The Sign of the Cat (6 page)

Sylvia McKay's voice was quieter, but it carried beautifully through the open door. “Not everyone can be a straight-A student. I don't expect it of him.”

“But we
should
expect it!” There was a crackling sound, as if a paper was being waved in the air. “This proves that we should!”

Duncan edged closer to the office door. With a sinking heart, he recognized the paper clutched in Friar Gregory's fist. It was his answer sheet from the national test.

“I began grading this afternoon,” boomed the friar, “and when I saw how Duncan had performed on the first section, I set aside everything else to grade his entire test. Do you know how many people in Arvidia have gotten a perfect score on the nationals? Two, that's how many! Two, in twenty years—and now, with Duncan's test,
three
!”

The triumphant word rang out. Duncan felt as if it echoed in some vast and breathless space within him. A perfect score! He was the best! No one in the whole nation could have possibly beaten him!

Friar Gregory paced the room in his excitement. “The Academy at Capital City offers two scholarships a year to the best students in the nation. There's no question in my mind that your son will get one.”

“See?” mewed Fia at Duncan's ankles. “I told you it was about a Skerl ship! That's good, right?”

Friar Gregory turned at the meow and caught sight of Duncan hovering in the hall. “Come in, my boy! How would you like to go to the Academy in Capital City this fall?”

Duncan could not trust himself to speak. He managed a nod.

Friar Gregory had not stopped smiling in his delight, and now he clapped Duncan on the back. “Excellent. You must get serious about school, though; no more slacking. They'll expect your best at the Academy.”

Sylvia McKay's fingers gripped the chair arm. “There must be some mistake.”

Friar Gregory's cheeks flattened, as if the air had leaked out of him. “It's true this is the first time Duncan has shown this sort of ability on a test,” he admitted. “But never fear”—he was smiling again now—“there is a makeup test in a month's time, and Duncan's score on that will prove there was no mistake.”

Sylvia McKay's hands relaxed. “Another test? He can take another test and get a lower score?”

Friar Gregory nodded. “In cases like this, where a startling result comes out of the blue, it's usual to require a second test to make sure there was no cheating.” He smiled at Duncan. “But I've known you for years, Duncan. I'm quite sure you didn't cheat.”

*   *   *

Sylvia McKay set Duncan's plate before him on the rickety wooden table. He stared at the old bread and cheese, the two wilted carrots, without seeing them. He could not believe what his mother had just said.

“You want me to
fail
,” Duncan cried. “You want me to
lie
.”

Sylvia McKay toyed with the shriveled carrot on her plate. “I'm not asking you to lie—”

“You ask me to lie every time you tell me to pretend I'm less than I am. Don't you understand,” Duncan added bitterly, “that Friar Gregory will think I cheated?”

His mother's face paled. “
You
will know that you are honorable,” she said with an effort. “What does it matter what other people think, if you know the truth?”

“It matters,” Duncan said through his teeth. “You know it matters.” He stood up and his chair fell over with a crash. He was trembling.

His mother clasped her hands before her, lacing her fingers together tightly. She gazed up at him, her eyes swimming. “Aren't you going to eat your supper?”

Duncan looked at his plate. His mother had given him everything in the icebox and kept just one small carrot for herself.

There was an odd sliding sensation in Duncan's chest, as if something tender within him had hardened, or been encased in stiff leather. “I'm not hungry,” he said, and ran up the stairs.

It was dark, but the moon had not yet shown itself. A small breeze rose with the coming of night, and a smell of the sea wafted through Duncan's bedroom window along with the monotonous rasping of crickets.

Duncan lay rigid in his bed, his jaw jutting toward the ceiling. He had never been so furious in his life, nor so bewildered. He hardly heard the meowing in the street below or the sound of his mother opening the door to let Grizel in from her wanderings. And when the cat came into his room and jumped onto the bed, he did not speak or move.

“Well?” Grizel said. “Aren't you going to scratch me behind the ears? Or stroke my fur? Or be polite in any way?”

“No,” said Duncan. He flung an arm over his eyes.

Grizel's tail flicked slightly. “You know, a little catlike courtesy wouldn't be amiss, especially if you want to come along to the cat council in the graveyard tonight.”

Duncan turned his head away.

Grizel padded over to his head and brushed his chin with her whiskers. “You seem upset. Did you have an encounter with a dog?”

Duncan spoke into his pillow. “My mother won't let me go. She says I have to fail the next test.”

“Won't let you go? Go where?”

Duncan choked out the explanation in a few short sentences. “She says not to worry, that I'll understand it all someday,” he finished. “But I can't wait for someday! This is the year everyone enters the Academy, if they're going. If I don't go this year, next year she'll say I'm too old to start.”

Grizel patted his ear softly with her paw. “You won't be too old to start at the Academy next year. Trust me.”

“Well then, she'll think of another reason I can't go. And she won't even tell me why! Grizel,” he said, sitting up suddenly, “do you think she's crazy?”

“Shh!” Grizel's ears pricked to the alert. “She's coming.”

Duncan pulled the covers to his chin and closed his eyes. He did not want to talk with his mother anymore. And he hoped she would not kiss him good night.

He heard his mother stop in the doorway. After a while he heard her footsteps again, fading away down the hall to her room.

Good. All he had to do now was wait for her to fall asleep. Moonrise wasn't for another hour yet. He had time before he had to leave for the graveyard.…

He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, for he struggled to wake, but the dream held him as it had so many times before. Everything was the same—the damp, slippery rock, the sound of the sea, a cat's whisker of a moon riding over all. And behind him, a lighted window high in the dark. That was all—the window in the night, and salt spray on his neck, and a sense of longing so powerful that when he woke, he felt dampness on his cheek, like tears.

