Cat Magic

by Неизвестный

You'll find me in the fields, John Barley.”

  The chant was whispered, as if to the stalks themselves. Rapture moved in the faces of the reapers as the wheat fell. Nearby a group of children rolled and laughed in the stalks, and three men bundled hay.

  Never before had Amanda had such an impression of how very old some human things have become. Mankind has been fanning for a long time now. She did not sense the presence of actual deities in these fields, but the mystery and the energy of the old gods seemed very real indeed. Demeter was the Goddess Earth, also called Gaia, known among Catholics as the Blessed Virgin Mary. Out of her rich belly her daughter Persephone emerged, escaping from Hades. Among the Romans Persephone's name was Proserpina, and she was the goddess of health and well-being, as well as death.

  Amanda had to leam what Proserpina knew. That knowledge was to be found in the world of the dead. With it she could bring prosperity to the Covenstead.

  There were chants going among many of the teams, the round voices of the workers harmonizing with the roar of insects and the bright calling of the children. As Amanda drove carefully along, she became conscious of how rich life in fields really was. How was it that such magic had been forgotten?

  Where is mankind going, that we would choose to leave farms such as this behind? Too much of the joy of working with the earth has been sacrificed. No prayer is needed to assist the fertilized plantings of Iowa and Kansas and California, but without prayer we are less human than we were, and our farms are less alive, our food less true to the needs of our flesh.

  And yet, our flight from the magical and the prayerful was not without sense: there was terror somewhere here, beneath the swelling light of the sun.

  “Hello, Amanda!” A tall woman held a huge pumpkin aloft, her figure tiny in the sweep of the land. Amanda waved from her window and tooted her hom. The woman, though, had put down the pumpkin and was running across the field. Amanda was stunned to recognize Kate, George's former wife. She stopped the car and got out.

  “Amanda, look at you, ”Now you've grown!“

  She embraced Kate, whose hair had gone gray, but whose face was radiant, flushed w'th sunshine and work. She wore a loose homespun dress tied by a black cord. On her feet were thong sandals wrapped to her ankles. In her hair was a silver pin of the quarter moon.

  “Kate, I didn't realize that you'd come here.”

  “We all did. George became impossible.”

  Amanda nodded.

  “Constance has told us many times about the coming of the Maiden, but I had no idea that it was you. When I heard your name I thought, is it possible? Then I saw you. Our Amanda. I just can't believe it.”

  Silence fell. There was obviously something else on Kate's mind. She was still smiling, but there was pain in the smile.

  “I spent a night at your house,” Amanda said. “I'm going there now to pick up my things.”

  “You've seen him? Constance won't let him on the estate anymore. Is he well? Or is that the right question?”

  George was certainly not well. “You're forbidden to see him?”

  “God, no. Connie doesn't do that sort of thing. Afraid to see him. Amanda, something happened to him, something dark that has to do with Constance. Don't think she's all sweetness and light. She isn't! She drew him into an involvement with death. She saw things about him that made him become obsessed. It was like death entered the house. We were in one of the Kominski covens. We were so happy. It was new and it was fun. Then George started these sessions up at the estate with Constance. The next thing I knew, he had started that series of experiments, trying to kill things and bring them back to life.” Suddenly she stopped, looked around. “Let's continue this in the car.” Amanda followed her in. They rolled up the windows. “I think Constance did something to his mind. He changed. All of a sudden he wanted a ritual chamber in the basement.”

  “The Kitten Kate Room?”

  “God, yes! It was so crazy. What in the world do cats have to do with it? He went in there and performed acts of self-abuse. He injured himself with candles. I trusted Constance and I sent him to her, and he got even worse! His work came to dominate his life. He'd spend literally days in that lab with that awful girl, Bonnie Haver, a tramp and a drug addict.”

  “Bonnie Haver? You mean the one from Our Lady?”

  “Yeah, you must have been in the same class, or close to it.”

  “I remember her. She was involved in a horrible scandal. More than one horrible scandal.”

