Cat Magic

by Whitley Strieber

  “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to whom gave it.”

  There was silence then, for a very long time Constance spoke again: “Let us tell the story of the descent of the Goddess. Heed it well, for each of us shall go also upon that bourne.”

  Always before Robin had heard this story in the joyous context of the Sabbats. He gave the opening:

  “The Lord of the Flies, Godfather and Comforter, stood before the door into silence.”

  All the witches responded: “And the Lady came unto him, and sought the matter of the mystery of death; so she journeyed through the portal on behalf of those who had to die.”

  “Strip thyself, Bejeweled Lady, for the cold is cold and thy bones are bones.”

  Softly, gently, Tom began to howl. Only at the rarest of moments will a cat do this, in high sorrow and in the night.

  Constance continued, her voice cast low beneath his keening cry. “So she gave her clothing to the earth, and was bound with the memory of summer, and went thus with open eyes into the empty voice of the pit.

  “She came before Death in the nakedness of her truth, and such was the beauty of her nakedness that Death knelt himself down, and lay at her feet as a gift the Sword of Changes.”

  The witches sighed in unity with the wind, and one spoke for them all, “Ours is the faith of the wind, ours the calling in the night.”

  “Then Death kissed the feet of Summer, saying, ‘Blessed be the feet that brought you in the path of the Lord of Ice. Let me love thee, and warm myself in thee.’ ”

  The witches made a sound as of whispering snow.

  “But Summer loved not the purple hour, and asked of him, why do you pin frost to my flowers?”

  The witches were humming a wordless inner song. Behind them the townspeople glanced at each other in wonder, for they had never heard such a sound. High and yet vibrant, deep and yet full of laughter, and sorrowing with the sorrow we all know, but which is not named in any human language.

  ” ‘Lady,’ Death said, ‘I am helpless against me dropping web of time. All which comes to me, comes.

  And all which departs, departs. Lady, let me lie upon thee.’ ”

  The humming grew louder, merging with the cat’s voice.

  “The Lady said only, ‘I am Summer.’ ”

  “Then Death scourged her, and there were storms and ashes.”

  The humming stopped. Tom crouched as if ready to spring at Constance’s throat. She stood before him, her head high, the wind billowing her cloak.

  “And she gave voice to her love in the fertile voice of the bee, and death was glad before her.”

  “Now the mystery of mysteries: love death, ye who would find the portal of the moon, the door that leads back into life.”

  All together: “Upon us, O Summer, leave the five kisses of resurrection. Blessed be.”

  Constance had thrown back her hood. “Blessed be.” She glanced around. “Cemnunos blows his horn this night, my children. Rocks, in the morning take her and bury her back in the mountains.”

  “But the Leannan doesn’t let us go beyond the Stone.”

  “The law is lifted for this burial. She is wanted there.” She took Robin’s hands in hers. “You Vines, will you watch over her tonight?”

  “I will,” Robin said. The other Vines joined him. They stood close together as the rest of the procession wound its way down among the rocks. Soon the last sound of the departing crowd was absorbed by the night.

  All became silent but for the wind and the rustle of Tom puttering about in the dry brush. The coven joined hands.

  It was not until Wisteria said in a soft voice, “Look over by the rowan,” that Robin even thought of the fairy. But they had been here of course, observing everything. He saw them now, dark small shapes stealing forth from the great shrub. Their jackets and caps hardly reflected the moonlight at all.

  Robin’s heart began to pound. A chill swept his body. He reached out, and found the hands of other coveners waiting for his own.

  The fairy came close, at least a dozen of them, pausing not ten feet in front of the coven. They had bows no more than a foot long, and arrows that looked insignificant to Robin’s eyes. But he knew not to move an inch; those arrows were infamously lethal. Constance said that in the distant past they had killed mammoths with them.

  The rustling grew louder.

  The fairy smelled strong and sweet and nothing like human beings at all. Were they bearded or not?

