Seven Pets for Seven Witches

by Annabel Chase

  Harkin was my best friend.

  Chapter 4

  I ran through the house, screaming and calling for anyone who was home. Dilys was up in her bedroom which seemed to double as some kind of mad scientist’s lair. I rarely ventured within. She came to the door, with a long pole in her hand. At the top was a chain, and a shorter pole.

  “What is that?” I asked, momentarily stumped.

  “Oh, just a medieval farming flail.”

  It was best not to ask any more. “Can you come downstairs? Quickly? I think Harkin’s been cursed. Where’s Maddie?”

  “Right behind you,” my cousin said. “What kind of curse?”

  “I don’t know. This is more my aunt’s area.”

  She was already halfway down the stairs.

  We gathered around Harkin in the kitchen. It made my blood curdle to see him stuck like that, frozen in space, only his eyes and mouth moving. Thank goodness the curse, whatever it was, didn’t paralyse him completely; he would have died.

  Though if we didn’t break the curse, he’d …

  No. No. I would not complete that thought.

  I let my aunt take the lead. She sat on a wooden chair and leaned forward, putting out her spindly hands towards Harkin, without touching him. She closed her eyes and hummed lightly under her breath, but it was no tune that I could recognise. Maddie shivered and drew away. Her allegiance to the Faeries made her particularly sensitive to music and song, and Dilys’s dirge was one from the night side of the soul.

  Then Dilys sat up suddenly and opened her eyes, and she looked shocked and alarmed.

  “I am so sorry, Bron,” she said.

  I went cold.

  Maddie came to my side and held me, spreading the warmth of her Faerie glamour over me to protect me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Dilys shook her head. “I don’t know. But it isn’t a curse.”

  “What?”

  “Harkin is not cursed.”

  “Then why is he not moving?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But he isn’t ill,” I protested. “I am a healer. I’d know.”

  I fell to my knees and didn’t even mind the pain of hitting the tiled floor. I put out my hands and sank my fingers into Harkin’s fur. First that cat in the tree in the churchyard, half up and half down. Now this.

  What next?

  “It might not have been a curse,” I said, “but the words that I spoke did this to him.”

  “Then we need to find the answer to the riddle,” Maddie said. “Write it down for me, and I’ll go out and get online on my phone.”

  “I’ll go and speak to Elsie and the others,” Dilys said, referring to her circle of cronies.

  I didn’t want to leave Harkin in that state. But I, too, had a job to do. “I’m going to go to Edgar’s house,” I said.

  “You’re going to break in?” Maddie asked.

  “Damn right I am,” I said grimly, and left the house, with one last look at my poor frozen cat. I would do anything to free him, and I’d say that to the judge in court if I had to.

  But there was already someone in Edgar’s house.

  Edgar had lived in an old cottage at the end of a row high up on a hill overlooking our town. As I approached, I saw a figure move inside, but the windows were dirty and I couldn’t tell who it was.

  I guessed it wasn’t the mysterious stranger from the funeral, though - Angharad said he was thin, and the interloper in Edgar’s house was tall and wide.

  My heart was hammering as I reached the door, and I saw that it was a few inches ajar. I flattened myself against the outer wall and extended my hand to push at the door to open it a little further.

  It made the most horrendous squeaking sound and completely blew my cover. The person inside was alerted immediately, and they called out, “Who’s there?”

  I sagged against the wall and a rush of hot and cold went down my back in relief. It was Horatio. I took a moment to compose myself and then went inside.

  “Bronwen, my lamb!”

  “What are you doing?”

  He sighed. “There is nobody else to do this. I just popped in to tidy up the basics – empty the fridge, throw out flowers – but the rest will be up to the authorities.”

  I looked around. The cottage consisted of two square rooms downstairs. The front room was the living area. It was neat and rather sparse, furnished only with one comfortable-looking sofa, and a great many books on one whole wall of shelves. There was a log-burning stove, and a low table which was bare. “He had a quiet life,” I remarked.

