The Catswold Portal (13 page)

“Just put someone else in the date. Get Garcheff. Any painter in the Bay area would be pleased to have a show at the Chapman.”

“If I'd known earlier I could have put the date up. Or I could have gotten someone. There's not enough time. And what about the New York show?” He set down his glass and picked up his keys. “The brochures are already at the printers. I won't cancel.”

“Call the printer. I'll pay for the damn brochures.”

“There isn't time to do new ones.”

“The hell there isn't. Listen, Rye, you—”

“Christ, Braden. Be reasonable. If Alice were alive you wouldn't be doing this.”

Braden went white. He drained his glass, staring at Rye. Rye looked at the glass pointedly. “Ever since Alice died, Brade, you've been letting yourself go to hell.”

“That's a stupid damn remark.”

Melissa hardly heard them.
Ever since Alice died—Alice…Ever since Alice died
…She hugged herself, shivering and hurt, so shocked she felt sick, but she didn't know why. She didn't remember anyone named Alice.

Rye said, “Where
is
Alice's work? That whole alcove used to be full of her prints.”

“At her gallery. Where the hell else would it be?”

“The last etchings, too? The Thompson thoroughbreds? And those drawings of cats' faces from the garden door? The Blackeston retrievers? She was the only animal artist on the West Coast worth a damn, and you've hidden her work away.”

Braden grabbed Rye, twisting him around. “I haven't hidden a damn thing! What the hell do you—?” Then he looked embarrassed and released the smaller man. “Sorry.” He walked away toward the bushes where Melissa crouched, then turned to look at Rye.

“Alice hasn't anything to do with this. I'm painted out, run out of steam, that's all.” He paused. “I have a dinner date, have to dress. Stay if you like. Maybe you can find something for the street fair.”

Rye scowled at his retreating back. “You have ten weeks to get the show in shape.” He left the terrace. As he crossed the garden, a woman's voice called from somewhere up the hill, “Tom? Tom?” Melissa watched Rye drive away, puzzled by the argument, and filled with emotions she didn't understand. Braden had gone inside.

When she looked up the hill again, a thin old woman in a brightly flowered dress was crossing from one house to another. The wind had stilled. Melissa could smell suppers cooking. As the sun vanished behind the woods she grew cold. She felt suddenly very alone.

When Braden came out and crossed the garden to a station wagon, she looked speculatively at the studio door. It would be warm in there, and there would be something to eat. She had a sense of delicious food within that childhood refuge. He gunned the engine, and squealed the tires as he turned around in the dead end lane and headed toward the
highway. He had been dressed in a pale jacket and slacks, a white shirt and tie. He had left a light burning. She studied the niche between the brick terrace and the house where he had hidden his key. What good to lock a door, then put the key almost in plain sight? She was considering the wisdom of going in when a branch rustled behind her and a boy's voice said, “Where were you?”

She swallowed, frozen.

“There's chowder for supper; you'd better come on if you want any.”

Every instinct told her to stay still. She tried to glance up without turning. Her heart was thundering.

The leaves rustled again. “There, that's better. Hey! Keep your claws in!” A boy strode past her close enough to touch, carrying an orange cat on his shoulder. As he moved away up the garden, silently she let out her breath.

The cat must have been standing just behind her. She wondered if it had been watching her. But it was the boy who had shocked her.

He was about twelve. He had the same dark brown hair as Prince Wylles, the same dark curling lashes and rounded chin—Efil's chin. The same straight nose as Wylles and Efil. He was fatter than Wylles, his color high and healthy, but still he looked like Prince Wylles. She watched him run up the steps of the white house carrying the cat and disappear inside, slamming the door. She could have been seeing Prince Wylles with only a few pounds added.

She had seen, close enough to touch, the boy who would be changed for Prince Wylles.

Surely Vrech had not simply discovered the boy here. He must have brought him here to this garden. She wondered how he had managed that. If Netherworld spells did not work here, what manipulations had Vrech used?

No matter. The changeling boy was here. Soon Vrech would take him down into the Netherworld. She wished powerfully she could undo her tryst with Efil last night. Thinking of bearing Efil's child, without clear promise to the throne, made her feel imprisoned, trapped and shamed.

