Cat Tales (5 page)

And what escaped from my mouth was a hiss, a
cat's hiss, a feral noise of challenge and defiance.

My sight had changed, shifted. The room was
still there, still familiar, but everything was larger now,
looming, and I was no longer a cowering kid, I was a small brindled
cat tucked into the corner of the room, back arched, teeth bared,
eyes burning with rebellion. I was armed now, tooth and claw.
Whatever came, I could take it.

But other things had changed, too. What did
come was not my father, not the man I knew, anyway. What came into
that room, seeking me with a hot and urgent need, was a demon of
darkness with eyes as burning as my own, burning with a black fire
of madness and evil.

This was the true thing that I had risen
against. Not the man who sired me, whose blood ran in my own veins.
We had both changed, turned into something different, something
deadlier, something greater than ourselves.

I could have fled. As the cat, I was small
enough, agile enough, and the window was open – one leap, and I
might have been safe. But this was a shadow I knew for an enemy –
and it was an enemy for others, not just for myself. Any victory
here would be a victory for other innocent souls which it had
devoured, souls which had lain defenseless in its path.

Unlike me.

I stood my ground. The shadow flowed into the
room, over my empty bed, spasmed, shivered, growled, turned; its
claws were none the less deadly for that they were not totally of
this world, because they were more than that, because their wounds
would go deeper than flesh, would scar the soul. And yet – and yet
– they had to be faced, because this was an old battle, and if they
were not faced down they merely grew stronger.

We came together, the shadow and the cat, in
the middle of the room. The pain was unbearable, incandescent; I
howled my agony, recoiling, twisting, fighting, biting, scratching.
But I too made my mark because where my claws raked the thing
shredded and faded, and light came through the cracks – and that
helped. A little. By the time we broke apart, the shadow to retreat
through the closed door, the small cat with scoured flanks and a
deep claw-cut beading blood above one eye, out of the window… and
running as fast as it could, limping on one wounded paw, towards
the cottage at the end of the street.

This is a safe house.

At last, I understood.

She was waiting for me, the silver-haired
woman, compassion in her eyes. She had ointment ready, and clean
cloth soaked in warm water to bathe my wounds – and I was a girl
again, in this house, my human body bearing the scars of my battle
that night, but fading slowly under her ministrations.

"The first time," she murmured, dabbing at
the cut above my eye. "The first time is always the very worst. You
have no idea what to expect. And then it exceeds every expectation
you could not possibly have had. It hurts. Ah, it hurts. I know. I
bear my own scars."

"The other cats," I said slowly.

She nodded. "Like you, in a way," she said.
"They come here already wounded, creatures seeking sanctuary. And I
help, I am here for all of them. They are all called here before
the worst happens, so that I can meet them, know them, give them
the cookies… with the secret ingredient in it, the one that makes
it possible for them to escape if they need to, to run like a cat
can, clear-eyed in the dark, and find their way back here to be
healed. But you are not one of those. You are different. You fought
the darkness."

"Who are you?" I whispered, staring at
her.

"I'm the Protector," she said simply, sitting
back in her chair. "This is what I do, I take in the wounded of
this world and this house, this garden, can make them whole again.
This is a safe house, safe from darkness, safe from harm. Summer
lives in this garden, and sweet dreams under my roof. I am here to
give to all strength and sustenance, and the will to go on… and,
when the time comes, the will to fight what I fight – to one, and
one alone. So – it is to be you, I think. The Protector who comes
after me. You know. You understand. You stood up to fight the
darkness, all alone, on your own. You have the mark of the
Protector on you. With me… it was later, and the pain already had a
foothold in me, the damage was already done. With you, it might
have come just in time – the true poison has been taken from you,
although you were close enough to smell it, to understand what it
truly means."

"But I don't," I said. "I don't understand
any of this."

"You felt fear, but you were not conquered by
it," she said. "That is a Protector's strength. We understand what
lies underneath, we have to before we can rise to fight it. But it
cannot destroy us."

"What do you mean?"

"You, my child, are what comes after me.
There are only a handful of us in this world at any one time – the
healers, the ones who make a safe haven and who guard it, sometimes
by a word or an invitation inside for a cup of tea, sometimes with
our own blood and tears. This is not your safe house, it is mine –
but some day you will make your own haven. It is coming."

I should have known long before now, but it
was only in this moment that I really made the connection in my
mind.

"You are the tabby cat," I said in sudden
understanding.

"Sometimes," she said, smiling. "And yes,
although you don't think you remember that now, you've seen me here
at least once in the aftermath of a battle with some demon out of
shadow. Human stupidity, or arrogance, or greed – something that
comes out of the dark and has the power to hurt the innocents in
its way. I Protect."

"How…?"

