“You were two feet away, I don’t think this one’s on me,” he snapped back.
A time hoop sizzled into existence before their eyes. It wasn’t like any time hoop Monterey had ever seen before. It was jagged and strange, like a tear rather than a hoop.
(As if a cat had drawn it in the air with a shaking claw.)
Oceanic light burst out of the tear, cresting, bubbling. A blur of orange smashed out through the rough shape, almost colliding with Monterey.
Professor Boswell rolled roughly on the grass, leaped to his feet, and hacked up a hairball.
“Boz,” said Cressida, overwhelmed.
“They took him,” Boswell snarled. “Ruthven. Didn’t even show themselves to me, the cowards.”
“Who took him?” asked Oxford in alarm. “It wasn’t my mother, was it?”
“They’re getting closer,” Monterey noted. The women in blue marched steadily towards them as if they had all the time in the world. The lack of running away from his team had become a matter of concern.
“Blue robes,” growled Boswell. “Purple cats. Something about a jade pineapple…”
“That’s them!” blurted Monterey. “Literally right over there. Ladies in blue robes, looking terrifying. Can none of you see them?”
“I thought you were being dramatic,” said Cressida, staring blankly in the direction of the advancing army of blue.
“I’m always dramatic, that doesn’t make me wrong.”
Damn it, Monterey was going to have to take a leadership position. He hated that. “Everyone follow me!” At least he could see what they were running away from.
He led his ragged group of friends up the slope, dodging serving staff and several giggling nobles in masks and costumes that at least looked like they belonged in the seventeenth century.
Boswell ran at his ankles, close enough to trip him up. Monterey had to assume that Cressida and Oxford were on their heels. He clutched Lovelace tightly to his chest, not wanting to lose her again.
Monterey almost tripped over himself when he saw more blue robed women up ahead, walking slowly with what looked like large purple sphinxes at their side. “Purple cats,” he whispered, not quite believing it.
“Steer clear of them,” Boswell said sharply.
“Yes, furball, I’d worked out that much.” Monterey hared off to the side, then back down the slope towards the golden stage, all set up for the fairy tale ballet.
The crowd were already taking their seats, though the ballet was not due to start until midnight. Louis XIV was the kind of host who assumed no one would ever want to sleep when he was in a party mood. Monterey appreciated that about the man.
“Up here!” yelled a voice.
Monterey stared around wildly. Too slow for Boswell, who leaped directly up on to the stage, winding around wooden tree silhouettes painted in gold, with jewelled fruits hanging from them.
Lovelace pushed away from Monterey’s chest, her paws landing lightly on the high stage.
“What are they doing?” huffed Cressida beside him.
“Making a spectacle of themselves,” Monterey said, scrambling up on to the stage himself. “You’d better come too. Protect me from homicidal ballerinas.”
A time hoop hovered at the back of the stage. Monterey had almost missed it, because it looked like a giant golden mirror studded with rubies. But the roiling, oceanic light inside was familiar, as was tiny, big-eyed Fenella Church in her over-sized coat, standing on the other side of the hoop.
“Hurry up!” she called, reaching out a hand to beckon.
Boswell and Lovelace slowed, side by side, both of them tense.
Monterey felt Oxford and Cressida draw up on either side of him. “How did you open that without a cat?” Oxford called out sharply
Fenella took a step back, and they were able to see Nero, white and fluffy as ever, perched on Fenella’s shoulders.
“She has a cat,” said Nero, in a voice that dripped with at least 50% more than average arrogance. “I suggest you allow yourself to be rescued.”
“Rescued,” Cressida said scornfully. “You’re an Anachronaut.”
“I am indeed an Anachronaut,” said Nero, radiating an aura that was pure ‘cat who got the cream’.3 “But what I am not is them.”
Cats never need to point. They have expressive enough eyeballs to do the pointing for them.
Monterey glanced behind him. The seats for the audience were mostly filled with space nuns in blue cloaks, and purple cats. He saw a woman in a gold dress and mask suddenly shift, her features blurring, and then she, too, was bald and robed and gazing directly at him like she wanted to eat him for breakfast.
“These people really want to know where the jade pineapple is,” Monterey said weakly.
“Is it you?” asked Cressida.
“Why would it be me? It’s a pineapple.”
“Sometimes things aren’t what they say they are. I’m not a church.”
The horde of blue cloaks shimmered, and multiplied. Monterey saw a blue-cloaked space nun ride up on the back of a horse that had recently been honoured by the royal buttocks of the Sun King.
