As Vieno's eyelids creeped up, consciousness creeped in: a numb swirl of cool, dim air,
flickering lights, and a dingy blue tile wall. As she rolled to her feet, the cracked floor shed dirt,
which clung to her itching paws and raw, tingling forelegs. Through bleary eyes, iron bars crowded so thick they couldn't possibly permit the flow of air, but as the cell came in focus, half the bars proved mirages and vanished. When her foggy eyes fell on her tender chest, shaved paws, and broken, splinted foreleg, she shook off the cast with an irritable shudder, for though its stubbly skin was sore from the harsh razor, her broken bone, torn muscles, and frayed tendons had healed.
At first, she thought him a trick of her woozy vision and trembling shadows cast by the flickering lights. Then there were the patter of soft paws, and the smug pouches of the cat prince's kitten cheeks, a face she dearly wished to scratch.
It was Oji. Not caged, but padding the halls, as self-satisfied and nonchalant as if he was her keeper. He seemed such an infuriating amalgam of alley cat and house cat, half goon and half condescension, that if he did not own the place, he acted the part; if not king of this world, he nonetheless seemed to strike a pose on top of it.
Had the beastly prince won? She had no words. When a roar billowed in Vieno's core, and she longed to let this pent-up fury explode, she swallowed her repressed anger, and her stomach burned. While foxes know no restraint, and snicker at both fences and morals, they are sly by habit and quiet by nature. If she bit her tongue, the stupid cat might walk into her jaws.
"How do you fancy your accomodations?" the cat prince asked.
"Did you come for the show?" she purred. "Or have some great wisdom to impart?" She couldn't help bititing off these choice words with more volume and venom than she had intended. She would know how badly he had hurt her if she let the cat get her tongue.
"Fools play with their food by a fox's den."
Vieno snickered. "I like that. As even a fox wouldn't play with its food by another fox's den, I might borrow that one day. If you don't mind."
"It's not mine. That is, I didn't write that. You asked for wisdom, so I spoke the only proverb I know. It won't amuse your jailers, but you're welcome to it."
"A jail?" Vieno cackled. "That's rich, prince. In keeping me from the dreary halls of The Mansion of the Shining Prince, they're only doing me a service. Like you did, my prince."
"What service?" Oji eyed her warily.
"You didn't drag me here?"
"Of course not. While I waited an hour until your unconscious body fell through the gate, then lingered as I wondered what to do, I wouldn't take a fellow Alsantian, even a traitor like you, to this horrorshow."
"Horrorshow?" sneered Vieno. "I've seen worse waiting rooms in a dentist's office."
"It's always pulling teeth with you, isn't it?" sighed Oji.
"Like you came to help."
"Earth is a strange place, where a cat might warm up even to an incorrigible villain."
"We're on Earth?" purred Vieno. "I knew you had some tidbit to share."
"Where else would we be? This sure isn't Alsantia."
"Surely you know there are others?"
Oji hissed. "You've always treated me like a dumb Earth cat."
"How so? Vieno couldn't stop the ear to ear grin, which bared her fangs.
"You never failed to serve cream. Not milk, but cream. Sometimes double cream, and always in the good dishes."
"You noticed! Not that you ever drank it," she sighed. "But I couldn't resist."
"I knew it was an insult," seethed Oji.
"Oh please. You've always acted the snob, Oji. You wasted all that cream."
"Of course I had a taste. As if I would let a dollop of cream go to waste. But that's what I mean, Vieno. You're the snob—the patronizing one."
"If I'm a little better-than-thou," sniffed Vieno, "you make it so easy, you foolish cat."
"Fine, then. I'll be going."
"Why did you come?" Vieno pressed her whiskers to the bars.
"I'm just a cat out there until I get a pair of pants." Like foxes, talking cats that changed shape kept their tails in human form.
"You wanted to gloat. You hoped I'd been experimented to death in this grim laboratory."
"I'm not like you."
"Don't worry, scaredy-cat," purred Vieno. "What would I gain in telling your secret?"
"I'm telling you, Vieno. That's not why I'm here."
"Then..." Vieno trailed off as she paced her cell, her tail flicking back and forth as she tossed the facts here and there. "You want something, my prince."
"As fox cunning is legendary, I had thought you would get there sooner."
Vieno chuckled. "Of course I did. Why would a cat sneak into a laboratory conducting animal experiments unless they had to do it? If you had delusions of heroism, I'd think twice about your motive, but we both know you're perfectly selfish, don't we?"
"I won't pretend to know what you know. I'm queasy just thinking about what goes on under that toothy grin."
"I'll rest your mind. Nothing noble. Nothing moral. Nothing remotely good. Where you're concerned, next to nothing at all. In fact, we wouldn't be talking if I didn't like to watch you squirm, my prince."
"There," said Oji. "That was easy."
Vieno's eyes narrowed. Did the kitten think he had gotten the better of her? "What could you possibly mean by that?"
"Even an abyss wants something," said Oji. "Nature abhors a vacuum."
"Well, that's a little presumptuous, your highness," said Vieno. "I wouldn't say watching you squirm is my favorite pasttime. It's not unlike playing with your food. And since my mother never taught me that foolish cat proverb, I play with my food however I like." Vieno's yawn was honest, in that she was still weary, but inauthentic, in that she stretched it out, theatrically, for Oji's benefit. "But there is something I want, Oji."
"Your freedom," When his innocent tone was entirely too practiced for Vieno's taste, she became intensely curious of the taste of cat. It wouldn't be that difficult to accomplish.
"For a moment, I thought you had the audacity to speak for me, your highness," Vieno spoke the honorific with as dripping a sarcasm as she could muster.
"But I'm guessing that must have been a mouse, cockroach,
or some other insensitive little pest.
As I was saying..." Strutting alongside the cage, she rubbed against its bars as she went. "...there is something I want. Your highness."
"Yes?" Oji sat back on his hindlegs, as if waiting on a fish.
"My freedom." Vieno allowed the r and m to roll in a gentle roar.
"Oh yes. That's entirely different." The cat prince rolled his eyes.