  Young or old? He couldn’t see.

  Then there was a change. One moment the air was empty, the next a little woman was standing above the coffin. She shone in the moon, or perhaps she gave her own light. Robin looked upon her face, and saw in it such love and joy that he clapped like a delighted child, he could not help it.

  Wisteria lifted shaking hands to her. She reached forward and touched Wisteria’s fingers. Then the other Vines crowded close about the coffin, and each in turn was touched.

  Close to her Robin could see the perfection of her body, the smooth, unearthly light of her skin. She came face-to-face with him. A thousand feelings roared through him: mad, lascivious passion, tender love, terror, lust, pleasure, laughter, all the wildest extremes of the heart.

  She parted her lips and closed her eyes and raised her face to be kissed. He was shaking so badly he could hardly hold his lips open. He drew close to her, and into a scent that engaged his deepest, most private memories. In the single instant of that kiss he knew his whole lang syne, from the moment he had found Moom cracking walnuts in the forest to the awful night he had seen the bishop’s men capture Marian, through the sad houses of all the years to now.

  There was a rush of frowning forests and dances, and then the Leannan turned away from him and stepped off into the dark.

  She seemed to go upward, and all eyes followed her. At first what they saw was incomprehensible. Then Grape screamed. Across the sky, enormous beyond understanding, blotting out the stars, were two enormous cat’s eyes.

  They glared until the witches hid their faces, and huddled like rabbits beneath a circling hawk.

  It was some time before anybody moved or spoke. One by one, though, they looked up again.

  They were alone with the night.

  Robin was seething with an energy beyond anything he had ever felt before from even the most intense ritual. Around him the other coveners were the same, their eyes glowing with the light that had spread from the Leannan’s body.

  He knew he had to act, or give up. “Please,” he said, “let’s try to reach Amanda. Let’s try the cone of power.”

  Without a word of protest they made the circle. They were with him.

  BOOK THREE:

  The Black Cat

  Within that porch, across the way,

  I see two naked eyes this night:

  Two eyes that neither shut nor blink,

  Searching my face with a green light.

  But cats to me are strange—

  I cannot sleep if one is near:

  And though I’m sure I see those eyes

  I’m not so sure a body’s there!

  —William Henry Davis, “The Cat”

  Chapter 25

  The class of one sat before her teacher.

  Mother Star of the Sea capered, her habit flying about her, wimple on the floor, naked wooden head bobbing, smile working as she darted in and out, pinching her student and scolding like a parrot.

  Mandy was being pinched away by crumbs and bits. The worst part of it was how badly she missed herself.

  “Somebody,” she wailed, “somebody!”

  “Will I do?” Bonnie Haver reappeared.

  “Get me out of here! Somebody, please!”

  Mother Star of the Sea rattled to attention. “You vant out? Jawohl! Outenzee hellhole! Sure. You can be a ghost, you have that right. So, soul, take flight!”

  Amazingly, Mandy was free! Blowing like a bit of pollen on the autumn wind, blowing through
long black mountains.

  Familiar mountains.

  The Endless Mountains. And there was the Fairy Stone. Mandy’s heart hurt to see the witches huddling together against the wind, and her own coffin.

  It was high night in the Endless Mountains. Mandy had become one with the air, guttering the candles about the coffin, whistling through sweaters and under cloaks, caressing the ones she had loved and lost.

  She was here, but she was helpless. So this was what ghosts were all about.

  So close to her people and yet so separated, Mandy felt a desolation of loss. She could hardly stay still enough to touch her own clean coffin, much less return to the body that lay within. She slipped and eddied about while they prayed into the hollow darkness. She came close to Robin, and the grief in his face tormented her terribly.

  “I love you,” she said, and the wind of her words made Robin shake in his sweater. “I’m right here with you. Can’t you hear me?”

  He huddled into his clothing and lowered his head-before the persistent gusts that were the spirit body of his lover.