When the garden was empty she came out from the bushes and approached the glass door. She wanted to see inside the house; she wanted to be in there, perhaps discover something to stir further memory. She felt torn between the two worlds, she did not know where she belonged.

N
ight was drawing down over the garden, making the vast sky seem less daunting. Melissa approached the glass door and slipped into the shadows. Up the hill behind her, lights burst on suddenly in the center house: not the slow rising of lantern light, but all at once, bright and steady. She tried the knob, pushed the glass door open. Letting herself into the bright room, she moved away from the lighted lamp, hoping not to be seen through the windows.

The smell of the studio was of canvas and turpentine and linseed oil. Familiar smells that filled her with nostalgia. She touched a corner of the nearest painting, and finding the paint dry, she stroked the colors, caught by the comforting feel of the oils. But the memories that came glanced away too soon; she could make nothing more of them than pleasant, familiar sensations.

Tubes of paint were laid out neatly on the table in three rows. Clean brushes stood bristles up in a heavy mug. A can of turpentine and a bottle of oil stood behind the little cups which would hold them. Stretcher bars and rolls of canvas leaned against the wall. But these items used by a painter did not belong to the memory of this house; they belonged somewhere different. And no detail of that other place would reveal itself.

She entered the short hall knowing she would find, on her right, the kitchen, on her left, the bedroom, and the bath straight ahead.

In the kitchen she reacquainted herself with the taps for running water, with the refrigerator, and with the knobs that gave fire to the stove. She took two apples from a bowl, and a bottle of milk and some cheese from the refrigerator. She drank the milk and put the empty bottle back. She found the bread, ate two slices, and tied six more and the cheese and apples in a dish towel.

When she looked into the bathroom she remembered the floor of small, white tiles. She remembered bathing in the tub when she was a child, squeezing soap bubbles over the ornate fish spigots. Then in the bedroom she stood at the open window looking downhill to the highway, watching the lights of passing cars reflected in the marsh water, watching night fall across the bay, as she had done many times when she was small. She sniffed the familiar salty air, gripped by nostalgia, and distressed at her inability to remember more. She went slowly out again to the terrace, caught in the half-awake dream, and unable to put anything together.

The past that she could glimpse was not whole—feelings and places all were scattered. The people flashing vaguely in her memory could not be drawn forth—they were shadows, their voices were unidentifiable whispers.

Outside, looking up the darkening garden, she searched for Vrech, then went quickly up through the tangle of bushes and flowers and small trees, hurrying past the upper houses into the woods.

The scent of the trees was almost like a Netherworld forest, familiar and comforting. She found a nest of fallen boughs between three trees, and rearranged the dry, soft-needled limbs to make room for herself. Apparently this was the nest of some animal, but tonight it would be hers.

As she ate her supper of cheese and bread and apple, the night around her pushed the last long shadows together into chambers of darkness. Below her in the white house a light went out. The wind turned colder. In the dark-shingled
house, a light went on upstairs. She could hear music, then strangely resonant voices that startled her until she remembered radios.

She remembered listening to the radio while lying snuggled in her bed with the lights out, listening to a radio story in the dark…whispering to someone in the bed across from her. They were shivering at the story and laughing together…

But who? Someone young and laughing. But nothing she could do would bring more than that fragment of memory.

Pressing deeper into the branches she became aware of the scent of cat on them, and without wondering how she could tell, she knew this was the scent of the yellow cat that she had seen from the bushes beside the terrace. As she considered her sudden sharp perception, she realized her vision had changed, too. Through the dark night, now she could see branches and deadfalls which, moments before, had been black smears. And she could see farther to the sides; as if she were seeing back past twitching, pointed ears. Excited, she sniffed the wind for new scents, waiting, wondering what it would feel like to change, to shape shift…

Waiting. Excited, afraid…

Waiting…

She didn't change. Her vision returned to normal human eyesight. Her sense of smell dulled again. Gone was the wild, skittery feeling that was so addicting.

