Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (25 page)

'We're leaving this forest, Francis,' said Aurelia bitterly, 'and so will you if you have any sense. It would be risky, not to say mortally dangerous, to go to the Fossilised Forest and put your head into the lion's den.'

'So it would,' I said. 'Only a real nut-case would do it.'

CHAPTER 7

T
here's something seductive about fairy-tales, because every fairy-tale character represents only a single aspect of the soul, which to some extent makes things seem easy to understand. And my journey to date had been rather like a fairy-tale. I'd met Saffron, Niger and the Company of the Merciful acting the part of goblins, the witch in the person of Diana and her familiar Ambrosius, the oppressed peasants (our endangered brothers and sisters on the farms stood in for them), Alcina as Princess Beauty, a Beast in the figure of Monster Paw, forest elves as represented by the Wild Ones, and last but not least the demonic Black Knight. In fact it was a fairy-tale
par excellence
, but a fairy-tale with flaws in it, as I was about to discover.

Another impressive feature of fairy-tales, however, is their weird and wonderful scenery. And half an hour after leaving the Wild Ones, when I had travelled some way, I found myself facing just such a weird scene. My eyes still saw forest in all directions, but the dense undergrowth was beginning to thin out, and finally I stopped on top of a rise and stared. Wicked enchanters - indispensable figures of fairy-tale -seemed to have cast a dreadful spell on this part of the forest, turning it into a bleak wasteland. Where mighty trees with lush green foliage should have stood side by side, growing as tall as houses, nothing rose but deformed, blackish-brown stumps that reminded me of decapitated bodies. And where lichens, moss, flowers, grass, shrubs and bracken should have made a dense carpet, there was only the detritus of dried-up twigs and bushes spreading like a disgusting flow of slime. A few dying trees with bare branches still stood -ailing creatures begging to be put to sleep. This desert of horror stretched as far as the eye could see. It wasn't so much a fossilised forest as a dead one I saw before me.

In the distance, where the horizon ended, rose the imposing cliff which I took to be the Black Knight's headquarters. Aurelia had told the truth. If this part of the forest had still been alive it could well have hidden the rocky cliff like a precious gem. As things were, the cliff represented the only attraction in the landscape. By now it was twilight, and the sun had set some time ago. Dark clouds were gathering in the sky as if plotting something sinister. You didn't have to be a clever weather-frog to predict that the storm which had marked the beginning of my flight from town was thinking of a repeat performance in the near future.

Only a total nut-case would put his head into the lion's den: that was a fact, and so was the present sorry state of the mental condition of one Francis. If it hadn't been for those thousands of unanswered questions, I'd sooner have paid a visit to a sheepdog training camp than inspect this particular lion's den. But I just
had
to see those two figures of legend, if only to tell them exactly what I thought of them. However, there was another reason for me to take this suicidal risk. The idea of my imminent death had strengthened my resolution more and more over these last few hours. It was like an arrow flying towards me while I stared at it, totally paralysed, unable to summon up the strength or will to get out of the way. But if the arrow was fated to hit me in any case then why, I asked myself, shouldn't it do so in the Black Knight's den? Perhaps it was better this way; Hugo and the dog knew their trade, and would probably do the deed quickly and painlessly.

As I was stalking towards the cliff through the lifeless thickets, I thought of Diana and how very much she did in fact resemble a witch. Not a wicked witch, but a good witch in the fairy-tale sense of the word. Witches usually lived in the forest, which gave them their magic powers. They collected the wild herbs of the forest, talked to its animals, and mingled all the life and death it produced to make a magic potion. So a witch's prime task was to care for her forest. Diana had done her best, but alas, she'd failed in the face of reality. Human beings couldn't get very far on broomsticks these days. They preferred driving cars. Driving them all the way to their own downfall, as this graveyard vividly illustrated.

Even from some way off I saw the crack representing the mouth of the cave, which was dark and threatening as the gateway of Hades and exercised a hypnotic power of attraction on persons with a death-wish, like me. The entrance itself was an inconspicuous slit in the stone, but broad enough to admit even a human being. Although I was on speaking terms with death by now, I had no intention of making things easier for him. On the contrary, I wanted to make the Great Reaper work hard to get me. So I stalked close to the crack in the rock on quiet paws, and only when I was sure there were no suspicious noises coming from inside did I risk a glance. It was rather dark in there, but there seemed to be perforations in the rock some way up admitting daylight in the form of columns of bright light. I gulped, and looked anxiously up at the sky. Lightning was now streaking across it. Great dark grey clouds swollen to alarming size had clashed and seemed to be wrestling with each other. The air was sultry because this sinister, impenetrable brew of cloud weighed so heavy on the earth. A monumental thunderstorm was about to break any moment. Perhaps I would never be granted a sight of the sky again. Before I succumbed to the temptation of putting up a fervent prayer, I summoned up all my courage and went in.

Fortunately the lances of light penetrating the rocky ceiling of the cave helped me to orientate myself. As I went step by step further in, I realised that at least it wasn't too difficult to get an all-over view of this musty domain. It might be the size of a small public hall, but luckily it wasn't sneakily equipped with dark nooks and crannies. If Crazy Hugo and the mastiff were planning an attack, they wouldn't be able to contrive much of an ambush, for want of suitable hiding places. The only good cover, not to mention an oppressive sense of tension, was provided by some spurs of rock rising from the ground, some of them tall as a man, rather like the stalagmites you see in dripstone caves.

