Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales Part 26

His att.i.tude seemed to bewilder Hob. The creature halted his jumping dance and thrust his head forward as if to aid his small eyes in examining this furred one who was not afraid of him as all proper inhabitants of this house should be.

"It be creama"cream for Hob!" He shuffled a little to one side so he was now between Thragun and the bowl. "Cream they gives when they calls. An' truly it is time for Hob to comea"there be black evil in this house!"

Thragun stood up, his lash of a tail moved from side to side and his ears flattened a little.

"Thewada, you are speaking true. Evil have I smelled, ever since I have come into this place. And Ia"I am the guard for the princessa"What do you know of this evil and where does it lie?"

Hob had grabbed up the bowl in his two hands and thrown back his head so far on his shoulders that it seemed to be like to roll off. He opened a mouth which seemed as wide as half his face and was pouring the cream steadily into that opening.

"Where," asked the cat again, impatient, "is that evil? I must see it does not come near to the little one I have been sent to guard."

Hob swallowed for the last time, smeared the back of his hand across his mouth and smacked his thin lips. Then he pointed to the ceiling over their heads.

"Aloft now, so it be. She has a black heart, she has, and a heavy hand, that one. What she wants," his scowl began growing heavier as he spoke, "is Hob's house. An' sore will that one be iffen she gets it! I say that, and I be Hob, Hob!" Once more he stamped on the stone.

"If this place is yours, why do you let that one take it?" Thragun asked. He was staring up at the ceiling, busy'thinking how he might get out of here and up aloft as the thewada said it.

"She works black evil," Hob said slowly. "But the law is with hera""

"What is Law?" asked Thragun in return. "It is the will of the king. Is he one to share this evil?"

Hob shook his head. "Mighty queer have you got it in your head. The Law is of us who have the old magic. Only it will do no harm to that one because she does not believe. There, are them who lived here long ago and now walk the halls and strive to set fear in her. But until she believes we can no' drive her out. 'Tis the lawa""

"It is not my Lawa"I have only one duty and that is to guard. And guard I will!" Without another look at Hob, Thragun went into action, flashing away down the hall.

Emmy's fingers were pinched and sc.r.a.ped from the holds she kept on the ivy and she dared not look down, nor back, only to the wall before her as she crept foot width by foot width along the ledge.

She shrank against the wall and hardly dared draw a breath. There was a sound from the next window. The cas.e.m.e.nts banged back against the wall. Then she heard Miss Wyker's voice: "Miss Emmy, my lady? Alas, I fear that you must be sadly disappointed in her. She is impudent and unfeeling. Why, she has never asked to see you nor how you did."

Emmy began to feel hot in spite of the very cool breeze which rustled the vines around her. Miss Wyker was telling lies about her to Great-Aunt!

"Now, my lady, do you rest a bit and I shall be back presently with the night draught Dr. Riggs has prescribed."

There came an answer, so weak and thin, Emmy could hardly hear it.

"Not tonight, Miss Wyker. I always wake so weak and with an aching head. I felt much better before I began to take thata""

"Now, now, m'lady. The doctor knows best what to gve you. You'll be yourself again shortly. I shall be back as soon as I can."

There came the sound of a door closing and Emmy moved, daring to edge faster. Then she was at the open cas.e.m.e.nt to claw and pull her way into the room. There were two candles burning m a small table near the door, but the rest of the room was very gloomy.

"Whoa"who is there?" Great-Aunt's voice, sounding thin and shivery, came out of all the shadows around the big curtained bed.

"Please," Emmy crossed the end of the room to pick up one of the candles. Going closer to the bed she held it out so she could see Great-Aunt resting back on some pillows, all her pretty white hair hidden away under a night cap, so just thin white face was showing.

The anger which had brought Emmy so swiftly into the room broke free now. "Please, Miss Wyker told you a lie. I did want to see you and I asked and asked, but she said you did not want to be disturbeda"that I was too noisy and carelessa" But it was a lie!"

