Chapter Seven

"Belay that order!"

While Oji's hackles were already raised from the murky clouds that seemed to dive for the locked armies, the deck, and the oar-splashed, warship-riven river, his shoulders shrugged higher still,

pinching tight until the nape of his neck veered so sharp, and his head sunk so ferally low, bringing his nature so level with his perking ears that he began to remember himself, fluffing with wispy fur, whiskers to tail.

Oji had to admit--the Ephremian captain could shout. It was a real gift. Ojo felt that if he was struck by a tuning fork, he would shatter into a million brittle shards. Having doubled back up the ladder, Djrezinia blasted through the hatch, and bellowed again, "belay that order, Jemor!"

Although a frown was buried in her first mate's bushy black beard, his dark eyes crinkled deep. "Had I followed his scaredy-cat order, I'd have been caught between mutiny and countermand, wouldn't I?"

If the knowledge that he was a cat prince left Oji feeling that respect was owed him, and he should have the power to lay a dark, bleeding scratch not only on these impudent river rogues, but across all Ephremia, he had lived his life jumping windowsill to windowsill and keeping his thoughts to himself, and, moreover, when he tried to draw himself upright, he only sloped and slid to all fours,

as the energy that had fueled his change ebbed to a dull, indignant tingle in his tail and paws.

The wind roughly gripped the tied sails as if it would tug them from their mounts, then lay left and right with the yardarm, smacking the Alsantian ships and tipping the ambassador in the drink for good measure. But while the lashed sails resisted the winds, and stayed wrapped around the triple masts, when Djrezinia whistled shrilly, then screeched in the sharp, jangly consonants of their harsh tongue, gleaming metal-clad oars slid from the hull, and plowed the river hard, as long brassy tubes swung forward, drawing a narrow bead upon the Alsantian flagship.

While the other ships had shed left and right, as fluid as the waves, the flagship had turned towards them, ballistae drawing back massive spears and stones, its catapult clutching a vast iron ball,

and its archers shoulder to cheek, arrows nocked to their ears, behind footmen huddling under a locked shield wall, shimmering and rippling like dragon scales.

When Djrizinia raised her hand, then brought it down with a harsh cry, the brassy guns boomed back, slamming the deck with such a stunning clamor that Oji scrambled, lost his footing, and fell flat on his chest fur. Then he jumped to his feet, for the hot boards had seared through his light chest fur, and even the thick pads of his paws were so uncomfortably warm that he had to scurry from station to station, where sailors manned jangling machines: twisting the oars to scoop the waves at their unbelievably rapid clip, hurtling for the towering Alsantian flagship; raising and lowering the gleaming cannons that had launched the fiery salvo, and now flung another burning fusillade. The roaring, ascendant missile spewed a backblast of scorching air, filling Oji's nostrils with smoke stench until his ears laid flat, and thrumming the deck with resurgent heat until he scampered in a most unprincely way for the hatch, which he now clambered down, declawed, hairless, and humbled in an instant, his arms and legs now suddenly awkward...

He was halfway down the ladder before his double take. The magical energy had surged again, washing the cat out of him and drawing the boy over him by the thoughtless undertow of the enchantment. When he realized he was a cat no longer, he flinched, one of those pained flinches that stop your heart and shake your breath.

Was the source below deck, on the Alsantian ship, or some other spark or shadow?

As the next boom roared like screeching glass and shattered men, the sky flashed through the open hatch, an electric blue tinged with the scent of a dead, still-warm light bulb, causing the Ephremians to bellow, then laugh. Then there was the tearing, rending sound of wrought ship become wreckage, so terrifyingly near that Oji feared their ship was torn asunder, for no matter how clever its robot oars and steampunk cannons, it was less than half the size of the flagship it had borne down on

like a terrier facing off against a rhino. As planks, fragments, and sail shreds whizzed above, some rained down the hatch, including one splintered, jagged board embedded with red-hot nails that drew a long scratch down his ankle, but the walls held firm, and the shouting Ephremians still laughed, though now it was tinged with the cruelty of the winner.

"Raise the sails! The Galiel flies!" shouted Djrizinia. "All hands--make haste! We have precious cargo. The Prince of Cats!"

While the curiosity was too much for Oji, his indignation was absolutely maddening. His confusion about the flagship was drowned out in jeers hailing The Prince of Cats. How dare they contract his kingdom so small, when his rightful claim was the crown of True Alsantia. While Ephremia had lived independently for centuries, and had, of late, fallen prey to paying Suvani tribute for freedom, his ancient claim took such righteous precedent that they owed Oji neither blood money nor mockery, but sincere fealty.

These angry ramblings sunk into dreamless wreckage when a whizzing board, spraying cinders as it hurtled down the hatch, smacked Oji hard on the forehead.

***

When the boom roared, the ceiling shook, the floorboards stammered, and the wall slats bulged,

then belched a loose nail, none of which woke the profoundly oblivious sleeper, until the nail tinkled on the floor. As the strange, shaking cabin pitched left, then right, as if the floor, the bed which half-smothered Oji's musty body, and his noodly fake boys' limbs, were all liquid, and like his bleary-eyed consciousness, splashing out of oblivion. Where was he?

Then he shuddered at the slow, callous grind of the anchor along the riverbed, which dragged out of him a flurry of blurred moments, and many cold hands changing his flurry of clammy sheets and tending his aching skull, though none attended to the deepest ache, the weary exhaustion at the core of the cat curled tight in the red-haired boy.

When sweat raked his hairless cheek and neck, he scratched the wet trails and muddied his fingernails in the days of sweat-grime caked on his face and forehead. As the pinched, shrill cry of Djrezinia cut through the ceiling, he remembered he was aboard the Galiel.

Feeling himself a stretched-out shadow of the cat he was, his heart stomped inside, and he tore himself from listlessness back into the pain of living and striving, of roaming this uncaring nightmare world. For unconsciousness had its own attendant horrors, given that if he now heard the anchor, then he had slept through the voyage. Surely his wound hadn't been that grievous, that he lost that much time and awareness? Where was he now?

When he sat up, putting boy hands on boy legs, he felt the strangeness of who he was now,

and wondered why he had not slunk back to his cat self, how had he stayed a boy through so many days of sleep, and down so many miles of this oceanic river?

While he wanted to cross from the bed to the porthole, he couldn't muster the strength. He didn't trust these knobby knees, and this bony human flesh, but it was not doubt that stilled him, but alienation, not only from this form, but his own, which lay on the other side of who knows how many days and thousands of miles. It was like he forgot how to breathe. Worse—if he had forgotten who he was, and how he was shaped; if his true form could be discarded days and miles ago, and not snap back to himself like the realization that one is dreaming; who is to say he had any existence at all? A statue is at heart a lump of clay, and this false boy, sitting on the foot of a bed, had proved just as shapeless at heart.

When his mood had been thoroughly blotted out by weary self-pity, he melted back to his true form, and no sooner was he a calico cat than his white feet pattered across the floor and pounced upon the desk under the porthole.

When it was hard to make out what he saw with cat's eyes, he took a long step down from the desk, melting so quickly from cat to boy that paws sprang off but feet touched the floor, and his hands grasped the desk as he leaned toward the dusty porthole. Through the tiny pane, bright red coral etched the eddying river like swirling calligraphy left by an idle poet god. The anchor had ground through rocks and coral to hook on the reef. Having been schooled in Berengere's lap by Animal Planet and other Earth TV, Oji couldn't help wondering: was this oddity a freshwater reef, or a salt water river? Both seemed too strange to accept, though Alsantia was his birth world and inheritance.

At a knock on the door, Oji sprang back and burrowed in his sheets, which was much harder as a tallish, rangy boy than as a smallish, wiry calico, so much so that when the door creaked open, his butt was in the air, his head only half-under the pillow, and his lopsided grin only a smile on the buried side, while presenting a frown to the bemused guards. Abashed at catching the cat prince in an embarrassing position, they backpedaled until their broad breastplates clapped and wedged in the doorframe, the brims of their helmets jostled and rang, and the ornamental brushes on their helms ridiculously jousted, knocking one's headwear off to clamor on the floor.

"Your grace."

Having extricated himself by planting his elbow firmly on his comrade's breastplate, and heaving back so hard that he knocked the wind out of him, a guard stepped in and bowed to Oji.

Having had a moment to swing to the foot of the bed, Oji put his toes to the cold floor, stood,

and turned his back on the guards. "Speak your piece and go."

"That puts me in an awkward position, your grace." When this brought a snicker from his groaning comrade in the hall, the guard's impassive face iced into an ingratiating smile. Though the mirthful expression gleamed, it was a false light, like fool's gold, and his eyes darkened until his mind seemed to have flitted to another land. "I insinuate nothing, you understand."

"Why would you?" Oji's scowl cut deeper, not that the guard could possibly see it, for Oji still faced the wall, and now squared his shoulders and pretended to glance down at the desk. While Oji could not read Ephremian, he pretended to be absorbed in its piled papers, as if they were vastly more interesting than the guards.

