The Catswold Portal

“Who is? What are you talking about?”

“The girl—Melissa.”

Mag started.“You’ve seen her? Well, you know to call her Melissa, all right. But of course you would,” she said, glancing at the dangling mirror. “What is she doing in Circe’s Grotto? How did she find it? No one knows how to find that ancient cave.” The old woman picked up her bucket, stepping around the guzzling pigs. “Why would you bother to bring such news to me?”

“The king knows where to find the grotto.”

“So? What has King Efil to do with Melissa? And how did you get out of the Hell Pit?”

“She forced me out with spells.”

“Melissa?”

“Of course not. The queen. Brought me up from the pit against my will. Locked me in her dungeon.”

“How did you get out?”

“She freed me.”

“The queen?”

“Melissa. Freed the rebels, too. They were half-starved. On their way home even now.”

“Melissa freed the rebels?” Mag grinned. “All of them?”

The Harpy nodded.

“But what,” Mag said, “has the king to do with that?”

The Harpy waited for Mag to figure it out.

Mag looked at the Harpy for a long time, her eyes slowly widening. At last, she said,“The king helped her? The king—oh, no.”

“Oh yes,” said the Harpy.

Mag stood quietly. Then she took the Harpy’s hand and led her toward the cottage, speaking of hot tea and biscuits.

When the Harpy had finished her tale, while supping up four cups of tea and a dozen biscuits, Mag said,“I will go and bring her home. What a foolish thing to do—what a headstrong, exasperating girl.”

“Leave her be,” said the Harpy.

“Why would you say that?”

“What would you do if you went there? He has already bedded her—likely she is already with child.”

Pained, Mag folded and unfolded her apron.

The Harpy said,“Why didn’t you tell her the truth, old woman? Why didn’t you tell her what she is?”

Mag looked at the Harpy intently.“She would have gone off among her own people. I’d have lost her. She needed to settle first. She is too headstrong; she would have done something foolish. I kept meaning to tell her.”

The Harpy said nothing.

“I was working up to it when she went off. And now…” Mag shook her head. “Couldn’t you have stopped her?”

“It was not my business to stop her.” The Harpy smoothed her wing feathers. “Don’t you see? What she has done could mean victory for the rebels—not that I care.”

“I see clearly that it could mean victory. And I see that it could mean her death if Siddonie learns of this.”

“Perhaps she will not learn of it.”

“Siddonie’s hatred goes back a long way.” Mag looked at the Harpy. “If only your mirror could show the future.”

“You would not want to see the future. This is Melissa’s destiny, let her be with it.”

“That is foolish talk—she is only a child.”

“She is seventeen. Possibly she might bear a healthy baby and become, in truth, the next queen of Affandar.”

“That, too, is foolish talk.” Mag rose, angrily poking a stick in the fire.

“You have no right to be indignant,” the Harpy said. “If she is successful, your rebels will have a bloodless victory.”

Mag sighed, and returned to her chair.“She is only a child. She knows nothing.”

The Harpy stroked her mirror, bringing a warming vision of Hell’s fires. She had done all she could. Mortals were stupid and ungrateful. She wanted to be home among her own.

She waited until Mag dozed, then quit the cottage. Hours later when Mag woke, the Harpy was gone. Nothing remained of her but two white feathers clinging to the plank floor.

Chapter 19

Melissa woke hot and uncomfortable. The king slept sprawled across her, his leg pinning her. She slid out from under him so carefully he didn’t stir.

Dawn light drifting across the mosaic ceiling made the jeweled branches seem to move. The ruby and amethyst and lapis birds stared down blindly, just as they had blindly watched the passion of lovemaking last night. She stretched languidly. In one night she had shaken off the last vestiges of Mag’s little Sarah. In one night she had changed. Though the strongest change, that had nothing to do with Efil, was the knowledge of her heritage.

She pulled a satin pillow behind her and lay trying to remember a shape-shifting spell, but she could not. She could recall no such spell from Mag’s book, though she remembered blank pages: pages surely enchanted so she had not seen what was there.

Slowly she brought back knowledge locked away from conscious thought. She dredged up casual remarks made by the rebels. She thought about the Catswold nation of Zzadarray, isolated far to the north, and about Catswold resistance to Siddonie’s rule.

This was why Siddonie wanted her. To help enslave that rebellious nation.

And Efil wanted the same. He wanted her for the armies a Catswold queen could bring to support him. He had known what she was and had concealed that knowledge from her.

And she had yielded to his spells.

Remorse filled her. She had given herself freely to him. She, heir to the Catswold queens, had given herself not for love but to be used. She felt cheapened, shamed.

She told herself she had come to his bed to save the rebels, that she had kept a bargain.

Watching Efil, she understood sharply that she had lost last night more than her virginity. He had taken from her something more. An important part of her life had never occurred; she had been catapulted from child to someone already regretting the nature of that closest of alliances: wonder was missing. Joy was missing, and tenderness, and trust.

There was no honesty or trust between them. All was manipulation, playing the game.

That, she guessed, was the way Efil had lived all his life. His marriage to Siddonie had been political maneuvering as, surely, all their life together had been.

And now she was part of that manipulation.My new queen of Affandar. My pretty Catswold queen.

Yet in spite of her disgust, her pulse quickened as she watched him. In sleep he seemed younger, seemed almost innocent. Watching him, she vacillated between shame and desire.

How dark his lashes were, curled against his cheeks. His lips were soft, faintly pouting. He slept on a silk pillow embroidered with an ancient dragon, souvenir from the upperworld where he had traded a small jewel for it. Efil said that, eons past, Netherworld dragons had found their way up through the tunnels to the upperworld. Seen by men, tales had been created and images made of them in clay and paint and silk. He had amazed her, speaking so offhandedly of his trading journeys there. Such journeys were to Efil as ordinary as a ride to Xendenton.

He spoke just as casually of Siddonie’s upperworld ventures. In the small hours as they lay talking, as he flipped open a crystal decanter causing its ruby wine to fill two goblets, he had looked deeply at her, with an expression she couldn’t read. “You know nothing about Siddonie, my love. Well, but why should you?”

She had stroked his shoulder, tracing her finger down his cheek.“Tell me.”

His face went sullen, filled with old angers.“She is obsessed with power. She lusts for power, and not only Netherworld power. She has built power in the upperworld, though perhaps it is small pickings by upperworld standards.”

“I don’t understand,” she had said. “I thought there were no powers there.”

“Not magic powers.” He had lifted the crystal goblet, and winked at her. “Money. In the upperworld, money creates power. And upperworlders will pay ridiculously high sums for Netherworld trinkets—diamonds, emeralds, rubies. It was easy for Siddonie to buy power.” He drained his goblet, and refilled it.

“She has established for herself a complicated investment structure, and she has recruited an army as well.”

She had stared at him, perplexed.

“Oh, yes, my dear. Siddonie now has an army of upperworld rabble, derelicts, upperworld refuse. She has collected men no one wants or will miss. She has given them food and shelter, and trained them to our weapons.”

“But why? To make war there, in the upperworld?”

He arched an eyebrow.“Of course not. She means to bring them here to fight beside our own soldiers against the rebels.” Efil smiled. “Siddonie is more afraid of the rebels than one would guess.”

“But upperworlders…Why would upperworlders fight for her?”

“When she befriended those men, few of them believed in anything. She has built allegiance among them. Now they believe inher, now she is their goddess. She has changed their need for liquor, through spells, to a need to serve her. She gives them security and material comforts. She furnishes Netherworld women to tease them and drive them nearly mad with lust.” Efil smiled. “She has turned the upperworld rabble into her eager slaves.”

He had seemed filled with talk. As if, Melissa thought, once he had laid claim on her, in bed, he must tell her all his secrets. Perhaps he needed someone to share his secrets.

“Have you not wondered, my dear, why her seneschals are so often gone from the palace? Three are concerned with Netherworld intrigues. Vrech is responsible for messages and instructions to her upperworld associate.

“Havermeyer comes down occasionally, but Vrech is the errand boy; he is back and forth often. Havermeyer is titular head of the corporation. Siddonie and her brother Ithilel hold title. The company operates barely on the edge of the law, but of course no one can touch Siddonie or Ithilel. They would simply disappear.”

“But what use is power in that world, if there is no magic there? What does she gain?”

“Siddonie likes controlling others. She lusts for power, and more power.”

“And does she plan to rule the upperworld as well as our world?”

He laughed, and traced his finger down her cheek.“You are an innocent one. The upperworld is immense. Even Siddonie has more sense than to challenge the giant corporations. Though she has amassed an interesting fortune. She does it for recreation. And she does it as well, of course, as a cover of respectability for the recruiting.”

He drew her to him, stroking her hair.“Siddonie has established herself as a philanthropist. She has bought slum buildings and turned them into hostels for the poor. It is easy to recruit men without jobs or families from such a place. They welcome her offer of country air, warm clothes and beds, hot food in exchange for a few hours work each week. Once they are housed at the ranch, of course, the enchanting, skillful women from Xendenton and Mathe make sure they will not leave.”

He cupped Melissa’s face in his hands. “Do you see, my love, how vital our role will be? Do you see what we might prevent by wresting the throne from her? If she brings those hordes down, she will sweep across the Netherworld enslaving every land.”

He looked deeply at her.“We can prevent that. Together we can free the Netherworld of Siddonie’s tyranny.”

Last night she had believed in him, she had believed all that Efil told her. Warm with lovemaking, feeling at one with him, she had burned to stop Siddonie. He had made her believe she would easily dethrone the dark queen, that Siddonie, without an heir, would fall and the Netherworld would be free.

He had driven away all her doubts, all her good sense. She had ignored his self-interest, had ignored the sure knowledge that within Efil there was no core of truth, no desire for good over evil. For right over wrong. She had pretended not to know that everything Efil did was for his own expediency and power. Now, for the first time in a long while she thought about the good, true things Mag had taught her, and she understood them. And she knew that Efil was not a part of that decency.

Efil stirred and woke, and lay watching her.

“I dreamed,” he said, distraught. He reached for her hand. His palm was sweaty and cold.

His distress alarmed her.“What did you dream?” Dreams were too often prophetic.

“I dreamed of a changeling child. I dreamed that Vrech carried Wylles to the upperworld and brought a changeling down. That Vrech brought a healthy boy down to take Wylles’ place.”

“But it was only a dream,” she said softly, seeing the pain in his eyes. She could not hate him when he felt such pain.

“No one traffics in changelings anymore, Efil. That was all in ancient days—it was a dream.”

“It was so real. I saw Vrech carry Wylles out through an upperworld portal. I saw him bring the changeling child down into the tunnels, and the boy looked uncommonly like Wylles. But he was stronger, rosy and healthy.”

“Maybe Wylles will get stronger. Maybe that was what the dream meant.”

He sat up against the pillows, pale, shaken, trying to get hold of himself. After several minutes he said,“I suppose it was a dream. It would take Siddonie months, years to find a child who looked like Wylles.” He drew her to him, kissing her nose and lips. “Before that our own son will be born and Siddonie will no longer be queen. Anyway, Vrech hasn’t yet…” He faltered, then said too smoothly, “Vrech hasn’t done anything to make me think…”

“Vrech hasn’t yet what?” She pulled away, and sat staring at him, alarmed.

His face slid into a smile.

She caught her breath.“It wasn’t just a dream! Siddoniehas planned a changing!You knew! You knew before we—before you brought me here!”

“Of course I knew,” he said easily. “And I have to stop her. Together, we can stop her.”

She swung off the bed, snatching up her dress.“You bred a child with me. You—all the time you knew she could prevent that child from having claim on the throne.You knew this! And you made a child in me! I will—I will lay every spell I know to destroy it!”

He was out of bed, pulling her to him.“Our child will be stronger than any changeling. Trust me. You have the Catswold strength. And you will have the Catswold nation behind you. With our child, we will defeat Siddonie no matter if she does bring a changeling.” He cupped her face in his hands. “There is a magic among the Catswold, a power for life that can defeat her.” He backed her against the wall, stroking her, handling her too roughly, hurting her, whispering spells to dominate her.

She fought him, pushed him away. He threw her onto the bed, forcing her until in a tide of passion she clung to him. Appalled at herself, she let him take her, driven by a wild, animal lust.

When they lay spent, she was ashamed. She hoped he would sleep. She made a sleep spell, silent and insistent. And when he did sleep, she slid off the bed and pulled on her rumpled dress. Angrily she cast the open-spell and watched the wall swing back. She was angry at herself, and angry at the powers that had lured her; angry because she could have resisted those powers. She was shamed because she had not.

Standing in the opening, she saw, away through the woods, the palace shining pale against the green-lit sky. She stood for some moments watching for guards, and when behind her Efil stirred from sleep, she spun around fiercely whispering another spell at him.

He slept deeply again.

She had stepped out into the woods when she saw riders leave the palace. She drew back, waiting until they had gone. Then a lone horseman came out the gate. It was the queen’s seneschal, Vrech, hunch shouldered, booting his horse along in that ugly way he had. He was headed south, his yellow cape billowing.

She remembered that a tunnel lay to the south, and Efil’s words exploded in her mind:Vrech is responsible to her upperworld associate, he is back and forth often…I dreamed of a changeling child…I dreamed that Vrech carried Wylles to the upperworld…Vrech goes up more often…

She closed the wall behind her and moved to follow Vrech. Soon she was running, keeping in sight his yellow cape. If there was a changeling she wanted to know it. She wanted to prevent the switch. She was determined not to let the tryst happen for nothing. She ran, her emotions and purposes all in a tangle, only knowing that she must follow Vrech.

Chapter 20

Melissa ran, ducking branches. She was just able to glimpse Vrech’s yellow cape disappearing between the trees as his horse trotted away through the forest. Running, she felt twigs catch and pull her hair, and she jerked her skirt higher to avoid the grasping vines. Soon Vrech vanished beyond the palace among the forested hills. Her breath burned in her throatas she turned aside and ducked under the pasture fence.

With a quick spell she brought a pony to her. She grabbed his mane and slid on, opened the gate with a spell, and pushed the willing beast to a gallop. As, behind her, the gate slammed closed, she bent low over the pony, willing him to a run. Soon again she saw the yellow flash of Vrech’s cape. He had slowed his horse. She slowed the pony and followed quietly in shadow. He was moving up along the river that wound through the forest. Her pony wanted to nicker but she quieted him with a spell.

Vrech followed the river for several miles. Among the trees flocks of birds fled away from him. Where a stream branched away from the river, he turned to follow it, but soon it flowed into a low cave and disappeared. As Vrech dismounted she turned the pony aside behind a tangle of mulberry bushes.

She watched him unsaddle his horse and tether it with a spell where it could graze and drink. He took from the saddle a lantern with a bundle. Carrying these, he disappeared into the cave, ducking low. She was cold with fear, wanted to go back. She spellbound the pony where it, too, could graze and drink, and followed Vrech. Ducking into the cave, she was terrified he had seen her, that he would be waiting for her on the other side.

But he had gone on. Beyond the opening the roof rose higher, and far ahead the earthen walls were lit by Vrech’s receding light. Vrech’s shadow humped and twisted as the lantern swung. Beyond him, the tunnel snaked away into blackness. She followed slowly, trying to made no sound. At her feet beside the narrow trail the stream ran deep and fast. But its faint churl did not hide the sound of Vrech’s boots on the rough stone.

The echo of his steps grew fainter and his retreating light dimmer. She stayed close to the wall so the green daylight behind her would not silhouette her, but soon that light was lost as the tunnel curved. She could see nothing now in the blackness but the glow of Vrech’s distant lantern. The air grew colder, soon the path became slippery. She knelt, feeling out across solid ice. Vrech had surely known it was here, and he had hardly paused. Carefully she crawled over the ice floe, then rose. This was the tunnel to the upperworld; she had no question but that that was where Vrech was headed. The thought of climbing out of her own world into the vast, unending emptiness of the world above filled her with hollow terror.

At last the air grew warm again, then the stream dropped away from her feet into a chasm, and here the trail narrowed, too. The spaces below her echoed back to her with the scuff of Vrech’s boots. When his passage dislodged stones, each fell down and down clattering until its sound was lost. She did not hear the stones strike bottom. She clung close to the one solid wall, and soon she had lagged so far behind that Vrech’s light had vanished. She wondered if he had heard or seenher and had doused his light and waited around the next bend. She dared not bring a spell-light.

Maybe the tunnel had split, maybe she was lost. She moved on faster, feeling ahead with each step to be sure there was solid earth under her reaching foot.

But then soon, frightened and wary in the darkness, she began to sense the path ahead of her, began to know which way the path was turning, and to sense the spaces and densities around her. She was aware of the solid wall almost as if she could see it, aware of the thrusting slabs above her, acutely aware now of the hollow chasm beside the path, as if some other sense than sight picked out the contours.

She had never had this sense before; surely this was Catswold sense, and it excited her. Accurately perceiving the inky spaces around her, she hurried on until she could see Vrech’s light again. Moving ever upward, curiosity filled her, about the world above.

Mag said the upperworld was awash with falling water, burnt by the spinning fire of the sun, and scoured by tearing wind. Mag said love was deeper there, babies healthier, and that there was in the upperworld a power that had been lost in the Netherworld. She said they did not have magic, but that other power was as strong as magic. The old woman grew morose sometimes, longing for that world. Melissa had no idea why she had left it, or why she never returned.

The dropping chasm disappeared, the stream ran again beside the path, sending spray across it. She knelt and drank, wishing she had a waterskin to fill. She was painfully hungry, and she was cold again. She imagined the queen making this journey wearing a fur cape and warm boots and gloves, her servants carrying food and wine; a safe, cosseting entourage within which the queen would travel warm and cared for. As I would, she thought, if I were queen.

Well, to Hell with that. She would rather be herself, and free, than be like Siddonie.

She waited impatiently while Vrech stopped to eat. She could smell onions, and could hear him chewing. Her stomach growled. They seemed to have been in the tunnel forever.

After many more hours walking, as the tunnel rose it narrowed so tightly and the ceiling dropped so low she panicked. Walking crouched, her head bent, then creeping, she held her fear in check, sweating, trembling. If she let her fear master her, there was no one to help. To beg help of Vrech would be to die in this tunnel.

But at last the constricted space eased, and the way rose more steeply. Twice more Vrech stopped to rest, and once to urinate. When she passed that place in the path she could smell his sour scent.

On and on up dark, winding ways. She sensed vast and dropping chasms, sensed jagged, tumbled boulders teetering across black space. Once she put her ear to the stone wall and heard beyond the stone the hushing roar of an under-earth sea. The tunnel grew so steep in places that steps were cut in the path. Hungry and afraid, she grew achingly tired. She went on heavily, wishing she were safe back in Mag’s cottage. And then suddenly ahead Vrech stopped and spoke. The thunder of his voice, after the long silence, turned her cold.

But he wasn’t speaking to her. He was reciting an opening spell. She heard stone scrape against stone and saw a stone wall swing in, then his light moved away beyond the wall, and the wall scraped closed, and she was alone in total darkness.

Tracing her hand along the rough wall, she felt adze marks where the earth and rock had been cut. She found the solid end of the tunnel and, to her right, a wall made of small stones set into mortar.

She repeated Vrech’s spell.

The wall moved toward her, pressing in against her. She slipped around it ready to run back down the tunnel if Vrech was there. She stood looking into a storeroom, an earthen cave cluttered with a ladder, wheelbarrow, potting table, and garden tools. She was alone.

