Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  Zimaya seized her other hand before she could change her mind—left palm to left palm and right palm to right. Dagmar braced for pain, but instead she felt an easing, as if a headache she hadn’t quite been aware of had suddenly gone away, and a loosening. That was all.

  Zimaya picked up one of the socks, and a darning egg. “Show me how to fix one of these,” she said. “We can’t leave for months yet, anyway.”

  *

  Once upon a time, there was a middle-aged woman who packed her bags and left the village where she’d spent her whole life, her grown children who had expected her to care for their grandchildren, and her husband and his falling-down house with the hole in the roof.

  The element of change, as everyone knows, is Air. They say that every now and then when the wind blows in a certain direction, it can bring an excess of Air into people who’ve never been known for foolishness. So close your doors on those days; shutter your windows. Don’t go out onto the mountainside and breathe in the wind and look at the sky.

  You never know when you might accidentally open your heart.

  IN THE WITCH’s GARDEN

  Inspired by “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen

  heard the girl before I saw her: dry, hopeless sobs from a child unused to having anyone pay attention to her tears. “Hush,” I called softly, breaking through the brush to reach her. Someone from the station might still hear her, and come after her.

  “Who’s there?” she cried out. “Help me, I’m lost.”

  I used my knife to cut away the last of the bushes. She drew back in fear when she saw me, and tried to struggle to her feet, but fell back in pain. She must have sprained an ankle when she fell down the embankment. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, and gave her my most reassuring smile, but the sight of my missing front tooth only frightened her more. When I knelt by her side, she overcame her fear enough to touch my gray braids with a fingertip. She had never seen gray hair before, as all the adults in the station maintained the appearance of youth—or so I was told by my mother, when she warned me not to go near the vast dark building so close to our valley.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “Can you help me get home?”

  “I am not from your station,” I said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “But I can take care of you. Climb on to my back.” She wrapped her legs around my hips, and her skinny arms around my neck. “I’ll take you to my home.”

  She was as light as a flower—eleven years old, I guessed. I broke into a trot once we reached even ground; the more distance I could put between her and the station, the better. I had always wanted a child of my own, but no matter how many men I seduced, I never managed to make one. Now the Goddess had sent me a child. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I will be a good mother to you.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I said, did you have a mother back in the station?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m a made-child, not a born-child. I have no parents.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Gerda. Do you want to know my number?”

  “No,” I said. “There are no other Gerdas here; we don’t need numbers. My name is Natalia.”

  “The Natalia my age isn’t very nice,” Gerda said. “But the ten-year-old Natalia, she isn’t so bad.”

  “There are no other Natalias here, either,” I said, and shook my braids so that the beads strung on them clacked against each other.

  Over another hill, then down into my valley: a cottage surrounded by a garden. Gerda looked around in wonder. As a station child, she would have found any garden strange and impressive, but my garden—inherited from my mother, who was also a witch—truly was strange: I grew an orange tree and a lemon tree, and the rosebushes and hydrangea bloomed in the spring when the hills beyond my garden were still covered in a deep layer of snow. The creek that flowed through my garden never froze. My magic was not perfect, but it served me well. I carried Gerda into my cottage, and set her down in my chair.

  “I’ll make you something to eat,” I said, and put a pot on the stove, with dried corn kernels in it. “Tell me how you came to leave the station, Gerda.”

  “My friend, Kai—he’s the eleven-year-old Kai—a few days ago he went to look for the edge of the station. He wanted to look at the outside, even though that’s forbidden. Now the Snow Queen has taken him.” The first kernel of corn in the pot popped, and Gerda jumped at the sound. “What is that?”

  “Popcorn,” I said. Another kernel popped, and she jumped again. “It’s just the sweet center of the corn; the warmth of the fire helps it burst out of its prison. We’ll eat it in a moment—serves it right for seeking to change its nature. Go on about Kai.”

  “They told us never to speak his name again. The Snow Queen takes only disobedient children, so he must have deserved what he got. But he’s my friend. So I thought I’d look for the edge of the station . . .”

  “Just to take a look outside, like Kai?”

  Gerda shook her head. “I thought maybe he’d gotten lost in the station.”

