Blackfoot

by W. R. Gingell

  Stop sulking, said Blackfoot, ruthlessly practical. You need to get me out of this circle.

  Annabel propped her chin on her chubby fists and very deliberately let herself settle into a plump, stupid blob of slack-faced girl. As rebellion went, it was usually remarkably successful.

  Don’t do that, Nan, Blackfoot said. There’s no time to play stupid.

  Annabel stared at him with glassy eyes, her face expressionless.

  Nan.

  Annabel blinked, slowly and heavily, and became even more glassy-eyed.

  Nan, please.

  “Oh, all right,” said Annabel, shaking off her stupidity. “You shouldn’t be so superior if you’re only going to back down. Why can’t you say please first?”

  Blackfoot’s tail twitched. Habit, most likely. You’ll need to be quick, Nan. If I’m still in here when they begin the spell there won’t be enough of me left to know the difference between hello and please.

  “I don’t think they can start it without me, anyway,” said Annabel, looking around the garden. She needed something that would break the circle enough to get Blackfoot safely out. “Bother! I used to have salt out here somewhere.”

  They can’t, said Blackfoot, but I also can’t help you from in here, and I rather think Grenna will be looking for you very soon. Use a twig if you must. I can make that work.

  Annabel took a few steps across the grass and snatched at a twig from one of the bushes, but instead of snapping away easily in her fingers it cut across them, as stiff and sharp as glass. “Ow!” she said in surprise, and tried again, this time more carefully.

  What’s wrong?

  “Nothing,” said Annabel, wiping away a trace of blood on her flannels. “There’s something funny about the bush. I’ll get a twig from the hedge.”

  The garden was awfully still as she passed through the shadows to the hedge; which was odd, because there was a breeze tickling at her hair and her cheeks. And yet, not a leaf or twig stirred in the darkness. When Annabel grasped a leafy twig from the hedge and tried to break it off as before, it cut into her fingers once again.

  She tried again, this time wrapping the skirt of her flannel nightie around her fingers to avoid being cut, and found the twigs as obdurate as ever. With a slight uncertainty to her voice, Annabel said: “None of them will come off, Blackfoot.”

  Ah, said Blackfoot. He sounded quite calm: even unsurprised.

  Annabel looked at him accusingly. “What’s going on? Did you know this was going to happen?”

  Not exactly, Blackfoot said. But I know how painstakingly precise he is.

  “He? I thought it was Grenna? Who is he? You said he before, as well.”

  I misspoke. She’ll have made sure nothing around here can move.

  Annabel left the question for a more convenient time and said instead: “You mean she expected me to try and rescue you?”

  Not exactly. She’s frozen anything that could possibly fall or be knocked into the spell: it’s a good idea for an outdoor spell that involves animals. If a falling twig breaks one piece of it by letting a cat escape at the wrong time, the whole thing could shatter.

  “What’s it for, though? What’s so important about one or two cats?”

  Blackfoot’s tail lashed. Find something else. What have you got in your pocket?

  “Don’t know,” said Annabel. There was only one pocket on her flannel nightie, but it was a big one: Grenna often left her in spells for hours on end and it was useful to have a few things on hand. “Food and paper and my pencil, probably.”

  She felt around in her pocket as Blackfoot, suddenly sharp and prickly in her mind, said, Pencil? You have your pencil?

  “Oh,” said Annabel, pulling out her pencil with a wondering look. “It’s wood.”

  Put it down, quickly, Blackfoot said. Something in the house is stirring.

  Annabel put her tiny stub of pencil carefully on the curving edge of the circle that kept Blackfoot prisoner, and for a moment it teetered between his side and hers, too small to balance easily. Then it began to grow, though Annabel didn’t think it took up any more room than it had previously, and before long there was a bridge for Blackfoot to cross between his side and hers.

  Annabel, her mouth open in surprise, watched Blackfoot pad uneasily across the pencil-bridge, his tail lashing in discomfort. The fur on his back was ridged and stiff, which worried her: anything that worried Blackfoot was a Very Bad Thing Indeed. Still, why was he so uncomfortable with his own magic? She had seen him do magic before, but she’d never seen him so little at ease with it.