"That is what I just said, your grace. But I must reiterate: you place me in an awkward, delicate position. While you have dismissed us, pending your receipt of the ambassador's message, it was she who sent us..."

Oji snorted. "Do you only belabor the obvious in Ephremia?"

"...and bade us bring you forthwith."

"Why?" Oji now turned to the guards. "For what could I possibly be required?"

"Forgive us, your grace. Having just slighted our foolishness and low worth, do you really believe Captain Djrezinia keeps our council?"

"If you do not know her mind now, you must know her reasons past, having so often served her will."

"Only in part, your grace."

"Then tell me this? Why wait until now to enjoy my company?"

"Your wound was profound, your grace."

"I remember waking before."

"Whenever I accompanied her here, she stationed me in the hall, where I saw little of what transpired, and overheard nothing reasonable from your grace."

"Nothing reasonable? What do you mean?"

"Pardon me if I do not elaborate. It is not my wish to offend, your grace."

"It is not your wish? Then keep your snide vagaries to yourself. You could only have meant that I was mute as a beast or ranting like a madman."

"We are expected, your grace." Less ice than mist, the guard's smile vanished.

"Were you ordered to disturb my recovery?"

"No, your grace."

"Then tell Djrezinia I yet linger." Throwing himself onto the bed, Oji's profound sulk shuddered through his back, sagged his face into a frown, and plunged into a groaning mutter, "tell her I malinger if you wish, since you're so fond of having fun at your grace's expense."

The guard paled, as if Oji had not scored with a witticism, but drawn blood by tooth or claw.

"Now that you see that I know your ilk, you may go."

"Your grace..."

"You may go." While Oji tasted the bitter steel of his tone, he could not keep it from quavering,

For while he was a prince, he was then no more than a boy, and a kitten at heart. When the door closed gently, he stretched and lolled on the bed, allowed himself a smug purr, and retracted into his calico self, the better to hide in the rumpled covers from foolish guards.

Pretending to relax soon unwinds, unknots, and unbends the pretender, and Oji drowsily nodded off--until his door resounded with a stiffer, heavier knock, his cat's eyes blinked open in the black and white of darkened covers and paws whitened by slitted night vision, seizing the sheets in surprise, and, as the door clattered hard, he cringed further back in the crumpled shadows of the comforter.

"Cat? Prince? Which of you is it?"

While Oji recognized the gruff voice from his river journey, and his heart drummed quieter,

he did not reveal himself, but stewed longer under the covers, clawing his way to a wrinkle along the comforter's edge which admitted the light.

Jemor stomped around the cabin, poking his profusely bearded chin in the bathroom, then under the bed, and, having forced the porthole with a grunt, poked his head out, as if a cat would ever dare use a porthole like a cat flap, with so much water lurking below.

As Jemor gazed through the porthole, Oji flashed across the floor, taking care to retract his claws and scamper quietly on the pads of his paws. Just as he ducked in the bathroom, then slunk inside the tub, Jemor growled long and low, so much like a wolf that Oji froze flat against the cold basin. The copper fixtures glinted above like an orrery, so many cold gleaming planets in the shadows.

When the door click-clacked again, holding shut but shivering in the jamb as if about to burst to pieces from the brute force of Jemor's departure, Oji slunk from the tub and peeked alongside the bathroom door. Finding himself once more alone, he laid on the chilled bathroom tile, and rolled his head on his paws.

His rest had ended. Djrezinia wouldn't take no for an answer. Who knows what Ephremian monster she would send next, perhaps a sphinx to wear her down with questions...the thought which broke Oji at last, summoning thoughts of those left behind in Suvani's menagerie. He wept hot and cold--cold, cowardly tears for himself, feeling less a prince than ever, and hot, compassionate tears for the griffin, the sphinx, and his poor subject, whose self Suvani had clawed out, stripping away all his words. Was he worthy of ruling True Alsantia, when he could not protect one cat, one of his own people?

Even if he had recovered from his head wound, that only meant he could run some more, and he was as weary of running as he was of fighting without allies. He should have fought harder to stay by Loren and Berangere. While he had resented playing the part of a dumb cat in The Mansion of the Shining Prince, whenever he rested his head, his heart went to the bed where he had curled against Berangere, as she read stories to her cat and her best friend. The Mansion may not have prepared them for being a prince and princess, but it had prepared them to listen and feel, and Oji now felt strongly that he must find the finale of his story.

The third knock rapped three times, each strike clear, distinct, and chilling. Oji sighed, raised his head, and met Djrezinia's glare.

"Why are you sandbagging, cat? Your palanquin stands waiting."

"My what?"

"It's a kind of conveyance, powered in Alsantia and in Ephremia's own recent past by the foot power of its bearers..."

"I know what a palanquin is. Why am I riding in one?" Oji trotted out of the bathroom, arched his back, fluffed up on his hindlegs, then sprouted in an instant to a boy. "You enlisted me in a parade?"

Djrezinia snorted. "As if. No one knows who you are. Well, that's not quite true, is it, given today's destination."

"Forget it," sighed Oji. "I won't ask. I don't really care."

"Come on then."

As Oji followed her down the hall to a ladder, passing the guards he had dismissed—whose fat, ruddy faces were bursting with gleeful smiles, as if biting back a private joke they desperately wanted to howl--he cleared his throat, and said, "to be honest, I am a little curious about the blood-red coral."

"Oh—now you're curious."

"Only inasmuch as I have the right to know where I am. What happened to the river?"

"How do you think we got here?"

"So the river is behind us? This is the ocean?"

"No and yes. This is our eastern port, Aruscaia, where the river mingles in the bay,

making this ocean fringe colder and sweeter than seawater."

"And those were coral reefs."

"Indeed."

As they climbed the ladder, another idea struck Oji. "I have another question."

"Fire away."

"Is Jemor a werewolf?"

Djrezinia's angry grimace slid into a sliver of a smile. "I'm not one to divulge a friend's secrets, but what makes you say that?"

"If there's little chance of you telling me..."

"No chance."

"...then never mind."

As they neared the top rung, Oji became woozy, and one paw slipped free. Paw? No, it was yet a hand. His whiskers twitched around his double take. No, it was only a nose, and blurred vision perched on the end of it—like glass scratched and clawed, as if his fuzzy, hazy exhaustion had scraped away half the world--but he was still a boy. When his foot slipped free, his tail thrashed, and that, at least, was still there, for he kept his tail in both forms.

Djrezinia snatched at his flailing hand and not only drew him back to the ladder, but up a rung,

where he looked down at the floors below, then flinched from the sky, which shone blue, and streamed golden sunlight through the hatch. Unconsciously, his cat's eyes contracted to the clownish colors of human vision. With everything rendered so garishly, it was no wonder that the humans were always laughing and fighting, but fighting halfheartedly and haphazardly, as if they had clown shoes on, without any agility at all, and with only the hope of a drunken grace. The muted colors of the feline world, like cats themselves, were lithe and nimble.

"Thank you, your grace."

"You're 'your gracing' me now?" While Djrezinia slicked a humorous tone over her proud indignation, Oji shrank from it all the same.

"Is it not the correct form of address?"

"Assuming you are a prince. If not, a hundred years ago, I could have had you whipped, or drawn and quartered, according to my mood."

"You needn't take my word for it. If you'd like, I'll call you Djrezinia. Call me Oji."

"Not on your life," she growled.

They clambered through the hatch. The deck now bustled with sailors and soldiers, as well as many not in uniform, humans, dwarves, and strong-backed talking animals off-loading empty crates while lading those crammed with fragrant provisions: the overly sweet scent of grapes, apples, pineapples, melons, wines, and ales; the vaguely salty smell of rice; the savory aroma of bread and salted meat; the rich, fatty smells of oils and cheeses. "'Your grace' me all you like, my prince. Soon you'll know where you stand."

This last insinuation was laced with an ominous tone that shivered in Oji's weary bones. Having just woken up, why should he feel faint?

As the gathered crowds shied closer for sidelong looks at the purported cat prince, their whispers almost sounded reverent. He must be deluding himself, he mused, for he had never received his due anywhere in human lands.

A strange clamor cut through their buzzing rumors, a clanking, clacking stomp marching with the precision timing of a clock until it jostled through the crowd. The mechanized palanquin stamped nearer and nearer on spidery legs, which looked cobbled together from telescopes, all gleaming tubing, gears, and a glass bubble, half of which slid back to divulge two moles seated in its rear hemisphere,

grasping rods by which they steered this oddity of Ephremian engineering.

Oji had begun to expect his changes by the slippery, melting feeling that washed over him, built up like a hiccup, then swelled to burst that flimsy dam with a flood of fear and anger. When the boy popped like a bubble and poured into a calico cat, Oji knew the reason for, if not the source of, his weariness, being now too far from whatever allowed him to shift from boy to cat. Not for the first time, he wished he was an ordinary teenager.

"Where's my fare, captain?" While the mole's shrill but lukewarm voice was like a whistle that only reached one pitch, or a tea kettle ready to pour, she regarded Djrezinia with brusque familiarity.

"You're looking at him," she shrugged.