  “There is something strange here,” Horatio said. “The fridge was empty and scrubbed clean. The fire is likewise pristine. There is no food in the cupboards and the bins have been put out.”

  “Someone’s been here before you!” I gasped.

  “I obtained the only key from the solicitors dealing with the probate this morning,” Horatio said. “And the neighbours say that no one has been in.”

  “Then …”

  “Yes. It is as if he knew he was going to die. And that is not so unusual, in the elderly. So, what is your business here?” He looked at me intently.

  I never felt as if I could hide anything from Horatio. I explained what had happened to Harkin, and he grew concerned.

  “Just like that cat in the tree in the churchyard. Cats, cats. You know, it is a strange thing, but Edgar Wrigley was somewhat obsessed with cats too.”

  His house didn’t look like a stereotypical cat-lover’s place to me – no novelty ornaments, no pictures, no cat-themed cushions. “Did he have a cat?” I asked.

  “There is no sign of any, but the neighbour said a very large black cat was often seen here, one with a white spot on its chest. Naturally I was concerned but when I came in, it is as if no cat ever lived here. There are no bowls, no litter tray, nothing.”

  I went to the bookshelves and began to browse, but groaned. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Most of these books are in Welsh.”

  “But I can tell you that they are all about cats, or folklore, or myths,” said Horatio, coming to my side. He spoke a clever and academic Welsh which was well above my abilities.

  My everyday Welsh was pretty poor. I’d learned it at school and I could make very small talk with people – hello, thank you, sorry for standing on your toe – that sort of thing. I couldn’t read an academic textbook in the language, however.

  I recognised the Welsh word for cat – cath. Or sometimes gath, or nghath, or chath. Welsh is a contrary and complicated language and for some idiotic reason, the first letter of various nouns actually changes depending on the form of the noun in the sentence. This makes using a dictionary exactly as frustrating as you are currently imagining that it does.

  I pulled a black-bound hardback book down. The title was Cat Sith: Chwedlau. I showed it to Horatio. “Tales of cats?” I asked. “I think. What’s the sith bit?”

  “Cat sith,” he said slowly, and frowned. “Let me see. This is a book of myths.” He flicked it open. “The cat sith is a large black cat with a white spot on its chest…” he read, getting slower with each word that he translated.

  “Like the one that hung around here?”

  “Indeed.” He cleared his throat and turned a few pages. “Here it is again, described in a story called The King of the Cats.”

  “What happens?”

  “A man is on his way home and he sees a funeral procession.” Horatio spoke slowly, translating in short bursts. “There are nine big black cats carrying a coffin. It doesn’t say how,” he added. “I cannot imagine how cats carry a coffin. Their shoulders are wrong. Anyway, I digress. So, this man stops to look – as you would! – and the cats speak to him. They say, tell Tom Tildrum that Tom Toldrum is dead. The man is puzzled but he goes home, and he starts to tell his wife what he say, to see if she can make any sense of it. As he explains, their own cat suddenly sits up.”

  My mouth went dry. I was expecting the next line to be: Then the ca
t froze.

  But Horatio didn’t say that. “And the cat says, so I am now the King of the Cats! And he rushes up the chimney and is never seen again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed.” Horatio leafed his way onwards through the book. “Cats born in May bring snakes to the house, according to this. Did you know that there are no snakes in Ireland because Saint Patrick drove them all out? Well, actually, it was more to do with the Ice Age but the Good Book is somewhat light on information in that regard.” He was about to put the book back on the shelf but something compelled me to hold out my hand.

  “Be my guest,” he said, and passed it to me. “I am going to check upstairs.”

  Horatio left and I tried to decipher the book’s contents. Another word I knew jumped out at me – wrach. Witch. I opened the book at that page and puzzled my way along, sentence by sentence, having horrible flashbacks to Welsh lessons at school.

  What I read – if I was correct – started to make me wonder a whole lot more about Edgar and his secret life.

