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Authors: Shirley Rousseau Murphy

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P
erhaps the universe tilted for an instant to allow Braden his perception of the dark, cavernous spaces. Surely some change in the natural forces permitted him to glimpse the tunnel plunging down, the teetering slabs of stone thrusting down into the hollow bowels of the earth. Though he didn't, for a moment, believe in such things. It was the next morning that, deep within the earth, an old woman stood saddling her horse.

 

Where the black caverns dropped at last to gentle meadows and cliffs and to wandering paths, dawn was coming, its green light seeping down from the stone sky—light laid down eons past by wizards long since turned to dust. The green light drifted like fog, turning the cliffs to emerald and embracing a stone cottage perched on the rim of the steep valley.

The old woman took her time saddling the horse and tying on her baskets full of woven cloth for trading. She was roundly built, with a face as wrinkled as an ancient apple.
The bay gelding she was saddling stood obediently tethered by her spell, his ears back in resentment. On the other side of the corral a pony snuffled at the hay manger. Behind them the valley dropped away, and across the ravine rose a line of cliffs jagged as dragons' teeth. As Mag tightened the girth and mounted, she glanced toward the cottage window and raised her hand to the girl.

From the open window Sarah waved back, and watched Mag force the gelding through the orchard and down along the ridge that lipped the valley.

She was seventeen, slim, and taller than Mag. There was a deceptive softness about her, like velvet over lean muscle. The corners of her wide mouth turned up as if with some secret pleasure. Her green eyes were wide, her lashes thick and black. She had long hands, clever at weaving. Her long brown dress was the typical valley coarsespun. As she watched the old woman and horse disappear down the cliff, intently she watched the pony, too, for he did not like being left behind. He was a big, sturdy pony of elven breed. When he raised his head and charged the fence suddenly, meaning to jump it, she lifted her hand in a sign that jerked him back. He turned away, his ears flat, his tail switching.

She could not see the village below, the land dropped too steeply. She would have gone with Mag but for the sow, due to farrow and as likely to eat her piglets as nurse them. The cottage felt larger without Mag, and she liked its emptiness. Mag's occasional absence was the only privacy she had. She loved Mag, but the cottage was small. She turned from the window, took up the mop, and began to scrub the wooden floor, mopping first without spells. When she tired of that she sent the mop alone over the boards, making it dodge around Mag's loom and around their two cots, around the table and their two chairs.

The one room served the two of them for cooking, for sleeping, for weaving and mending, and for canning and drying their garden produce. Its stone walls were smoke darkened, its rafters low, with herbs and onions hanging from them. She seldom went beyond the cottage and garden,
except when Mag took her trading to some small village. There were no neighbors; she was used to the company of the beasts. The cottage was the only home she remembered. She thought she was no kin to Mag. Mag was as sturdy as a turnip, always the same and always steady. Sarah was, Mag said, as changeable as quicksilver. In this room Mag had taught her the jeweler's arts and taught her to weave so she could earn a living, and had taught her the spells for gardening and gentling the beasts.

She could remember nothing of her childhood. That part of her life was without form, and Mag would tell her nothing about her past. When they did travel to some small village among other Netherworlders, the old woman sometimes put the deaf spell on her so that, listening to the villagers' conversation, suddenly she would lose meaning and know that she had for a few moments been deafened, made unaware. Though Mag would never admit to such spells.

She took up a cloth and carefully dusted the clothes cupboard and the kitchen safe, then knelt to polish a carved chest. She liked to dust by hand, rubbing oil into the ancient wood. But now as she pulled out the drawers of the chest to do the edges, the bottom drawer stuck. Kneeling, she tried to straighten it by reaching underneath.

When she felt papers stuck there, up under the bottom of the drawer, she drew back.

Then she reached again, fingering them. They crackled dryly. When she started to pull them out, one tore. Dismayed, she hissed a spell to free it. Three sheets came loose, the old, yellowed papers dropping into her hand. She spread them on the floor.

She thought Mag would not hide papers unless they had to do with her. How furtive the old woman was. Sarah was afraid to look at them. Maybe she wouldn't want to know what they would tell her. She closed her eyes, trying to collect herself, torn between excitement and fear.

The earliest thing she could remember about her life was her ninth birthday. She had become aware suddenly, as if jerked from deep sleep, had been riding a horse double be
hind an old woman who was a stranger to her, had sat pressed against the woman's soft back as the horse worked his way down a cliff. She didn't remember ever riding a horse before; she didn't remember the landscape around her. She had been bone tired, aching from a journey she could not recall. Below them stood a thatch-roofed stone cottage, a lonely, bare-looking hovel. The old woman had called her Sarah, but the name had meant nothing to her.

