“Girl.”

Eva did not turn her head.

“You, girl. The girl picking through the garbage.”

It wasn’t garbage. It was recycling, or it would be once she put her bag in the battered green and blue bin.

“I know you can hear me.”

Eva was pretending she could not hear the cat.

“Don’t walk away from me.”

She was walking away.

She was walking quickly, then running, and her sandals made dull sounds across the dingy sand until she reached the graveled part of the road. Then there was crunching and skittering, her footing almost lost in her haste, and she had to throw the arm not around her bag to catch herself. She didn’t want to look back, but instinct made her fear and her pounding heart tell her that the cat would be chasing her.

The cat was not chasing her.

It was still laying on the rocks, hunched low, its short wings with its bars of color and whiteness hanging loosely off its back.

It looked back at her from across the path, its eyes catching and holding the light of the setting sun. She could not quite decide what the color of those eyes should be: there was the crimson, but that could have just been the sun, and there was the clear crystal blue, but such a color could not belong to anything alive. She had seen it in only a few places: in an advertisement on the grocery’s television, in the thread of a fine lady’s dress, and in the sky that existed between the night and the day. The color of the dawn.

The cat spoke again.

“I cannot hurt you. You don’t have to be scared.”

For the first time, Eva realized the cat was a woman. Or, she was a cat that had a woman’s voice, rich and deep like a singer she had seen a recording of once. It made her a little less afraid, enough to turn slowly, once more hugging her bag to her chest.

It was strange, what the cat said.

“You can’t…?”

Usually, people said that they wouldn’t hurt you. It was what the carabineros said when they knocked on doors or took people away, though most times people didn’t come back. That was how it had been for all of Eva’s eight years of life, though Mama said it was different when she had been a girl. Though there were troubles back then, just like there were troubles everywhere, the police were supposed to be good, and the big cities like this one still had lots of people living in them.

The beaches had been cleaner then, too, and the sand was not so gray.

“I can’t. I haven’t the power any longer.”

Eva hesitated, then began a set of slow and careful steps that brought her close enough to see the patterning of spots across the cat’s hide. Those were crimson, the same color as the sun, while the rest of the fur was a rich purple like the parts of the sky that were turning to night. She thought she could see a bit of cream far down, perhaps on the cat’s belly, to match the cream on her short snout. From the way she was built, Eva thought she was not a cat like a person might keep in their house, but a cat that lived in the brush and the forests. She’d seen them in books, though she had never seen a cat anywhere that had wings.

Her wings were short and strong. A hawk’s wings, or a songbird. Eva wasn’t sure.

The cat was very beautiful, though Eva could see her sides moving with great effort, a labored breath passing through her parted jaws.

The cat didn’t look hurt and yet Eva found herself asking her–

“Are you dying?”

“Mm. I think so.”

The cat was calm. That let Eva stay calm, too, and she shuffled a little closer, until she came to a rock wide and flat enough that she could sit down on it. The cat moved, too, but only enough to move one broad paw under her chin, which Eva guessed was to be more comfortable.

“Why are you dying…?”

It probably wasn’t polite to ask. Mama scolded her sometimes for all the questions that she asked, wanting to know what the street signs said or why there was no more fruit in the grocery or how the aging hotels had looked when tourists used to come every summer. Usually Eva tried to hold in the questions, but the cat’s blue eyes, which really weren’t scary at all, were so clear and so steady.

“I am dying for two reasons, child. First, because Mankind has killed me.”

Eva’s fingers clenched, crinkling the plastic of her bag. “That’s horrible.”

“Yes,” replied the cat, her lids dropping for a moment. “But you are not surprised, are you?”

“...no, I’m not. It happens.”

And she’d heard the things Mama hadn’t wanted her to hear, about the villages further from the cities and the animals they brought in from the hills to eat when the gray ocean had stopped giving them enough fish to survive on. That was recent. If Eva tried hard enough, she could recall digging in the sand with her mother as an even smaller girl, pulling up clams that had sometimes cut her fingers. Those were gone now. She only ever found the empty shells.

“What’s the second reason?”

“I left my kingdom.”

