I felt that Vati was there with me and my playing was drawing him out to the bright margins of his darkness.
Liberated, I whirled and capered until I heard laughter. At home I loved to generate laughter. Nothing made me happier. So, who was laughing at me, here in this lonely forest?
I paused, and found myself doing exactly what the Spirit Lion had told me to do: stretching out and touching the earth with the whole of my being. And listening.
My eyes had closed from sheer exhaustion, but I was in a state of trance. The laughter was high-pitched and silvery, and it was coming from hundreds of exquisite beings of light. Their eyes flickered as they laughed, not at me, but with me. These were beings of pure joy. Clustered high up in the trees, they too were listening to some finer, higher song from the Universe beyond.
I kept still and the tiny beings began to descend like glitter falling through the forest. They came closer and closer until I saw their colours, and felt their love cover me in a canopy of stars. And then I slept, like a dead cat sprawled across the forest floor, and I dreamed of a straight and secret path that would lead me to Vati. The path had the softest, most luminous green grass that healed my paws, and on either side of it rose tall plants with straight stems, growing densely and protectively together, like a guard of honour for me.
Day after day I trotted through the trees, sometimes running and leaping over clumps of plants, sometimes following narrow paths which looked promising as they wound between ferns. There were plenty of mice and voles for me to catch, as well as starlings, who descended in twittering flocks to feed on the berries, stripping whole trees bare in one sitting. They were easy prey as they paraded around the forest floor, driving their beaks into the ground to find worms and grubs. Mysteriously they moved as one mind, their plumage glistening with rainbows, their wings whirring as they took off in unison, darkening the sky with their swirling clouds.
The forest had hilltop places almost touching the sky, and I was drawn to them. Each time I expected to see the shining river, and the far-off land where Vati waited for me. I wanted to see the end of my journey. But each hilltop only gave me a view of another wooded hill, and another beyond. It was never-ending, and I started to feel downhearted. The nights were cold now and I chose to travel in the moonlight, sleeping in the daytime when the sun warmed my fur.
One night the moon seemed to be bobbing alongside me, silver white behind the black trees. The night was a dark crystal, sharp with frost, and all I heard was the whisper of my paws trotting through the cold. Ahead of me was a hill without trees, and the sky above it was coppery and alive with moving lights. At the top, I sat, spellbound, my tail twitching with excitement. Far away the river shone white in the moonlight, and the long bridge sparkled orange, like a necklace of beads strung across the water. There was the taste of traffic fumes in the frosty air, the hum of cars and lorries, their lights reflected in the water as they crossed the long bridge.
So far away … it both encouraged and frightened me. How could a little cat get safely across that busy bridge? I’d have to try.
On the forest floor the air was still but the west wind roared in the high branches as I spent many days sheltering miserably from a storm. I lost all sense of direction, and began to wonder if I was wasting precious time while Vati was edging closer and closer to death.
Utterly depressed, I curled up in the leaves, and tried to sleep, switch off, forget I was now a homeless, nameless cat on a mission. Rain glazed the surface of my fur, but I didn’t bother to move. Starlings flew down, but I didn’t bother to catch one.
Why bother? I was seriously lost.
My fur, which I’d been so proud of, was driving me mad. Itching, full of burrs, matted beyond belief, and, despite my efforts to groom myself, I ended up being sick from the hairballs I had somehow swallowed. There was even a piece of bramble caught in my tail.
So intense was my anxiety about Vati that when I finally saw the bridge again I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t stop and try to work out how best to cross it. I thought, Go for it, Timba, and soon I was trotting along the grassy edge of the slip road that led onto it.
I didn’t expect it to make me ill, but it did, right from the start, down there in the haze of pollution that hung over the tarmac. The winter afternoon was dove grey and still. A yellowish white mist drifted over the river, mixing with the traffic fumes.