There was a door in the opposite wall. The streak of yellow-white light beneath it told her how bright this world must be. She moved to the door and pressed her ear to it. She could hear wind blowing; she could feel wind shake the door. And when she lifted the latch the door was pulled from her hands by the wind. Wind hit her, pummeling her. Sunlight exploded in her eyes. She stepped back, covering her eyes, pushing the door closed. Red spots swam across her vision.

When she opened the door again, she was ready for the light and the wind. Wind whipped her hair and dress against her. Light burned her. Squinting, she searched the brightness for Vrech.

She could make out nothing clearly. Masses of bright color swayed before her; tangled branches swung away to reveal blinding light, then swung back again. She was in a hillside garden. Down the hill stood three houses, their windows filled with the garden’s bright, blowing reflections. When she turned she saw three more houses above, and above those rose the empty sky. She looked straight up at total emptiness and went dizzy, reeling. Clinging to the door she felt as if she would fall upward straight into that tilting and endless space.

And in the sky rode the sun.Ra. Osiris. Elven tales of the sun god filled her. She felt drawn by that powerful being. The sun made her feel weightless and giddy; she wanted to run through the garden leaping, wanted to bat crazily at blowing leaves. The wild abandon that filled her was beyond any human experience, made her long for claws to rake the trees, made her feel she must have a tail to lash.

And when, controlling her wildness, she turned to pull the door closed, she was facing cats, dozens of cats. She thought they were alive, then saw that they were carved from the wood of the door. They were familiar; she thought she had seen them before and she reached to touch their little oak faces.

Nine rows of cats, nine cats to a row. She didn’t need to count, she remembered. She was a little girl again, wearing a short red dress, gazing up at the cats, waiting for them to speak, caught in an intense childhood game.

She stroked the dear cat faces and touched their little carved teeth, filled with raw longing for that lost time.

But the memory was connected to nothing. It hung in her mind suspended and alone.

She touched the heavy vine that framed the door, a vine so old and thick that its cut branches, trimmed to clear the door, formed a deep, rough frame. How familiar the feel of the cut stubs, and of the young tendrils that had snaked out as if they would lash the door shut. How familiar the smell of crushed leaves where the vine had caught in the door’s hinges.

Behind her the garden darkened suddenly, as if a huge beast had loomed over her. Alarmed, she spun around.

A gigantic shadow engulfed the flowers and small trees. When she looked above, she remembered Mag telling about clouds. The sun was hidden by clouds, like soft gray islands. And now, below the hill, the houses were absorbed by shadow. But as she looked she realized that the center house was familiar. Puzzled, intrigued, she started down the garden along a winding path. Ducking under small trees, skirting past tangles of flowers, she soon stood at the edge of the brick veranda that spanned the front of the house.

She remembered rolling a wheeled toy, bump bump, over that long expanse of brick. She remembered playing with dolls here.

She had been a child in this house. She had stood looking out at the garden. She could almost bring back the voices. In memory she could smell chocolate, and something lemony and sweet.

But again the memory was attached to nothing.

The front of the house was different. She did not remember all this glass, she had never seen so much glass; the whole front wall and door were glass. Its reflections of the blowing garden cast her own image back at her alarmingly.

She didn’t want to look at her image, but she was drawn to look. She had never seen her full image. She put aside fear and studied her figure, and she liked what she saw. She was slim, long waisted. Her green dress looked darker in the glass. Her face was thin and pale against the blowing garden. She moved closer to look into her face and lost her image and could see into the room.

One big room ran the length of the house. Yet she remembered two rooms, with a little entry between them. In the entry had stood a red lacquer table. This ceiling was different, too. It was higher. There were rafters now where they had not been before, and there was a glass window in the roof between the heavy beams. The house in her memory was changed, as a dream changes.

These walls were white, not flowered. And on them hung images. Paintings—they were paintings. Their bright colors exploded in the light-filled room, forming bright hills and trees and sky and the images of people. Paintings like the small image in Prince Wylles’ chamber, only these were huge.

To her right was a little seating area, a soft-looking chair and a couch covered with lengths of silk and velvet in all shades of reds and pinks and orange. Down at the other end of the room were more paintings, leaning several deep against the walls. A sound made her turn.

On a lane beside the garden, cars were parked. She remembered cars, remembered the feel of movement, the smell inside a new car. A car had pulled up now and was parking, but when its door opened she stared.

Vrech was getting out. She fled for the bushes at the end of the terrace, shocked to see him so suddenly, and amazed to see a Netherworlder using an upperworld machine.

As she huddled beneath the bushes, Vrech crossed diagonally up the garden carrying a bundle, and let himself into the tool room that led to the Netherworld.

She assumed he was going back, and despite her fear of him she was unnerved at being left alone in this world. But then as she watched, he came out again wearing different clothes, and got back in the car. He had hardly driven away when she saw a man running toward the lane. As he crossed it, she moved deeper into the bushes. He came directly through the garden toward her. She didn’t breathe. But he didn’t glance toward the bushes; he crossed the terrace and went into the house. He was tall, dark haired, bronze skinned: he was the man from the Harpy’s montage of visions. His bare legs looked strong and muscled, not like Efil’s pale legs.

Soon he came out carrying a tray with two glasses, a tall bottle, and a bowl. He was pouring himself a drink as another car pulled into the lane and parked. The driver headed for the terrace.

This man was short, dressed in a suit and tie. This pleased her, that she could remember upperworld clothes. So many memories flashed at her, but none with meaning. The tall man poured a second glass and the two went in the house. She moved so she could see inside.

They were looking at the paintings, standing together talking, moving along from one painting to the next; but as they progressed from one end of the room to the other they began to argue.

They came out again arguing, their voices cold with anger. The shorter man said,“This is why you kept putting me off, telling me to wait until I got back from London, then until you got back from Carmel, from Sonoma, to wait until after Christmas. Why the hell didn’t you say something, Braden? I hate to sound stuffy, but under contract, you don’t have the right to cancelthe show.I like the work—it’s not as great as the Coloma series, but it’s good. You can’t back out of a show, not so late.”

“Just put someone else in the date. Get Garcheff. Any painter in the Bay area would be pleased to have a show at the Chapman.”

“If I’d known earlier I could have put the date up. Or I could have gotten someone. There’s not enough time. And what about the New York show?” He set down his glass and picked up his keys. “The brochures are already at the printers. I won’t cancel.”

“Call the printer. I’ll pay for the damn brochures.”

“There isn’t time to do new ones.”

“The hell there isn’t. Listen, Rye, you—”

“Christ, Braden. Be reasonable. If Alice were alive you wouldn’t be doing this.”

Braden went white. He drained his glass, staring at Rye. Rye looked at the glass pointedly.“Ever since Alice died, Brade, you’ve been letting yourself go to hell.”

“That’s a stupid damn remark.”

Melissa hardly heard them.Ever since Alice died—Alice…Ever since Alice died…She hugged herself, shivering and hurt, so shocked she felt sick, but she didn’t know why. She didn’t remember anyone named Alice.

Rye said,“Whereis Alice’s work? That whole alcove used to be full of her prints.”

“At her gallery. Where the hell else would it be?”

“The last etchings, too? The Thompson thoroughbreds? And those drawings of cats’ faces from the garden door? The Blackeston retrievers? She was the only animal artist on the West Coast worth a damn, and you’ve hidden her work away.”

Braden grabbed Rye, twisting him around.“I haven’t hidden a damn thing! What the hell do you—?” Then he looked embarrassed and released the smaller man. “Sorry.” He walked away toward the bushes where Melissa crouched, then turned to look at Rye.

“Alice hasn’t anything to do with this. I’m painted out, run out of steam, that’s all.” He paused. “I have a dinner date, have to dress. Stay if you like. Maybe you can find something for the street fair.”

Rye scowled at his retreating back.“You have ten weeks to get the show in shape.” He left the terrace. As he crossed the garden, a woman’s voice called from somewhere up the hill, “Tom? Tom?” Melissa watched Rye drive away, puzzled by the argument, and filled with emotions she didn’t understand. Braden had gone inside.

When she looked up the hill again, a thin old woman in a brightly flowered dress was crossing from one house to another. The wind had stilled. Melissa could smell suppers cooking. As the sun vanished behind the woods she grew cold. She felt suddenly very alone.

When Braden came out and crossed the garden to a station wagon, she looked speculatively at the studio door. It would be warm in there, and there would be something to eat. She had a sense of delicious food within that childhood refuge. He gunned the engine, and squealed the tires as he turned around in the dead end lane and headed toward the highway. He had been dressed in a pale jacket and slacks, a white shirt and tie. He had left a light burning. She studied the niche between the brick terrace and the house where he had hidden his key. What good to lock a door, then put the key almost in plain sight? She was considering the wisdom of going in when a branch rustled behind her and a boy’s voice said, “Where were you?”

She swallowed, frozen.

“There’s chowder for supper; you’d better come on if you want any.”

Every instinct told her to stay still. She tried to glance up without turning. Her heart was thundering.

The leaves rustled again.“There, that’s better. Hey! Keep your claws in!” A boy strode past her close enough to touch, carrying an orange cat on his shoulder. As he moved away up the garden, silently she let out her breath.

The cat must have been standing just behind her. She wondered if it had been watching her. But it was the boy who had shocked her.

He was about twelve. He had the same dark brown hair as Prince Wylles, the same dark curling lashes and rounded chin—Efil’s chin. The same straight nose as Wylles and Efil. He was fatter than Wylles, his color high and healthy, but still he looked like Prince Wylles. She watched him run up the steps of the white house carrying the cat and disappear inside, slamming the door. She could have been seeing PrinceWylles with only a few pounds added.

She had seen, close enough to touch, the boy who would be changed for Prince Wylles.

Surely Vrech had not simply discovered the boy here. He must have brought him here to this garden. She wondered how he had managed that. If Netherworld spells did not work here, what manipulations had Vrech used?

No matter. The changeling boy was here. Soon Vrech would take him down into the Netherworld. She wished powerfully she could undo her tryst with Efil last night. Thinking of bearing Efil’s child, without clear promise to the throne, made her feel imprisoned, trapped and shamed.

When the garden was empty she came out from the bushes and approached the glass door. She wanted to see inside the house; she wanted to be in there, perhaps discover something to stir further memory. She felt torn between the two worlds, she did not know where she belonged.

Chapter 21

Night was drawing down over the garden, making the vast sky seem less daunting. Melissa approached the glass door and slipped into the shadows. Up the hill behind her, lights burst on suddenly in the center house: not the slow rising of lantern light, but all at once, bright and steady. She tried the knob, pushed the glass door open. Letting herself into the bright room, she moved away from the lighted lamp, hoping not to be seen through the windows.

The smell of the studio was of canvas and turpentine and linseed oil. Familiar smells that filled her with nostalgia. She touched a corner of the nearest painting, and finding the paint dry, she stroked the colors, caught by the comforting feel of the oils. But the memories that came glanced away too soon; she could make nothing more of them than pleasant, familiar sensations.

Tubes of paint were laid out neatly on the table in three rows. Clean brushes stood bristles up in a heavy mug. A can of turpentine and a bottle of oil stood behind the little cups which would hold them. Stretcher bars and rolls of canvas leaned against the wall. But these items used by a painter did not belong to the memory of this house; they belonged somewhere different. And no detail of that other place would reveal itself.

She entered the short hall knowing she would find, on her right, the kitchen, on her left, the bedroom, and the bath straight ahead.

In the kitchen she reacquainted herself with the taps for running water, with the refrigerator, and with the knobs that gave fire to the stove. She took two apples from a bowl, and a bottle of milk and some cheese from the refrigerator. She drank the milk and put the empty bottle back. She found the bread, ate two slices, and tied six more and the cheese and apples in a dish towel.

When she looked into the bathroom she remembered the floor of small, white tiles. She remembered bathing in the tub when she was a child, squeezing soap bubbles over the ornate fish spigots. Then in the bedroom she stood at the open window looking downhill to the highway, watching the lights of passing cars reflected in the marsh water, watching night fall across the bay, as she had done many times when she was small. She sniffed the familiar salty air, gripped by nostalgia, and distressed at her inability to remember more. She went slowly out again to the terrace, caught in the half-awake dream, and unable to put anything together.

The past that she could glimpse was not whole—feelings and places all were scattered. The people flashing vaguely in her memory could not be drawn forth—they were shadows, their voices were unidentifiable whispers.

Outside, looking up the darkening garden, she searched for Vrech, then went quickly up through the tangle of bushes and flowers and small trees, hurrying past the upper houses into the woods.

The scent of the trees was almost like a Netherworld forest, familiar and comforting. She found a nest of fallen boughs between three trees, and rearranged the dry, soft-needled limbs to make room for herself. Apparently this was the nest of some animal, but tonight it would be hers.

As she ate her supper of cheese and bread and apple, the night around her pushed the last long shadows together into chambers of darkness. Below her in the white house a light went out. The wind turned colder. In the dark-shingled house, a light went on upstairs. She could hear music, then strangely resonant voices that startled her until she remembered radios.

She remembered listening to the radio while lying snuggled in her bed with the lights out, listening to a radio story in the dark…whispering to someone in the bed across from her. They were shivering at the story and laughing together…

But who? Someone young and laughing. But nothing she could do would bring more than that fragment of memory.

Pressing deeper into the branches she became aware of the scent of cat on them, and without wondering how she could tell, she knew this was the scent of the yellow cat that she had seen from the bushes beside the terrace. As she considered her sudden sharp perception, she realized her vision had changed, too. Through the dark night, now she could see branches and deadfalls which, moments before, had been black smears. And she could see farther to the sides; as if she were seeing back past twitching, pointed ears. Excited, she sniffed the wind for new scents, waiting, wondering what it would feel like to change, to shape shift…

Waiting. Excited, afraid…

Waiting…

She didn’t change. Her vision returned to normal human eyesight. Her sense of smell dulled again. Gone was the wild, skittery feeling that was so addicting.

She unclenched her fists, disappointed.

Perhaps she would not change until she knew a spell to help her. She must try to remember a changing spell.

Depressed, feeling flat and dull, she finished her supper, then curled down within the branches. How sad, to feel wonders dangled enticingly before her, then feel them jerked away. Nearing sleep, she felt again the sensation of being a child…

Only this time she had been terrified.

She was wearing a blue taffeta dress. She was perhaps four or five. She was huddled alone in an alley crying into the taffeta skirt when a stranger came and lifted her up and carried her into a strange house. She screamed and kicked…

She could not remember any more. She lay shivering, fully awake again, galvanized by a child’s helpless fear.

She woke at dawn, alarmed at the heavy weight on her chest. When she opened her eyes she was staring into yellow eyes: the yellow cat sat atop her chest gazing down at her.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or be afraid. When she stared back at him, he seemed suddenly to turn shy and retreated to the piled boughs and crouched there watching her. His golden tail twitched, his golden eyes remained intent. He was so alert, looked so intelligent, she felt her spine tingle.

She stayed still, knowing she was in his territory. She wasn’t sure whether his intensity signaled interest or challenge. She did not want to battle a yellow tomcat for this space. The cat regarded her for some moments, self-possessed and bold. His coat looked so thick and silken she longed to touch it. She could still feel the warmth of his heavy body crouched on her chest. At last, deciding he was friendly, she started to reach to let him sniff her fingers, but the look in his eyes changed to active challenge and she drew her hand back.

But then his yellow eyes grew puzzled, as if he was as confused by this encounter as she. Then suddenly his ears twitched in the direction where the hill dropped, and he turned to stare down the garden. She heard a boy calling,“Pippin. Pippin.” She raised herself up slightly above the branches, looking.

She saw the changeling boy, standing on the porch of the white house. When he spotted Pippin perched on the branches, he came directly up between the houses and into the woods. Not until he was very near did he see Melissa tucked down among the dry limbs. He stopped, startled; then he grinned.

“You’re in his bed. Did you sleep there?” When she didn’t answer, he flushed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry. I’m Tom Hollingsworth.” He picked up the cat. The big tom flopped happily over the boy’s shoulder, lying limp, looking down remotely at her.

She said,“I’m Sarah.”

Tom studied her with a direct, comfortable gaze. She looked back boldly into the child’s face, seeing a miraculously healed Prince Wylles.

He said,“You don’t live in the village. I’d remember you.”

“I live that way,” she said, pointing off through the woods, wondering what lay in that direction.

“In the city?”

“Yes, in the city.” She imagined tall buildings and steep hills as in the Harpy’s vision. Or was she seeing something from her own memory?

She said,“Is there—someone who comes to the garden, someone named Vrech?”

Tom nodded, but his eyes hardened.“He’s the gardener. He does all our yards, they’re all mixed together.” He looked at her deeply, with a child’s honesty. “Do you know him? Do you like him?”

“I don’t know him really, I just—I know his name. You don’t like him?”

“He’s always asking questions.”

“I’m asking questions.”

Tom grinned.“His questions are—pushy. He wants to know what I’m reading, what I’m learning in school, what my favorite foods are—he asked me a lot about that. What I’m doing this summer, even what foods my mother doesn’t eat—really nervy.”

“Do you answer his questions?”

“I guess I do,” Tom said, surprised. “There’s something about him—when he asks, I just—I suppose because he’s a grown-up and—and because he frightens me a little,” he confided. He bent his knee and scratched his leg without leaning over, so as not to disturb the cat. “He wanted to know what my father did before he died. One time, before we moved here, he asked me what my mother did in her work. He knew she was a broker’s assistant, but he wanted to know exactly what she did, stuff that was none of his business.”

“Has he always been gardener here?”

“Since before we came. He does gardening all over the village—for some of Mama’s friends. That’s how we found this house. He told Mama’s friend Virginia about it right after our house burned. He said this house was empty, and the people might be willing to rent until we got settled. My mother thinks that was very nice. But I don’t like him. I didn’t like him helping us.”

“Who—who lived in the house before it was empty?”

“Someone named—Santeth, I think. Did you know someone here?”

“No, I…”

But she did; there was a Santeth in Affandar Palace, a captain of the queen’s guard.

Tom shifted his weight as if the cat was growing heavy.“Do you work in the city?” Then, seeing her expression, “Now I’m asking nosey questions. I’m sorry. I just thought…”

“It’s all right. I—don’t work—just now.”

“You’re out of a job? What do you do?”

“I clean,” she said, trying it out. “I clean and cook.”

“You’re a maid? That’s crazy. You ought to be a model, not a maid. You’re too beautiful to clean someone’s house. You can’t like doing that.”

“It’s all right.” She wasn’t sure what a model was; she was pleased and touched that he thought her beautiful. Something about the wordmodel struck her, but she couldn’t make any memory come. When a car horn honked, Tom turned.

“It’s my mother.” He touched her hand by way of good-bye. “Come back,” he said, spinning around so the cat flicked its tail to balance itself, and he was gone. She watched him set the cat down on the porch rail, where it jumped into a tree. Tom got into the car with his mother. They backed out and turned down the lane, going slowly past another cat trotting across the lane—a dark, tiger-striped animal. Melissa wondered if everyone kept cats; she wondered if they were all ordinary cats. The car was about to turn onto the highway when another car swerved in squealing, spun around atthe end of the lane and out again, just missing them. And something had happened. Tom and his mother jumped out of their car. Tom started to kneel, then his mother pushed him aside saying something, and he ran shouting up the garden, leaving his mother crouched in the lane over the small, still form.