  When he was safely across, he gave the smallest hop toward her, his back legs twitching a kick that was as nervous as it was quick. As he padded a swift, shadowy circle around her, Annabel reached out for the bridge in fascination and found herself holding her pencil once again. She put it back into her pocket, and heard Blackfoot say harshly: Quick! Throw one of the other cats in. That one: the black one.

  “All right,” said Annabel, very carefully dropping the other black cat into the circle that had once held Blackfoot. “But what about me? They’ll see me as soon as they get out here!”

  I’m sorry, said Blackfoot, and for a very cold moment, Annabel didn’t quite understand.

  When she did, she said, with a small wobble to her voice: “Blackfoot?”

  I’m sorry, he said again. They’re going to catch you and put you in the spell. I can’t help that. But without me they won’t be able to do it properly and it shouldn’t hurt you.

  “They wouldn’t have been able to finish it without me, either,” said Annabel. She was shivering: not with betrayal, because she knew Blackfoot; but with fear, because she knew Blackfoot. He was going to make her do something she didn’t want to do– something difficult or unpleasant that was entirely unavoidable. Peter was always forcing her to do things she didn’t want to do—or wasn’t brave enough to do—and Blackfoot had caught the habit from him. The only difference, as far as Annabel could tell, was that Peter quite often had an ulterior, entirely self-motivated reason for pushing her into difficult situations. Blackfoot never did so unless he thought it was necessary, or unless it was something that would help her.

  No, but they could do a storage working to keep all the power they’re trying to harvest. Then I wouldn’t be around to help by the time they caught you.

  Annabel hugged shivery arms tight against her soft belly, her pencil gripped in white fingers. “What are they harvesting?”

  Souls, said Blackfoot, with terrifying calmness. And magic.

  “Cats– cats don’t have souls,” said Annabel, trying very hard not to cry.

  These ones once did, Blackfoot said. His back was to her, his cat-gaze scanning the hedge that blocked off the lane, gauging the leap he would need to make. There was probably magic there, too, but Annabel couldn’t see that. Call them futures, then. He’s stealing futures.

  He leaped as he spoke, a stretching bound that had him dancing lightly atop the hedge a moment later. Annabel, who desperately didn’t want to be left alone to the two shadows that were growing in the doorway of the cottage, hissed: “What about the others? Shouldn’t we try to save them, too?”

  Blackfoot’s eyes glowed in the rustling shadows of the hedge. It’s too late for them, he said. They were lost as soon as she did the first working.

  He was gone the next moment. Annabel gave a subdued sniffle and hid herself in a soft, quivering heap beneath the shadow of the hedge, but they found her at once, the big grey cat unerringly shimmering through the early morning fog and straight toward her.

  “Get up,” said Grenna, hauling at Annabel’s arm. Annabel, quite used to this sort of fight, made herself as floppy and heavy as possible and simply tucked her head into her arms when Grenna passed onto the next stage of this particular game, which was to kick Annabel until she got up of her own volition.

  Above her head and between kicks, she heard Grenna say to the grey cat: “I’m trying, your worship!” It scared her to
think that the grey cat could be anything like Blackfoot, and she tugged herself tighter in desperation.

  Nan, get up, said Blackfoot’s voice.

  Don’t want to, thought Annabel, in a haze of panic. She knew he couldn’t hear her, but she couldn’t help answering him anyway. Don’t want to.

  Nan, she’ll hurt you.

  It hurts now! wailed Annabel in her thoughts. I don’t want to!

  But in the end it didn’t matter whether or not she wanted to, because Grenna dragged her inch by inch toward the sinister, sprawling spell, gasping excuses to the grey cat all the while. Annabel, quivering and sniffling, was shoved into a larger coil of rope than the cats were confined in, and was miserable but unsurprised to find that once in, she couldn’t get out. She huddled at the outer edge of it in spite of that, as far away from the grey cat as she could manage. It looked back at her with a cool sort of amusement, and it was some time before she realised she could still hear Blackfoot’s voice in her mind; that he had, from the sounds of it, been talking to her all along.

