The Catswold Portal

“You can go to the store for more chicken. The cat can’t.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that. It’s got what it wanted so far.”

“She really isn’t yours? She’s beautiful, Brade. Where did she come from? Her coat is lovely. And those eyes…” She knelt, lifting the cat’s chin, gazing into its eyes. “So green—and a line of kohl around them, the way the Egyptian queens did. Oh, you are beautiful, my dear.” She seemed to need the diversion. As she knelt there stroking the cat, the line of her body softened, her face grew softer. “Did Morian bring her to you? That would be like Morian.” The cat had finished eating. She picked it up again and rose, holding it against her throat. “How can you hate her, Brade? She’s so dear.”

“I don’t hate her. I just don’t want a cat. She’s a stray. She’s Morian’s.” The cat looked at him coolly and intently from Anne’s shoulder, her green eyes nearly on a level with his. He stared back at her, annoyed, then headed for the phone.

Morian picked up on the third ring. He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

“Mor, the cat’s still here.”

“I just got home. I’ll be down in a while.”

“Anne’s here. She has a problem.”

Morian came on down, took a look at Anne, and drew her to the couch. As Anne talked Braden cleaned up the broken plate, then began to clean his palette and brushes. The cat lay curled in Anne’s lap, asleep.

Morian didn’t argue that Anne might be mistaken about Tom or overtired, or that Tom needed mental help. She didn’t suggest seeing Bob, she just listened.

When at last Anne was eased, Morian took the cat from her, cradling it in her arms. It hardly woke, relaxing against her as it had against Anne. Nothing was changed about Tom, Morian hadn’t solved anything, but Anne felt better, had gotten it out of her system. The two left together, Morian giving Braden a pat on the cheek, carrying the cat away to make it a bed and get it settled; there was no question of her wanting it.

Not until some hours later did Wylles wake from napping, confused about where he was, feeling sick and cold then hot. He rose and slumped to the window, sweaty and irritable in the unfamiliar, sticky pajamas. He was looking at a garden he had never seen before. He tried to find some coherent memory, and could not. Everything was muddled, unfamiliar, and confusing. He could remember nothing before this day.

He knew he did not belong here. Maybe he was caught in some enchantment, though he could not remember much about enchantments. He did not know where he belonged, only that he did not belong here.

When he saw, in the window of the house next door, a cat clawing at the glass trying to get out, he froze. He hated cats, though in his crippled memory he didn’t know why. But watching the dark, white-marked beast, he was filled with fear and disgust.

Chapter 30

The Harpy sat rocking beside Mag’s wood stove, her expression content but remote, her thin hands cupping her little mirror, her wings lifting awkwardly to avoid the chair’s moving rockers. She regarded Mag stubbornly. “If I showed you where Melissa is, you’d go charging off to find her. You wouldn’t leave her alone. This is her life; she must sort it out for herself. I assure you she is all right.”

“She’s not all right. She’s been changed into a cat, and she has no idea how to change back. I never let her learn a changing spell, never let her see one. Now,” Mag said remorsefully, “she’s in danger every minute. How can you say she’s all right? And if Siddonie learns she is still alive…” Mag stopped speaking and glared at the Harpy.

The Harpy thought Mag would love to wring her feathered neck. She said, “I would not worry about Melissa. At this moment she is content and happy.” She wanted to spy on Melissa some more—she knew she was in Braden West’s studio—but she would bring no vision until Mag had left the cottage. She closed her eyes, slowed her rocking, and pretended to doze.

Mag glared, flung on her cloak, grabbed up a bucket of slops from the corner by the door, and went to tend the pigs.

The Harpy sat petulantly, thinking. She didn’t understand where her sudden streak of caring had come from; she had never cared about anyone, not since she was a fledgling pecking around her mother’s feet among the flames of the Hell fires. Caring, feeling pain in her heart, wasn’t a harpy’s style.

But she did care. She found herself uncomfortably worried about Melissa, though she would not have told Mag that.

Maybe this burgeoning sentimentality was Mag’s influence. Or maybe it stemmed from some genetic fault, some weakness left over from gentler times when harpies lived in the upperworld and consorted with humankind. Then, when harpies still lured sailors to their deaths, there had been tender moments, moments of passion and sometimes of real love and caring before they drowned their hapless victims.

Maybe she was a genetic throwback.