GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008

by GUD Magazine Authors

  Out loud I may have said, “Who am I? What is this place?"

  But I could understand. They were glorious creatures. They truly were.

  Still my heart and history could not accept, would not accept. Surely she would wander back out of the woods with an apologetic smile. “I couldn't,” she'd say. “At the last minute, I came to my senses."

  Silent green light extinguished that dream, bleeding across the sky like daybreak. The departure of the ships.

  They made no sound when they rose. I watched the end of their ascent, the last moments before their disappearance into the cloud cover. I saw her disappear into the night sky.

  * * * *

  I drove home a few days later, back to our apartment in Brooklyn. A lot of her things I threw away immediately. All the decorations in the apartment—posters, paintings, a delicate mobile of butterflies—were hers, and I tossed them in the garbage by our curb. A girl who happened to be walking by, a chubby, lonely oboist who lived in our building, looked at the debris—the things that were obviously Sabile's—and said, “Figures."

  Other people said similar things.

  The most beautiful, though not the merely beautiful. The ethereal, the mercurial. Our visitors had been selective. (I wondered about couples where neither partner had been taken—wondered if they were ashamed, a little, or jealous.) On the face of it, it seemed absurd, but there it was: they had taken humanity's most-loved ones.

  At first, in the weeks afterward, there was a certain honor in having had one's mate taken; it meant you had had a beautiful, extraordinary companion, and your grief at the loss was deeply valid.

  But that didn't last, and then ahead of you the decades stretched, and thinking about it made your throat constrict. You would find yourself sick, horribly sick, as if the bacteria in your body had all gone to sleep on the ramparts, and you wouldn't even care. The years.... Nothing to do but set the alarm, trudge to the office, purchase groceries, eat dinner with the television. You would find tears on your face and not know where they came from. You have your old life, but certain hopes are absent and things feel truncated, as if each year has been cut in half.

  Queen of Winter by Jennifer Crow

  You drift, heaping banks against the walls where once soldiers in new uniforms pressed kisses on the local girls, and they, matrons now, remember heat, remember how mouths burned against theirs, how life whispered between breaths, how hands traced

  mysteries against fresh skin. They never speak of the soldiers, though sometimes they catch glimpses in each other's eyes of someone slender and straight, someone who once fought, once loved, once breathed. Knee-deep in your drifts, they break paths between each other's stories,

  hems catching on the cold crust of lives, the surface melted and frozen daily until it hardly recalls what it was—and the patterns they measure against winter's face, against the icy glitter of your court, trace a cycle of worship and fear.

  You trick eyes narrowed against the glare, the robes of summer dignitaries layered with the promise of nights huddled by the fire, hands cracked like maps under your touch. If they follow the trails etched in their own skin, should they dare, should they remember the old roads and set out upon them,

  your wrath will test them, rage down the open alleys of trees, cast itself over precipices, smash against the stonework raised by forgotten kings, kings you loved and cast aside, kings whose frozen hearts line the walls of your bedchamber, so many lumps of meat, the devouring myth of your passion sated and at rest.

  Even here they would curse your cold dreams, had they tongues, had they the slow murmur of spring to steady them as they lifted the bow, as they sighted down the barrel, as they raised frost-rimed steel to your throat. They would die cursing your magnificence, your beauty,

  your scorn, as the last heat of a maiden's kiss shivered in their soldier hearts.

  The Flying Cat by heather lam

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Persian on the Forty-Second Floor by Keesa Renee DuPre

  When I was thirteen, I met a cat without a soul.

  I had first learned to see the souls of cats five years earlier, at eight. It's a funny age, eight, a time when you either learn to see the world or you don't. If you do, it's yours forever; if you don't, you never have a second chance.

  It was a summer day, that day when I was eight; the sky was a brassy blue-gray and the sun slurped moisture from air and ground and skin. I was on my way to the creek for a swim when a tussle caught my eye—a bright mêlée of crimson. Our cat Lila had caught a cardinal. Carmine blood coated the ground, and carmine feathers were everywhere. I screamed and ran for Mother. She, of course, held me and told me it was just what cats did. But Lila stared at me with those eyes of hers, one topaz and one citrine, as if I had betrayed something special between us.

