2. The desert (II)

The defile through the ravine proved hard going. There was no trail to speak of. Sometime in the past — it might have been a month ago or a thousand years, he couldn't say — a sudden flood, rushing down from the hills in the distance, must have scoured through the sand and rock, leaving a ragged channel of deep pits, exposed boulders, and debris, and stranding here and there the crumbling, half-petrified remains of great dark columns of timber that had been carried from some hidden grove. The cat, on all fours, was more sure-footed and agile than he, and could easily leap over all but the highest obstacles, but even she picked her way slowly. Within an hour he had bruised one knee, twisted an ankle painfully, and scraped the skin from both of his palms. Sweating under the full sun, he was dehydrated and weak from lack of nourishment, but he stumbled and climbed and crawled on in silence, squinting ahead to make sure the cat had not abandoned him. When he slipped and his foot dislodged a stone, exposing an exquisite, tiny blue scorpion nestled beneath, he gave an involuntary shout, but she neither turned nor slowed her pace. He scrambled to his feet and hustled a few steps down the channel. When he looked back he saw that the scorpion had wheeled around to face him, its tail arched high, but it held its ground and made no move to follow.

To his surprise, around midday the air began to feel perceptibly cooler, though still uncomfortably warm given his exertions. They were now in a narrow canyon, partly sheltered from the sun by sandstone cliffs on either side. Here and there his fingers touched patches of darker sand, sheltered beneath an overhanging shelf or tucked behind a boulder, that felt slightly damp to his touch. A few yellow patches of lichen, unexpectedly garish in their colorless surroundings, clung to the rock walls.

When the cat stopped, panting lightly, and turned to await him at the foot of a steep and ragged slope of jagged and broken stone, he did not at first see the tiny pool. In diameter it was no larger than the kind of ornamental fountain one might find in the garden of a modest country cottage; the water, trailing down from the heights in a thin trickle, was no more than a few inches deep. In spite of the great relief this sight provided him, he did not immediately advance to drink. He eyed the cat for a moment, and only after she inclined her head and took in a long draught did he kneel down on the opposite side and attempt to do the same. At first he simply lowered his lips directly onto the water and stuck out his tongue, unconsciously mimicking the cheetah's technique. He immediately realized that this not only made him look ridiculous but that it was also uncomfortable and hopelessly inefficient. He turned his head to the side, lowering one cheek into the pool, but this was hardly better. Finally, blushing a bit in view of what he felt sure was a look of exasperation on the cat's face, he sat back, cupped both hands through the surface of the water, raised them to his lips, and began to slake his thirst. The water was slightly warm and mineraly, but after a few handfuls he began to feel markedly better, and sat back against the damp wall to rest.

“There are easier trails than this one, by the way,” the cat said, “but there is no water on them, and since you have made no provision for desert travel there was no choice but to come this way. You may rest here for a little while, but then we must continue if we are to reach safe camp by nightfall.”

Having said this, and before he had time to answer, she leaped away from him further down the canyon and quickly vanished from sight beyond a turn in the rock. He felt a sudden terror and confusion at being thus abandoned, but he was too exhausted to ponder the question of whether the cheetah's sudden disappearance rightly ought to disturb him or not. There being nothing he could do in any case to ensure her return, he had little choice but to trust that she would. He drank another few handfuls of water, nestled himself as best he could in the shade at the bottom of the cliff, and almost immediately fell asleep.

He awoke to the sound of footprints on sand. He wasn't sure how long he had dozed, but the shadows down the canyon had crossed over to the other wall, and he was now sweating in the sun's full glare. Lucinda stood over him; when he glanced up at her he was startled to find that her muzzle was streaked with blood. He sat up in alarm, but when he put his hand down for support he felt something small and soft beside him that had not been there before. It was a tiny gazelle, a yearling perhaps, no bigger than a lamb. Its neck had been broken by the cat's teeth, no doubt with a single, efficient bite; its head was splayed back awkwardly in a position that in life would have been impossible. Its back legs were gone, and the flesh on its lower back was exposed and caked with blood and sand.

“I've already eaten. The rest is yours. Eat what you want quickly, for we'll need to make up some ground.”

He stared dumbly at the delicate body, then touched one foreleg. It was still warm, though barely, and not a bit stiff; he could have bent and moved the joints as easily as if the gazelle were still cantering across the savannah. The idea of actually consuming what remained of it seemed, at first, inconceivable, but then he reflected on the emptiness in his belly and on what an opportunity, perhaps an irreplaceable one, was now at hand to relieve his hunger. One obstacle remained, however; he had no way of starting a fire, nor any timber to sustain one. His meal would be the raw carrion at his fingertips or there would be no meal at all.

Lucinda stood a few yards off and waited, wordlessly, her long tail flicking now and then. He could not disjoint the carcass with his hands, and so he knelt alongside it, raised what remained of its hindquarters in the air with both hands, and lowered his mouth to the exposed flesh. He hesitated, then realized that the only way to do what had to be done was to attack it ferociously, all at once, and gnaw off a piece before he had time to think about what he was doing. With a sudden movement he closed his eyes and snapped his jaws shut, but even as he did so the sensation and flavor of the raw flesh overwhelmed him with horror and disgust. He spat out the meager scraps his teeth had torn loose, heaved violently, and lunged to the water, trying vainly to wash away the taste, rubbing his teeth frantically with his fingers to scour away every trace that remained.

The cat watched him sidelong, then exhaled and turned her back on him, preparing to continue the day's march. He stood up, still feeling receding ripples of nausea, and prepared to follow, then hesitated and looked down at the remains of the gazelle.

“Leave it,” she said, barely looking back. “You'll go hungry, is all. It's of no use to me.”

April 30, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Chris Kearin. All rights reserved.