The Wildings (25 page)

If it was a perfect spring, the following season was anything but, for that summer was the summer of the crows.

First there was just one flock, and then two, and then more and more, settling raucously in the hedges and trees of Nizamuddin. We wildings were indifferent—crows had always been part of the colony—and then, as more and more of them came in, wary. You know what crows are like, Tooth: loud and bustling and given to throwing parties every evening with brawls between the younger lot. And they can be mean, and some of them are very clever thieves—they’ll wait for a cat or a cheel to make the kill, and then sneak in and swipe the lot.

But they’re also fun: look at Blackwing and Brightbeak and their brood, and the way they keep watch for all of us here. These crows, though, were different. They came in like the gathering monsoon clouds, masses of them, shrouding the trees in black and grey, filling the skies with their relentless cawing and squabbling. And then the clan remembered Tigris’ visions, and in our hearts and whiskers, we were afraid.

At first, Stoop paid them no mind. She went on her daily patrols as always and stayed far away, on the highest gables, roosting in the trees in the wild, unclaimed lot. Conquer wasn’t happy when she issued an order that all cheels were to leave Nizamuddin and make their homes as far away from the crows as possible, in Humayun’s Tomb and across the canal in Jangpura, but he obeyed her, coming back himself for flying visits.

I was puzzled too, it wasn’t like Stoop to cede territory—she was always one for a good fight, your mother. But she told me one day when our paths crossed, “I don’t understand this, Miao, there’s something behind the crows’ behaviour. It’s not your normal invasion—they’ve run away, they don’t have real leaders or
tribes and that makes them dangerous. I need to think about how to get them out of here.”

She tried to speak to their leaders, but Bitterbite and Bakbuk flapped out of their nests at her and cawed their threats furiously, refusing to answer questions. Stoop parried their darts at her easily, rising into the feathery embrace of the nimbus clouds, and didn’t try to engage them again.

We missed the cheels. Your family sometimes preys on kittens, or old cats, or ones that are sick, but mostly they leave our kind alone—and we raid their nests when we can find one on lower ground, we’ve killed fledglings too. There’s no real enmity between us, though, and the tradition you grew up in, Tooth, where we leave part of the kill for you and you for us in lean hunting weather—it goes back to the first cats and cheels who settled in the old alleys of Nizamuddin.

I sometimes looked up at the sky, and I’d see a tiny, faraway speck against the sun—Stoop, gliding above us, looking down at Nizamuddin, quartering her turf. I often wondered what she saw, and when her shadow floated over me, darkening the ground for a fleeting second, I missed her.

The crows were becoming bolder. They stole from us, attacked our kittens until we had to keep all of them, nine-weekers and younger, carefully corralled in the tiny park at the back, with the toms guarding them, and even so we lost quite a few. They harried the lizards and the mice, the rats and the bandicoots, and then they began to attack the Bigfeet’s homes and their pets—and this was dangerous for all of us, Tooth.

Six of the crows got into one of the homes, opened up the cage of these guinea pigs who were kept as pets, and killed
them all. Poor things. They were silly little creatures with no conversation at all: “I gots food! I not gots food! I gots more food than you gots!” was about as much as they could manage. But they didn’t deserve that ending, and there was no need for it—the crows who did it weren’t even looking for food. They were just bored.

After a pair of hutch rabbits went the same way, and the crows attacked a Bigfoot child, we saw that the Bigfeet were getting restless, and angry. And we were fearful, because we didn’t know what they would do, but we were sure it wouldn’t be anything good.

I would have gone to Stoop then, but she had disappeared. Oh, her patrol was there all right, but they flew further and further away, only circling Nizamuddin once during the day, and Stoop was nowhere to be seen.

I had too many troubles of my own to worry about Stoop for long, anyway. Nizamuddin has always been rich in hunting, and the Bigfeet leave wonderful things out for all of us in their garbage heaps, but there were too many crows, and more crowding in every day. Bitterbite and Bakbuk led several murders of crows out foraging most days and they were becoming more vicious, stalking us cats and stealing our kills whenever they could. One murder of crows left suddenly, led by Breakbone, and we heard they’d settled in the Jangpura market, across the canal.