"Emmy, child, I have wanted to see you, too. Very mucha" But how did you get here? Surely you did not come through the window."

"I had to," Emmy confessed. "She locked me in my room. And she locks your door, too. See," she crossed the room and tried to open the hall door, but, as she expected, she could not. Turning back to the bed, her eyes caught sight of the tray Jennie had brought with Cook's custard on it.

"Didn't you want this?" She took the tray in one hand and the candle in the other. "Cook make it speciala"out of the best cream and eggs. She said you always liked it when you were not feeling well before."

"Custard? But, of course, I like Cook's custard. Let me have it, Emmy. Then you sit down and tell me about all this locking of doors and my not wanting to see you."

Lady Ashely ate the custard hungrily, while Emmy's wards came pouring out about all the things that had been happening in Hob's Green which she could not understand, ending with the story of how Thragun Neklop had come that very day and how Miss Wyker had acted.

"And father sent him to mea"he is a gift from a princess, a real princess. Jennie took him away and I don't know what has happened to him!!" One tear and then another cut into the dust of the vines which had settled on Emmy's round face.

"Emmy, child, can you help me with these pillows, I want to sit upa""

Emmy hurried to pull the pillows together and make a back rest for Great-Aunt.

"Emmy, has Mr. Adkins been here lately?" Emmy was disappointed that Lady Ashely had not mentioned Thragun, but she answered quickly. "He has come three times. But always Miss Wyker said you were asleep, or it was a day you were feeling poorly, and he went away again."

Mr. Adkins was the vicar and Emmy was somewhat shy of him, he was so tall, and he did not smile very much.

"So." Great-Aunt's voice sounded a lot stronger. Emmy, without being told, took the empty bowl on its tray and set it on the chest under the window. "I do not understand, but we must begin to learna""

"But," Emmy dared to interrupt, "what about Thragun? Jennie said Rog took Cook's kitty away and it never came back."

"Yes, we shall most certainly find out about Thragun and a great many other things, Emmy. Go to my desk over there and find my letter case and pen and inkbring them here."

However, when Lady Ashely tried to write, her hand trembled and shook and she had to go very slowly. Once she looked up at Emmy and said, "Child, see that brown bottle over on the mantelpiece? I want you to take that and hide ita"perhaps in the big bandbox in the cupboard at the back."

It was when Emmy was returning from that errand that they heard the key turn in the lock. Lady Ashely forced her hand to hold steady for two more words. Then she folded it and wrote Mr. Adkins' name on the fold. Without being told, Emmy seized the letter case with its paper and two pens, one now dribbling ink across the edge of a pillow, and thrust it under the bed, stoppering the small inkwell and sending it after it. Lady Ashely pushed the note toward Emmy and the girl s.n.a.t.c.hed it to tuck into the front of the dusty and torn breeches.

The door opened and Miss Wyker stood there, a lighted candle in her hand. She held that high so that the light reached the bed.

"M'lady," she hissed, "what have you been about? Whata""

The light now caught Emmy, and Miss Wyker stopped short. Her face was very white and her eyes were hard and glittered.

"You cruel child! What are you doing here! Shameful, shameful!" Her voice rasped as she put down the candle to bear down on Emmy. She caught one straggling lock of the child's hair and jerked her toward the door. "Be sure you will suffer for this!"

"I think not, Miss Wyker." Lady Ashely did not speak very loudly, but somehow the words cut through. Miss Wyker, in the process of dragging Emmy to the door, looked around, but her expression did not change.

"M'lady, you are taken ill again. This cruel child has upset you. Be sure she will be punished for ita""

"And if I say no?"

"But, m'lady, all know that you are very ill and that you sometimes wander in your wits. Dr. Riggs himself has commented upon how mazed you are at times. You will take his medicine and go peacefully to sleep, and when you wake this will all be a dream. Yes, m'lady, you will be very well looked after, I a.s.sure you."

