Baying At The Moon (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 2 Outside his window, close enough to see through the trees in
the garden, was the moonlit road. Dimly, from the restaurant down the road,
music drifted up. His aunt never ate out and did not approve of music. On the table in front of him was an exercise book in which
he was supposed to be working out algebra problems. Instead, all he had done
was doodle. Ships belched smoke as they battled stormy seas on the page before
him, and a steam engine chuffed out of a tunnel. Birds like carets joined
together hung above mountains like jagged cones. Almost unconsciously, he drew a parody of his aunt, with her
fat, almost cylindrical figure in its usual dotted dress, and mass of curly
hair. He made her mouth huge and shouting, so that it took up most of her face,
her lips like those of a trumpet, her teeth like paving stones. It was cruel
and brilliant and instantly recognisable. Tonight his fault was that she had had to do his laundry for
tomorrow and so had to forgo some TV programme or other (he wasn’t allowed to
watch her TV). Yesterday it was that she’d had to go shopping because he was
eating her out of hearth and home. Tomorrow, no doubt there would be another
excellent reason. He had got as far as this thought when the door to his room
swung open. His aunt entered, carrying a bundle of his clothes. She was so
busy finding a place to put the clothes down that he managed to turn the page
before she could see what he had been doing. She glared at him and the
formulae he was scribbling, was obviously about to begin lecturing him on the
subject of his laundry, then remembered something undone, some task unfinished,
and went muttering away again. The boy returned to staring out through the window and
watching the moonlit road, and wishing he were travelling along it, and going
somewhere far, far away.
She
paused below the lighted windows, looking up at the square of yellow light. The
lights attracted and repelled her at once. The lights meant meat, but light
meant fire too, and the ancient fear still slumbered somewhere deep in her subconscious.
She narrowed her yellow eyes and hunched her heavily muscled shoulders, tensing
for instant movement, but there was nothing. Not even a dog whined. All she
could hear was the music coming from the place she had already passed, on the
other side of the road Many times, over the years, she had found herself in
situations like this, where the meat was near enough for the taking but hidden
behind walls and doors. Each time she had won through, somehow. She wrinkled
her muzzle, exposing the huge canines. She would not fail now, not when the
prey was so near. She had some dim memories of the ways of the meat, knew how
they acted in their everyday lives, and had, many times, made use of this
knowledge when she hunted them down. Now she waited, smelling the air, ears
twitching. There had to be a way in, a door left open, a window unfastened to
catch the evening breeze. She would wait only so long. If no opportunity
offered itself she would move on. There was meat for the taking, but it had to
be taken with minimum risk. A meal was not worth her life. Faintly, through the torrent of smell and sound which she
was filtering for traces of her prey, she knew what she was, and knew where her
knowledge of the ways of the meat came from. It did not matter; they were meat,
no more. But they could be dangerous, so she crouched, waiting. A sudden sound startled her: the opening of a window,
followed by a rattle as a curtain was drawn back. The noise came from her
right, round the side of the house, and she turned in that direction, staying
as close to the wall as she could. The wall was dark, and if she stayed close
to it she would also be safe from any light shining out of the windows. She saw the woman almost at once; a short squat figure shaking
out a mat or something out of the window. A cloud of dust shimmered in the
yellow light as she shook. The woman’s attention was so focussed on what she
was doing that she didn’t notice the dark shadow that drifted toward her
through the night. She finished dusting the mat, dropped it on the floor behind
her, and leaned out again to pull the window shut. And by then it was far too
late to do anything but scream. [ Continue to page 3 ] |