Cat Magic

by Whitley Strieber

  The Catholics claimed that human beings were born of sin. But what was it? Marian had never seen any.

  Could it be poured from a cup or sold in the market? No. They said it lived in the soul, this sin. But where? The Crone of the Cauldron lived there, and the Cauldron contained only truth in its spiritual stew.

  She knew, she had tasted of it many times.

  They carried her into a tall, dark hall most artfully wrought of stone. Compared with this, her own palace was rough indeed. But her home smelled at least of the forest, not as this did of greasy fires and sour beer.

  “We will begin at once,” the bishop said. They took her down a winding stone stair. She was given a draught of milk by a young woman who worshiped her for a moment and then slipped away. Soon the bishop came prancing down the stairs. He had affected humble brown robes.

  “Hangman, the first degree.”

  She did not mind when they disrobed her. She was used to being naked before others. Clothes were only proof against the wind, after ail. But when they laid hands on her garters, she at first almost swooned with astonishment. Then she fought their fumbling, clumsy fingers. She fought with all the fury of the legendary maid Boadicea who had fought the Romans, and did not stop lighting even when twenty of them sat upon her, laughing and flatulent, most of them stiff to wood from scuffling about with her.

  In the end they took the ancient garters of the Goddess, and it was the first moment since time began that they had not been on the thighs of the Maid of England. She cried out and at last spoke to the Bishop. “I command you, my knave, to have me unhanded, that I may replace the garters.”

  “Rack her.”

  There commenced an excruciation beyond belief. She was bound in a wooden bed so that she could not get up. It creaked, and when it did the most terrible pain came into her legs and arms. After a time it creaked again and hot agony shot down her spine. Her belly tore on its moorings. Bile came up, and when she spat it out, there was a great deal of laughter all about.

  “Confess that you are a witch and a poisoner,”

  “I am the Maid of England, sir. You must know I be a witch. Of course I am a witch!”

  “You have poisoned the wells of Lincolnshire. Confess it.”

  “The fairy poxed you, sir. Give them back their deadheads and make no more, and they will raise the curse soon enough.”

  “The second degree, please, hangman.”

  The men took her from the wooden bed and bade her stand, but she could not stand. So they made her kneel before the hangman while he cut off her tresses. How long and black they were, lying upon the vile stone floor. She sang to them a little and mourned that they would be with her no longer.

  They poured a black liquor over her head and ignited it. The torment was awful, her ears and scalp raging with a pain as if the skin were being rubbed off the bone. Her body wanted to run, but she fell to the floor at once when she tried. There were great knots around her legs, and she could not move them for aught.

  “I am broken,” she moaned.

  “Then you say it, you are witch and poisoner. It is you who poisoned the wells of Lincolnshire, Lady!”

  “I told you, give them their deadheads—oh, I hurt so, sir, really I do. Do you not know that I am the Goddess Consecrate? Oh, where are my garters?”

  “The third degree.”

  Her head ached so badly that she could hardly think anymore. She could still feel, though, as they lifted her high and put her wrists in rings. They horsewhipped her mercilessly. She fainted then, and the Goddess herself came to her and made her a promise that gave her courage. “Only a little more will you suffer, my daughter. Your body will soon give up the ghost, and I will receive you.”

  The Goddess appeared in her dream as bear. But when Manan awoke there was another animal present, a great black cat she knew well. He strode about the chamber snarling and spitting at the bishop.

  “Look there—her familiar has come to save her! Capture it and we will burn it with her!”

  The man who touched old Tom got the flesh ripped from the bone of his finger. Then Tom leaped into the rafters. Soon only his green eyes could be seen. Then with a flick of his tail and an angry scream he was gone. ‘There you see, girl, your devil abandons you.”

  “The Goddess cannot abandon me any more than the air can abandon me.”

  “The fourth degree.”