  * * * *

  In my dreams that night, I was the cardinal. Blood and feathers and pain mingled together, always with the cat's cruel eyes above me, behind me, to the side. I couldn't get away from them, though I tried, beating mangled wings against the blood-soaked ground. Above me, the sky was the irresistible, unreachable turquoise of freedom.

  I woke, sweat plastering my nightgown to my skin, to find Lila perched on my chest. For one panic-stricken moment, I was still the bird, and I flailed broken wings, trying to sit up. But as the dream faded, Lila's sonorous purr became less menacing and more comforting. I ran shaky fingers through her fur. There were no traces of dried blood left to spike her coat into menacing bristles. Lila always groomed herself well. She tucked herself between my shoulder and my chin, and her purrs ever-so-slowly lulled me back to sleep, back to dreams.

  This time I was the cat. The cardinal fluttered in front of me, my claws its cage. Its blood was a metallic tang in my mouth. Fierce joy made every muscle quiver. I became aware of each muscle, each vein, each tendon of my cat-body in an intimate way no biologist could ever know. I released the bird for a moment, just long enough for it to lurch forward in the false hope of freedom, simply so I could feel my muscles tense and release when I sprang forward to catch it. I was ginger and cinnabar, I was the russet brown of a fallen leaf, I was a fallen leaf. And then I was shadow and sunlight, I was all and nothing at all, I was Cat.

  * * * *

  When I woke, I saw the moonlight reflecting off Lila's eyes, turning them an eerie blue, and I found I could see her soul in them.

  Now you know, Lila said.

  Yes.

  You might forget.

  But you'll be there to remind me.

  I won't, though.

  Why not?

  Because I'm Cat.

  Am I Cat? I asked, genuinely confused. The dream was still close about me; it felt more real than the stuffy air of my room or even Lila's weight on my chest.

  You're Girl. It's close, but not the same.

  Why is it different?

  You can be Bird. Now go to sleep.

  And I obeyed the cat.

  * * * *

  It was different, being able to see a cat's soul. I found I could see the souls of other cats as well, but never so clearly as Lila's. That made sense; the dream had been only a dream, of course, but even so, if only in a dream, I had been Lila.

  I spent most of my time outside in those days, a lithe brown farmgirl with hair bleached blonde by the sun. I climbed trees and caught fish in the stream with my bare hands—it can be done, if you know how—and went to the local school, or sometimes played hooky and only pretended to go. Sometimes Lila padded after me on these excursions, and sometimes not. Cats like company when they like company; the rest of the time, they like to be left alone. Girls, I discovered, are much the same way. I learned to walk as silently as Lila—she showed me the trick of it—and I learned what the coyotes were saying when they moaned their arias to the moon. Sometimes I caught squirrels or chipmunks, then released them, just because it was such a challenge. You try catching a chipmunk sometime and you'll see what I mean. But I remembered my first d
ream, and I never killed a bird.

  * * * *

  By my tenth birthday, my mother was growing concerned because I never seemed to have any friends. Catlike, I merely smiled when she brought it up, and never tried to correct her. I had friends, of a sort; at any rate, I had companions, and I was content. The woods were my friends, the sun and the wind and the trees. Lila was a friend, in a way. And by then, I was friends with birds, as well. I never told Lila, but of course she knew—and of course she pretended not to. It was the only way to maintain both her dignity and our relationship. Cats are masters of hypocrisy. They have to be; they live with humans.

  I learned from the birds how to speak to the wind. It whispered of wandering, of mountains and oceans, of changes in weather, of flight—of freedom.

  * * * *

  Then, the summer before my thirteenth birthday, we moved.

  "The new job will be good for your father,” Mother said. “A promotion, a pay raise ... and a change of scenery will be good for you, too,” she added, as if it were an afterthought, though I knew better. Catlike, I had crouched outside their bedroom door at night, heard their every whispered word, for months. It was all about my contented solitude. No one likes a person who is different. If the person is your own child, you take steps—and they had.

