The Ginger Cat

by Lucia Ashta

  Unlike the elven arrow that snaked between Washur’s armor in the courtyard of Irele Castle and penetrated his side, and unlike even the light that I emitted to counter the dark blobs and which reached the Count, Washur did not walk away from Mordecai’s attack.

  It wasn’t just that he hadn’t seen it coming. Mordecai was a powerful wizard, perhaps as powerful as the Count in his own way. Mordecai knew as many spells as Washur, even if he wasn’t prepared to ignore morality and consider all of them at his disposal as the Count did. Still, it wasn’t any of that.

  The Count of Washur fell unceremoniously to his butt, his sword clattering out of his reach, not because of Mordecai’s power in particular—although only a wizard of great power could ever hope to defeat Count Washur. Rather, the reason for the Count’s seemingly impending defeat was a simple one, which the Count didn’t see because of its plain existence.

  It was time. The time is now. There were times when righteousness and light had their victory over darkness. There were times when balance was fought for and regained. There were times when good had to triumph over evil.

  And Mordecai, and Marcelo and Gertrude, and even Winston and Salazar, were on that roof at just the right time. And I was also heading for it.

  The power of the elements rushed from Mordecai’s extended hands like a ball of white fire, and it traveled faster than sound. Before Washur could think to react, he was flung to the floor like a rag doll. As he sailed through the air, he had a flash of a doll that the younger of his two sons had before he died. The Count had held onto that doll for years, until the darkness consumed him enough that his heart could no longer feel his son at the touch of the soft and worn cloth of the doll.

  As he flew through the air, the Count felt like that doll, limbs all soft and limp. And he remembered. He remembered the doll, and he remembered his son, and then he remembered his other son and his wife, and how they all felt to his touch. He remembered everything he’d tried so hard to forget—until he eventually had.

  When the Count hit the stone flooring of the roof, it was more than his rump that seemed to break. Even then, Washur knew that his bottom would be bruised the next day, but the only hard slap he felt was to his heart.

  There, deep within a vacuous chamber, his heart tried to thud back to life. Once. Long enough for the Count to locate where he used to feel his heart, so long ago.

  But that one thud wasn’t enough to spark life into what was long dead.

  The Count got to his feet. He shook off the surprise of Mordecai’s attack and his fall and memories he believed better left in the dark.

  Washur didn’t reach for his sword. In a fight of true magic, the strength of metal wasn’t the greatest weapon.

  The Count squared his stance toward the old magician, who by now had reached Marcelo’s side. He bared his teeth toward both of them, looking like the beast he’d become.

  Chapter 44

  Salazar hadn’t wanted to come out onto the roof. Mordecai had forced him, not by actual force, but by persuasion.

  The weathered magician had paused by Salazar long enough to say, “We are victims of life only so long as we see it that way. What may seem to be difficulties are often opportunities to discover what we are made of, and who we really are.”

  When Mordecai continued up the stairs, Salazar followed the swishing dark cloak out through the door the old wizard held open for him. Salazar hadn’t known that would be his decision, but Mordecai had.

  Now, Salazar hung behind, close to the door. He hadn’t followed Mordecai as he advanced on the Count. Salazar was no longer certain of the validity of Mordecai’s words out in the glare of the sun and his father’s wrath. Washur’s anger wasn’t yet directed at Salazar, and already Salazar was debating whether it would be possible for him to slink back down the stairs without being noticed.

  He’d had enough of his father’s cruelty to last him several lifetimes, even if he lived as long as Washur. He didn’t particularly care to see what his father would do to Marcelo and Mordecai, and he especially didn’t want to see what his father did to Mina. Winston might enjoy watching, but Salazar didn’t.

  Salazar had decided to retreat and hope for the best when his father’s voice rung out, sharp as a blade, stilling feet that had already thought of moving.

  “There you are, son.” When Washur said son he made it sound like an insult.

