Cat Magic (32 page)

Tom had returned, sullen and slinking, mewing loudly. “Tom, they’re calling me back, I can hear them!

Please, Tom, tell me how to get to them! They need me! Oh, God, I can feel how bad they need me!”

She ran, she jumped, she clawed the air. When she scrambled up the gnarled remnant of a tree, she could hear the sucking eagerness of the demons in the clouds.

How absurd, she thought, to have chosen this. Nobody ever came back from the dead, not with all of hell barring the way. The dark once entered…

Guardian: a great maroon scorpion with the blue-eyed face of a little girl.

Guardian: a white bird that warbled lies.

Guardian: something that once had been a nun. Mother Star of the Sea.

Amanda hadn’t thought of her since sixth grade.

Tom spoke, a fierce, rasping voice in her head. “They are death’s soldiers, the demons.”

“Then death is evil.”

“Death is death, neither good nor bad. It’s just there.”

She ran. It was brutal, simple instinct, the reaction of the monkey to the slinking panther. The ground beneath her was spongy and had the slickness of skin. Maybe it was skin. This hideous place could easily be on the back of some inconceivable monster. She slipped and slid in the soft, glittering folds of it, and smelted the sweet stink of it.

The cat ran along beside her for a while. Then she saw it prancing in front.

Then the clouds spit a drop of hot, sticky rain.

The drop tickled her face. She raised her shadows of hands and touched the ooze. It was full of hair-fine worms. The tickle on her face changed to an itch, then at once to a dull ache. She reached up again and pulled away a great gout of skin. It was seething with the threadlike creatures. She threw it down in disgust and wiped her hands on the rubbery ground.

The sensation in her face was awful, an ache and a salty cut and the itching of a scab. She raised her eyes to the sky, which was tossing and bulging down at her, as if great fingers punched behind the clouds. “Let me go home’ I don’t belong here and you’re not going to keep me!” She would have thrown something but she had nothing to throw.

Somebody whispered in her ear, and she knew it was a demon; “You’ve got a lot to learn, baby.”

“Don’t you dare call me that! I’m Amanda Walker and I’m not your baby.”

The clouds twisted and stormed, became a great, dark skull filled with lightning, and began to draw closer to her. The grinning jaws bellowed thunder so loud she held her ears and screamed, but her own voice was lost.

And she had an odd thought: the demons in those clouds don’t hate me. They’re just doing their job.

“Your body can’t receive you back. Dead is dead. The ones who do return end up as ghosts, useless victims of the winds.”

This was a new voice, not big like the storm. Rather it was soft and small and full of peace. Amanda had heard something like it before, at the fairy stone. If a voice could be called sacred—she went to her knees. “I thought death was something like going down a long, hollow tube and then meeting my grandfather or somebody and being welcomed, and—”

“Each person creates his own death.”

Amanda was increasingly sure she knew that voice. And if she was right—then maybe things were going to get better. “Who are you?”

For just an instant Amanda glimpsed a bright, tiny woman, quite perfect, with rowan in her hair.

“
Leannan
, it is you. I was hoping it was. Listen, please help me get out of here. I’ve got to find a way to go back without ending up in hell.”

The
Leannan
regarded her. “You’ve set yourself a difficult problem.”

“But I don’t deserve hell. I’m not guilty of anything.”

“If you want my help, then come with me.” Tom was at her side, looking large indeed next to the Fairy Queen. “Don’t worry about your demons. They won’t stop you going deeper into death.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I want. I’m going to get out of this. I’ve got to go back to the Covenstead!” She turned—and found herself facing a narrow man with a sneer on his face and rape in his eyes. He grabbed her throat with a wet hand. Suddenly both he and she were as solid as living bodies. She could smell his rancid skin, see his oily tongue, hear his breath bubbling in his nostrils. “Hey, baby,” he said, “let’s dance.”

“Oh, God! Oh, God, help me!”

He brought out a long, serrated knife. “This is God ” When he started squeezing her throat, she suffered very real agony. “This is just the beginning, you stinking bitch. I’m gonna cut your heart out and eat it right in front of your eyes!”