The lights flickered and dimmed even more as a bell blared through a concealed overhead speaker, and as Oji darted through the curtained doorway, he seemed to outrace his shadow as it died in the bright light admitted by the fluttering curtains.
Vieno paced the cell, clicked her teeth, crept under her bed, and crouched on the dirt floor,
which smelled unpleasantly of cold dust and worms, a scent stirred by the draft issuing from tubing embedded in the wall. Though it was barely wider than a baguette, she smiled. While they likely knew she was a special animal, and might know she was a talking animal, they clearly did not know she was an Elderlich, or they would not allow such an easy escape. Unless...they wanted to see magic with their own eyes?
While Elderliches could take many forms, other animals' senses were eerie, and even her practiced human form felt like walking on tiptoes.
As she considered in which of the subtle, elusive animals she would make her escape,
four humans barged in, their gray uniforms each having a different color stripe: red, purple, orange, and blue. Despite having lived for ten years as a human, it was simpler to tell them apart by such ornaments, so she could ignore their monkey faces and observe their more meaningful body language.
"Where's your friend?" Blue stripe prowled before the bars, as if he was the restless caged animal. Purple stripe stood behind him, while orange and red stripe passed through the curtain, letting in the glaring light.
Vieno flitted her tail, perked her ears, and smirked.
"Cat got your tongue?" he barked.
When Vieno could not suppress the frown, her monstrous yawn obliterated it, then resounded in the cell and adjoining room. If they believed she could speak, they must have knowledge of Alsantia, but did they know Alsantian? Did repeating Oji's bad joke mean red stripe had eavesdropped, or was he as ignorant of their conversation as of the quality of his witticism?
While a garter snake might slither through the tube, Vieno stalled in her nauseating thought of the horrifying grime, mold, and vermin that would no doubt be inside. There was no pleasant scenery in an old tube, she thought to herself, shrinking inwardly, and decided there was little harm in playing along, especially if it gave her a better opportunity for a cleaner escape.
There was also the practical consideration: she had no inkling of the tube's purpose. Had it conveyed poison gas, carbon monoxide, or water for drowning? Perhaps another dead Alsantian blocked the tube? Not only would playing the dumb animal be safer, but she could indulge her caprice,
spite her hosts for these rude accomodations, sit back, and watch their frustrated antics.
As she clicked her teeth, and pretended to admire her tail, she kept the grey-clad men in the corner of her eyes.
"We heard you." Turning towards the cage, Red Stripe rested his hands behind his back, and swelled his chest. "Are you protecting it?"
Rolling on her back, then rolling her eyes, Vieno allowed this sarcastic glare to linger on her shaved belly then sweep to the dank, cobwebbed ceiling. They had gouged her in a few places with the shaver. What was the large purple bruise: had they inserted a tracking chip or other device?
Although it is hard to hold a frown while lolling on your back, hatred and contempt for humans surged over Vieno, her brow became heavy, her smirk curled into a grimace, and before she could stop herself, she twisted onto her feet and rushed the bars, ears flattened, teeth bared, and fur bristling.
"Stupid humans," she seethed, "sticking your eyes in everything. Not happy with the shapes and forms at hand, you conjure your world into your living rooms to relieve your countless insecurities, and now you're peeking your way into my world. You grasping gluttons might as well have pig bellies and monkey hands."
"You do talk." When blue stripe took a step back, his face came into focus—agog and astonished, a look she relished.
"Of course I talk," she snickered. "You saw us through your eye into my cell, didn't you? Shouldn't you say, 'you know my language?'" Mimicking his shocked tones, Vieno brayed a most un-foxlike laugh. When she heard her human voice, she took in her lengthened shadow, then, with some mild surprise, her human form. To match a biting sarcasm to his dumb expressions, she had unconsciously shapeshifted, so that she was now in human guise, save for her bushy tail expanding like a cobra's hood as she pressed against the bars.
"Impossible. It's some sort of trick."
"I'm guessing you're not the boss," she said. "Whoever paid for my capture knew what to expect. Why would they bolt a bed to the wall for a fox?"
"Then Havala is real?"
Vieno raising an eyebrow, turned a shoulder, and paced before the bars, hoping to obscure her bewilderment. Havala? Where was that? "You mean the beautiful, topsy-turvy Earth, where I breakfasted on human filets, served by a, er, talking wren. Filet minion is delicious."
"I hate puns." Blue Stripe scowled. "And you're lying. A wren couldn't lift the tray."
"Did I say wren?" When Vieno turned, her human face—a faux face, from which she could twist or smooth any epxression—was frozen into a somber mask. "I meant roc."
"Rocs are real?"
"And a dime a dozen on Havala. I bought my first house from a roc. Speaking of better accomodations, since we're on speaking terms, can't you show a girl the door?"
"I'd get sacked," said blue stripe.
"Isn't there a law against this?" purred Vieno.
"Laws protect humans, not...whatever you are."
"How provincial." She pouted. "Is there a law against this?"
Vieno willed the transformation. Wide-eyed, blue stripe seemed to flutter up as she dwindled down, and his keys, rattling in the door, echoed from the waiting tube as she slithered towards it.
The tube mouth was not only steel, but deceptively small, having become so crimped by the bedside that it pinched the wriggling serpent when it snaked inside. As she slid through stale air, feeling the twin motion of the pipe swallowing her as she swallowed each spoiled breath, she felt more worm than snake, and the claustrophobic pity the living felt for their freshly buried dead.
As the wormy scent of a freshly rained puddle drew her profound thirst, no sooner had her snout poked through the end of the tube, then her tongue flicked for a tantalizing taste of fresh air, and with a single writhing convulsion, she poured from a drainpipe onto the cold black iron landing of a fire escape beaded with rain.
As the snake shivered, then shook, it bulked, then fluffed into a shock of red-gold fur, and Vieno padded down the icy stairs on fox feet. When she caught herself hyperventilating, she held a deep breath, let out a quiet gasp, then held another, repeating until her breath evened out.
When a window opened, and Blue Stripe's head poked out, Vieno sucked in her pounding heart and lungs and hid behind a rail.
That was when she saw him, through an adjoining window.