  Marcelo turned to look over his shoulder at his nephew, feeling stung by Washur’s words for the first time that day. Whatever his nephew’s allegiances, Marcelo bristled. After all, this was still his sister’s son.

  As if Salazar felt Marcelo’s gaze upon him, he looked at him. It was only a quick and furtive glance, but both Marcelo and the Count caught it.

  “What is it, Salazar?” The Count dragged out his son’s name as if it were worse of an insult than son. Neither word should have been an insult. But it was true that the Count’s use of the word ‘Salazar’ was worse.

  Marcelo, already made suspicious of his nephew’s name by Salazar’s hooded warnings, saw the subtle shift in this younger version of himself. Salazar’s eyes changed when his father spoke his name. Marcelo had seen softness in them when his nephew turned to look at him. That softness fled as fast as the name left the Count’s lips.

  Marcelo recognized what was left behind of his nephew not for what it was—Marcelo didn’t fully understand exactly what was happening, but he had a good idea—but for what it was not. Salazar might have been on his way to becoming their ally, and he might have not. Whether he’d been or not didn’t matter any more. Because clearly, he no longer was.

  Again, he was the Count of Washur’s puppet. And Washur was an excellent puppet master.

  “Come join me, Salazar,” the Count beckoned.

  Marcelo watched his nephew attentively, looking especially toward his eyes. As they always did, the eyes revealed everything, even the deepest of secrets. Salazar’s eyes, bright blue like Marcelo’s, were impassive and unchanging now. The spell was firmly in place, and the heart of Clarissa’s son was imprisoned by its terms, so long as they lasted.

  Like an automaton, Salazar obeyed. He walked over to join his father. His body seemed to move without the will of his mind.

  “It’s good that you have finally joined us. I was waiting for you. It’s your right to avenge your mother’s death. It’s your right to kill your uncle, your mother’s murderer.” The word murderer slithered off the Count’s tongue.

  Despite himself, knowing almost every word to be a lie, Marcelo recoiled inside. Washur was the worst of all poisonous snakes. His dance was more deadly than that of a cobra, even if his strike was nowhere near as fast. Washur killed his prey in the casting of webs woven from venomous words.

  Salazar leaned forward. Marcelo leaned toward him, ready to meet him halfway. Mordecai threw a murderous look at Washur, perfectly capable of murdering an ordinary human still in possession of his soul. Washur ignored Mordecai, enthralled instead with the machinations of his puppet.

  Winston stood behind them all, seemingly forgotten. And Mina stood at his side, watching the action with interested eyes that still looked all too human, despite Washur’s skill in transfiguration.

  And it was then, in that precise moment, when balances were about to be determined, when truths were at war with lies, that I crashed through the door, and out upon the roof.

  Chapter 45

  Although every set of eyes turned to face me, only the Count of Washur moved to action. Without looking away from me, he flicked his hand behind him.

  I followed his movements just in time to see his magic lift Mina—my sister in feline form—and hurl her over the side of the roof as if she were a scrap of used, crumpled paper. Mina hovered in the air for the slightest of moments. Then, she dropped.

  She plummeted as if she were made of iron, quickly overtaking the parapet. And then she spun into a free fall. I knew it even without looking. The Count would’ve made sure the hidden ledge beneath the parap
et wouldn’t save her.

  “Oh well,” Washur said, his voice gratingly pleasant. “It wasn’t what I’d planned. But what’s life if not one improvisation after another?” It was the sort of inane talk I’d grown up with around the dinner table at Norland Manor. I didn’t care for its falseness then, and I certainly wasn’t about to stick around to wait for my sister’s death.

  I ran across the rooftop, solid footfalls landing upon solid ground, knowing that soon I’d leave it.

  When I reached the edge of the roof, I didn’t slow. Instead, I moved faster. From there I could see how far my sister had fallen already, and the castle’s roof wasn’t high enough from the ground just a few stories below us.

  I jumped up onto the parapet and leapt. I pulled my arms to my side in a dive, urging my body to go faster.

  Finally, I was embodying who I was meant to become.