“Morian! Morian!” Tom shouted. “Tiger’s hurt! Morian!”

A door slammed and a black woman came quickly from the gray house. She took the boy by the shoulders, staring into his face. He said something, pointed, and she ran down the terraces, her bare feet flying. Melissa forgot all need to hide herself; she ran down the garden and stood watching Tom and his mother and the black woman kneeling in the middle of the road. The black woman’s face was twisted with pain as she rose cradling the little bundle in her arms, and got into the car. Melissa was totally caught up in the drama. A cat had been hurt, and they had rushed to it, were surely taking it for help. In Affandar, a hurt animal would be left to die, no one would attemptto save it. Perhaps no one would love it deeply enough to save it.

When the car had gone, she went quickly down to the portal and stood touching the carved cats’ faces, letting their familiarity ease her confused feelings. She didn’t belong in this world; she was a foreigner here. Maybe she had lived here once, but that time was gone; she had been only a small child then. Now this world reached out too powerfully, wanted too powerfully to draw her into it. Frightened, she pulled open the portal and slipped through into the tool room, and quickly she said the spell.

The wall drew back. She pushed through into the darkness and closed the door behind her.

Alone in the black tunnel she felt tears stinging. She wasn’t safe in the upperworld, yet something of that world held her. Something of herself belonged there, something raw and vulnerable. She felt she had torn herself physically from that world. Confused, she hurried downward into the blackness, heading down fast toward the less complicated comfort ofthe Netherworld.

She traveled a long way, unable to bring a spell-light, running down through the blackness, trailing her hand along the rough stone, sensing the emptiness and the masses of stone with feline alacrity. She slowed when she reached the first drop.

And as she descended, the upperworld seemed not to diminish in size as a place does when one moves away. It seemed to grow larger behind her, the wind blowing wilder, the sun burning brighter.

Much later she managed to bring a spell-light dully gleaming against the tilting slabs, light swallowed by the dropping chasm beside which she fled. From far below came the churl of the stream hurrying down toward the Netherworld. And as she approached her own world she thought more kindly of Efil. Maybe she had been too hard on him. Efil had offered her a kingdom, offered her all that was his. In bedding her, he had only been trying to save the heritage he had so foolishly let Siddonie control.

She wondered if she and Efil together really could free the Netherworld. She wondered if they could stop the need for war, make every land free to govern itself, and if they might free the Catswold from their self-imposed exile. She remembered Halek saying once, when she and Mag had visited him in his village, that Siddonie longed to destroy the Catswold’s stubborn independence, to break their spirit.

When she stopped to rest beside the stream, half of her wanted to join with Efil, while the other half wanted to avoid him. And there was within her, as well, a fierce, painful hunger to turn back again to the inexplicable world above.

But whatever she did, she must tell Efil that Vrech had found a changeling boy. No matter what she felt about Efil, no matter how he had deceived her, she must do this for him.

When long hours later she began to smell the deep green scent of pine she ran, bursting out from the tunnel into the familiar Netherworld night. She crossed the stream, and knelt, and snatched up Netherworld earth in her hands. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

She looked for Vrech’s stallion, but it was gone. She wondered if Vrech, returning, had seen the pony behind the bushes. When she reached the pony she laughed at his impatient pawing. Quickly she swung onto his back, released him from the binding spell, and gave him his head. He flattened his ears and bolted for thepalace.

Near the palace she slid down and loosed the pony in his pasture. Approaching the palace wall and slipping in through a side gate, she could see lamps burning in the scullery. And though it seemed to be very late, the big dining hall was brightly lit, and she could hear voices and laughter. She moved to the back of the palace, looking up at Efil’s vine-choked balcony.

Chapter 22

She climbed the vine and swung onto Efil’s balcony. She thought as she moved to the window to look in that maybe she would regret her return. Yet she must do this; she felt compelled to bring news of the changeling boy to Efil. She could see through the partially open draperies that the room was dark. She turned the latch and gently pushed the door open—it was jerked from her hand, and someone grabbed her arm, pulling her in. A spell-light shone in her face.

“Melissa!” Efil laughed drunkenly and pulled her into his arms. He stank of wine. “Where have you been? This is wonderful. Where did you go yesterday? I woke and you were gone.” He began kissing her and fondling her.

She pulled away and moved to the mantel.“I have something to tell you, Efil. Something important. You weren’t asleep?” She glanced toward the bed, then watched him light a lamp by snapping his fingers in a showy spell. He was really very drunk.

He said,“I just came in. Supper was endless. She’s all worked up about the damned dwarfs in the north and their silver.” He moved the lamp to a table; its light leaped up across his face to form unfamiliar contours. “She can’t get the dwarf nation to settle on a king elect without turning it intoa battle over silver taxes. What difference? She takes what she wants anyway.” Again, eagerly, he reached for her.

She moved away and sat down on the bench before the cold hearth.“Please listen. This is important.”

He sat down close beside her, smiling indulgently, and began kissing her neck. She pushed him away, prying his fingers loose.“Youmust listen, Efil. Vrech has found a changeling boy. He has found a boy to be changed for Wylles.”

He stared at her, frowning.“There hasn’t been time. She only—you’re not serious? But of course, you’re mistaken.”

She shook her head.“There is a boy in the upperworld who looks exactly like Wylles. I have been there. I saw him.”

He laughed, reaching for her.“You wouldn’t go there…not alone, my love.”

He was exasperating; she wanted to slap him.“That is where I went yesterday. I followed Vrech. He has brought the boy to live in the garden by the portal. Six houses,” she said, trying to hold his attention. “Six houses surrounding a hillside garden. There is a door opening into the hill—a portal. Vrech has the boy living there, the child is the same age as Wylles. He looks exactly like Wylles only fatter, healthy, and strong.” She wished Efil was sober. “Don’t you understand? I followed Vrech up. I saw the boy. I talked with him myself.”

Efil rose and moved irritably to the mantel. He stood looking at the row of dusty wine bottles, seeming not to see them. Absently he lifted one, wrapped a spell around the cork, and drew it forth.

“Oloroso,” he said, seeming surprised that he held the bottle. “Worth a fortune—brought down from Spain generations ago.” He filled two goblets, holding the bottle carefully, not using a spell, as if with drunkenness his spells, too, were shaky. “In the upperworld they bid fortunes against fortunes for such wine.” His eyes, when he turned to look at her, seemed caught between drunkenness and fear stirred by her words.

He handed her a glass.“Tonight you drink a fortune, my love. And tomorrow,” he said, lifting his goblet unsteadily, “tomorrow we banish the queen.”

“How can you banish her? You don’t know yet if I’m with child.”

“Tomorrow we will know.” He smiled, regaining his composure. “This morning I sent a page to Ebenth to fetch an old woman who is a master at the spells of prediction. She will tell us if we have started a son.” He watched her, laughing.

“Oh yes, my love. She will tell us. She has a solid reputation among the peasants. Whether her prediction is true or not, the peasants will believe her.”

She set her glass down.“No one can know so soon.”

“This woman can. And if Siddoniehas found a changeling as you say, then we must have proof at once. The old woman can give us that proof. A son, Melissa—a new prince of Affandar.” He reached to pull her up from the chair, to hold her. She pushed him away.

He said,“Once the news is public, Siddonie wouldn’t dare to harm you.” He snatched up her glass, spilling wine. “Drink, Melissa—drink to our child—to a healthy new prince for Affandar.”

She rose, took the glass, and set it on the mantel.“What about Wylles?” she said quietly. “Wylles is the true prince of Affandar.”

“Everyone knows Wylles will die. Whether he dies here or in the upperworld makes little difference. It would be more convenient, though, if he died before any switch was attempted.”

“You can’t kill him.” She watched Efil, shocked. “The Primal Law…”

“No one spoke of killing.” He lifted her chin. “But poor Wylles knows pain. He could know more pain. Wylles knows fear, and that could turn to terror. Perhaps Wylles will find a way to ease his own hurts.” He pulled her close, kissing her, open-mouthed and ardent, forcing her toward the bed. Fear and repugnance filled her.

“We daren’t, Efil. Not here.”

“There’s no danger. Siddonie is occupied with a tinsmith from Cressteane, a hulking boar—as if size could assure her a breeding.” Crudely he pulled at her dress, pinning her against the headboard, forcing her, seeming possessed. She fought him, stiff and clenched, hitting him. But even drunk he was stronger. His weight was on her, his hands invading her; this was not lovemaking, it was cruel. She was terrified she would cry out and be heard beyond this room. She bit him, twisting away, and heard the door crash open.

Light filled the room, blinding her, shattering across Siddonie’s face twisted with rage. The queen lunged at her, grabbing her, wrenching her away, jerking her off the bed, shaking and slapping her, her nails biting into Melissa’s shoulder. She hit back at Siddonie and broke free. She tried to run, but something unseen jerked her down; a power held her unmoving and helpless.

“On the taint of Catswold blood…” Siddonie hissed.

“No!” Efil shouted. “She bears my son! She bears the prince of Affandar!”

“To Catswold cleave…”

“The peasants already know,” Efil yelled. “The news has been spread—they will rise against you…”

Melissa struggled, twisting at Siddonie’s feet; above her Siddonie’s voice echoed, “To cat do I command you…”

Her body constricted. She couldn’t breathe.

“To cat I commit you. To cat you will cleave, to no other spirit yield.” Siddonie had grown so tall, so huge. Melissa stared up at her, then stared at her own shaking hands. And her hands were changing into paws.

The queen glared down at her, her eyes filled with loathing.“To cat you are returning. Cat you will remain and never more than cat. You willremember no more than cat…”

Her body hurt, her legs were twisted with pain. She saw the disgust on Efil’s face, saw him turn away. Siddonie’s shouts deafened her. “Bring the guards!” Running feet pounded down the hall, and the queen’s voice blurred, lost all meaning. The room was immense around her. She tried to rise, and fell panting. She stared in terror at her white paws scrabbling at the carpet as men pounded into the room, surrounding her. She spun around, facing one then another, torn with fear. “Get the creature out of here! Put it in a cage!”

The calico cat crouched, her eyes blazing, then leaped at the queen, clinging to Siddonie’s thigh, slashing so brutally the queen screamed and knocked her away into a tangle of booted legs. The room seemed filled with boots, soldiers towered, spraddle-legged, blocking her, grabbing at her. She faced them spitting, raking their reaching hands, then dashed through between their legs and fled into blackness under the bed.

Two soldiers crawled in after her. When she lashed out at them they hit her. One grabbed her front legs, guarding his face, another jerked her up by the tail. They dragged her out, hurting her, and thrust a leather coat over her. She fought the coat. They held it closed like a bag, lifting her. For an instant something of Melissa surfaced, wild with terror, fighting so fiercely that the queen repeated the spell. Then she was simply cat again, raking at the leather. A blow made her sprawl, panting. The noise of loud voices pained her too. She was carried. Her captors’ footsteps echoed down the corridors. A door banged open. She smelled fresh air. She heard leaves rustle under the marching feet.

Soon she smelled chicken coops. A latch clicked. The coat was tossed onto a hard surface and jerked open, and she was prodded out with sticks. She streaked out, ramming into the iron bars of a chicken cage.

Her back to the bars, she crouched facing the five soldiers. They slammed the door and locked it, and began poking her with sticks, shouting and laughing. She fought their thrusting jabs for a long time, until she was so weak she began to shiver and salivate.

“It’s going to have a fit.”

“Let’s get out of here. The queen said leave it alive.”

They left, smirking.

The cat lay panting and shivering.

The cage was strong enough to keep small dragons and bears from the chickens. The floor was mucky with chicken droppings. Around her in other cages chickens flapped and squawked with fear of her. When she had revived somewhat, she watched the chickens with rising interest, her tail twitching. But soon she began to lick herself; she hurt in so many places that she worked frantically back and forth from one painful, tender area to another.

She was kept in the cage for five days. Darkness followed light. She had little to eat, and only a small bowl of dirty water that she avoided until she could bear her thirst no longer. On the fourth morning an apple-faced old woman came to look in at her, reaching her fingers through the close-set bars. The calico cat came to her mewling, rubbing her orange-and-black cheek against the old woman’s hand.

Mag stood for a long time beside the cage, trying every spell she knew to open it. She was sick with despair for Melissa, wiping back tears. No spell she tried would work—Siddonie’s powers were too strong. She could not slip the cat out between the bars; they were only inches apart. She could barely reach through to stroke the scrawny cat.

She found an iron stake in a pile of rubbish and tried to pry the bars apart, but the stake flew away, deflected by the queen’s protective magic. And the cage was too small to turn the cat into Melissa, even if she could have breached the queen’s power. Anyway, what would the girl do cramped in a chicken cage?

She thought that Siddonie wouldn’t kill the little cat. She thought that not even the queen would go against the Primal Law.

She rubbed the little cat’s ears. Then, whispering, glancing around to be sure she was still alone, she repeated the most powerful strengthening spell she knew. If nothing else, she might give the child a measure of added endurance. The little cat pressed against the bars, staring up at her forlornly, but when the long, complicated spell was completed, something came into the calico cat’s eyes that cheered Mag. She read it as heightened courage. She had barely finished when three guards came around the corner, saw her, and shouted and grabbed her.

She fought them; with hurting spells she made one back off, another double up with pain; but the three together were too strong. They forced her into the palace and through the scullery and storeroom, and down two flights. There, in the dungeons, they locked her in the cell vacated by the Toad.

For a long time after Mag disappeared the little cat watched for her, warmed by her caring. But Mag did not return. On the morning of the sixth day the calico was hauled out by a gloved hand and shoved into a leather bag. The man who held the bag smelled of sour sweat. She knew his smell; she hissed and spit through the leather at him, and clawed the bag until he hit her.

Panting, hurt again, she was hoisted and carried. She smelled horse. The pinprick of green light she could see through the tie hole of the bag changed as they moved, and the horse’s movement jarred her. The light changed. The movement changed as the man got off the horse and began to walk.

Soon the green light disappeared, the hole in the bag went black. Then the tiny hole was pierced by a yellow light moving as the man moved. She could smell oil burning, and some part of her below the conscious level knew it was the smell of an oil lamp.

She could smell damp earth and stone, too, and could hear water rushing. She could feel the man climbing. The smell of water soon had her wild with thirst. But some sense told her it would be a long time before she drank.

Long after they entered the tunnel she had sensed a heightened awareness from deep inside herself. Frightened, she tried to back away from it. When she moved, shaking the bag, he hit her. And as they rose higher away from the Netherworld, the awareness seemed to diminish.

After many hours, the exhausted cat slept.

She woke when the smells changed again. The man had stopped climbing. He startled her by speaking; his voice made a guttural rhythm. Then came the soft, sucking sound of stone moving across stone, and something new stirred within the little cat. Some hidden part of her was trying desperately to wake. The sound of the moving wall brought a sense of promise. She crouched, tensed and listening. She could hear the wind. She could smell greenness. Weakly she lifted one paw, and her heartbeat quickened.

Chapter 23

Vrech left the portal and garden quickly, heading east along the busy two-lane road that led to Highway 101. The bag was heavy. When the cat tried to claw through the leather, he punched her. Each time after he hit her, he could hear her licking. He cursed having left the car with the damned mechanic in the city. He’d thought of going after it, then knew the delay would stir Siddonie’s rage. She wanted everything done now.

When he reached 101 he headed north, walking along the concrete shoulder beside the fast traffic, jerking his thumb at every passing car. No one stopped for him. The day was growing hot. His upperworld pants bound his crotch, and his pants and shirt were sticky with sweat. Upperworld clothes were too tight. He dodged a reefer truck careening close to the shoulder, and when he stumbled, the cat yowled. He wished the beast was dead, but he daren’t kill her. He didn’t think much about the Primal Law, but he wouldn’t go against Siddonie. The cat could die after he left her, but not while she was in his possession.

He had served Siddonie long before she married the twelve-year-old prince. He had been seneschal to the old king of Affandar and had adeptly managed the affairs that resulted in the king’s death. For Siddonie, he would have killed the king with his own hands. Before she had any claim to the throne, when she was only visiting Affandar, she would meet him at night in the stables or in the woods beyond the palace. Her ways with him stirred passions no other woman was capable of; she knew his weaknesses; she knew how to touch him and when to cast a spell as she caressed and fondled and bit him, drawing from him the mind numbing, shuddering responses that no other woman could elicit. In turn, he had set the stage for the old king’s illness and had helped her to reach the small prince, arranging her seemingly chance meetings with him. By the time the king died, Siddonie had enslaved young Efil with charms to drive a boy mad. Vrech had stoically endured the knowledge that Siddonie lay with him. Thus she had bound and corrupted the child. Within a month of the old king’sdeath, Siddonie and Efil were wed, and she was crowned queen of Affandar. Once they were wed, he of course had returned to her bed, slipping into her chambers after young Efil slept.

The cat shifted position again, pawing at the bag. Along the highway the traffic was growing heavier, but the drivers looked at his lifted thumb and stepped on the gas. When at last a ride did stop, it was an ancient delivery truck, home-painted blue over the words, A-ACTION PLUMBING. He climbed into the hot, exhaust-smelling cab and dropped the bag on the floor next to the engine.“How far you going?”

“Portland.” The boy was dirty, with pimples down his neck.

“I won’t be going that far. Crescent City, maybe.”

“What you got in the bag? It’s moving.”

“Trained monkey. It sleeps during the day.” He nudged it with his toe. “Big dreamer—wiggles in its sleep.” The bag jerked, and the cat gagged and heaved.

“Ate too many marshmallows. Makes him sick. Kids love to feed him marshmallows.”

He parted with the van north of Crescent City. It was almost dark. Wind swept the tall grass in waves across the empty fields. He dropped the bag between the road and a clogged drainage ditch. If the cat was smart enough, it could get out. That should satisfy the Primal Law. He crossed the highway by running between cars, and in the diner he ordered a beer and a hamburger. Within half an hour he had eaten and caught a ride south again with a trucker.

As the eighteen-wheeler turned out of the diner’s parking lot and passed the spot where Vrech had dumped the cat, he thought briefly of the girl Melissa with a pang almost of remorse. She was a toothsome thing, young and untried or nearly so. But then he put the little chit out of his thoughts; she was of no use to him. He belched comfortablyand settled back, chewing on a toothpick.

Chapter 24

Speeding trucks made the roadbed tremble. Their hot diesel wind sloughed through the tall, dry grass, shaking the bag, bringing the cat up stumbling with fear, falling against her leather prison so it writhed and rolled. At the onslaught of each truck, she fought the bag, trying to run from the thunder and shaking; then she would stop fighting and lie panting until another eighteen-wheeler sped past nearly on top of her, jerking her up again. At last, too exhausted to fight, retching and dizzy, she curled into a little ball and escaped into a trance-like sleep.

She was jerked up again when a semi careened off the pavement nearly on top of her. She exploded, throwing herself stumbling and fighting the bag. Flecks of saliva flew against the leather. Her tongue was thick from thirst and her body was sore in a dozen places from Vrech’s blows. She was very thin from her days locked in the chicken cage, all bones and fur, her calico coat cupping in ugly shadows along her thin back and flanks. During her week-and-a-half confinement in the cage, she had been fed only enough to keep her from dying. And on the journey up the tunnel then up the highway there had been no food or water. The shape of her skull showed clearly beneath her matted orange-and-black coat. Her left eye was swollen shut where Vrech had struck her. Weak and sick, the stink of diesel fuel sucking in through the hole where the bag was tied made her sicker.