  “She's no better now than she was then! She had a terrible effect on George. The more he saw of her, the more time he spent in that hideous, demented room. My God, Amanda, I could smell the burning skin. It was hideous, hideous!” She slammed her hand against the dashboard. She was crying too hard to go on.

  There was certainly a dark side to Constance. Dark and subtle.

  The words of what had once been a favorite poem of hers came to mind.

  I am the mower Damon, known Through all the meadows I have mown.

  For a moment she could see him, huge and dark, straddling the fields with his great scythe like a fiery ray of sun. I am the Godfather Damon.

  “He was such a brilliant man. Now he's crazy.” Known in all the meadows—

  Snick. Snick. Snick. Down go the stalks. To his cool cave descending. . . All the meadows he has mown. “Why did you come here?”

  “I wanted to, I was desperate to live here. So were the kids! Poor George—it's terrible what's happened to him, but still, I love the Covenstead.”

  “Have you confronted Constance?”

  “Of course! She listened, then she embraced me and sent me on my way. End of story. Amanda, they're all saying that you're going to be Maiden of the Covenstead. Please, if you are, remember what I've suffered. My husband has been destroyed for some scheme of Constance's.”

  “I'll remember, Kate. And I will make Constance tell me what it's all about as soon as I get back from town.”

  Kate kissed her cheek. Her eyes were big with sorrow. “I want my husband,” she said. Then she went back to her work.

  Driving along, Amanda had the sense that something larger and darker even man she had thought was occurring. The trouble with this play was that the actors were not allowed to know the plot. Thus they were not actors at all, but puppets. She didn't like being a puppet, not in such a fierce and dangerous mystery.

  By the time she began passing the vegetable patches she was trembling The warm, pellucid air was pearl-white with haze from the rapid snow melt. She sensed the close presence of a terrible contrivance of magic, terrible and beautiful, as sweet as light, yet so very dangerous. She recalled the Leannan's guards, with their rat teeth. The Leannan, too, must have such teeth. Were they evolved from rodents, the fairy, as we are from apes, or had they come to earth from another planet? And Constance—what did she really know, and what did she really intend to accomplish?

  She thought, as she rounded the last quick turn in the road, that she heard a horse galloping. Just here she had cried out for the sheer exhilaration of it, upon Raven's back, when they were flying together. Oh, horse.

  The border of the estate was marked by a neglected wire fence, a few posts, and a faded sign warning against trespass. There were blackberry thickets full of human laughter—the gay laughter of men picking berries together, and from the sound having a good time of it.

  Then she crossed a rickety wooden bridge into the outside world. Beyond a mowed field mere was a row of shuttered houses. She remembered their lights darkening down last night, the cloaked people running out, the excited voices, the rustle of feet in dry grass, the snapping hiss of quick-drawn breath.

  They had touched her for luck as she rode by.

  The road went from gravel to asphalt as it passed through the field. Then there was a yellowed wooden sign: Corn Row. Beyond that was a brick street, neatly curbed, overhung by nearly bare trees. There were tall houses set along either side, fanciful Victorians with curved porches and towers and widow
's watches edged by gingerbread. A man with a cap pulled low over his face peered at her from one of the yards. He had something fat and green in his hand. His face was rigid.

  As she picked up speed, she saw him lean far back, raise his arm, and throw the thing. She jammed on the accelerator. The car roared, and at the same moment what he had thrown hit the roof with a thud and a splash.

  She turned on two wheels to Bridge Street. Her car filled with the reek of gasoline. She thought, no, no, not that, they mustn't set me on fire! More than anything she hated fire. The idea of being consumed by it haunted her nightmares. She prepared to stop and jump.

  For whatever reason the gasoline bomb did not ignite. As she picked up speed again, she saw in her rearview mirror the man dash across the street.

  They must wait there, she thought, just at the edge of the estate, for anyone who dares to come out. No wonder the nearby witches' houses were shuttered during the day. They must be under virtual siege for their beliefs.

