The Cat Who Knew How to Cry

7. THE GREAT CURTAIN (part 1)

Every self-proclaimed do-gooder who ever undertook it to turn someone's world upside down ought to have first inquired whether its inhabitants would like to live with the lights on the floor and the toilet on the ceiling.

From a lecture by Ellis an Temiar

The short night was passing. It was getting light, but the shadows were still thick enough to hide the Alae seeking refuge in them from prying eyes. Anar slid from one column to another like a grey ghost. He hid behind the crippled statues – some missing an arm, some without tails, others deprived of golden ears – due to battles from long ago. Catching his breath after the great exertion, he leaned against the trunks of ancient trees... so warm, powerful and stern to behold, one might think that instead of sweet sap, thick salty blood flowed beneath the bark, which they'd sucked out from myriad fallen righteous warriors. Anar chuckled at this eerie reverie, so readily cultivated in the fertile vineyards of his mind's eye once nourished by fear's witchery! Every stone here was saturated with it – the doings of mommy dearest from her youth...

He didn't allow himself to think of Aniallu. It was paramount to get out of the forbidden territory without being noticed, and the slightest stray thought might be his undoing. He forced himself to keep going, paying heed to his sharpened sensations and focusing all his efforts on finding a safe way out.

After a few minutes he was able to get beyond the confines of the temple complex and plunged into the dense shrubbery of the forest. Because he often went for walks here, he knew virtually every trail, every tree. It was the only "uncultured" wood in Rual – brazenly untidy, dark, dense and loud. When he got further in to the humid thicket, Anar stopped and sat down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. He couldn't shake the feeling that something very important was eluding him. He replayed the conversation with the tal sianae time and again in his head, but couldn't make heads or tails of certain emotions that had so clearly manifested on her expressive face. First of all, her bashfulness at the sight of the healed wounds – first her own, then those inflicted on him. It seemed there was some sort of hidden meaning behind it all, but he lacked the imagination to understand exactly what.

Maybe his own embarrassment was keeping him from figuring out hers. He recalled with insufferable shame the first moments of their encounter, when he so passionately incriminated Aniallu as one of his mother's minions: "... topnotch face... wonderful actress – to say so much with just one look, having never actually felt anything that your face is depicting... our meetings would turn romantic..." What an oaf he was! Anar's nose and the fleshy pads of his paws blushed with shame. He sat, stood up, shifted his weight from paw to paw. And she was genuinely worried about him; he was actually dear to her. Dear to a tal sianae! Dear... to her. Unthinkable... and intoxicatingly pleasant.

Anar rested in the forest for over an hour, licking his disheveled fur and straightening his tangled thoughts. Then, having donned a royally apathetic mask, he headed home.

He climbed at an easy pace the stairs of the walking trail, which wound into the forest like a long grey tongue. The stones that paved it were kept cool by magic, chilling his dusty paws pleasantly. The sky was wrapped in a haze of clouds, and the enchanted lanterns' flames were dissolving in morning's pale diffused light like chunks of colored sugar in milk. The trail led to a tiny triangle-shaped chapel. On the wall facing the forest, it featured Alasais leaning over a kitten's crib, blowing a miniscule amber bead from her palm like fluff. It was Anar's own creation: Touched by the Birth of the Liberator, Alasais Inspires Him to Create the Curtain. The Alae glanced at it... His eyes were probably playing tricks on him in the dim light, for he thought he saw a hint of Aniallu in the goddess' stately features.