Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Gurgeon's Mood

Gurgeon was in a bad mood.  Of course, Gurgeon was always in a bad mood.  He had been born in a bad mood, and he had been in that same bad mood ever since, without interruption, including while he slept.  He had never been happy, or even reasonably contented, and he had no plans to be.  The only thing he really enjoyed was hurting people, and even that didn't exactly overjoy him.  It was nicer than not hurting people, that was all.

At the moment, however, he was in a really foul humor, because Glimmerind had placed the whole blame for the housecat's infiltration squarely on his shoulders, which was completely unfair.  Gurgeon hadn't even seen the housecat, and if he had, it would not have amused him, because nothing amused him, except perhaps the suffering of mice.  Was it his fault that those fool guards under his command had let the fat old housecat into the palace in order to watch him roll around batting at a ball of string?  Or that, having grown bored of this sport, they had ceased to pay any heed to the housecat whatsoever, leaving him free to infiltrate the dungeon and rescue those silly foreign envoys?  Of course not.  If anything, it was Glimmerind's fault, because Glimmerind was the one who was supposed to be clever and think of things, while Gurgeon was the one who was supposed to hit things and bite them and make them squeal with pain.  These roles, Gurgeon felt, had been pretty clearly established.  If Glimmerind wanted Gurgeon to start thinking, he would have to pay him more.

So Gurgeon was in a bad mood already when one of the rampart-guards burst into his chambers, where he had been engaged in horribly dissecting a dozen innocent fish, to inform him that there was something going on outside which Gurgeon simply must see for himself.  Gurgeon doubted this very much, but he couldn't think of an especially good reason not to go out to the ramparts—other than that he didn't want to—so he grudgingly followed the stupid guard to the stupid ramparts, prepared to witness some stupid thing that wasn't his stupid problem anyway.  (Like a great many stupid people, Gurgeon thought of the whole world as being stupid.  This is known as the Pathetic Fallacy.)

The ramparts were in a state of confusion when Gurgeon stepped out onto them, with the guards all whispering to each other and pointing at things and just generally being idiots.  Gurgeon ignored them and strode straight up to the parapet, expecting to see a wandering minstrel below, or possibly a family of beggars.  If it was a minstrel, he would simply throw rocks at him; if it was a family of beggars, he would throw rocks at them also.  When a thing was too far away to be hit or stabbed or bitten, throwing rocks was usually a good alternative.  Gurgeon always kept a few rocks lying around the battlements for use on such occasions.

What he actually saw when he stepped up to the parapet was something he was not at all prepared for, which made his eyes go wide and his jaw fall open and his head begin instantly to ache with the effort of thinking.  What he saw was Leopold, standing just at the edge of the drawbridge, hands clasped easily behind him, as if he didn't have a care in the world.  Beyond Leopold, just out of range of the arrows and the catapults that lined the palace's ramparts, there lurked what appeared to be an enormous throng of very excited cats.  Gurgeon's mood, which had already been worse than bad, immediately worsened.  This looked like a whole stupid situation.  He found himself wishing that Glimmerind, whom he despised, were there.

Leopold favored Gurgeon with a jaunty salute.  "Ahoy!" he cried.

Gurgeon said nothing, but his scowl deepened to the point where it threatened to swallow his entire face.

"Gurgeon," pursued Leopold, his voice ringing clearly in the hush, "you're just the cat I was hoping to see.  I bring you grave news, Gurgeon.  I should like it if we could set our old rivalry aside and face these new dangers together."

Gurgeon wasn't aware of having any particular rivalry with Leopold.  To him, the black cat was just something to torment when possible, and grudgingly tolerate the rest of the time—like everyone else. Gurgeon was, in a sense, the ultimate egalitarian.

"Your king," Leopold continued, "is not what you believe him to be.  He is not what anyone believes him to be.  Do you wish to know what monarch it is you are serving?  Do you wish to know what lurks behind that mysterious black curtain?"

Gurgeon's eyes widened.  He did not wish to know.  He wished to stay as far away as possible from that accursed black curtain, and all the deadly, unfathomable secrets it concealed.  His heart began pounding in his chest.  His mouth was suddenly sand-dry.  Don't tell me, he pleaded, in the depths of his cowering heart.  Don't tell me, don't tell me, please don't tell me, please don't, I'll do anything, please.  Still he remained silent.  For one dizzying moment, he was too petrified to speak.

"Your king," announced Leopold, raising his voice still higher, "is a rodent.  A literal rodent—and not one of the higher rodents, either.  He is not a squirrel, or a hamster, or a porcupine, or even a rat.  You do see what I'm driving at, don't you?"  Leopold paused, for dramatic effect.  "Your king is a mouse."

For a moment, Gurgeon just stood there gaping, staring down at the little black cat that stood so casually at the edge of the drawbridge.  His ponderous mind groaned and creaked alarmingly as it shifted gears.  Then something clicked into place in the rusty machinery of his brain, and Gurgeon threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Gurgeon's laughter sounded like two bulldozers clashing and grinding together in a high-speed collision that would destroy them both.  The rampart-guards edged away from him a little on the battlements.  Even Leopold seemed a bit thrown.

"It's quite true," he insisted.  "You can ask our friend Glimmerind, if you doubt me."

Gurgeon shook his head, wiping tears from his eyes.  He hadn't laughed like that since ... well, he had never laughed like that.  It was partly the relief of not having to learn the king's real identity after all—and it was partly the sheer staggering desperation of Leopold's lie.  What did the foolish little cat hope to gain by such a transparent deception?  It was absurd; it was more than absurd.  And if that was the best that this tiny upstart could come up with, then he, Gurgeon, was sitting very pretty indeed.

A voice very close to his left shoulder made Gurgeon leap several feet into the air—fur bristling, claws out, fangs reflexively bared.  "What's all the commotion?" said the voice.

It was Glimmerind, who had crept up behind Gurgeon unnoticed on his soft, nimble paws.  Gurgeon hated that.  He hated everything about Glimmerind; in fact, he hated Glimmerind more than he hated people in general, and that was very much indeed.

Glimmerind pretended not to notice the effect of his sudden appearance.  He stood impassively, gazing down at Leopold with disdainful eyes.  "Where in the world did he come from?" he asked quietly.

Gurgeon glowered.  "Just showed up," he said.  Inwardly, he was seething.  How should he know where the stupid cat had come from?  Leopold was here, that was the point, and it was well past time they started throwing rocks at him—but he had a feeling Glimmerind would be asking a lot more questions before the rock-throwing could begin, and that made him angrier than ever.

"What does he want?" inquired Glimmerind.

"Wanted to see me," Gurgeon grunted, shrugging.  "Wanted to tell me the new king is a mouse."

Glimmerind's eyes flickered over to Gurgeon.  "And do you believe him?"

Gurgeon didn't, of course, believe a word of it, but he was feeling petulant and defiant, and he decided to be a nuisance.  He pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders, not meeting Glimmerind's eye.  "Might be," he said.

The intensity of the look Glimmerind gave him then made Gurgeon turn and look the courtier-cat full in the face.  For a fragmentary instant, Glimmerind's mask of oily sophistication slipped, and Gurgeon saw the fear and fury of a caged animal staring back at him, and in that moment he knew the truth.