The Big Meow

— and beneath it, so faint that Rhiow’s ears twitched forward as if to hear it better, a faint desperate cry like the mewl of a kitten trapped down a sewer: Laurel –

And the fur abruptly stood up all over Arhu. That’s enough! he said, hurriedly backing away from the Lady in Black. On the instant, the rainy night that had seemed to cling about her was gone. She was a ghost again, pale in the hot sunlight, and moving again, walking down the centerline of Hollywood Boulevard, past them, around the corner, and up Highland past the Silent Man’s blue car. And then she was gone.

Arhu made his way back to the sidewalk and sat down there, still sidled. He started washing, and it was very much the composure-washing of someone eager to put himself to rights before their ehhif guest could see him.

What happened there? Hwaith said.

Arhu paused in his washing and shook his head as if someone had clouted him upside the ear. Whatever was listening…all of a sudden started listening a whole lot harder. If it’d heard much more, it could have realized who was looking at it, and from when. Not something we want anyone to know right now, I’d think.

He was unnerved. Rhiow put her head down, bumped heads with him, though she was unsure how much reassurance she could truly offer Arhu in a situation like this: she was unnerved enough herself. You did right, she said. There’s another spot we need to look at, down the street: but it can wait a little.

No, Arhu said. No, I’m all right. He shook his head hard, so that his ears rattled: when he looked up, a little of the normal insouciance was back.

This soulsplit, Hwaith said. How long ago would you say it happened?

Arhu’s tail twitched with uncertainty. Hard to say. That soul could last have been in a body as long as…two, maybe three weeks back –

Around the time the earthquakes started, perhaps? Hwaith said.

Arhu looked at him thoughtfully. Could be, said Arhu. It’ll take a little more checking to find out. We’ll need to go back up the hill and have another look at that spot where the gate’s trying to root. I didn’t have any idea, the first time, that we were going to find this connection…

Rhiow sat down by Siffha’h and tried to keep her own bristling under control. Wonderful, she thought. Another problem we didn’t need. For now the question arose: had the Lady in Black invoked this unsavory state of existence of her own free will, or had she had it wished on her? If she had, she had to be helped out of it. If the soulsplit had been her own idea, she still had to be offered the opportunity to remake the choice. Assuming her body isn’t already quietly decomposing somewhere up in the hills, Rhiow thought, or being digested inside any number of coyotes. Why in Iau’s name do ehhif seem so eager to do this kind of thing to themselves?…

Meanwhile, here they all stood in the sunshine, with the ehhif of the past going about their business in their fat solid shining cars, and in the big red trolleys that passed by with a cheerful clangor of bells when pedestrians threatened to get in their way, or some auto turned across an intersection in a trolley’s path. The fronds on the palm trees off to their right rustled and glinted in the sun, and everything nonetheless seemed very unreal… especially with the direct experience of the Whisperer’s unease just a few minutes before. Rhiow let out a long breath. “Come on,” she said to Arhu, “get yourself unsidled: we’ve got to work out what to do next. Siffha’h – “

Siffha’h glanced down the road. Barely a second later, one of the engines in one of the cars some ways back in the traffic jam turned over. Other drivers, noticing, got back into their cars; within moments, more and more engines were revving all up and down the road.

Siffha’h got up then, stretched, and turned and walked away from the intersection. Behind her, the lights changed to green, and gradually traffic on Hollywood Boulevard started moving again. Behind one of the palm trees, Arhu came out of invisibility and wandered out to join the others.

The Silent Man watched him as Siffha’h went over to bump noses with him. So would someone tell me what that was all about? he said.

Rhiow was trying to figure out just how to do that, and how much to tell. “Half a moment,” she said. “I still have to finish debriefing our two youngsters. Was there somewhere else we were going first?”

Down by the Chinese – that other address you were interested in. It’s only a block or so.

“Let’s head down there, then,” Rhiow said.