"That's all? We might have sent a boy with a wagon." While Oji was much larger than a mole, he was an atom in the echo of her monotone sneer, so flat it might have been taken for a kind afterthought.

While Djrezinia raised her hand to her face to stifle her laughter, Jemor's wolfish snort cut through the roaring din and the clatter of crate. Oji's whiskers flicked left and right indignantly, but he couldn't see the first mate anywhere.

Now that she had an audience, the mole did not discontinue her shrewish aspersions, but layered them even thicker. "You'll find my palanquin quite roomy, your highness. I could roll out a rug on which to scratch your claws, if you'd like. Maybe a ball of yarn or a saucer of..."

"Don't even think about finishing that sentence," growled Oji. "Just because mole stereotypes aren't as plentiful as those of cats, don't think I can't put you in your place."

"Your highness," said Djrezinia, "respect would suit you better. You know little of my friend."

"On the contrary," groused Oji. "I know her as well as I'd like."

"That's too bad, because she was specifically sent for, due to her circumspection in handling missions for the crown."

"How could she come on royal orders when you said the king and queen aren't here?"

"We have many machines in Ephremia, including one by which we send messages, even from a ship's cabin to a throne room."

"Not to rush your highness and your grace," the mole blew in her strange monotone whistle, "but I have other fares today."

"Morning?" The sun-scorched deck already blasted Oji's underbelly with overbearing heat, and the sea air was heavy, muggy, and wet. "It's already so hot. And if you're coming with me, it's only going to feel hotter."

"The desert is an oven compared to the coast, but you won't feel it in the palanquin," whistled the mole.

"I might be tall, but I'm not that leggy, Chazna," said Djrezinia. "Make it kneel."

The younger mole spun a dial and dropped a lever, and the palanquin's spidery limbs contracted into a crouch no higher than a dining table, at which point, Djrezinia gestured towards the strange vehicle.

"Age before beauty," she smirked.

"You're undoubtedly older than me," said Oji.

"Not in cat years," she tittered.

"I'm fourteen," he grumbled. "In human years. Talking cats live as long as you do."

"And are no more amusing, apparently. Get in."

As Oji bounded inside, the bracing dip in temperature made his belly hair pinch, then prickle straight as swords. The Mansion of the Shining Prince's old air conditioning was stale compared to the brisk, chill wind of this Ephremian innovation, which so invigorated Oji that he paced the sandalwood interior front to back as Djrezinia stooped inside and took the seat near the hatch.

"You really shouldn't have," said Oji.

"What, treated you to the best ride on the boardwalk?"

Oji's ears perked up. "There are shops?"

"Of course."

"Food?"

"What do you think? We not only eat, we drink too. I'll need a tall glass, the way this day is going."

As the captain's jibe lingered, the palanquin-automaton lurched forward, clambered down the gangplank, and picked up speed, running pell-mell down the quarter-mile quay to a boardwalk crammed with brick buildings, wooden booths, bushels, barrels, palettes of roped-down furniture, and pried-open crates, jam-packed with fragrant tea, odorous oiled jackets and boots of oiled leather, heaps of sweet-smelling apples, uncut books with the musk of new paper and fresh glue, sheaves of short hunting arrows tied with cord, and every other commodity or good, not only plenty of the imaginable, but quite a few of the unimaginable, such as one crate stuffed with crudely hacked unicorn horns, and another, curiously constructed of a streaked, smoky glass, in which a budding Ashflower scraped, strained, and snapped at its opaque walls, not for the sunlight, as any well-meaning plant might, but for the passers-by.

"What is that?" The strange horseless carriage coming toward them had no engine but its riders, who faced each other on long parallel benches, and pedalled gigantic wheels--each the diameter of a shed--so rapidly that their spokes were a blur.

"You don't have surreys in Alsantia?"

"We don't have steam trolleys either." Just visible down an alley, this contraption chugged along on tracks parallel to the boardwalk, so that as their palanquin trotted, its cars and engine peeked through the gaps between houses.

Street artists dabbled in ink, wax crayons, graphite, and chalk, not only on paper and clay tablets, but on the false windows of brick storefronts, sheets of slate expressly created to receive the graffiti.

"Is that art or advertising?"

"We don't draw that distinction in Ephremia, where commerical art isn't as stigmatized as in Alsantia. Additionally, Aruscaia's city government subsidizes another class of artists, who work in sand, beads, seashells, nuts, candies, and other ephemera, expressly for the temporary beautification of the boardwalk. While their designs are ultimately picked at by birds, wind, and rain, or disturbed by the careless feet of shoppers or porters, it improves our lives."

Oji relented in his anger towards Djrezinia. While he had no reason for it, he had fanned the fire for as long as rage had felt right. As it became clear his indebtedness would continue as the day dragged on, he cooled. Cats had no pockets or wallets to buy food, and he couldn't buy breakfast with his looks.

"I'll admit I have been a bit difficult, your grace."

"Do you think?"

"But to wake up and find myself so far from my chosen destination—what would amount to an impracticable journey, whether by foot or paw--you can see how that would put even a prince out of sorts."

"You're as free in Ephremia as you were in Alsantia. Freer in many respects, having no responsibilities to your subjects, and beloved by our myth-loving people in a way your Alsantian brutes can neither fake nor feel."

While Oji was curious of the myth to which Djrezinia alluded, the frosty roar of the palanquin's enchanted air conditioning drowned his purr in the rushing air, and his drooping squint very nearly blacked out under the crush of sleep. "Forgive me, your grace. I fear I am too weary to sport in a conversational manner."

She snorted. "It's certainly not from lack of sleep, nor lack of victuals, for when not enjoying your pillow, you crammed whatever food we served you."

"I have little memory of this."

"I fed you once myself, as I had wanted to ask you something, and thought you might be more forthcoming to the one who held your plate. When you were so drowsy that I feared you might nod off mid-chew and choke, I gave your plate to the nurse. Must I hand-feed you again?"

"You didn't." Oji was aghast at the image of Djrezinia feeding him by hand, as if he was a dumb, ragamuffin kitten.

When Djrezinia's head raked left and right, scouring her side of the boardwalk, Oji's curiosity stirred, and he climbed the arm of his chair to the headrest, where he looked upon the glistening delicacies of Aruscaia's sea market.

"Cats eat fish, right?"

Oji's nose wrinkled. Not that the rankling stereotype wasn't true—he was, indeed, a carnivore. As he stewed a sarcastic reply, his stomach gurgled and groaned in answer.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Something less gamy, please. Those fish don't exactly smell fresh."

"Wrezala are never served fresh. These were likely harvested months ago, fermented the entire time, and decanted this morning."

"So, you slow cook it by rotting it for months, instead of eating it raw, the way god intended.

Even a frying pan would be better. Find me a less rotten stall."

"Other than today's fish, there won't be much left."

While Oji's reluctant attention had been on the novelty of the automated palanquin, the enchantment of the experience, the decor of its interior, and his preoccupation with their unknown destination, his eyes had shimmered in rapt appetite as he took in the long tables of fermented fish, so that despite his distaste for their unsavory aroma, his head jutted in an incredulous sulk toward Djrezinia. "Do you mean to say your wharf ran out of food? And all those ships?"

"This is the last day of a nine day celebration, your highness. While some barrels linger in the backs of cargo holds, and one or two ships are laden with commodities for the return voyage, wrezala, today's harvest, and some scant leftovers are all that's on the menu."

Oji now placed the cloyingly sweet, disquieting aroma—it was the crushing scent of wines and brandies crusting the flagstones, rising from shattered wine bottles, dried corks, and a few puddles of spilled alcohol. Layered on top were the aromas of salt, oil, nuts, and fried breads, as well as greasy, torn paper and cloth bags, and the acrid droppings of horses and unicorns.

"You may be in luck, your highness."

"And it's not a fermented treat?"

"Stop, Chazna."

When the mole seized two bright dashboard pins and spun them clockwise, the palanquin chugged to a halt, then lowered with a gradual squeal of its spidery joints.

"Wait here."

"As you please, your grace. The meter's running." Chaza's face brightened, as if she had imparted the most optimistic news. Having snagged a rumpled paper under the dash, the mole leaned back in her seat, and doodled on the page.

When the younger mole fiddled with the dash, his seat reclined nearly flat, and he kicked back, closed his eyes, and prepared for a snooze.

Djrezinia scowled as Oji peered at the controls of his own seat. "How can it be time for a nap when you are so very hungry?"

"Oh! You want me to come with you."

"Was that not implied, your highness? What we're eating is much too messy to dare eating it in Chazna's palanquin."

"I'm not the biggest fan of messy foods."

"You may be a tidy eater, like the rest of your kind, but intelligent or not, I've never met a cat who didn't like messy fare. Your highness." She smirked.

Oji scampered a step ahead of her, his tail pumping furiously in quivering rage. Not only would it be undiplomatic to scold or scorn one who had promised to tend to his sustenance, but he had to admit that he had no luck at all until snared in Djrezinia's plans.

They stopped at the back of a meandering line, three-quarters dwarves, one fifth humans, and a smattering of others, including a pair of Alsantian foxes bickering loudly on their hind legs.

