Cat Out of the Bag Read online

  “The Landlords make their own rules. It is up to us to keep up with them.”

  I turned and looked at Pappi, who’d gone back to stirring his soup. His eyes were white and milky. If he didn’t have surgery soon, he would go blind. His body was hunched and weak. His tail hung limply behind him.

  I hissed low in my throat, angry at how complacent he’d become. When we had arrived in the desert when I was just a kit, Pappi promised me we would return home someday, back to the rain forests, where we belonged. We couldn’t live in the desert with goblins and trolls. We belonged in the lush green lands near the coast. But at some point, Pappi’s dream of going home had died, probably around the time I’d broken my arm in my first speeder race. He just wanted to keep me safe, and I couldn’t really blame him, but I wondered what the cost of safety was if it meant our freedom.

  “I’m going to get us back home. You’ll see. Today’s prize was ten thousand credits. I was so close. I just have to find a way to attach the hover screen over my turbo boost. If I bypassed the thermal injectors…” I looked down at my schematics, biting my lip and twirling my tail in my hand. I was so close. I knew it. If I could just win one race fair and square, we could get Pappi’s surgery, pay off our debts to the Landlords, and get back to the farm, assuming that it hadn’t been sold off yet. I’d heard from Jym Boe that the land lay barren, and no one had taken residence there. There were rumors that the Landlords had plans to cut down the trees to build a great monument to their patron deity, a reptilian god, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of that.

  I just needed a little bit more time, and I would get us home. As soon as one Sho’Kin family returned to the forest, we all would. I had to keep faith that we would get back to the ancestral lands that we loved, where we could tend the trees and the flowers and the animals like family. It wasn’t just our farm that was at stake or the prospect of a lifetime of eating cactus soup—farming was everything that our people were, down to the very bone. Without the land, we were nothing but a race of cat people living in a foreign land, digging scraps out of the garbage, which was not our destiny.

  “Stop staring at those plans and sit down for dinner.”

  I looked up from my schematics and wrinkled my nose. I loved Pappi, and when we could get a rabbit and fresh vegetables from the traveling merchants, I loved everything he cooked. But those days seemed to be gone forever. The acrid taste of boiled cactus wouldn’t leave my mouth.

  I was about to object when Pappi pushed me down in my chair. He was deceptively strong for an old man who was so resigned to his fate. I tried to disguise my eye roll. The only sign that he’d seen it was a twitch of his ear as he turned to the stove and ladled sludge into a bowl for me. He placed it in front of me, and I could barely stand the scent. I stared down at the bowl, knowing that if I refused to eat, he would be even more irritated with me.

  He sat down beside me with his own bowl of gruel, and I dipped my spoon into the green mush. He began scooping the foul food into his mouth as if he no longer had any taste buds left and looked up at me with an expectant nod. “You better eat before it gets cold.”

  I sighed. It was a small compromise to make when Pappi and I disagreed about so many things. The least I could do was eat his disgusting stew.

  I dipped my spoon in the bowl and braced myself for the flavor. Time seemed to stand still as I raised the spoon to my face. All manner of thoughts ran through my brain. My life flashed before my eyes, and I began to contemplate what it would be like to work for the Landlords.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be indebted to them for the rest of my life. I would get preferential treatment in the food lines and maybe even in the races. Who cares if they would own me like a slave for eternity? It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? At least I would get decent food to eat.

  I growled and shoved a spoonful of sludge in my mouth then gulped it down before it could hit my tongue. I would never work for the Landlords. They were destroying everything that was good in the world. I didn’t love food so much that I would give in. There were things that were more important than a good taste in my mouth and a full belly. At least I hoped so as I swallowed the gruel.

  I was tempted to think that maybe it was just foolishness to resist. The Landlords had so much to offer, and they wanted me, a common trash picker, to work for them in their big shop. I was just a humble Sho’Kin mechanic.