It was such a shock that her eyes seemed stuck, for he was a familiar sight, a friendly face, and the only thing she left unfinished on this world of unrestrained gluttons and voyeurs, living mainly on their plates and through their cell phones. That he was also Alsantian did not register in Vieno, who had fallen for him when both pretended to be human. Having carried on their charade for ten years, their everyday routines became more real than the rarely remembered Alsantia, and in this simulacrum of living, they cultivated an image of love. In the ripples of the children's escape and her return to Alsantia, that image was forgotten, but seeing him now, these carefully collected sentiments returned.
It was as if she had cultivated this harvest of nostalgia for future reaping. She was oddly reminded of a curio case her father had crafted for her to keep the bones of her kills. She had not only treasured their skeletons, but kept up her conversation with the talking squirrel after wringing its neck. Since that first backtalking prey, she covered her soft spot for weaker things by making of them a miniature museum of curios. Her accumulated moments with Njall were also odds and ends, like a junk drawer of unattended memories saturated with nonsensical sentiment. But now that the junk drawer was opened, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the oddities and rarities.
Did she still have feelings for Njall? Vieno now recollected a tedious afternoon at a coffee shop not with a sneer, but with fondness. He had tried to list the virtues of some long-running British science fiction show, and she had smiled, and allowed herself a cozy interior smile, to coddle her reluctant, but, she now realized, heartfelt, admiration for the Elderlich. No agent of Suvani's, but a sincere representative of True Alsantia, Njall had long experience in believing things, so it made sense that he would feel at home in Earth's trash heap of fandoms.
It was hard to say whether Njall was captured in human form or his natural skin, for while most of him was a heavyset, blonde, and bearded man, his badger paws were strapped down, cruelly shaved,
and needled with red and white wires trailing to a chilling and fearsome machine.
If horror overflowed, it drowned in joy, and Vieno was so enrapt at finding Njall that she had no recollection of slinking in the half-open window. When a mouthful of the rank, fetid smell woke her to her senses, she padded to the cool breeze seeping under the door, gulped it down like water, then laid there, bowing mournful eyes on her friend.
"Njall," she whispered. "Njall!"
"He can't hear you, otherworlder. I doubt he hears or feels anything, when I'm keeping him half-alive with meticulous care." The articulate, insidious voice crawled like a centipede, its undertone of anger a current of hellfire just barely pent back by the frail facade of the speaker, who sat on a torn vinyl chair facing Njall's bed.
While his face was hard, as if his jutting nose and chin were chiseled free moments ago, his voice was soft, and talking seemed so new to him, that it was as if he was chipped free from a cliff for this conversation. A steely expression and stabbing eyes were undermined by the brittleness of his constantly trembling lip, which seemed to crumble under the effort of sneering; his slumping shoulders,
much too numb and soulless to conjure up a shrug, as if a vestige of the decaying mountain that spawned him; and the constantly tapping foot, which rapped floor and chair-legs with robotic determination, as if they meant to rattle themselves to powder.
"I would forget my manners if they weren't long dead." His voice creeped along to an explosion of coughing. "I might raise them from the dead for this happy occasion, so rarely does a subject wander in on its own accord. My name is Max. Max Milano."
While much was on her mind, so much of it was an indistinct cloud, fogging her focus with thoughts of her own skin, the bedraggled and tortured Njall, the nagging sense that she ought to pin down Oji and cut off the line of True Alsantian Kings, and now the dozen different cuts by which she might arrange this human heap into a more respectful pile, that she could only snarl.
"Cat got..."
"Too late," she sneered. "I've heard that from not only your catnapper, but the cat himself."
Max chortled. "Catnapper. How well you've described my man, who is insufferably lazy when he isn't stealing cats and other rarities as they scurry in from your world."
"And you're chockful of pep," sniffed Vieno.
Max's gleeful smile settled as his eyes brightened. "If you're saying it describes me as well, because you've caught me catnapping while contemplating my subject, I must admit that's very true."
"Your subject!" Vieno's tone rose to scathing sarcasm. "You're no king."
"Science is king." Gripping the arms of the chair, Max pushed himself woozily to his feet, as if still drowsy, drunk, or in the grip of terminal disease. "And here on Earth, I am science. No one else goes so far as Max Milano."
"Pleased to meet you, science," growled Vieno. "I'll throw you farther."
"I think that would be 'further.'" When he put on the airs of a schoolteacher, his smile was just as diabolical. "But I accept your offer of assistance, if not in the spirit you intended."
Grasping the cane leaning against his chair—a bone-handled cane, Vieno saw, well knowing the gray of bone from her daily diet of gore—he hobbled upon its unyielding black wood, one step, then two, then lifted it from the floor, its tip shaking as if it weighed a thousand pounds. At the first tendril of green smoke, Vieno scrabbled over Njall to the other side of the bed, then slipped groggily to the floor, having taken a bitter whiff of the first, invisible trickle before the colorful vapor escaped in a rush.
As she hacked, gagged, and cowered against the wall, Max Milano chuckled as he hobbled around the bed. "I'm so sorry." His blatant sarcasm said he was anything but sorry, and amused besides. "While your sacrifice can't be helped, I apologize for the taste."
Her mouth and nose full of the noxious scent, and her eyelids drooping from soporific gas, Vieno could not picture the words she stuttered "d-d-d-on't...d-d-d-on't...t-t-t-ou..." and punctuated this garbled gibberish with a humiliating gag that voided her stomach, then the world, in a burst of unconsciousness.
***
Vieno flinched from the bright light, tucked her head under her forelegs, then curled into a ball,
her shaved patches scraping on the floor. Why was it so bright? As memory seeped into her mind—her cage, Oji, blue stripe, Max Milano, and the lingering aftertaste of the vile gas—she steeled herself to lift her head into the glaring light.
While she recognized her dilapidated cot, there seemed neither room, nor bars, nor walls, but only dazzling light fountaining through the transparent ceiling of a glass enclosure. The cube shone with a cloudy light like a light bulb, which glinted in the glass walls, but could not pierce the surrounding shadow, as if darkness entombed the glass sphere, so that no matter which direction she looked, she saw only glass in a nimbus of light, but nothing in the darkness beyond. Calling it a ten foot cube might have been a generous estimate, although it was hard to tell, as the oppressing shadow leaned in so heavily that it seemed to shrink the illuminated glass.
