Cat Tales (19 page)

He was not in the small library either; but in this cozier room, with its book-strewn table and leathern armchairs and friendly small hearth, I chanced upon Mutano.

He gave me a noncommittal salute and returned to his disport with Creeper, pursuing a game that any babbling child might play with a cat, teasingly jigging a scrap of paper tied to a thread and whisking it away when the animal pounced. An idle pastime, methought. Where was the grave business with Creeper of which Astolfo had spoken? I settled into an armchair to await the shadow master's arrival. Rain had begun to lash the ivied walls of the villa and nothing else seemed so pleasurable as to sit at ease for a spell, finding pictures in the flames and hearkening to the fray of the elements.

The fire comported itself in no ordinary fashion. It brightened and dimmed and sent a roiling, misty smoke out over the hearth, a vapor that retained a defined shape and was not of the arbitrary formlessness of familiar hearth-fire smoke.

Against the gently leaping flames, the smoke-shape was difficult to define precisely, but the longer I observed, the more knowable it became. Then I realized that its writhings and saltations, its turnings and moilings, were like those of a cat at play. The mistform creature was aping, as 'twere an image in a mirror, the motions of Creeper as he cavorted, twisted, and feinted the air in merry chase of Mutano's dancing scrap of paper.

I rose and drew closer, trying to discover of what substance this active shape consisted; it was so airy and light and agile that it must have been composed of the most æthereal of stuffs. Soon I knew it to be a shadow, the true shadow of Creeper, even though it was not attached to the green-eyed cat at any point of the body.

Here I beheld a marvel I had only heard rumored. When a shadow is taken from its subject, be that caster ever so active, ever so fluent with sinew and
vis vitae,
the shade, as a rule, loses all inner spirit and lies or stands or hangs inert. It retains its volumes and textures, its tints and tones, and something of its flavors and aromas. Astolfo is capable of detecting, so saith he, certain sounds belonging to a severed shadow, small noises like distant echoes from a lost valley. He is the master. And animation requires a skill and, beyond that, an amplitude of art that I was certain Mutano did not possess, so Astolfo must have had some hand in this accomplishment.

While I sat down again and pleasured in the music of rain-sweep against our walls, Astolfo came sprightly into the room, paused briefly to smile at the antics of Mutano and Creeper, and beckoned me to follow him to the kitchen where he poured for the both of us a dollop of sweet, resinous wine into thick glass beakers.

Thus he commenced: “How went the intercourse with the rope merchant? Have you learned to escape the wiles of the rope-maker's daughter?”

I was mystified; the pale Rudensia was but a child.

Then I understood that he used thieves' language; “the rope-maker's daughter” is an alehouse term for the hangman's noose. “I learn some new thing every day,” I replied.

“Tell me then of your dealings with Esquire Sativius.”

In slow and careful words, I gave him as minute an account of the encounter as I was able, trying to omit naught that might be worthy of notice. Seated on the butcher's block with his head inclined toward me, he almost seemed to twitch his large ears as I spoke.

When I concluded, he sat silent for long moments.

“How many years of age hang on these children?”

“Thirteen.”

His expression grew grave. “This matter may be of a darker character than we have suspicioned. Would you describe their shared shadow to me again? Come as close to the object as may be.”

When I repeated my impressions with some slight enlargement, he still seemed unsatisfied.

“You say this shadow that lay between them was darker of tint that you would otherwise observe in the circumstance?”

“So it appeared there.”

“Was it uniform of its darkness or was the center of it perhaps a little more dark than its flanks?”

“It lay upon a wine-colored carpet of thickish pile,” I said. “I could distinguish no gradation.”

“Close your eyes. Envision all again.”

I did so, but with no result. I shook my head.

“The mother and the father spoke, but the children spoke not?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose that they had spoken. Which voice would be louder, that of the boy or of the girl?”

I considered. “They would be equally soft,” I said, “with something of the timbre as of the pealing of little silver bells. But they did not speak.”

“How did you form your conjecture as to the sound of their voices?”

