Six

By J.S. Veter

"Welcome to The Bestiary! Unusual Pets for Unusual People since 1890!"

In The Bestiary, the rats have started a circus, Bertie the crow gives lectures on living with humans, and Blue the macaw, who understands English, has just been elected Speaker for the Parliament of Fowls.

All the animals in The Bestiary have a talent. All the animals, that is, except for Six.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shoestring House
• Release date: Jun 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9780995228313

J.S. Veter

J.S. Veter is the author of three novels and has published short stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Luna Station Quarterly, New Realm, and Seventh Star Press’ anthology Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword. Liked what you read? Please take a minute and leave a review at Amazon,  Goodreads or your favourite site? Reviews are food for an author's soul, and I read every review I get. The best way to support authors you enjoy (other than by reading their books!) is by sharing and reviewing. Thank you!

Book preview

Six

J.S. Veter

Copyright © 2016 by J.S. Veter

Cover Design by Robert Wakefield

Illustrations © 2016 Sam Purnell

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in Canada

First Printing, 2016

ISBN 978-0-9952283-1-3

Shoestring House

85 Creighton Road

Dundas, Ontario, Canada, L9H 3B7

www.jessicaveter.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Six

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

About the Author

About the Illustrator

For Dazzle and Duchess,

Jack and Nikki;

for Teazer,

Abu

and Adelaide

One

A loud noise woke Six from a deep sleep.

When she opened her eyes, she was already standing up. It was a trick Mother had taught her as soon as she could walk: to be up and moving at the first sign of danger. But Six found she didn’t always get her direction just right, and sometimes, as now, she banged up against the side of her crate and blinked at the wall. Six waited for Mother to scold her, waited for the light nips at her neck to remind her to get it right next time, but the scolding didn’t come. Then Six remembered that Mother had been taken away, that all her brothers and sisters had found families and that she, Six, was alone in the crate.

Something was going on in the store.

Six turned and faced the aisle. Her sight had improved a lot in the last few weeks. Now, Six could see clear across the floor to the door. The door closed heavily even as she watched, the bell hanging overtop clanging tunelessly. Six caught the interesting smell of two boys who were leaving. They were in a hurry, as though they were chasing something. Six sniffed the air experimentally. They were, indeed, chasing something. Something old and nervous and too-well fed. Six chuffed happily. The boys would probably catch it.

Don’t you even think about it! It was the store owner, Tea, shouting. Moggy! Get back here!

Six hunkered down on her belly. Sure enough, the white cat had escaped again and was even now standing in front of the closed door, scratching at it impatiently. Moggy was always getting out; Six lived in complete and total terror of him. He was huge, to start, with great tufts of fur spurting out from his face and two small mean eyes that never blinked. Six tried to look invisible, but a small whine escaped her. The last time Moggy had escaped his cage, the store had been closed, and the cat had spent the long hours of the night stalking back and forth in front of the rodent cages reciting recipes for things like Gerbil Jerky and Mouse Loaf and Coquilles St. Rat. The mice, especially, had been beside themselves for days. They had refused to do any of their usual tricks, and business in the store had seriously suffered. Tea kept lowering Moggy’s sale price, but no one who came into the shop wanted to risk his temper, or his claws. Now that he had grown out of kittenhood, it seemed the store would be stuck with Moggy forever. Luckily, today the cat had escaped during regular hours, and Tea was here, and she was stomping across the wooden floor to pick up Moggy and put him back into his cage.

Moggy wanted none of it. Six’s ears pricked up. The great white cat waited until the Tea was almost upon her, and then rocketed off towards the Amphibians. The owner’s hands missed her by a whisker, and Moggy left a slowly descending mist of white fur in her wake.

Moggy! Tea snapped. This is too much! And she was off after the cat, her sneakers making squeaking noises on the polished wooden floor. Moggy bounced off a toad tank, careened past a pair of sleeping corn snakes – neither of whom actually woke up – and landed in a spitting, hissing heap in front of Six’s crate. Six wiggled away quietly. Moggy’s back was to her, his tail was thrashing, and Six was overwhelmed by the smell of indignant cat. Tea approached softly, crooning.

Here, pussy-wussy, she said. Come and have some nice milk.

‘Milk’ was a word Six knew and she perked up, tail wagging so hard it lifted her bottom right off the ground. Moggy knew the word, too, and sat up, ears forward.

That’s right, Moggy, let’s get you some nice milk, Tea sang. Tail still wagging, though more slowly now, Six felt herself grow calm. The woman’s voice worked on Moggy, too, whose fur had smoothed and whose purr was revving up.