  As she proceeded down Bridge Street toward The Lanes, the peaceful life of the town surrounded her. A blue delivery truck from Hiscott's Drugstore went past, followed by a small school bus full of kids. It turned onto Main Street, heading for the red brick school which took up one side of Church Row. In the distance bells rang. Early yet: 8:30.

  Under the larger trees the melt fell like rain, and Amanda had to turn on her windshield wipers. The stink of the gasoline slowly faded. Amanda kept her speed high; she felt dreadfully exposed in the streets of this town. There was a strong temptation to turn around and go back to the estate. But she could not. She did not understand the whole of what she was to do in the town, but she intended to follow Constance's instructions. Deep within herself, she sensed that she understood very well what she was doing, even though her conscious mind refused to recognize the sense of it.

  Her plan was to go to George's house, get her things, and get out as quickly as possible. If mat was all that happened, then the visit could be seen as a further test of courage. Maybe the man with the gasoline bomb was really a follower of Constance's Perhaps that's why the bomb didn't ignite.

  “The essence of initiation,” Constance had said, “is the confrontation with the Godfather. To lead people in the ways of the hidden world, we must know death ”

  The shadow of the mower seemed to darken the whole town, Damon in the field of souls. Constance had said that Amanda did not love the Covenstead as much as her own life. But she was here, allowing herself to be acted upon by Constance, delivering herself to whatever new danger her teacher had devised.

  The mower mowed, his scythe whistling.

  She came to the comer of Maple Lane and turned left. Leaves cluttered George's lawn. No curtains blocked the windows of his house, which were black from the darkness within. His Volvo stood in the driveway. Amanda pulled in beside it, turned off her car, and set the brake. With the shrubs mostly bare the Volks could be seen all the way to the end of the street. It would not take somebody with a gasoline bomb long to discover where she had gone.

  She ran a finger through the oily film on the roof of her car.

  The house was silent. She went up to the front door, tried the handle. The door swung open.

  The front hall was dark, the living room off to the left empty. She went in, intending to cross the dining room and see if George was in the back.

  Halfway to the bedroom she heard Jane Pauley talking about French green beans. George was in the kitchen huddled over the little portable TV, absently stuffing Fritos in his mourn. An R.C. cola stood open on the counter beside him.

  “George?”

  “Oh, Good Lord, Amanda! You scared the heli out of me!” His smile was stiff on his face and he seemed very tired. “I assumed you had gone to live on the estate.”

  “I do think it would be more convenient for me to stay there. I'll be doing all my work there.”

  His eyes had gone all alight. The suddenness of his movements suggested nothing so much as stifled rage.

  “The estate is really very quiet,” she said carefully.

  “No, Amanda, it's not quiet. Just last night they had a ritual. Surely you know about it. I was coming up Stone when I saw a naked girl riding a big black horse. Beautiful. She took off across the lawns before I could see her face.” He laughed, and the laughter changed to a wheezing cough.

  How should she respond to him? He seemed to know nothing about her, yet he was supposed to be a witch, too. She decided to be careful. “Constance mentioned that there had been an event last night in the town.”

  “Everybody from here to Morris Plains is talking about it. And you remember Brother Pierce. That beauty. He's having a conniption. There was a run-in. Some of his people shot this girl's horse and then got themselves mauled by a flock of trained crows over in the Wiliowbrook ruins. Oh, boy, the whole town's going crazy! I was looking for some news on the Altoona station but they didn't mention it. It's a local sensation, though.”

  It wasn't like him to chatter. George had not struck her as being any more of a talker than her father, whose specialty was the long silence.

  The sooner she understood the nature of this latest test, the sooner she could go back to the safety of the estate. “Never mind the town, George. I want to know how you're doing.”

  “Me? Extremely weli. My experiment could hardly be going better.”

  “Brother Pierce leaving you alone?”