“I do not know. Yet the soft bell-peal comparison cometh vivid to mind.”

He nodded. “Now close your eyes and envision the shadow where it lay on the carpet. Only do not think about it.”

I closed my eyes, deepened my breathing, and relaxed the concentration of my mind. Then I saw what I had seen. “The center of the shadow is indeed darker than the larger body of it. Yet that center bears the same outline as the greater shadow. It is like an inner shadow of the greater shadow.”

“Doth this dark one rest content where it lies?”

I did not hesitate. “It is a shadow,” I said. “The ways of its thought — if it possess any of that — I never could say in an æon of attempt.”

“Could you declare if the parents are affectionate of their progeny?”

“I believe them so.”

“Might one of them be more so than the other?”

“That is possible,” I said. “When they turned them about-face to depart the room, the mother Funisia rested her hand for a moment on her daughter's shoulder. Sativius did not bestow that small gesture upon his son.”

He hesitated long before he spoke again. “This piece of business I have given over to your care, and it belongs to you to conclude successfully. But I will tell you somewhat of similar circumstances that I have heard in my years. I do so to be of some aid, yet not to direct the affair myself. It is in your charge. I desire also to impress upon you the gravity of this state of things.

“These children now approach that time when ‘swift-wing'd desire,' as the poets name it, first makes its trembling advance within mind and body. Those who have been innocently affectionate as childhood playmates commence to look upon each other with new eyes. They may join in amorous union. This act brothers and sisters ordinarily will not perform, but they may draw together more tightly in mind and spirit than ever before and at last become almost a single entity. These pale-souled children of Sativius already share but one shadow. Soon they may possess only the one soul between them. If this annealment takes place and then at a later season they are parted by some turning of fate, one of them will surely die. Both may well perish.”

“What would be the case if they were separated now, before the tumult of early desire comes upon them?”

“With only one shadow between them, one or t'other would pine away to sickness and live out a life of pallid misery.”

“I can foresee no happy result for the dilemma,” I said.

“Have you no glimmering of a notion? I thought when I found you in the library that you might be setting out upon a course of research.”

“I had thought I might pursue the genealogical line,” I said. “Perhaps this strange malady has been recorded of the Sativius family in time past. If such a case has been historied, perhaps a remedy may have been noted down. I have also conjectured that an ancestral curse might have been laid upon the family by a rival family or by an unknown foe.”

“Beware that you do not mire in superstitious notions concerning inimical spells of witch and warlock. Keep to the science of sciomancy. There may be something in the genealogical tables; you know where the records are shelved. But I will also suggest that you thumb some way through the pages of Morosius.”

“Morosius?
Annales tenebrae antiquitatae?”

This was a tome I held in especial disfavor, a dull, bulky volume of confused accounts from every era and territory of miraculous or preternatural phenomena: fairies that infested bakeries, toads with jewels in their foreheads, flying anvils, drowned monasteries, and so forth. Morosius was particularly fond of peculiar rains falling out of clear blue skies — pebbles, emeralds, thimbles, goats, hay carts, thunderstones, powdered wigs, &c. All this farrago of hearsay and cloudy testimonia was flung upon the pages artlessly, so that one had no indication where to find relatable information.

“I seem to recall there was some story of a statue and its shadow,” Astolfo said. “But it has been long since I perused the book.”

“I shall look into it,” I said. My promise was halfhearted.

“Let us hope these children are not victims of some angry plot,” Astolfo said.

“We shall have enough dealings with a vengeful opponent when Mutano brings his quest for justice into full career.”

“What is happening with Mutano?”

“ 'Twill be a sober amusement,” Astolfo said. “You shall know all of it that is needful sooner than you may desire. . . . But do not let me keep you from the library and the family trees and the learned but mazy sentences of Morosius.”