  Chapter 46

  The Count, who’d unconcernedly flung my sister off a rooftop without looking, spun on the heel of his pointed shoes and ran to the edge of the roof, in time to see my body streamline into aerodynamic flight.

  His hands clenched the edge of the stone while he leaned over it, eyes wide in disbelief. I knew his nervousness didn’t stem out of concern that I might not reach Mina before she splattered unceremoniously against the ground below. It was the thought that he’d underestimated me. His greed for power would’ve been greatly satisfied had he been able to consume my soul as he had all those others.

  Marcelo and Mordecai saw the Count’s distraction as an opportunity to rid the world of his darkness. It was what we knew we’d have to do when we arrived at Washur with the daybreak this morning.

  They advanced on Washur. But when they neared Salazar, he bristled and opened his mouth to shout out a warning to his father.

  Mordecai continued toward the Count, while Marcelo changed course to halt Salazar’s warning.

  He hurled a ball of air at his nephew, which was enough to draw Salazar’s mouth closed. Then he flicked his gaze toward Winston to verify he wasn’t an immediate threat.

  Winston was watching Mordecai’s progress, albeit surreptitiously. He probably recognized that the Count of Washur might be on his way to becoming the lesser of the powerful forces on that roof.

  As Mordecai was about to reach Washur, Mina was about to crash against the ground, and I was about to reach her, my hands already outstretched.

  Washur couldn’t pull himself away from the spectacle, even though more than five centuries had taught him not to turn his back on an enemy. Being the man he was, the Count didn’t turn his back on his allies either. But my flight was extraordinary.

  And so it was that Mordecai was able to stand unnoticed behind Count Washur, and quickly finished whispering the spell that’d bind the Count’s magic. It was a long spell, and Mordecai spoke it with speed, because speed could mean victory, and the lack of it death.

  The Count whirled on Mordecai, missing the predicted moment of Mina’s impact, because he felt the constriction begin. Mordecai refused to meet the Count’s eyes. This was his only chance at binding this man, and if he lost it, he’d be dead, and it was likely that everyone else he cared about in this world would die soon after him.

  Mordecai spun his arms in the air, mimicking the motion that would bind a person’s arms to his body with rope. When he’d given the bindings enough turns around Washur’s body, they began to glow, sufficiently to announce their place around the dark magician. Washur looked down at the glowing fastenings, aghast.

  He let out a groan that sounded like real pain, even though the process of binding didn’t hurt the body. Seconds after, a smaller, more timid sound imitated that of the Count’s. The ropes Marcelo was tying around his nephew had begun to glow as well, bringing with them a foreshadowing of finality.

  Unlike Mordecai, Marcelo didn’t avoid his nephew’s eyes. Binding Salazar’s magic wasn’t what Marcelo had wanted to do, but he had no choice.

  He didn’t want to harm Salazar, but he didn’t want his nephew to harm anyone else either. His only choice was to bind his magic—an act forbidden to wizards under normal circumstances.

  Almost at the exact same moment, Marcelo and Mordecai concluded their spells on son and father, and tied the knot on the spell in the air in front of them. Now Marcelo was the only person alive that could unbind Salazar, and Mordecai the only one able to undo the bindings on Washur.

  Washur and Salazar could still inflict harm in the usual physical sense. Their swords remained as sharp and able as ever, but they could no longer lash out through spells.

  Marcelo ran a cautious look over the younger version of himself, but soon abandoned him, despite the distrust of the furious glaze in those same blue eyes. He ran, as fast as I’d sped across the roof less than a minute before, to reach those same stones I catapulted from. Marcelo felt a hand on his shoulder as Mordecai came to look as well.

  Only Mordecai and Marcelo had reason to trust each other on that roof. There were abundant arguments why everyone else there should mistrust one another. But my flight wasn’t something seen every day, or ever really.

  The Count of Washur, seething at his virtual imprisonment, still turned back to lean over the parapet. Salazar, almost as angry as his father, and feeling betrayed besides, ran to reach the wall in time. Winston, careful not to announce any allegiance, remained to the side away from all of them, but looked over as well.

