This Introduction is dedicated to Roger.

           

Introduction

 

The old cat finished the last of the cheesy noodles, licking the inside corners of the bowl to show his appreciation, then went to the sunny window and stretched out, closing his eyes and feigning instant sleep.  Undeterred, the two younglings snuggled up to him, wriggling about and against him, purring.

 

“Story?” asked Barry, hesitantly.

 

“Oh, yes, a story, tell us a story!” chimed Bette.

 

For a while, the old cat kept his eyes shut, pretending not to have heard. Then he sighed, opening one gold eye and trying to look resentful. 

 

“Mmmm, yes?” said Bette indistinctly, her nose nestled in the warmth under the old cat’s chin.

 

“All right,” he said, “but only till you fall asleep.”

 

He really didn’t mind telling stories.  It just wasn’t good to encourage them too much, they’d be spoilt and, well, he might run out of stories.

 

But not anytime soon; he had five tales right here…on the tip of his pink tongue…and he bet himself that he could tell them all before dinnertime.  After all, he had so many remembered Lives to draw upon, so…

 

                                                          …herein find his…

 

 

                                                      

 

 

 

TINY TAILS  

                                  

a very small series

by TR

       

 

 

                                                    

THE WAY

Tail #1

(in memory of Jumpin’ Jack Flash)

                                              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

FORUM FELIX

Tail #2

(For Banshee) 

 

 

                    

 

It was the screams that woke me. 

 

I had been sleeping, as so often I do, beneath the equestrian statue of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (though the Temple of Castor and Pollux is better for ratting), but the noise that hot night stole sleep from me and all who lived in Rome.  A drunken party, I thought, no unusual thing on such a night until I saw, or thought I did, (as if in a horror dream) six legion eagles of armed men marching and one thousand flaming torches …

 

                                                                                ****

 

I leap ahead of myself, like an untamed horse. 

 

The fractious days before had been full of more than Forum rhetoric: shouting old Senators in their purple bordered togas and screaming Tribunes in their lesser garb.  Factions formed, shifted and reformed in merest minutes. Lictors had their axes out but found targets far too many, the Forum crowd writhing like a headless snake.  There was reason custom bade one Consul always bide in Rome. Sticks slid out from under tunics; daggers from togate old men. I hunkered down in shadow.

 

More fights than flights of oratory, unfitting to the Forum and enough to wake Jupiter Optimus Maximus on his lofty throne. Not alone did I glance above for fear of lightning spear.

 

My master had fled to join his troops but oh, Marius and his sneaky tribune bought and paid for with solid coin--one red Rufus, have stirred the unwatched pot too oft.  Their witchy brew, this dissent and noise of angry Romans: it must surely call my master home.  He and his famous Luck, we would then together set these things aright. 

 

For my master, like me, was called Felix and not for naught. For near twenty years I have walked this Forum, nodding left and right to passerby who know me, accepting treats from all my favorites. They say I keep the Forum’s Fortune in my tail and I thought I did indeed (after all, Cicero himself had said so once…but then he laughed), and my master kept that of Rome herself, but now I am unsure.

 

Where I used to lounge, listening to Hortensius speak and young Cicero stride, now I watch and wish from shadows.

 

Alas for Rome, great city, she has gone wild as Grecian Furies. 

 

Yesterday, I saw a set of eagles alight upon the airy roof of Jupiter Best and Greatest.

 

A good omen, you say? But no!

 

The horror of it drove me (and all who saw) deep into the shadows, for those two eagles, the very sign and self of Rome, did then set upon one another in awful anger, blood-red feathers falling until one bird was felled entire, stone cold dead to earth.  The other great eagle flew off with bloody beak, leaving headless foe on temple steps. No horns and cheers and dancing girls, that luckless Triumph. And what did it portend?

 

Last night, portents met the truth as my master…

 

                                                      …oh, I cannot tell it.

 

 

But…if not me, then who?

 

Sighs in the winds. Roma, she trembles.

 

From the depths of the Forum, I heard the first screams and clashing swords. Mos maiorum, ancient code: slashed to shreds by six legions marching straight to the heart of Rome herself, with my own Sulla Felix at the fore. I hid myself for fear. I closed my eyes for shame. 