  Pappi was shoveling stew into his mouth as though it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. I was caught between insanity and moral suicide. Knowing Pappi wouldn’t let me leave the table until I’d finished my bowl, I picked it up, brought it to my lips, opened up my throat, and poured it in. I gulped it down as if it would save my life. When I was done, I slammed the bowl on the table with a loud grunt and a roar.

  “I knew you were hungry,” Pappi said, not looking up from his meal.

  “May I be excused?” I was trying to get back on his good side.

  “You may.”

  I grabbed my schematics from the table and hurried off to my tiny loft over the main room of our hut. Pappi had slept up there until he’d gotten too old and frail to climb the ladder. Living in the desert seem to have aged him ten times faster than what was normal for a Sho’kin. Losing everything had broken him, and now that I was grown, the loft and the big bed were mine. Pappi slept on the couch in the main room, which made it harder for me to sneak out at night.

  I lay down on my bed and stared at the low ceiling. Most of my friends laughed at me for caring so much about what my pa thought of my day-to-day activities. I didn’t have to eat his stew. I could get a sand-mouse shish kebab if I could manage to win a few games of dice or repair someone’s broken speeder.

  But I didn’t just care what Pappi thought. He was the only thing I cared about. I hated that the Landlords had taken everything—his heart, his health, and even his mind in some ways. He was a shell of the man he used to be, and all I wanted was to see the light in his eyes once again and to take him home, where he belonged. If I could do anything to make him feel just a little bit better, I would, even if that meant eating his terrible soup and not sneaking out at night.

  I’d been so upset after losing the race that I’d forgotten to bring anything home for dinner. I should have known that Pappi was boiling a cactus. They were the most common scrub weeds that grew around the junkyard, and they were edible and nutritious enough to sustain the lives of the impoverished workers who lived in tiny huts built of trash.

  I lifted the schematics and stared at my plans. There just wasn’t room on the bike for both the screen and the turbo boost. I’d stripped down every nonessential part to make it weigh as little as possible. And even if weight hadn’t been an issue, there just wasn’t room. No matter how many times I reconfigured the parts in my head, I couldn’t come up with a solution. I hissed and set the schematics down beside me. I was bone-tired and sore from the race and an entire day of junk collecting before that. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, my body relaxing into the bed. I just needed a little rest. Just a little rest.

  Chapter 3

  I stood before a shimmering oval doorway, like the black void of the night sky. Something compelled me from the pit of my stomach to step through, although common sense would have suggested otherwise. My tail flicked around me, and my whiskers twitched. I tried to peer through the portal to see what was on the other side, but all I saw was darkness.

  A whisper slithered through the darkness into my ears and my brain. “Hello, Mango,” the voice said.

  “Hi.”

  “Step through the portal, and I will give you a gift.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that until we meet face-to-face.”

  “Are you on the other side of the portal?”

  “You will step through time and into my space, where I reside. Then we can be friends.”

  “How do I know you aren’t lying?”

  “You don’t. You have to trust your heart and your gut.”
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  Something about the whole situation didn’t quite feel right to me, but I couldn’t help my curiosity, which had always been my biggest downfall. I wondered what Pappi would say if he could see me.

  I put one foot into the oval black space and found purchase on the other side. I could still feel my foot even though it had completely disappeared, cut off by the veil between here and wherever there was.

  I reached through, hoping I might feel something, but my hands grasped only air. It felt cool and damp compared to the desert, and I thought maybe it would be an improvement even if whatever was on the other side decided to eat me. Maybe I could get out of the desert weather for a few minutes and cool off. I stepped my other foot through, and as my arm and torso and head slipped through the blackness, I felt almost as if I’d lost my sense of space, time, reality, and even who I was for just a split second before I stepped out on the other side.