But then through the hole came another smell, a healing smell, making her more alert. The wind sucked in, carrying the scent of earth and grass; and she could smell muddy water. She pawed at the leather and licked at it, and tried to push out through the tiny hole. She could get a paw out, but no more. She had dug at the hole for some time when another smell reached her as the wind changed, a smell that made her force her nose frantically into the tiny opening.

The shifting wind brought the smell of frying meat, from the diner. She gulped at the greasy smell ravenously; it filled her senses, tantalizing and rich.

Each thundering truck made her try to run, tripping and fighting inside the bag. In between, when the highway was silent, she dug and pushed toward the smell of food that came to her from across the highway.

After more than two hours of fighting to get through the hole, she had chewed through the cord. She did not realize she was free. The puckered leather remained closed. She lay heaving and weak, retching from the road fumes, wild with thirst. Her raw nerves made her muscles jump at every faint, distant approach of a truck. She could feel their approach in the shaking ground. She panted fast and shallowly. She had no more strength to fight. Yet when the next diesel roared by, the sudden blast of its horn jerked her violently to life. Inside the bag she tried to run, plunging away.

She hit the puckered hole, and was out, scrabbling at earth and grass, running blindly through the tall grass.

She might have run until she dropped, but in the darkness and confusion she didn’t sense the ditch and she fell.

She landed six feet down in mud. She smelled the brackish water and crouched, licking frantically, swallowing mud.

When her thirst was slaked, she climbed out of the ditch sniffing the greasy, delicious smell from the diner. She approached the edge of the highway and crouched, watching the broad black expanse with her good eye. The macadam was warm under her paws. But the thunder began again, shaking the highway. She stared at the approaching lights growing larger, growing huge. The wind of the semi buffeted her; she leaped away into the grass and crouched and hissed.

When the highway was empty once more, the smell of food drew her back. Hunched and shivering, she crouched, tensed to dash across. There was thunder coming, but it was not very loud yet. She ran.

She was halfway across the first lane when the lights of a Greyhound bus exploded fast out of the distance; she froze; light bathed her small, still form and reflected from her eyes. Her white parts blazed bright. The driver didn’t swerve. She leaped back from the speeding wheels barely in time.

When the bus had passed she sped forward again, confused, directly into the path of the next racing light. This time, an air horn drove her back as a pair of racing trucks bore down, their lights picking her out. The passenger of the nearer truck stared down at her laughing, as if he would like to see a cat mashed on the highway.

Then there was a lull in traffic. The four-lane was empty, and silent. Only one set of lights was coming, very far away and with not so much noise. Eagerly she ran for the diner.

She misjudged. The car was quieter than trucks, but it was moving fast. The driver saw her and slammed on the brakes, skidding, screeching the tires. The cat was so terrified she didn’t know which way to run, she crouched directly in the car’s path, full in its light; then at the last second she leaped into blackness. She felt its wind behind her.

She crouched on the white line in the center of the highway, dazed by the lights now coming from both directions. Again tires squealed, another car skidded, and she ran wildly as it slid sideways. Through its open window a woman screamed at her. She could taste the smell of burning rubber as she fled toward the gravel ditch beside the diner.

She scrambled and slid down the side of the ditch to safety.

Above on the highway the car straightened and went on, the driver cursing.

There was water in the ditch. It tasted faintly of dog urine. She drank, gulping, then rested, panting and pawing at her sore eye.

At last her heaving heart slowed. She roused herself and began to stalk the smell of food. She climbed out of the ditch and crept across the parking lot, taking shelter under a car ten feet from the steps of the diner. She stared out at the door where the smell was strongest. The noise of the juke box, of boots moving inside on the wood floor, and of raised voices and occasional shouts made her tremble. Suddenly the door was flung open, noise blared out, and she fled as three men swung out loudly arguing, clumping down the steps toward her. Panicked, she streaked through the darkness toward the rear of the diner.

There she paused, drawn by the smells from the four garbage cans.

She could smell dog, too. Warily she stalked the garbage cans, then jumped onto one. She pawed at the lid and when she could not get inside, she moved to the next can.

All four were sealed tightly. At last she leaped down and slunk back to the front of the building.

As she crouched beside a truck, huddled against its rear tire, two women came out of the diner. They were quieter than the men, and she didn’t run. They saw her white parts catching the light from the diner’s window, and they began to croon over her. She backed away from them under the truck, tensed to run. But then the women went back inside.

She was still there when they returned, knelt down beside the porch, and pushed a paper plate under it.“Here, kitty. Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

She smelled the food, close enough to make her drool. She didn’t come out until the women had left.

Then she fled underneath, and stalked the plate.

Convinced there was no danger, she attacked the food. She gulped fried hamburger, potato skins, and spaghetti. She ate until her stomach was distended. Then she curled down beside the plate and slept.

When she woke, the diner was silent. No noise, no lights. She stared out from under the porch at the expanse of blacktop. The shelter of parked cars was gone. She crouched in the blackness beneath the porch, watching and listening. She saw no movement, and she heard no sound to threaten her. Far in the distance thrummed the soft hoot of an owl.

She finished the potato skins and spaghetti, then chewed the greasy paper plate to remove every last bit of goodness.

She came out from under the stair pawing at her sore left eye and staring warily around the parking lot.

When she was certain that nothing threatened, she sat down in the center of the blacktop and began to wash her front paws and her face. Then she sat staring toward the south. From that direction something drew her. Faint, incomprehensible images touched her. Dark spaces beckoned. In her puzzled feline thoughts, stone caverns waited, and safety.

She rose and left the parking lot, trotting due south along the shoulder of the highway.

When trucks passed she veered into the tall grass. She passed under an occasional oak tree, and glanced up into its branches, where instinct told her height meant safety. When she came across the fresh scent of another cat she ran. She kept moving steadily, obsessed with the sense of deep, sheltering caverns somewhere ahead.

She traveled all night. By morning her left eye was matted and oozing, and the pads of her feet were beginning to crack. At first light, as the sky began to redden, she climbed, exhausted, into an oak tree. She curled into a concave where three branches met, and slept.

She came down at mid-morning, hungry again. The sense of stone caverns drew her on, she kept moving and did not turn aside to hunt; she knew little about hunting; a kitten must be taught by its mother to hunt with skill.

Late in the afternoon she approached an abandoned shack. She was very hungry. She watched the shack and listened for a quarter of an hour, then she crawled underneath it to rest. Here she stumbled on the scent of mice. Investigating, she discovered a mouse nest. She ate the six baby mice, then stalked the cobwebby darkness where the mouse smell was strongest.

She caught a grown mouse not sufficiently wary. She killed it quickly and ate it, but she caught no more. It was that night, when she tried to catch a rat, that she learned how viciously a small beast could attack, and learned how to fight her prey.

She had crossed a cut field through heavy stubble. In the center was a small trash dump, and as she explored the rubble for food she smelled the rat in a half-buried wooden crate. The crate smelled of celery and of spoiled meat. The rat was a big male, old and rough coated. He had survived dogs, and had killed his share of kittens. Deep inside the barrel, he had heard her coming a long way off, but he hadn’t bothered to hide himself. Now he crouched, listening to her approach, staring out at her.

The cat circled the crate, watching the gleam of his red eyes. She moved to the entry, to block him from running out. She crouched, tensed to spring, ready for him.

When after a moment he didn’t run, she moved in.

She was close to the rat when he charged. She dodged and lashed at him. He swerved and clamped his teeth on her paw, biting clear through. He hung on as the cat thrashed and fought, and gnawed her paw brutally. Then before she could bite him he loosed her, dodged, and leaped at her throat, biting deep. She struck at him with her claws, then sank her teeth in his flank, trying to pull him off her throat.

The rat had miscalculated his distance; he had only the skin of her throat, not the jugular. She managed to jerk him free, tearing a piece of skin from her throat. She shook him, swinging him, and in her terror she hit him again and again against the sides of the barrel.

The rat went limp. She turned it loose, to lick at her wounded paw. The rat came to life, leaping straight into her face. She clawed at it and tore it away. Enraged, she grabbed it by the neck and bit and gnawed until it died.

After it was dead she thrashed it against the crate floor, heaving and shaking it.

She ate the rat, then licked her wounded paw. There was nothing of Melissa apparent in the little beast; she was all cat, learning to care for herself. Yet somewhere within the little calico, too deep to be sensed by animal instincts, breathed another presence. Within the little cat something waited poised, watching, learning.

Her hunger eased, the calico left the dump and headed south.

It took her ten days to cover the miles Vrech had covered in a few hours. The country remained open, with tall grass, occasional trees, and scattered farm houses and shacks. At first she hunted, but as her wounded paw grew painful and bloated with infection, she began to search out the easy pickings at garbage cans and dumps. Twice near dumps, half-wild farm cats attacked her. The first time, she ran. The second time, she fought the two females. She came away bitten and hurting, but she had taken her share of the garbage. Her hurting foot made it hard to run fast enough to avoid dogs, but the scattered trees gave her refuge beyond a dog’s domain. She learned to stay near the trees if she scented or heard a pack of dogs. At one promising garbage dump she faced a family of raccoons, and when the big male charged her she fled. It was the next morning that she approached a salt water inlet on the outskirts of a town.

Houseboats and fishing boats were tied up along the banks. Somewhere a radio played music, but she had learned that this kind of sound didn’t threaten her. She smelled human waste from the houseboats, and she smelled food cooking. Beside a dock, she smelled fish offal. Very hungry, she approached the fish cleanings, prepared for a feast.

She did not see at first the three big female cats who were already maneuvering for position over the fish, snatching at it, snarling and striking at one another. With the music playing, she didn’t hear them. One cat was heavy with kittens, the other two were in nursing condition. Left alone they would have shared the food out in their usual desperate way. Now they froze, staring at the intruder, hissing at her and threatening with low growls. But the calico, as she traveled, had grown bolder: these were only cats, not dogs. She approached them, stalking stiff-legged.

A female’s ear twitched. A tail dropped, and all three crouched.

The three attacked her together. They had her down, clawing and biting her when a little girl, fishing at the other end of the dock, threw a bait bucket at them.

The three cats fled. The calico fled, too, limping, her swollen right front paw sending shooting pains up her leg. Running, she stopped often to lick the lump that had formed as each day the abscess grew larger and more painful.

Five days after the rat bit her she came to the outskirts of a town. Her white parts were dirty now, her white chest matted with grit and road oil. And, cowed by the pain in her foot and by fear, she carried her ears and her tail low.

She crossed the fields of a small farm, walked under its last fence and stood surveying the city street and the houses lining the opposite sidewalk. She was less afraid of houses now. Houses sometimes meant food, and she was ravenous. Her swollen paw throbbed with pain, hurting so badly that even though she kept her foot lifted and walked on three paws, every movement sent jarring pain through her body.

Now at the edge of the town she crossed the street behind two slow-moving cars. On the other side she trotted, limping, across yards until she came to an alley. Because it was narrower than the street and more sheltered, she turned into it, walking on three legs.

She traveled the alley quickly, crossing each residential street, never faltering from her destination south. She passed houses and scattered stores, then more houses. She was halfway through the town, in a small cluster of stores, when she smelled fish and paused.

Warily she turned into a side alley and approached the back door of a bait shop.

She stared up at the screen door. The smell of fish was strong. Boldly she picked her way through scattered trash and up three dilapidated wooden steps.

Crouching to run, she stared in through the screen. Inside, a man was cutting up fish. When he turned and saw her, he banged his cleaver on the table and shouted. She fled, leaping down on all fours: the pain jarred like fire through her.

But the jolt broke the abscess. As she fled it began to drain, the pus oozing out.

She ran for two blocks before she crouched under a car, licking and licking her hurting, oozing paw.

Soon the pain grew less. When she left the shelter of the car she was walking on all fours.

By nightfall she was out of the town and in an open field dotted with oaks, and she had forgotten her wound. She caught and ate three field mice, then sheltered high in an oak tree, resting, coming down once more to hunt. Her hurt eye had begun to heal, and the itching annoyed her. Several hours after dark the full moon rose. Its pull made her giddy, she lay out along a branch watching it, letting its power tease her.

At last, filled to brimming with the moon’s madness, she leaped down out of the tree and raced the meadow, running up another tree and down, and up another. In each tree she paused to stare at the sky and out at the moon-whitened field. Then she raced on again. And if, as she ran madly, visions touched her, if she sensed underground spaces, and if mysterious voices whispered, these disembodied experiences seemed little different to her than the disembodied voices coming from radios and juke boxes.

She left the meadow that night, traveling south beside the highway. And now as she hurried on, feeling well again, she stopped sometimes to bathe thoroughly, sleeking and fluffing her fur. And she played more. She was drawing near the place coded in her feline spirit as home.

When on the tenth day she left Highway 101, a sense of rightness made her leap along through the marshy meadow that flanked the narrower road. With kittenish abandon she gamboled, jumping puddles. Her dodging play through the marsh grass made it dance and tremble. When she caught a mouse almost by accident, she ate it quickly then ran on swiftly toward home. Drawing near the portal, her green eyes shone. She smelled home. She stopped to stand on her hind legs, peering away over the grass toward the far hill. She smelled the garden. She galloped on, and soon she smelled a faint turpentine and oil scent caught on the breeze, speaking to her of a particular house. Wildly she fled along the edge of the highway, then crouched and sped across between cars, shaken by the cars’ wind as they passed her. On the other side she slipped into the briar tangle at the base of the hill.

She climbed the hill beneath the briars, using a path worn by other cats and by rabbits. At the top, she came out behind the center house. Her whiskers twitched with interest at its scent, and she stood looking. But she did not approach the house. She went on past it, up through the garden, alert for the cats whose scent marked this territory as theirs. She could smell, ahead, the cup-of-gold vine and the ancient door, and she approached eagerly.

Olive Cleaver, standing at her window looking out at the garden, glimpsed a flash of calico and white move between the bushes. Startled, she waited for the cat to emerge. Strange that a neighborhood cat would have the nerve to come into this garden, where the other cats were so possessive. Strange that it was a calico. She had never seen a calico cat near the garden or in the neighborhood. The cat soon appeared nearer her, higher up the hill. She watched it slip through a tangle of nasturtiums and disappear beneath the jasmine bush before the tool shed door. Olive put down her book, watching for it to come out.

When the calico cat did not appear after a long time, Olive thought it must be hunting under the bushes. Maybe it was a stray and really hungry. She thought of taking some food down to it. But gooseflesh touched her because it was a calico, and she changed her mind.

Annoyed with herself, she went into the kitchen to brew herself a cup of tea, thinking that she made too much of things, let her imagination run away with her.

Strange, though, that a stray calico cat would appear in the garden, going directly to the tool shed, as if it knew the place.

Chapter 25

Riding fast, Siddonie and her two companions galloped along the Mathe-Wexten border followed by the queen’s small entourage and by two dozen warriors belonging to King Ridgen. The three monarchs had been in the saddle since dawn, inspecting caches of arms and food laid ready in spell-hidden caves. Siddonie watched King Ridgen proprietarily. She liked the way he rode, with an easy elegance. He was dark haired, sleek, with a knowing body and knowing hands, whether handling a horse or a woman. By contrast, the older king, Moriethsten, was altogether sloppy. He rode like a bag of oats. His excess weight shifted with the gelding’s movement, and his pale hair, bound in gold filigree, bounced unbecomingly in time to the horse’s canter. His face was too soft featured, matching his soft, undisciplined thoughts.

Still, he kept the record books well enough. Since daybreak they had examined twenty caves, checking over and counting barrels of crackers and dried meat and water, and blankets and weapons and upperworld medical supplies. Other caches waited farther on where Wexten spanned beneath upperworld waters. But now, though the stores must be inspected, her mind was only half on the preparations for war.

She was unable to dismiss her uneasiness about Melissa. She knew Vrech had set the cat adrift in the upperworld, and that should be the end of it. With luck, the cat was already conveniently dead, rotting in some field. A natural death, for which she could not by the Primal Law be blamed. Yet now when she remembered Melissa as a small child, a certain remorse touched her.

She wondered if Melissa had already been pregnant with Efil’s child when she caught them in bed. Rage at Efil made her boot the stallion and jerk his reins. Efil had been far too bold to bed that girl. He had ruined a good many plans, and he would pay for it.

Melissa’s death was particularly bad timing. She must be replaced now, quickly, and the chosen Catswold girl must be trained to lead a Catswold army. They would have to quickly find among the upperworld Catswold they had captured some likely half-breed girl. A girl who had inherited some latent talent for magic and could be trained to the task. The result would not be as satisfying as having Melissa, but at least an upperworld Catswold girl would be easier to handle than Melissa.

The upperworld Catswold, strays from San Francisco’s streets, had not yet been allowed to take human form. They must first be committed totally to the Catswold queen before they learned the changing spell and learned what they really were. They must be willing to fight for, and die for, that queen.

She moved her stallion up beside Ridgen as the trail widened. Soon, too, there would be the changeling boy to train, to teach how to behave like Prince Wylles. A boy to be turned into Prince Wylles, a healthy boy to insure her title to the throne.

The land around them was bare here, and craggy. It would grow nothing. There was no village, not one cottage. Even the most skilled growing spells would hardly bring a green spear. When she glanced at Ridgen, the dark king gave her a slow, promising smile. Beside him, Moriethsten noticed nothing; the man was as dull as a turnip. She was pleased that the pretty young queen of Chillings would not be joining them. She hadn’t liked her, though she had thought her loyal until the girl was caught sending supplies to Zzadarray. Under the acts of war, the Primal Law against killing didn’t hold. Likely the young queen’s people were busy this day burying her. Siddonie considered the choices for a new ruler. Chillingsshould have a king—men were easier to handle.

Ahead, the stone sky rose abruptly, layered and ragged. Slivers of stone lay in their path where the sky had flaked and crumbled. She could see ahead, down the sloping, stony hills, the isolated inn: a dark, sprawling group of rock buildings forming the tri-border where Mathe, Wexten, and Saurthen joined. The horses began to fuss, sensing food and shelter ahead. As they came down the last expanse of stone, a dozen grooms ran out to take their reins.

Siddonie’s soldiers dismounted and helped with the animals. They would join the grooms for ale in the inn’s cellar, to glean whatever intelligence they could.

Soon Siddonie and the two kings were sipping spell-chilled ale in the small, intimate dining hall before the inn’s fire. Ridgen and Moriethsten, discussing troop movements, quieted when the red-faced elven innkeeper returned with their meal of rare venison and roast quail. Siddonie watched the small, square innkeeper refill her stein, keeping the pewter white-cold with a local elven charm. When the steins were full Ridgen toasted her, dark-eyed and ardent, Moriethsten joining him innocently.

But Moriethsten was skillful in other ways, and reliable as long as she kept close check on him. Their mutual cousins staffed his palace in key positions. She had put Moriethsten on the throne after the old king was unfortunately discovered selling Wexten children into Cathenn slavery and was driven from the palace by a mob of enraged peasants. Very nicely handled, in Vrech’s usual style.

A metallic racket began. She watched, annoyed, as three musicians strolled out from a curtained alcove with half a dozen dancing girls around them—nearly naked girls dressed in upperworld spangles. Ridgen and Moriethsten ogled them until Siddonie caused Ridgen to choke, and caused both men to find the girls dreary. Both kings turned away with bored glances and returned to their discussion of war tactics.