My anxiety did not vanish, but it was increasingly overlaid by the fascination of this hidden cave. The further in I went, the more closely I observed what I saw, the more I forgot the real purpose of my visit. Curiosity about the unexplored took possession of me. I was particularly pleased when, to my surprise, I made a spectacular discovery. The rock wall on my right was covered with any number of pictures of buffaloes, horses, ibexes, and human figures dancing about in a state of euphoria. Of course I was seeing these pictures in a dim light, and I could only guess at the original colours, but there was no doubt about it: I was looking at genuine cave paintings. I might not be the first to discover these precious things, but that didn't lessen the thrill at all. Looking at the pictures, which were executed with great care, I remembered the many books on this subject in Gustav's library, books I'd once read avidly. The human practice of worshipping certain animals goes back to prehistoric times. For years, people thought the idea behind these pictures was that the image of a buffalo on the cave wall would give humans power over it. But when you look at such cave paintings with a zoologist's eye, you suddenly see something else: they show dead animals, not live ones. For instance, it's obvious that the animals' weight is not resting on their hooves. The cave paintings show the feet of animals lying on their sides rather than standing upright. They are depictions of freshly slaughtered animals, intended to honour their memory, and bear witness to the great respect human beings then felt for the spirits of the creatures they had killed. The more faithfully the artists captured the figure of their prey on the rock wall, the sooner would its soul reconcile itself to its new home. Boy, oh boy, to think how things had gone wrong between us and mankind since those magical times!

The painting I liked best was one which basically looked like a kind of prehistoric strip cartoon. It showed a man with a spear hunting an animal with some similarity to a bear. In the next phase of the picture he'd killed and skinned his prey and was wearing its skin, so that he looked like a bear himself. I took a few steps back to get the general impression. As I did so my back paws knocked against something in their way. It clattered. Alarmed by the sudden breaking of the silence, I let out a shriek and swung round. What I saw on the cave floor was another sensation, but one of the more familiar sort. I'd finally come upon what I'd been looking for.

My paws had touched some bones which fell apart with a rattle. The bones belonged to two skeletons lying together on their sides, like the slaughtered beasts in the cave paintings, or perhaps like a pair of star-crossed lovers years after carrying out a suicide pact. Two skeletons in beautiful condition, untouched, as if they'd been preserved for biology lessons - but of different build. One of the skeletons, the top one, was the skeleton of a dog, judging by its size a mastiff. The one underneath unmistakably belonged to a specimen of my own kind. So it looked as if Hugo the Black Knight and his murderous steed didn't spring from a collective desire for myth and legend on the part of the forest-dwellers. They really had once lived in this cave, and they'd died here too - years and years ago.

But didn't Aurelia know that? Why had she said I could still find the Black Knight in his cave? And how could this be reconciled with the claims of not only Aurelia but all the other animals to have seen him? Zack had even given a detailed, factual description of the couple, faithful in every respect. And Alcina had gone on as if you could see them as frequently as outdoor keep-fit tracks in the forest. All the forest dwellers had given me that impression.

However, if my strange find made the mystery even more mysterious, at least the score was two-nil to me in one respect. First: just as my infallible instinct had told me, Crazy Hugo and the mastiff were out of the running as murder suspects because they had died ages and ages ago. Second: someone had a lively interest in shoring up the legends of the Black Knight in every way possible and ensuring that they were passed on. Unfortunately, whether this mysterious Someone was the same as the impersonator of the roving Black Knight, or indeed the same as the murderer, was a question that must remain unanswered for now. Despite Aurelia's distrust of the whole tribe of mice, I thought of Zack, who said the Knight used to ride an animal of a kind he'd seen near a house in the forest ...

I made another discovery. This one, however, didn't set me off on another sequence of logical deductions, it gave me a nasty sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach instead. All the time I was trying to work out possible solutions, my absent-minded gaze had been fixed on one of the natural stone pillars rising from the uneven floor. The front of this spur of rock was touched by one of the columns of light, and the place where the light actually met it shone more brightly than anything else in the place. It looked as if the light were being reflected off something even brighter. I took a closer look - and the sinking feeling in my stomach turned to outright panic.

The monster's paw shone in the cone of light like a special priceless creation behind armoured glass in a jeweller's display window. When I looked up, I saw his eyes glowing in the dark like boiling gold. They kept on staring at me, utterly motionless, as if they were firmly installed diodes. The creature was sitting perfectly relaxed on his rocky pedestal, and the real shock, to me, was that he'd been patiently watching me all this time. Judging by his vague outline, he was about a metre and a half long. He was probably waiting for me to die of a heart attack brought on by fright, so that he could spare himself the trouble of killing me and start tucking in straight away. Suddenly I didn't find this such an unattractive idea myself. I mean, it would save me a good deal of unpleasantness. However, there was one very useful aspect to this ultimate encounter of mine with Monster Paw. It solved the whole case! Monster Paw had killed Crazy Hugo and the mastiff here, eons ago, and then extended his reign of terror to the farmyards. All those witnesses who saw or thought they saw the Black Knight had simply been suffering from an optical illusion. Now that I'd successfully done my detective duty, I could die in peace.

At the last moment, however, I thought of what seemed to me an amazingly cunning plan. I'd act as if I hadn't seen Monster Paw at all. Then I would allow my gaze to wander in another direction, I'd turn in the casual manner of a walker who'd lost his way and fetched up in this cave by accident, and I would stroll slowly towards the entrance. If the monster made any move to spring, then I'd suddenly switch into cheetah gear, as we describe our most effective emergency sprint, after a very famous relation of ours. It really was a brilliant idea.

I turned my back on the monster.

'No false moves, my little friend!'

I might have known it. I had, really. Not such a brilliant idea after all. His deep bass sounded like the voice of a pitiless Greek god in the habit of annihilating whole kingdoms just for the hell of it. It seemed to brook no contradiction because no one had ever yet ventured to contradict it.

Boldly, I turned round again.

'I've left a letter with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals authorising an anti-terrorist commando unit to storm this cave if I'm not home by tea-time,' I said, in a voice that trembled.