  Mother had expected protests, whining, screams, but that isn't the way of a cat. I simply stared, expressionless, as she told me. Then I walked away without a word—a cat's way of expressing disapproval. She may have been relieved; I think she was unnerved. But she didn't change her mind. I hadn't expected her to.

  * * * *

  What should I do, Lila? I asked.

  Just as you please, she replied. Go, or stay. It doesn't matter.

  It does matter, I insisted. I can't stay on my own.

  Go, then. Why ask me?

  I don't want to leave here for the city.

  If a cat doesn't want to do something, she doesn't. If your problem is more complicated than that, why ask a cat for advice?

  Why, indeed, I wondered. Lila was no help.

  What about you? I asked, rolling over onto my back. Cumulous clouds formed horses and dragons and an octopus over my head.

  I'm not going, if that's what you're asking. She turned away, chasing a grasshopper through a patch of weeds. The octopus reached down its sticky arms to seize me and keep me close to the land.

  I'll go, I said.

  Bon voyage, Lila said. The grasshopper crunched as she ate it.

  I didn't look back as I walked to the house.

  * * * *

  Packing took most of my time over the next few weeks. I stayed inside, away from clouds that tried to pin me down and tell me who and what to be. Lila disappeared the night before we left. Mother stayed out for hours calling her, but of course she didn't come. She didn't say goodbye; our conversation a few weeks before had been her farewell. Mother expected me to be devastated at the loss of my pet, but Lila had stopped being my pet years ago. She was Cat, and she was staying. And if I did hide one or two tears in my pillow that night, it was only because they were making me choose between them and Lila—between Girl and Cat. Staying would have been a kind of constraint, as would leaving, and I only wanted freedom, like the wind. But I couldn't be Wind.

  We left in a borrowed van that clattered and clanked like a wooden roller coaster. I tried not to think about what I was leaving behind, nor what was waiting ahead. I tried not to feel imprisoned by the van's metal claws. I tried not to feel like the cardinal, cornered and crushed. I was Cat, and I had made my choice.

  * * * *

  We lived in an apartment, on the forty-second floor, surrounded by other apartments and other people. I found a cat, Kali, who reminded me of Lila, and offered her food and milk in exchange for companionship. But I didn't really speak with her as I had with Lila. Perhaps I should have. If I had spoken to her then, she would have listened, might have helped.

  I made friends at my new school, of sorts; they were shallow girls who had been trapped in buildings and activities when they were eight, and had missed their chance to see the souls of cats. But they were people to talk to. Kali lived her own life and wasn't always around. And when she was around ... I was afraid to speak to her. Somewhere within myself, I knew what I was becoming. I forced myself into that mold every day, and with every day it fit better.

  Mother was thrilled that I had friends, but I was lonelier than I had ever been. There were no trees to talk to here. I couldn't even see the sky from my bedroom window.

  I wore makeup now, and curled my hair, yet I felt emptier with each passing day.

  I hated our school uniforms. I hated the feel, the greasy texture, hated the shapeless silhouette, but most of all, I hated the color, a dingy burgundy—the color of dried blood. Trapped inside that crusty burgundy exoskeleton, I found it small wonder that my grades dropped. I spent more and more time with the girls from school, but they were a vacuum, a void that sucked away my personality. There was a price to be paid for fitting in. My emptiness became so natural that I ceased to be aware of it. Then I met the Persian.

  * * * *

  It was New Year's Day. Our school had hosted a “New Beginnings Day"—uniforms required—for those of us whose parents weren't too sloshed from the night before to make us go. Mother and Dad never drank, even on Christmas or New Year's, so I'd had the pleasures of listening to our vice-principal give a drone about the importance of goals and resolutions, of showing my parents some felt cutouts and paper foldings I'd done in class—Icould understand making paper airplanes at school to mock the teacher, but these so-called crafts had been the school's idea—and of counting minutes until it was over. We had discussed my report card, where I had gotten a D in History, and my parents had given me the “You never get low grades in History; do you want to talk about what's wrong?"

