"A shame to start off on the wrong foot, don't you agree?" he said. Plaintively, almost a miaow, to the castanet shuffle of his claws sliding against one another.

She heard his feline a.s.sertion. "You are are a Lion," she said, and whispered theatrically: "the king of the forest, no less!" a Lion," she said, and whispered theatrically: "the king of the forest, no less!"

She used just the perfect phrase designed to poke the embers of his childhood into flamed memory despite his resistance. The King of the Forest. The King of the Forest. He shuddered involuntarily, hoping she couldn't hear his jowls jiggle. He shuddered involuntarily, hoping she couldn't hear his jowls jiggle.

She pressed her advantage. "I'm neither a judge nor a jury. I'm a witness. Tell me who you you are, Sir Brrr, and how you got here. And tell me the truth. Then maybe I'll comply. You weren't already weaselly when you were young, were you? Even weasels aren't very weaselly at first." are, Sir Brrr, and how you got here. And tell me the truth. Then maybe I'll comply. You weren't already weaselly when you were young, were you? Even weasels aren't very weaselly at first."

With elegant steps, looking sore of paw, Shadowpuppet paced to the legs of Brrr's chair and purred to be picked up. Brrr obliged. The cat calmed him down.

Taking this deposition would be one campaign he wouldn't screw up. For the love of Ozma, wasn't he the equal of this crazy old coot draped in a tablecloth? And he had his writ in hand, permission to take her into custody if need be. He would get the goods if they were to be gotten.

If it was to be cat and mouse here, he had the genetic qualifications to play the cat. He had the motivation. He had the might of the b.l.o.o.d.y Court to back him up, too, if need be. He would redeem his reputation among the great and the good of Oz, and he'd wipe the smirks off their G.o.dd.a.m.n faces with his own beribboned tail.

"You're an oracle, I'm told," he said. "You ought to be able to see my youth, if you want to."

"I like to hear it told," she replied. "I have an appet.i.te for childhoods. Insatiable, as it happens."

The Nursery in the Forest

- 1 -

THE PARTICULARITY of other folks' youthful memories always mocked Brrr. of other folks' youthful memories always mocked Brrr. The first visit to Grandmama's! When the coconut fell on the teacher's head! The time that baby Albern almost choked! The first visit to Grandmama's! When the coconut fell on the teacher's head! The time that baby Albern almost choked! How we laughed, how we cried. How we remember. Together. How we laughed, how we cried. How we remember. Together.

His first and oldest past was undifferentiated. Unending forest. Unremarkable seasons. Loneliness without hope of relief. How could Brrr imagine imagine relief from loneliness when he hadn't found companions.h.i.+p yet? What goes unnamed remains hard to correct. relief from loneliness when he hadn't found companions.h.i.+p yet? What goes unnamed remains hard to correct.

Brrr didn't know if his mother had died in childbirth, or been stricken with amnesia. Or maybe she just lit out because she was an unnatural mother. A loner or a schizo. Or maybe she was drummed out of the pride for low behavior. He used to care which it was.

Though of course he didn't take it in at the time, he also grew up without the benefit of a tribe of his own. No aunties to fill in the blanks about what his mother had been like, and where she had gone, and why. No growly father hiding a whiskered grin of affection even as he set to cuff his darling cub, raising him up right in the ways of the family.

His earliest memories-gluey hazes-involved skulking about the Great Gillikin Forest north of s.h.i.+z like-like a skunk, like a grite, like one of those creatures who can become repellent even to their own kind. Like a human.

In later years as an arriviste in the Emerald City-having sat through a number of poetry readings-he found a way to characterize the Great Gillikin Forest. After a second sherry he could wax most convincingly about shrouds of spiderwebs. The dank naves suggested by rows of diseased potterpine, slatted with bars of cold yellow light. The forest floor carpeted with thornberry p.r.i.c.kle. The stupid fecundity of the spring, the swift and unrewarding summer, the gloomy autumn, and-oh h.e.l.l-the bone-taxing winter. What d.a.m.ned Lioness would bother to deliver a cub just to abandon him there, of all benighted places?

People nodded politely as they inched away.

The trees creaked as if the whole world were constantly flexing its muscles, about to pounce. A fern could unfurl with a snap that knocked you six steps toward a sanitorium. Owls, bats, forest harpies, badgers. A wild turkey in the undergrowth, startled into flight, making a noise of small explosives. To say nothing of fog. He hated fog. And poison ivy. And don't even mention snakes.