Emmy tried to hold onto a bedpost and then to the back of a chair, but pain from the tugging at her hair made her let go. Great-Aunt was looking at Miss Wyker as if some horrid monster were there. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and Emmy could see that she was frightened, really frightened.

The door to the bedroom was thrown open with a crash and Emmy jerked out into the hall.

"You," Miss Wyker shook her, transferring her hold on Emmy's hair, to bury her fingers in the flesh on the child's shoulders, shaking her back and forth, until Emmy went limp and helpless in her hands. "Down in the cellar for you, my girl. The beetles and rats will give you something else to think about! Come!" Now her fingers sank into the nape of Emmy's neck and she was urged forward at a running pace.

They reached the top of the narrow back staircase the servants used. Up that shot a streak of dark and light fur. It flashed past Emmy. Miss Wyker let go of the child and tried vainly to pull loose from what seemed to be a clutch on her back skirts. Unable to free herself, she tried to turn farther about to see what held her so. Something small and dark crouched there.

Then came a battle scream, answered by a cry of fear from Miss Wyker. Now her hands beat the air, trying to reach the demon who clung with punishing claws to her back. She screamed in terror and torment as a paw reached around from behind her head and used claws on a white face which speedily spouted red.

Miss Wyker wheeled about again, fighting to get her hands on the cat. Then she tottered as that shadow hunched before her now at her feet struck out in turn. The woman plunged sidewise with a last cry. Thragun flew through the air in the opposite direction, landing on the hall floor not far from Emmy who had crowded back against the wall, unable even to make the smallest sound.

The cat padded toward her, uttering small cries as if he were talking. That candle which had fallen from Miss Wyker's hand rolled, still alight, down to the stair landing below. Miss Wyker lay there very still. But there was something else, too, something dancing by the side of her body and uttering a high thin whistling sound. Only for a minute had Emmy seen that and then it was gone. Thragun was rubbing back and forth against her legs, purring loudly. Emmy stooped and caught him tight.

Though this was hardly a dignified thank you, n.o.ble Warrior allowed it. After all, was he not a guard and one who had done his duty n.o.bly and well, even if a skirt-jerking thewada had had something to do with it? HIS princess was safe and that was what counted.

Bastet's Blessing.

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.

In memory of Shuttle, trusty companion, professional hunter, dedicated sunbather and excavator of cat boxes.

His coat was the tan of desert dunes, ornamented with bands shaded from pale amber to gold around his legs and tail and outlining his great peridot eyes with a tiger's mask. When he moved, it was as if the sphinx had risen to its ma.s.sive paws to stalk the paths of men. The length of his tail and the height of his ears bespoke more than common lineage.

When he roared, unfortunately, it tended to come out as a rasping maoao noise, in keeping with his size, but one had to be pragmatic. Probably he would never have been able to find good help if he roared when he wanted in, roared when he wanted out, roared when he wished a change in his menu or wanted his box changed.

And truthfully, roaring would have misrepresented him, for he was a gentle, scholarly creature, of quiet dignity and poise. Or so he believed, and so he told Dr. Mercer the morning he made her acquaintance. She found him in reduced circ.u.mstances, incarcerated in a wire pen.

"Poor cat," she said, kneeling so that her eyes were on a level with his. Whether it was because her eyes were intelligent and kindly that he decided she would be suitable, or because she had the good sense to kneel in his presence, he was unsure. But he rose to a seated position, his front half erect while his back half supported it. His unusually long tail flicked up and down slightly to indicate that he required her attention. "Madam, please disregard my present habitation. I was evicted from my former lodgings because of xenophobic tendencies toward my species on the part of Miss Rosamund's new patron. Do not distress yourself on my behalf, however. The arrangement was never truly to my liking. Miss Rosamund, in addition to housing my mother and siblings, kept five others of my species and I am a creature who prefers a degree of privacy and solitude."

