Her name was Mauz.
She liked to scatter crumbs of assorted things in her wake, convincing the strays there was something to munch on when she walked through alleys and called out 'Heerreee Puss Puss Puss Puss' and they would come running with a perked up bob in their nice curved tails and an alertness to their eyes that often meant 'Feed me'. She liked to sneak down amongst the dumpsters, where the overhead lights did not beam and the cockroaches lurked in the nearby corners, mulching as they munched. She would huddle down close to the ground, upturning her nose to the alley stench and snuffling about playfully, a mimic to the feline reflex that had three or four of them at a time, skating around the obstacle course she had led them down to satisfy that curiosity they were known for. There she would wait, with a few strips of fish or some bits and nips, crouched with her chest to her thighs and knees, hands spreading the tender pieces out onto the alley floor where they rushed in to gobble and gulp with the hurried speed of the hungry and the possessive.
She made sure to make separate piles, so that they didn't end up fighting one another. Well, that and to keep them apart.
She liked to watch them munch and purr around their meals, licking chops and paws with quick swipes of a comb like tongue and then wait for them to finish and glance up at her with an expectant 'More please' to which she would reply with a most tidy smile and a nod that said 'Nope. That's all done, now.' and of course? They would get insistent.
'Please' they would meow, sauntering up to try and seduce with offerings of 'You can pet me if you like' against her leg or her hand and she would say 'Nope, No more left' and they would continue to meow with that expectancy, or step off to the side to lick themselves clean of the dirt smudges and stink that would never seem to fully go away. Just diminish to bearable. She would watch them do this and 'Ho Hum' to herself while they meowed and purred with all the guile of the greedy.
And quick, like canaries out from under the paw, she would suck in a breath and reach out for the Haze, that filmy presence no one without the right eyes could hope to see and pull a little into herself or out of herself, until she stared with eyes, beady and black and a nose, long and twitching and a pair of ears, slightly curled and twitchy as well. Until her nails grew a crooked bend and her hands tucked up beneath her chin. Until she hunched amongst the meowing lot not as a girl almost sixteen, but as a Ratling staring hungrily quiet at the morsels in front of her.
She'd done it a few times in the past, sometimes for hunger's sake but most times for a little petty revenge. She'd grab one by the back of the neck and watch it hiss and flail and snap with the adroit ferocity of the caged. Of the outraged. Of the displeased and imperious.
'Unhand me!' it would yowl, sending the others scattering into nothings and invisibles and she would reply 'Nope. You got greedy. Nothing left for me to eat. Except maybe you.' and she would. With big wide gulps, a broad set of jaws the rival of any Redgrinner and teeth long enough to bite clean through one side of anything and out the other, Well. Maybe not anything but a plenty many things.
Soon enough, a few gulps later, and there would be no more stray. She'd wipe her mouth and burp and spit and leave the bones to lay beneath the dumpsters, sometimes with a little grisle and fat on them, for the other little Ratlings she knew hid in holes and cracks around places like these because they weren't big like her. They weren't attack back and petty revenge like her.
And that's what she did, sometimes. Sometimes like tonight, but not just that sometimes. Sometimes, like tonight, she had somewhere to be. Someone to meet. Someplace to go and with something in hand. Like the sometimes tonight, she was on her way to the Markets. To find herself a path. Not just any path, because that led to the wanderings that made up a mess and though she didn't much mind a mess, she did much mind when it happened to be her that was the mess. So sometimes tonight, she was off to find herself a path that led to a specific mess, where she hoped to make a sort of brightness come up and out of the blue with one simple gesture. One little token. One something she happened to pick up on a whim and a wing and a Just for Show.
Then?
Well then, she could watch without anything else to do and go no few Tonights without needing a sometimes.
* * * * *
The Markets.
People called them lots of things, because the more names a place had, the easier it was to find and the harder it was to look for it. Linen Square, The Quarters, Empirical Bayou, Quislings Anonymous, Pocket Town, Firsties, Mama's Bakery, Scarecrow Square, the Qualms, Oddity Bobbit. She liked them all but didn't much care for any of them in particular, except maybe Mob Market, but that was mostly because she liked crowds and hated people. It was a hard place to get to and a worst place to go, unlessen you had some method of finding your way around like a map, but then, those were rare. Rarest of the rare. You had to have a good friend in a Nocker, or a half dozen Boggers who'd done some jogging in the lanes and made it out with their hides intact to be able to gimmick one of them and even then? Hardly foolproof.