"Max!" Pacing her glass cage, Vieno found it not only sheer, but polished from both sides, so that her reflection followed a pace behind in her circuit of the cube. "Oji?" As her voice dropped to a plaintive tone, she became sickened by her own weakness, and scampered another lap around the glass.
When she smelled pepper and butter, though it masked some green vegetable, she salivated, and her eyes drifted to the table and chair. Having recognized the cot from her previous cage, her eyes had riveted there, then the glass cage and the freedom beyond, so it was like the table and chair had appeared from thin air. Then she remembered skirting the table leg on both laps around the small space. Nosing closer, Vieno propped against the chair like a toy dog.
When Vieno summoned the words for the Change, the taste of gas returned in a wave of sour, rising bile, washing the spell from the tip of her tongue. Leaping onto the seat, she lifted her queasy, shaking jaws over the table.
While it was a feast fit for the most gluttonous human, Vieno's salivating smile curled into a scowl. Not because it was cold, but because the plate was heaped with human food. Despite her fond memories of The Mansion's kitchen, where she puzzled out recipes and solved for delicious smells and tastes, her preferences still ran gamy and raw—not chicken flesh cooked bloodless and baked in so much batter that it was truer to call it a pastry; not peas smothered in butter, a baked potato, or a spinach salad drizzled in cheezy dressing.
A fox was a carnivore, and its stomach a short, blunt instrument good only for shoveling in small, dead animals. Lacking a small intestine, Vieno could not stomach all these vegetables and starches; even the chicken flesh might as well have been coated in cement.
While she might enjoy the taste, she would suffer for it later, when the rock-hard food smote her with indigestion and nightmares.
They wanted her to change, she realized with a scowl, and a furry shudder. While her mind had long lived as a human, and she had memories of enjoying this very meal with Njall, when she recalled this memory, and considered shifting into human form, her fox fur rebelled. As if on puppet strings, her paws pushed the plate away from her salivating jaws.
It galled her, but to trick the sick little man she must trick her nature.
By closing her eyes, and letting her contempt for Milano rise until it overwhelmed the aftertaste of the gas, she voiced the spell in a mutter, as if she feared her fox ears would eavesdrop.
Her hunger was much worse as a human, for humans have such deadened senses that aside from what was right in front of their nose, they could only think of food. Grasping the seat in both hands, Vieno scooted forward, rested her elbows on the table, then seized the cold potato and gnashed it down in four bites, relishing the butter, pepper, bacon, and sour cream.
While the chicken had stiffened until it looked as unyielding and unpalatable as plastic, Vieno chomped the legs and thighs, then crunched the brittle wings like crackers, not only chewing with her mouth open, but spraying crumbs, in the hope that her audience might underestimate her intelligence.
The peas she disposed of in fistfuls, mashing them in her mouth, aside from those she leaked through her knuckles, dribbling to the plate with tings echoing tinnily on the glass walls.
"There she is." The voice so resonated in the glass that she heard its murmur outside, but felt its whisper shivering in the panes, the doubled words creeping and gliding as smugly as the insufferable creature that padded near.
"Don't be a fool, cat," snorted Vieno. "If I see you, they can too. Not that I care for you, neither hide nor hair." While Oji's yellow eyes and white paws were visible, the rest of him dissolved into the shadow, so that he seemed like a ghost dangling outside the glass. Vieno giggled. "If I'm lucky, they'll serve you up next, to test my fox stomach."
"You must care for me a little." The cat prince yawned. When his whiskers trembled, and his ears quivered, she realized he was on the brink of exhaustion. "You changed my litter box."
"A charade, my prince."
"Your prop litter felt like the real thing on my withers, then."
"Amusing." Vieno furrowed her brow. Didn't the stupid kitten know they were coming? Even if they waited for the outcome of this conversation, they would pounce on Oji soon enough. All joking aside, if they shoved him in with her, she would feel awful if she had to eat the little ginger cat. Ten years of care, even for show, leave as indelible a mark as a true relationship. "Why haven't you fled, foolish kitten?"
"You must care for me a little." Vieno's hackles rose. To hear the prince harping on this issue so creeped her out that she shuddered, then turned and sighed.
"Don't let it bother you, my prince. It was just an act. If I grow nostalgic, and wish you were sound asleep in Loren's bed, it is only because you comforted my daughter when I didn't dare."
"You changed my litter box." Vieno turned back sharply. This wasn't Oji repeating himself, this was Oji being played back. When the cat froze in a forward step, then flickered to a few steps behind where he was, she realized he was only Milano's toy, no more real than an app on a child's tablet.
"Why didn't you answer, Max?"
The explosive sigh clicked over the speakers. "A glitch."
"So you captured Oji as well."
"No, this was reconstructed from surveillance video. The bit about litter boxes was part guess, part joke."
"A lucky guess. Not so hot as a joke." Vieno's tone rose to an acid pitch.
"What do I call you, anyway?"
"That depends. What are you going by today? Science? Or Max Milano?"
"What use could I have for your name, fox?"
"You're interrogating me, Max. By those rules, I shouldn't give you an inch. Why not guess again?"
"I'd like another stab at it, that's for sure." It was Blue Stripe's surly voice.
"That's the ape I fooled," snarked Vieno. "How much wildlife do you have here, Dr. Moreau?"
"Check the alley for the other intruder, Mr. Holt."
"I'm going." The microphone picked up Mr. Holt's mutter with much more definition than it translated Max's cratchety growl, which now popped and sputtered.
"Ugly, ill-natured fool. Sometimes I think he just likes to hear himself over the air." For a few moments there was nothing but silence, then the speaker stuttered to life again. "So you've been here before."
"That's not a question," yawned Vieno.
"Answer," goaded Max.
"Don't pretend you know everything, then," snarled Vieno. "And how can I answer if I don't know where here is? Having passed out in a desert, I woke up wherever this is."
"You quoted H. G. Wells."
"Did I?"
"Yes. The Island of Doctor Moreau."