At the cottage she had stood against the fence while the woman unsaddled the horse and watered and fed him, then the wrinkled old creature said, “I am Mag. Today is your ninth birthday.”

“It's not my birthday. I don't remember my birthday. Who are you?”

Mag had led her into the cottage and sat her down in the rocker before the cold wood stove, had knelt and built a fire, lighting it with a flick of her hand. Then she took a clay bowl from the shelf and began to mix gingerbread. Sarah had watched, numb and angry. When the dough was rolled out, Mag made a gesture with her hands that caused ginger dolls to be cut from the dough without any cutter or tool. “The dolls are tradition,” Mag said. “Part of the birthday celebration.”

“It's
not
my birthday.”

“It is now. This is the first day of your new life. You are nine years old.”

Mag had set about decorating the dolls with magic runes that appeared suddenly deep in the dough. She had baked and cooled them, and made Sarah promise not to watch as she hung them outdoors in the fruit trees.

But of course she had watched from the window, and when, after her birthday supper, Mag sent her to search for the ginger dolls she found the wishing doll at once. It was the only one with emeralds baked in for eyes, in the fading light its green eyes gleamed at her. Coming back with it, she had stopped to look in the water trough at her reflection, wanting to see her own face, and her image shone up at her as unfamiliar as the face of the ginger doll. She was sur
prised that her eyes were the same clear green as the doll's emerald eyes.

But from the cottage, Mag had seen her look into the trough and had been enraged. “You must not look at reflections. Not your own, not anyone's reflection. A reflection is an image, and it is powerful. In this kingdom the queen does not allow images.”

After that, Sarah had avoided the water trough for a long time.

Now she touched the brittle papers, knowing they held a reflection too, a reflection of her own past. Her stomach felt hollow. The yellowed papers rattled in her shaking fingers.

Two sheets had been torn from books, their left-hand edges were ragged and they had page numbers. They were made of strange, foreign paper, very smooth, and the printing was not the usual handwritten script, but rigid and precise. The third paper had thin blue lines to guide a childish handwriting, and the child's words stirred her strangely.

May 9, 1938.

She is dead. My little Mari is dead. She was so small when I found her, just a little lost kitten alone and hungry in the garden. She had long white whiskers, she was so beautiful, her colors all swirled together like the silk tapestry that hangs in our hall. Her eyes were golden, with black lines around. She rolled over, flashing her eyes at me. She was starving, she wanted a home. Her throat was white, and her paws white, waving as she rolled. I picked her up and took her in the house and fed her leftover scrambled eggs and toast and milk. She ate until I thought she'd burst. I knew her name should be Mari, I don't know how I knew.

She slept with me every night of our lives together. Five years. She always met the school bus, racing across the neighbors' yards to the corner. She never went in the street after I scolded her. Sometimes when she looked at me I thought she wanted to tell me some
thing. I thought she was trying to talk human language, but of course she couldn't. She could only talk with her beautiful golden eyes, or by touching me with her paw.

Now she is dead. The doctor couldn't mend her sickness.

I hate doctors.

I buried her under the fuchsia tree. I dug the hole, I wouldn't let Daddy help. I dug it deep, and I wrapped her in her blue blanket. I put in her favorite sofa pillow and her little dish. I made a clay headstone with her name and picture drawn into the wet clay, and baked it at an art school. I will miss her forever and I will love her forever.

There was no signature. Sarah knelt on the cottage floor holding the lined paper, shivering with pain for the child's agony.

Was this her own childhood grief, embossed into the page? Had she been that child? How could she forget such a thing as the death of a loved animal? And she didn't think she had ever seen a cat; cats were forbidden in the Netherworld. At least they were forbidden in Affandar—the queen's edict said cats belonged only in the upperworld among foreign evils. For an instant she felt on the brink of realization. Then the sensation of dawning knowledge vanished.

The other two papers only intensified her confusion.

I am Bast, I am beauty, I am all things sensuous. In Bubastis, in the temple of cats, my saffron fur was brushed by slaves, incense was burned to me and prayers raised to me, and kings fought for my favor. I strolled beside lotus ponds where virgins knelt at my silken paws or at my sandaled feet and served me delicacies in golden bowls.

I am Bast, child of moon's caress. I am Sekhmet, born of fiery suns. I have confronted the Serpent whose name is Deception and I have destroyed him.

Though the serpent will rise anew. My daughters will confront him and their daughters will face him. So I bequeath to my heirs the Amulet that holds the power of truth. I tell my daughters this: only by truth can the Serpent be defeated. Only by falsehood can he survive.

She put down the paper, shivering.