  She roared in anger because they could not see her, but only managed to put out all their candles. Then she quieted herself.

  The night upon the mountain became as still as a bedroom. She heard their soft voices as they spoke encouragement to one another. How tired and beaten they were. Her heart suffered for them. She was so close, but so helpless.

  In life we think of ghosts as rarities. We do not know that every rustle and squeak, every scratch of twig upon the screen or moan of wind along the eaves, is someone passing in the journeys of the night.

  Mandy saw the first hopeful thing that had come to her since she died: Tom ran across the sky. His eyes were stars, his body the whole firmament, his tail the kink in the Milky Way.

  Mandy wanted to hammer on her coffin, to dive into her body. Please! Let me go back to them!

  As she flitted and blew along, she saw the Leannan coming across the mountain with her guards. As they crept into the rowan, Mandy had the odd thought that one could look on the fairy as a species that had developed a technology of, the spiritual world, Just as man has developed one of the physical. Using this magic, the Fairy Queen could rule here and also walk in the world of the dead. The science that supported her must be a strange and glorious thing—theories that were experienced as dreams; snatches of song that were powerful machines.

  For her part, Mandy wasn’t in control even of herself. One moment she could be close to the ground, the next high in the air. Then she might be in Robin’s hair, then scudding among the stones.

  Was the Leannan going to kiss him? She hoped so, that would help him! She began to plead on his behalf: “Please, Leannan—”

  Then she saw puppet grins nearby. “No, not yet, don’t take me back!”

  “But Mandy, this is the perfect time.”

  “You said I had the right!”

  “You did, but you’ve used it up.”

  No sooner could she smell the candy stink of the cottage than she felt herself falling down its licorice chimney.

  She was back in hell’s schoolroom.

  Robin heard the wind wailing, its voice echoing through the Endless Mountains to the north, and moaning south in the gentler reaches of the Peconics.

  He couldn’t even start the cone of power, so overcome he was by the Leannan’s kiss. Her loveliness had struck him temporarily dumb.

  More than that, it had sent through him a current that seemed to have washed every cell of his flesh with new sensitivity. He looked out on the world from revised eyes, and the world was not the same. Beneath him the soil now seemed a surging flesh. Every stone was an eye, every blade of grass a nerve ending. Earth was not just alive, it was more than that: it was shockingly aware. It knew him as it knew every man, woman, and child, every tree and every animal that was resident upon its body. And it was watching them all, quietly, endlessly, like a mother dreaming over her children Wisteria began raising the cone of power, and Robin was grateful to her, to them all. Finn hands took his own. The coven was confident in their rituals; they had the balance of professionals. They raised the cone with a series of sounds, called the Chants of the Long Tones.

  Wisteria started the whispery humming.

  Soon other voices joined, each so familiar to Robin, each the voice of someone who was far more than a friend or even a lover. People who do real magic together become close in ways that words cannot say.

  They chanted into the silence of the mountains, into the wind, into the living sky. Robin looked to the center of the circle, just above the coffin, for the shimmering red moon the coven sometimes saw when they raised the cone of power, but only the darkness there returned his glance.

  At first Mandy did not understand. What were those funny little joints her demons were putting together—wooden knuckles? They were building hands, arms, a new puppet.

  Then she screamed, she pushed and struggled at the straps that bound her once again to her chair. Lying on teacher’s desk was a gleaming, enameled wooden head. And on that head was a caricature of her own face.

  “I couldn’t smile like that. I’ve never hated anybody enough’”

  “Oh, no? We’re your demons, Mandy. We make whatever serves your guilt. Do you think the real Mother Star of the Sea would be in hell—not that good woman, took!”

  Suddenly there appeared in Mandy’s lap a shimmering mirror, and in the mirror was an explosion of loveliness such as she had never imagined, smooth and cool and green, long hills and the perfect voice of joy, a young woman raising song. It hurt to see her, this real Mother Star of the Sea.