  They laid her in a wooden box made with boards between her legs. Then they hammered wedges between these boards and thus crushed and split the bones of her legs, causing her a torment that made her break her throat with shrieking.

  “Say that you poisoned the wells.”

  But she was insensible, and could say nothing.

  She awoke to the distant crowing of cocks. A boy, most frightened, came to her and laid poultices upon her legs and back, and gave her thick beer, as much as she could drink, and worshiped her. “Oh, Goddess,” he murmured, “the peasants in the country weep that the townsfolk have got you.”

  “My child.” She could say no more, and soon brought up the beer.

  Then there was a dismal blast of crumhorns and sackbuts and the hangman returned. She screamed in terror to see him, but when they were alone he also worshiped her and wept bitterly. To let him know she shared his misfortune, she laid her hand upon his head, but she had not the strength to speak.

  Soon the soldiers reappeared and put a conical crown of paper upon her head. Then they took her in hand and dragged her out into the misty morning. There was a stake erected in the middle of the bishop’s close. The high sheriff of Lincoln and the sheriff of Nottingham both came, and other lords, and the high sheriff read aloud a charge:

  “You have been found guilty of treason against the King, by calling yourself Queen of England, and have carried out a program against his subjects by poisoning of wells and suchlike, and you keep familiars and say you are a witch. By my authority as sheriff of this shire I command that you be tied upon this stake and burned forthwith for treason, and your ashes be cast into the river and never buried in consecrated ground, because you are a witch.”

  She could not imagine a horror as great as being consumed by fire. She rolled her eyes with terror, she struggled despite the pain in her legs. She was weak from her injuries and could not get away. Soon she stood against the tall wooden stake, lashed so tightly there she thought she would be tom into parts. She wept openly before all the nobles and ladies of the shire, even many who had worshiped her, and forgot in her dread that she was Maid.

  “Do not bring the torch,” she screamed. “Oh, put it away! Put it away!” But the hangman, still weeping, laid it upon the faggots at her feet.

  There was an awful time, watching the fire creep and grow in the wood.

  Quite suddenly it pierced her feet as with hissing irons. She certainly could not bear it, and she shook what of her she could shake, which was her head. Then the flames caught to the robe they had wrapped her in and began eating her flesh.

  “Oh, Goddess, Goddess!” She raised her face to the sky, to see if she could find the Lady of the Clouds—and she did. Yes, there, the Lady in her endless, ever-changing glory of forms, dancing across the morning as gaily as ever on a Mayfair’s day.

  While the flames devoured her she looked upon the white dancing shapes of the clouds, serene in endless blue.

  Then she died.

  And Amanda, lolling in the Land of Summer, understood the message of this memory. With twisting dread she foresaw what waited for her if she returned to life: another, slower fire.

  Chapter 21

  Constance stirred her cauldron with the fury of the possessed. She was old, though, and her body protested. These slack arms could not stir forever. “Amanda, listen to me! Amanda!”

  Despite all of her knowledge and her understanding of a situation she had in large measure created, Constance had not expected what was happening. Something immense and strange was coming down the road, a furious, disappointed little girl who somehow lived b
oth in the other world and in this.

  Her body was gone to rot but her spirit longed to finish its uncompleted life.

  The moment Constance sensed this dead child’s rage she knew she might never get Mandy back. There is no demon more angry than one who does not deserve its fate. The child had been cheated of her lifetime. Her bitterness made her want to hurt others. She had not yet understood the depth of compassion. Without life to teach her, she might never understand.

  Why this demon was in Amanda’s death Constance could not imagine. It was as if there were forces outside of Amanda’s own soul commanding her to journey onward. And she was going. Constance could feet it. She stirred and groaned and sweated, but the veils between the worlds got thicker and thicker.

  She felt the loneliness that came when a spirit turned away from the circle. “Amanda!”

  The little girl was the key. But what had been done to her to make her as she was? Why was she still partly alive? And how could such a thing be? A child like that ought to be far, far into Summer by now.