To speak of Bast or Sekhmet in the Netherworld would be to invite imprisonment. Cats and the gods of cats, by edict of the queen, were forbidden—evil and unclean. Why had Mag hidden this? What did it mean?

After a long time she took up the third page, and these words were more comfortable, like the language of the Netherworld tales; though strangely this page, too, spoke of cats.

I tell you an old Irish saying that “There's crocks of gold in all them forths, but there's cats and things guarding them.” And the Danaan people were driven out of Irish lands into the burial mounds and secret recesses. And they went down through crypts and graves into the netherworld. And there were among them the Cat Kings and the queens of the Catswold.

She did not know the meaning of Catswold. Yet the word alarmed her. Fearing Mag would return, she put the papers back beneath the drawer and sealed them with a spell. She rose and stood at the window, searching the dropping cliff; though if Mag had started up, she could not be seen. She stood looking, then moved to the shelf and took down the old woman's spell book.

Leafing through the yellowed pages, she found the spell she wanted. She committed it to memory in one reading, and returned the book to the shelf, casting a spell of dust across it so Mag wouldn't know it had been moved. Then she pulled on her cloak, snatched up a waterskin, and went to saddle the pony. The Pit of Hell lay to the east, cutting
across a dry Netherworld valley where she had never been. She imagined the pit's flame-filled gorge bisecting the valley, its fires leaping high and searing the land on both sides. She imagined the Lamia she must call from the Hell Pit, the beast half-dragon, half-woman, a beast thirsty for human souls. She had no choice. These papers had to do with her past. The time had come to learn about her past, and only from a Hell Beast would she get answers.

S
he pressed the pony fast along the high, grassy plateau, her heels dug hard to his sides; her long skirt whipped in the wind that sucked down from the granite sky. Fear of the Pit filled her. Her imagination toyed too vividly with the Hell Beasts and their hunger for human souls, and human flesh.

But with a powerful enough spell she would be safe. If she could call from the pit the Lamia and force it to answer three questions, she might learn who she was. She might learn why Mag had kept the past secret from her.

Soon they left the plateau and the pony made his way down a steep incline toward a dry, sandy valley. No blade grew here, no beast grazed. The brown expanse was surrounded by stone cliffs eaten with holes from the ancient seas. Above her the stone sky was eroded and scarred. She pushed the pony fast across the dry plain, and when at last they reached the far side, she pressed him up a new barrier of steep stone ledges.

At the top she paused to let him blow. Their shadow on the cliff shone thin as breath. Before her the land dropped again steeply, and the granite sky rose away like the top of a
bubble. Her every instinct told her to turn back to the cottage and to Mag and safety. But she urged the pony on down the bank. He picked his way carefully, sure-footed, as were all elven-bred beasts. But at the bottom where they entered into a tunnel, he snorted uneasily. She had no doubt this was the way; already she could smell the reek of smoke from the fires of the Hell Pit. The tunnel, without the green wizard light, was totally black. When she brought a spell-light the pony moved on more easily, and when he saw far ahead the end of the tunnel he hurried; the gleam of green light cheered Sarah, too. They came out at the foot of high cliffs.

The air was hot, the land radiated heat. The smoke was so strong she sneezed. They climbed again, and by mid-morning, when they reached the highest ridge, the pony was sweating and balking. Now far, far below them stretched the Hell Pit. The scorched plain was dark with smoke, and was burned black in a wide swath along the edge of the pit. The pit belched smoke and seethed with flames leaping and sputtering. It was in some places wider than the broadest river, but portions of it were as narrow as a path. It was bottomless. Its magma burned and belched fire, bubbling up from the earth's molten core.

She forced the pony down the slick rock, the little beast skidding and sliding. The smoke smelled sulphurous. Soon sweat plastered her hair and ran into her eyes and glued her dress to her. The pony's neck and shoulders ran with sweat. Suddenly ahead something black flew toward her, separating into three winged shapes.

Three flying lizards skimmed along beneath the stone sky. When they were directly above her, they circled, watching her. She stared up at their little red eyes and shouted a spell at them. They flapped as if jolted, and flew away screaming. The winged lizards were the queen's spies. Why would they want to watch her?

As she drew near the bottom of the cliff, the stench of sulphur and smoke gagged her, and the pony put his ears back, wanting to bolt away. At the edge of the plain he balked completely, rearing and wheeling, fighting her. She slid off,
let him run back up the cliff, then hobbled him halfway up with the strongest holding spell she knew. If he ran off, she'd walk home.

On foot she crossed the burnt plain and approached the Hell Pit, coughing from the fumes, dizzy with the heat. Near to the pit, flames licked out at her, and the heat warped her vision. She stepped nearer.

