Catechisms: II

[catch]

He did not sleep. Not for the most part. He went, on and on, his mind roving and scuttling from one thing to the next, until his body - his flesh - begged for relief. He used to fear when it came. When he was forced inside his head, and the pus-boil Wolf howled and smashed the jars full of his memories, scattered them into the worm-holes and mouse-dens, gnawing at stars, and then Catch would have to sweep up the pieces, try to glue it all back together.

He hated sleeping. Until the Sky Lady healed him. Until Miss Lamai had saved him. Until the Light escaped, full and glorious, at Descant's decadent Ball.


________


He walked in the Forest, not as it was now, dying and yellow, and not at a time that it had ever been. This was the idea of the Forest. It was what Catch saw. Colors were sounds, and smells were music, and he could taste their talk on his tongue. He walked with little fear through it, bright as a fever-dream, and sometimes he would reach out and caress the leaves. Their color would come away on his fingers, and they would laugh at the tickle, and Catch laughed with them for the sheer joy of it.

He had no fear. He knew, in his core, that it would not turn terrible, not like the other times. There was no Wolf. There was no Fat Man. But there were other things.

"Aha! Lord Catch!" came a voice high in the branches, and Catch turned his head up. He still had his hair, and his beard, full and shining and soft-curls. Why, he thought even his scar was missing. Only the silver light, hovering there at his brow.

The voice belonged to a hunched, simian creature, dressed in little, silken pants of red and blue. (Catch had seen a monkey in the gypsy camp. It danced to the tune of a little organ. He had never seen a monkey before.) The creature scuttled down the tree trunks, limber as any squirrel, and swept his little hat off his head, bowing deep to Catch as if he were a Lord. And he was, maybe. He felt it.

"What news, Kossin?" Catch asks, sounding just as lordly as he could possibly sound, grave and wise as a judge. (Catch knew a judge, once. He walked with a cane, and took his leash in his hand, and led him to his great mansion and chained him in a room with a feathered bed and gave him good things to eat and had brought him [blank] and then CATCH HAD TAKEN HIS EYES, OH GOD, MY EYES, WHERE -)

Kossin, for that was his name, set his little hat at a jaunty angle on his head, his little paws settling back on the branch while the hind came up to scratch his chin like a dog. "Well, it's Rowsdower Cattails, Lord Catch. He's sent me off to find you. Said it was im-por-tant." The monkey spaced all his words out, and rolled his eyes, and Catch knew why. Cattails was a pompous creature, but Catch didn't mind being so summoned. Kossin was outraged, but Catch was a Lord, and he was wiser. The monkey chattered as he rode on his shoulder, nonsense and snatches of songs.

"Way hey and away we go,
Donkey riding, Donkey riding,
Way, hey, and away we go
Riding on a donkey -"

"I'm not a donkey," Catch told Kossin. For some reason that did bother him, and he had to remind himself that he was a Lord.

"Er, 'course you're not, m'Lord Catch," Kossin said, and laughed nervously, and he grabbed the nearest dangling branch and climbed away. Catch didn't mind, too much. He was at Rowsdower Cattails.

The huge dog lifted his head, rolls of flesh wrinkling along his neck, one by one, like the dominoes the men in the Tavern played, staring at Catch with great and bloodshot eyes, his lips and ears full of dirt from where they dragged the ground, eyes rheumy. He was Cattails, because around his neck he kept the tails of Cats that he had hunted, and boasted all over the Lake and the Valley and the Mountains that he was the best, most terrible cat-catcher in the whole Forest. Catch was a little frightened of him, but he never said it. (He was not Fat Man. Wasn't this better? Animal-friends, happy-friends, they loved him and called him Lord and set crowns of jasmine in his hair.)

"You sent for me, Rowsdower?" Catch said politely enough. The bloodhound swung his head too and fro, squinting his red eyes.

"Hoo, hrmph. Sent that good-fo'-nuffin'. Cassowary or Camelkin. Wotever. Found ye, then?" Rowsdower turned his neck, scratching at his flaps with a wet, smacking sound, and Catch knew he did it just to show off his cat-tails, grey-striped and black, red and orange and calico-dipped, every size and shape and color. Catch didn't feel impressed, so he found it easy to keep his face from betraying anything, and Rowsdower gave himself a great shake in disappointment. He knew, in the end, who the Lord was.

"Well, had meself a sniff, didn't I? Up there, an' down there, through t'coombs an' downs an' mountains. Feeling I got in me paws. You feel it, too?"

(This was a dream. But he knew he knew under the decay and the Eye and) "I felt it," was all Catch said. (In his bed, he tossed onto his belly, his arms spread in front of him.)

"I'll show ye, then," Rowsdower said, all his pomp and snuffling gone. he set off at his rolling, laborious pace, all roll and flap and working of splayed, stubby feet, and Catch followed along. It seemed he could stretch his legs, just so, and keep up with the giant dog, so that when Rowsdower Cattails slowed, puffing and huffing and panting great splats of drool, Catch did not feel tired at all.

They came to a rock in the forest, smeared with flower-oils, but Catch could see at once what the matter was. The floor of it was covered in maggots. And there was a hole, too, and Rowsdower sniffed at the squirming things with distaste.

"You smell it, m'Ludd?" he asks Catch, even his massive lips able to curl. Just a little.

"The bloody hole," Catch whispered, and Rowsdower's hot breath blew his curls into disarray. Catch leaned into the hole. He felt the heat boiling from it. Heat hotter than the giant dog's breath, hotter than fire.

Down there, something burned. Down there, past [Cloud-hair] past [Miss Drache] past [who?], something was born.

(And then he woke up.)

[catch]

"What's the Fire Hole?"

"It's where the fire comes from."

"Where does the fire come from?"

"From the Fire Hole."


Catch was not dreaming. Not this time. It Flickered across his mind as he lay in his bed, unable to sleep from the dream he had had. It took him in his mouth like the warm, wet corpse of a rat, and shook him. It was like when he had opened the Eye. It was like the Gold City, only it melted under the liquid flame.

He called to it. A single, coursing sound of a bell.

And it was that that scattered the Nightmares, sent them away in the space of a breath, though that had not been his intention. He hadn't known they even existed, that his joy at good, wholesome dreams would mean the disasters for the townspeople. All the same, they were gone.

His brains hurt. He lay back down and trembled.