Then one day Stoop flew back with worrying news. “The Bigfeet are setting out poison,” she said. She tried to tell Breakbone, because she believed it was her duty to warn all other creatures, even the hostiles.

“Get away with you, you bag of bones,” was what Breakbone said, “you’re just trying to keep us away from good feeding so that you and your flea-ridden friends can hunt without competition.” So Stoop said no more, but a week later, she came back to tell us that all the garbage heaps in the market were covered with black feathers. Breakbone and his gang had fallen victim to the poison.

After that, not a single crow tried to leave Nizamuddin, even though more and more crows came flooding in by the day. Living became a desperate struggle; we kept our eyes on the sky, never knowing when their sharp beaks would attack again. “We have to do something,” I told Neferkitty one evening. That morning, I had seen the squirrels keening in a sad huddle, mourning the loss of yet another of their family.

Neferkitty had a gaunt look to her, by then. She’d been a handsome, well-muscled queen but the last few months had taken it out on her—she’d melted down to bone and muscle. It was only later that I discovered she’d been feeding the kittens and nursing mothers from her kills, barely eating enough herself to keep tail and whiskers together. But her mind was as sharp as ever.

“I have a plan,” she said. “It’s desperate, but it’ll have to do.” She told me the details and I agreed; it was desperate, but what other choice did we have? We would give Bitterbite and Bakbuk one chance—ask them to get half the crows to leave, perhaps to find homes a little further off, at Humayun’s Tomb with the peacocks and the bulbul songbirds. Or perhaps they could go even further out, to the golf course with its spacious, green grounds. If they refused, we’d attack that night itself.
The dogs were with us. They had suffered equally from the invasion of the crows, and when we approached them to ask for a truce, their leader Tommy went further and said they’d stand by us and fight if need be. But there were only a few strays, and ours was still a woefully thin force.

“It would help if we had the pariah cheels on our side, Miao,” she said. “Any news of Stoop?”

There was none; and when I spoke to Conquer that night, your father was civil but distant. “Not our fight, Miao,” he said, “The cheels have moved on. Besides, I haven’t seen Stoop myself in many moons. She’s all right—my pinions would fluff and tell me if she was in serious danger—but that’s all I know.” I pleaded with him until his tail feathers began to ruffle in annoyance, and then I had to back off.

It would have made a difference to have Conquer and his squadrons on our side. Without the cheels, the other birds refused to get involved.

“Look at us,” said Spackle Sparrow and Grackle Sparrow. “We’re too small, Miao, the crows would make mincemeat of us in no time.” The pigeons had long since fled; Bismillah, the bulbul, said he’d do what he could, but he couldn’t put his brood in further danger. And Petuk and Potla, the vultures, had left for a long holiday, preferring the Yamuna river with all its pollution to overcrowded Nizamuddin.

Neferkitty and I went to meet Bitterbite and Bakbuk. It was an unpleasant task; they were squabbling over one of their kills, though we couldn’t tell what animal it was. Just as well; sometimes it was best not to know. Bakbuk lifted his head; his beak was bloody, his eye angry.

“You dare interrupt my meal, cats?”

“Mine!” cawed Bitterbite furiously. “Mineminemine! I found it first, so I did.”

Bakbuk stabbed at her, tearing a feather slightly. Then he turned back to us. “Well?”

Neferkitty’s feathery tail twitched warily as she laid out our terms. All were welcome in Nizamuddin, but he would agree there were too many crows. Food for all—the crows as well as the other animals—was running short; the Bigfeet were getting restless and would soon take steps, as they had with the garbage heaps in the market. We didn’t want a fight, and there were many other parks and neighbourhoods; if half the crows would agree to leave, we could continue to live in peace. Would Bakbuk agree?

Before Bakbuk could say anything, before I could do anything, Bitterbite flew at Neferkitty, slashing fiercely at her face. Neferkitty screamed as the crow’s sharp talons shredded her ear. “Trucebreaker!” I cried in shock, leaping out of Bakbuk’s way. “We came here under truce terms!”

Neferkitty, despite her bleeding ear, was now swatting at Bitterbite, but I could see the rest of the murder swarming into formation. “Neferkitty, follow me!” I howled, and we both fought our way out of there. If the dogs hadn’t helped us, we wouldn’t have made it.