  I found myself in what must have been a cave. There was very little light, and what illumination did reach the place filtered through a crack in the ceiling far above. There were stone walls all around, and water dripped down a jagged black surface and from the ceiling. It was a cavernous place, as big as the Imperial Palace, I imagined. The air was cool and felt as if I was deep underground. I could smell the earth and the water dripping down the walls, but I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

  “Hello?” I called.

  I waited, not hearing a reply. I turned suddenly and looked behind me to make sure the portal was still there, but it had vanished.

  “Hello?” I called again, turning in a circle. In the deep shadow at the far end of the cave, a massive reptilian head emerged into the sliver of light eking through the ceiling. Our eyes locked, my back went up, and I jumped in fright, hissing and clawing. I shot backward toward the wall and drew my dagger. What I thought I might do with my tiny claws and dagger against the gigantic monster, I didn’t know, but my reflexes forced me to act.

  “Who are you?” I asked again. My heart raced faster than my speeder, and I felt as if I might crash. The massive head grew closer, and I could make out more of the beast’s form. I had never encountered anything like it before in all of my nineteen years in the world, but I’d heard stories from the traveling bards about creatures like it.

  “You’re a dragon,” I whispered, terrified that the stories might be true.

  “I am indeed a dragon,” the creature said in a deep, resonant voice. It walked forward and sat above me, curling its tail around its legs and looking relaxed.

  I was anything but—I knew that with one flick of its claws, it could skewer me and eat me like a sand mouse. “Why have you brought me here?” I asked.

  “I could sense you. My name is Mithril, and I have been looking for someone like you for a long, long time. Most summoners are unworthy of me. They want only to summon dragons for their personal benefit. But you? You have something rare inside you. I feel the urge, as it were, to be joined with a summoner again. It has been many long years. I remember when my previous summoner laid down his mortal body and passed from this world. It seemed we were together for so short a time, but I suppose it was at least sixty or seventy years. You seem to me to be about the age he was when we first met, but I daresay you have far less training.”

  “What?” I asked, wondering if the creature was going to talk me to death instead of using his claws or fangs.

  “You are a summoner. Don’t you know?”

  “What?” I asked again.

  “Oh, sweet, dear Mango, you know so very little. But I suppose it is understandable, considering that you come from the trash heap.”

  “That’s me, trash cat.” I laughed nervously. What does this guy want, anyway? I’ve never heard of anything called a summoner before. Then I realized that it was not normal. I’d walked through a portal in the air, for the gods’ sake, and I was talking to a dragon. None of it should have been real.

  Chapter 4

  I sucked in a deep breath, and all of a sudden, I was awake in bed with no dragon and no portal. My claws weren’t even out. I sat up and smashed my head against the roof. My head pounded as I struggled to crawl to the edge of the loft. I stared down into the main room and saw Pappi sleeping on his couch. He snored heavily, his whole body shuddering with each breath. His tail lay limply to his side, and his blanket had fallen away. I climbed down the ladder and picked up the blanket, pulling it up over his shoulders. My poor, sweet Pappi. What I wouldn’t have given to make his life easier. The dragon’s words flitted through my mind as if they were a distant echo from a far-off place: “You are a summoner.”

  What in all the worlds is that?

  I went to the kitchen to see if I could find anything to eat besides leftover cactus stew, but there was nothing. My stomach was tight and growled with need. I stepped out into the night and looked up into the clear sky. Stars sparkled overhead, cold and distant. I’d heard of people traveling to the stars on airships. I wondered if any of the other worlds was a place where good people like my Pappi didn’t suffer. I would have liked to travel on a starship and to go on grand adventures. I would join the Space Fleet any day, just to get beyond the reach of the Landlords. But that would have meant leaving Pappi, and I couldn’t do that.

  I drifted through the rows of hovels. Most of the lights were out, but there were random lights or fires outdoors. I ended up down at the tavern where dice games were played. I had a few credits, and I knew how to win a few more. Why buy one kebab when you can buy three?

  “You are a summoner,” I heard the dragon whisper again.