Eva’s brows came together, but before she could ask, the cat laughed, and it was a lovely, lovely sound. It made her think of chocolate and flowers and the nighttime.

“I am a king, dear child. I am that which changes the world. I am the last of a long, long lineage that has battled for land to rule and to change.” The cat sighed, a warm, sad sound that lingered. “A kingdom has all a king’s power in it. If they leave, the power in their bodies will one day run out and without it, they will fade away.”

“...but why did you leave?” Eva was not sure what the cat meant by being a king, since her only understanding of the word were people on thrones in places far away or back in time. Still, there was an ache inside, making her ask. “Shouldn’t you go back?”

The cat laughed again, very softly.

“All the kings I have met on my way here asked me the same thing. How could I? How could I leave? My kingdom needed me. I should have fought until the end. I would still have lost, because no other king has ever conquered Mankind, but I should have stayed.”

The cat had to pause to catch her breath. Eva was almost sorry to have made her talk, but the cat looked at her after. Her eyes were steady, sure of herself, and so, so blue.

“Child, can you do me a kindness?”

Eva’s head and shoulders came up, her expression startled.

“What can I…?”

“Carry me to the sea.”

The cat turned her head, looked toward the stony hills and rows of dried brush and grass that hid the coastline from view. They really weren’t that far from edge of the sand; they couldn’t see the water, but they could hear the waves, that constant, rolling rumble that had never changed.

Eva put down her bag.

“Okay.”

The cat was only a little bit bigger than a housecat, but she was very heavy. The weight of a stone, or a bag of sand, or maybe a whole tree, if the trunk were somehow wrapped in fur so velvety fine that Eva gasped the first time that she touched her. Dense and warm, so soft that her skin prickled from feeling it, Eva thought that she might cry, though she didn’t know why she wanted to cry, and tried to focus instead on lifting the cat up against her chest with a grunt.

Broad paws folded over her shoulders. A downy ear brushed Eva’s cheek. When the cat exhaled, she thought she could smell flowers.

The way was normally very easy, but with the cat in her arms, Eva had to be very careful. Thick stones, some of them from the earth and some from shattered concrete, were broken up by snatches of grass and thick, low bushes. They had never gotten much rain in this part of the world, mainly just mists and fogs save for a few months out of the year, but the wet seasons had grown shorter and shorter, and what plants survived were rougher, denser things. The lichen alone could make her slip and she had to avoid the wide patches of it as she crested the hill, the wind snatching at the flyaway hairs that had come out of her braid.

Past the hill, gray sand stretched out to the left and the right as far as Eva could see, dotted with bits of trash and debris and old clam shells. A few birds picked at the papery bits, looking for food, but they all turned to look at her and the cat and she swore that they paused for several seconds too long. When they all took off at once, it startled her, and she had to grab tight to the cat as she made it past the last few rocks.

The smell wasn’t good. Low tide left all the dying plants and fishbones behind.

“Keep going,” the cat said. “Up to the water.”

Eva wanted to grimace, but she thought that if someone was dying, they should at least be able to do what they wanted to do before they went. Her Mama told her that; you had to live as best you could, in the best way you could. This life was all you had.

Carefully, so carefully, Eva marched across the sand. Her feet sank in, one sandal and then the other getting caught, so she left them behind, and bit her lip as she stared at the ground so as to avoid anything that might cut her feet. There would be glass sometimes, or bits of metal, and the doctor in the city was always telling children to be careful of the metal especially.

She and the cat were lucky. It was mainly paper, plastic, bones, and soot today. Eva could go right up to where the sand grew smooth and wet, the gray foam left bubbling in the wake of every coursing wave. When she felt the spray upon her toes she finally stopped and gently placed the cat down.

The cat surprised her by putting out her paws. She wobbled at first, but came to stand, and pulled her wings up into a fold on her back.

Eva thought again that the cat was so, so beautiful.

“I could not see the ocean from my kingdom.”

Eva wiped a little sweat from her brow and then sat down beside the cat, bending her legs up and holding her skirt from beneath to keep the sand out. She hadn’t asked the question and maybe would not have, if the cat wanted to be alone, but it seemed as though she wanted to talk instead.

