The Palace of Laughter by Jon Berkeley Page B

weeds and long since abandoned by the swans. A small ornamental house with an open front perched on the edge of the pond, where Lady Partridge and her visitors had once sat on summer afternoons, fanning themselves and watching the swans sail among the water lilies. This was the gazebo, and in its dilapidated ruins the last few stragglers were just arriving to attend the Council of Cats. Lady Partridge’s hundredcats had been joined by several stocky mousers from the surrounding farms, a number of strays, and a delegation of town cats from the tall houses of Larde.
    Little put her finger to her lips and beckoned to Miles. He followed her to a willow tree beside the pond, whose feathery branches hung to the ground, making a sort of leafy cavern. They ducked under the tree and sat themselves on a carpet of dry leaves. Between the branches that trailed in the water’s edge, they could see across the pond and into the gazebo, which was so packed with cats that those on the lip of the pond were in danger of falling into the water. A beam of moonlight shone through a hole in the roof and picked out a large tomcat. He was completely white except for a black tail and ears, as though he had been dipped in ink at both ends. He sat on top of an oblong of sandstone, carved with a tangle of leaves and a horned face, that stood on its end in the middle of the gazebo.
    The black-eared cat opened his mouth and let out a low yowl, which silenced the others for a moment. Little sat forward as though to hear better. For some minutes the cats meowed and growled back and forth as cats will, especially when they areoutside your window and you are trying to get to sleep. Miles listened as carefully as he could, but he could make no sense from the sounds the cats were making. “What are they saying?” he asked Little. She put her finger to her lips again, and leaned over to whisper in his ear. “We must be quiet. We would not be welcome if they knew we were here.”
    â€œI can’t understand a thing,” said Miles.
    â€œYou are listening too hard. You must stop trying to listen before you can hear. The voices are there, and they’re not that different from your own.”
    Miles tried to grasp what she was saying, but it made little more sense to him than the mewing of the cats. He sat and listened for a while longer, but soon became sleepy and bored. He felt in his pocket for Tangerine, who grabbed his finger and lifted himself out. Miles put him down, and Tangerine crawled about happily, rummaging among the crackling leaves and tossing the furry willow seeds at Miles when he found them. In the distance a voice was saying, “The circus cats have a right to hunt our fields, provided their stay is short.”
    Somehow Miles knew, without even looking, that this voice belonged to the black-eared cat perched on his sandstone throne. He forgot Tangerine for a moment and stared in amazement at the moonlitfigure in the center of the gazebo. The cat’s voice sounded just the same as it had before, and he couldn’t understand why the meaning had not been clear to him all along.
    â€œWhat right is that?” called a bony black cat who was wedged into a corner at the back. “There’s three and more big cats hunting our fields since yesterday. Fat fellows they are too, living well enough on circus leftovers. Why they need to be muscling in on our pickings is beyond me.”
    A large cat, stretched out on the gazebo roof, chuckled quietly at this. “No one tells us where we can hunt and where we can lie. We are citizens of the road and guests of every town. Besides, as you say yourself, there are plenty of scraps to be had at the circus, if you have the teeth to ask for them.”
    Several of the cats that crowded the roof and the surrounding trees sat up to look at the speaker. One hissed at him and stalked to the other end of the roof, his tail held high. “I wouldn’t share food with a