Catfantastic II

by Andre Norton

  And especially, to Jeannie’s disgust, about cats. Snowball, of course, first and always. But she sent Jeannie out to find and bring into the bedroom the other cats, the china ones and glass ones and the elegant woodcarving of a Siamese that Jeannie had not noticed in a corner cabinet until Clara told her which shelf. Clara not only talked about cats, she seemed to talk to them: to the picture (“Snowball, you beauty, you dear…”) and the china cats (“You’re so sleek, so darling…”) It made Jeannie gag. So did the tang of tomcat, which remained even in cold weather. Had the cat hit a hot-water pipe, Jeannie wondered? Was it living under the house, in the crawl space?

  In the middle of January, Pearl came one day without calling first. Jeannie wakened suddenly in midmorning, aware of the doorbell’s dying twang. Her mouth was furry and tasted horrible; she knew her eyes were bleary. She popped two breath mints, put on her hooded robe, and peered out the spyhole. Pearl, muffled in layers of brilliant knitting, stood hunched over a walker on the front porch, holding a folded newspaper in her hand. Jeannie opened the door, backing quickly away from the gust of cold air. “Sorry,” she said vaguely. “I’ve had a sort of cold, and I was up last night…”

  “That’s all right, dear, and I won’t disturb Clara-” Pearl handed her the paper. “I just thought you should know, to break it gently-our other classmate, May, died yesterday in the nursing home.”

  “Oh, how terrible.” She knew what to say, but felt the morning after lassitude dragging at her mind. “Sit down?”

  “No.” Pearl glanced at Clara’s shut bedroom door. “I don’t think I-I mean, I might cry… I would cry… and she’d be more upset. Pick your time, dear.” And shaking her head to Jeannie’s offers of a cup of tea or a few minutes of rest, she edged her way back out and down the walk in careful steps behind the walker. Jeannie watched through the window, then glanced at the paper. “May Ellen Freeman, graduated high school in ‘17, one of the last few…” The newspaper writer had let herself go, wallowing in sentimentality.

  It was, in fact, the perfect excuse. Everyone knew that old people were more fragile, could fall apart when their friends died. Pearl was using a walker- Pearl, who two weeks ago had climbed the front steps on her own. So if she told Clara, and Clara’s heart stopped, who would question it? And she would choose her time carefully.

  Clara, of course, was awake, and had heard the doorbell. Another mistake, Jeannie told her. She hurried Clara though the morning routine-after all, they were late-rushing her through the bedpan part, bathing her as quickly as she could, changing the bed with quick, jerking tugs at the sheets. She even apologized, with the vague feeling that she ought to be polite to someone she was going to kill in a few minutes, for being late. She’d felt a cold coming on, she’d had a headache last night, she’d taken more aspirin than she should. Clara said nothing; her tiny face had crumpled even further.

  “I’ll get your breakfast,” said Jeannie, carrying away the used bed linens. Her head was beginning to pound with the effort of thought. She glanced at the clock as she pushed the sheets into the washer. After ten already! Suppose they did an autopsy… Clara would have nothing in her stomach, and she should have had breakfast. Could Jeannie say she had refused her breakfast? Sometimes she did. A snack now? The thought of cooking turned Jeannie’s stomach, but she put a kettle on the stove and turned on the back burner. Tea, perhaps, and something warmed in the microwave. She went to her room and brushed her hair vigorously, slapped her face to get the color in it. In her mind she was explaining to the doctor how Clara had seemed weaker that morning, hadn’t eaten, and she’d taken her a roll, wondering whether to tell her yet, and Clara had… had what? Should Clara eat the roll first, and then be told, or… the kettle whistled to her.

  Rolls, cups of tea, the pretty enameled tray she might sell at the flea market for a few dollars. She carried it into Clara’s bedroom with a bright smile, and said, “Here you are, dear.”