When they had conquered Ferrathil and Cressteane, they would move south. Once the south was won, they would destroy the eastern nations.“I want the Catswold finished,” she said softly.

Moriethsten pushed back a strand of pale hair.“When we move east, our armies will be dangerously cut off from the beltland.”

“No,” Siddonie corrected him. “We will not go through the tunnel. We will draw the Catswold out to attack us.”

The nations of Zzadarray, Ebenth, Cathenn, and Marchell, Catswold dominated, were separated from the eleven belt nations by the Hell Pit and by dense masses of stone passable only through a long, tedious tunnel. It would be suicide to attack those nations on their own ground, the Catswold had turned those peoples totally intractable. Siddonie traveled there seldom. She did not like the slow smiles of the Catswold. She would not tolerate her horses being mysteriously set loose, and her soldiers’ weapons suddenly dulled and broken.

It had taken her a long time to develop a suitable plan to defeat the Catswold.

Several years ago she had purchased, with some manipulation, the hundred acres of cattle land in the upperworld, where there was an unused portal which led down through three miles of old gold mines and tunnels into Zzadarray. It was that portal through which, generations ago, many Catswold had emigrated to the upperworld. Now, very soon, Havermeyer would complete purchase of the old Victor mine, then the portal would be on her own land, a direct route into the Catswold nation of Zzadarray.

The Catswold didn’t use the tunnel much now; their fascination with the upperworld seemed to have palled.

She regretted that upperworld weapons wouldn’t operate in the Netherworld. If they would, she could wipe out Zzadarray in minutes, win the entire Netherworld in a matter of hours. She had, when she was quite young, sent pack animals down into the Netherworld laden with gunpowder and modern arms. But the old laws had held. Once in the Netherworld nothing would function; the gunpowder was as useless as sand. The Primal Spells, like the wizards who had laid them, were of incredible power.

The spell of light was needed, of course. But the spell that discouraged killing in the Netherworld except for official war was tedious, unwieldy, and outdated; the spell that would let no upperworld machine or mechanical device function was an abomination.

The dancing girls and musicians had gone. The fire had been built up and their mugs had been refilled. Siddonie raised a toast to their success, and saw Ridgen’s color deepen. Under the table he stroked her hand as he lifted his glass in toast. But in spite of his touch, she was still thinking of Melissa.

If the cat accidentally survived, there was always the possibility that she could break the spell and free herself.

Though if she did, what matter? What damage could one Catswold do without training? Likely Melissa did not even know her powers. And likely she had no knowledge of the Amulet, or its considerable power.

And surely that gem was lost, inaccessible.

It was nineteen years ago that Siddonie had climbed the dark tunnel out of Xendenton beside Ithilel and his Catswold wife—Melissa’s mother. She had thought then that Timorell had the Amulet, but later, searching Timorell’s upperworld room and her possessions, she had found nothing.

After the earthquake she had searched the bodies of Timorell and McCabe, and had gone through the wreckage of McCabe’s apartment. She had even searched the baby’s clothes and its crib.

She had hated taking care of the baby; she didn’t like babies. And what a difficult baby Melissa had been—mewling and spitting up. When she took her to the welfare people, she had meant to get her back when the child was old enough to be trained properly in magic. Even after Alice Kitchen’s family took her, she had thought she could get the child any time.

She had tried, during those years, to establish some closeness with Melissa. Every trip she made to the city, she visited the child. She had done all she could to shape her thoughts and create some rapport with her. The child had been difficult even when she was small, so typically Catswold—stubborn, willful, and flighty, bursting into tears of terror for no reason. Then the problem had arisen with the Catswold Portal, and that was a situation that had seemed far more than coincidence.

That portal had been forgotten for generations. Havermeyer discovered it when he followed Alice Kitchen and the child. It had seemed a fortuitous find, entering down directly into Affandar as it did. She had, at that time, just begun to court eleven-year-old Efil of Affandar. She had been twenty-four.

Once Havermeyer found the Catswold Portal, they had used it regularly. But then Havermeyer, approaching it one afternoon, had stumbled upon Alice Kitchen making a drawing of it. He had pretended to admire her work, and Alice had told him, in the typically candid way of upperworlders, that she thought the door was ancient and that she meant to trace its history.

Siddonie sipped her ale, frowning. She had gone up through the tunnel herself the next day, to get Melissa out of there before Alice Kitchen learned too much about the portal, and perhaps began to suspect things about the child. It had been time to bring the girl down anyway. She was twelve years old and should begin training.

She remembered that day sharply. When she came out of the tunnel into the tool cave, the child was playing just outside the open door, in the garden. Siddonie had spellbound her easily, had picked her up, and had carried her back through the wall when someone cast a spell over her. She went dizzy and felt the child pulled out of her arms.

She had remained trapped for hours in a spell as confining as stone, slumped at the end of the tunnel, unconscious, knowing nothing. When she regained her senses, she was certain the child had been taken down to the Netherworld. Then as she followed the tunnel down, she found behind a boulder some bread crusts where someone had eaten—smooth, commercially baked upperworld crusts. And beside these, a dark spot of earth had smelled sweet, as if some child’s drink such as Grape Kool-Aid had been spilled.

Once in the Netherworld again, she had launched a thorough search for Melissa, but the child could not be found.

And in the upperworld Alice Kitchen began a search, too. It was later that she—Alice West by then—began to investigate the portal.

Vrech had taken care of Alice smoothly enough, crossing the Primal Laws only in a small way: a fear-spell that touched the truck driver, causing a swerve. That had been a long shot that had paid off.

Siddonie started as Ridgen squeezed her hand. She had been a long way off. Ridgen warmed her with a deep look. She winked back at him, and he smiled.

“The fire is dying. The chambers have been aired and warmed,” he said.

As they watched Moriethsten, Ridgen’s eyes narrowed, weaving a sleep-spell over the Wexten king—a simple enough charm when handling one person, though near impossible when dealing with a mob. Moriethsten yawned and began to nod.

Siddonie rose, taking Ridgen’s arm. The two of them moved toward the stair, amused by Moriethsten asleep with his head on the table.

Chapter 26

In the Hell Pit the Harpy basked among flames, easing quickly again into her old habits. Her memories of the upperworld faded. She mingled with the hell-cast souls of the dead and whispered the grim songs of the dead, and nearly forgot the vibrant goodness of the living. Old lusts gripped her. Depression and anger drugged her; soon she was wallowing in all manner of depravity.

Only slowly did her preoccupation with the morose and sullen begin to pale, only slowly did the excesses of the damned begin to lose their charm, and the dead began to seem dull. At last the Harpy grew restless and began to think that warm, living people were more interesting. On a damp night when the Hell fires sulked and smoked, the Harpy looked deep into her mirror.

She saw Melissa climbing the vines at the back of Affandar Palace. She saw her fight the king’s embrace, saw the queen storm in. She saw Siddonie change Melissa to cat, and she saw Mag agonizing beside the girl’s cage, trying to free her. She saw Mag captured.

The Harpy watched Mag huddle shivering in the Toad’s old cell, her round, wrinkled face pulled into despair. And when the Harpy tried to sleep, she could not.

What was it about this old woman that drew her sympathy?

The Harpy was uncertain about leaving the Hell Pit. But she could leave. Siddonie’s spell, that had originally freed her, was still strong.

She stood wakeful, pecking irritably at the flames and coals. Why shouldn’t she go? Nothing bound her here. She would not admit even to herself how totally boring the Hell Pit seemed to her now.

When at last she rose, flapping, she headed straight for Affandar.

Three hours later in Siddonie’s dungeons, a white wing swept against Mag’s cage. A white arm reached through, and a thin hand shook Mag awake.

Mag stared muzzily into the white bird face as the Harpy whispered a spell that swung the door free. Waking fully, Mag quickly quit the cage, following the Harpy silently. The womanbird, excited over her increased strength over Siddonie’s weakening spell, flapped and preened. She led Mag deep into the cellars, where she mumbled a charm that opened a pillar. Mag followed her down a thin flight of stairs and along a low tunnel. As they traveled, ducking, Mag sniffed the Harpy’s smoky, sulphurous scent. “How was the Pit?”

“Warm. Lovely.”

They walked a while in silence, then Mag said,“Why did you come away? Why did you rescue me?”

“The bitch queen took my mirror.”

“That’s no answer. You have your mirror.”

“By freeing you, I am paying her back for my suffering.”

“Am I that valuable to the queen?”

“She detests you.”

Mag smiled.“And where is Melissa? What is happening to Melissa?”

The Harpy didn’t answer. Walking ahead of Mag she looked down into her little mirror and saw the calico cat limping along beside the highway, thin and dirty. She saw the little cat in the garden staring up at the portal, her green eyes huge.

But the danger wasn’t over. The cat remembered nothing; she was innocent and half-helpless.

“Well?” Mag said. “What of Melissa?”

“I can show you nothing.”

“What do you mean, you can show me nothing?”

“If I gave you a vision you’d know where she was. You’d go barreling away to rescue her. She is best left alone.”

“But what is happening to her?”

“She is resourceful,” said the Harpy. “Trust me.” She ran her fingers through her white feathers. “She is utterly content at the moment.”

They had reached the stairs. They climbed and came out into Circe’s Grotto. Mag caught her breath at its beauty, and she wanted to tarry and look, but the Harpy, pressing cold fingers into Mag’s arm, shoved her on. The womanbird opened the wall and pushed Mag through, and they moved quickly away through the night-dark woods.

Chapter 27

Stiff-legged, the cat stalked the door, her eyes burning with green fire, her tail lashing against the bushes and vines. Warily she watched the cats’ heads: they were not alive but there was life in them. She drew close then leaped away, then skidded toward them again, ignoring the clamor of the garden birds. Drawn to the oak cats, she reached a paw toward something invisible that seemed to move beyond the door, then, confused, turned quickly to lick her shoulder. But the vision amused her. She stared up at the door again, giddy, and rolled over, grabbing her tail, spinning and tumbling, her eyes flashing. Madly she played with the power she sensed. Leaping onto the vine that edged the door, she swarmed up it, drunk with the forces that pulled at her. She didn’t see the garden cats on the hill above where they crouched watching her.

The five cats stared down, frozen with interest. They crept closer as the calico reached the top of the vine, watching her, stealthy as snipers. At the top of the vine she did a flip, then worked her way down again, slapping at the leaves. She leaped out of the vine at the base of the door and sat before it, ready for the door to open, willing it to open.

When it didn’t open she rubbed against it. When it remained closed she pushed at it with her shoulder, then began to dig at the crack beneath, rolling down and thrusting her paw under.

When digging failed, she reared up on her hind legs and reached for the lowest row of snarling oak faces and raked her claws down them in long, satisfying scratches. When still the door didn’t open, she turned away, pretending total boredom, and selected a shelter deep beneath the overgrown geraniums.

In the cool dark she stretched out full length, digging her claws into the earth, then lay washing herself. Drawing her barbed tongue across bright fur, she soon eased into a contented rhythm of purrs and tongue strokes. Soon she slept, exhausted from her long journey. The garden cats came down the hill and circled her. One by one they sniffed at her, then turned away puzzled. The big orange tom stayed a long time staring at her. The sun dropped behind the woods. The sky held a last smear of brilliance, then the garden darkened. The wind came up off the bay blowing branches and vines, but the calico slept on. She didn’t hear the tool shed door push open. At first sign of the hunch-shouldered man, the orange cat bristled and fled. In sleep the calico smelled something unpleasant and her ears went flat and she curled up tighter, but she didn’t wake.

Vrech stood in the low doorway staring around the garden, watching for activity in the six houses. The lights were on above in Morian’s house. At Olive Cleaver’s, only the porch light burned, suggesting that the old woman had gone out. In the low white Cape Cod, just the living room was lit. This was Anne Hollingsworth’s night to work late. Likely Olive Cleaver was sitting with the boy. Tom would be asleep, suffering from the fever his mother thought was the flu.

Below, the yellow house on the left was dark. It was Wednesday, the Blakes’ bridge night. He watched the center house as West left his easel and went down the short hall to the kitchen, likely to fix himself a drink. To the right of West’s, the musician’s house had lights on in the bedroom and bath. Wednesday was jazz night; soon those lights would go out and John the clarinetist would go up across the garden to Sam’s Bar.

Vrech smiled. Olive Cleaver’s hearing wasn’t sharp, and the wind was making plenty of noise. With wind moving the foliage, he might never be noticed; he might seem just another blowing shadow.

He watched John cross the garden with his clarinet case, but decided to wait a few minutes more. Maybe the artist’s model would go across to the tavern, and maybe West as well. They were both jazz freaks. Jazz made him nervous; he didn’t call it music.

When neither Morian nor West came out, he grew impatient. Stepping back inside the door, he lifted his burden, bound in the burlap bag, easing its weight across his shoulder.

He left his lantern burning behind him on the tool table, pulled the door to, but not closed, and made his way up the terraces. The drugged prince was a heavy weight, and he was already tired from carrying Wylles up the tunnel.

He had neared the white house when the screams of trumpet and sax cut the night. The band was warming up; that would cover any sound he might make. As he moved in between the bushes beside Tom’s window, something crashed past him, yowling. Damn cat.

He hid his bundle in the bushes, watching the house and thinking about the cat he had left on the highway. He saw it in his mind as the girl—a sexy creature. Suddenly another cat sped past his feet. They were all over the garden tonight—moonlight made them crazy.

He moved to the window and looked into the living room. Yes, skinny old Olive Cleaver was there reading a book. He returned to Tom’s darkened window and felt with sensitive fingers for the hinges he had loosened earlier.

The blaring of loud, dissonant horns jerked the little calico awake and on her feet, cringing at the noise, staring with terror at the swaying, tossing garden. In the blowing moonlight the carved cats on the door seemed alive, and she reared up, looking at them with widening eyes. At that moment, the wind fingered open the door, exposing a crack of light. She stared at it and crept forward.

She sniffed the cat faces but was drawn, too, by the light space beyond the door; and by falling spaces on beyond the light. She hesitated, then she pushed through the door into the tool room, moving directly past the wheelbarrow and ladder to the stone wall, and stood looking up expectantly. She pressed her shoulder to the wall, then pawed at it. She was clawing hard at the stone when Vrech returned carrying his bundle. The cat tasted his scent and spun to face him. Her back pulled into an arch, her teeth bared in a spitting yowl.

Vrech set down his burden, swearing, wondering how the hell she had found her way back. He shoved the bundle against the wall, making sure Tom was too far gone to cry out, then closed in on the cat. When he lunged, she leaped clear.

He worked her into the corner behind the wheelbarrow. She darted past, upsetting two oil lamps and breaking a chimney.

He was sweating and furious by the time he caught her. She had clawed him in three long wounds; his hands and arms were bleeding. He grabbed a gunnysack and shoved her into it, but before he could close it she sank her teeth into his wrist. He knocked her loose, pushed her deeper in, then tied the bag and threw it against the door.

He barked a guttural opening spell that sent the wall swinging back, lifted Tom inside, laid the boy on the cold stone, and left him there.

Closing the wall, he picked up the sack with the cat inside and moved out into the blowing garden. He had to get rid of the beast; he dare not leave it so close to the portal for fear Siddonie would learn of it.

He’d leave it somewhere where it had a chance for life. That was all that was required. He wasn’t carrying it back up the cursed highway.

He decided to buy a Greyhound ticket in the village, watch the bag loaded on as luggage, then disappear. Let the driver worry about what to do with it. One bus went clear to Coos Bay. He’d have a drink first, there was plenty of time. The Greyhound schedules were common knowledge in the village, and the Coos Bay bus didn’t leave for two hours. He hoisted the cat to his shoulder, snuffed the lantern, and headed across the road. He didn’t like the music at Sam’s, but he liked to watch the women who came there.

Chapter 28

Basin Street jazz drowned the wind in the garden. The beat was solid, the music at once weeping and happy—primal music like a deep heartbeat. Braden, drowning in the good jazz, turned off the overhead studio lights and crossed the blowing moonlit garden, heading for Sam’s.

He paused beside the tool room door, watching wind shake the door and whip the vine that grew around it. Feeling spooked, he wanted to move on, yet was held a moment watching the blowing shadows that raced across the garden, shadows running like live things. In the restless light the carved cats’ faces seemed to move and change. Then from Sam’s a blast of trumpet and trombone rose against the wind. And the wind leaping from tree to tree suddenly stilled.

The shadows stopped running. The garden was silent, deadly still.

Elder wind. It’s an elder wind…

The term shocked him, surprised him. It was a term his Gram had used, a Welsh term from her girlhood. He hadn’t thought of it since she died.

He could see her beside him standing on the rocks above the sea, the wind whipping her carroty hair, her arm around him because he was small and the wind was strong, wind that died, then suddenly blew again, throwing salt spray in their faces.“An elder wind,” she said.

“What’s that, Gram?”

“An elder wind can speak to you, if you know how to listen.”

“How do you listen? I don’t understand.”

She had laughed, enjoying the wild evening.“You listen with something inside, the part of you that knows things.”

“But what would an elder wind say?”

“Something of the future, something that’s going to happen.” Then, seeing his expression, she had said, “Something good. Something—beyond everyday things. Something—not everyone can hear.”

He stood in the blowing garden, lost in that time that was forever gone. Lost to those he loved who were gone. Then, scowling at himself, he went on across the lane toward the warmth and the good, pure Dixieland. Above him the redwood forest loomed deep black, rattling and hushing as the wind once more tore at its branches.

Sam’s Bar was an old converted house, dark shingled, nestled alone against the redwood forest. It had no neon and needed no advertising. Its patrons parked in the lane or on the skirt of blacktop by the front door, or left their cars at home. Inside, walls had been removed to allow for a sprawling openness with quiet corners, and to make space for the bandstand. You could get dark stout on draft, and hardboiled eggs pickled in pale, hot pepper juice. You could get bock beer in the spring, and during legal crabbing months you could get a sandwich made of green olives and crab fresh from the SanFrancisco fleets. Sam, ex-stevedore, jazz buff, was a good listener, and held within his graying head half the secrets of the village.

Braden threaded between the cars parked tightly around Sam’s front door, and stood a moment awash in the plaintive, hypnotic rhythm of “Joe Avery’s Blues.” The porch was ten feet wide, with four steps leading up to it, and a dark wooden door with a small stained glass panel.

Inside, the room was warm, smoky, booze-smelling, and rocking with the gut-twisting music. He checked the bar, nodded to the band. Sam poured him a whisky, grinning through a short fringe of grizzled beard. The main room was to Braden’s right. There was a good blaze in the fireplace. Long windows faced the windy, moonlit forest. Morian and Bob were at the corner table. Carrying his glass, he joined them. He took the chair in the corner, laying a hand companionably over Morian’s. She was dressed in something white and low that showed off her beautiful umber skin. She was tall, not fat, but the sort of woman who, nude on the model stand, made fashionably skinny women look incomplete. After Morian, no model seemed worth drawing. No other model had the beautiful bones, the fine, long muscles and gorgeous breasts, the subtle turnings of shadows to study and capture and linger over. Her dark skin picked up reds, ambers: dark velvet skin clothing itself in deep lights and rich shadows, so any other clothing seemed out of place. She studied Braden.

“Work going badly, Brade?”

He looked at her; she always knew. She had been good friends with Alice, had always cared about their work, was a good critic. It was an experience to watch Morian rise from the model stand at break, slip on a wrap, walk around the classroom studying the work. A comment from Morian was always perceptive and valuable. She hugged a lot, companionably, as she admired and questioned. Low and velvet and fine, Morian was like a dark, rich sun rising in soft brilliance whenever she entered a classroom.