  “She’ll never know you chose her to be your demon.” The puppet Mother snapped her jaws. “She’s a saint! I’m your sin, not hers.”

  Full of snide laughter, she and Bonnie assembled their new marionette. Mandy watched, stumped in her straps.

  Mother Star of the Sea approached. She was wearing a surgeon’s mask. In her hand was a hacksaw. “I’m going to take out your brain and put it in this head.” Bonnie opened the hinged top of the noggin. “Think of it, a miracle of modern science.”

  Mandy looked desperately about. Bonnie was behind her now. Strong hands held her head steady.

  Mother Star of the Sea laid the saw against her temple.

  This is just an illusion, she thought miserably. I don’t have a body.

  The first cut crunched through her hair. Then a prancing migraine—fire in her skull, nails being driven between bone and brain—made tears flow and her nose run. Her eyes rolled in agony with each rhythmic burr of the blade.

  After this was done she was never, ever going to go back, she knew that She was going to become some inconceivable part of hell.

  She was dimly aware of three new schoolgirls at the front of the room testing the joints of the puppet, making it snap its jaw and rattle its fingers.

  Somehow, in her agony and despair, she had an idea. What was the opposite of the demon’s anger? Not love. They would jeer at that. It was compassion, rich, deep, abiding compassion. She could damp the fires of her own guilt with it.

  She summoned up what strength lay at her command, she forced herself to think, to form words, lo talk:

  “I forgive you,” she said. “I forgive all of you.”

  The sawing stopped.

  The girls playing with the puppet dropped it and stared at her, their eyes glassy.

  Bonnie released her head.

  “Damn,” Mother Star of the Sea said.

  “I forgive you and I—I love you. I love you all no-matter what you do to me.”

  There was thick silence. Then Mother Star of the Sea burst out laughing. “That old cliche! Love thy neighbor! What a load of crap!”

  But she had thrown her saw to the floor.

  “Unstrap me.”

  Bonnie came dutifully forward. In a moment Mandy was free. She stood up, she turned.

  There were tears in the eyes that watched her. These were all part of her, every one, no
matter what else they had become.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say. To turn one’s back on guilt is not difficult. After all, the deeds had been done, the wrongs committed. She understood how she had turned away from her mother and father when she could have embraced them in their need. But the past was the past, she did not need these demons to punish her. Mother and Dad were dead. Her best had not been good enough to heal their lives. Any effort she had made on their behalf would have failed. The lesson was, she should have tried.

  The lesson had been learned. It was possible to melt the heat of Mother’s anger with her own soul’s spring. Compassion, acceptance of self. I did wrong, and now I have paid. She left the demon schoolroom.

  Behind her there arose a great howling and clattering of puppet joints. She walked on, though. They were tragic and she could not help them, but she would never forget those parts of herself.

  As she moved through the forest, the stumps shook and swayed and seemed to beckon her closer to their rotted sides.

  Death never gave up.

  “I am leaving you. I can’t help you.”

  Soon she came to the border of the terrible woods, heart pounded, her mind sang with her triumph.

  The view before her was so vast, so extremely awesome, that she almost lost her balance.

  Beyond the formless edge of the world of the dead a whole galaxy was revolving, its stars shining in colors too subtle and exquisite to be named. The light of stars is their voice; their language is the color of that light.

  The earth, a small green ball, lay in a tremendous, withered palm. Evil, huge beyond imagining.

  I am the hand. The hand that takes.

  All about wheeled other empires of stars. Hundreds of billions of fiery beings going in the orbits of their time, carrying planets and lives and rivers and storms.

  The voices of the stars were raised in vespers, for the whole universe was at evening.

  I am the hand.

  But not only that. Death is also rebirth. In the very act of taking life, she returns it to the land. Spring flows from winter; the rose takes root in the rotted flesh of the shrew.