  By the time she was thinking coherently enough to understand him again, Blackfoot had fallen back on the old expedient of repeating: Nan. Nan. Listen to me. Nan. Nan. NAN. Pay attention!

  Annabel gave one last sniffle and wrapped her arms around her knees. Blackfoot’s voice said, with a gust of relief: That’s better. Good girl. This spell is a complicated one, so it’s going to take a while. You need to listen to me very carefully, because it’s also going to be a bit unpleasant. Can you do that? Sit down on the grass and wipe your nose if you can.

  Annabel plopped onto her rump in the grass and wiped her nose with the front of her flannels. Grenna glared at her and muttered beneath her breath, prompting Annabel to duck away reflexively, but didn’t hit her. Instead, she picked her way through the intricate curls of the spell with a spryness that belied her crooked appearance. She came to a stop somewhere in the centre of the spell, in a position diagonal from Annabel that formed a triangle with the coil that should have held Blackfoot, and Annabel looked at her in some surprise. Was Grenna part of the spell too, then?

  “It’s ready, your worship,” said Grenna to the grey cat. The grey cat seemed to give a brief nod, then stole softly through the coils of rope until it was in the very centre of the triangle formed by Grenna, Annabel, and the black cat.

  It’s about to start, said Blackfoot. You won’t notice anything at first, but soon the cats will start to die: the outer ones first and then the ones closer in. It should be quiet, but if they start wailing just block your ears and close your eyes.

  Annabel’s chin wobbled again. Grenna didn’t often do magic requiring death, but it always made her feel sick and dirty on the inside. She knew perfectly well that there was nothing she could do about it, but the thought only made her feel even sicker, as if there was something she should be able to do about it.

  Grenna, her shiny eyes coming to bear on Annabel, said sharply: “We’ll have none of your blubbering, thank you, miss! Just you put your fat face into your nightie again!”

  Close your eyes, said Blackfoot’s voice. Just close your eyes and listen to me.

  Annabel closed her eyes, but instead of listening to Blackfoot, she listened to the alien silence of the yard. The wind teased her face but didn’t stir through the greenery, and the only sounds were those of the cats mewling in their circles of rope, and the wheezing of Grenna as she tried to catch her breath after the effort of finding her place.

  At first the mewling and hissing was a constant babble behind Grenna’s wheezing. It wasn’t until the hissing stopped completely that Annabel realised how very loud the mewling had become. Now it wasn’t so much mewling as it was yowling, loud and wailing. Annabel opened her eyes without meaning to and saw that the cats at the outer edge of the spell were writhing in their circles, teeth bared to the morning air. She turned her eyes away from them at once and caught sight of Grenna, her head thrown back with every sign of enjoyment, a blissful smile spread across her broad face. Grenna always had the same expression when she was engaged in death magic: Annabel thought, shivering, that Grenna must be able to feel all the magic flowing through the spell. Death magic spells were some of the few occasions when Annabel was glad she couldn’t feel or see magic. The idea of enjoying that feeling was frightening.

  It wasn’t long before the cats in the spell around her began to scream. Even the grey cat in the centre of the triangle was yowling now, its smoky grey body rippling like mist and expanding as the cats around the edges of the spell shrieked.

  Annabel’s face ached from her eyes and all the way down her throat, tears painful to hold but too frightened to come out. She tucked her face into her flannelled knees and covered her ears with her palms, the thunder of her heartbeat taking over the muffled screaming of cats. And faintly, in the back of her mind, Blackfoot’s voice said: It’s all right, Nan. Keep your ears covered, that’s a good girl. It’ll all be over soon.

  I want it to be over now, thought Annabel piteously, pressing her hands more tightly against her ears. Make it stop, Blackfoot!

  There was a patchwork of spotted black and white behind her eyelids where she had pressed her eyes too tightly into her kneecaps, but Annabel couldn’t seem to stop doing it in spite of that. She shifted her aching arms to give them some relief, and in the gap between covered and uncovered ears she heard someone groaning. It was a deep, gasping groan that sounded male, but that was silly because the only people in the garden were Annabel and Grenna. Annabel lifted her head cautiously from her knees, and through the blurry speckle of white and black she saw that the big grey cat was no longer a cat. It was a huge, vague, misshapen mound of shadow that writhed and bulged, groaned and grew.