  “Wish I could have eggs.” Clara fumbled for one of the rolls, and Jeannie helped her. It was stupid, the doctor saying she couldn’t have eggs, when she was over ninety and couldn’t live long anyway, but it saved Jeannie from having to smell them cooking when she had a hangover. She sipped tea from her own cup, meditatively, wondering just when to do it. She felt someone staring at her, that unmistakable feeling, and turned around to see nothing at the window at all. No one could see through the blinds and curtains anyway. Her neck itched. She glared at the picture on the wall, the fake fluffy cat Clara called Snowball. Two glowing golden eyes stared back at her, brighter than she remembered. Hangover, she told herself firmly; comes from mixing pills and booze. So did the stench of tomcat.

  What it really did was remind her of the perfect method. She cleared away the tray, gently wiped Clara’s streaked chin and brushed away the crumbs, then carried the tray to the kitchen. She was a little hungry now, and fixed herself a bowl of Clara’s cereal. The right bowl would be in the sink, later, if anyone looked. They would look; it was that kind of town.

  Then she carried in the morning paper, and the white cat-shaped pillow, fixing her face in its fake smile for the last time. She would have a fake sad look later, but this was the last fake smile, and that thought almost made it real.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Clara,” she said, as sorrowfully as she could. “I’ve got bad news-”

  “Pearl?” Clara’s face went white; she was staring at the paper. Jeannie almost wished she’d thought of that he. It would have done the trick. But in her own way she was honest. She shook her head.

  “No,” she said gently. “May Ellen.” Clara’s face flushed pink again.

  “Law! You scared me!” Her breath came fast and shallow. “May’s been loony this five years-I expected her-” But her chin had started to tremble, and her voice shook even more than usual.

  “I thought you’d be upset,” said Jeannie, holding out the cat pillow, as if for comfort. ” Pearl said-”

  Clara’s good eye looked remarkably alive this morning, a clear unclouded gray. “I thought I heard you two whispering out there. She here?”

  “No, Aunt Clara. She didn’t want to disturb you, and she said she’d start crying-”

  “S’pose she would. May was her maid of honor, after all.” Jeannie had not realized that Pearl had ever been married. Clara’s voice faded again. “It was a long time ago…” Now she was crying, grabbing for the cat-shaped pillow as Jeannie had hoped she would, burying her face in that white fur, her swollen knuckles locked onto it. Weak sobs shook her body, as disorganized as her speech.

  “There, there,” Jeannie said, as soothingly as if she expected it to go on tape. “There, there.” She slipped an arm under Clara’s head, cradling her, and pushed the pillow more firmly onto her face. It didn’t take long, and the bony hands clung to the pillow, as if to help.

  Jeannie “discovered” her an hour later. By then she had bathed, dressed, downed two cups of strong coffee, and made her own bed. She checked her appearance in the mirror. Slightly reddened eyes and nose could be grief; she left off her usual makeup. When she called the doctor, he was unsurprised, and quickly agreed to sign the certificate. She let her own voice tremble when she admitted she’d told Clara of May’s death. He soothed her, insisted it was not her fault. “But it’s so awful!” she heard herself say. “She started crying, into that old fur pillow… she wanted to be left alone, she said, so I went to take my bath, and she’s… it’s like she’s holding it to her-” Sounding a little bored, the doctor asked if she wanted him to come by and see… she could tell he thought it was silly: old ladies do not commit suicide by smothering themselves with fur pillows. “I guess not,” she said, hoping he hadn’t overdone it.

  “You’re all right yourself?” he asked, more briskly.

  “Yes… I’ll be fine.”

  “Call if you want a sedative later,” he said.

  Jeannie removed the pillow from Clara’s face, unclenching the dead fingers, surprised to feel nothing much at all when she t
ouched that cooling flesh. Clara’s face looked normal, as normal as a dead face could look. Jeannie called the funeral home Clara had always said she wanted (“give the condemned their choice”), and then, nervous as she was, called Pearl. It was a replay of the doctor’s reaction. Jeannie lashed herself with guilt, admitted she had chosen the time badly, explained at length why it had seemed safe, and let Pearl comfort her. The irony of it almost made her lose character and laugh-that Pearl, now twice bereft, and sole survivor, would comfort the murderer-but she managed to choke instead. Pearl wanted to come, right away, and Jeannie agreed-even asked her to call Mr. Benson, the lawyer. “I feel so guilty,” she finished, and Pearl replied, wearily enough, “You mustn’t.”