She could see deep down within the flames, dark shapes moving. Swallowing her terror, she choked out a summoning spell.

She waited, then repeated the spell. When after a long time she thought no Lamia would come, she felt weak with relief. But suddenly something dark shifted within the flames and began to rise.

A creature rose up within the licking flames, dragon-tailed and armored with scales, its woman's face and jutting breasts covered with bright scales that glinted and changed color in the hot, warping air. Its thick tail lashed at the edge of the pit, dislodging stones that fell away into the flames. The hot air warped and shifted, and the Lamia hung before her—half-dragon, half-woman—its woman's face fine featured but reptilian. Its mouth was red and wet, its black eyes hungry. Its hands darted out toward her: woman's hands ending in sharp dragon's claws. Its voice was a burning hiss. “What power have you, girl, to call me from the pit?”

Sarah had backed away, her mouth too dry to speak.

“Why do you call me, human girl? What do you want?”

“I—I call you to answer my questions.”

The beast lunged at her. “If I answer your questions, what do you offer in return?”

She moved farther from the edge. “I offer nothing. You are bound by my spell to answer me.” Her heart pounded too fast, she couldn't make her voice steady. “My spell allows three questions.”

As the Lamia laughed, its colors changed, flickering into crimson spots and blue and silver bars that flashed across its breasts and thighs. It leaped at her suddenly, its claws pierced her shoulders and it jerked her into the smoke,
swinging her out over the pit. She hung in space above the flames, the heat of molten earth and fire searing her, dizzying and sickening her. Below her, a dozen half-seen beasts writhed and reached, waiting for her to fall. She twisted, fighting the Lamia, sick with terror that she would fall, and she saw the hem of her dress burst afire. She grabbed the Lamia's arm and stared into its scale-lidded eyes, shouting a spell to save herself. The Lamia's eyes widened; it shifted, nearly dropped her. She screamed the spell again to ward away harm from herself, and suddenly the beast moved toward the bank and tossed her at the solid ground. She leaped from its claws sprawling, grasping at the earth, her heart thundering as she crawled away from the edge.

She crushed out her flaming hem against the earth and rose to face the Lamia, shaken, still so dizzy she dared not look down into the pit. “Do not touch me again. You are bound by the ancient powers to obey me.”

“I am bound only by my own power or one stronger. Your powers cannot equal mine.”

“I had the power to call you here. I had the power to free myself from your obscene hands.”

Its black eyes blazed, then narrowed. “What is your question?”

“Who am I?”

“Melissa,” it said obediently, its mouth widening in a bloody smile.

A surge of rightness filled her, a wave of excitement. The name seemed right, seemed almost familiar.
Melissa. I am Melissa.
But a name was not enough. She stared into the Lamia's hate-filled eyes. “I do not want to know only a name. I want to know
who.
What person? What family and history? What life did I have that I cannot remember?”

“You asked none of that. You are Melissa.”

“But
who
? The question means more than a name.”

“I have told what you required.”

She swallowed back her rage. She did not dare to lose control of herself before this beast. “Tell me about my mother.”

“That is not a question.”

“What—what was the lineage of my mother?”

“Is that your second question?”

“It is.” But even as she answered, she thought she had formed this question, too, unwisely. She had a sharp desire to attack the beast, some part of herself wanted to claw and kill the beast.

The Lamia said, “Your mother was wife to the brother of my sister.”

“That is no answer, it's a riddle.”

“I have told what you required.”

“But she can't have been…Wife to the brother of your sister? But my mother wasn't…that is not possible.”

When the Lamia began to fade, Melissa went rigid. “Child of Lillith! By the Ancient Wizards you are bound. You must answer my third question!”

“Then be quick. It's cold up here.” It licked its red lips, eyeing her hungrily.

“What—what is the entire truth of my past?”

“Too broad a question. I need not answer that.” It rubbed its dragon hands over its scaly breasts and began to grow indistinct, its body mingling with the smoke.

“By the old laws, you must answer me!” Melissa shouted.

“From—from exactly where and whom, and by what power, can I learn the entire truth of my past?”

The Lamia stopped fading. Its colors were muddied now and sullen. Its voice was hollow, but its eyes glowed at her obscenely through the hot, warping air. “You can learn what you wish from the Toad.”

“Give me the rest of the answer, child of Lillith. By the Ancient Wizards, you are bound to do so.”

The Lamia's black eyes fixed on her throat. Its claws moved as if to tighten around her flesh. “The Toad sleeps in the dungeons of Affandar Palace. It will tell the past if you can wake it. And if it likes you.”

