by Torey Hayden
“You are strong,” James said as Conor’s shoes passed in front of his pen.
“Yeah!” Conor called and leaped down to the floor. The cardboard cat was held high above him like a parachute. “Up and down, up and down. The mechanical cat can fly!”
Suddenly he halted and looked over. “That’s a song,” he said and smiled. “Did you hear it? That was a song.”
The comment surprised James. He raised his eyebrows.
“Listen. I’ll sing it:
Up and down, up and down
The cat can fly.
It will never die.
Metal fur.
It will never die.
Lots of wires.
It will never cry.”
He spoke a high, thin, crystalline sing-song.
“That’s quite amazing,” James said. “I like your song.”
Conor skipped gaily around the room, his movements free and fluid.
“The cat he knows,
His eyes, they glows.
The cat can fly and never die.”
Bending over his notebook, James scribbled quickly to record the precise words.
Conor noticed this. He paused. “You’re writing what I say again.”
James nodded. “Yes. It’s a beautiful song. I want to remember it.”
“Then you must write this: ‘The Song of the Mechanical Cat’. Write that at the top because that’s its title.”
“All right.”
“Now, underneath it you must write ‘By Conor McLachlan’.”
James did so.
Conor came around to James’s side of the table and bent down to see the notebook. “The Song of the Mechanical Cat, by Conor McLachlan,” he read. “That means it’s my song. I am the author. I created it.”
“Yes,” James replied.
“Will you keep my song? In your notebook?”
“Yes,” James said.
“Everything the boy says, the man will write down. In his true book. Everything the boy says. All the true things. It’ll be our book.”
Conor smiled and held up the cardboard cat. “Today you will write: ‘The boy heard the mechanical cat’s song. He heard it out of nothing and made it something. The boy sang the song all day long.’”
And so the session went with Conor singing freely, his conversation bright and natural, his movements those of any normal, happy boy.
James always gave a warning to the children about the approach of the session end. So, as usual, when only five minutes of the session were left, James said, “It’s almost time to go. When the big hand reaches the ten, that’s the end.”
“No. Today I don’t want to go.”
“You’ve been having a very good time today and don’t feel like going,” James interpreted. “You’d like to stay longer.”
“Today I’ll stay longer,” Conor replied. “I’ll do finger-paints.”
“You wish you had more time,” James said. “Unfortunately, every visit is the same amount of time. When the clock reaches ten minutes to, it’s time to stop.”
“But not today. Today I made a song.”
“Unfortunately, even today.”
“But I don’t want to stop. I’m not finished yet.”
“You’ll be here again on Thursday. Then you can continue.”
“No!” Conor cried in an anguished tone. Then defiantly, “The mechanical cat says ‘No!’” He held the cat out in front of him like a crucifix. “The mechanical cat says, ‘Don’t listen to that man!’” Conor ran off across the room. Clambering over the bookshelf, he hid behind it.
The clock ticked away the last minutes.
Rising from the table, James crossed to the playroom door and opened it.
Alarmed, Conor stood up and peered over the bookshelf.
Dulcie was standing in the hallway outside the room, Laura behind her. “There’s your mum,” James said. “It’s time to go now.”
Conor screamed. Scrambling over the bookshelf, he ran towards James. “No!”
“Here, let’s put the mechanical cat back in the box with his friends,” James said.
“No!” Conor pressed the cardboard cat tight against his chest, shrieked, ran around the table and then out through the open door. He burst past Dulcie before she could catch him but Laura managed to grab hold of the shoulder of his shirt.
Conor screamed so loudly that James’s ears reverberated.
“What’s he got?” Laura asked. “Conor, what’s in your hand? What is it? Here, give it to me. You can’t take things out of the playroom, honey. Let Dr Innes have it back.” It took all three of them to prize Conor’s fingers open enough to remove the cardboard cat.
He howled.
Over the din, James said to Laura, “Would you like to take him into my office? I have another client coming into the playroom, but if you want a few moments to calm him down, Dulcie can go with you.”
Laura shook her head.
“Are you sure?” James asked.
“No,” she replied through gritted teeth, “but, please, just notice what he’s like.” James saw tears in her eyes. “Notice, so that you’ll quit taking Alan’s side on this. Because he isn’t getting better. I’m living in hell at home. He’s like this all the time with me. I honestly don’t think I can take it much longer. I mean that. I can’t.”
Then the tearful mother and sobbing son departed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
James felt that Conor’s behaviour at the end of his session was a positive sign indicating that Conor was confident enough to express anger when his wishes were thwarted.
Laura’s behaviour, on the other hand, troubled James. He and she had shared so many positive sessions together, establishing what had felt to James like a good rapport, and yet she was still so quick to perceive him as taking Alan’s side.
This led directly into what had been James’s other longtime concern about Laura: why did she never bring Conor up? Why did she never enquire about his progress or openly talk about her issues with him at home? Aside from the very early days when they were establishing intake information for Conor, Laura had never even spoken her son’s name in therapy. Indeed, the way she’d thus far structured the therapy sessions by giving this careful chronology of her life’s unfolding story, she’d made it fairly difficult even for James to bring Conor up.
