Thank you.
Your message has been sent and will receive a response.
Meanwhile, you can access
HunGar Book Galley
By clicking HERE.
The Rat, The Cat & The Architect
Episode One
As she plotteth revenge, the Cat Queene receiveth
a peace token from her Enemie.
Threading a path through the broken rubble of the dead Goddess, powdered with snow, trod the Cat Queen, high in her mountain realm. Yonder starkly projected the stump of a column, and here lay on the flagged pavement, hoary with frost, a fragment of the divine sceptre. Strangely barren albeit were these ruins. The cataclysm had blasted most of the fabric instantly to atoms, swept clean away by the screaming night wind. Then for days the Cat Goddess had rained as a fine ash to coat the fronds of that tropical forest extending from the feet of the mountains. Katrina approached the high altar, cracked in two like an egg. Out of the colourless sky snow began to pelt again. The cruel wind dug through her fur with fingers of ice, while grain-sized flakes pecked her eyes and sensitive pink nose. There she stood, paws in freezing slush, gazing dully at that cloven altar top, still dark-stained from the bloody suppers of the Goddess. A flame of rancour combusted in the heart of that Queen. Into the hollowness of her despair was sucked a furnace blast of hot fury, driving from her all feeling of cold. Then with burning resentment she began to plot, and as she plotted her tail switched to life and weaved a maze in the air like the loose coils of smoke that presage the flame. The windings of her machinations ever returned to spiral round one obsession: How to turn tables by plucking from under the Rat King’s nose the two-faced magician, Alfred A. Brussel.
Thus her steward found her. He brought with him two bedraggled, travel-wearied arrivals: one, an hideous rodent with long yellow fangs, bearing a key; the other, a feline of her own realm, but of the abhorrent rats lately imprisoned. He, haggard and mangey, bore an iron box. These two envoies delivered also a message of the Rat King:
Judging the mightiness of a sovereign as more brilliantly illuminated by what he might give than by what he hath power to take, His Munificence, Othon XVIII., Head of all Rats on this side of the sea and Potentate of field mice and shrews, doth desire to offer His Peace to His vanquished Foe on most generous terms, and, in token of the Gentleness of His Heart, His Largesse the King Rat doth present to Her Majesty, Katrina, Queene of Cats, this small Box, the contents thereof, He doth satisfy Himself, She’ll find do measure in worth much bigger than size.
With curiosity she studied the bringers of this offering, so unlikely matched. ‘Most unnatural mating,’ she mewed, ‘howbeit cunning of the Rat. For, by this device hath he frustrated the natural coupling of male and female parts, thereby certifying delivery of the prize. Give thou unto me first the key.’ When she had the key about her neck upon its chain, she said, ‘Now, the box.’
Then she dismissed all and betook herself to a closet high in her house, greedy to discover the contents of the box, but taking care first to bar the door. Windows in that high place did cast down stares upon her alpine realm, sentried all round by stern visages of granite, bearded with snow. Between those peaks long ribbons of valley streamed down to that forest ponderous with its shade, roiling to a far off azul mist that was the true sea. Hidden among the undulations of that sylvan province stretched vast marshes where the air swam with heat and monstrous insects. There, on an artificial archipelago, dwelt the rats in their teeming city wormed with canals and twisting alleys. When the wind came from that direction, cats said the stink was intolerable.
That view did not delight Her Majesty as it had formerly, when naught in it challenged her sovereignty, ere the Great Pyramid raised by the brazen rats gored her pride. So her visits to the room had grown infrequent, but now her eye did latch upon that rival mountain. Its shimmering slopes of gossamer melted into the air as it were of celestial frame. Night, the temple that crowned it, striding amongst the wheeling stars, made companion with the Moon, and sometimes caged it. Under its basement, thought she, were he prudent, the Rat would have sealed up its architect, Alfred A. Brussel. In the Rat’s place, it’s what she would have done. She considered, too, that, almighty as that many-storeyed mountain might seem from afar, yet was it built on plague, exhaustion, famine. It was built on the hollow bellies of rat children without strength to whimper for the food they lacked; on the dead rotting in the filthy alleys of the rat city, the quick too weak and too despairing to give burial to the heaped carcases. It was built on the hunger of Othon himself, the King Rat, if rumour be true that his cook made broths by boiling the stuffing from the palace mattresses. Once the girth of three common rodents, now, her spies reported, he lifted the draping mantle of his emptied skin like robes of state that he might walk.
So, as she steered her eye back to the peace offering, that she had set upon a shelf, her mind was bent not on peace, but destruction, for she thought: ‘Not clemency doth his gift betoken, but weakness. Some doubt concerning the invincibility of his God even now becloudeth the Rat’s heart.’ The resolve to exterminate the rodents, erase them forever, took shape within her and congealed like molten bronze. The fragrant smoke of their roasting flesh piled in heaps would rise even to the starry spirits, whilst the dripping grease would water the earth. Many mortal deaths would be traded for one divine and the Cat Goddess would again prowl the night, haunting the sleep of the rats. Her eyes blazed as if with the very flames that she envisioned and she spat with contempt at the paltry trinket box with which the dissembling Rat had sought to oil her submission. She savoured the haughtiness with which she would refuse the gift. She only wished she could be on hand to see the frustration on his face when the box was returned with her contemptuous retort.
Then it struck her that to disdain even to open it would be an insult still more delectable. With a voluptuous purr she turned her hindquarters to the box and padded from the room. Forthwith she made council with her generals, deliberating on the design meetest to capture the magician. Her generals regarded her bemusedly, for she did now and then treat herself to morsels of conceited smiles. They could not know that on those occasions she relished her proud rebuke of the Rat. Ever and again she mused on the treasure the box contained: What had he wagered could appease her? How keenly would he feel her refusal? When her generals had reverently taken her leave, having satisfied herself of possessing the will to put aside her curiosity, should it so please her, she judged she had, practically speaking, done so by proxy, wherefore she had no reason any more not to peek inside the box, which neither the Rat nor any one else need know.
She stole to the door of that upper room and slipped the key into its lock.
‘Your Majesty.’
She turned and saw her steward approaching. Guiltily she slid the key into her pocket.