"It will come to you, " she said gently. "It
is given to all of us to find the one who will succeed us
eventually – and I can see that someday you will take my place. Not
here, but somewhere else, in a safe house of your own, in some
other corner of the world where there is a need for healing magic
and a healer to wield it." She paused, hesitated slightly as though
she were weighing something in her mind, and then came to a
decision and reached to lift a slender silver chain over her head.
It bore a pendant, a single round stone, golden except for a dark
vertical streak in the middle, looking like a lion's eye. Before I
had a chance to protest, to refuse, the chain had slipped over my
own head, the pendant coming to rest over my heart. "This will tell
you when it is time," she said. "I only have a little time left –
and when I am gone you will make a safe house, and it will grow old
roses in the garden, and call to the sick and the wounded and the
ones who need protection. And in that stone lies the spirit and the
wisdom that I myself inherited once from all the ones who came
before me. I have learned all it needs to teach me – it's yours
now. You are the Protector. This house remains a safe haven for as
long as I stay here – but the shadows come for us all, it is what a
Protector knows from the very beginning. Make another safe house,
for all the hurt ones in this, your corner of the world. It will
take as long as it must… but don't let it take too long" She leaned
over and actually kissed me on the forehead, as though in
benediction. "Go, now. And remember."

My mother died when I was sixteen years old.
The authorities came for me and for my brother, and took us from
our father's house – they separated us, and I don't know where he
went, in the end. I never saw him again after that last tearful
goodbye, when they tore us apart from one another and he was put in
one car and I in another and we were driven off in opposite
directions. I was placed with several foster families, but nothing
ever seemed to work out – not least because I was given to bringing
in stray cats from the neighborhood, and speaking to them in a
quiet gentle voice, and holding the feral animals until they
stilled in my arms and looked at me out of glowing eyes that were
blue or bright green or tawny orange-gold – and we had an
understanding, that I would heal, and protect and care.

And then, before I turned seventeen, my hair
turned silver-gray overnight.

I had not worn the cat's-eye pendant which
the witch from the cottage had given me; I had kept it safe, but I
taken it off from around my neck as soon as I was able to after she
had placed it there that night. But on the day that my hair turned
the color that hers had been, I took the pendant out of its safe
place and hung it openly around my neck. And I walked out of the
house in which they had placed me, taking nothing with me except
that pendant – and I found an abandoned house at the end of a
once-genteel street, and walked inside, and closed the door behind
me. It was empty when I fell asleep curled up on the bare floor
against a wall whose wallpaper was peeling in rotting streamers –
but when I woke, the cottage had dreamed itself into being around
me. There was a fireplace, and a lamp which shed warm golden light,
and an oddly familiar black cat walked in from the back garden and
yawned and took possession of the window-seat in the bay
window.

I was home. And I knew what I had to do.

The shadows knew me, and came for me when I
patrolled the neighborhood streets in the night, when the house
lights were down and other people were sleeping. And I knew them,
and faced them. And this, she didn't tell me, the witch – this I
found out the hard way, myself – every battle is like the first
battle, and every victory is like the first victory, because you
are always fighting on two fronts – as the Protector, standing
between innocents and harm, and as yourself, fighting your own
fears and terrors and the shadows in your own soul, things you can
never allow to win, because the moment you bow your head before
them all the battles of the future are already lost.

I don't remember exactly the first time I fed
a crying child the special cookies that allowed it to come running
to me in the guise of a kitten when it was hurt or scared. But
somehow, very quickly, the rest of my life disappeared somewhere
into a dream – and this was all that I had ever done, all that I
had ever been, and I could smell the old roses which had always
been there in the garden of a cottage at the end of a suburban
street.

And then came the day I saw a wary, rangy
teenager poised ready to flee on my doorstep, staring at me with
huge, wounded dark eyes, so much like mine had once been, full of a
world of hurt – and yet defiant, ready to take on a world which
seemed to be gathered against her. And I understood, and
smiled.

She was who I had once been. And one day she
would become what I was now. This was a new Protector, still young,
still a chrysalis, but she would understand.

"Come in," I said softly, beckoning with one
hand while the other closed around the eye of the cat on my breast.
"This is a safe house."

-----0-----

Midnight at Spanish Gardens
:
"Alexander's language is lovely and poetic...the imagery is
beautiful, the setting is compelling...But it's the characters that
drive this story, in all of their imperfection, in all of their
passion or disconnection or feeling of failure."
-- Alana
Abbott
,
Flames Rising

The Secrets of Jin-shei:
"Vivid and
involving'... both an exotic journey into the imagination, and a
graceful exploration of the heart."
-- SF Site

Changer of Days:
"Powerful characters
and a powerful setting help to deliver what I am thrilled to say is
a great bloody book."
Altair

Gift of the Unmage:
"This latest book
seems as if it is going to be your standard coming-of-age magician
tale, but then you realize it is so much more. It is philosophy, it
is science fiction, and it is beautiful."
-- Kelly A.
Ohlert

Midnight at Spanish Gardens (Sky Warrior
Books USA 2011)

Dolphin's Daughter and Other Stories
(Macmillan, UK, 1995)

Houses in Africa (David Ling, New Zealand,
1995)

Letters from the Fire (Harper Collins New
Zealand, 1999)

Secrets of Jin Shei (HarperCollins, USA,
2004/2005)

The Hidden Queen (Eos, USA, 2005)

Changer of Days (Eos, USA, 2005)

Embers of Heaven (HarperCollins , UK,
2006)

Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax, (Kos
Books 2010)

WORLDWEAVERS Series

1) Gift of the Unmage (HarperCollins, USA,
2007)

2) Spellspam (HarperCollins, USA, 2008)

3) Cybermage (Harpercollins, USA, 2009)

Website:
http://www.AlmaAlexander.com/

Blog: http://anghara.livejournal.com

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AlmaAlexander

Email: [email protected]