Or elves. Or any beast larger than a runtling pig.

The first humans he could remember coming upon were the mad Lurlinists. Brrr spied on them from behind screens of bracken. They dabbled in heathen rituals. Smoke and incense, singing in minor thirds. That sort of thing. He'd deduced language from them, language of a sort: an orotund pitch derived from religious prosody. Somewhat off-putting, as it turned out. It hadn't helped him to act the part of an alley cat later on, when he'd wanted to flee into the demimonde.

But he had loved the contrapuntality of discussion even before he quite understood that words possessed dedicated meanings. Eavesdropping on two travelers arguing over which way to go: savory plum nectar to him, blanket and kisses and mother's milk to him. The lilt of human voices in conversation, the nasal sonority, the fermata silences-he learned to hold himself very still in dappled shadows for the reward of it. Rhythm and tempo came first, vocabulary followed-but he never practiced, except to himself in secret bowers. As a young Cat he was still larger than a human, and if he spoke stupidly he might identify himself as nothing but a big lummox.

How had he survived his early years? He'd eaten nothing but forest turnips, shallots, the pinker of the edible fungus. He'd stalked human travelers and eavesdropped on their campfire chats to try to pick up anything that approximated street smarts, though he didn't even know what streets were yet. Watching occasional romantic exercises in the firelight, he'd learned more. Not that he'd been able to put theory into practice very often. More's the pity.

"Your childhood," said Yackle coaxingly, as if she could smell his thoughts. As if she could sniff out those pa.s.sages he hadn't chosen to retail at drinks parties.

Her words lulled him. The past, even a bitter past, is usually more pungent than the present, or at least better organized in the mind.

- 2 -

HE DIDN'T exchange a word with a mortal soul until he was nearly full grown, which for a Lion takes about three years. Therefore, he was slow to pick up on the concept of hunting, even though he'd heard it mentioned. exchange a word with a mortal soul until he was nearly full grown, which for a Lion takes about three years. Therefore, he was slow to pick up on the concept of hunting, even though he'd heard it mentioned.

The memory stung still. He crossed his legs, as if the old witness sitting there in her death-linens could hear the vascular effort of his veins trying to retract his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. He smoothed the Rampini coat over the little loaf of his stomach.

Hunting...well, it was what he was doing now, too, wasn't it? No handgun in his vest pocket, true. Just the privileges of the law, notarized by EC heavies.

He remembered the first time he'd heard the noise of rifle-shot. From far enough away, it had sounded like a distinct filament of thunder, a single flayed nerve of it. Brrr knew tree rodents to be smart; if they were careering away from the retort, there was good cause.

He lay low, in a kind of declivity-not a Lion's usual response to aggression, but how was he to know? Before long a quartet of uniformed men came near. They pitched their tent, and lit their campfire, within a few yards of where he had dropped like a felled potterpine. It took the Lion a few moments to realize they were responsible for the portable thunder. The rifles leaned against one another, reeking still of burnt gunpowder.

He was afraid his body odor would give him away, or the rumbling of his stomach. The hunters were noisy from drink, though, and he had nothing much to fear from them except what he learned about hunting. They traded tales of knocking off deer, skinning and mounting ocelot, tanning the hide of elk, beheading lions and having their skulls stuffed with sawdust and their teeth waxed. And spheres of polished onyx inserted in the emptied eye sockets.

Brrr's blood went slow, as if turning to gelatin. Even when the last hunter had nodded off, and the campfire collapsed into bright char and hiss, his whiskers never twitched. Were the hunters to sniff him out, stand over him and give him a head start at the count of ten, he wouldn't have been able to move. The bombast of hunterly boasting had hexed his limbs into basalt.

The hunters woke before dawn. One of them all but p.i.s.sed on Brrr, but the guy was sufficiently hungover not to notice. They kicked sand over their campfire and hoisted their rifles and packs, and crashed like rhinos away from Brrr's sanctuary.

He resigned himself to living in hiding for the rest of his life: to remain a rogue, unattached and unnoticed. And safe. Though what kind of a life would that be? He remembered with the instant nostalgia of youth the Lurlinists singing their anthems, the rare hikers chatting over landmarks, the lovers twisting by firelight against each other, as if trying to relieve a fatal itch. The choice of renunciation he was making was gloriously disappointing and refres.h.i.+ngly sad.