She watched him closely.“I suppose Rye’s been over.”

Braden nodded.“I told him to cancel the show.”

Morian scowled.

Bob leaned back in his chair, watching them. He was smaller than Morian, a well-knit man. Sandy hair, a look in his hazel eyes that was sometimes too understanding—that was the trouble with shrinks. He was seldom without Leslie in the evenings—trim, tanned Leslie—except when she worked late doing the endless paperwork of the small village library. “That’s pretty heavy, Brade. Rye’s likely to take you up on it.”

Braden gave him a questioning look.

Morian said,“Rye was over at school today. To see Garcheff’s new work.”

Braden put down his drink, instantly defensive.“He thinks I won’t get the work together. He’s planning to slip Garcheff in.” And he knew that wasn’t fair.

Morian said,“But you told him to cancel the show.”

Now for the first time he didn’t want to cancel. “Hell, I guess I had it coming.” He reached for his drink, and spilled it.

They helped him mop up the whisky with paper napkins, stuffing them in the ashtray. Morian said,“You have almost two months. You aren’t letting Garcheff take your date.” She laid her hand over his, giving him a black velvet look, a soothsayer’s look. Bob looked away, half embarassed, then left the table, muttering something about peanuts; Braden felt a quick, fleeting amusement because Bob was so straight. The band swung into “Just a Little While to Stay Here.” The heat of the music drew them closer. Morian started to say something, then stared past him across the room, frowning. When she kept staring, he turned to look.

The gardener was sitting by the door. Vrech. The dark, hunched man was alone at a small table against the wall. Morian watched him intently.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“That bag under his table,” she said quietly.

“It’s just an old gunnysack. What do you think he’s got, Olive’s jewelry?”

“It moved.”

He hadn’t seen it move.

She put her hand on his knee.“Keep looking—he’s got something alive in there.” Her eyes flashed. “You don’t stuff a live creature into a gunnysack.” She was getting worked up; it didn’t take much.

“Listen, Mor—” He took her arm to keep her from getting up. “Wait a minute. At least be sure. What could he have?” He hadn’t seen the bag so much as flinch.

Bob returned with pretzels, two beers, and a bourbon.“That’s A’Plenty” ended in a high riff, the trumpet player mouthed inaudible words and they launched into “Salty Dog.” Bob looked at Braden and at Morian’s stormy face, and shifted his chair so he could glance across at the gardener.

Braden said,“She thinks the bag moved. Listen, Mor, just sit still a minute. What could he have?”

Morian picked up her purse.“There’s something alive in there. What does he—he was in the tool room all afternoon with the door closed. Until after dark. He came out carrying a bundle—not that one, a big bundle. And now he has something alive. He’s caught some poor animal…”

Bob looked mildly skeptical.

She scowled at him.“There’s something in the bag. And he was in the shed for hours; I could see the door from where I was sewing. I saw him come out, but I never did see him go in.”

Braden drained his glass and reached for the drink, amused at Morian.“You must have looked away once or twice.”

“It takes more time than a glance away to go across the garden. I was watching the door.” She looked faintly embarrassed. “The door seems to draw me. I see anything that moves around it. Vrech didn’t go in while I was sewing. He came out well after dark, carrying a big, awkward bundle. The band was here, I could hear them warming up. Vrech came up across the garden carrying the bundle over his shoulder, then the moon went behind a cloud. When it cleared he was gone. I changed, made a phone call, and came on over. And there he was ordering a beer.”

Bob shifted his chair again so he could prop his feet on the one next to him and see the gardener more easily.

Braden said,“Alice felt that way about the door.”

Morian nodded.“I know.”

When Bob left to meet Leslie, the bag had still not moved. Morian wouldn’t leave. They sat quietly talking about the show at the de Young, obliquely watching the gardener. They avoided talking about Braden’s paintings. Their hands touched as they worked up comfortably to a night at his place; it had been a long time. The band was into “Tailgate Ramble” when thebag moved again; they both saw it twitch then twist, as if something inside had flopped over. When Vrech prodded it with his toe, it lay still. But Morian was up, easing around the table. “I heard a cat cry. He has a cat in there.” She stared at Braden, eyes flashing. “One of our cats?” He watched her, half amused, and followed her, hoping this wasn’t going to turn into a brawl.

The gardener watched Morian coldly. When she knelt reaching for the bag, he snatched it from her and stood up swinging it away. The bag began to thrash and yowl. Vrech pushed Morian out of the way and spun past them out the door. Morian lunged after him. Braden could do nothing but go with her. He grabbed Vrech, swinging him around, and Morian jerked the bag from his hands. The rest was a tangle. Vrech punched Braden in the face, the cat screamed and raked Braden’s cheek through the bag, then Vrech had the bag again, running. Morian ran after him; Braden, his jaw hurting, caught a glimpse of her face raging mad. He could only stay with her, knowing this was insane. As they crashed through the wood he gained on Vrech and tackled him running. He threw the bag clear, jabbing his knee in the man’s belly.

Holding the gardener down, he watched Morian tear at the bag, fighting the knots. Whatever was in there flopped and fought. Every time Vrech tried to jerk free, Braden twisted his arm tighter. He stared down at the man’s angry face, surprised that Vrech was so strong. He felt a powerful distaste at touching the man; he wanted suddenly to flatten that leering face.

“It’s open. Oh Brade…”

A cat looked out, crouching and terrified. Its ears were laid flat, its eyes immense with fear. Its face was part mottled dark, part white. As the wind hit it, it ducked down. But when it saw Vrech it exploded out of the bag, clawing Morian’s hand, leaped away, and ran. Like a streak it disappeared within the dark woods. Morian rose to chase after it, then turned back.

“She was terrified, Brade. If I chase her she’ll run forever.”

He looked at her, exasperated.“What the hell am I going to do with the gardener? What the hell are we doing out here?” He was drained suddenly, and perplexed. Something about the gardener sickened him. The man was tense as a spring—he knew if he let up only a little, Vrech would be all over him. He didn’t feel like fighting anymore. His jaw was already swelling and his fist felt like it was broken. “Christ, Mor…” But she wasn’t paying attention; she was staring off into the woods looking for the damned cat. The way the wind was tearing at the bushes, no one could see a cat running.

“It was hardly more than a kitten, Brade. Little white throat and paws. It was terrified.” She turned on Vrech, her black eyes blazing. “What did you want with it? What were you going to do to it?”

The gardener glared and didn’t answer. His dark eyes were chilling, there was a strangeness about him that made Braden force him harder against the earth.

Morian moved closer, touching Braden’s shoulder. “Let him up, Brade. The cat’s gone—he won’t catch her. Let him go.”

He didn’t want to let him go, he wanted to pound him.

“Brade, let him go.”

Unwillingly he loosed Vrech, ready to pulverize him if he so much as looked sideways.

Vrech moved away from him quickly, and headed back down through the blowing woods toward Sam’s. He looked back at them once. In the darkness Braden couldn’t see his face. The lights through the bar’s windows illuminated his slouching walk, then he was gone around the building, heading toward the lane.

“Brade, go ask Sam for some hamburger. I’ll go up in the woods, maybe she’ll come to me. I think she’s hurt. I couldn’t tell, she fled so fast.” She touched his face. “I can’t just let her go, if she’s hurt. Go on, Brade—cooked hamburger.”

In the bar he got some hamburger scraps and two double whiskeys, and borrowed a flashlight from Sam.

It wasn’t hard to find Morian in her blowing white dress, standing beside the spring. She took the hamburger, spread the wrapper out and weighted it with broken branches. She led him some distance away, into a shelter of wild azalea where the wind didn’t reach them so strongly. “Talk softly, maybe the sound of our voices will soothe her. Maybe once she eats, she’ll come to us.”

He felt ridiculous sitting in the middle of the woods waiting for a cat. Alice would be very amused. He wondered what the gardener had been going to do with it.“Why do you think it’s a female?”

“Most calico’s are. And that little face—very female.”

He didn’t know how she could be sure—it was just a cat. Frightened, though, and young. Its eyes had been huge. “It won’t come to you, Mor. It was too scared. Christ, what are we doing out here?”

“Just a little while, Brade.”

They sat in silence, their hands touching, chilled by the wind, waiting for a stray cat. She said,“It hurts me to see them like that, so afraid, and maybe injured. They’re so small; they weren’t meant for our cruelty. Tiger—he was so terribly hurt. I couldn’t help him. The vet says they go into shock, that they don’t feel the pain. I don’t know.” Her hand was holding his too tightly. “I couldn’t help him live, all I could do was help him die.”

He looked at her and said nothing. She had the same empathy for animals that Alice had had, a deep, intimate fellowship that he had never really felt and found hard to understand. After a long time she said,“I guess she isn’t going to come near the food while we’re here. Poor little thing. I wonder where she came from, where she belongs.”

“She’s just a stray cat, Mor.”

She gave him a hard look.“There’s no such thing as just a stray cat.” Then she grinned at him. “Are you just a stray person?” She rose and stood looking into the black woods.

“The wind makes her all the more frightened. Maybe if I put out food tomorrow when it’s calm, she’ll come to me.” She took his hand and they started down through the woods heading for his place.

The calico stalked the meat, but not until Braden and Morian had been gone for some time did she come near enough to gulp it. She ate all the hamburger, then drank from the spring, stopping several times to stare in the direction of the garden.

She was both drawn to the garden and afraid. She approached and shied away five times before she had worked her way down to the portal. Shivering, she smelled Vrech’s scent in the door and leaped away again, but she did not head back to the woods. She bolted down the hill toward the brick veranda, sensing safety there.

She avoided the lighted portion of the veranda where yellow squares from the windows angled across the brick, and took cover in the bushes at the far end. Safe in the familiar shelter, she washed, circled deep in the dry leaves and curled down, tucking her nose under her tail. With her white parts hidden, even in the invading washes of moonlight she looked like part of the dry leaves, her mottled coat the same color as the leaves.

Her dreams were filled with fear. She mewled sometimes, and her paws twitched and ran. But then as she slept more deeply the dreams became unclear to her cat nature. Meaningless dramas were played out, voices and scenes touched her which only the conscious Melissa would have understood.

Chapter 29

Braden was pulled out of a deep sleep, fighting to get his bearings. A sound had woken him—a scratching, clawing noise. Coming awake, he tried to figure out why he was sleeping on the model’s couch. Then he remembered, and reached for Morian. The next moment he came fully awake and saw that she had gone—her clothes were gone. He could smell coffee; she had made coffee. The scratching sound was like fingernails on glass. He stared toward the window wall.

There was a cat out there, rearing up, scratching at the glass. It was the cat from last night; the cat they’d sat up half the night trying to catch. The one he’d bruised his fist for. What was it doing here? He didn’t believe it was trying to get in through his door.

The cat had woken before daylight. The wind was gone. The garden was littered with broken branches, and birds flitted across them, searching for insects. She had started out from the bushes to hunt when a sound from the house made her draw back.

A figure had come out, her white dress rustling. She had crossed the veranda and headed up the hill, her scent on the still air familiar and comforting. The little cat rose to follow her, but then she glanced again toward the studio and settled down, yawning and stretching. She was dozing when a sparrow flew onto the veranda.

It took her some time to maneuver the sparrow into position. Skillfully she pounced, bit it behind the head, carried it into the bushes, and ate it. This morsel stirred her hunger, and she began to watch the studio. There was food there—she had gotten food there. Her green eyes blazed as she slipped out of the bushes onto the veranda and peered in through the glass door. She pressed against the door, and when no one came to let her in, she began to claw at it.

The door didn’t open. Nothing moved inside. She clawed harder. Soon a figure moved on the couch.

The man stretched, and the cat backed away. But the next minute she pressed at the glass again, looking in sideways, her whiskers flattened in white lines across her cheek. She had received food in that room; she had known warmth and shelter in there, and love. Layers of her nature surfaced, layers of Melissa’s childhood, but to the cat, she simply needed to be in there.

When the man didn’t come to let her in, she raked again impatiently. She saw him swing his feet to the floor.

He couldn’t believe this. The cat was staring in, raking its claws insolently down the glass. Why wasn’t it still afraid? Why had it come down here? A chill touched him. What the hell did it want? As it reared up, its belly shone white against the glass. Its mottled and white face seemed curiously intent, its green eyes demanding. He snatched up a museum catalog and threw it hard at the glass. The cat stopped clawing. But it didn’t run; it looked angry, almost looked incensed.

Maybe it smelled Morian, maybe had followed her because she fed it, maybe it thought she was in here. He pulled on his shorts, got a cup of coffee, sucking in the first sip, and went to shower and shave. The cat would be gone when he came out. He slammed the bathroom door on the sound of its claws.

When he came out the cat was still there. But it wasn’t scratching now, it was mewling. He rushed at the door shouting, flung it open, and chased the cat into the bushes.

He put the canvas ofNatalie at Summer on the easel, poured out turpentine and oil, got a fresh cup of coffee, and stood back to study the painting. Then, squeezing half a dozen tubes onto the palette, he got to work; softening Natalie’s face and the purple shadow across her forehead, working in Indian Red, toning down the umbrella and its shadow across her shoulder. At some point the cat came back and began yowling stridently and clawing again. He wanted to throw the easel at it.

He worked steadily, ignoring the sound until his stomach began to growl either from frustration at the noise or from hunger. He refilled his coffee cop and stood in the hall looking at the painting. It was coming to life—there was warmth now. This was the one he’d wanted most to make right, the one Morian had looked at longest last night, though she had said nothing.

The cat was suddenly so quiet he looked up, hoping it was gone. It stared back at him, its green eyes huge and demanding. Christ, he and Morian had spent half the night waiting in the woods for the damned cat. It wouldn’t come then, so why was it down here now, trying to get in? He went into the kitchen, started some bacon, and broke four eggs into a bowl. When he turned the skillet down he could hear the cat yowling.

Why the hell didn’t it go to Morian’s? She was the one who wanted to feed it and mother it. He went out to chase it off, but this time it didn’t run. When he shouted it stood at the edge of the terrace looking so determined he almost laughed. For a little thing, it had a hell of a nerve.

Alice said cats went to the people who disliked them, that they found that amusing. He smelled the bacon burning, made a dash for the kitchen and flipped it onto a plate, swearing. He washed the skillet and started over, then turned the bacon low and went to phone Morian.

“That cat’s down here.”

“What cat?”

“The one last night.”

“Don’t be silly, Brade. It wouldn’t come there, it was too frightened.”

“The same cat. Clawing my door.”

“It can’t be. Are you sure? Calico with white paws and—”

“The same cat.”

“I’ll be down.” She hung up, and in a minute she came down the garden dressed to go to work in a sleekcaf? au lait suit. Before she reached the veranda the cat fled for the bushes. Morian stood looking after it as Braden opened the door.

“It’s the same cat,” she said, frowning. She approached the bushes and tried to coax it out, kneeling awkwardly in her high heels, talking softly. They could see the cat peering but it wouldn’t come out.

Morian left at last, instructing Braden to feed it.“I’ll come for her tonight—my class is in an hour. Please, Brade—she’s just a young little thing, and frightened.”

“She wasn’t frightened while tearing up my door. And she looks old enough to hunt for her breakfast.”

“Feed her, Brade.” She cupped his chin in her hand, brushed his lips with hers, and left him.

He scrambled the eggs, put the burned bacon on a paper towel for the cat, and took his breakfast to the veranda. The sun rising at the back of the house left the terrace in shadow but washed golden light across the upper garden. The whole garden was torn and tangled from the wind, scattered with broken limbs. He put the burnt bacon by the bush, and his own plate on the table at the other end of the terrace.

He had eaten only a few bites when the cat came out. She sniffed the bacon but didn’t eat it. She sat down, staring the length of the terrace directly at him. Directly into his eyes. He looked back at her for some time, strangely caught by her clear, green gaze. She blinked, and blinked again, then bent her head and began to eat the burnt bacon.

When she finished the bacon she looked up as if she wanted more. He set his plate down at his feet, knowing she wouldn’t have the nerve to come for it.

She approached the plate slowly, her body tensed to run. Her green stare didn’t leave him. She was as dark as mink in the shadow of the terrace, her white markings sharply defined. She stalked the plate and watched him, seeming to hold both Braden and the plate in her wide gaze.

And, crouched at his feet, she licked up his scrambled eggs and bacon then got to work on the half piece of toast, holding it down with one white paw, tearing off small, neat bites, glancing up at him with a complacent warmth.

When she had cleaned his plate she gave him a slow shuttered look and flopped over at his feet to lie sprawled totally unprotected and trusting. Upside down, she began to wash her paws and face, glancing coyly up at him.

Amazed, he sat still, watching her. He guessed he didn’t know much about cats. He would never have thought one so frightened would so quickly turn bold. Amused by her, he studied the painterly mixture of russet and black that patterned her thick coat with intricate swirls almost like batik.

Her four feet were white like small white gloves, and the bottoms of her paws were pink. Where the fur parted at her white throat, the skin was pink, making her look frail and vulnerable. Her mouth and triangular nose were pale pink, her ears so thin the light shone through.

When he moved to get up she fled to the bushes.

He scrambled four more eggs and ate them in the kitchen, put his plate in the sink, made more coffee, and got back to work. Working, he glanced occasionally through the glass at the cat, who lay trustingly asleep on the terrace.

Satisfied withNatalie, he tackledLady with a Yellow Buggy. Garcheff wasn’t having his gallery date. They were good friends; Garcheff would say he never dreamed of such a thing, unless of course Braden wanted to get off the hook. He was working steadily now, with a calm, sure sense. All he’d needed was Morian in his bed. He glazed gold into the shadows, worked life into the woman’s face where before it had been stark, wove light into her figure and into the tree-tossed background until the painting began to glow. The old sure, elated feeling lifted him. When he looked up the door was ajar.

The cat was asleep on the model’s couch, stretched across a piece of vermilion silk. He moved to grab her by the back of the neck and dump her out, but he thought she might scratch.

If she got behind the stacked canvases he’d never get her out. He bent and took her up carefully, sliding his hands under her warm, relaxed body. She hardly woke, she lay limp and trusting in his hands, raising her gaze full on him, her eyes languid.

He stood looking down at her, holding her. Her warmth radiated through his hands. At last he put her back down on the couch, on the warm indentation she had made in the silk.

This way, he’d know where to find her when Morian got home.

It was evening, almost six, when he finishedLady with a Yellow Buggy. Drained, he avoided looking at the work, had looked too long, the colors burned into his mind so he couldn’t see anything clearly. But he knew the work had life now, resonance. Somewhere he had gone heavy-handed with this series, working as if with dead people. Still, maybe this was a false high, maybe he’d hate the stuff tomorrow. The cat was awake, staring up at him all languid ease and long emerald eyes, her mouth curved as if she were smiling. She jumped off the couch with a soft thud and came to him, wound around his bare ankles. The sensation was so strange he stepped away. Where the hell was Morian?

When the cat rolled onto her back, her white belly and throat exposed, he thought he could have crushed her throat with one kick. Before he knew it he was kneeling, stroking her.