  Everything went according to plan. Pearl arrived just before the funeral home men; she had her moment alone with Clara, and came out saying how peaceful Clara looked. She herself looked exhausted and sick, and Jeannie insisted on giving her a cup of tea and a roll. The funeral home men were swift and efficient, swathing Clara’s body in dark blue velvet, and removing it discreetly by the back door, rather than wheeling the gurney past Pearl in the living room. “So thoughtful,” Jeannie murmured, signing the forms they handed her, and they murmured soothing phrases in return. She wondered if they would be so soothing to someone who felt real grief. The lawyer arrived; she sensed a renewed alertness in his glance around the living room, but she had been careful. None of the conspicuous ornaments was missing. He murmured about the will filed in his office; Jeannie tried to look exhausted and confused.

  “Will? I don’t suppose she has much, does she? I thought-if I can just stay here a week or so, I’ll go back to my job in the city-” In point of fact, Clara had to have been rich; she’d been married to a rich man-or so Jeannie had always been told-and he’d left her everything. And Mr. Benson had always spoken of her monthly income as allowance from a trust; trusts were for rich people. Jeannie had not come to a small town to work herself to the bone for nothing. But she knew she must not say so. The lawyer relaxed slightly.

  “Of course you’re free to stay here as long as you need; we all know you’ve put a lot into nursing Clara. The funeral, now-?”

  “I thought Tuesday,” said Jeannie,.

  “Excellent. We’ll talk about the will afterward.”

  A steady stream of visitors came by that afternoon; Jeannie had no time for the relaxing drink she desperately wanted. Someone middle-aged stripped the bed, made it from linens taken from a bureau drawer. The woman seemed to know Jeannie, and where everything was, which made Jeannie very nervous, but the woman said nothing. She slipped away after restoring Clara’s bedroom to perfect order. Several people brought food: a ham, a bean casserole, two cakes, and a pie. Two of the women walked into the kitchen as if they owned it, and put the food away in the refrigerator without asking Jeannie anything. But she survived it all, and at last they left. She was alone, and safe, and about to be richer than she’d ever been in her life.

  She was also deadly tired. She thought of pouring herself a drink, but it seemed like too much trouble. Her own bed beckoned, a bed from which she need not rise until she felt like it. No more answering Clara’s bell (in her memory, already blurring, she had always answered Clara’s bell.) No more getting up each morning to help an old lady use a bedpan and give her a bath. No more cooking tasteless food for a sick old fool. She stretched, feeling the ease of a house empty of anyone else’s needs, with plenty to satisfy her own, and settled into her bed with a tired grunt. Beside her, the bedside table held what she needed if she woke suddenly: the pills, the flat-sided bottle that would send her straight back to lovely oblivion. She turned out the light, and yawned, and fell heavily asleep in the midst of it.

  She woke with stabbing pains in her legs: literally stabbing as if someone had stuck hatpins into her. Before her eyes were open, she was aware of the rank smell of tomcat somewhere nearby. She kicked out, finding nothing, and reached down under the bedclothes to feel her legs. Something clinked, across the room, in the darkness. It sounded like beercans. The rattle came again, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone rummaging through tightly packed bottles.

  Something was in the room with her, and had found her cache, her secret store of liquor hidden in the back of her closet. Furious, she reached for the bedside table lamp. Something raked her arm, painfully. Claws she thought, as her hand found the switch and light sprang out, blinding her. A waifish ginger kitten crouched on the bedside table, one paw extended. Its wistful eyes were pale gray, an unusual color she had never seen on any cat. A dull clank came from the closet, and the smell of whiskey joined the smell of tomcat. A yowl, and another clank and the tinkle of broken glass. Something white streaked across the floor; Jeannie shivered. It slowed, stopped, turned to look at her. A small, sleek, white cat, hardly larger than the china cats on the shelf in Clara’s bedroom. Her stomach roiled. Another small white cat joined the first, just enough larger to look like one of a set.