It was his first adult decision and therefore almost immediately revoked. A few days later he stumbled-literally-across the inaugural test of his mettle.

Evening. Brrr had been on the lookout for a growth of sweet forest pumpkin, which he especially favored. He hadn't seen the fellow on the ground, and he'd stepped right on him. The pressure of his paw had awakened the hunter out of a torpor of pain. "Help," said the man. Brrr leaped back, as terrified as he was surprised.

It was the youngest of the four hunters, the least offensive, though no saint either, by the stench. The fellow's leg had been all but snapped off in a trap of some kind. Flies were making a banquet of the pus.

"Open the trap," begged the poor sod. "Let me free, or else eat me at once. I've been here days beyond telling."

Surely it can't be more than three days, thought Brrr, but he didn't contradict.

"I can't bear another night," claimed the fellow.

"The very dark," said the Lion. This didn't seem enough, so he added, "Isn't it very very fright fright-ful?" It was his first remark to anyone other than himself, so it was the first time he heard himself sound like a pantywaist. What was that all about?

"I beg you. Mercy, for the love of the Unnamed G.o.d."

The Lion backed up, his rump high in the air, his whiskers a-twitter.

"Release me or do me in-one or the other," said the man, and fell to moaning. "Kill me and you can chew this wretched leg off my torso at last."

"Actually, I'm very vegetarian," said the Lion, proud of the actually actually. Is this how conversation was supposed to go? Your turn.

The young man reached again, for what must have been the ten thousandth time, to try to open the trap by force, but the thing was built to hold. He hadn't the strength by himself, and the trap wouldn't yield.

"You pull that side and I'll pull the other," said the fellow. "Together we can open it. Then, maybe you could cart me to a settlement, or at least to a stream. I've been rotting here with nothing to drink but the dew I could lick off the vegetation."

But the Lion found the teeth of the trap alarming. "That's a very iron mouth," he observed. "Far too very dangerous. Look what it's done to you."

"It's sprung, it can't spring again. Hunter's traps don't work like that."

Brrr shook his head.

"You imbecile. You flathead. I'm begging you-"

"I can't risk it. There are those who rely on me for support," said the Lion, thinking: Myself Myself, for one, and one is enough. for one, and one is enough. "Besides, I haven't those curving shrimplike fingers you have. I can't just purr the thing off you, you know." He was trying for a jocular tone, but it seemed to lack smack, and the hunter's distress was, well, distressing. Brrr pawed about, keeping a fair enough berth, sniffing and tossing his mane. "So this is a hunter's trap, and you're a hunter. And I've just put the two concepts together. Aren't you a little bit very ashamed of yourself?" "Besides, I haven't those curving shrimplike fingers you have. I can't just purr the thing off you, you know." He was trying for a jocular tone, but it seemed to lack smack, and the hunter's distress was, well, distressing. Brrr pawed about, keeping a fair enough berth, sniffing and tossing his mane. "So this is a hunter's trap, and you're a hunter. And I've just put the two concepts together. Aren't you a little bit very ashamed of yourself?"

"I'll give you anything. Every nickel florin I own. My father's cottage-it's freehold, no mortgage, running water, two fireplaces, stunning views."

"A cottage among very human cottages?"

"Nicely done up. You wouldn't even have to redecorate."

"Cottages filled with the fathers of hunters? I don't think so."

The man fell back, stunned into silence, and then began to weep. Quietly, noxiously. The Lion was appalled and faintly offended. This wasn't quite as much fun as he'd imagined. The human raised himself on an elbow and managed quaveringly to say, "You have a pride nearby-someone old enough to know how to show mercy to a stranger in your kingdom..."

"I'd go for help," said the Lion, "but I'm afraid no one is very near."

"Help is near enough. If not from your clan, then from mine. I just got separated from my pals. Not long ago, really. They probably only made it back to the base camp by now. And look, in case the base camp has pulled up stakes, there's a small cadre of the Wizard's forces stationed at Tenniken. I'm one of their number-hunting with my mates on behalf of the regiment. They're loyal to the Wizard of Oz! They will come for me if you tell them where I am. Soldiers don't abandon their own."

"A soldier-hunter." A new concept. "A lesson for us all," said the Lion cautiously. "Wish I'd had a soldier for a mother, then. Loyalty to the pack: what a thought." But that was rumination, not conversation. He tried again. "Have you enjoyed visiting this very neck of the woods?"