  The only explanation was that some part of her must still be in this world, by some rare process clinging to actual, physical life. Whatever it was, it kept her chained to bitter memories. The only protection from her would be to find out how to break this strange connection.

  In her mind’s eye Constance could see the child, pretty enough, dressed in blue—and bearing a stump where her right hand ought to be.

  So that was it, the hand.

  What gave it life, though? Only devotion and attention could do that, and what warped soul would have so intense a relationship with the severed hand of a dead child?

  Dimly in her vision she could see Brother Pierce approaching. Yes, it was time for him. She had foreseen that correctly, in her long nights of meditation before the Leannan, submitting her mind to the shattering guidance of that powerful being. The Leannan could have met Constance anywhere, but their meetings took place in the Mabcave on the back of Stone Mountain. Constance preferred it that way. In her agony she was sometimes noisy. A glance from the Leannan could shatter the ego. Many times the Leannan had shown her the awful details of the death she had chosen for Constance. Not knowing the future is hard, but knowing it can be excruciation.

  In her male form as the King of the Cats, the Leannan wove on the loom of time. She wove the life of May well just as she did the journey of Amanda. But it was a rough weave. The will and effort of humankind was what would make it fine.

  Now came this angular, guilt-ridden man, straggling along with a few of his followers.

  Tom, who had been stalking round and round the witches’ circle, stopped and crouched to the ground. A glance at Constance told her everything: the hand was not expected. It contained a fury that did not belong to the world of the living.

  It was capable of vast destruction.

  A moment later flames roared to life on the far side of the cornfield. Despite them, and the screams that were uncoiling above their crackle, Constance and the Vine Coven tried to keep their circle.

  “Moom moom moom moom moom moom,” went the chant, turning and flowing between the worlds, almost a thing apart from its creators. “Moom moom moom moom.”

  There was the barest chance that Constance could relieve the hate of the wronged child, but only if she could understand. To her it was obvious that the hand was connected to Brother Pierce. But why had he kept it? She rowed in the cauldron with her hazel staff, looking for answers.

  Shadows flickered in the steamy water, bits and edges of the little girl’s horror, her bitter runaway’s life, and the man who had taken advantage of her dreams and then denied her everything.

  Constance rowed and rowed, but she was old and used up, and the world in the water wasn’t patient with her. Her muscles had been defeated ten minutes ago; only her will forced her on. Still, she got no specific vision of what had been done to the little girl to cause this rage. And where was file hand? On Brother Pierce’s person. Good God, it was in his pocket.

  She felt her life as a tattered edge; she wanted to drop the hazel rod. Tom glared at her. In his eyes she saw the Leannan’s image. Leannan whipped Constance with a vision of her own dying. Blue flames raced across a ceiling of her future, yellow flames spouted through a floor. The gnarling fire turned her to a black hump. She heard the crackling hiss of her own burning skin Then there came the pain: she screamed in agony, terrifying the poor Vine Coven. “Chant,” she shouted, “chant for your fives!”

  “Moom moom moom moom!”

  Other witches began rushing past the Vine Coven, cloaks and flaps of canvas grabbed from harvest wagons in their hands, running to the distant screams and flames. Nearby cornstalks were already rattling with wind from the inferno.

  The cauldron circle wasn’t strong enough to help the enraged child, and so there was little hope for Amanda. “Moom moom moom moom, hear our call! Moom moom moom moom.”

  There must be no end to the swirling of the cauldron or Amanda would be lost forever. Black wings beat in Constance’s mind. “I’m fainting! Help me!”

  Tom jumped up on her head and dug his claws into her scalp. The pain of it would have kept Rip Van Winkle awake.

  “Moom moom moom moom moom—”

  The waters roiled and sputtered, deep with scent of herb and shape of frond, boiling-pot of a few common herbs, window into the human soul. Black, dangerous, interesting waters.