  The popcorn was almost done. I shook it a few more times and took it off the stove, then sprinkled it with a pinch of salt and set it on the table. “Eat. It’s very tasty.” Gerda looked at it dubiously, then took a single fluffy kernel and crunched into it. Her face brightened and she took a handful. I wet a cloth in cold water and then sat down at her feet, easing off her shoes. They were bright red and gave off an acrid odor. Her left ankle was swollen and bruised; I wrapped it in the cool cloth and drew the footstool over for her to rest it on.

  “What happened then?”

  “Someone began to follow me. I was afraid; I was in a forbidden corridor. A really forbidden corridor. I started running, and I pushed on a door and found myself—”

  “Outside.”

  “Yes. They always told us we would die if we went outside. It’s safe only inside the stations. Is that true?”

  “No, it isn’t true,” I said. “I’ve lived outside my whole life, and I’m not dead yet.”

  “Then perhaps Kai isn’t dead, even if he stumbled out like I did,” Gerda said. “Have you seen Kai?”

  “I saw no boy leave the station,” I said. “If I had, I would have brought him here, just as I brought you.”

  She looked down at the last of the popcorn and her eyes grew suddenly wide. “Are you the Snow Queen?”

  I chuckled. “If I am, it’s a good thing you were disobedient, isn’t it? Haven’t I been kind to you so far?” But her eyes were still wide and afraid, so I said, “No, I am not the Snow Queen. I am only Natalia, a gardener and a witch. Finish the last of the popcorn, now. Your ankle needs rest, and so does your heart. I’ll give you some tea and put you to bed.”

  I would need the second bed, I thought, as I heated the water; I would bring my mother’s old bed down from the attic. I sweetened the tea of forgetfulness that I brewed her with wild honey. “You’ll wake when you’re ready,” I said as I gave her the cup. Gerda drank the tea, and closed her eyes and slept, right there in the chair.

  *

  The forgetfulness herbs are not perfect; if something reminds you of what you’ve forgotten, the spell can be broken. So while Gerda slept, I took my scissors and cut away her dress, her stockings, and even her underwear. Around her neck was a snug cord strung with a metal chip: G2117F, it said. Her tag. I studied that for a long time; I was unfamiliar with the magics used by the station scientists, and if I cut that cord away, I wasn’t sure if it would hurt her. I tugged at it a bit, and by and by the cord stretched until it was loose enough that I could slip it over her head. When she was naked, I wrapped her in a blanket and lay her on my bed. I bundled up her clothes and her shoes and that tag, and put them away in the attic of my cottage.

  Gerda’s hair and skin smelled like the chemicals she washed with, so I warmed water and steeped marigolds and rose petals in it, and bathed her with that until she smelled like me. While she slept, I made her a dress, so that she would
have something to wear when she woke. I disapproved of children wearing shoes, but her feet were delicate and fragile from her life on the station, so I also made her a pair of sandals.

  When Gerda woke, I smiled at her and said, “Are you feeling better, my darling?”

  Gerda blinked. “Who are you?” she said.

  “I’m your mother, sweetheart,” I said. “You’ve been very ill. Don’t worry; everything will come back in time.”

  If Gerda had been a born-child and not a made-child, it’s possible that the forgetfulness herbs would not have worked at all. But she remembered no other mother, and so she accepted my word when I said I was she. And I discovered (as I had suspected) that I could be an excellent mother: patient, loving, and affectionate, much as my own mother had been. As the spring and summer passed, I taught Gerda the names of all the plants and trees in my garden (pretending, of course, that I was re-teaching her what she had forgotten). I showed her how to brew an herbal tea that would stop a woman’s labor if it was too early, or calm someone crazy with fear, or cure a cold. To toughen her feet, I encouraged her to kick off her sandals whenever she pleased, and by the time I could smell the tang of frost when I left my valley, the sandals were gathering dust under her bed, forgotten.

  Gerda told me sometimes that she still didn’t remember anything from before her sickness. I always sighed and shook my head and said that perhaps those memories were gone forever, but Gerda wasn’t to worry; we would create new memories together.

  Then I got sick.