It was not tears. It was Grizel's rough, wet tongue, and she was licking his face. “Wake up, if you're coming.”

Duncan scrambled into his clothes. The stones he had picked up that day were still in his pocket, and they knocked gently against each other as he bent to find his boots.

“Make it snappy.” Grizel switched her tail in irritation. “If you make me late, I'm going to regret waking you up. It's almost moonrise.”

Boots in hand, Duncan slipped down the passageway, avoiding the creaky floorboard in the middle. He made it to the second-floor landing without a sound and stepped carefully past the sea chest to the window. At sea, the ship that had been becalmed seemed to have found some wind at last. The moon shone upon her filled sails, and Duncan could see that she was a two-masted schooner, moving slowly into the bay.

He squinted. Were those
square
sails near the top of the mainmast? Square sails were for ships that sailed far, not just between local islands.

Grizel hissed a warning. Duncan heard his mother's door creak open.

He melted into the shadowed corner behind the sea chest and stood perfectly still. What excuse could he give for being up at this hour, fully dressed, with his boots in hand? Maybe he could convince his mother that he was sleepwalking. Or maybe he could say that he was going to fill the cat's water bowl and was carrying his boots because … he had a sudden urge to polish them?

No. He would tell his mother he was going to visit his father's grave because he was so upset about the Academy. With any luck, that would make
her
feel guilty. And it was even true—the cat council was in the graveyard, after all.

Quiet footsteps approached. Duncan opened his mouth, ready to explain.

But Duncan's mother never turned her head to look for what might be in the shadowed corner. She walked across the second-floor landing and started down the steps. As she passed, Duncan saw that she carried her shoes in her hand.

Click. Click
. Sylvia McKay unlocked the door. She slipped on her shoes, tied a scarf on her head, and stepped outside.
Click. Click
. She locked it again.

She glanced down the street in both directions and pulled her scarf forward, as if to hide her face. Then, with a swing to her legs that had nothing hesitant about it, she walked briskly over the cobblestones toward the cliffside road. By the time Duncan gathered his wits and ran after her, she had disappeared.

 

CHAPTER 5

Graveyard Council

T
HE SEA WAS SILVER AND BLACK
beneath the rising moon, and the clifftop grasses were dry, springy underfoot, and curled like sheep's wool. Duncan sat beside his father's grave with his arms wrapped around his knees, and shivered lightly. He wished he had thought to bring a jacket. Even in summer, the sea breeze cooled the windswept top of the island. In winter, the wind was a razor, cutting straight to the bone.

It had been winter the first time he'd seen his father's grave. He had been very young then, but he had asked so many questions that at last his mother had taken him to the cemetery by way of an answer. He had shivered small in his thin coat, but as he traced his father's initials on the cold tombstone with a pudgy finger, something in him had understood that his father was not just gone but was never coming back. Now, years later, when Duncan was allowed to roam about the island on his own, he came back to the grave every so often to talk things over with himself and whatever part of his father might still be listening.

He ran his long fingers over the carved initials:
CDM
. The
M
was for McKay, of course, but his mother had refused to tell him what the other letters stood for. He liked to think that the
D
was for Duncan.

Somewhere in the dark, crickets chirped steadily with a soft
creak creak
. In the hollow on the edge of the cemetery, cats were gathering. They appeared over the rim, pointed ears first, followed by the lithe moving shadow of their bodies, edged with brightness where the moon tipped the fur. As each tail disappeared into the dark cup of the hollow, a pair of shining eyes joined the rows of waiting cats.

All cats' eyes shine in the dark, but not always with the same color they have in the day. Duncan watched as a wavering line of kittens was ushered in by their nervous mothers, but he could not see which one was Fia. He scooted closer. Grizel preferred that he keep his distance at council meetings—he wasn't a cat, as she had frequently explained—but if he lay on his stomach behind the large gravestone and propped his chin on his forearms, he could see everything without being in the way.

The cat known as Old Tom was pacing back and forth near Duncan. “No sense at all!” he grumbled, his tail agitated. “I came on the supply ship yesterday with urgent news from Capital City, and do they put me first on the agenda? No! They start with kitten examinations!”

“They always test the kittens before any other business,” Duncan meowed, “because it's so hard for them to wait.”

The tomcat pricked his ears forward. “Ah, you're the boy who speaks Cat. It's rare to find a human so intelligent, so cultured.”

Duncan grinned in the dark. Cats were incredible snobs. They could understand human language perfectly well, but they acted as if they couldn't. They preferred to be addressed in Cat—the most civilized of all tongues, in their opinion.

Old Tom sniffed. “Maybe you're bright enough to listen to my warnings. The felines on this island never seem to.”

A pair of Siamese cats strolled past Tom, flicking their whiskers. “Maybe it's because there are so
many
warnings,” said one. “Like the droopy-ear syndrome. Or the tail mange that was supposed to make our rumps bald.”

Tom's whiskers bristled. “Those were real dangers! There could have been an epidemic!”

“Or the dangers of catnip for kittens,” said the other, snorting, “when everyone knows that kittens don't even like it.”

Tom scowled. “That wasn't catnip; it was
kitnip
. A completely different thing.”

Duncan remembered the catnip-versus-kitnip discussion. Catnip was a kind of mint leaf that could make cats almost crazy. No one worried about its effect on kittens because kittens didn't even seem to notice it. But according to Tom, a different variety of leaf had been found on one of the islands; it didn't attract grown-up cats, but kittens would crawl from their mother's sides to get hold of it. The cat council, curling their tails with impatience, had suggested that Tom bring a sample—if he could find one. Tom never had.