This created a conundrum for James. An important aspect of his therapeutic philosophy involved giving the client complete control. James did strongly believe in the value of this. With a sense of control, with the ability to decide when and how things would be revealed, clients came to trust James and James’s environment enough to explore the fears and secrets that had paralysed their lives. But how long did one stay with that? This had been where everything had come undone in New York. Taking the passive role of listening, reflecting and waiting patiently, James had been too slow to save Adam.
When Laura arrived for her next session, she looked distinctly nervous. Appearing at the door of his office, her hands pushed deep into the pockets of an oversized cardigan, she wrapped them tight around herself as if she were cold.
James smiled kindly. “Come on in.” He gestured to the conversation centre.
She crossed to sit down in the big overstuffed chair. The “womb chair,” as Lars liked to call it. James exchanged a few pleasantries with Laura, mainly about the impending holiday season.
Then Laura said, “I’m sorry about that scene with Conor.”
“No problem,” James replied. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” she said and didn’t meet his eyes.
James let the silence flow in around them.
“I really don’t,” she said.
“That’s all right,” James replied. “In here you decide.”
“It’s Fergus I need to talk about.”
James nodded.
She began quietly, her voice slowly growing in confidence as she relaxed back into storytelling.
“If Fergus had
any uncanny gift, it was his talent for turning up wherever I happened to be in spite of my complex schedule and the size of the city. Occasionally, even when I was out shopping, I’d return to my car in the car park to find him standing beside it. He said he did it by focusing on my life force and because he loved me so much. He couldn’t bear to be away from me. However much time we spent together, Fergus always wanted more.
“I didn’t find this attention overwhelming in the beginning. I was in love with him and wanted to be with him every moment I could. Besides, being his girlfriend was such a buzz – a lot of people really did take this ‘prophet’ business seriously and they looked up to him. They admired him and they envied me, being so close to him. I liked that.
“It felt like a dream, being the centre of Fergus’s life. He made no disguise of how much he wanted me and how much he wanted to please me. For example, my birthday is in June – well past the lilac season in Boston – so he drove all the way up to Maine to find lilacs still in bloom in the cooler elevations and bring a huge bouquet for me because he knew they were my favourite flower. No one had ever done such a thoughtful thing for me. I loved feeling so wanted.
“It wasn’t unconditional love, though. Fergus was always turning up with books on philosophy and religion and even quantum physics – two, three, four at a time – saying, ‘Read this and we’ll set up a time to talk about the ideas.’ There was no question that I would not only read the books and digest their ideas but also discuss them with him in considerable detail. It was almost as if I were taking second degree alongside medicine.
“He was very keen to improve me. He was appalled that I ate ‘dead flesh’ and insisted the only way to purify myself for my role as his consort in the New World was to become vegetarian. He was mystified by my inclination to be incoherent with tiredness when he wanted to see me late at night. To him my exhaustion indicated a lack of discipline as far as my body was concerned. It showed weakness or perhaps even a wilful choice of the physical realm over the spiritual. And then there were my ‘worldly connections’, as Fergus termed them. This included my CD collection, my enjoyment of going to the movies, and most definitely the time I put into studying. He was the only person I’d ever met who was dismissive of medicine as a discipline. He could not see the value of traditional education, which he regarded as rigid and ‘establishment’, aimed solely at perpetuating the status quo. But worse, he even saw the time I spent writing about Torgon as ‘worldly’ and thus, an activity I needed to let go of.
“‘I have to write the Torgon stories,’ I’d protested. She was, after all, what had got me where I was.
“Fergus was adamant. Writing about Torgon, he insisted, only stifled my evolution as a pure channel. Torgon should only come through me directly.
“We talked about Torgon constantly. This Torgon, like the one I trotted out for the Tuesday night group, had long ceased to be related to the real one. Fergus translated and reshaped her continuously in order to help me to understand her for what she really was: not a figment of my imagination, not a character from my writing, but a Being of Light, who had come to me through my play as a child because this was all I was capable of holding in my mind at that age. Now, however, it was important that I allowed Torgon to return to her natural form and to accept her mission for me.
“Fergus explained in great detail how she was passing wisdom through me to help bring about this new world of peace and universal love. I needed to accept this and purify myself with an appropriate diet, meditation, and the right kind of company in order that I might better open myself to this beautiful expression of universal love.
“I did say at one point that Torgon had never seemed to me to be a particularly shining example of universal love. Her life was altogether as frail and human as mine, and her society was downright brutal. Fergus ignored this. All he was concerned with was that I opened myself up for direct communication with her.
“I desperately wanted to believe what Fergus was telling me. I loved him and wanted to live to up to his dreams and I wanted life to be the way he said. I longed to be the genuine psychic Fergus believed I was capable of being. I wanted to channel a true Being of Light who really had chosen me alone from the billions of people on earth. I just so yearned to be what everybody already thought I was.”
When the session was over, James wemt in search of this “real” Torgon. There were only a few stories left, none of them very long. Sitting down in the “womb chair,” he put his feet up on the coffee table and started reading.