"What quote? That was an allusion. To be precise, I name dropped a fictional character."
"You will not correct me."
"It's the tenor of the conversation. When you try to pin me down on everything, don't expect I won't do the same. And while you're being loose-lipped, why shouldn't I tell you about my best friend, Doctor Moreau, and his firefly farms on Alsantia?"
"Alsantia." After a sputter, then more dead air, the speaker roared back to life. "Is that your world?"
"I don't know. Who are you talking to, Milano?"
"Answer my question."
"Answer mine. I'll answer one of yours for every one of mine."
"Why should I be talking to someone?"
"You keep muting the mike, Max."
"You know not only our words, but our jargon. How often have you come here?"
"You're ahead of me, Mr. Mad Doctor. You've asked so many questions, and haven't let me ask more than a few."
"Not that you've given any answers."
"Don't be a fool, Max," Vieno purred. "We both know you're a better interrogator than that. How many pages have you flipped in your little notebook by now? Filled with notes and question marks, I bet."
"It's a digital tablet, if you must know."
"There we go, Max. Information exchange. Because while you're a superb interrogator, I'm a skilled spy. You'll never find the truth in my lies without gaining my trust."
"Fine. One for one."
"Good. Is this Earth?"
"Impertinent fox," muttered Max. "You think to start the questions?"
"It's an easy question, Max. Go outside and check the street sign. Your mother might have sewn labels on your sleeves to remind you of your address, and other everyday facts..."
"Enough!" shouted Max. "I will not be mocked."
"Really?" Vieno's squeal rose to a squeak. "The mad scientist lives with his mother, Max?That's so droll." Vieno tittered as irritatingly as possible, to ruffle his feathers and get under his skin.
"Give me hee hee a moment to ha ha compose myself."
"Here's your moment," snapped Max, and the light streaming in the glass cube was snapped off, plunging Vieno into absolute darkness. The speakers fizzled, then died.
By her afterimage of the amenities, Vieno made her way by the dying, residual light amplified by her fox eyes, pawed onto the bed, then curled up on the mattress, sending ripples through the sheets and blankets.
"Vieno." The hiss was so much softer than a whisper that she first mistook it for her own discontented breath, as she sulked and heaved dissatisfied sighs with her horrible day, which not only cast her as the loser, but plagued her with consuming doubt and dread of a universe ruled by the Author of the Elderlich tales she had never believed before, but feared now, feeling in the grasp of a cruel justice vindicating the begging birds and squirrels she had mauled by putting her in the vulturous claws of Max Milano.
When the hiss came again, she thought the bedsprings squeaked, but when it came a third time, she feared that she had contracted that boring malady, a conscience. When "Vieno!" was hissed a few decibels higher, and punctuated by a rasping exclamation point, she raised herself on her forelegs and peered into the dark.
As the eyes of foxes, like cats and dogs, reflect moons, stars, and street lights to create their clear image of the night world, nocturnal vision is of little use in a black room, where there is no light to collect and redirect, and as Vieno peered and probed with tired eyes, she saw nothing; in truth, she saw less than nothing—she saw nothingness. "Very clever, Max."
"It's Oji."
"Yes, clever indeed to throw a voice without an image. Not that I care how you do it, or would ever praise you for your cleverness. But cleverness is its own reward, is it not?"
"Vieno!"
As each repetition was nuanced with a little more exasperation and frustration, Vieno had to wonder. The mad scientist not having enough time to record so many variations, she began to believe this was Oji. Not that his being here still couldn't be a trick of Milano's.
"What did he promise you, my prince?"
"Who? The jailer? Njall?"
"You saw him? Is he safe?"
"I doubt he'd say so," said Oji, "given that he's too unconscious to feel safe, or anything, for that matter. While I wouldn't call him secure, the humans still have him secured, and he isn't going anywhere."
Vieno couldn't be certain, but thought she saw the flicker of Oji's eyes floating in the glass.
Oji asked, "is Njall one of you?"
"One of who? You don't know what you're asking."
"Was he working for Suvani?"
"No."
"But you were friends?"
"Well." Vieno wished Oji could see her smug, leering smile. "We were friendly. As you're still a child, my prince, I'll not tell you how friendly. Plus, Max is listening."
"He is?" Oji's voice rose to a frantic pitch.
"Isn't he? He didn't think to torment me by a more familiar face? Tell him it's working. I can't bear his ugly face and nauseating voice."
"I came for you myself, Vieno. We were halfway to a deal."
"How unlike me." Vieno chuckled. "What deal was that?"
"I was going to help you regain your freedom."
"Oh yes," snickered Vieno. "And I was to help you regain a pair of pants. Have you ever had one?"
"No," said Oji. "I want the locations of the Elderlich gates."
"All our gates? They're not my gates. Why not? But why all our gates?" she purred. "One would do the trick. You're spying for Max."
"Are you really so stupid," growled Oji. "With a crown waiting in Alsantia, why would I stoop to be some tinkerer's spy?"
"I don't know," said Vieno. "Suvani stoops pretty low, you know. In fact, in all my days, I've never seen a lower stooper than our Queen."
"She's not my Queen."
"Certainly not on Earth," admitted Vieno. "But my prince might find himself in another birdcage on returning to Alsantia." She chuckled. "Yes, I heard about that."
"Do you want my help or not?"
"What do you propose? The walls are unbreakable glass. No form I know can go up or through such a sheer, indestructible wall. Moreover, we're likely being observed in infrared, or even targeted by a nightscope."
"They think you're from some other world. They can't possibly understand Alsantian. You watch too many cop shows, Vieno."
"I rather miss TV." she said, then added, with a scathing tone, "Max might have at least shelled out for a set."
"Right now, a lamp would be nice." Oji gingerly walked the perimeter of the cage, brushing his whiskers along the glass.
"You have no ideas at all," said Vieno.
"Only a willingness to help. While we stand on opposite sides in Alsantia, here our interests are aligned."
"You presume too much. If I admit to some nostalgia where you are concerned, it is only for the idle times you cozied up to my daughter..."
"Once or twice it was your lap, Vieno."
"While I do not remember those moments of weakness, I don't mind taking you on your word."