He forbore to mention that he also liked digging, which was why he alone of all of Miss Rosamund's boarders had been ignominiously evicted on the patent leather toe of the patron's shoe.

Dr. Mercer did not pry. She jingled a few coins in a small purse and selected one for the jailer. "I'm taking this cat."

The jailer did not argue. The vivisectionists did not pay as well. And Dr. Mercer carried herself with authority.

Her confidence did not come from being an immaculate housekeeper. She was the despair of her twice-weekly cleaning woman. The appointments were nice enough. The rugs were old, rich with exotic patterning and ruddy color. Deep-leather-upholstered chairs squatted around the flat in sufficient profusion that they should have provided adequate seating for a Sunday tea. A carved cherry desk with clawed feet took up half the parlor. The bedroom was dominated by the velvet canopied bed but also held a fainting couch, dressing table, and wardrobe. The dining table was a fine old piece, too, inherited, like the rest, from Dr. Mercer's father's estate. The vast walnut bookshelves that lined the walls with heavy old volumes in cloth and leather covers had belonged to the estate, too. If the books had stayed on those shelves, the cleaning woman would have been happy. But they dripped across the dressing table, spilled onto the sofa, flowed onto the fainting couch, cascaded onto the chairs, burdened the bed, and all but drowned the dining table. Piled among the pillars of books were reams of papers, dissertations, notes, graphs, ill.u.s.trations, and bits of other detritus, pieces of pots and sc.r.a.ps of ancient cloth. The decor, the cat decided upon inspection, suited him nicely.

When Dr. Mercer brought him home, she first filled an old clay dish with water and another with canned fish and placed it on the floor for his approval. For some reason, she put an old pillow near the dishes, beside the coal cookstove. Then she scooted a year's worth of research literature to one side and sat on the couch, watching and waiting for the cat's verdict. He sniffed the fish, sniffed the water, sniffed the pillow, then paced the perimeters of his new domain.

Papers slid under his paws, the musty smell of old ink and a tinge of green mold filled his nostrils, and his claws flicked across the linoleum and across the hardwood, until he padded onto carpet and clicked back again, back and forth from the parlor to the bedroom to the kitchen. Then he leaped lightly onto the desk, the bed, the sofa, and the chairs, feeling knowledge, wisdom, information, and also vast amounts of ignorance and misunderstanding push against his pads.

Dr. Mercer observed his survey with amused tolerance, the same feeling her flat aroused in him. "You're quite the pacer, aren't you? To and fro, to and fro, like a weaver's shuttlec.o.c.k. Very well, then, Shuttle it is."

Perched high atop a trembling tower of tomes on ancient Egyptian archaeology, the cat regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then blinked his approval.

Miss Rosamund had never called him anything except "cat." His other name had been long forgotten, even by him. "Shuttle" would do.

In a short time Shuttle and Dr. Mercer developed a congenial relationship, based on mutual respect and interests.

During the wet, windy days when Dr. Mercer ventured into the gray world beyond their snug flat to reach her cla.s.ses and practice her profession, Shuttle drowsed on the books, soaking up images of sun-warmed sand, tall fronded trees, and the heavy green Nile snaking through the dusty tombs of kings and queens, the ancient burial grounds where mummies lay dry as autumn leaves, withered in their wrappings and desiccated until their own cats would not have known their smell.

He learned of the cla.s.sification of pottery shards by period and design, the intricacies of hieroglyphics, the blueprints of tombs, the interesting things canopic jars held, and about the ka or soul.

Dr. Mercer was cooperative in broadening his education. About the time he had napped on the top book of every pile in the house, she would come home with some new problem and a whole new layer of knowledge would be shuffled to the top.

Thus Shuttle's education as an Egyptologist, ranging over a period of months, was thorough and comprehensive if not especially chronological.