  I heard a noise and looked up, expecting to see Horatio or perhaps the next door neighbour. It was a fluttery sort of sound and I was shocked to see half a dozen dragonflies in the doorway between the front room and the kitchen at the back. Horatio must have left the back door open when he’d been in the kitchen. I moved forward, flapping my hands in a futile gesture. “Shoo!”

  The cloud of dragonflies grew. Now there were at least twenty, and I stepped back. One dragonfly is hardly a threat – no one feels menaced by a little hovering rainbow – but in a mass, I was starting to find them intimidating.

  But worse than that were the snakes that had suddenly appeared below.

  “Horatio!” I bellowed, leaping back into the front room and up onto the couch. I didn’t think for one minute about how rude it was to trample on someone else’s furniture. Come on – SNAKES! You would have done the same.

  Horatio burst into the room and stopped dead.

  The dragonflies had made a tight and unnatural ball, hanging in the air. Below them were five adders, thin and moving in that slow-yet-determined way that snakes have. Some were pale brown and some pale grey, and all had a black zig-zag pattern down their backs.

  I was usually okay with snakes. I had treated a few over the years. And no one had died of an adder bite in Britain for ages. But that was one snake at a time. When five snakes come at you in some kind of concerted effort, that puts a whole new level of horror on proceedings.

  “Snakes!” I blurted out. You know, just in case Horatio hadn’t noticed the slithery hell approaching us.

  Horatio had definitely noticed. He grew larger and he stepped forward, his voice booming out in a language I didn’t understand at first.

  It wasn’t Welsh.

  Then I realised he was speaking in Latin. In an actual dead language. He spoke with such a swell in his voice that all the hairs went up on the back of my neck, and clearly the snakes had the equivalent feeling – if they’d had hairs, that is. I suppose snakes are almost entirely neck, though.

  The snakes hissed and slithered around but they began to twist and retreat. The cloud of dragonflies moved backwards and then suddenly, as if someone had clapped their hands, they all shot off in different directions and disappeared.

  I climbed down from the sofa warily. “What just happened?”

  “Snakes, as you said,” Horatio said. “Astute of you. I think we should leave.”

  I was still clutching the book to my chest. “You’re right,” I said. “I have to get back to Harkin. I think I know how to free him now.”

  “And the other cat? And Edgar’s own soul?”

  “It’s all linked,” I said. “Just like the snakes and the dragonflies.”

  “I don’t see the connection between cats, snakes and dragonflies.”

  “You said it yourself: a cat born in May brings snakes to the house.”

  “And the insects?”

  “You know what the word for dragonfly is, in Welsh.”

  Understanding began to dawn on Horatio’s face. “Yes, my lamb. You’d better go.”

  Chapter 5

  I raced back to our house, still carrying the book. There were a few words I needed to check, either with Dilys if she was back or in one of the dictionaries we owned.

  Dilys was out. I went to Harkin who looked unhappy but not overly distressed, still frozen in place by the kitchen table. He was not in pain. I stroked him briefly then grabbed a dictionary and confirmed a few words.

  I had it.

  The story that had caught my eye was to do with witches, of course. It was said that a witch could turn into a cat nine times during their life. And witches didn’t have to be female. I guessed that Edgar Wrigley had spent most of his time living as a cat. That was how he knew things that others did not – while he had been in his cat-form, he had seen Billy living in the school, for example. Cats get everywhere, don’t they?

  I remembered that the cat in the tree was supposed to show which way a soul was going at their funeral – heaven or hell. But another, linked myth about cats and funerals was this: country folk also believed that a cat could steal your soul completely before the soul had a chance to move on properly.

  Most people thought that this was a bad thing. So there were rituals in place to stop a cat from stealing someone’s soul. The most common method was to ask a riddle, but to never answer it. This would make the cat stop, while it waited for the answer.

  The man at the funeral had stopped Edgar’s soul from going back to the cats.