  Gerda put me to bed, and brewed me teas to bring down my fever and ease my aches and pains. She had learned well, and in a very few days I felt much better again. But I was weak and fussy, the way people often are when they’re getting over being sick, and Gerda thought she’d look for the candied orange peels that we had made a few months earlier; those, she thought, would perk me up.

  The candied orange peels weren’t in the kitchen. Gerda tried the cabinets in the herb-drying room, but they weren’t there, either. Nor were they in the coldhouse, nor the root cellar, nor the pantry. Dozing in my bed, I could hear Gerda looking for something. Then I heard the creak of the ladder to the attic. I could have shouted “No! Stop!” and invented some excuse for her to not go up there, but in truth, after all those months, I half believed myself that I had borne Gerda from my own womb, and raised her from her infancy.

  I heard Gerda’s footsteps, but something was different about them. She set a jar by my bed, and I looked over: the orange peels. Then I saw a flash of red: the shoes. On her feet.

  “Mother,” she said. “Where can I find the Snow Queen?”

  I closed my eyes and turned away from her. “I should have burned those clothes,” I said. “But I was afraid the smoke would poison the hydrangeas.”

  “The Snow Queen,” Gerda said. “I’m only angry because I was looking for Kai, and now—I don’t even know how much time has passed.”

  “Eight months,” I said.

  “Now how am I going to find him?”

  “There is no Snow Queen,” I said. “It’s a story told to frighten the station’s children. To keep them from trying to go outside.”

  “Kai must be somewhere,” Gerda said.

  “If I’d seen a boy leave the station, I’d have brought him here—I told you that.”

  “Would you have dosed him with tea, and told him he was your son?” Gerda asked.

  Still facing the wall, I smiled a little. “Maybe,” I said. “What I really wanted was a daughter.”

  “Do you know anyone else who might have taken him?”

  I shrugged. “There are settlements to the south and the west. Perhaps he found his way to one of those.”

  Gerda kissed my cheek. “I have to go look for Kai, Mother,” she said. “Will you help me find him?”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “I can’t leave my garden,” I said. “If I leave my garden, the orange trees will die, and the lemon trees, and the roses . . . it’s almost winter. Without my magic, the garden will turn cold. Can’t you wait until spring?”

  “It’s already been too long.”

  “If you must go,” I said, “Take my heavy cloak, the one hung by the door. There’s magic in the wool, and it will keep you warm. Also—” I reached under my own collar, and drew out a claw on a leather thong. I pulled it over my head and gave it to Gerda. “Keep this with you. When you are ready to come back, speak my name three times and hold this in the palm of your hand. The claw will point back to my house.”

  Gerda hung the claw around her own neck.

  “Good luck, stolen daughter. Come back to me soon.”

  I did not tell Gerda that the claw would let me scry her. After all, my mother hadn’t told me that either, when she gave me the claw to wear. What mother would?

  *

  I walked Gerda to the edge of my valley, and stood and watched her as she headed west. The station was to the north, but she didn’t head towards it. Kai would not be there, and no matter how hard she knocked, they would not let her in.

  When the curve of the hill took her out of my sight, I headed back to my garden. Though my valley stays warm, the trees know when it’s winter, and it was time to clean up the leaves. I raked them into a bin to rot until spring, when I’d use them to enrich the soil and keep the new plants moist. Even the roses had dropped their leaves, and I carefully gathered up the last of the rose blossoms to dry in my house.

  As the setting sun plunged my valley into shadow, I went inside and put my kettle on the stove. My house seemed very cold without Gerda; her empty bed seemed to take up far too much space. I poured hot water over dried rose petals and orange peel to make tea, and then poured more hot water into a blue clay bowl. I set the bowl on my table, wrapping myself in my shawl and sitting down to stare into it.

  As the steam dissipated, I saw Gerda.

  She sat on the side of a hill—I could make out no landmarks that would tell me where. She had not built a fire, but simply wrapped herself up in my cloak. The hood was thrown back, as if she was a little warmer than she might like.

  I watched her as she unfolded the kerchief of food and had something to eat, choosing the foods that would go stale the fastest. Just before it grew too dark to see her, she broke off a tiny piece of the candied orange peel and put it in her mouth, tears rolling down her face as she ate it. I hastily got up to get myself more tea, and when I returned to the scrying bowl, it was too dark to see anything.