"Weakness?" As Oji wrinkled his nose, his whiskers twitched.
"Look at you," Vieno snickered. "If I had retained such a memory, it might have colored my instincts with the feeble sentiments of your Old Alsantia. Make no mistake. Your noble skins and other ideals, like loyalty and love, I think so many urges and animal drives. If I caressed your fur, or admired your cute, kitten ways, those memories are soft spots, waiting for the touch of tooth, claw, or blade. If I do not gouge out these sentiments myself, something will do it for me, and nine times out of ten, it's the treacherous center of the memory. It's much easier to grab the soft, squirming memory and wring its neck before I get attached."
"You're not making this easy," said Oji.
"Don't get me wrong. Not only would I like an ally right about now, I need one. I just thought that, for old time's sake, you should respect the realities of our relationship. We never had one. While I liked you, and still do, it doesn't mean what you think it does. It only means that I'm in touch with my self, and take delight in momentary things, like the brush of a cat's fur, or the aftertaste of the bird I ate." Vieno chuckled. "I should say afterthought, as it was her argument that didn't agree with me, not her taste."
Oji scowled. "If you think to scare me off with this revelation, think again. I know you're more monster than fox."
"Think of your subjects, my prince," snarled Vieno. "I'm not worth it."
"It's not your worth, but the cost of my crown," said Oji. "I must number even traitors and villains among my subjects."
She sneered. "How magnanimous, your highness."
"On the contrary, I would never give you more than you deserve. Even the judgment you've earned by your crimes must be exact. While my heart is liberal, the noble pelt is my duty, and my paw may be neither generous nor proud."
The hidden speaker sputtered and crackled. "Do I entertain royalty?"
The deep, wheezy chuckle burst into a long, drawn-out cackle, worthy of a harpy.
"I had no idea I was so lucky. A hunter makes nets and knows not what skins will fall, what brutes will die..."
When Max trailed off, it seemed that the mad genius dissolved into his meaningful ellipsis. As he hummed an obscure melody, the pregnant moment swelled more and more, until the ceiling sprayed blinding light, sendingVieno reeling and eliciting a pained mew from Oji. "Eat floor, animals!"
There was the clatter-bang of doors, the click-stomp of boots rushing in, and Oji yowling, first from just outside the cage, then many places at once, as his plaintive yawl echoed on glass and concrete. Dim colors--as if the spectrum was wrung dishrag gray--bled dizzily into a throbbing vision of Oji squirming, dangling by the scruff of his neck from blue stripe's meaty hand.
"Be careful with him," Vieno heard herself say, numbly, as if someone else had spoken. "He was my cat once."
"You domesticated a prince? I must hear that tale. I've always liked animal stories: Aesop, Lewis, Adams, Orwell...Alpo," Max snickered. "Perhaps I'm jaded, but I've always preffered Aesop, whose tales often end with one animal eating his neighbor. As Aesop was a slave, he was so familiar with the cruelty and brutality of human nature that it was easy for him not to idealize animal nature. We are all subject creatures one way or another, with our only saving grace being the whip's handle, for those with the courage to seize it."
"In a different setting," purred Vieno, "say Alsantia, where a creature of your mean capacity and cunning would be fit only to grovel and lick my Queen's boots, I might have dignified that with a rebuttal, but only after scoring your face with my claws. If what you say is true, your heart and mouth are unworthy of your truths, which you have only learned by luck, having accidentally found yourself holding the whip handle, to use your metaphor. Not only do I think you parrot another's philosophy, I doubt you had the strength to build all this by yourself."
"If I serve my own queen, what of it? If I did not create the rules or design the chessboard, I can still be a respectable grandmaster," sniffed Max Milano. "If I am but a bishop, who captured who? What does that make you?"
"My own person."
"In a glass cage. Transfixed with spears of light like a butterfly in an album."
"You collect insects," snickered Vieno. "I did not think I could lower my estimation of you any more."
After a loud reverb that slammed the walls—whether by accident or intention, Max had turned the dial full circle—the speaker sputtered and snapped off.
Having sidled near the glass, Blue Stripe now looked down his nose with a brutish sneer at Vieno. In a plastic cat carrier dangling from his ham fist, Oji laid on his side, the prince's tiny face shriveled in unconsciousness. "Strange."
Vieno ignored him. As she stared gloomily at Oji, the tiny red nub under his ribs glared back. They had injected him with something.
"Are you deaf? I said strange."
"It is strange that an oaf should speak, and expect to be understood."
Blue Stripe slammed his palm against the cage, shivering the glass and the air inside,
making the hackles of Vieno's neck stand up. "No. Strange that you should look like any other dumb, caged animal."
"While you're on the outside, I could say the same thing about you," Vieno said lazily. "Inside here, I'm freer than you'll ever be out there, with bug-boy holding your reins."
"If there was a way of shutting you up," Blue Stripe growled, "no one would ever think you were more than a dumb animal."
"If only there was a way of shutting you up," sighed Vieno, "you might be respectable. Not human, mind you, but a good solid creature, with a meaningful work ethic...like a jackass."
Blue Stripe rocked the glass again with the heel of his hand.
"Ow!" Hamming it up, as if Blue Stripe struck her, not the glass, Vieno bounded on the cot,
stretched out like one mortally wounded, then langourously stretched some more, lengthening from fox to human, with only the flourishing shock of her rust-brown tail to betray the illusion of the woman that appeared in the cage.
"How about now?" she said.
While Blue Stripe seemed dumbstruck by the change, when his cheeks reddened,
she realized something else had shut him up: the brutish guard's bashful attraction.
"Do I strike you as human?" Vieno smirked. "Or do you still find me foxy?"
"W-w-well," he stammered, "you're hardly human."
"Hardly doesn't seem fair. So many other words would be truer. You might have said handily human"—she wiggled her fingers—"or almost or mostly human"—she fluffed her tail—"but hardly human is so ungenerous, given how much work goes into making this happen."
"Does it hurt?" Blue Stripe's earnest expression was too much. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of so many upturns and downturns, but it now seemed the most hilarious thing ever. Laughter tremored in her reclining form, rocked her side to side, then convulsed with a deafening chortle that vibrated the glass. When his face turned beet red, she reined in the laugh with a rasping cough so believable that another followed it by reflex, then another, until she was on her last gasp of breath, which stuttered out in a choking conniption that was now only half an act.