"What's that smell?"

Oji's gurgling belly squealed, drawing snide looks from burly dwarven women with red, gold-clasped braids, while a tall, hirsute man, much too pale for Ephremian, rolled his eyes, clasped his arms over his chest and turned his back.

"That smell?" She smirked. "And I thought you might not like it."

"Like it? To be honest, I've never smelled anything like it. It's such a fascinating aroma that having smelled it, I couldn't turn back now."

"Not being a cat, I can only speculate that it's like the scent of a fresh kill...or maybe one only a few days old."

"Aren't humans on good terms with talking animals here?"

"We are."

"Everything you say rings with prejudice, your grace."

"I like animals, talking or no. I even like cats."

"Then your bias is with me?"

Djrezinia's smirk faded. "Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot, your highness. Not only were you a stowaway, but you lifted your pseudonym from the pages of my favorite book."

"That's only two strikes."

"Strikes."

"Forgive me, your grace. It's from an idiom of my native land: 'three strikes and you're out.' It's a sports metaphor."

"As for your third strike—whatever that means—you belayed my order!" Her scowl flared for a second, then was squashed by a broader, bemused smile. "As for your native land, you don't mean Alsantia?"

"No, Earth. Technically, Draden, as I didn't live on Earth long enough to call myself a 'citizen of the world.'"

"Both are nonsense words to me. How can you call these places home, if you are to be King of True Alsantia?"

Only one more person stood in their way, the pale, broad-shouldered Alsantian.

"Thank god."

"What do you mean?"

As the aroma at the front of the line was too mouthwatering for conversation, Oji only licked his lips and waved a paw towards the booth, where the cook stirred a vat of bubbling oil, scooped up dripping brown-battered chunks, redolent of chicken and fish, with a mesh-hooped ladle, which trailed grease as it smacked them in a paper bowl, soon sauced with a glaze smelling of honey, peppers, and berries.

It was now their turn. Djrezinia had just stepped up to the foodseller, a short, squat woman with gray-tinged black hair, who smiled broadly as she called back, "one Galiel special."

"What if my tastes have changed?" If Djrezinia currently looked more pleased than perturbed at being so well-known by the vendor, it was such a volatile mixture that she seemed to flip-flop from flattered to flustered in the next moment.

"It's more likely for the sky and ocean to trade places, your grace. With neither fish above, nor birds in the surf, I'll have your order in two minutes."

"You'll have to double it, Anja."

While Anja suppressed her easy smile by pretending a stern glare, her nose wrinkled in good humor. "I thought you knew. We've served you a double order for years."

"A double order? It's enough for a bird to eat."

"Then that bird's a dragon wearing feathers."

The short, wiry cook made a great show of tucking the battered feast in a paper bowl, saucing it with the sweet, fruity glaze, and handing it to Anja, who set it on the counter before Djrezinia.

"Actually, it looks smaller to me."

When Anja feigned a shocked expression, Oji realized he was watching a show founded in many years of flirtation, in keeping up appearances for her workers, and in amusing her regulars, whose shocked gasps were too over the top to be provocative, but not to be fun.

As Djrezinia took their baskets, the aroma wafted down, and Oji inhaled so deeply that the vapors curled up comfortably, catlike, and nearly satisfied him just by scent. But this was a complex aroma, with rich, fatty layers under the savory and sweet, and the second surge of scent nearly crushed him, sending spasms from his outraged stomach to shake him head to tail. When his ears and tail perked on their own accord, and his paws went on their toes, wanting to kick him into a rapid scamper, it was only by exercising the utter limits of his restraint that he flattened his ears, tail, and nose, although his hot, jetting breath still flared, curling his whiskers.

There was only one misgiving he had to clear up.

"Is this cannibal fare, your grace?"

Despite her heaping meal being entirely untasted, the scent was so savory that Djrezinia's watering mouth was already working, and when she laughed, she almost choked on her own saliva, and had to turn her face to regain her composure. "If that was a joke, you might laugh too."

"Not if this ever talked."

"Only birdsong. Gulun is a poultry dish."

"You're doing it again."

"We don't eat talking animals here. What do you think we are--Alsantians?"

While Oji was much too hungry to lose his appetite, his grumbling soured it as his claws pricked through Djrezinia's pants. "Either you forget who I am, or you forget yourself. I'm a True Alsantian." While they were a soft, sheer fabric, and he undoubtedly drew at least a drop of blood, she only smiled all the more.

"The myths say Ephremia and True Alsantia have been allies throughout the ages. And so with Teriana. While we haven't had cause to call on our True Aslantian friends, we answered the summons of the Terianans. Hopefully not to our doom. What say you, your highness?"

"I say you're talking too much. Let's dig in!"

While Djrezinia arched an eyebrow at Oji's effrontery, she stooped, then squatted on the curb, all the while balancing the food on one hand. Seeing that Anja had layered one paper bowl in another, Djrezinia carefully extricated the inside bowl, then poured as close to half its contents as she could judge into the other. Djrezinia proved herself an able diplomat in her conscientious divvying of their meal, for while a twice-doubled order meant plenty to go around, nineteen battered chunks could by no means be divided evenly, for you could not assume three small chunks equaled two large, not when the small might very well be solid breading, and the large overly gristled or muscled. Having done the best she could, she handed Oji his share of the feast.

Oji tore free a strip of breaded flesh. "You didn't say there was a whole bird in each one."

"That's what gulun means. Well, not whole bird, but fried bird. Whole is implied."

"Not that I mind. The bones crackle and drip so much hot marrow that they're almost juicier than the meat."

Djrezinia looked down her nose. "You're supposed to eat it all together. It's a snack, not a four course platter."

When Oji chewed it all together, the soft bones crunched, mashed, and squished with the greasy meat and thick, salty breading. "It is better this way." After a pause, he added, "I like my truth all at once, too."

"You want to know where we're going. Royalty may be an age old story, but it boils down to relations, near and far."

"You brought me all this way for a family reunion?" Oji snorted. "While I'm surprised that we're cousins, I should have guessed talking cat runs in your bloodline."

"Very droll, your grace. if I admit we're not so very different at that, I wouldn't dare claim that point of distinction. As in Alsantia, two kings rule Ephremia, and the true allegiance of many lie with the King Who Walks."

Oji's stomach gurgled, despite having crammed it with gulun. While his ears and hackles perked at the mention of Ephremia's hidden king, his curiosity dissolved in his renewed hunger. "Are you going to eat that?"

Djrezinia's bowl had grease-stained imprints from the breaded birds she had eaten, but there were still three of the greasy snacks. "Feast away, your highness." She thrust the paper bowl a little too haphazardly, and the greasy sauce splashed on Oji's paws, so that he had to lick his toes clean, giving Djrezinia a dire glare as he did so, before continuing his repast. Only when Oji had finished did her magnanimous smile turn down at the ends, her eyes narrow, and her shoulders hunker down over crossed arms. "It's not like it's the first food I've eaten since I've left shipboard."

Oji muttered, "if your intent was to make me feel both hollowed and choked by your false generosity, you have succeeded."

"Forgive me, your grace."

Oji could not grasp the reason for her mocking tone and insincere smile, if she was truly on royal orders. What reason could Djrezinia have to envy him, or resent whatever good thing awaited?

What could it be? Why was he here? As far as he knew, he had no kin outside of Alsantia. Even though cats travel as they will, talking cats mate for life, and he could trace his ancestors' fidelity throughout the ages as if writ in stone. And if there were no unexpected kin, it could only be the unlikeliest of inheritances. Not that he had any reason to fear. If Djrezinia's flagrant annoyance was disquieting, it was also reassuring, for it stood to reason that if she was leading him into a trap, she would cover her displeasure with a better semblance of a smile. What was to come might surprise, or even shock, but could be no evil, not if it aroused the covetousness of Djrezinia.

When the feeling of fullness finally hit him, he felt queasy, as if the greasy fare had oozed waves of disquietude through his limbs. "What have you done to me?"

"I would never eat so much gulun myself, your highness. But rich to the rich, as they say."

"What a stupid saying. Animal kings are rich in other ways."

"I doubt it." Djrezinia picked her teeth daintily with a fingernail. "Rich is rich. Animal riches can't be that much different than Alsantian or Ephremian riches. If you don't hoard cash or goods, you hoard something else. Being rich isn't trading in goods, but in superiority. The rich obtain an excess of whatever is treasured. What is precious to a talking cat? Based on precious company, sarcasm and wit. As you have oodles of the former, and a modicum of the latter, we can account you to be rich." She looked at him sidelong. "If I've offended you, I was only trying to make you feel at home, you know. I thought only to be your mirror today, to act as you do."