  For Edgar, having his soul taken by the cats – after a life lived with them – was actually what he wanted. No heaven nor hell for Edgar. He wanted to be with his cat family. He had lived as one for most of his life, after all. Why not die as one? And return his soul to them?

  A mystery remained, however. Who was the man who came to the funeral, and why did he want to prevent Edgar’s soul from joining his beloved cats? What harm could that do to anyone?

  I’d look into that just as soon as I freed Harkin. All I had to do was to answer the riddle.

  I sat down at the table, next to Harkin, with the Welsh dictionary and the book of cat lore. What falls but does not break? What breaks but does not fall?

  I pondered it. I didn’t open the books. I just sat, letting my mind explore the riddle. Snow fall? Down fall? Fall as in the season of autumn?

  Ugh. While I tried to work it out, my cat was stuck. I needed Maddie here. She could use the internet. My magical powers blew technology to bits; we barely had functioning electricity in our house, and that’s why she was out, because she couldn’t get online when I was around.

  I’d be here until tomorrow morning at this rate.

  Morning.

  Day break.

  Night fall.

  I jumped up and spoke it aloud: “What falls but does not break? And what breaks but does not fall?”

  Harkin mewed pitifully.

  “Night falls!” I yelled. “And day breaks!”

  Harkin blinked, shivered all over, and sprang up, clawing his way up my leg so that I could cradle him in my arms. I didn’t even care that he had probably drawn blood on the way.

  “We have it!” I said.

  “You have what?” Maddie said as she entered suddenly, her arms full of books from the library. “Oh my gosh – look at Harkin!” She broke into smiles. “Hey there, Harkin.” She dumped the books on the table and reached out to him. “Is he really all right?”

  “He is.” I sat down, letting him nestle on my lap. I didn’t ever want to let him go. “Listen to what I’ve learned,” I said.

  Maddie nodded as I told her everything. How Edgar had probably been a cat, most of his life, and he wanted the cats to steal his soul at his funeral, but the strange man had stopped it. She grew animated as I told her about the riddles, and she tapped one of the books she’d got.

  “Yeah, you know, I was onto that,” she said. “Day breaks and night falls, right?”
>
  “Exactly.” I reached out with the hand that was not petting Harkin, and flicked open the book. It was full of riddles, and I smiled.

  “This is not over,” I said. “But at least we know how to free the other cat. And, if we’re right, it will release more than just that cat. It will release Edgar’s soul to join them, at last.”

  “But what’s behind all this?” Maddie asked. “That man…”

  “I don’t know, but the answer might be in those books. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve done what I need to do in the graveyard.”

  Still carrying Harkin, I ran outside and through the garden. It was early evening now, but still quite light and warm. I let Harkin go when I got to the wall, so that I could climb over it more easily, and I legged it to the tree where the other poor unfortunate cat was still stuck, halfway up and halfway down.

  I repeated the riddle and the solution once more.

  The cat yowled. It didn’t go up nor come down – it leaped from the tree, almost horizontally, and landed at my feet, looking up at me with big grateful eyes.

  I felt another cat rub around my ankles but when I looked down, there was nothing there.

  I looked again, with my second sight, closing my eyes to remove the distraction of the ordinary visible world. A ghost cat curled around my legs, big and black and very happy indeed.

  “Edgar?” I said.

  It nudged me with its spectral chin and purred like a chainsaw.

  Then it bounded away. It met the other cat, and they greeted one another. Cats, of course, have manifestations on the psychic plane as well as in the ordinary world. They mewed at one another. With a whoosh, they had gone.

  Edgar had gone.

  I opened my eyes.

  The churchyard was now empty expect for me and Harkin. I felt pleased and relieved. Edgar Wrigley had lived nine lives as a cat and now he had died as a cat – he was on his chosen journey through his afterlife and I was delighted for him. His soul had been released and taken by the cats.

  I smiled and began to turn back to our house.

  Oh.

  Oh no.

  The churchyard was not empty … and it was not over yet.