  Annabel whimpered, and became aware that Blackfoot was speaking to her again.

  Nan? Nan! Get your feet under you. When I tell you to run, run. You’ll only a have a moment before Mordion is able to stand, and Grenna won’t take long to notice, either. Don’t try to go through the gate: it won’t open for you. Go through the back door of the cottage and straight out the front.

  Shivering, Annabel took her hands away from her ears and pushed herself up from the grass. She immediately wished she hadn’t: most of the cats were silent and still now, but the voices of those still wailing had risen in pitch and wildness until they blended into one scream that was underpinned by the shadow’s—Mordion’s—increasingly human groans. She covered her ears again as quickly as she could, her toes curling in the dewy grass and the dew-wet patch on the seat of her flannels making a coldness behind her. Grenna was still smiling blindly at the lightening sky, her head tipped back and her shoulders slumped, but in the centre of the triangle, the grey cat had become a man entirely.

  As Annabel watched, he began to stir; not as he had earlier, all misshapen bulges and edges, but with deliberation and purpose.

  Now! said Blackfoot. Run, now!

  Mordion turned his head and looked at her, and Annabel froze, losing a precious second in the shock of it. Then Blackfoot howled: Run, Nan! and somehow she was running– heavily, frantically, her bare feet catching in rope and grass as she dashed across the spell. Her feet cleared the single step and stang painfully against the threshold; and behind her, she heard Mordion’s voice grate: “I’ll. Kill. Him.”

  Annabel’s feet caught against each other, plunging her to the floor in a painful heap, palms and knees first. She scrambled to her feet, looking behind her fearfully to where Mordion, rising shakily on one knee, was a menacing shadow with real edges.

  “Stay,” said the shadow, its voice deep and rough. “Stay, or I’ll go up to that house on the hill and kill him.”

  Nan! Where are you?

  “I’ll kill him,” said the shadow again, but Annabel knew in a bright flash of relief that if he could have killed anyone—could have done anything magically—he would already have stopped her that way. Blackfoot was right: Grenna hadn’t been able to do the spell correctly. Annabel turned and ran, meeting a
snarling ball of rigid fur and teeth at the front door, then she and Blackfoot were pelting down the lane while his voice ordered: The castle! You need to get there before Mordion catches you.

  Annabel would have liked to ask him why the castle ruins, but she was already gasping for air, too heavy and clumsy to run for as long as she had been running, and she didn’t have the breath to spare. So she simply concentrated on running, and in the back of her mind she heard Blackfoot’s worried voice wondering in jumbled thoughts and ideas, why Mordion hadn’t yet followed them into the lane.

  Annabel stopped at the fork that branched off to both the ruins and Peter’s house, but when she took a step along the lane that went up toward Peter’s house, Blackfoot was there, snarling and spitting.

  The castle.

  “But Peter!”

  Send the message box. That’s all we have time for. If he catches you…if he catches you–

  “If he catches Peter, he’ll kill him!”

  He can’t kill anyone with as little magic as he’s been able to gather. Nan, please.

  Annabel hesitated a moment longer, then fished for the message box with a shaking hand. The message box was one of Peter’s tickerboxes: if you spoke into the one at the bottom of the hill, another tickerbox in Peter’s room would parrot back what you’d said. It worked in reverse, but not always, and not very well. Annabel, sick with fear, pressed the button on the box and said: “Peter? Peter, can you hear me?”

  There was a long, horrible silence, and then the tickerbox’s impersonal, emotionless voice said: “Wot?”

  “Peter!” said Annabel frantically. “That grey cat isn’t a cat anymore and he said he’s going to kill you!”

  “Wot,” said the emotionless little voice again. And then: “Ann…something happen?”

  Tell him to get to the castle as quickly as he can, said Blackfoot, whipping back and forth at her feet. Nan, we have to go. Mordion’s doing something back at the cottage: I can feel a lot of magic gathering.

  “Blackfoot says you have to come to the ruins as quickly as you can,” said Annabel. “He says it’s the only safe place.”