Oji's eyes widened. Had he really acted like that? Not like a prince of cats, but a pampered pet,

scratching Djrezinia or cozying to her as he willed? And she had ruffled his fur by mirroring housecat right back at him, so that in scorning her, he had only gotten his whiskers wet in his own reflection. When Oji's hackles ruffled even higher, his teeth set on their needle-sharp tips, and his tail stiffened, he turned from Djrezinia

While the bulk of the palanquin was blocked by milling crowds, he could just spy the moles' one-sided conversation inside the bubble. Perched atop the outlandish taxi, the moles must have had an excellent view of this stretch of the boardwalk, and he wondered if they discussed him and Djrezinia now. When the older mole roared at the younger mole—comically muffled in the distant glass--and showed no signs of stopping, he guessed their topic must have been something that not only got the mole's dander up, but kept it in that puffed-up, overbearing stance.

"With your king and queen at war in Teriana, and my throne still waiting, it's best if we not waste time in idle discussion. If you think it best to keep teaching me lessons, please submit them in writing."

When Djrezinia's ugly, scornful laugh echoed in the adjoining alley, it layered her mirth with grim foreboding, and Oji second guessed his appraisal of their destination.

"Where should we start? How not to belch and make a mess of yourself when eating gulun? If you mean to order up etiquette lessons, it will give me writing cramp, your highness."

"I know you don't like me. I just don't understand why. It makes no sense at all. In fact, it makes so little sense, I wonder what this pretense hides?" Oji's tail smacked Djrezinia's calf. "You're afraid of where we're going."

"Is that so." Djrezinia sniffed, squared her shoulders, and led Oji back to the palanquin. "So what if you're right? I'm right to be afraid. You would be too, if you knew where we were going."

"Then tell me."

"Even if I have reason to dislike your highness personally, don't mistake me for a cruel person,

as I take no pleasure in feeding a spoiled prince's fears and watching him squirm, nor do I have any interest in running you down when you try to escape your fate."

"But that isn't true, is it. You want me to run. And as you are cruel, you gamble that my fear of the unknown—the greatest fear of all--will make me run, instead of profiting from whatever revelation awaits."

"In your dreams."

"Whatever waits will less likely hurt me than help your royal couple, or why would they order you to share it with me, when they are at war?"

"I thought you didn't want to talk." But Djrezinia's scowl was telling. This time, when she opened the palanquin hatch, she did not wait for Oji to board, but clambered in, blocking his entrance,

so that he had to scamper over her lap to his seat.

"Where to now, your grace?" asked Chazna.

"Sandfolds: coordinates ciello thirty-one, aliph four, berin ninety. Ideally, we need to be there one hour ago."

"Begging your pardon, your grace. The palanquin's a marvel, but not a time machine."

Djrezinia sighed. "It's only another dimensional coordinate. In a logical world, you would be able to do it."

"Showing off our learning, are we, your grace?"

"We? As if. The only thing we are is late. If it's no time machine, I at least hope it's a speed machine."

"Are you really demanding she gets us there an hour ago?" Oji was incredulous.

"Forgive her grace, your highness. It's only a game we play."

As they raced down the boardwalk, the palanquin sprightly sidestepped and stepped over other merchants and browsers, their ride now a clattery, shivering one, which rattled Oji's teeth and tore at the claws which sank into the armrests. The automated taxi was indeed alarmingly fast, clearing miles of boardwalk in minutes, when they reached the Ephremian roads. Even after Chazma shifted gears to a roaring gallop, Oji could tell that the paving was of some unknown material, presenting a more seamless surface than Earth roads. While the fastest unicorn might rival their speed for a few moments,

there was no outpacing the palanquin's monotonous tread, and they soon left behind not only the sprawling coastal city, but its roads, with the strange paving giving way to cracked flagstones, then dirt paths.

Having extracted a small sphere from her pouch, Djerizinia touched it to her forehead, shut her eyes, and furrowed her brow.

"About your coordinates, your grace..." Aside from the shivering, shaking hull, an hour had creeped by silently, and Chazna's wheezy whistle rang shrilly in the palanquin tube.

"Follow them to the letter." She was still in her odd meditation when she pursed her lips and cut off Chazna's question.

"They're taking us off the road. Not that it isn't built for that, but I wanted to advise you of our bumpy ride."

"Bump away," Djrezinia said crossly, then closed her eyes again.

Oji was looking out the window, and almost didn't catch it. Passing through a rural village, where houses on stilts overlooked shifting sand dunes that dusted the palanquin's spidery limbs, and its villagers came to gawk at the strange automaton, Oji was vicariously enjoying the children's looks of wonder when he saw the flash in the windowpane.

Oddly, the glint drew his attention from the scene to the glass itself, and the reflection trapped inside the pane: a tiny window in the sphere pressed to Djrezinia's forehead widened...but when he jerked his head towards her, she wrapped it back in its cloth, stowed it in her pouch, and leaned back, a satisfied smile on her lips.

"What was that thing?"

"We call it a tremic. It's like a telescope with a focal point that can be shifted at will."

"That's hardly science. You can't reroute optics as you see fit."

"Who said it was science? As for optics, I wasn't using my eyes, so there was no line of sight to speak of. What does a cat know about science, anyway?"

"So it's magic?" Oji ignored the jibe only by great effort.

"Of course it's magic. Honestly, I thought you might be nosier about where I was looking, than how I was doing it. You have a hard time staying subjective." This queer reversal of the customary Earth idiom about staying objective, while by no means so jarring as the Ashflowers of the Sargan Vos, or being stuffed into a gilded cage, was one of the weirder things Oji had heard since arrival in this world, and it brought him up short, a pause which stretched as he remembered where he was. No, it wasn't remembering so much as becoming more present to Alsantia, as if that magico-megacontinent had sunk in, at the glacial creep of an iceberg, into his brain.

"While I was doing my best to ignore you, if it's difficult to stick to my guns, I am only a teenager. And I'm frustrated beyond the pale. I boarded your ship with the best of intentions, but I had no intention on coming all the way to Ephremia. Not to mention I would have preferred never to set foot in another desert, having lost my Berengere in the last one."

"Your Berangere? My King and Queen might object to that description. What claim of yours could possibly supersede their rights to their daughter?"

"That is a vile statement, tantamount to slavery in True Alsantia. Even parents do not own their children."

"Such is the way with commoners in every human realm, but kings and queens often have complete authority over their offspring. Is it not the same with your highness? Would you not rather fulfill your dreams than this preconceived and unknown legacy? Instead, you strive to serve those before you, those after you, and those very far below you, your highness."

"It galls me to admit I've thought on these lines. I hate to think I can be anticipated by such a petty mind as yours." Feeling himself near the end of their journey, Oji saw no reason to withhold his true feelings from the spiteful ambassador.

Djrezinia was set to blow her vehement reply when the palanquin upstaged her, the metal bursting and the wood splitting with a screeching, splintering roar as the sleek vehicle became ungainly wreckage, and they tumbled with scattering debris, colliding in a heap along a scorching sand dune.

When Oji couldn't breathe, his panicked, kicking arms and legs strewed sand in his ears and the nooks between his fingers, down his shirt, and into his boots. Fingers? Shirt? Boots? He rolled on all fours, spewed a clump of sand, heaved a dry, abrasive breath that set him coughing and hacking, then took a much timider breath, wheezing in and out as he dribbled more sandy spittle on his hands.

As the power surged in him, the wet sand clumped to his hands dried in seconds, swirled with the desert wind. and rejoined the dunes. As his huffing breath fanned to a dull, aching roar, strength suffused his boy's limbs, and when he staggered to his feet, he stood a foot taller than when last he was a boy. Was this being a man? While his arms, and legs were still hairless, deeper breaths sank in a wider chest, and his arms and legs were longer and thicker with muscle. While his change was more powerful, the mere fact he had become human, here in the desert, troubled him, for he couldn't feel the source of the magic. While the flame of enchantment coursed from his feet to his head, he couldn't trace the spark.

"Djrezinia?" Her eyes looked up, but through Oji, as if he wasn't yet there, but some forty feet behind where he stood.

"Why are you shouting?"

"I'm hardly shouting, but if I did shout, being in an explosion is a pretty good reason!"

"Ow! Keep your voice down." Djrezinia's attention drifted back to Oji, as if she had painfully reeled her focus back in. "No, you better keep your head down." When Oji looked at her quizzically, she shouted, "duck!"

Still crash-rattled, Oji dumbly wondered why is Djrezinia calling me a duck? Now in his gawky boy limbs, he remembered I'm not even a cat any more. When the shadows fluttered near, then clustered to his own shadow, he dived for the sand, rolled onto his stomach, and, gaping at diving vultures trailing dark, buzzing clouds, kept that momentum going, rolling all the way down the dune.

"Stick together!" screeched Djrezinia, then rolled after him--two human logs bounding down the sandy slope. While Oji had hoped distance from the source of magic would revert him back to a cat,

the better to elude the vulture storm and whatever swarmed in their wake, his boy's bones rattled all the way down, until his ribs, knees and skull ached and burned from thwacking hot sand. When his thoughts shook, and the world spun, as if he was the topsy-turvy heart of an inside-out top, something hot, angry, and powerful buzzed back at the diving swarm, a swarm of angry roars, each swelling with a lion's rage.