She really was thin, all bones beneath the soft fur. Tiny little bones; he hadn’t realized cats were so delicate. He must have known that once, because Alice was always petting cats on the street and he must have petted them to please her. When he stopped stroking her, the cat touched his hand with a soft white paw, wanting him to keep on. Irritated, he turned from her to look up the garden, wondering if Morian was home. He saw Anne Hollingsworth pull in, leaving her car in the drive. When he rose to make himself a drink, the cat followed him to the kitchen.

“I’m not feeding you again—forget it. Morian can feed you. Cats stay where they’re fed.” The cat sat down in the middle of the kitchen and looked up at him demandingly. He turned away, relieved at the knock on the door. Morian could get the damned beast out of here.

It wasn’t Morian, it was Anne—disheveled, red-faced from crying, her brown hair half damp and unknotted, her eyes swollen. Even her tailored suit looked limp.

“I’m sorry, Brade, but I can’t—I wouldn’t come barging in but…” She shivered and dug in her purse for a handkerchief. He put his arm around her and led her in, and handed her a clean paint rag. She blew her nose on it, then leaned bawling against him. He held her close, amazed; he’dnever seen Anne cry. He’d never seen her messy and unkempt. She was the essence of the perfect professional woman.

Finally she got herself under control. Gulping back the last spasms, she stared up at him. Her face was blotched; she looked terrible. Damp hair clung to her forehead. She straightened her blouse, picked up his drink from the work table, and took a long, calming swallow.

“I’ll make myself another, come on.” He guided her toward the kitchen, like directing a small child. “Can you talk about it?”

“It’s Tom.” She leaned against the cupboard where he put her. “He’s worse. Not—not sicker. Just…I don’t know…His temperature’s gone. Two weeks of flu has left him pale and he’s lost a lot of weight. But it’s not any of that, it’s—theway he is.” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with a fear that made him stare. “He looks at me like a stranger, Brade. As if he hates me. He…” She finished her drink and accepted the refill he had ready. He had made it weak—she wasn’t a heavy drinker.

“He doesn’t look at me the same. He doesn’t speak to me the same. I could be the scrub woman. He’s…totally unresponsive. I don’t know how to describe it.” She shook her head. “Braden, I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of my own child.”

He didn’t understand what she was saying; she wasn’t making sense. “Let me run it by you. Tom doesn’t look at you the same way. He doesn’t speak to you the same, and you’re afraid of him.”

She nodded.

“How long have you felt this way?”

“It’s not the way Ifeel! It’s the way he is!”

“I’m sorry, Anne. How long has he been this way?” She made him uneasy; he kept wanting to move around. He propelled her toward the studio.

She sat down, cradling her drink.

“How long?”

“This is going to sound insane. As if—as if I’m going on about nothing.”

He waited.

“It started this morning. But he’s so…”

Braden tried not to show his annoyance.

“Listen, Brade, I know how it sounds. But it’s true. He’s—it started this morning all at once. He is totally, completely different. He could be a different boy.”

“But you can’t…”

“He is so changed, Brade. As if—as if that boy up there is not my son.” Anne looked up at him, her face puffy and desperate. He felt chills; he’d never known Anne to have flights of imagination. He wondered if she’d been working extra hard or if something had happened he didn’t know about. Anne was the sensible one, always in charge of her life, perfectly groomed in her neat little business suits, able to juggle her work and care for Tom, planning things out, knowing exactly what to allow for in a given situation.

He said,“All the time Tom was sick he wasn’t like this?”

She shook her head.

“But now, today, he’s different.”

“Yes.”

“Did you call the doctor?”

“I called him and went to talk to him. I just got back. He said—he just said…to wait. To see how Tom is in a few days. See if he gets worse. Call him if he gets worse.”

Braden took her glass and went to refill it. When he got back she was sitting just as he had left her, clutching her hands together in the same way, her knuckles white. She went on talking as if she hadn’t stopped. “And the cat—he—Tom tried to kill Pippin.”

She looked at Braden nakedly, her eyes like a hurt child.“You know how Tom loves Pippin. That cat hardly left Tom’s room the whole time he was sick. Tom lay there with Pippin cuddled in his arms.” She began to sob again, choking, then looked up at Braden with cold anger. “This morning Tom threw an iron bookend at Pippin—threw it hard enough to kill him, it made a terrible dent in the wall. It barely missed Pippin. Tom was white with rage. When Pippin leaped away, Tom grabbed up the lamp to throw that, jerking out the cord, standing up on the bed screaming. I snatched the lamp from him and got Pippin out of the house. The look on Tom’s face, his eyes…The cold, horrible look in his eyes…”

Braden held her—he didn’t know what else to do.

“Pippin won’t even come to me now. He just runs; he won’t come near the house. I don’t blame him.”

“Maybe it’s Tom’s medicine. Could the medicine have turned him strange?”

“He hasn’t had that prescription for a week. He had Pippin on his bed last night while he ate dinner, loving and petting him. It was only this morning when I carried Pippin into his room that…Pippin tensed suddenly and stared at Tom and leaped away, clawing me and hissing. He has never done that. And the minute Tom saw him he went white and grabbed the bookend.”

“But why did Pippin hiss when you brought him in? Tom hadn’t hurt him yet.”

“I’m trying to tell you. Tom…” She set her drink down, put her face in her hands.

He knelt beside the chair, holding her hand, puzzled and upset by her lack of control.

“When Tom got sick that first night, Brade, when his fever was so high, he kept saying strange things, crazy things. But he was never like this, not like today. He seems filled with hatred suddenly—with a cold, terrifying hatred.”

“Drugs can cause mental change, Anne. Psychological change.”

“When I reminded the doctor of that, he said,Not with this drug.”

“And a drug could cause him to smell different,” Braden said reasonably. “Maybe to the cat he smells different. Maybe—Bob says…”

“I don’t want to hear what Bob says.” She glared at him, then lowered her glance. “I’m sorry. You touched a sore place. I don’t want to think about—about Tom being…”

He held her close.“I know you don’t. But if the drugs caused it, it isn’t like his father was. It’s—why don’t you…”

“Talk to Bob?” She shook her head.

“Talk to the doctor. Ask him if—”

“I told you! I did talk to him! That’s half of what’s the matter. He doesn’t believe me. He really doesn’t give a damn!” She stared at him, enraged. “I just came from talking to him. He left me so—he said there was never a case of that happening with this drug. Never. But then when I pressed him he said maybe it could happen, he simply couldn’t say. He didn’t offer any help, he didn’t offer to see Tom. He didn’t want to run any tests, he just said to wait, see what happens. He just covered himself and left me hanging. That’s what’s so terrifying, that there’s no one to understand or to help. No one to tell me what’s wrong.”

A crash cut them short. Braden remembered the cat and headed for the kitchen.

The cat was in the middle of the table ravaging a loaf of bread. Ravaging was the only word; she had shredded the wrapper and was hunched over the bread, gulping it down. She had, in the process, knocked a plate off, smashing it.

“When did you get a cat?” Anne said behind him. “Tom will—would have—would have laughed,” she said faltering.

“After all your remarks about cats. Braden, she’s hungry. You can’t feed her bread. Don’t you have any cat food?”

“It’s not my cat. I didn’t feed it the bread—can’t you see it just helped itself? I didn’t ask it in here, it’s Morian’s cat. Go call her and tell her the damned cat’s down here.” Maybe that would distract Anne. And maybe Morian could do something to help her, make her feel better.

Anne knelt and took the cat in her arms, stroking it. It relaxed against her, staring into her face coquettishly, and purring. With the cat over her shoulder like a baby, she opened the cupboard door, found a can of chicken, as familiar with his kitchen as with her own. They often fixed meals together, platonic and comfortable, Anne and Tom, Morian and Olive Cleaver.

“For Christ sake, don’t feed it my chicken. It’ll never leave. Let Morian feed it.”

“She’s starving, Brade. Look how thin she is. She needs meat.” She opened the can and dumped the boned chicken on a plate. The cat leaned out from Anne’s shoulder, her paw reaching for the plate.

He said,“That cat ate two eggs this morning, five strips of bacon, and a piece of toast. It’s had enough protein to run a polar bear. I eat that canned chicken for lunch.”

“You eat hamburger and eggs for lunch. Go call Morian yourself.” She sounded more like Anne again. She got the milk, poured some into a salad bowl, and watched tenderly as the cat slurped and gulped.

“That was the last can of chicken,” he said, watching the cat with interest. He had always thought cats were neat, silent eaters.

“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.

Now, alone in the cottage, she brought a scene which she hadn’t shared with Mag, viewing again an encounter that had made her smile. As she watched Melissa and Braden West, the Harpy clacked her beak with pleasure.

In West’s studio, the calico lay on the model’s couch sprawled across a spill of vermilion silk. West was reaching for her angrily as if he would jerk her off the couch and throw her out the door. But then suddenly he drew back, his anger seemed to dampen, and he lifted the little cat gently, almost cuddling her.

The cat gazed up at him with languid ease and trust, her white paws limp, her small, pretty body limp in his comforting hands. The Harpy opened her beak with devilish interest as Braden carefully laid the cat down again on the silk, and stroked her. He was smitten, already infected with tenderness.

The Harpy liked West’s tall, tanned leanness, his look of taut strength. But more than that, she liked his kindness. She was amazed at herself that she cared about kindness.

And there was something else she liked about West, something she couldn’t sort out. Puzzling over the attraction, she thought maybe it was the fact that West didn’t know he was kind; West thought of himself as hard-nosed and blunt. The Harpy watched him with interest, but at last she turned from Braden and Melissa to bring another vision: a conversation in the Netherworld that she had glimpsed earlier.

The queen and her seneschal stood in Prince Wylles’ chamber observing the changeling boy they had stolen. Siddonie was dressed extravagantly for the royal ball in a swirling satin gown the color of the deepest Hell flames, and with rubies woven into her elaborately upswept hair.

On the bed, Tom Hollingsworth slept deeply. Drugged and spell-laden, the boy was now as pale as a Netherworlder. As the Harpy watched, Siddonie drew her hand across Tom’s closed eyes, renewing and strengthening the spells she had laid on him earlier.

“You will remember nothing of the upperworld. You will learn willingly all I command you to learn. You will be healthy and strong in the Netherworld for as long as I require this of you.”

The queen lowered her pale hands and turned to Vrech, her expression triumphant.“You did very well, my dear Vrech.” She stroked Vrech’s cheek, moving closer to him. “Now, of course, the boy must be properly trained.”

Vrech nodded.“I have spoken with the horsemaster. In my absence, he will do quite well with the boy. He will put him on a horse, and teach him to handle weapons. The new Wylles should be ready soon to travel with you to the villages.”

Siddonie brushed Vrech’s lips with stroking fingers. “I plan to take the boy to every village in Affandar. I want him seen by every subject, every croft and herding family. Everyone in the Netherworld must know that Prince Wylles is again healthy.”

Vrech’s hands wandered over the queen’s breasts. But his eyes, regarding the boy, were cold with another kind of promise.

Suddenly the boy stirred.

Vrech and Siddonie drew back, and quickly Siddonie cast a sign across Tom’s face.

But still the child’s eyelids moved. His hand slid across the cover, and his color rose. His eyes opened and he lay looking up at them, dazed, uncomprehending. Siddonie repeated a spell, and repeated it again.

The boy shivered, seemed to be trying to move. Then he dropped into sleep.

The Harpy, watching in her little mirror, saw in that instant when the boy had looked up something that perhaps the queen and Vrech did not. She saw deep in Tom’s eyes a spark of sharp awareness. The boy was alert, intense; a look he quickly masked.

Siddonie watched the boy with cold anger.“He should not have awakened. What has caused this? What sort of boy did you bring me?”

Vrech had paled.

“I assume, Vrech, that you were more efficient in carrying out your other instructions. I assume you took more care in seeing to my wishes regarding Melissa.”

“I told you that after I dropped the cat, I patrolled the highway. I am certain that pack of dogs tore her apart. There was orange-and-black fur everywhere.”

“You might have waited and seen it happen.”

“The Primal Law—if I saw it happen and didn’t stop it…”

“A technicality, Vrech.” The queen studied him with remote dislike, all her lust for him gone. “In the morning you will return to the upperworld. You will go directly to the ranch and set about replacing Melissa with a false queen. I want a girl who is sufficiently avaricious but who can be readily trained.” She turned from him abruptly, her red satin gown swirling, her ruby encrusted hair catching the lamplight. She paced the room as if too filled with energy to be still; then she turned back suddenly, giving him an unexpected smile. “You may, of course, attend tonight’s ball before you leave.”

This ball, the Harpy knew, was another triumph for Siddonie. The wedding of Princess Natalia to King Allmond had brought into Siddonie’s fold of politically subjugated nations the rich kingdom of Shenndeth, and King Allmond would be a loyal addition to Siddonie’s cadre of obedient monarchs.

They left the chamber of the prince and moved into Siddonie’s rooms, where Crandall Havermeyer waited.

Havermeyer’s back was to them. He stood at the window looking out between the black draperies, his squarely built figure silhouetted by the fading green light. The upperworlder was so heavily built that he looked at first glance to be a strong, solid man. But at second look one perceived a frail construction, as if his body was made of hollow bones joined insubstantially byill-fitting joints. The overall impression was of a body improperly designed, a rickety machine that could fall apart under physical strain.

The pant cuffs of Havermeyer’s upperworld suit were wet, likely from the tunnel or the stream. His camel hair coat was wrinkled. His square jowls needed shaving. His skin always looked gray, dry as paper. His face was, as usual, without expression.

Siddonie looked him over with distaste.“Have you arranged to get Wylles and the Hollingsworth woman away from the garden?”

“I am arranging it. This is not something one does overnight.”

She snorted.“You make a major project of everything, even something as simple as this. Have her fired, Havermeyer. See that she’s offered a job in another state, one she can’t refuse. I want this done immediately, not in your usual tedious fashion. I want Wylles away from the portal. If the spells on himdon’t hold, I don’t want him trying to return here. You will arrange this quickly. Do you understand?”

He nodded, stone faced.

“Once this is done,” she said, “I want you to go directly to the ranch.” She moved to the window, looking out. Her view was of the courtyard, where the gates were wide open. In the dark green evening, carriages were already arriving from Cressteane and Ferrathil. Lanterns swung, sending arcs of light across the milling horses. Soon the courtyard would be full as a steady stream of richly dressed monarchs and their entourages made their way through the palace doors and into the ballroom. Siddonie turned, regarding Havermeyer impatiently. “You and Vrech will select, from among the captive Catswold, the girl to train in Melissa’s place. She must be calico like all of their queens. She must be spirited, selfish, and tractable. I want a girl who is a fighter. I want a whelp of alleys, a slut who craves power.”

Havermeyer’s eyes hardened.

“Once the young woman is selected, Crandall, you will remain at the ranch for as long as Vrech needs you. You will help with her training in any way Vrech chooses. Do you understand me?”

Havermeyer nodded but still he didn’t speak. Vrech said nothing.

“What is this silence? What’s the matter with you two?”

Havermeyer shifted his weight.“You can’t train one of them. No one can—no spell can make them tractable.”

“Of course they can be trained,” she barked. “The upperworld Catswold are nothing, not like these Netherworlders. I should think you would look forward to it—a young, fulsome Catswold girl to do with as you please.”

She smiled.“You will train her to every power of magic you can force from her. I don’t care how you train her. I don’t care what methods you use. I want a Catswold woman who looks like a Catswold queen, who knows all possible Netherworld magic, who is totally ruthless. And who is totally obedient to me.”

“But she won’t have the power of a Catswold queen,” Havermeyer said. “There is no way to train her to that.”

“One can fake, with common magic, a formidable power. She must learn that magic. She must learn to manipulate. She must learn to feign sincerity just as convincingly asyou, my dear Crandall, can fake honesty.

“And the girl must have charisma.” She moved to Havermeyer, touching his cheek. “Charisma counts for much, Crandall. In both worlds.”

The Harpy let the vision fade, preening her beak on her ragged feathers. To please herself, she brought a vision of the little calico being cuddled by the distraught Hollingsworth woman and then by the dark-skinned model. She smiled. Melissa would do all right.

When Mag came in from slopping the pigs, the Harpy’s mirror hung idle and blank and the Harpy appeared to be sleeping.

Chapter 31

Morian carried the little cat up the garden, snuggling her, admiring her patterned coat of orange and black and white. The cat glanced up at her companionably, then flicked her tail at a winging bird and chattered a hunting cry. When Morian laughed at her, she looked back clear-eyed and snuggled closer, relaxed and trusting.

Reaching the porch, Morian shifted the calico to her shoulder, opened the door and, carrying her, emptied the laundry basket. She took it into the bedroom and found an old quilted robe to line it. Stroking the little calico and talking to her, she put her down near the basket, shutting her in the bedroom while she went to collect a litter box and cat food.

In the kitchen, as she filled a bowl with water, her thoughts were on Anne. She had been alarmed and puzzled by Anne’s distress, and amazed at Anne’s sudden helplessness. She couldn’t believe Tom was as changed as Anne said. Yet Anne was not given to imaginative flights. She would have to see him for herself; maybe she could figure out what had made Anne react so alarmingly.

Anne’s husband had died in a mental institution. Anne had had a hard time and was sensitive about mental problems. Morian shook her head; the thought that Anne herself might be having such a problem chilled her.

She had known Anne long before Anne and Tom had moved to the garden. Anne had kept her equilibrium remarkably well through the hard times with her husband. It seemed strange that now Anne would be losing her grip.

In the bedroom Morian arranged water and food dishes on a newspaper, knowing the little cat would be happier in one room until she got used to the house. She could let her deal with the black tom later. Morian smiled, speaking softly to the cat.“It’ll take Skillet a while to get used to you.” She stood watching as the calico peered with curiosity under the dressing table. Skillet had been lonely since Tiger died, but he wouldn’t want another cat in the house.

She opened the window three inches from the top for fresh air, checking to be sure the screen was latched. The cat was sniffing the laundry basket. Morian watched her circle it then hop in and begin to knead the quilted satin as if she was pleased with the sleeping arrangements. This pleased Morian, too, and she knelt to stroke the little cat, admiring her brightly mixed colors against the cream robe.“You don’t seem anxious to get out. Too bad Braden won’t keep you—he needs something alive around him. He’s getting morose.”

The little cat’s purr rumbled against Morian’s stroking hand.

“You need a name, you know.” Morian thought of several, but didn’t offer any. The cat was beautiful and she’d like to keep her. But she didn’t want this to get too permanent. Maybe Braden would change his mind.

In the kitchen again, she made a sandwich. She ate it looking out at the garden, thinking about Anne and Tom, then she left for an evening class.

In the bedroom the cat napped briefly. When she woke, she ate all the food. She used the litter box with interest, then prowled the room restlessly. Now that she was alone she felt shut in.

When the door wouldn’t open under her demanding digging, she leaped to the windowsill. The breeze blew in above her. She leaped again and clung to the top. Under her weight the window dropped a few inches. Encouraged, she climbed atop the sash. It dropped farther. Balancing, she sniffed the night air, pushing at thescreen, then she clawed the screen. It was an old screen and rusty, and when it ripped she stuck her nose through the small tear and pushed.

The hole expanded. She pushed through and, balancing awkwardly on the sash, she gauged her distance to the railing below. She quavered, rocking across the screen, found purchase with her hind legs, and leaped. Her rocketing jump ripped down the screen, sending her thudding onto the rail.

In a little while she was back at Braden’s. Crouching on the bricks, she stared into the lighted room. When Braden didn’t look up, she mewled. When he ignored her, she clawed the glass.