  “Your friends've made sure of that. He's thoroughly preoccupied with witches now.” He smiled a little. “You ought to see what they've put up in front of the Tabernacle. In a way it's funny.”

  Why was George so uneasy? Why was she so scared? “I have a question for you,” she said quickly. “Are you my Godfather?”

  “It's been years since I thought about that. But yes, I am supposed to be responsible for your spiritual well-being.”

  “So you are.” (Known in all the meadows you have mown.)

  “The one and only.” He grinned.

  This test was about death, all right. Her death. Constance had gone too far. “I've got a lot of work to do up at the estate. I think I'll just get my canvases and stuff—”

  “Brother Pierce and his people have erected a stake in front of the Tabernacle. A stake surrounded by piles of wood. It's a most dramatic display.”

  She could still smell the gasoline fumes.

  “Hardly surprising.”

  “They shot that horse. Beautiful thing. I heard it. I was the first person there after the sheriff. He's a witch, too, people say.”

  Amanda remembered his fundamentalist deputy. That department must be a tense sort of place. “How horrible, to kill an animal that way.” She kept her voice as steady as she could. She had the sense that if she moved too suddenly, he was going to make a grab for her.

  “I saw it. Fine animal. The poor thing didn't die right away. I hate to hear a horse scream. Sheriff had to put it out of its misery.”

  She stared into his jack-o'-lantern smile. Until now she had consoled herself that Raven hadn't suffered. A vision swam up of his whole end, as it had really happened:

  For a few seconds he lay in silence, confused, not understanding what had happened to him. When he realized that the ground was under his side and he was no longer running, he tried to get up. That was when the pain hit, the thrumming, pounding pain that flared from his nose to his neck. When he screamed, laughter replied and a vicious kick to the muzzle. He shrieked through bloody, shattered nose bones.

  He could only see out of one eye. Even so, when he could quiet himself he had looked for her.

  Then he had seen the North Star. And he had begun galloping into great, snowy mountains. The sheriffs shot of mercy had sped him on—

  “Amanda, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.” He made a clumsy movement toward her.

  “I'm not upset. It's just that I don't like cruelty to animals.”

  “Amanda—”

  “George, I have to go now.”

  He laughed
sharply, then suddenly stopped “I'm nervous. Sometimes I think Maywell might be hell.”

  “Maybe you have a point.” She wanted to get out of here.

  “Give me your hand, darling.”

  “No, George.”

  “You're my goddaughter! I want us to be friends.”

  She had to play for time. “What's troubling you, George?” As she spoke she stepped away from him.

  “Troubling? Nothing at all, I'm fine.”

  “You look terrible.” She took another step back. The point of the test was to go into the cave of Godfather Death and bring back something precious. She was here, and the treasure was the tools of her art.

  “I've been working late. And I don't eat well on my own.” He waved his bottle of cola. “Amanda, I'm awfully glad to see you.”

  How could someone so pitiful be so frightening? “Take it easy, George.”

  “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  “Stay right there, George. Don't come any closer, please.”

  “Amanda, you don't understand. I'm offering you a place in immortality.” What was this? It didn't sound like part of the script. “Immortality! You'll know the secret of the ages!”

  “George, calm down.”

  He waved his cola. Saliva flew from his mouth. “They might hate me and they might laugh at me and they might destroy my work, but they will never kill my ideas! No, my ideas will go on and on down the halls of time and in the end they will triumph.” He smiled as a marionette smiles. She saw his truth in that smile. He had failed, totally and completely, and his failure had driven him crazy.

  Her only thought now was to get away, but he had placed himself between her and the front door. She was forced to try and talk her way out. “George, get hold of yourself. If something's wrong, you and I can sit down and discuss it like two civilized people. I can help you, George.”

  “You certainly can! You're young and strong and just the right size!”

  What did he mean?

  When he lunged at her, she managed to make a dash for the door.

  He moved with tailored grace. His long arms came around her neck. Such was the force of his maneuver that the cola bottle slammed into a thousand pieces against the far wall.