When he clutched a rocky spur, claws pierced stone, and a monstrous shadow swallowed not only his own tiny shadow, but Djrezinia, whose eyes widened as he coiled onto his haunches and bellowed, a hot roar that shivered the columns until they crumbled to rocks, gushing sand and billowing dust. Rocks the size of heads and rocks the size of paws rolled together, rapidly assembling a pride of stone lions.

As the vultures flitted from the choking dust cloud, Oji squatted and waited on the spinning world. Surely his enormous shadow was but a trick of his doubled vision, and his thundering pulse only the echo of his rage. His eyes raked his giant paw, taking in the golden tufted fur. Was that what he was? Not only had he never learned that shape, but what was the source of so much power? It was not only a colossal feat of magic, but an unimaginable strain on even the stoutest heart.

As the dust settled, the circling buzzards drew the buzzing swarm in behind them, an evil mass converging in a screeching and chirping black cloud, until Oji's deafening roar scratched out the noise,

a deafening thunder wave that sent the vultures spinning and so stunned the swarm that they showered the hot sands with clicking green.

This green rain clumped to the dunes, shuddered, then swamped towards Oji, clamoring for his blood.

Locusts. Talking locusts, vile things whose language was only hunger, feeding, killing, and death. Now the eye of the converging swarms, Oji saw the locusts were the true monsters, and the vultures the bottom feeders, hoping to pick clean what the swarm had swallowed down to the bones.

One vulture darted down, nipped up the young mole from the shattered globe, then darted back into the darkening sky, but when another fluttered down to pick Chazma from the broken glass, the tiniest fringe of the swarm spilled over the bird, and its right wing and feathered scalp were stripped down to ribs and skull. As life left the vulture's eyes, Chazma scampered just an antenna's length ahead of the locusts.

In this unfamiliar body, thought became deed sooner than Oji could comprehend, so that he only realized his desire to save Chazna after crushing the swarm's forward edge. As this pounce had taken him forty yards, it was more like flying, and melted so instantly into memory that he could not remember having done it, but only having wanted to do it. This lion body was not only strong, it was innocent of weakness, and doubt and regret were similar blind-spots, so that Oji struggled to remember any uncertainty, mental or physical. His bones and muscles did not ache, and still surged with power, as if he had come here by an act of will.

As the vultures hurtled in, Oji blasted them back by mighty wallops, and when the locusts stirred under him, his mighty roar buzzed through them, shattering some to bits, and stunning the rest into immobility, other than the faint wavering of antennae.

As Oji's growl rolled in his throat, his head throbbed. Each thought burst like thunder, and each breath surged like a furnace. Everything he thought and felt was now invested with a strange momentousness, more ponderous than powerful. As he glowered at the shivering insects and the circling vultures, he again felt himself as the eye of the storm.

Not that this tornado of insects and carrion eaters had any merciful center; Oji's lion glare had flash frozen them in this peaceful moment.

At the tiniest of clicks-- some hidden locust general tapping its wings--the horde teemed over him and furrowed through his fur, pinching his thick, musclebound hide.

In a bizarre moment of synesthesia, Oji recalled how the green rain of locusts had showered the dunes, felt himself to be drowning in the chittering swarm, and when this triggered his feline distaste for getting wet, his mighty shudder repelled the locusts with the force of hailstones, to split and shatter on the rocks.

When Oji lifted his woozy head, his mane and whiskers drizzled into the shimmering brook rippling around his paws. He and Djrezinia had rolled down to a rocky gully, where a slender trickle ran down the bottom of what was once a wide underground riverbed. While the ancient stream had shriveled to the creek at his paws, it had channeled a smooth stone tunnel under the dunes.

From this dark grotto, long shadows snaked, so long and sinuous that Oji first thought them serpents, yet another swarm joining the verminous throng, but when they glared at the pests swarming Oji, their eyes gleamed like crescent moons, and when they crouched and growled, Oji recognized these shadows as kindred beasts. While not lions, they were undeniably great cats of some unknown tribe, perhaps Ephremian cougars or panthers.

But something else called to Oji even more. A tremor whispered from the ground, a deep, resonant purr in the earth. The locusts' creep surged to a frenzied crawl, scattering out of sight like wind-blown leaves. As the creeping swarm dried up, the vultures took to the skies until only their specks sullied the horizon.

When the shadowy cats strode forward, Djrezinia slunk behind Oji, but the strange pride padded around them, tracing a circle, then another, repeating this circuit several times. It was less like the shadow-cats were surrounding them, then lulling themselves to sleep, and just as that thought struck Oji, a strange drowsiness descended, and Djrezinia slouched off into unconsciousness, her arms and legs a full starfish of splayed-out insensibility, and her head lolling on the sand.

As he padded towards the shadow-cats, they swelled, hulked, and towered high. When his tiny paws dimpled what had been his huge pawprint, he was relieved to see his own paws, but it was distressing to see that the whole of him could curl up in that gigantic print.

Had it been a dream? As he staggered under the idea, the ground shuddered, as if he was still a giant lion. When the ground folded under him, his mind winked out, and folded inside it, but the cats kept padding in shadowy orbits, their golden eyes shooting through his darkening sleep.

Where earth and mind folded, the world doubled, out of focus, and dreaming Oji stretched out of mind: here a kitten, there a boy, and there a shadowy lion, padding dark tunnels painted not by hand, but by the delicate brush and claw of paws. Here a stag dabbed in blood, there a gazelle daubed indigo and green, but the horns of both were a gold so resonant that the cave painter must have hammered in real gold with a rock. And there, scrawled on the longest wall, sprawling through the darkness to the merest scratch of light, a shadow cat knelt on a skin painted snow-bright, his tufted beard longer than his tail.

When the cave paintings' profound details sparked Oji's awareness, he recognized it as his dark dream, scrawled by the flashing pawprint of his sleeping mind. Accustomed to the harsh incandescence of everyday life, it is a strange thing for the conscious mind to flicker awake in the fluorescence of the dream world.

Or was he dreaming? Maybe he sleepwalked these hidden tunnels, for their branching chambers were cut so distinct that he could not be dreaming. In one long chamber, dark stone tombs were capped with smooth boulders black as coal, each engraved with the face of a long dead cat. In another, a mother caterwauled on a long, silvery table, and midwife cats prowled from the steaming cauldron and wall of bizarre birthing tools.

Moreover, these caves meandered far too long to be plumbing his imagination, hewing their way through darkness toward pale dawn's light.

Having his fill of darkness, shadow-cats and paw-painting fluorescence, Oji's doubt bubbled out of him: "Am I dreaming?"

"We have a philosopher." This snickering, lanky shadow-cat's tufted braids jutted up in a spiny ridge, an absurd but terrifying mohawk running head to tail. His warlike sneer rippled silver whiskers and stripes of black warpaint.

While this fearsome face might have provoked more common fears, such as fear for his life,

princes have uncommon fears, and Oji's tail trembled more at the scornful lese majeste which clawed at his dignity, then shivered as this dream world fluttered in and out, shifting and changing, blotting out his imperiled identity in profound doubt for his very existence.

"Who are you?"

"No one of consequence, your highness."

"Not you, personally." Oji scowled. "Your tribe."

"Who are you?" As the huge growl sounded in the meandering shadows, it echoed, then echoed again in the joined roars of the tribe of shadows.

"If you call me your highness, you already know who I am."

"Behold," proclaimed the painted cat, "the great Who I Am." They chuckled and hollered some more, but did not meet his eyes as they rubbed up against him, until he braced his paws for fear of being crushed between their massive, rippling flanks. When his hindquarters was swatted, he could not help scampering forward, no matter that he clawed the earth, yowled, then raked back with his enraged paw, the shadow of which now fell on the whole tribe, drowning them in utter blackness, aside from the bright dot of their destination.

Having swelled back to the shadow-lion, now he stood higher than his hosts. It was like it surged out when swarmed or swamped, first the locusts and vultures, and now the shadow-cats,

who mingled and milled so chaotically that they seemed to teem far out of proportion to their numbers.

"Let's try an easier question. Where am I?"

"Marei." This benign and tranquil face was furiously painted, depicting Alsantia's indigo and violet moons in conjunction, and the shared area of their eclipse seeming royal blue or deep purple depending on the angle. "Forgive Eremineus. Hhis great reverence for you is not worn well on a face habituated to sarcasm, scorn, and cruelty, being the leader of our vanguard. We are called the Mareira."

While Oji finally felt he was getting somewhere, a guilty tweak in the back of his mind derailed his nagging questions about where he was and why was he here, for he felt it proper to be concerned about the ambassador, no matter how rudely she had fulfilled her obligations.

"Where is the ambassador?"

"If you mean your friends..."

"I never called them friends, but yes, I'd like to know what you've done with Djrezinia and our pilots." That was when Oji remembered the fate of the hapless apprentice, who he last saw pinched in a skyward vulture's claw.

The shadow-cats' jovial grins seemed to sink in the dark tunnel, even as the darkness receded into the graying light of the bright cave mouth, through which Oji spied flashes of green and a swath of shimmering blue.