Braden heard her, and scowled. What the hell had Morian done—left the door open? After some moments of strained patience he picked up a folded newspaper and opened the door, meaning to scare the cat away. He smacked the wall loudly, but the cat only stared up at him and marched past him into the room.

Flicking her tail, she leaped onto the model’s couch and circled, kneading the crimson velvet. He stood watching, amazed by her colossal nerve, and flattered by her determination. He watched her settle herself comfortably, her colors rich against the red. She gave him an unfathomable green look, lowered her eyes as if dismissing him, and began to wash herself.

He knew he ought to pitch her out.

But what harm could she do in the studio for a few hours? He felt like going out anyway, so let her stay. He stared out at the night, cold and perfect, pulled on his tennis shoes, and went running.

He ran through the hillside residential streets, breathing in the scent of the huge redwoods that stood guard among the houses. He stopped in the village after an hour’s run, cooled down, and had a beer and a hamburger. Eating on the restaurant’s deck overlooking the stream, he wondered if he should have left the cat in the studio. What if she made a mess? Yet he had a strange, unaccustomed feeling of pleasure at knowing she waited in the empty rooms to greet him.

When he got back, she seemed not to have moved. She looked up from the couch languidly yawning, her open mouth pale pink, her green eyes slitted sleepily, the pupils narrowing in the sudden light. Almost reluctantly he phoned Morian and explained that the cat had come back and that he didn’t want a cat. Morian said her screen was torn. She said it looked to her as if the cat had made her own decision, so why didn’t he relax and accept it.

She said,“If you don’t want the cat, just put her out. She doesn’t want to stay with me. You can’t force a cat to live somewhere.”

He knew he ought to put her out. He knew he shouldn’t let her get the idea she belonged here. He glanced out to the garden, remembering the sharp chill as he walked home, and wondered where she would sleep. Well, where the hell had she slept before? Cats slept outside, that was where cats lived.

He didn’t mean, passing the model’s couch, to become interested in how the moonlight slanting down through the skylight stroked the cat’s mottled coat. He stood studying the patterns of her orange and black markings against the shadow-crossed silk, seeing a rich painting. Then, annoyed at himself, he made a drink, got a book and went to bed.

The little cat woke in the small hours. The wind was up, rattling branches against the windows. Through the skylight, clouds ran across the moon, hiding then revealing it. Moon shadows swam across the floor, and she leaped off the couch to chase them. The blackness under a campaign chair belled out then sucked back, and she leaped into it, her eyes huge, then charged out to chase the tracery of branches dancing along the walls. Twisting, spinning away she plunged into the black tunnel behind the stacked canvases and raced along its length to burst out again, eyes blazing.

But suddenly different shadows were in the room with her. Four shadows fell through the glass where four cats stared in. She approached them stiffly, her lips drawn back in challenge.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder: the black tom and the old white female, and her two half-grown kittens. The kittens, bolstered by their mother’s presence, snarled and spat. And as the calico moved closer, all four cats screamed a challenge and forced against the glass. She held her ground, snarling, until the black leaped at the glass so hard it thrummed and vibrated. She backed fast, and took protection behind the easel.

When he charged again, the glass shook as if he would come flying through. She fled for the kitchen, leaped to the counter then to the top of the refrigerator. There she crouched, listening.

When after some time no sound came from the studio, she began to prowl the kitchen counters.

She found nothing edible. She jumped to the floor, drank water from the bowl, then went to investigate the bathroom. Leaping to the counter she sniffed the tubes and bottles. They smelled like the man. When she grew bored with the bathroom she prowled the bedroom. He was asleep; the sound of his snoring interested her. Moonlight swam across the bed. She jumped up, patting at the streaks of light that shifted across the white sheets. She watched Braden. She had never seen him lying down. She stood studying him, sniffing his arm. In the chilly room she was drawn by his warmth.

When he rolled over snoring she jumped clear. Then, purring, she nosed down into the warm nest he had left. Settled against his warm back, she flexed her claws happily in a wad of blanket.

She slept, her nose tucked under one paw. And within Braden’s sleeping consciousness something prevented him, when next he turned over, from rolling on her; something made him slide to the left before he turned, a sense of caring that rose without his volition.

He woke at dawn and lay looking out at the bay and marsh stained red by sunrise. The blood red sky was reflected in the wind-rippled water, cut through by sharp spears of marsh grass. He had painted this marsh, an early series capturing sunrise and storm and the clarity of summer light: a dozen different moods of the salt marsh.

All night the wind had blown; he could remember waking to wind. He frowned, remembering the cat jumping on the bed, and he turned to look.

She slept soundly in a nest of tangled covers. He reached, meaning to throw her off, but she looked too small and delicate to manhandle. Let her sleep.

He wished he had a cup of coffee. Alice used to bring the pot into the bedroom at night, plug it in when she woke. He got up finally, went into the kitchen, filled the coffee pot and stood barefoot on the cold floor while it brewed, thinking about the work, the show, and Rye Chapman. By the time he carried the pot and a mug back to bed, his feet were freezing and the sunrise was past its peak. The cat hadn’t moved. He got back in bed and slid his feet under her, feeling her warmth like an oven. She woke suddenly and turned her green stare full on him, her expression chilling. Then she got up, stalked across the bed, and resettled herself where his feet couldn’t reach her.

He grinned. Alice would be amused. A sense of Alice, a sense of the empty spaces where she should be, lay behind all other thoughts.

He got up finally and got to work, not stopping until the cat rubbed against his leg, startling him because he’d forgotten her. He looked down, rigid with the shock of fur against his ankles. “What the hell do you want?”

She headed for the kitchen.

After nearly a week the cat was still there. Braden wouldn’t admit she had moved in. She came and went at her pleasure, clawing at the door to get in, leaving deep scratches on the wood frame, waiting outside impatiently if he wasn’t home or didn’t come right away. He bought a few cans of cat food—he could always give them to Morian. The cat slepton his bed at night but was not allowed on the pillow; house rules began to grow up in spite of his insistence that she was temporary. She paid little heed to rules; though she did not get into the paint again after being cuffed lightly, probably because she didn’t like the smell. And she had never offered to claw the canvases. He was completely caught up in the work again, the cat and everything else existing outside the real world of the paintings. He woke, painted, ate, slept, painted. He fed the cat and let her in and out to avoid her insistent yowling and scratching, or her insouciant rubbing against his legs. Twelve paintings were finished. Chapman came by and was pleased, and took some photographs for the papers. Braden wasn’t on a real high, but he was working. Alice used to say the house could burn down around him when he was working.

Alice hadn’t been so singleminded, shutting out everything else. She had been able to juggle several things at once—painting, print making, etching, housework, lectures. She had been such a careful draftsman, had always known what she was going to do before she did it, known what the work would look like. He could never manage that; his pleasure was in the exploration, in the discovery of forms unrevealed until he touched the right combination to free them. Alice had marveled at that. Well, Alice had been organized. She always said he lived by intuition—it was a standing joke between them. Aliceput things where she could find them, then found them there. He put things where he could find them, then forgot where that was. He missed her. His occasional nights with Morian were warm and caring and completely casual. Morian was the earth mother—giving, loving, but not involving herself. Theywere good friends, as Morian had been with Alice. He couldn’t stop thinking of Alice; he was thinking of her more now than he had done for months.

It had taken him a long time to learn to escape the raw memories that tore at him. Now again they were like a fresh wound—he was thinking of her again as he had just after she died, lonely for her in the way he had been those first months. As if she would walk into the room, as if when he looked up she would be there working. Now again when he woke at night he reached for her—and was startled and angry when he touched the damn cat.

Bob maintained that patients in depression could be helped by having a pet, a living creature that they would hold and talk to, to let them know they were still among the living. With that thought Braden almost chucked the cat out. But she gave him the rolling over, green-eyed coquette treatment, and he ended up stroking her. And he thought, as she watched him so intelligently, that sometimes her eyes didn’t seem like a cat’s eyes. Sometimes her green gaze seemed to hold a greater knowledge. Braden studied her, puzzled and intrigued.

Maybe Alice would know what that look was, maybe Alice would be able to explain what he found so strange about the small cat.

Chapter 32

Dawn. Melissa woke lying next to Braden deliciously warm curled on the blanket. Outside the bedroom window the sky was barely light. She stretched lazily, her toes touching the foot of the bed and her fingers tracking across the headboard. She jolted awake filled with panic: she wasn’t a cat anymore.

She stared down at herself, at her rumpled dress. How close she lay to Braden, nearly touching him. His hand lay across her hair. She watched him, stricken, terrified he would wake. He slept sprawled naked, tangled in the blankets, blankets and sheet tumbled away from his bare back.

How long had she lain beside him as Melissa? She had felt no pain at the changing. Unless it was pain that woke her. Carefully, slowly, she slid off the bed.

He didn’t stir. She tiptoed to the door, but then she turned back and stood watching him. Seeing him from the viewpoint of a woman was very different from seeing him through the eyes of a cat. The cat had seen height and strength and security, had been aware of his kindness and restraint, had seen a human she could be comfortable with, and one she could tease and manipulate when she chose. But now as a woman she saw him differently, and different emotions moved her.

He was strong and lean; she liked the clean line of his jaw and the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. She liked his deeply tanned face against the white pillow. He had a smear of green paint on his left ear; she wanted to wipe it off. She could still feel the heat of his body where she had slept against him. She knew his scent sharply, as the little cat had known it.

Beyond the windows, red streaks of dawn stained the bay. He would wake soon. He would look out at the sunrise then roll over and plug in the coffee. If she was still sleeping on the bed as the cat, he would stroke her and talk to her, and she would purr for him. If he found her gone he would call her, then pull on a pair of shorts and go into the studio looking for her, calling her.

He stirred suddenly and rolled over almost as if her thought had woken him. She fled down the hall and through the dark studio to the glass door. She was fumbling with the lock when he called,“Kitty? Kitty, kitty?” She wanted to giggle. He had never named her, justkitty, kitty. She heard his footsteps. Panicked, she got the door open at last and ran for the bushes.

She crouched down in the little space under the bushes at the end of the terrace, her back scraping against the branches. She wanted to change back to cat. But she didn’t know how to change.

She didn’t know why she had changed to a girl; she knew she had been a girl before, but she could remember nothing except being a cat. She remembered traveling through strange, hostile country, and before that a dark, smelly man shoving her into a leather bag. She remembered the smell of diesel fuel as she fought to get out of the bag. Then the diner. She remembered traveling, miserable and hungry, her swollen eye hurting her, and her swollen paw sending pain all through her body. She remembered the stray cats and the fights and the blazing eyes of the rat as it crouched to leap at her.

She looked up the garden to the door in the hill. The door had drawn her here, pulling her on, hungry and hurt and frightened. She heard a door slam somewhere up the hill and then in the lane a car started. She could smell bacon cooking, and could hear faint voices from the houses above. Soon Braden would come out searching for the little cat. She didn’t want to be caught here hiding in the bushes. But she didn’t know where to go. As a cat, she would simply have run up the garden and disappeared in the bushes. Now she didn’t know where she could hide. In her distress, a memory touched her: a woman’s face so pale it was nearly white, surrounded by blackness. Then she remembered animals; a huge toad as big as a person. A tall creature with a woman’s breast and a bird’s face and all covered in white feathers.

She pulled her skirt around her sandaled feet for warmth, listening to the din of birds in the garden. Their riot stirred her hunger; she wanted to slip out and grab one. She was appalled at herself, not at the thought of eating raw bird but of being seen catching and eating it.

The studio lights came on, and she could hear Braden inside calling the cat. Through the windows she could see him searching behind the stacked canvases. When he turned, she slid deeper under the bushes. He disappeared toward the kitchen, and she fled across the garden and across the lane.

Running toward the village brought new memories. She hurried past houses tucked among huge redwood trees. Scenes began to come to her: she was a child walking along this street holding a woman’s hand, they were going to the village for ice cream. She couldn’t remember the woman’s face. Then she was inside a shop that sold bicycles, stroking a red bicycle. Then she and the woman were crouched together beside a stream looking for stones. These memories did not fit with the white feathered womanbird and the toad, or with the black room where a woman’s white face seemed suspended.

Walking, she had soon passed all the houses. Now there were only shops. To her left the redwood trees rose up a hill above the stores, and there were houses tucked among the dark trunks.

She lingered before a hardware store, then stood looking into a dress shop. A sign reading“tool rental” meant nothing to her. But she remembered the art store.

Where the street dead-ended and a cross street cut through, she recognized the Greyhound station. She remembered riding the Greyhound to the city across a huge bridge. As she stood looking, a big black dog came around the corner and stopped, staring at her, his head lowered. She watched him warily. He sniffed her scent, and his lips drew back in a snarl. She backed away. He crouched to chase her and she fled through a shop door, slamming it in his face.

She was in a tea room. The tables had white cloths. It was half full of people eating small, leisurely meals. The smell of hot pastries stirred her hunger. She longed for a cup of tea and something delicious and sweet. She watched a man pay for his meal and she knew suddenly that she had no upperworld money.

She realized, shocked, that she was remembering not one world, but two.

Confused, light-headed, she left the tea room quickly, pushing out onto the street.

There was not one world, but two.

When she was able to look around her again, she saw that the dog was gone. Watching for him, she wandered the village—trying to jar her memory, trying to put pieces together. Certainly, whatever that other world was, it was far different from this world.

She looked at herself in a shop window, her figure an indistinct smear among shattered light and reflections. She touched the cloth of her dress and she remembered a loom. She fingered her jeweled bracelet and was aware of caves, and of a metal pick in her hand. Slowly she was able to reach back to that world, to glimpse stone ridges and stone sky and dark, cavernous wastes. Slowly, the Netherworld returned to her. Then suddenly and vividly she saw Mag’s cottage, then Affandar Palace. She saw Efil’s chambers; she saw the black bedposts carved into four leering Hell Beasts.

It was in that chamber that she had been changed into a cat.

She was Catswold. Half woman, half cat.

And she was still hungry.

She examined her bracelet again, and then turned back up the street, to the jewelry shop she had passed. She went in boldly, removing a small diamond bob from among the bangles.

The bland-faced, pudgy jeweler was reluctant to accept a jewel she had removed so casually. He looked at it in his glass, then asked to examine the whole bracelet. She gave it over, explaining patiently that she needed money. He looked for a long time at the individual jewels. When finally he made an offer, the amount had no meaning for her. She folded the paper bills into her pocket under his puzzled, uneasy gaze, and headed for the tea shop.

In the art store Braden bought half a dozen tubes of paint and some linseed oil, then he stopped at the Greyhound station for a paper to see the reviews of last night’s opening at the de Young, then went across to Anthea’s for breakfast. He ordered from Betty Jane, hiding a grin because her hair was the same too-red tangle that had always amused Alice. He asked how Betty Jane’s mother was doing in the nursing home, then settled back to read the art page to see what Mettleson had said about his award in the annual. One thing about Rye, he got work around to the shows without Braden having to bother with it. This was one of the Coloma paintings, one of the semi-abstracts of ferns growing inside the roofless brick ruins of an old gold rush bank building. Rye had borrowed it from a collector for the show. Mettleson said it was “…reality blown apart and reassembled into lyric tapestry without seeming to have been rearranged, so discerning is West’s eye for the essence of pure abstract poetry that exists in the everyday world.”

Sure, Mettleson. Poetry. But the review pleased him. He was finishing his eggs and ham when his attention was caught by a girl just coming into the tea shop. She started in but suddenly she turned back, returning to the sidewalk and standing at the curb with her back to the window. The one glimpse he had of her was striking: a tangle of brown hair framing a cleanly sculptured face, gorgeous eyes fringed by thick, dark lashes. Now she stood looking up the street as if she were waiting for someone. Watching her, he began to see a painting—the girl’s figure framed by the red awning, the white letters of the awning making abstract shapes against her hair, and these patterns blending into the blue building across the street. The whole scene was contorted by light warping across the glass. He made a sketch on his napkin, a quick memory-jogging study.

He had finished, memorizing the colors while eating the last of his biscuit, when the girl turned to look in, and he raised his hand in greeting—then wondered why he had done that. She looked startled and turned away, and he dropped his hand, feeling foolish. Why had he waved? He didn’t know her. He had never seen her before. His aftervision was filled with her startled gaze before she spun around and headed up the street.

But, strangely, his shock of recognition remained.

He grabbed the check and dug in his pocket for change.

He searched the streets for her, wanting to talk to her, wanting to find out if he did know her. Wanting, suddenly and intensely, to paint this girl. Unable to shake the powerful, curious feeling that he knew her. Puzzled, and annoyed because he couldn’t remember, he looked into shops and down side streets, and even walked up into the wooded residential area around the library and looked in through the long library windows, but she wasn’t in there.

He went home at last, totally frustrated. He wanted to paint her beside the tea shop window. He could still see her dark-fringed green eyes. He dropped his sketch on the work table and unfolded it, but he didn’t need it; the painting was surprisingly clear in his mind. Excited, he set up a fresh canvas, changed his shirt, and got to work.

Melissa had evaded Braden by ducking into the dress shop and browsing among the racks at the back. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding. Braden couldn’t know her. She wasn’t sure, either, why she had turned to look back into the restaurant. She had just wanted to look at him; she hadn’t thought he would be watching her, had thought she wouldn’t be noticed. She had frozen, terrified, at his look of recognition.

But how could he recognize her?

She remained behind the dress racks until she saw him go past the window. She had avoided the sharp-faced saleswoman. Now the woman stood beyond the rack looking her over, taking in her long dress and unruly hair.“May I help you?”

“Help me?”

“May I show you something, my dear? Would you like to try on a dress?”

She felt confused, disoriented.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

“I—yes, I’m fine. A dress—the yellow dress in the window.”

But then in the fitting room the saleswoman stared at her, shocked because she wore no undergarments. Cringing under the woman’s disapproving gaze she dressed again quickly and left the shop.

She wouldn’t go in there again. And she didn’t want the suggested panties and bra and slip—she felt constricted thinking about them. Distraught and afraid Braden might still be searching, she headed for the edge of the village away from the shops. There on a deserted street the black dog found her again, and he had been joined by two big hounds. She turned to see them coming toward her fast, noses down, sniffing her trail. Before she could run, they circled her.

They lunged and drew back, baiting her. She was stricken not simply with her own fear, but with a child’s total panic: this had happened when she was small. She had been chased and surrounded by dogs. She stood facing them, edging toward an oak tree in the yard of the nearest house.

When the black dog lunged, she kicked it. He snapped at her, and when she kicked again he jumped on her, knocking her against the tree. She twisted as she hit it, and climbed. The rough bark tore the skin inside her legs and scraped her arm, then she was up the tree clinging with all fours, holding tight with sharp claws.

The cat clung in the tree, spitting, her claws digging into the branch as below her the dogs leaped at the trunk, barking and snarling.

The little cat remained in the tree until late afternoon, backing along the branch each time the dogs leaped. She was only cat now, she remembered nothing else. Long after the dogs tired of the game and wandered off, she remained clinging in the branches. Only as darkness fell did hunger drive her down again, and instinct point her toward the garden. Hardly visible in the darkness except for her white markings, she fled between houses through the darkening woods, evading other cats, running in panic from dogs, streaking across streets in front of headlights. Twice she was nearly hit. When she crossed the lane to the garden, running, she almost collided with the black tom. He hissed and cuffed her and bit her. She dodged away and made for the veranda and safety.