She unclenched her fists, disappointed.

Perhaps she would not change until she knew a spell to help her. She must try to remember a changing spell.

Depressed, feeling flat and dull, she finished her supper, then curled down within the branches. How sad, to feel wonders dangled enticingly before her, then feel them jerked away. Nearing sleep, she felt again the sensation of being a child…

Only this time she had been terrified.

She was wearing a blue taffeta dress. She was perhaps four or five. She was huddled alone in an alley crying into the taffeta skirt when a stranger came and lifted her up and
carried her into a strange house. She screamed and kicked…

She could not remember any more. She lay shivering, fully awake again, galvanized by a child's helpless fear.

 

She woke at dawn, alarmed at the heavy weight on her chest. When she opened her eyes she was staring into yellow eyes: the yellow cat sat atop her chest gazing down at her.

She didn't know whether to laugh or be afraid. When she stared back at him, he seemed suddenly to turn shy and retreated to the piled boughs and crouched there watching her. His golden tail twitched, his golden eyes remained intent. He was so alert, looked so intelligent, she felt her spine tingle.

She stayed still, knowing she was in his territory. She wasn't sure whether his intensity signaled interest or challenge. She did not want to battle a yellow tomcat for this space. The cat regarded her for some moments, self-possessed and bold. His coat looked so thick and silken she longed to touch it. She could still feel the warmth of his heavy body crouched on her chest. At last, deciding he was friendly, she started to reach to let him sniff her fingers, but the look in his eyes changed to active challenge and she drew her hand back.

But then his yellow eyes grew puzzled, as if he was as confused by this encounter as she. Then suddenly his ears twitched in the direction where the hill dropped, and he turned to stare down the garden. She heard a boy calling, “Pippin. Pippin.” She raised herself up slightly above the branches, looking.

She saw the changeling boy, standing on the porch of the white house. When he spotted Pippin perched on the branches, he came directly up between the houses and into the woods. Not until he was very near did he see Melissa tucked down among the dry limbs. He stopped, startled; then he grinned.

“You're in his bed. Did you sleep there?” When she didn't answer, he flushed. “Sorry, didn't mean to pry. I'm Tom
Hollingsworth.” He picked up the cat. The big tom flopped happily over the boy's shoulder, lying limp, looking down remotely at her.

She said, “I'm Sarah.”

Tom studied her with a direct, comfortable gaze. She looked back boldly into the child's face, seeing a miraculously healed Prince Wylles.

He said, “You don't live in the village. I'd remember you.”

“I live that way,” she said, pointing off through the woods, wondering what lay in that direction.

“In the city?”

“Yes, in the city.” She imagined tall buildings and steep hills as in the Harpy's vision. Or was she seeing something from her own memory?

She said, “Is there—someone who comes to the garden, someone named Vrech?”

Tom nodded, but his eyes hardened. “He's the gardener. He does all our yards, they're all mixed together.” He looked at her deeply, with a child's honesty. “Do you know him? Do you like him?”

“I don't know him really, I just—I know his name. You don't like him?”

“He's always asking questions.”

“I'm asking questions.”

Tom grinned. “His questions are—pushy. He wants to know what I'm reading, what I'm learning in school, what my favorite foods are—he asked me a lot about that. What I'm doing this summer, even what foods my mother doesn't eat—really nervy.”

“Do you answer his questions?”

“I guess I do,” Tom said, surprised. “There's something about him—when he asks, I just—I suppose because he's a grown-up and—and because he frightens me a little,” he confided. He bent his knee and scratched his leg without leaning over, so as not to disturb the cat. “He wanted to know what my father did before he died. One time, before we moved here, he asked me what my mother did in her
work. He knew she was a broker's assistant, but he wanted to know exactly what she did, stuff that was none of his business.”

“Has he always been gardener here?”

“Since before we came. He does gardening all over the village—for some of Mama's friends. That's how we found this house. He told Mama's friend Virginia about it right after our house burned. He said this house was empty, and the people might be willing to rent until we got settled. My mother thinks that was very nice. But I don't like him. I didn't like him helping us.”

