"Gabriel King - The Wild Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Gabriel)

for his patience and to Joseph James for his eagle eye; to Ginny Black and Joyce Newman for breeding such
beautiful cats; to friends and family; and to all cat-lovers everywhere, especially those, like Rita, who feed and
care for the feral cats of America.

The cat is called in Hebrew, Catul; in Greek, ailouros; and in Latin, Catus,felis. The Egyptians named it mau,
for the sound of its voice, and gave it worship. To the Northern peoples, it is a Creature of fertility and fortune;
but the Romany call it ma-jicou, and abhor its presence.

All Cats are of a single nature and agree much in one Shape, though they be of different Magnitude; each
being a Beast of Prey, the Wild and the Tame, it being in the opinion of many a diminutive Tyger.

The most miraculous of Beasts, it walks invisibly and silently the highways of the Earth, and many believe it
invested with the Magick of the World.

The Ancients have prophesied that in every eighty-first generation of the most ancient of the FeUdae there
shall come a Cat of Power, which shall not be greatest of Magnitude, but possessed of the most exquisite
Soul. And the greatest of these shall be the Golden Cat, which shall come only when the ancient north joins
with the Eye of Horus, and it shall have the Power to harness the Sunne and the Moon and the Wild Roads,
and may render to any so lucky as to possess it the very Key to knowledge of the Natural World.

тАФWilliam Herringe The Diminutive Tyger, 1562


Part One




Love the World and Follow Your Nose

PROLOGUE

The one-eyed black cat called Majicou sat between a rusting cage and two sacks of stale grain on a shelf in
a shop on Cutting Lane.

He had positioned himself with care; of the shop's inhabitants, only the spiders he had dispossessed were
sure he was there. He seemed to be asleep among the shadows and soft gray cobwebs. But his one eye
was half open, and from it he had a hunter's line of sight through the shop to the street door, where small
rippled-glass windows admitted just enough weak afternoon light to illuminate a stock of leather collars,
tartan-lined wicker baskets, and gaudy paper sacks of dried animal feed. Among this poor stuff, a human
being moved clumsily about its business in a cloud of disturbed dust. It seemed to Majicou as tired and
greedy as most of its kind. It seemed as ill as they all were from the bad air and bad food they had made for
themselves. Majicou watched it idly for a moment as it pushed a rat's nest of straw, torn paper, and spilled
fish food around the old wooden floor with a broom.

Unless their affairs touched his, the black cat had no interest in human beings. He sat on his shelf as still as
a stone, and half his mind was somewhere else. There, fires broke out; there were cries of terror both human
and feline; he was responsible and not responsible. It was long ago but not so far away. The other half was on
the shopтАФwhere, despite the gloom, nothing escaped him. If his cold eye could not penetrate, his whiskers
mapped the air currents instead. His nose was full of the thick, complex smell of imprisoned animalsтАФ"pets,"