"Stop it." Blue Stripe wrinkled his nose with disgust, and when the racking coughs continued, yelled, "quit that!" While Vieno delighted in his frustration, she knew her moment, and squeezed her eyes uncomfortably tight, until the backs of her eyelids reddened. Laying just so, her head lolled, tapping the wall in its throes once, then twice, then came to rest.
"Max?" Puzzlement tinged blue stripe's voice. "Check the air flow."
The speaker remained silent.
"Max? Aren't we keeping this one?"
Silence.
Vieno considered how long to keep up the act. As she could not make her cheeks turn blue or her eyes bulge, there were limits to her performance. However, as the only limits to its effectiveness were how well it was believed, she staged this death until the last possible moment.
As she laid there, waiting on Blue Stripe to do something stupid, she thought about drifting off for real, for while the scratchy cot was not padded enough to ease her aches and pains, it was nonetheless flat, and her exhausted body screamed to cling to its horizontal surface and fall into slumber. By the time he made his decision, Vieno had nodded off twice, and the second time she rose from unconsciousness with a throbbing headache and a violent start that she hoped made her throes more believeable.
"You two. Stand on either side of the door."
"I wouldn't," warned another voice, younger and reedier.
"Who's in charge?" snapped Blue Stripe. "Not you."
"Max is in charge. And he said under absolutely no conditions were we to open this cage, or any other, without his express permission."
"If she suffocates on your say-so, Max will liquidate us both. Do as I say. I'll take the blame."
When the door opened silently, Vieno felt a little sorry for Max's minion. Even one who went to Earth schools should know an airless room does not open without a loud inrush of air, and even a stale room opens with a breezy whisper caused by the change of pressure. When he tottered in and reached for her, however, the human pity dissolved in instinct, flesh welled into fur, and the space between her head of hair and tail so conflated that he missed, grasped a fistful of mattress by reflex, and she scampered up his arms, scraping and scratching a bloody trail to his neck, where she buried her muzzle until she tasted blood.
While she savored the taste, no sooner had she chomped then she pushed off his chest, rebounded off the falling cat carrier, and landed on human feet, having changed shape mid-air to grasp the handle the instant before the dropped crate would have struck the ground. When her full-throttle sprint barged through the gray doors, a shocked wail echoed down the hall: "Tim!" Their stomps chased her down the corridors.
When one snatched at the carrier dangling behind her from her outflung arm, she swung it before her, clasped it to her chest, jumped in an elevator, smacked the button, and turned to kick him in the chest. He was knocked flat so abruptly that those following could not stop their charge, and his reeling, outflung body tripped them into a howling tangle, except for one gigantic and grossly overweight guard, whose momentum carried him over top of the crushed bodies, stampeding them under size seventeen shoes.
The elevator doors closed just as Vieno's outthrust foot slipped back inside. Vieno held down the 1 button, hoping that it meant first floor, not the first basement level, and that her constant pressure would skip other levels. When it zoomed up with a soothing, uninterrupted hum, she breathed a sigh of relief.
When the elevator opened to a barrage of bright lights, she held her breath, fanned her eyes with her free hand, and stared down the dozen rifle barrels seeming to stretch the distance from the elevator to the lobby doors. Although gentle daylight lit a thronged bus stop and dog-walkers outside the foyer windows, so clearly that she could see the color of eyebrows and the glint of earrings, she saw it not as a glimpse of Earth but a tantalizing peep of a free world she would never reach, not through this gauntlet of gunmen. It might as well have been Alsantia. As she considered the possibility of escape, her grasp on the cat carrier shifted from white knuckled to a loose, dangling grasp, and she idly swung the unconscious prince. Even if she left him behind, she could not go unscathed.
Once, the dingily carpeted lobby must have been a booming hotel or movie theater, and it crackled to life now in wall-length mirrors flecked by gray and white scratches, which seemed not to reflect their standoff, but replay it, like lost footage from an old movie. Since pedestrians and commuters passed by oblivious to the small army inside, Vieno gathered that the lobby glass was one-way, either reflecting the city or opaquely black.
When the elevator doors did not shut, Vieno's hand fluttered over the buttons, and the clicking of her nails echoed in the silent lobby. The guards were not only as still as toy soldiers, but as breathless as plastic.
As the silence stretched, Vieno exhaled slowly, painfully, her heart skipping a beat, and as she stepped out, her footsteps seemed to pollute the resounding silence. Even after exiting, there was no motion from the guards. They were waiting for something...or someone. Vieno sneered. If Max Milano's reach in this building was long, his petty power was underwhelming; he was such a weak tyrant that Vieno had scratched him with mere words. If it was only Max and his mindless minions,
she liked her chances of escape.
The silence was broken—more precisely, busted, so emphatically was the silence interrupted by footsteps reverberating in an adjoining stairwell, imparting a shiver to the steel elevator panels. There was the slow, weak stagger she already recognized, but behind Max, and then clicking in front of his echo, were powerful but feminine heels, evoking the controlled gait of models...or royalty. Vieno was powerfully reminded of her first meeting with Suvani. Along with a hundred other talking beasts, she had sworn allegiance, and the Queen had strutted along the stage as if she only deigned to be there, favored them with a single glance, signed the document that recognized their citizenship en masse, dipped into a shallow, insincere curtsy, then slowly, and with enviable grace, turned on her heel and exited the stage as her insufferable brother read their marching orders.
Even in her human guise, Vieno's senses had a crisp, foxlike precision. Not only was the approaching gait pompous and regal, it sounded identical to Suvani's.
When the stairwell door was pushed open by a stiff arm sleeved in an ostentatiously flashy white fur, it brought with it the musk of corruption that indicated a real skin. Under platinum blonde hair streaked with pink, her face mirrored the Queen's, not only skin deep, but the deeper creases of her contemptuous, imperious glower. While perhaps a fourth the age of Max, who tottered behind her, she advanced like a queen, and there was little doubt who followed who.