“Who—who lived in the house before it was empty?”

“Someone named—Santeth, I think. Did you know someone here?”

“No, I…”

But she did; there was a Santeth in Affandar Palace, a captain of the queen's guard.

Tom shifted his weight as if the cat was growing heavy. “Do you work in the city?” Then, seeing her expression, “Now I'm asking nosey questions. I'm sorry. I just thought…”

“It's all right. I—don't work—just now.”

“You're out of a job? What do you do?”

“I clean,” she said, trying it out. “I clean and cook.”

“You're a maid? That's crazy. You ought to be a model, not a maid. You're too beautiful to clean someone's house. You can't like doing that.”

“It's all right.” She wasn't sure what a model was; she was pleased and touched that he thought her beautiful. Something about the word
model
struck her, but she couldn't make any memory come. When a car horn honked, Tom turned.

“It's my mother.” He touched her hand by way of good-bye. “Come back,” he said, spinning around so the cat flicked its tail to balance itself, and he was gone. She watched him set the cat down on the porch rail, where it jumped into a tree. Tom got into the car with his mother. They backed out and turned down the lane, going slowly past another cat trotting across the lane—a dark, tiger-
striped animal. Melissa wondered if everyone kept cats; she wondered if they were all ordinary cats. The car was about to turn onto the highway when another car swerved in squealing, spun around at the end of the lane and out again, just missing them. And something had happened. Tom and his mother jumped out of their car. Tom started to kneel, then his mother pushed him aside saying something, and he ran shouting up the garden, leaving his mother crouched in the lane over the small, still form.

“Morian! Morian!” Tom shouted. “Tiger's hurt! Morian!”

A door slammed and a black woman came quickly from the gray house. She took the boy by the shoulders, staring into his face. He said something, pointed, and she ran down the terraces, her bare feet flying. Melissa forgot all need to hide herself; she ran down the garden and stood watching Tom and his mother and the black woman kneeling in the middle of the road. The black woman's face was twisted with pain as she rose cradling the little bundle in her arms, and got into the car. Melissa was totally caught up in the drama. A cat had been hurt, and they had rushed to it, were surely taking it for help. In Affandar, a hurt animal would be left to die, no one would attempt to save it. Perhaps no one would love it deeply enough to save it.

When the car had gone, she went quickly down to the portal and stood touching the carved cats' faces, letting their familiarity ease her confused feelings. She didn't belong in this world; she was a foreigner here. Maybe she had lived here once, but that time was gone; she had been only a small child then. Now this world reached out too powerfully, wanted too powerfully to draw her into it. Frightened, she pulled open the portal and slipped through into the tool room, and quickly she said the spell.

The wall drew back. She pushed through into the darkness and closed the door behind her.

Alone in the black tunnel she felt tears stinging. She wasn't safe in the upperworld, yet something of that world held her. Something of herself belonged there, something raw and vulnerable. She felt she had torn herself physically
from that world. Confused, she hurried downward into the blackness, heading down fast toward the less complicated comfort of the Netherworld.

She traveled a long way, unable to bring a spell-light, running down through the blackness, trailing her hand along the rough stone, sensing the emptiness and the masses of stone with feline alacrity. She slowed when she reached the first drop.

And as she descended, the upperworld seemed not to diminish in size as a place does when one moves away. It seemed to grow larger behind her, the wind blowing wilder, the sun burning brighter.

Much later she managed to bring a spell-light dully gleaming against the tilting slabs, light swallowed by the dropping chasm beside which she fled. From far below came the churl of the stream hurrying down toward the Netherworld. And as she approached her own world she thought more kindly of Efil. Maybe she had been too hard on him. Efil had offered her a kingdom, offered her all that was his. In bedding her, he had only been trying to save the heritage he had so foolishly let Siddonie control.

She wondered if she and Efil together really could free the Netherworld. She wondered if they could stop the need for war, make every land free to govern itself, and if they might free the Catswold from their self-imposed exile. She remembered Halek saying once, when she and Mag had visited him in his village, that Siddonie longed to destroy the Catswold's stubborn independence, to break their spirit.