  She wanted to scream, to say that this was impossible, but no sound came when she tried. She stared at the open door, where an impossibly fluffy white tail showed now, as an enormous white cat, a blue satin bow tied around its neck, backed out of the closet with something in its mouth. A beer can, one of the silver ones. Her mind chattered crazily, reminding her that cats are not dogs; they do not fetch things that way. The cat turned, gave her a long yellow stare, and dropped the beer can, which rolled across the floor. The two small white cats batted it with their paws as it went by.

  Her voice returned enough for her to ask “Snowball…?”

  The white cat grinned at her, showing many sharp teeth, and ran its claws out and in. It was as big as the cat-shaped pillow, as big as the cat in the painting. She felt something land on the bed, and looked to see the ginger kitten bound across to jump off the far side and go to the big white cat. They touched noses, rubbed cheeks, and then sat down facing her.

  Her mind went blank for a few minutes. It could not be what it looked like, yet she had seen pictures of young Clara, a slight ginger-haired girl with wide, waifish gray eyes. And in the huge white-tomcat, it must be-she saw the protective stance of the acknowledged mate. Cats aren’t like that, she told herself, as both of them jumped onto the bed, as the sleek smaller cats jumped onto the bed, as she batted helplessly at mouths full of sharp teeth and paws edged with sharp claws, as the massive white fur body of the tomcat settled over her face, and the light went out. Snowball she could hear Clara saying in a meditative tone was not just an ordinary cat. Jeannie had time to worry about what the broken whiskey bottles, the rolling beer cans, the unmarked packet of pills, would say to those who found her, before she realized that she didn’t have to worry about that after all.

  Hob’s Pot by Andre Norton

  In the old days before Papa came home, no one used the big drawing room since Great-Aunt Amelie had stopped entertaining, saying she was too old for company. However, this afternoon it had been turned into a treasure cave and Emmy, sitting on a footstool beside Great-Aunt Amelie’s chair, looked about her very wide-eyed. There was a picture in one of the books Miss Lansdall had brought when she had come to be Emmy’s new governess which looked a little like this wealth of color and strange objects, some amusing and some simply beautiful, like the pendant Great-Aunt Amelie was now holding. There had been a boy called Aladdin who had found such treasure as this that Papa’s Hindu servant and both of the footmen were busy unpacking from wicker baskets which looked more like chests, pulling back layers of oiled cloth which had kept the sea air out, before taking carefully from the depths one marvel after another.

  “Rrrrrowwww!” A cream and brown shape slipped between two of the chests and stopped to try claws on the invitingly rough side of one.

  “Feel right at home, Noble Warrior, is that it?” Papa was laughing. “Well, it is true you’ve seen some of this before. Does this suit your fancy, perhaps?” Papa picked up from a table top a shiny green carved figure. It might have the body of a man
wearing a long robe of ceremony but the head was that of a rat!

  “Your birth year, Thragun Neklop.” Papa laughed again, catching sight of Emmy’s bewildered face. “It is true, Emmy. Our Noble Warrior was born in the Year of The Rat. And he will have a very notable series of adventures, too.

  “Ali San read the sand table for him and the Princess Suphoron before he left the palace. It’s all written out somewhere in my day book, I’ll find it for you. The princess wanted to be sure that Thragun was indeed the proper guard for MY princess. And here, my dear, is your robe, so you will look as if you belong in a palace.”

  He reached over Lasha’s shoulder and picked out of the trunk a bundle of something which was both blue and green, like the gemmed feathers of Great-Aunt Amelie’s pendant. There were scrolls of silver up and down, and when Papa shook it out to show Emmy that it was a coat, she also could see that the silver lines made pictures of flowers and birds and-yes, there was a cat!

  “Ohhhhh!” Papa put it around her shoulders and she was smoothing it. Never in her life had she seen anything so wonderful.

  “A little big, but you’ll grow into it-” Papa did not have a chance to say anything else, for there came a loud snarl and then a series of deep-throated growls from floor level.

  Thragun Neklop had left off his scratching to swing around and face a much smaller container of wood very sturdily fastened by a number of loops of rough rope. Slow, stiff-legged, he approached the box until his nose just did not quite touch its side, and there, with flattened ears, he crouched. One paw flashed out in a lightning-stiff strike and the extended claws caught in the rope, jerking the box so it fell toward the cat.