“I heard of it from the birds and the kings of the rivers. When I thought of it, I only wondered what kings would live there and how they would do battle. I spent my whole life in battle, always at odds with the other kings of the forest. My lineage and theirs had been fighting for fifty million years. We didn’t know anything except war.”

The cat shifted her weight and Eva saw her flexing the toes of her paws, feeling down into the sand. She couldn’t help but copy her, the gray mush squishing up between her own toes.

“I liked it. I was good at it. It was a king’s life, changing the world and living in splendor. I don’t regret it. The other kings asked me if I was unsatisfied with it, if I dared go against my nature, but that wasn’t it, child. That wasn’t why I left.”

The next wave rolled in, soaking their feet.

“Do you know why the sea is gray?”

Eva hugged her knees a little tighter, her chin resting on them.

“The forest is burning.”

“Yes.”

The cat had to sit, too, and Eva saw that her back legs were trembling with weakness.

“The forest has been burning for as long as you have been alive, I think.”

“Mhm. Mama says that’s why the tourists don’t come here anymore.”

Yet the way they were both quiet after that told Eva that the cat knew the same as she did, that it wasn’t just the fires, though Mama did what she could to keep Eva from knowing too much. Here, the cities just grew empty and people just went away, but in the west and in the north, past the plateaus and the great mountains that the grocer said kept them a little safe, the troubles were worse. There had always been troubles everywhere in one way or another, but no trouble before had brought a dying cat that could speak to Eva, and so she thought that perhaps these were the worst of all.

“I think what makes me the most angry is that Mankind was not even going to war with me. I fell as a consequence. They had fought one another before, burned parts of my kingdom and left their blood to soak the earth, but this time…oh, this time. The fires never stopped. I screamed and cut them in the dark, but they blamed each other, and the war went on. They may still be fighting it, though the ash is all that is left.”

On the horizon, a scarlet line cut through the gray, and the night’s first cold wind put goosebumps on Eva’s arms.

“I had to understand, child. I had to know why. While I still lived, I had to demand an explanation from Mankind and since Mankind would not speak to me, then I would have to become like them. I would have no kingdom, no strength, no sovereignty except that which I carried with me, and I would go as they had gone, to all the edges of the world.”

“Did–”

It felt wrong to interrupt. But that was Eva’s nature; she was always asking questions.

“Did it work?”

The cat turned her head. In the growing night, her eyes gave off an airy, gentle glow.

“Yes.”

The cat’s breathing was no easier, but it was also no worse, and the smell of flowers had not gone away.

“I am nigh powerless. I am so weak and so fragile I thought I would die the moment I touched the sea, because the kings in these depths are filled with so much old, stubborn strength that they could cast me aside as easily as they do the sand and the stones. Yet I am here.”

“Like me.”

A cat could not smile, but Eva knew the cat was smiling, anyway.

“Like you.”

Gingerly, in the way that an old grandma might move, the cat turned so that she could sit and face Eva instead of the sea.

“What is your name, child?”

“Eva.”

A little purr came from the cat.

“Eva, I am Sowori. I used to be the King of Chiribiquete, but my kingdom is now ash in the sea.”

A deep, deep shiver took Eva, one that briefly stole her breath away, but what it was and what it meant she would not know or understand for many years.

“I saw you with your bag.”

“Mhm. I was picking up the litter.”

Sowori smiled again. “You want to change things.”

“I want things to be better.”

Eva wasn’t sure about much in her life, but she was sure of that, and when her chin rose, so too did the cat’s wings and stumpy tail.

“Then let me teach you how to make things better.”

~*~

Passing kingship.

Character design by and adopted from . Story part of my ongoing series, Kings of Earth:

1 - The King of Central Park
2 - The Second Worst King in New Jersey
3 - The Half-King of Kansas
4 - She Sleeps in Nunavut
5 - When Manhattan Was Just an Island
6 - The Sand, the Stones, and the Sea at La Serena
7 - A Light Died in Union City
8 - The Last Man in Monument