  *

  My scrying showed me nothing but Gerda walking across treeless fields for three days. At dawn on the fourth day, however, I sat down with my morning tea and my scrying bowl just in time to see a huge black crow dive down and wake her. “Good morning,” the crow said.

  I nearly spilled my tea. I’d heard stories about the tribe of talking crows, but they’d never come anywhere near my valley—so far. Gerda rolled over and blinked up at him with equanimity. “Good morning to you, too,” she said. Her voice was a little hoarse from disuse, and she cleared her throat.

  The crow ruffled its feathers. “You say that like someone who expects to be greeted by a crow,” he said.

  “Natalia doesn’t let crows into her garden. I’ve never met a crow before.”

  “Never met . . . ! You must be from the station,” the crow said.

  “Yes!” Gerda sat up so sharply that the crow took an alarmed hop backwards. “Yes, and I’m looking for a boy who also came from the station. My friend, Kai.”

  The crow put his head to the side. “A boy. A stranger?”

  “Have you seen someone?”

  “Maybe. Maybe. There’s the boy who married the Princess. He might be your Kai.”

  Gerda’s eyes grew large and she pushed herself to her feet, gathering up the cloak in her arms. “Can you take me to him?”

  The crow launched himself into the air with a raucous caw, then settled onto Gerda’s shoulder. “Towards the sun,” he said. “Oh, and just so you know? Crows don’t normally talk. My swe
etheart and I, we were improved by the scientists in the town. Us and our children, we’re the only talking crows in the world. You were supposed to be startled when I talked to you . . .”

  *

  The crow directed Gerda to a path through the grasslands; then the path opened up, and led to a wide road of hard-packed dirt, and the road led to a town. I recognized the town when I saw it. I had traveled there once, during the summer when I could leave my garden for a week without harm to it. The scientists in the town made seeds that grew unnaturally well and potions to heal grievous wounds. I had gone to their auction and concluded that they had nothing my magic could not do for me, but others paid a small fortune for the scientists’ tricks. I didn’t trust the scientists, but they had some congress with the station. It was possible they might be able to help Gerda.

  The crow directed Gerda through the streets to the laboratory—a large cottage with walls made out of sheets of black metal. It looked like the station, but much smaller. There were steps leading up to the front door.

  “This is where the princess lives,” the crow said. “And the young man she married. Just knock on the door and ask for him.”

  Gerda climbed the steps and knocked, and the crow launched himself from her shoulder into the sky, with a caw that sounded like a cackle. A moment later a young woman opened the door. “Yes? Who are you?” she said.

  Gerda opened her mouth, then hesitated. The woman prompted her with an impatient noise. “Is Kai here?” Gerda asked.

  “Kai? I don’t know a Kai. I’m sorry, but I’m quite busy. Are you with a caravan? You look a bit young to be on your own. Tell your caravan we hold open hours at noon daily. It’s not noon yet. Good day.”

  The door closed.

  Gerda looked around, but the crow was nowhere in sight. Her chin trembled, and she clenched her teeth. She trudged back down the steps and sat under a maple tree, wrapped up in my cloak. Open hours at noon; it looked as if she intended to simply wait until then.

  Noon. That was hours away. I could safely leave Gerda, I thought, and dashed outside to work in my garden. I had noticed while raking that my herb bed was looking dry. I drew water from the well and sprinkled it over the rosemary and thyme, the basil and oregano, the lemongrass and St. John’s Wort. There was a little water left in my pitcher when I had watered everything that looked thirsty, and I brought it inside to heat for the scrying bowl as the sun neared its zenith. Gerda was still sitting patiently where I’d left her. Other people had also gathered outside the laboratory: a dozen men in coats sewn from rabbit pelts; a man and a woman in black wool cloaks; an ancient man in rags, with a gnarled walking stick and a polished wood bowl. They waited a few paces away from the door, the men in fur talking quietly among themselves in a language I didn’t understand. A man in ordinary clothes strode into the laboratory, and a handful of scientists came out, dressed from head to foot in white—white linen dresses, white wool scarves, white fur boots.