Bakbuk’s hoarse, mocking caws followed us: “Come to us next time and we’ll tear you to shreds, you furbags! Nothing will make us leave, you hear? Our trees. Our park. Our kills. Ours!” The sky was black with crows, cawing and shrieking their defiance.

We rejoined our clan in the small park at the back. None of us had much to say; we didn’t need to link to know that we were all apprehensive of the night to come. Instead of even considering the situation or offering some sort of solution, the crows were now on guard, and there were so many of them.

“Neferkitty,” I said after a while. “Should we attack as planned, or is there no hope?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” said Neferkitty, her black fur gaping here and there with red where the blood still streamed from her cuts. “It seems desperate, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s us who should leave.”

I’d thought about that too, but the idea of leaving Nizamuddin, turning our backs on the neem trees and the familiar alleys, abandoning the rooftops we’d played our stalking games on as kittens … it was too much, and how would we shift all the cats?

The crows could take flight, map neighbourhoods, find trees; it would take one cat scout many moons to locate a suitable territory. Where would we find a place that had enough scavenging for so many of us, that was free of other cat clowders, that didn’t have too many predators, that was close enough to Nizamuddin?

And even if we did … in the vast shared memory of Delhi’s cat clans, I could see not even the faintest pawmark that indicated a successful migration. Cats were not birds; we grew up and lived in the same territories as our mothers and fathers, and that was that. I said as much to Neferkitty.

“It sounds crazy, I know,” she said. “But Miao, we can’t go on much longer. With the crows here, we’ll starve this winter; we’re all weakening, and who knows if we’ll be able to
protect the next litter of kittens? We have to think of the unthinkable.”

We would have talked further, but there was a great beat of wings, and then we heard the high, pitiful screaming of one of the young stray pups, and the sound of the caws rose until we were nearly deafened. Nizamuddin was under attack.

YOU HAVE TO IMAGINE
it for yourself. All of us, cats and dogs, squirrels and mice, hedge pigeons, mynahs … scattered in disarray, while great black clouds of crows poured out like smoke descending from the trees. The noise! The rustling of their wings, the crescendo of caws—it was deafening and confusing, some of the smaller animals could do nothing but run up and down, making targets of themselves, the poor things. The squirrels ran back and forth along the branches, getting picked off two at a time; the mice scurried in desperate circles on the ground. It was terrible.

That first hour was dire. Neferkitty got out there, of course, and did the best she could, along with the fighting toms. The dogs helped, but soon we were bombarded by clusters of crows. The only thing that saved us was that the crows weren’t proper fighters. They were from different families, unused to fighting in formation, and I suppose they hadn’t really expected much resistance. They made a fearsome racket, but they weren’t attacking in order—any old group would take off any time it felt like it, and they banged into each other, in the air and on the ground. They squabbled too, and stabbed each other when they grew cross, and that saved many of us. Bakbuk got so annoyed
with his best fighters for diving before he did that he snapped at three of them, wounding them so badly they had to retreat.

Even so, they had the advantage of numbers—however badly they fought, each injured crow was replaced immediately by another ten, and they covered the grass with the black of their wings. Neferkitty kept her head. She had crept into the trees, and she moved fast from branch to branch, from neem to the flame tree to the laburnum, attacking the crows from behind, attacking their leaders just as they were poised for take-off, ducking back into the leaves if they tried to turn on her. The pups stood with us, the Nizamuddin strays, barking their heads off, bounding into the thick of the press, not letting the crows land.

Neferkitty was bleeding heavily—some of the wounds of the morning had opened up again. But the owls had woken up and rallied around her. Hootem and Hutom made darts from the safety of their hole in the ancient laburnum tree, getting in some good shots and buying Neferkitty a little breathing space. But the beat of the black wings never stopped; it seemed the trees were spewing out crows nonstop, one after another.

Bitterbite was in between us and Neferkitty, with a proper murder of crows, six of them who had clearly seen fighting before. I measured the distance between us and shuddered—the thought of trying to get to her, or her trying to get to us, through a thicket of sharp beaks and blood-hungry claws, was not pretty.