 

The Subura burning, women screaming and quick as thought, lists of the lucky Consul’s unlucky foes handed out with promised coin.  Soldiers and Forum bullies alike collecting heads all through the night, banging doors and stabbing in shadows till blood ran red, flooding through the Forum and lower Palentine streets like summer floods. Death, death, and not much care for lists or no, coin or no, heads or tails, noble or baseborn; blood called out for blood, it seemed, and never any ending.

 

This sacrilege must surely cut short the Consul’s famous Luck, I told myself and then I shivered. What had I said? Cut short, cut down?

 

Sudden glitter into my shadows, sharp pain—

 

 

By dawn, in Rome’s first hour, the silent Forum Romanum had new and terrible ornaments. Yes, the Consul had returned but—

 

Heads on sticks, heads on sticks, heads on sticks…

They grimace; orators gaping chop-fallen at the sky…dead, all dead…

 

                                            

             …and small in shadows, one old black Forum Felix whose Luck, at last, had fled. 

 

 

                                                    

 

                                                     

 

SHILOH

Tail #3

(for Festus)

 

 

  

She lay among the roadside reeds to birth her young, one by one, till out I came, last of the five who made it through that weary night.  She suckled us for suns uncounted, while we grew strong and learned to hunt. 

 

She left with the light one winter eve in ‘61. I cannot recall her face, but her milky scent is sometimes in my dreams.

 

                                                                 ****

 

We fared less well then, but three of us still lived when spring lifted seed up into new shoots all along that sunken southern road and through the backwoods swamps and sloughs.  Days grew less chill and nights less deadly. Rats fell to our devices, along with less savory things.  Larger predators awoke and stalked the woods and marshlands.

 

In those days of warmth's promise, we were now only two but oh, how we thrived.  One of us had stripes in butter-yellow, the other as blue-gray as the Tennessee dusk, but we were brothers all the same.

 

Nights found us wrapped together, tight as rosebuds, dreaming of new dawns.  In small hours and soft as whisper breezes, we washed one another and repeated Tales mother had told: of our kin and kind, each one living three-by-three Lives uncounted threading far back through Time.

 

We were two and though knowing best our own small selves, we also knew some of what Life was, how breath linked breath and day followed day, all strung like beads, and in this way we learned and thrived, we two: me and my own Beloved Brother. 

 

The first day of April, in true foolery, tricked herself in blossoms, good hunting, and promises of summer.  Again and always, we together went a-hunting and knew we would not starve.

 

In but one thing were we mistaken: that What Was would last forever.

 

                                                                      ****

 

April rains, as is their wont, sudden came and quicker went. Droplets lay upon leaves.

 

Thus did four days pass…and then:

 

One homespun army marched up our roadside in its mismatched butternut, stealthy but not stealth enough. No, not near silent enough, for another lay in wait, in blue, in hope, and camped just three miles hence.

 

Marching, marching, marching…the noise alone sent we two to ditches, hiding, crouching; eyes wide with wonderment, hearts beating as one, fast as birds a-wing. 

 

What curious things we saw!

 

Antique weapons, smoothbore muskets from another age, and even spears (like fabled Hottentots) were brandished, clashing metals, flashing swords in the hands of mounted and plum-ed Sirs.  I myself heard the cry of one such, called Beauregard, ‘Sir, sir,’ he said, ‘the time is not yet ripe!’ but even as he spoke, their trumpets called a charge and many voices took up the cry to war, to war.

 

Thus did these armies puff up and sally out, then simultaneous strike, like two snakes eyeing one bird.  Sudden clash, gunpowder stench arising, earth moved by cannon boom again and again.

 

Brother and I were separated in the confusion but in that we were not alone.  Unkempt bodies moved and writhed, some blue, some butternut but all digging into swamp-mud for fear and dying in the reeds. Blood painted our familiar landscape, our world of two, a bright arterial Red pumping thick and hot from a hundred hearts. I smelled sweaty death in each direction and I grew more afraid.

 

Where are you, Brother?

 

I heard them name our roadside their nest, their Hornet’s Nest, as stinging bullets clouded and surrounded like carrion flies. Swarming, biting flies (spilled scents of guts and gunpowder).  Invisible trajectories, each hit marked by blood and screaming boys.  Pools of water from April rains became thick and bloody scarlet.  Where, where are you, Brother?