Mutano had departed the library, but the hearth-fire needed only a little encouragement with a poker and a taste of unseasoned oak to set it crackling merrily. I fetched the requisite volumes of genealogical history to the armchair by the fireside, piled them in a stack of five, seized the topmost, and set to tracing the mainstream and tributaries of the race of Sativius. Soon enough I discerned that there would be little of interest in these histories. 'Twas but the old story of a race of yeomen farmers descended from soldiery. There once had been a great estate, but it had divided into smaller and smaller parcels as inheritors multiplied. The offspring of the former landowners joined the mercenary armies that formerly ranged the countryside or they went to sea or entered into various trades in the newly burgeoning towns.

The man Paolo Sativius, father of the twins, had first followed the sea where he studied the gear and tackle and trim of ships, borrowed money from his father when he abandoned the sail, and founded a rope-making enterprise which incorporated certain improvements in hempen-ware he had devised as a tar.

Of the mother's lineage, little was recorded. I traced a few branches of farmers, petty tradesmen, and undistinguished warriors and let the book drop from my hand.

The rain had increased its force; the windows creaked as the storm beat upon the panes; drops sizzled as they fell down the chimney into the flames. The pleasure of the hour was so calm and somnolent I did not desire to distress it by reading in musty old Morosius, but duty impelled me to return the genealogical tables to their appointed shelves and drag down the heavy folio of the
Annales
and lug it back to my seat. I predicted that it would work its soporific powers so efficaciously that these leaden paragraphs would put me slumbering.

But it is the way of certain books to present a different character to us each time we open them. The rain, the tall stillness of the room, the hearth-fire with the clump of massy shadow there in the ingle: These surroundings caused Moroisus to seem an appropriate companion.

I searched first for any story about a statue since Astolfo would surely rogate me upon the point. But all I discovered was a tale concerning a certain well-loved priest, Prester Vonnard, who enjoyed in his lifetime such high esteem among the populace of his little village of Zenoro that they decided to erect a statue to him and perform an unveiling ceremony lavish with encomious speeches and the solemn chant of a children's chorus.

But when the canvas was swept away from the bronze figure of this paragon of virtue it was seen by one and all that the shadow the statue cast upon the paving stones was of a vivid scarlet hue and seemed in texture almost as viscid as blood. A prudent but close investigation of the life of Vonnard was ordered, and in a short time the statue was removed and the bronze melted and fashioned into armor. The shadow remained, however, an immutable stain; and any traveler to Zenoro still may inspect it. Morosius is, however, silent about the location of Zenoro.

Turning a few idle pages, I chanced upon a speculation by an unnamed philosopher who conjectured that if a lion eat a man, the shadow of the lion will contain, as an envelope contains a document, the shadow of that misfortunate and that this shadow, though indistinguishable, will not be part of the lion's shadow but a separate thing. The man is a spirit superior to the lion, saith this sage, and therefore can never be truly assimilated by an inferior spirit. 'Twas an interesting thought, but I reflected it must provide but small comfort to the man.

One overladen chapter was devoted to the Specter of the Summit, a phenomenon of northern latitudes that I had heard Astolfo discourse upon. A walker approaching the peak of a mountain cloaked in cold mist, and with the obscured sun behind him, will see a shadow advancing toward him and growing larger in its progress. Then, if the mist lighten but a little, he will see his own shadow, darker in hue, cast upon — within — the approaching shadow. At a certain point, depending upon the light and the density of the mist, both shadows disappear. Some overcurious travelers have tumbled into gorges trying to gain closer inspection of this phenomenon.

These were the passages that teased my attention. Other pages excoriating Morosius's rival philosophers or speculating whether the shadow of a rose truly possesses an odor or only the memory of one, &c., &c., I passed over with scant interest. But these instances of shadows-within-shadows seemed to point in a favorable direction, and as I reflected upon them I fell into a contented doze.

My sleep was shortened by a difficulty in breathing. There was some obstruction to inhalation, at first so subtle I thought it part of a dream. It grew thicker about my mouth and nose and when I opened my eyes the room with its windows and candles was darkened as by a pall of smoke. I raised my hands to my face to claw away this weave of fog when it went from me suddenly. It gathered into a ball and then elongated to a ferret-like shape and streaked grayly over the worn carpet to the door. Now, of course, I recognized it as the shadow of Creeper.