  It was just a dream, but it made me wonder, and I considered who I could ask about such things. “Summoner” was a word that sounded magical. There were people who knew about magic, even though the Landlords had forbidden the garbage pickers from doing magic, saying it was to prevent squabbles and to keep everything fair. I knew they used it as an excuse to keep us down.

  I’d lived in the junkyard since I was five years old. When the Sho’kin lived in the forest, our shamans practiced magic all the time, and I’d seen them do wondrous things. But since we’d moved to the junk heap, magic had become nothing but a memory. I knew who to ask about such things, though. The shaman from my old village lived at the very edge of our shanty village. People still went to her for healing and help with childbirth.

  I slipped into the tavern, and the smell of ale and sand-mouse kebabs filled the air. My stomach grumbled. The taste of cactus soup still clung to my tongue, and I wanted to scrape it off. I’d tried that before. It didn’t work.

  I scanned the tavern and found my friend Toby. We’d come to the junkyard at the same time and were about the same age. We’d been through it all together.

  He waved me over to his table, and I slid through the crowded bar to find him and our gang of friends. We mostly hung out with other Sho’kin, but one of our best buddies was a gnome named Hilde. She was older than us—considering gnomes lived to be about three hundred, there was no telling how much older. Hilde was laughing hysterically, slapping her fist on the table and shaking her head as if someone had told a hilarious joke. The others were snickering. I looked at Toby questioningly.

  “Pepper was just telling us about some junk she found in the garbage heap today.”

  “So then the buyer said, ‘all it needs is batteries.’ And I said, ‘If something’s going to do that to me, it’s gonna need to buy me dinner first.’”

  Hilde started laughing again, and I still didn’t get the joke. Toby whispered in my ear, and I blushed.

  “Did you wash your hands?” I asked.

  “I always wash my hands after I’m in the junkyard,” said Pepper, a black-furred Sho’kin girl who had been part of our gang since we were kits.

  Hilde was still laughing. Toby poured her another mug of ale, and he poured one for me too. I needed it after the day I’d had and that weird dream.

  “Are there any dice games going on right now?” I asked, fingering the credits in my pocke
t.

  “Why do you ask?” Toby said.

  “I’m starving.”

  “I was just saying we should all put our money together to get a plate of shish kebabs,” Pepper said.

  “I wanted pancakes.” Toby said.

  “I need some meat.” I rubbed my stomach. “Pappi’s been cooking cactus stew for two weeks.”

  “Ugh. How can you eat that?” Hilde asked.

  “It’s amazing what you can do for love,” I said.

  “As long as you have batteries.” Hilde burst out with laughter again then swallowed it down with another swig of ale.

  “If I could win a dice game or two, we could all have a platter of shish kebabs.” I looked around the tavern for a game. While magic was forbidden by the Landlords, gambling was almost encouraged. I’d grown up playing dice and cards, relying on my luck and wits to feed my aching belly when Pappi couldn’t make enough credits to bring home food. Since I did most of the scavenging myself these days, it had become a way of life to gamble with the majority of my pay. Most of the time, I came out ahead, and the people who knew me well knew that I was a winner. It was like I just knew what cards to pick and what numbers to call. Some people might have called it luck, and others might have called it skill. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I’d been using it long enough to know that it was dependable.

  “I’m not gambling away my credits,” Pepper said. “After what I pulled out of the trash heap today, I need something I can depend on.”

  “But I’ve heard those things are far more dependable than the alternative.” Hilde tried to keep a straight face as she wavered over the table, holding her tankard askew.

  “What’s the alternative?” I asked.

  “She means a man,” Pepper informed me.

  I frowned, thinking I was definitely missing something. Most of my friends had already paired off in one way or another. Some had even committed a sacred handfasting. I had yet to be interested in such things. It just didn’t seem like the right thing to do until we were back in the forest where we belonged. There was no telling what would happen until then, and we should have been using all of our strength and energy to get ourselves home.