"Are you tormenting me?" The lad-he was hardly more than that-sat up as far as he could. "Am I hallucinating all this? Kill me or save me, as you wish, but for the love of the Unnamed G.o.d, do it soon. I'm all alone."

It was this last remark that moved the Lion to pity, or pity of a sort. He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.

He padded forward and put his big head down on the man's chest. The man swooned in fear or disbelief, whereupon the scattershot snare in his chest slowed to a more stately thud.

The Lion considered creeping off. The whole thing was so embarra.s.sing. Yet he remembered conversations usually concluding with "Good night" or "So long" or at least "p.i.s.s off." He didn't want to be rude and leave without the correct valediction.

He wrinkled his nostrils and sorted out the ribbons of odor. The pheromones of panic and anxiety (the young soldier's and the young Lion's, both). The salty sting of male sweat, and the cinnamony reek of human feces. Dried urine (faintly aphrodisiacal), dried blood (an astringent to the curled outer segments of Brrr's olfactory fissures). And mold, but not common leaf mold. This was mold on parchment that had been sized with bleaching.

Brrr had few words for those apprehensions, which were nonetheless tantalizingly distinct. He followed his nose and discovered a satchel of four books. They were dropped a few yards beyond the trap. He picked them up in his mouth and brought them forward to the soldier. He smelled the ferrous note of the belt buckle and then its complement, the tooth-sting of processed tin. The soldier wore a medal on his chest. Even in forest gloom the s.h.i.+ne on it was enthralling.

The Lion fell in love. He sat down with front paws laid out together, like a sphinx, until the felled hero began to stir.

"I brought you your books," said Brrr.

"Oh. I hoped you were a dream," murmured the soldier, which Brrr first took to be a compliment.

"I thought you'd want them." He walked the parcel over to the soldier and he didn't mean to drop it on his head. "Whoops. Sorry."

"They're not mine, you monster," complained the young man. "They're for you."

"I have no learning," said the Lion, "or I'd be happy to read aloud to you to pa.s.s the time."

"You mock me for someone else's crimes. Lion, I throw myself on your mercy."

"What can I do for you?"

"What do you think? I don't want you to return these books to the library return these books to the library!" yelled the soldier. "I want help! Go for help, you cretinous beast!" He was quite pretty, weeping.

"Wait here. I'll bring you some water to drink."

"I'm not going anywhere, 'cept to the breast of Lurlina if you don't hurry." The soldier ran his fingers over his shaven scalp. "I wish the bugs would wait until I was fully dead."

The Lion returned. It was hard to balance water in a scooped-out gourd, and most of it had spilled, but a few drops moistened the soldier's parched lips.

"Since you can't wrench this iron mouth off my leg, please go get my comrades," said the soldier. "If they've given up on finding me, they'll reconnoiter at the barracks in Tenniken. Tell them that Jemmsy sent you. They won't forget their Jemmsy. I'm their favorite. I'm like their little brother."

"Jemmsy, is it? Jemmsy, I can't have anything to do with soldiers! Soldiers and their campaigns, Jemmsy. Really."

"Don't kid yourself," said Jemmsy. "Everyone sleeps with the soldiers, in the long run."

"If I'm not mistaken, Jemmsy, you were among that troop a few nights ago, Jemmsy, boasting about bagging p.u.s.s.y and all that? Weren't you, Jemmsy?"

"You totally don't get it. But this is my punishment? To be lectured to death by a talking Lion?"

It was at this remark that Brrr first surmised that not all Lions could speak.

"You're raving, perhaps from starvation," said Brrr. "Jemmsy, let me find you some food at least." He lit out in the direction of Tenniken, in the direction that the fallen man suggested, and when he came across a slope of ripe strawberries he picked several quarts with his mouth and brought them back, delivering them one by one with a roll of his tongue.

The water had revived the soldier enough to be more aware of his pain. "Don't stop to feed me," he groaned, cramming the fruit in his mouth. "Don't come back with a salad course. Just get my mates. Get me some f.u.c.king help. Don't I merit that much mercy?"

"I can't actually tell. What's your medal for, Jemmsy?"

"Courage in the line of fire." Jemmsy began to bite his nails.

"And why do you wear it, Jemmsy?"

"To give myself courage."

The circularity of this was beyond Brrr.

"You want it? The medal? Take it. I don't deserve it anymore, anyway. Going to pieces like this." He unpinned it from his jacket. "You can fix it to the belt las.h.i.+ng those books together, and wear it around your mighty thigh."