Coming down the steep path from the high holy place to look for the food offering, Torgon saw a figure standing in the shadows at the forest’s edge.
“Who’s there?”
The figure didn’t move.
Torgon slipped down between the last of the large rocks. She paused a moment, her heartbeat in her throat. At last she ventured closer. “Mogri! It’s you! How my heart cheers to see you.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
Mogri stepped out of the shade of the trees. “Here. I’ve brought your food that you may eat while keeping your communion with the gods.” Angrily she chucked the basket out onto the grass.
“Mogri?”
“No, take it. Mam has sent it especially for you. For you must always have the best. So take it, Torgon. Eat.”
“I can’t. Not here. I must return to sacred ground to eat.”
“Aye, that sounds like you. Very well. Keep your holiness intact.” Mogri turned away.
“Mogri? What goes so ill with you? What’s happened?”
Mogri burst into tears. “Tadem’s dead.”
“What?”
“Aye, Torgon. Three days ago. Working in his father’s smithy, he took a cut across his hand. Just here. Just a tiny cut, a graze. But evil spirits entered and he’s died a writhing death.”
“So fast? Did not the wise woman come to put a poultice on?” Torgon asked.
“It never should have mattered. But there are so many evil spirits now. The wise woman came but the spirits had already grown deathly strong and she couldn’t call them out.”
“Oh, this brings much sorrow to my heart.” Torgon reached out. “Here, take the comfort of my arms and I shall weep with you.”
“What good will that do me now?” Mogri said and pulled away. “Where were you three nights ago? That’s when I needed you. We prayed all night in the holy temple and lit candles that your spirit might see and tell you to return, but you did not come.”
“Oh, Mogri, I’m so sorry.”
“That night of Ansel’s death, when I counselled you to tell the elders that the two of you had simply been in disagreement and the knife came accidentally between you, you said no. You said, ‘I will tell it as it is, that he showed himself to be unfit for sacred duty and Dwr commanded me to end his life.’ You said, ‘To do less than tell the truth would make me what he said I was. It is in my heart to show that I am more.’ And this is more? Hiding on the high holy place so Ansel’s brothers can not touch you, while we in the village suffer with no holy guidance?”
Torgon turned away. She slumped, discouraged, against a tree. “So, what would you have me do? Say, yes, I ran fear? All right. I ran away, afraid. And for that weakness I’m very sorry, but I’m divine only in so much as I am human. I feared being parted from my life before I had a chance at other courses. So, I withdrew here to let Dwr tell me what he would have me do.”
“And what would he have me do, Torgon?” Mogri replied bitterly. “I was never Tadem’s wife, for there was no Seer there to marry us and I now carry an eight-months’ babe inside me. What man will want me now, when I’m so soon to yield a crop he didn’t sow?” Bringing up a hand, Mogri wiped back her tears. “What should I do? Leave the babe to die to make myself more marriageable? Or stay forever a daughter in my father’s house?”
“I am sorry, Mogri. I’ve never meant that my burdens should fall on you.”
“Perhaps not, but they have and you’ve never stoppe
d to lift them up again.”
“Mogri, please. Do forgive me. I’m truly sorry.”
“Yes, I know you are.” A second sigh. Mogri wiped back the tears. “I know too it’s not your fault alone. But life does seem much unfair to me. And my heart is sorely sick with it.”
Torgon approached her.
“At the very least, won’t you come back among us?” Mogri asked. “Can’t you make strong your heart and fight the fear? It’s quiet now. The elders will give you fair hearing for what you’ve done.”
“Shall I tell you truly why I bide here yet?” Torgon asked and her shoulders drooped. “The Power’s waned. I know not why, but fear I lose my holiness. I’ve stayed here, awaiting its return, for I am naught without it.”
“They say in the village that you are already dead, that Dwr’s relieved your body of your spirit in fair payment for the holy Seer’s death. If you stay away much longer, the Power will most definitely pass into another’s hands and you’ll never get it back. So, won’t you please make yourself strong enough to return again and prove the rumour-mongers wrong?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
As much as James longed to have Becky and Mikey at Christmas, it was important to him that Christmas be a time of good memories for the children, not of fighting parents. His own parents now passed away, his brother living on the other side of the country, James knew he couldn’t provide a traditional Christmas with all the trimmings like Sandy’s family celebrated. So, in the end, he and Sandy both agreed that Becky and Mikey would spend Christmas with her and then travel to South Dakota for New Year’s Eve.
James had worked hard to create new traditions for this holiday. The kids were still too young for staying up late, so they had settled on celebrating New Year’s Eve by having a “picnic” in front of the fireplace in the living room. James let them roast hotdogs and marshmallows over the dancing flames. They finished off by throwing handfuls of specially treated pine cones into the fire afterwards to make the flames turn different colours.
Their other tradition was to go shopping on the 31st to buy each child a new outfit to wear on New Year’s Day and a new toy to play with. The latter James realized was an indulgence so soon after the glut of presents the kids had received at Christmas, but the pleasure they had shopping together always outweighed his better judgement.