the window. The moonlight traced her outline in silver as she gazed unseeing into the night.

There was a silence then, and Gregory wondered if he ought to leave. When Millicent spoke again, her voice had a soft and bodiless quality, like a voice half-remembered from a long-ago dream.

"Do you have a family, Gregory Tilson?" she said.

"I have a sister," said Greg. That was about the extent of it.

Millicent half-turned and smiled. "I had a family. Nineteen sisters and twenty-four brothers. More cousins than a body could nuzzle from sunup to sundown. A great, big, unwieldy, thriving family, bursting and bristling with life."

Her eyes were bright with the memory. Greg felt a pang in his heart as he realized the scope of her loss.

"When last I came here," Millicent continued, "the Culling was already well underway. My father had been too proud to seek the Bannockburns' assistance—but as his family disappeared around him, his fear and his grief grew greater than his pride, and humble he came—stooped and humble—to put himself at the feet of the Bannockburn king. Sure and I was beside him when he did it—likewise kneeling, likewise shattered with misfortune. Together we knelt, and together we begged him to come to our aid."

Millicent's mouth curled bitterly, her face growing hard and taut. "And didn't the Bannockburn king refuse us. Didn't he have the gall to tell us our people had made their own choice. As if yielding yourself to the trickery of the humans were a choice to be made at all!" Her voice was louder now, ringing in the quiet room.

With an effort, she controlled herself, and went on more calmly. "Not long after it was that my father gave up all hope himself. I watched them carry him into that great metal monster that wheeled away and was gone. I was alone then—alone as I am now. The great, proud Millicent Lamley—an orphan ruling a city of ghosts."

Silence engulfed them again, and Greg felt wracked with helplessness and guilt. When Leopold had first told him the story of the Culling, he had been inclined to view it humorously—as an amusing example of interspecies misunderstanding. Now there was nothing funny about it, and Greg felt ashamed of his earlier reaction. Millicent's agony was real, palpable, and quite possibly beyond remedy. He didn't want to laugh; he wanted to weep.

"But if the Bannockburns turned you away when you needed them ... then why are you helping Leopold? Shouldn't you hate him?"

Millicent smiled sadly. "Leopold never knew. We were too proud to let anyone know it. The whole matter was done in secret, and in secret we stole away."

Greg moved a step closer to the bed. He wanted to put a comforting hand on Millicent's shoulder, but he didn't dare. "Have you ... have you tried to contact your family? Rescue them? Anything like that?"