The blade caressed sensitive skin, and she saw a long spike of flecked drool start in the comer of his mouth. “
Leannan
, please, you said you’d help me!”

“Then you must follow me.”

“I’m sorry. I will.”

At once the rapist began to change. His form wavered and he rolled his eyes. His knife fell into dust, his whole body shivered, twisting back on itself.

Then Tom was there, swishing his tail.

“It was you! All the time, it was you! You’re evil, you’re a monster. A
monster
!”

“He obeys the law, Amanda. And so must you.” A hand so small it felt like a little, warm mouse came into her own. “Come with me. I want to show you your past, so you can learn what’s drawn you so against your better judgment to your witches. Perhaps then you’ll see that you should go to what you think of as heaven, which I call the Land of Summer. You’ve long since earned your peace.”

“I want to go back. I’ve got to.”

The
Leannan
sighed. “You’re very strong,” she said ruefully. But the small hand squeezed Amanda’s fingers.

Amanda walked along with the
Leannan
. She wasn’t at alt sure she wanted to, but every other choice seemed worse. She had expended her last bit of resistance facing Tom the rapist.

She suspected that he was only the first in a long line of guardians of the gates of life. The scorpion, for example, was worse. And the little bird far worse. And then there was Mother Star of the Sea. Dear God, she was the very personification of guilt. In school she had managed to make Amanda feel hell-bound for having an untied shoe.

“Will you please hurry up, Amanda? I’m having trouble with my damn fire.”

That was Constance Collier—and this place—they weren’t on the field of skin anymore, they were—oh, God, this was all familiar. “Oh,
Leannan
, thank you, thank you!” All the time she had been bringing Amanda back to the Covenstead. Deeper into death, indeed.

“The veil between life and death is thin here. But make no mistake. I have not brought you closer to the resurrection you seek. Let Constance show you your first life. Perhaps then you’ll see that you have the right to the summer you have earned.”

The meadow was clear and bright, and Constance was sharply outlined by the sun. Things were still very strange: there were people around her, for example, but they were mere shadows, seated in a vague circle. Connie was stirring a great, iron cauldron, and that was very clear, too.

She smiled at Amanda. “You’re slow as molasses, girl!” Her voice renewed Amanda’s determination. Despite what the
Leannan
said, she could hear how very desperately Connie wanted her to return. The old woman waved her long staff for emphasis. “By the very Goddess we’ve got to get you back.”

Amanda ran up to the edge of the circle. “Constance, am I really dead? This is crazy—if I’m dead how can you be here?”

“Go round the circle once widdershins and you can come in. Then I’ll tell you.” Amanda began to walk.

“Not that way. That’s sunward. Widdershins is the other direction.”

Inside the circle even the air was different. It had less of the sparkle of spirit air, and smelled of fields and farm. She could just see, if she looked very, very closely, the faces of the people huddled around its edges. She recognized Ivy, and her heart panged to see Robin. But they certainly did not see her.

“Where is this place?”

“We can meet here for a time. The witches’ circle lies between the worlds.”

“I’m on the estate?”

“The circle is in both places.”

“What places? Have you given me some kind of a drug?”

“Oh, little baby, the drug is death! You are really and truly dead. And we don’t even know if your lunatic of an uncle will get himself back together enough to return you to life. He doesn’t
want
to, that’s for sure.”

“But you sent me to him! If you knew this would happen—”

“To be the witches’ guide in life, you must learn the secrets of death. And to do that you’ve got to die.

Unless there’s a chance you won’t come back, you aren’t really dead.”

“The
Leannan
said that you were going to show me why I don’t need to return. But you seem to want me back so much.”

“I’m going to show you your first life. How you take what you see is your business. Now I’m going to swirl the cauldron and you lean over and look into it. Be mindful of what appears, young woman!”

The cauldron gurgled and gargled almost like a living throat; it boiled and bubbled. Soon Amanda began to see things rolling about in the murky waters. Shadows, faces… things that made her look more closely.

“That’s right, that’s good.” Constance swirled harder.