"We tend to your ambassador and her mole, your highness. The destiny that drives the young through their ordeals is a crushing doom to the old, who are soon overwhelmed by cares and exhausted."

"She may be older than me, but Djrezinia's hardly old. And what cares? I stopped the swarm!"

"A swarm is no foe to be blocked by a shield or a strong back, your highness. Despite your efforts, your friends were overrun by locusts--aside from the kit, who was borne aloft by a vulture, and whose fate is unknown."

"Overrun? Fate? What do you mean? Are they alive or dead?"

"They fought well, your highness; the mole like a mastiff fifty times her size, and the woman laid about with a sword, her eye so keen that she sliced wings from locusts and beaks from birds."

"You're beating around the bush!"

"Don't fear, your highness. While I can't speak to the safety of the kit, who is surely nothing but bones by now, the others yet live, as I have said, and are being treated for pain and exhaustion."

"Why must everyone in this world be so frust--" As the meandering tunnel swelled to an enormous grotto, Oji's grumbling died in the radiant light flooding the cave mouth. Whereas the tunnel network was smooth as glass, vitreous hollows hewing to the natural, meandering lines carved over the eons, the cave entrance open to the near-blinding sunlight was built from hewn stone, its walls a perfect octagon. As each laid stone was much too heavy even for massive shadow-cats, Oji guessed this must be some marvel of ancient engineering. But what lay outside was a greater marvel.

If part of Oji curled in the back of his mind, adamant that the whole thing was a dream, the oasis banished this specter of disbelief from his mind, seizing this doubting sleepwalker by the scruff

and raising Oji's hackles, tail, and the rest of his fur, on pins and needles. Enormous trees flanked a well-trodden path to a cerulean lake, its waters shimmering and pellucid. The branches were lush with leaves, a profusion doubled by clinging ivy. Oji's first breath of the thick, heady air made his heart race, the second made his eyes swim and his front paws sway, and when he drew in the third, he blacked out for a moment, hearing only the rippling pond and running streams. As his vision came back in spots, then in splotches, then a hazy shimmer that showed a ghostly, shivering world before the solid, everyday one, a palpable silence clung there, even to the grass under his paws and the wind stirring his tail. All was replete with an enormous hush.

They led him down the river banks toward the lake, where the cats sunbathed under the blazing sky. It was like they had journeyed hundreds of miles, not a few thousand feet through tunnels, for in this strange paradise, the sky blazed blue horizon to horizon, with no trace of the swarm that had beclouded the desert, or a wisp of any cloud.

Although Oji could see the far shore, the lake shimmered left and right to untold reaches and glimmered to unknown depths as if more idea than surface. While this bright land had dispelled even the shadow of a doubt from his mind, Oji strongly felt these were dream waters. Not knowing when the dream ended and where the real world began, and no longer knowing the real Oji, when the weakness of kittens was what he remembered and the strength of lions was what felt right, it felt true to set one paw in dream and the other in reality.

When this fusion of dreams and reality seemed to bend, then ripple, then burst, the shadow-cats shimmered into shadows, then shivered into human form, shrouded in black robes. The trappings of a city appeared as well, not only huts delicately wrought from glinting sandstone, but businesses buying and selling the dressed-up dream-work, not only meat and drink, but more esoteric foods for feeding fantasies, like travel guides and maps to unknown worlds.

Although he poured upward into the leggy flesh and gawky chin of his boy form, Oji still felt out of place and at sea in confusion, not knowing if it was an instinctive reaction to the shadow-cats taking human guise, or if this time he had desired his boyhood to take shape. Despite the omnipresent enchantment of the oasis, Oji knew it had not quickened his tranformation. It had been like stepping through a door, not shape-changing but departing one form for another.

"None of this is real." Oji's downcast eyes lowered further still, to the cobblestones. Only you couldn't call it cobblestone, for the particulate stones comprising it were such tiny pebbles that it was more accurate to call it pebblestone. If not founded in utter fantasy, the streets were a miracle of engineering, for in any reality, they would soon crumble under the harsh tread of boots, horseshoes, and wagon wheels. Not that there were any domesticated beasts, nor talking animals aside from the human-clad shadowcats, and those few who stubbornly lolled on the curbs as actuality intended: shadowy, leonine cats, with tails coiled like whips, paws feathered to a velvety sheen, and eyes slitted in hedonistic pleasure as they absorbed sunlight. Whenever Oji stepped past one, he felt scorching heat,

as if they were not cats but fallen, molten moons. These sweltering sunbathers lolled equidistantly around the shore, as if the lake's self-appointed satellites and guardians.

"What is real? We planned our city longer and with more care than the architects of your land."

"Alsantia was never my world. And on Earth, what is real is subject to constant negotiation and technological innovation."

"I see no conflict in claiming kinship to Earth and kingship over True Alsantia, a people who

have not only prepared you a place, but prepared their hearts to receive you. You will find our city as welcoming, should you appreciate what you see, not dismiss it as vapor and illusion."

"Smoke and mirrors," mumbled Oji.

"A clever idiom, your highness. Is that of Earth?"

Oji only scowled and bowed his head lower, until his whiskers grazed the pebblestone streets. "And an apt phrase," the mareira continued, "in that our city is not only a manifestation of conscientious thought, but a reflection of our adored oasis." He stopped, faced the lake, and waved his paw left and right. "This lakefront circles clear around the lake."

"And no boats." Oji snorted. "A point in your favor. Boats are uncivilized--wilder than wild beasts. Not only is my head still swimming from my voyage here, but I had sealegs for the better part of our sojourn through your desert."

"Our desert? We never see it here. We left our sanctuary only to play our part in fulfilling your destiny."

"What would you know of my destiny, having never seen my face before today?"

"While neither hide nor hair of you was spotted on our shores, your shadow dwelled here even when you hid on Earth."

"My shadow follows me paw to paw, like any other. And I didn't hide on Earth; I was hidden. There's a difference."

"Do you not notice something added to you? Something not given, but restored?"

"That's nonsense." Oji creased his brow and wrinkled his nose, but his eyes fluttered from the cool, passive face of the mareira. His flinching attention then alighted on the many marvels of the shadow-cat city, such as the sandstone lake shelf, painstakingly terraced into its crystal clear depths down to the glinting rockbed; ornate, coppery posts engraved with arcane lettering, by which the shadow-cats navigated this dream harbor; exquisite shops, which seemed cut and polished not by masonry but by the jeweler's art--this one stacked from shimmering emeralds beside another more gilded, turquoise-studded, and agate-crusted than any crown, if suitable for coronating not a shape-shifting cat prince, but a sphinx that dwarfed the largest dune.

Among the milling throng were those darker than any Ephremian, those as blue as the highest reaches of the coldest sky, those as green as the deep sea, and the blindingly white, whose wintry complexions was less snowy than snowblind, punching out people-sized holes in the crowd. Mareira smiles were also of an infinite diversity, not only inquisitive and joyous smiles eager to see the coming prince, but captious 'I told you so' smiles, girl-cat smiles so pregnant with interest that Oji burned, and looked to the lake to douse his desire, and smiles of cunning and cupidity writ not only in the grins,

but the creased, glistening brows of merchants hoping to hammer out trade deals with True Alsantia, avid for profit and prosperity.

The merchants' naked greed posed a problem to Oji. Why so eagerly anticipate his business, if it was not real? And to toy with the mirage of a boy or a lion was one thing, but why should the girl shadow-cats tease their own desires, and flirt with what was not real?

If he turned his back, would the dream harbor disintegrate into the sand at his paws? Not that he could turn his back on a city ringed around an oasis, and itself beringed by rocky desert hills.

What would the sphinx riddle of this strange mingling of the unreal and the real?

"You forget where you are, your highness," yawned the painted shadow-cat. "Magic is real here. To the sorrow of your young friend."

"That's the second time you've mentioned him, after watching vultures carry him away."

"While we had foreseen your arrival here, part of the future is always shrouded in shadow."

"So you saw the palanguin, but not its wreckage, and the desert, not the swarm," snickered Oji. "How convenient for a prophet."

"Before the Stranger's shadow cloaked mind, memory, and history, your story was written for all here to see, your highness."

"Back up. You raced all the way to the ambush from here only after the explosion of the palanquin? It wasn't even a minute."

"Your skepticism is only natural, your highness, being also the murky influence of The Stranger."

No sooner was the dark god's name repeated than it echoed in disturbing memories of his recovery in his cabin: the sweating and fever of infection, the downing of countless cups of water, then a stronger liquid that burned his throat, force-fed by Djrezinia. He had tossed and turned as the Ephremians squabbled about The Stranger's arrival, and what his coming presaged.

Then he recalled Worlds class, where Njall took a twisted relish in sharing macabre myths of the Stranger, horror tales infused by not only swarms, but zombies, skeletons imbued with a clacking semblance of life, and thirteen dark lieutenants, each the most depraved of their animal kindred: Bagh the Wolf, Rampu the Bear, Synnica the Fox, Klaia the Vulture, and nine more carnivores, all equally indifferent not only to whether the flesh they ate once talked, but to whether it was freshly dead, long dead, or kicking and screaming, their necromantic hunger devouring all that once lived with a bottomless, inexhaustible appetite.