  All sets of eyes followed me, my skirts up by my ears, all but obscuring Mina’s body, the size of an average domesticated cat. A tip of tail would whip out to one side of my skirts, fighting to be seen amid rippling scarlet taffeta.

  I was so close to my little sister. I could almost reach her now.

  But she was virtually at the ground, and I thought surely she was so close now that the earth element could reach up and tickle her playfully for the second before the impact killed her.

  Chapter 47

  While I pummeled toward the earth, I thought only of my sister and her kind, gentle eyes, which were just like mine except for the yellow streak through one of them, a constant reminder of her uniqueness and the gift she was to me.

  We were going too fast and there was too little time and space for me to reach her and halt our descent. The probability was strong that if Mina died, so would I. Even if I reached Mina in time to get a good hold on her, we might still both crash and break against the dirt, anyway. I’d have to use great strength of magic to counter the force that drove us into the earth like a hammer drove a nail.

  To make things worse, I was no master at flying. I’d flown only twice before, and the first time, I’d fallen. It’d be a great deal of luck if my sister and I survived the Count’s last act of magic.

  The moment finally arrived, despite the slow motion that seemed to rule these instances where death was so close, yet there was a sliver of a chance to avoid it. It was now or never. Mina and I would die next, or a miracle of magic would happen. And none of us, least of all me, knew what that might look like.

  Every man atop the roof, whether friend or foe, held his breath on a collective inhale of unbearable suspense.

  I, however, continued to breathe, and continued not to think about what I was doing or the risk I was taking.

  The only one thought—although it wasn’t really a thought, but a notion that came from the pulsing in my center—burst through me like a spark, just like when my sisters and I teased each other, rubbing our feet against the rugs and then touching each other to release the startling energy we somehow built, as if that process were a magic all of its own.

  My fingers finally curled around an auburn tail. My grip was in the process of tightening when the five-petal knot activated all the elements.

  The air rose up more powerfully than a geyser. The earth retreated more fluidly than a gaping sinkhole. The water within my sister and me simmered into perfect stillness. And the fire roared within me bringing me and my magic fully to life.

  I came to a complete sto
p, yanked violently from flight. And so did my sister. My eyeballs rattled in their sockets with the shock of sudden inertia, and my skin seemed ready to peel from my body from the strain.

  The earth would have crushed us if it hadn’t retreated, gifting us with more space and time. For once, time, which had been against us since Marcelo and I first met, became our ally. And never had I been more grateful that it happened now.

  She and I hovered and then floated softly down until we landed in a hole in the ground, burrowed within mounds of earth shoved rapidly out of the way on all sides. I let go of her tail and rolled to the side in the dirt.

  Incongruously, I began to laugh, then to giggle, until I felt a cold nose nuzzle my face.

  Then, I began to cry.

  Chapter 48

  Air rushed from Marcelo’s lungs in an audible whoosh and Mordecai patted his back in loud claps.

  “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” Mordecai celebrated. His child-like enthusiasm ignored the danger that still surrounded them. He celebrated with infectious joy when there was reason to celebrate.

  “We almost lost her, son. But we didn’t,” Mordecai said and followed the statement with a giggle that would’ve seemed out of place emitting from the long gray beard.

  It was then that the Count’s murderous gaze summoned Marcelo and Mordecai’s attention. Obviously, even though Mordecai had bound the Count’s magic, the fight wasn’t over. Washur’s sword was drawn and it became apparent that his intention was to use it, immediately.

  Mordecai’s smile retreated to the forest of his beard, and Marcelo turned quickly to lean over the parapet once more.

  “Clara, do not re-enter the castle. Get Gertrude to safety and wait for us there,” Marcelo called down, hoping that I’d understand that he meant for me to go to the horses, hidden at the bottom of the hill. It was important that I not enter the castle. Within it, I’d only encounter more danger.