Not all their time was spent in study. On occasion, colleagues or students would stop by, and long discussions and arguments would ensue while they drank sherry and catnip tea. Shuttle liked to lie along the top of the couch, basking under the reading light, pretending it was the hot sun of Thebes. He stretched so the warmth could penetrate his fur, until his body extended the length of the cushion, his tail tickling Dr. Mercer's neck. He added occasional comments, but even human beings intelligent enough to read heiroglyphics were ignorant of his language, though Dr. Mercer, being his personal protegee, understood more than most.

He felt as if he had known her since he was a kitten, and longer, so well suited were they and so comfortable together.

At any rate, he grew very attached to her, and when she first came home, he would seat himself on her lap and allow her to warm her hands in his fur and at night he would first curl next to her head to lull her to sleep with his purr, then lie for mutual warmth near her feet. She was very considerate and moved carefully, even in her sleep, never thrashing about as Miss Rosamund had done. Once she was quite asleep, he would often proceed with his own research, mapping out excavations in the sand in his commode, or lying on the books in the windowsill, to gaze across the rooftops at the thrashing sea and watch the wind scatter clouds across the moon's wan eye.

Dr. Mercer, even while deep in her studies, would rub his ears or tweak his tail affectionately as he pa.s.sed her chair. Sometimes when he lay near her book, she would seek out his fur with her fingers or read him pa.s.sages and then argue with him as if she expected him to concur with her opinion. He usually did. She was unusually bright.

And then spring, a season he always antic.i.p.ated with relish, betrayed him. Dr. Mercer pulled odd smelling receptacles from the closet and began packing heavy, functional clothing he had never seen before, things in desert colors, and a hat. She never wore hats. He sat on the cases and watched with avid interest for a while. He thought the cases smelled something like the books. Like Egypt. The dust was old dust, sand and mummies, he imagined.

One day she snapped the clasps shut and bent down and picked him up, so that his face was so close to hers his breath clouded her spectacles. "Sorry, old dear, but duty calls. Monica Thomas will be here to see to you. You'll remember Monica. I believe you liked her." Nonsense. He barely knew the girl although he was, of course, polite to all of their guests. "I'll miss you, but if I took you along you'd have to undergo quarantine back here, all that sort of thing, and you'd hate that. I will think of you often. I'll be digging outside Bubastis. You'd approve of Bubastis. Sensible people. Thought cats were divine."

And then she was gone and Monica Thomas came. Monica Thomas did not really care for cats as much as she cared for the professor's lovely flat far from the dormitory, where she could study Shuttle's and Dr. Mercer's books at her leisure and, more often, entertain in private. She put all the books back on the shelves and screeched at Shuttle when he sat on the tables or touched his claws, even in thoughtful kneading, to the upholstery. She shut him out of the bedroom many nights, away from the window. Sometimes she would condescend to pat him, but she disliked getting his hairs on her clothing. She let his food get stale or, worse, sometimes forgot to set it out.

At first he was patient, for what is time to a being with nine lives? But by the second round of the moon, he felt Egypt through the pattern in the rug, through the polished hardwood; he felt it through his claws and bones and in the fighting hairs of his back and tail and in the sensitive places where his whiskers touched the world around him. And he knew. All was not well in Egypt.

Monica did not agree. She came in brandishing a letter from Dr. Mercer, chirping to Shuttle that his mommy had said hi. When she went to bed that night, Shuttle hopped upon the desk and sniffed the letter. Her scent was on the paper, salty and faint but distinctive. He lay upon it, warming his stomach with it and absorbing the message. If he were human, he would have been rea.s.sured. "We have made a find. Of course, it's too early to know quite how important it will be, but already we have located the entrance to the tomb and the shrine. Unfortunately, work has slowed down as our fellahin have deserted us. Some complaints about odd noises at night. Negotiations are in progress, however."

What she said was not as significant as her scent and that of the paper. It carried danger, wrongness. Shuttle scratched at the bedroom door and tried to explain to Monica that he needed to look out the window, to see if he could see Egypt, to divine the nature of the problem. She threw a house slipper against the door, but in the morning fed him fresh food and chucked him under the chin as if he were a mewling kitten. "Don't cry, chum. She'll be back in a few months."