  But of course nothing was wrong. I had friends, I fit in; I was a normal, well-adjusted child. So how do you tell your parents that's the problem? Obviously, you don't. I blamed it on the stress of the move, getting settled in, my first holiday season in the city, and they were satisfied. The truth was, I had always been good at history because Lila loved to discuss it. She would be only too happy to chat about it for hours, her usual laconic attitude gone, and I loved history because it made her eyes sparkle and her soul dance. My new friends took no such delight in it.

  * * * *

  I saw the cat in the hallway as I fumbled through my backpack for the key. The owner was carrying it, a living muff curled stylishly over her arm. A Persian, with perfect white fur, impeccably groomed and delicately scented. At first I thought nothing of it; there were a hundred such cats in Manhattan alone—a thousand, even. Then it turned and looked at me. I knew something was wrong when I saw its eyes, two perfect sapphires in a perfect purebred face. When I realized what it was, I screamed. The woman gave me a strange look. The cat's fur bristled, and it hissed. There were no words in the sound; it was a hiss.

  I was sobbing by the time I reached the roof, thinking it was me, thinking I had lost the ability to see. Kali, with her catty prescience, was waiting for me. The blue light of her soul playing in her eyes had never been so beautiful.

  What's wrong? Kali asked. I knew the question was meant to give me a chance to reply; she already knew, but I needed to be able to say it. I told her about the cat, the Persian without a soul, and she listened with an interest in my troubles Lila had never shown.

  It was awful, Kali, I said. How—What happened? How could a cat live like that?

  Kali licked her paw, then cleaned behind her ears, weighing her words. It's a trade, she said finally. Luxury, safety—but no free-souled cat could endure that. After a while, the soul withers. She cleaned her ears again.

  That's awful, I said.

  Yes, she agreed. Have you ever looked at your own soul, Chandra?

  No, I said. Understanding was beginning to force its way in. How can I?

  I'll be your mirror, if you'd like, she offered
.

  I have this, I said, showing her my compact.

  Kali hissed, an expletive-like sound I had come to expect over the years with Lila—a world away from the Persian's soulless reaction. That will show you nothing. You look in that a dozen times a day, and never see yourself. Use my eyes.

  Dreading what I might see, I did as she said. She stared straight ahead without blinking—one trick Lila had never taught me.

  I peered at my reflection, trying to ignore Kali's dancing soul. Tears had streaked mascara down my face. Oddly enough, it looked cleaner for the black streaks—more catty.

  I focused on my eyes, trying to see my soul. I'm not sure what I'd been expecting; a flickering blue light like Kali's, perhaps, only a little weaker? Not this mucous-green thing with brown splotches across it. I shivered and pulled my gaze away. Kali blinked.

  It looks awful, I said. Tears quivered my voice.

  It was sick when you first came to Manhattan, Kali said. It's worse now.

  It's dying, isn't it? I'll be a perfect shell, like that Persian. I shuddered again.

  What will you do? Kali asked, sympathy warming her voice.

  I turned, letting my unfocused gaze wander over the nearby buildings. “Girl is like Cat,” I whispered, “only different."

  Somewhere a bell tolled: noon of the first day of the new year. I brushed my fingers across the greasy burgundy of my hated uniform, feeling mangled, crushed. Dried blood, I thought, trembling. I peeled off the jacket, flung it to the roof.

  Lila's words were a gong, a bass drum, a timpani inside my skull. Girl is like Cat, but different. The skirt came off next. Why's it different? I was wearing only my slip and my chemise now. I stretched my arms, felt forgotten muscles flex.

  I'm going to be Bird, I said, meeting Kali's gaze. Lila would only have stared, impassive. Kali nodded.

  I think you should, she said. She brushed her head against my hand, her way of saying she wanted me to pet her. I will miss you, she added.

  I petted her with long, smooth strokes from nose to tail, just as she liked. It was the only way I could thank her. I will miss you, too, I said. But I have to.