The scornful eyes flicked toward Vieno. Too late, Vieno suppressed her recognition. "Do I know you?" the girl asked.
"I don't know," Was this only the image of her queen, or the real Suvani, come from Alsantia to test Vieno? "Have you been to Alsantia?"
The haughty eyes narrowed. "Max."
"Yes, Ivanu?"
"This is no animal. Accomodate her appropriately." She sighed. "You can accomodate her, can't you Max?"
"Yes, Ivanu."
"Third time's the charm?" Ivanu said, with hopeful sarcasm.
"I must decline," said Vieno.
"I must insist. How can you have somewhere else to be when it's not your world?"
"With respect, I decline to answer. With delicacy, I take my leave."
"But where will you sleep?"
"I can find better lodging anywhere."
Ivanu snickered. "When you're turning down five star accomodations, I doubt it. I spared no expense in our renovations."
"While I'm no cage connoisseur, I wasn't partial to my lodgings."
"I wouldn't make the mistake of kenneling a guest."
"I'm a guest?" asked Vieno. "Then I decline, politely."
"A rude guest, I must stress, as you downsized my staff two weeks before I was to make my own cuts here and there."
"Then I saved you paperwork."
Both women chortled. Vieno continued: "I do like you, though. If I had run into you instead of Max, we might have gotten off on the right foot."
"Let's set out on the right foot together, then. I'm in the mood for a stroll."
"I'm willing to stretch my legs, if only to put as much running space between us as possible."
"Oh, behave." When Ivanu waved her hand, the guards, with machine precision, clicked the safeties of their rifles. "I insist."
"Please," wheedled Max, "save her skin." As he giggled, he wheezed until he hacked, then hacked until he wheezed, a coughing jag which peetered out in a dry, rasping cackle.
"I didn't know you liked our guest."
"I meant that literally, Ivanu. Kill her any way you'd like, only keep her skin intact. It's essential to my experiments."
"You heard him. Single shots only, on my mark. Unless..."—Ivanu grinned at Vieno—"you'd care to reconsider."
"Reconsider what? Living? My thoughts on that subject are the same as ever. I'll join you on your stroll."
"Oh good." Ivanu hopped up and clapped her hands like a little girl. "Max, call for the car."
"Good luck," drawled Max. "She killed my driver."
When Ivanu stepped near to choose a guard kneeling in the front rank, an arrogant move which blocked their line of fire, Vieno might have dwindled to a fox and slipped away, if she was not still nostalgiac for her daughter's pet prince, who dangled in the cat carrier and could never be dragged by a fox. Moreover, she was curious about this dead ringer for her Queen. Was this a longlost twin hidden on Earth by the regent as leverage over Suvani, a doppleganger cast off from this parallel world in imitation of her Alsantian double, or only a freak coincidence?
As Vieno gingerly set down the cat carrier Ivanu laid her hand on the man's shoulder and favored him with a condescending smile. "Congratulations, Emory. You've been promoted."
"He's Emory. I'm Jacques."
"So sorry." Having turned to the real Emory, Ivanu used the same intonation, as if she had rehearsed before a mirror. "Congratulations, Emory. You've been promoted."
"Are we both promoted?"
"Jacques, I'm surprised at you." Ivanu tsked. "You know full well there's only one vacancy, and have heard, twice, the news of Emory's promotion." A fat, patronizing smile rose to her lips as she regarded Emory. "Ever since Max hired you, I've had my eye on you for a driver."
"I'm a sharpshooter." Emory frowned.
"Why do you think I promoted you?" Her voice rose to an earnest pitch. "Emory's a much better name for a chauffeur than a sniper." The smile vanished. "Why are you still here? Who's driving the car I summoned, if not my chauffeur?"
Emory mumbled, stood, and took to his heels in a well-timed jog. Knowing her way around soldiers, assassins, and spies, Vieno realized Ivanu had promoted, whether by chance or design, the most polished military professional in the room.
"I thought we were going for a stroll."
"Outside?" Ivanu vented hysterical laughter. "On the sidewalk? Where dogs do their business, slobs down fast food, and cars and buses stew exhaust fumes?" While her hands flitted here and there, as if warming up to her subject, her tone dipped from amused to serious. "In Rockham, there's only one half-way decent place for two girls to be seen taking a stroll."
When the white limousine rolled slowly to the lobby doors, Ivanu waved Vieno to her, and as Vieno approached, she became increasingly uncomfortable of two things that swelled in her mind, whelming all other considerations: 1) she had left Oji drugged in a cat carrier; and 2), Ivanu's uncanny resemblance to Suvani was even more striking than she had thought, with both teenage tyrants having a tiny black birthmark on their right cheek, and green eyes that seemed not to look at Vieno, but through her, to the wall. When Ivanu grabbed her hand and headed for the exit, Vieno submitted with a nonplussed amusement, and guards hurried ahead to open the lobby doors.
"Emory!" Ivanu called. The newly-minted driver averted his eyes, and his face wrinkled, mingling frustration and profound bewilderment. Having opened the car doors, drummed his fingers on the roof, tapped his toes on asphalt, then slammed them inside while they were still settling in, Emory walked around to take the wheel.
"Emory." Ivanu was still holding Vieno's hand, as if they were longtime friends. Vieno very much felt the difference in their ages.
"Yes, ma'am," said Emory.
"Emory, be a dear."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Never call me ma'am. In the car, call me Ivanu."
"What about outside the car, ma—Ivanu?"
"Better that you don't address me at all." Ivanu opened a clutch, pulled out a shiny tube, turned a glinting mirror to catch the gleaming light, and applied lipstick.
"As you wish, Ivanu." Having started the car, Emory pulled into light traffic. "Where am I taking you, Ivanu?"
"Haven't I told you, Emory?"
"No, Ivanu?"
"It must have slipped my mind. I'm so very excited. We're going to the mall, Emory." When Ivanu checked her hair in the rearview mirror, her smug smile faded into a scowl, and she leaned back until she bumped shoulders with Vieno. "Max is following us. That's why I didn't say where we were going. I knew there was a reason. Can you shake him?"
For reply, Emory swerved a hard left down the cross street.