“The tennis shoes you wore when you were ten, some snapshots of you then. Baby treasures, too, Holly your dolly and first friend. And Old Moll with her nose askew, and calico Kitten Stew—remember them?”

“I remember.”

“Look, then. Look at life in the classroom.”

Something was wrong with this picture. Her childhood had not been a time of such terror. Or had it?

The waters turned and turned. She remembered sixth grade. There was Daisy O’Neill and Jenny Parks sitting by the window, and Bonnie Haver in the back, plump Stacey behind her.

Two swishing rows of girls came down the chapel aisle behind Mother Star of the Sea. They chanted to the
Stabat Mater
tune:

“Now, wait a minute,” Amanda said. “Eating meat on Friday isn’t a sin anymore.”

Bonnie Haver: “But you did it when it was, so you are doomed.”

“I’m not even a Catholic! Mother Star of the Sea might have secretly baptized me that afternoon I fell asleep at my desk, but—”

“You are doomed.”

Just at the edge of the circle Amanda saw the blade-faced man again. He was wearing a long slack coat.

In his hand was a smoking soldering iron. He held it up. “How about some scars, girl?”

Constance brandished her staff and shouted: “Away, Tom! Come as her friend or don’t come at all.”

“He’s a demon, Connie, and I think the
Leannan
might be one, too!”

“No, Amanda, they’re not demons, not those two. They’re gods. Or angels, your Mother Star of the Sea would call them. In any case, they’re a couple of whores. All gods are. They’ll be whatever you want them to be and do what you want them to do. If you declare yourself guilty, they’ll take you to hell and give you to your demons. Or they’ll sing with you in heaven. It’s up to you.”

Despite herself, Amanda found that she was looking deep into her own soul, where the moss of forgetfulness grew. And under the moss she saw: “I
did
tease that nun. And I did it on purpose, because I wanted to make her suffer. Oh, God, I did it for the sake of hate.”

The man with the soldering iron stepped right through into the center of the circle. With a shout Connie pitched back and fell among the shadows of her witches. Amanda looked at the blue, smoking tip of the iron.

“Now, my dear, open your legs.”

She would not. She was guilty, but not
that
guilty, “I was just a little girl. It was the innocent anger of a child.”

The man twisted and hissed at her, then in a yowling instant was Tom again, curling about her feet, his tail low and sullen behind him.

Connie came shambling back, brushing corn silk from her cloak. This field had just been harvested.

“The particular deity you call Tom is your familiar, dear. You must learn to control him. Until you do, be careful. Remember that he follows your wishes. If you stay on this guilt trip, watch it.”

Amanda looked at the cat. He winked one green eye.

“No, dear, ignore him. Look into the cauldron again. See what you’ve suffered on behalf of the witches.

You needn’t feel guilty if you don’t wish to make such a sacrifice again.”

“I thought you wanted me back, Connie.”

“Not out of guilt. Out of love. Now, look. Look deep!”

There was somebody in the cauldron, a tall and furious somebody from a far place and a farther time.

“You’re beginning to see who you were. You’ve been a witch for a long, long time.”

“That other one down there—I remember him, too. He burned me!”

“He always does. But don’t be attracted by his bishop’s robe. Go back farther, to when he wore simpler things.”

Amanda looked deeper into the cauldron. Just then it shook as if someone had kicked at it. She seemed to slip and slide away from the edge. The waters, which had been clearing, grew murky again.

“What’s going on?” Constance rasped. “Who’s messing up the chant?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What’s the matter with you. Ivy? Can’t you tell she’s here? Can’t you see her?”

“Connie, I’m trying my best!”

“This is the most important circle we’ve ever cast! Don’t you dare break it. Now, chant, girl,
chant!
”

“I said I’m trying.”

When the chant became smooth, the cauldron cleared again. But it lasted only a moment. Soon the waters were more turbid than before.

“Ivy, you are breaking the chant.”

“I’m sitting in a damned ant bed, Connie. They’re swarming all over me.”

“
Chant!
”

The waters came clear. Amanda peered in. As before, her childhood floated at the surface. Below came the various colors of other lives, whole finished worlds swimming in dim old seas.