Milk, milk, milk for pretty puss, Tea continued. Who’s the prettiest puss ever? She got closer with every word she said. She smelled like the bird cages she’d been cleaning all morning. Now, she was right in front of Moggy. She reached out one hand, fingers pinched as if holding something. Maybe a treat? Six sniffed from her cage. Moggy, nose working, whiskers reaching forward, was sniffing too. Definitely a treat, Six thought, and yipped excitedly.

Moggy had forgotten Six was behind her. As soon as Six barked, the white cat leapt straight into the air and ran right at Six’s cage. He hit the door with a tremendous crash, loud enough to wake all but the laziest of the nocturnals. Moggy seized the wire momentarily with his claws, glared at Six in feline surprise, and bolted again. Six spread herself on the newspaper in the bottom of her cage as it rattled with the force of Moggy’s departure.

Moggy! Tea called in exasperation. She walked up to Six, looked down at her through glasses which magnified her eyes, and said Fat lot of help you are, before stomping off again after the cat. Six buried her head in her paws, wrapped her tail around herself, and tried to be as small as possible.

Now you’ve done it.

Six squinted at the macaw above her. Blue was hanging upside down from his perch, flushed with excitement. She’ll be forever catching that cat now, and we’ll all get our dinner late!

At the end of the aisle, in the Small Animals department, the rats took advantage of the owner’s distraction and began to rehearse their juggling routine (they had a performance that night). Six spent a lot of time watching the rats. Since her brothers and sisters had been sold, weeks ago, there wasn’t anyone to play with. Blue the macaw did gymnastics most of the time, practicing his dismount. When he wasn’t practicing, he was preening his blue and yellow feathers and lecturing Six at length on topics which were of grave importance to parrots, but not at all interesting to puppies. Six had heard all about nest building, and keeping your beak sharp and more than she ever wanted to know about droppings. What she really liked, Six thought, as Moggy continued to evade capture, was smelling things. Blue, however, had very little to say on the subject of smell.

Of course smell is very nice if it’s all you’ve got to go by, Blue would say grandly, "but I would much rather see that a thing is rotten and stay away from it than get close enough to smell it. Think of all the preening I’d have to do!" As if the very thought of preening made it necessary, the macaw would polish each one of his feathers all over again.

For Six, though, everything was about smell. Until her eyes had opened, all she had known was the warm milk-smell of her mother, and the wriggling, scat smells of her brothers and sisters. When her eyes had finally opened, the world had been very confusing. Everything was so big, and things loomed aggressively. She had even been terrified of Tea when she first saw her! But then Six had closed her eyes, concentrated on the smell of her, and realized it was someone she knew. Soon she matched the tottering, towering stick-figure with the false-flowery, black-tea smell she’d known her whole life.

Luckily for Six, the store was a treasury of smell. It changed day by day as animals came and went, stock items came and went, and store assistants worked their various shifts. Every time the door opened, a new rush of smells came in from outside: people and food, the things they brought in on their shoes and their skin, and the wonderful, complicated smells attached to children.

For example, Six thought, sniffing the air appreciably, she could still, over the smell of upset cat and aggravated Tea, smell the two boys who’d been in here. They were very interesting, smelling nothing like fake soaps or perfumes. The boys had smelled like they hadn’t bathed in a day or three; they’d eaten French fries recently, and had been in close proximity to some mud only this morning. Six liked boys. She thought that if she were ever to leave the store, she would like to leave with some boys. She imagined playing with boys would be a lot like playing with her own siblings: a roiling mass of tails and teeth and paws and just plain fun. Girls, Six had noticed, were different. The girl standing by the counter now, for example, smelled like detergent, and mint toothpaste and new leather shoes.

Would you look at that, Blue whispered.

The girl was speaking earnestly to Tea. They were using words Six didn’t know, which meant they were not discussing food. Tea was holding a carrier out to the girl, and the girl was handing some crisp, new bills to Tea. But who was in the carrier?

Six’s nose worked, but over the new plastic smell of the carrier, she couldn’t tell who was inside. Who? she asked the macaw. Do you know who?

There were mutterings up and down the aisles of the store as the animals whispered across the spaces between their cages. Who was it? Who had found a home? Who was leaving the store? The rats stopped their juggling and pressed their long faces through the bars of their cages. Even the gerbils woke up, babies like tiny pink nuggets standing on top of one another and trying to smell out who the lucky one was. Eventually word came back from the Cattery.

It’s Moggy! Blue whispered. Moggy’s been sold!

All the animals in the store stopped snoozing, scratching, slithering and swimming. All of them watched the girl with the huge cat-carrier in