  Constance was frantic. Even Tom’s claws and his tail tickling her nose could not keep her conscious much longer.

  “Moom moom moom moom!”

  Black water covered Constance. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

  She awoke a few seconds later to find the circle shattered, and with it Amanda’s last contact with this world.

  Why in the name of all holies didn’t George Walker resuscitate her? He was supposed to have done it long before now. All of Constance’s planning to create a safe journey through the netherworld had been useless. “The only thing you are doing,” the Leannan had cautioned her, “is sending Bonnie Haver to a terrible end. When you die yourself, how will you explain the arrogance of what you have done? Will you take her place in hell? What will you do, Constance? Look at you, holding your head high, you arrogant creature! There is no guarantee for Amanda any more than there is for any shaman who attempts the journey. If there was a guarantee of her return, she wouldn’t really be dead. You revolt me, not seeing that. How dare you be so stupid, so willful, after all you have been taught. Amanda couldn’t enter death if she had a guarantee. She’d come back with mere hallucinations. You’re a shameful fool, Constance.”

  That voice had cut more by its tone even than by its hard words. “I give myself to your mercy,”

  Constance had murmured through her tears. The Leannan’s laughter had tinkled in the cave. Then Tom had come forth, great and roaring, a panther with teeth of steel, and driven her out.

  There could be no guarantee. And, absent one, Amanda had died, finally and actually.

  “Constance! There’s a man on fire!”

  She could smell the awful barbecue and gasoline of the burning man, and the matted stench of his burnt hair. They all smelted it.

  “Moomoomoom—moom…”

  “Chant!”

  “Connie, we’ve lost her. She isn’t here anymore.”

  “Chant!”

  Something awful happened. Tom leaped down into the cauldron, disappearing into its boiling interior with an awful howl. Then, rising from the water, came the little girl. She waved her stub of an arm, triumphant. I am the hand, the hand that takes.

  “You poor child.”

  A cry from beyond the cornfield and me smoke; “Help us! Help us! This man is dying!” The lo Coven was out there.

  They had been in among the corn rows gathering culls for their pigs.

  When the fire began crackling in nearby cornstalks, the Vine Coven finally gave up. Between Connie’s exhaustion and A
manda’s wandering, and now this little girl, they lost all hope.

  But then things changed again. Brother Pierce was running, and taking the hand with him. As he ran, the little girl disappeared in a shower of sparks, her eyes flashing toward the departing figure.

  Without the demon to block it, the way to Amanda was clear.

  “We’ve still got a chance!”

  “Moomoomoomoomoomoom…”

  But there wasn’t even a whisper of Amanda.

  It really was a great blow. After Constance’s own death the Covenstead would go on, but it would be a diminished thing indeed, weak and prone to the ordinary destructions of life, Without the wisdom of death and the connection to the old traditions Amanda would have brought back, it would last a generation, perhaps two, then fade away.

  The Maywell Covenstead would not be the rebirth of a fine and peaceful old way of life after all.

  Mankind would continue as before, unable to stop the rape of war, the bleeding of the earth, moving helplessly toward the coming end.

  “Help us,” came another call from the corn.

  Joan and Joringel were carrying the burned man between them on a canvas tarp. The worst thing about him was his hands, flaking black lumps. “Take him to the house,” Constance commanded.

  “It’s too far. He needs help now.”

  Constance did not like the idea of an outsider, no matter how comatose, being in the village. Joan and Joringel went right past her, crashing through the cornfield, indifferent to the toppling stalks and the flying ears of the corn as yet unharvested.

  Constance was wretched with despair over the loss of Amanda, but she had no choice. The situation demanded her presence. She broke circle and followed the others to the village.

  Tom didn’t follow, though, because he wasn’t there anymore. As swift as smoke he had crossed Maywell to a certain house. He moved on soundless pads across the basement floor, coming swiftly to the Kitten Kate Room.