“No toad could be kept in a dungeon, it would slip out through the bars.”

The Lamia's colors flashed brighter. “I did not say how big a toad.”

“Well? How big?”

“That is four questions.” It shivered and began to vanish.

“You have not completed the third question,” she shouted.

“What power will I use to make the Toad tell me?”

The beast's voice was nearly bodiless. Flame and smoke warped her vision. “You need no special power,” it hissed. “Use your wits.” It appeared again faintly, its woman's shape more dragonlike, its face sharpened to a dragon's face. Then it disappeared in an explosion of licking flames.

When it was gone she turned from the pit quickly and fled up the cliff to the pony. She stood hugging the warm, sweet-scented pony, her arms around his neck, trying to calm herself.

At last she slid on and let him have his head. He leaped away up the cliff at a gallop, pounding upward as if pursued by the entire population of the Hell Pit. He didn't slow until they were well away from the valley, on the highest ridges.

Riding, clinging to him, she thought,
Melissa…I am Melissa
…Something of her true self had been given back to her, a tiny core of rightness. Perhaps now that she knew her real name—like knowing the key spell to potent magic—she could unravel her past.

The pony was climbing the last ridge when suddenly fire exploded in their path and a huge tree stood blocking their way where, a second before, there had been only bare stone. Its branches spread over them broad as a cottage. Its left side was consumed by flame, every branch burned, every leaf and limb was eaten by flame. But the right-hand side was green and alive, the leaves as fresh and tender as the first new shoots of spring.

She calmed the rearing pony and made him stand, though he shivered and trembled. This tree, that had burst suddenly into being before her, was the living symbol of the Netherworld: half of natural life, half of the shifting flame of enchantment. It held her powerfully. And it was the symbol of her own life, too: the half that lived with Mag in the cottage was natural and familiar. The other half was hidden within the flames of some inexplicable enchantment. And she knew that
the tree, beneath its licking fires, was healthy and alive. Just as, beneath the secrecy of enchantment, her past was alive.

She did not leave the presence of the tree, the tree left her, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. She went on, filled with a strange anticipatory excitement. But then coming down the bank to the cottage she saw Mag's horse rolling in his pen, and she began desperately to invent a lie.

She dared not tell Mag she had been to the Hell Pit or that she knew her name. She led the pony into the corral and unsaddled him and rubbed him dry, delaying, unable to think of any reasonable lie.

 

In the cottage she found Mag kneeling before the wood stove bedding down newborn piglets in a basket, and she was filled with guilt. The sow had farrowed. Against Mag's instructions she had left the cannibalistic sow alone.

“I saved nine,” Mag said, scowling up at her. “Who knows how many she ate.”

“I—I was hunting mushrooms. I felt stifled in the cottage, I forgot the sow—I had to get out in the air.”

“And where are the mushrooms?”

“I lost the basket down a ravine—the pony bolted, I dropped the basket. Flying lizards were everywhere.”

Mag sat back on her heels. “Lizards don't come for nothing. What were you doing, that they would watch you?”

“I told you, hunting mushrooms. I'm sorry about the pig. Truly, I forgot her.” Why had she mentioned the lizards?

Mag searched her face cannily. “Whatever you were doing, Sarah, it was to no good. And lizards promise no good. You'd best be wary, miss. You'd best stay in the cottage until the lizards tire of you.” Mag looked deeply at her. “You could be asking for more trouble than you imagine.”

She looked back at Mag innocently, but she was shaken. What did Mag know, or guess? Mag said nothing more until supper. She was, Melissa felt certain, angry about more than the sow. Could Mag know that she had gone to the Hell Pit? Or did the canny old woman know about the papers she had found beneath the linen chest?

Or was Mag's distress about something else, some village crisis perhaps, or something to do with the secret rebellion? The rebels' plans for war seemed so frail to Melissa. Yet the rebels were totally committed, and their ranks were growing. Selfishly she hoped Mag's anger was centered around their problems, and not on herself.

She waited until supper, than asked innocently, “Did you not trade well for your beautiful cloth? The blue one alone should—”

“Traded fine,” Mag snapped, breaking the bread, her round, wrinkled face pulled into a scowl.

“Was—was there trouble for the rebels?”

“Yes, trouble!” Mag spread butter with an angry thrust. She had obviously been bursting to talk, and too upset to start the conversation herself. “Three leaders from Cressteane have been captured by the queen's soldiers.”

“Oh, Mag. But how?” The rebels' movements and identity were so carefully hidden. It was only with well thought out plans that she and Mag ever approached a rebel cottage. Even where a whole village was against the queen, the rebels were painfully discreet.

BOOK: The Catswold Portal
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