No, most folks settled for a compass. Cheap, reliable and one use friendly. Not much good for the merchant sort, most of which went in once to start a business and never came back out again. Half the time 'cause they hadn't hit it big yet and the other half, 'cause they did but couldn't find their way back out again. When you traded and bartered in the Markets, half the time it was hoping someone had half a charge left on a Compass that they could follow back out to an entrance. 'Course, you'd be paying arms, legs, hands and feet for the effort but for some folk, that wasn’t terribly more than terribly inconvenient.
It just so happened that she’d been saving for a night like tonight. A night when she knew where she was going and how to get there in the most vague of ways because you had to know vaguely where you were going. If you knew exactly where you were going, you’d end up there in a hurry and if you didn’t know where you were going you’d never get there. Vaguely made sure you were never too late and never too early and no one had enough reason to be anything but tolerant at the worst of it.
She had a vague idea in the form of an image she’d heard about from a friend of a friend. Something like a Caterpillar, long and red and big. She’d conjured up something about the length of her arm and it gave her shivers every time. Things that went scuttle and slick were right at the tip top of her get right out and gone list, but then she came prepared tonight which was a Sometimes sort of night.
She dug a fist into her pocket, smearing the remnants of the stray along the outside seam, a little bit of blood to taint her path and give it a good strong smell to follow back if all else failed, though she imagined she’d planned enough that all else had a pretty good shot. Her hand touched the rim of the strange pocket watch, boosted and thieved from the antique store out on Madison Grove, where the old folks stayed and watched behind glasses so thick, she swore they could read the lies on her teeth without her opening her mouth once inch. Still, they were too busy picking up the pieces of the lamp she’d bumped into to notice the missing piece and she figured they wouldn’t miss it, seeing as how it’d probably been there for a few years by that time.
And really? The big shopping plaza was due to go up in a few months and then a missing pocket watch would be the least of their concerns.
So plan A sat comfortably in the stitch of her pocket, ticking away comfortably on a brand new wind up (She’d made sure to turn it ‘round until her fingers hurt from pressing. A good long wind so it wouldn’t run out anytime soon) and she pulled her hand out and moved to pluck at the seam of her breast pocket. The pocket in her flannel shirt which was three sizes too big, fiddling around with her tongue between her teeth until she found the nail clippers. A dollar store was kind enough to charitably provide and she even got some young leggy creature, three shades too tall for her and a half shade too pretty, to flash a little more than she was looking to flash at some boys in the aisles who’d never forget it. Who said a Fish hook and some wire couldn’t be put to creative uses?
She pressed the two ends together experimentally, without retrieving the piece from her pocket. The soft ‘click click’ found her satisfied and she removed her hand. Plan B was fine and she had plenty of clippings to spare that day and for many others beyond and if push came to shove came to pull, she could always ditch her shoes and there were ten more nails for the clipping to be had.
No, tonight was a sometimes night which was a good night often enough to be worth it. She had been preparing for days and for days before that and she was the patient sort but couldn’t stand waiting long.
That’s why tonight, she found herself at the Rabbit Hole, where the Wonderland for Reals, Calamityville, John and Janes, Kaiser Sousay’s Place, that Other Part of Town, the Warps, OOBE’s, Yuletide Griftons, Sallys, the Chernobyl After and Where Cowboys Go could be found. Because the Markets was called a lot of things but not all things, just a lot so as to make sure you never got there the same way twice and if you did, it wasn’t because you wanted to. Only the best sorts of people and places had more than one name. Only the most dangerous were ever just happy with the One.
Which was probably why she was not a little scared but sort of terrified of having to deal with her vague reason. The Caterpillar. The Rust Golem. The Tock Collector. McGibbon. He had a lot of names himself but never called himself any of them. Those were just the ones people threw around because they were a little too scared about the fact he only ever gave out one.
She pulled the hard iron door open, struggling with the weight, thankful that she was in good shape but hated that it wasn’t good enough, absently wondering what sort of possibles came with a name like Mr. Click.
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