 

I slunk, flattened to the swampy mud to seek, to find; my nose overwhelmed by fearful foreign scents.   Where are you, Brother?

 

O Where are you, Brother?

 

Brother? I caught a glimpse of butternut fur…and leapt sideward, running towards it when…something…bit me in the back…and I fell down, gone limp into the muds…sharp pain slowly fading into shivers.

 

 So cold, Brother, I am so cold, ah, there you are! I had wondered, I remembered, vaguely reassured…while drowsiness overcame me… 

 

As my eyes closed, I had a fleeting vision of mother’s face. Why, she was an Angel!

 

And to think, I’d never noticed.

 

Pain gone, cold banished, my blue was now nestled side-by-side with Brother’s butternut. I squeezed my eyes against a burst of light and then…and then…

 

… we snuggled in among the others, our many brothers and sisters: kneading, mewling, living, loving, and all around us, warming us, were the indescribable scents of safety, of… home.

 

                                                                  ****

 

 

ending as I began, I close my eyes and begin another time between, waiting…

 

                       …but waiting is no burden, as patience runs so very deep in me and mine.

 

                                                          

                                                                  ****

 

 

Twenty years later, the prize-winning sow of a man living near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, annoyed her owner by rooting out yet another set of battlefield bones* far, far smaller than the rest.  Disliking their smell and size, she declined to chew on them.

 

                        Shifting her ponderous bulk and ignoring her owner’s agitation, she moved along.

 

 

 

 

 

*this problem eventually led to the creation of the beautiful Shiloh National Military Park, including a cemetery wherein the Shiloh dead were finally laid to rest and where no visible traces now remain of the bloodiest battle in the American Civil War. Incidentally, Beauregard’s superior, to whom he pleaded patience, died in that first day of fighting.

 

 

 

 

                                                                   

       

                                                     

THE TRAMP

Tail #4

(In honor of Tinker and all those who Wander) 

 

 

 

The Crooked Cat woke, washed perfunctorily and howled his greetings to Moon. 

 

The night was high and hard; steel pennies in heavens.

 

Cold bit deep, shivered flesh and standing up his ragged fur.

 

The tree shadows followed him as he paced outside the up-there glassy eyed windows, wondering if Door had food behind it tonight.  Curls of memory, taste on the tongue; a disappearing smoky wish.

 

Headlights.

 

Hide like turtles. The smells of gasoline, grit and rubber.

 

Creeping flat against Moon's wide eye, Crooked Cat poured himself along the curbs and up along the railings, climbing- creeping- careful stairs. 

 

Soundless as six snakes.  Small and flat as shadows.

 

Door.

 

Vast high bastion of locks and peepholes: barricaded against War, Plague and Famine.  Against all crooked denizens of darkling night.

 

Safehouse. Safe as houses. 

 

Danger.

 

He stopped in front and sat back on his scrawny haunches, looking up warily.  Door was silent but the night whispered, whispered.

 

In the windows to the right, sleek housecats popped their shiny heads, peering wary at Crooked Cat, at his shambling old gray bones on cement and stone.  Their sleepy sneers were vague, reflexive.  He was the evening's familiar, always known and unknown. Crooked Cat belonged out There, where crippled crooked cats lived short and fiercely.

 

He waited; then screamed once, twice, with all his might at Door.  He would open it with his hungry lungs and heart.

 

And again.  Again.

 

And…

 

Door opened.

 

Man spoke soft somethings, set down crisp bowl crunchies.  Also a can top-open to wet food: killed things and good tastes, easy eating. 

 

The smells made him dizzy, excited; he went close.  Man fingers brushed against his rough fur, he jumped--then looked up and sidewise from lamp-green eyes.  Man looked, too.  Odd. Green-brown eyes like those spoilt cats living behind glass.

 

What do they think about, Mans?

 

Man watched and then Door closed, shutting thump like doors in labyrinthine tombs.  Dust settled. 

 

Crooked Cat ate and ate, making sloppy mouth noises of fast good eating.  He licked and scraped down into tin crevices, swallowing in gulps and almost forgetting to breath.

 

 

 

 

Four fat shiny cats watched him from the windows, bored.

 

Full--the Crooked Cat moved on. Cold cut sharp.