"You speak of murky influence, yet traffic in illusions."

"Where do you think the Shadow Bringer comes from, your highness?"

"He's one of you?" Oji could not help laughing, for all his uncharitable suspicions of his rescuers felt justified.

"One of us, your highness." While the shadow-cat's face was masked in a stony assuredness, his condescension was worthy of Njall, whose discipline was legendary, having made every Animalyte write sentences at the blackboard until their hands cramped and chalk caked their fingernails. As he drove this lesson home, his eyes were slitted in mingled cruelty and pride, though Oji was fairly certain the shadow-cat took moer pleasure in stripping him of his illusions than in revealing his legacy. "You did not think you were an Alsantian cat?" His loud and heavy snort stirred the sand caked to the pebblestone more than a yard away. "No Alsantian cat could measure up to my prince."

While there are certain advantages to being small, Oji squirmed in his discomfort at broaching a subject that had pained him all his life. But no matter how he shrank from the thought, and wished he might squirrel away right now in a tight hiding place, he stayed swelled, ripped head to toe with bulging muscles. It was strange that getting his wish should make him so miserable; that having become accustomed to being small, he should shudder at being so conspicuously mighty. "You say that now, when I fell short of my expectations long ago."

"Your glimmer was a necessary evil, my prince. How were we to expect you to survive on a world callous, at worst, to its own animals, and indifferent, at best, to its own intelligence? By hiding you under the guise of a common housecat, we thought to shelter you from their indifference until you could be collected." He sighed. "We had no idea how long it would be. His majesty said if we interfered with your development on that accursed world, it would not only embolden The Stranger into premature action, but empower Suvani even more."

"Where are we going?" Not wanting to let on how curious he was, and the battle having piqued his hunger and thirst well past his curiosity, Oji growled, and turned toward the tents of golden thread and businesses masoned from gemstones. When his stomach gurgled, and his hungry belch exploded any thought of what he would say next, his train of shadow-cats rippled with mirth.

When Oji had turned toward the businesses, the painted shadow-cat had become a tall, dark man, whose cool smile showed sharp, leonine teeth, which nonetheless seemed oddly fitting for his human mouth. "As you are, more or less, already at your destination, young prince, let us share a bite. Judging by that belly-roar, maybe we shall share more than one."

"If that belly-beast has its way, the plate will be bitten." This curvaceous mareira had bright blue hair, bundled into a topknot nearly as large as her head. Her voluptuous figure so puffed her sleek black robe that subtle rainbows rippled in the taut, satiny fabric. Oji's undeniable attraction was shot through with alarm, for the rational part of him well knew that in truth, he wasn't much more than a mouthful to this shadow-cat.

They led him from the lakeside road to the ring of businesses, wending their way through a tent selling fragrant kebabs piled high with still-sizzling herbed meats and vegetables with such a savory aroma that he forgot he was a cat, reached with his boy's hand for the meal-on-a-stick,

and devoured it from the side, to mingle its flavors in one mouthful.

"Have you decided to join us at our play?" While her flirty purr floated on an amused roar, Oji returned a sarcastic smile.

"It's only natural for cats to play with their food. If I'm not so certain it's food for my soul, I can't deny your conjured city is food for thought." Oji talked around mouthfuls of meat and seasoned vegetables, tasting savory oregano, thyme, garlic, onion, and bits of peppercorn so much spicier than any on Earth, and likely any other world, that Oji drew in a sharp gasp that so aspirated his next words

that they disintegrated into the immense thirst wrought by the sharp pepper.

Having rolled her eyes over a sarcastic but doleful smile, the flirtatious mareira strode off,

leaving the padding, crunching footfall of a hulking shadow-cat.

Why were all the faces beautiful? And the bodies...as his gaze trailed in her wake, his mind jiggled, softened by her sarcastic sashay to something dull and lustful. Having neared a market stall and bantered with the seller, she brought back a handful of dripping ices, all a different arc of rainbow--blue and green, red and orange, or blue and violet--clutched like a bouquet.

Succumbing to his proud thirst, Oji crushed the aqua-shaded ice to his mouth, soothing his peppered lips, cooling his burning throat, and dripping from his chin.

When brain freeze numbed his thoughts and feelings to aches and pains, it was a moment before he could chip away a single idea. "What is this, in reality?"

"You've never had sweet ice?"

"No. The Elderliches didn't think much of such things, but that's beside the point.

What would this sweet ice become if the illusion melted?"

"What becomes of ice when it melts, or water when it evaporates? Nothing is ever created or destroyed, your highness."

"That's a specious argument. You might as well say all our names for things are meaningless, if everything shares the same eternal substance. This had a unique form before you changed it. When reality is restored, will it not snap back to that underlying truth?"

"It is not I who am specious, but you who are captious, your highness. Did these Elderliches teach no science, my prince?"

"Of course they did."

"And you never heard of trova?" Although Oji narrowed his eyes into a haughty, knowing gaze, the painted shadow-cat glimpsed the empty ignorance in them, and continued: "trova are the building blocks of all things, not only tangible things, but abstract ideas. "

"On Earth, we call them atoms, and limit them to material objects."

"Even on that world, are things not built as much from ideas as material, and in some cases, more from the substance of the idea than the substance of the material? Everything is conceived by a spark of trova, and as trova accumulates, more of the idea manifests. until it passes from idea to reality."

"Just tell me what it is...lake water? Hopefully not sand."

"My prince." Having passed the point of patience, the shadow-cat's voice now tested its edge. "While science studies trova's permutations, magic rearranges trova according to our wishes. You ask what the ice was before it changed? It was trova."

"So the ice was atoms." Oji snorted a long, rude sigh. "Obviously. I'm still hungry, but I've had enough of your town. I'm ready for whatever I am meant to do here."

"While we do not mean for you to do anything, you are intended for much, my prince. May the stars see no limit in all you do." She dipped her head in a graceful bow. "It will be as you say."

When the other mareira had their fill of refreshment and illusion, the painted-shadow cat led Oji and his train of shadows back along the bottom crescent of the beringed oasis. The ice seller had accumulated a long line of thirsty or sweet-toothed customers, and the kebabber now topped his kebabs with a slice of bright blue melon.

As neither the painted shadow-cat nor the flirty one offered any conversation, and the retinue had dropped to a hush, Oji's attention drifted to the sights, finding as much amusement in the mareira shadow-show as in the gaudiest Earth reality show, for the phantasmagoria might have been ephemeral, but it was diverting (jugglers and peddlers of cleverly constructed machines, instruments, and toys), fascinating (fashionistas and haberdashers selling not only blouses, tunics, slacks, robes and cloaks, but wings, and garments with extra sleeves to fight for the wearer, and extra pant-legs to do the walking), and often unnerving, the most alarming being a small inlet where many monsters, oddities even in the shadow-cat's mirage town, soaked in shallow water: the hulking, ruddy, man-faced lions known as manticores, flexing their scorpion stings unconsciously when the flies circling the lake reeds drew too near; and, two dragons, so differing in size and scale that each might seem a different monster, not only a sinuous serpent whose long loops roped around a half-dozen rocks, and whose wings were as gauzy as a butterfly's, but a massive, squatting beast that seemed more toad than snake, until you saw the jet of fire flicker out where you expected a tongue to be, the strange, diverging eyes that looked left, right, and straight ahead as if each was operated by a separate mind, and the rust-red wings, huge slabs that, when they flexed their enormous wingspan over the water to drip dry, slimmed the squatting dragon considerably, then nestled in again so seamlessly that you might have forgot they were there a moment later. Accenting this amenity were brass tubes tapering to apertures as wide as trumpets, fountaining a bubbling spray under the lake that obscured the creatures' underbellies where they knelt or lay.

He had just been thinking of her a moment ago. While he might have expected Djrezinia to find her way, or for Chazma to soak her sorrows in this enchanted jacuzzi, this was such a happy coincidence that he began to believe the mareira oasis translated thought to reality.

For there she was.

Even Suvani would have given him less pause, for the Alsantian Queen had the entitlement one expected in a tyrant, smug enough to tour the ephemeral facility, arrogant enough to offer critique and suggest improvements, and hypocritical enough to dress complaints up as praise as she demanded better amenities from her enemy hosts.

But to see the sphinx here, so many adventures later, was too much for Oji. He had suffered much from his native land, which tore him from Berangere and stuffed him in one cage after another,

when he was not chained by responsibility, decorum, and the deferred power of his promised kingship. If this dark world bestowed many promises, it had gleefully taken many friends, and the sphinx was the first it had returned to Oji. If sharing Suvani's cruelty had not warmed his heart to the sphinx, her deigning to set paw in this dream world overwhelmed Oji. As he gazed, dumbstruck, at his fellow prisoner, sunning in the inlet, she blurred a little, and he smoothed his wet face fur with a paw. As the sun slipped behind her majestic, sleeping head, which towered higher than the roofs, the fringe of her shadow dragged over him, and he shrunk back to a calico kitten.