Months! He should have insisted on accompanying her.

He spent the day staring at the sea, leaving it only to return, his claws clicking back and forth on the floor. He scratched at the sill and at the door. He had to get to Egypt. But it was no use. He was locked in. At last, exhausted, he fell asleep on the desk, on the letter and the book whose place Monica had marked with it.

And at noon he rose and walked through the window, across the housetops, and with a mighty leap crossed the sea and all the countries between to Dr. Mercer's tent. She was sleeping, mosquito netting draped over her, her hair matted with sweat. She smelled wonderfully like herself, only more so, but she twitched and moaned in her sleep. Shuttle purred and she quieted, and he padded out into the night.

The tents would have been easy for him to penetrate as a flesh-and-blood cat. For his ka-form, they were less substantial than the heat waves that rose from the sand: Most of the tents held sleeping scientists, sleeping students. The native workers, he knew from conversations, would be at their villages. He kept poking, barely interspersing himself with the fabric of a tent before pulling out again, until he found the ones he sought.

Naturally, in his higher form, the cook tent did not tempt him, especially since the odors were old and complicated by disinfectant some conscientious scientist no doubt forced on the native cook.

No, the tents that interested him were those where finds were already being cataloged and recorded. He knew that the answer to the wrongness must lie there, or part of it.

It came to him through the canvas, so that he hesitated before entering. He hissed and all his soft fur spiked into quills. The pottery shards were there, neglected, on a side table, along with a typewriting machine that bowed the rickety table in the middle with its weight. On the center table were jars and transcriptions, bits of jewelry, and whole pots. He barely noticed them. It was the stack of cylinders, piled like firewood on top of and underneath the third table that sent twitches from whisker to tail tip.

He stalked toward the table, sniffing, but he knew from the outline of the ears, from the shapes of the snouts pushing their silhouettes against the shadowed canvas, that these were cats. Dead cats. Very old dead cats. Desecrated, deformed, bereft of beauty. He growled uncertainly, his tail jerking. Suddenly, something stirred in the far corner, rustling like a mouse then trumpeting like an elephant, and he shot straight into the air and dashed through the tent wall.

When he was safely on the outside, he heard the snoring resume, and realized the mouse and elephant had both been no more than another sleeping scientist. Cautiously, he slipped paw by paw back into the tent and stole past the scientist. He recognized the fellow, of course. Dr. William Parsons. Good pottery man, Dr. Mercer said. Apparently not much for cat mummies, from the casual way they were left lying on top of each other. Much as the mummies repelled him, Shuttle was fascinated by the wrappings, cloth wrapped in intricate patterns around the bodies, paws, and tails. A gummy black substance such as that used on human mummies covered the cats. One stiff was all he needed. What had become of these creatures, he wondered? And what was it about them that felt so wrong? He stopped wondering, stopped sniffing, and stared for a long moment. In his head a chorus of plaintive mews rasped across the ages and he opened his mouth and caterwauled, spooking himself all over again.

He leaped from the tent, leaving Bill Parsons, oblivious to ka-ish caterwauls, still sleeping soundly, if noisily. The expedition had had unusual luck, locating its first finds shortly after commencing the dig. Dr. Mercer's letter had taken almost a month to reach Monica. The tomb now stood open, with a guard sleeping by the door. A series of ditches and stakes marked the site of the temple and the shrine. The tent town of scientists and their a.s.sistants ranged in a crescent surrounding the site.

The shrine was little more than a small stone mound at one end of the crescent. The mound was hollow as an oven and the door was ajar. Shuttle could not bring himself to enter that place. The smell of mummies and misery hung heavily within, and the mews such as he had heard within his head echoed and re-echoed through the shrine. This, then, had been the sepulcher of those unfortunate members of his race now lying like so many mackerel wrapped by the fishmonger within Parsons' tent.