 

 

 

 

And the night was high and hard…steel pennies in heaven. 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        

 

 

 

LAND OF THE PHAROAHS

Tail #5

(For Mak and the Queenies)

 

 

Eternity isn’t dark.

 

It’s as blinding bright as Ra’s hawk eye; pouring thick, lazy warmth onto the Temple stones where I like to sit.

 

I can almost remember a time before birth…but not quite. I meant to remember, tried to, I know that much, but…

 

                                                                           ****

 

 

 

What I do remember is the start of Now.

 

Birth hit hard, then hunger.  Soft urgent bodies, wet nipples, satiation, and then sleep.  Sleep nearly sweet as milk.  Through my open eyes (O, clear-eyed youth!) I saw night come and go with her secret sounds, saw day spread his hot, gilded seed across the sands, again and again and…

 

The River. Near and everlasting long. 

 

I could spend a day just gazing, mesmerized by movement of the waters and those who live within.  Crocodiles with their deceptive smiles.  River Horses rolling, cooling in the mud; behemoths to beware. Silvered fishes, divine scarabs (those holy bugs) and papyrus reeds in the winds’ brisk rushes. 

 

They say the Nile is the first birth, the last death, the whole of life. Still, I have seen the sands beyond and wonder.  I pad through the stone Temple, cooling my feet and soothing my eyes, overwhelmed again by a God’s burning eye. 

 

I wake, I sleep. I wake only to sleep some more. Burning sands. Inertia.

 

Sleep is delicious; like the first milk after birth, like offerings the priests bring, like heat on the stones.  There are others of us, many others, but we forever eat of plentiful delicacies. Our bellies are round, our fur is sleek, our eyes shine gold and green. These tasty foods, they daily appear along with priceless incense which, lit, wafts out and upward like exotic echoed melodies.  Each day has its own refrain.  We are content.

 

We grow old but more are birthed in cycles endless as the Nile. Years unseen in the Land of the Pharaohs, where time has paused and turned in upon itself like a serpent. Archimedes’ circles inscribe our lives.

 

I know no other place, can picture no way but this: these rhythms of the River, our Temple, sultry days and chilly nights, and all full of worship and silent song.  I am never hungry. I mate when I feel the urge, which grows less as I sink deeper into my years. Yet I am ageless. Fearless too, despite the snapping jaws of Brother Crocodile and the slithery hiss of Sister Snake, for my own self is Sacred.  Defilement means terrible death.  Ancient taboos and Temple laws protect us. Our every move is venerated; each birth a celebration. To harm us is to insult the very Heavens. Even great Pharaoh himself may not disturb us. It is forbidden.

 

Beloved of Gods and man, safe, I walk my nights through hot sands and cool muds. I sleep my days in Temple shadows or in the pools of Ra’s eye. Eyesight dims, food and frolic lessen their demands.  Age weds sleep to me until I feel it within my skin.

 

I sleep, sleep, sleep. It is weary work, this growing old. Priests bring tender food to me on tiny golden trays.

 

I die one day upon the stones, under the warm morning eye of Ra and in the Temple of my God.  Bast, at last, I see her living person as she looks down on me and smiles.  She is far more lovely than her statues. I die easy, as I have lived. 

 

I know peace unlike any other.

 

Soon the priests will come and bind my hallowed bones with linen, wrap me up with charms and antique prayers to free me from this life.  My Ka, my soul, my Sacred Self, it will then lift and fly high, high into the Heavens where I will join the Gods in celestial wait.  This is no burden; patience runs deep in the souls of my kind.

 

Now is Past, passed in a single blink, and all I can remember is that I was blessed, blissful…

 

                                                  … and each day was good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so…

 

The old cat finished speaking and began washing his young charges as they slipped into slumber, burrowed close against his thick furred body.  The sunny window-sill made his creaky bones lethargic and he smiled lazily out at the lovely light.  The two younglings snuggled against him, purring.

 

 

                             

                                  …and then the old cat closed his golden eyes in sleep.

 

                                  

 

 

 

 

 

TINY TAILS, a very small series, is the copyrighted property of Tragic Rabbit and belongs to him alone, by right and by statute. If you enjoyed this or any other TR Tale, please let him know by emailing: tr@tragicrabbit.org