Cat Magic

by Whitley Strieber

  Perhaps a statuette. Yes, that must be it.

  But she could see the moisture gleaming on its eyeballs.

  She decided to get out of here. She would phone Constance Collier from the safety of some coffee shop in town.

  Her watch told her it was 9:45. By the time she got back to the car and drove into town it would be 10:15 at least. Over the phone Miss Collier could so easily tell her to forget the whole thing.

  There really was no choice. Reason said that she was not facing some supernatural creature, not a troll, not one of Constance Collier’s faeries. Such things were not real, not anymore.

  But a mad dwarf from some nearby mental institution could be very real. And wasn’t there a Peconic Valley Institute for the Criminally Insane?

  Either she walked past it or she gave up this job.

  Shaking, her hands clutching the portfolio, she started off for the crest of the hill. More than anything, she expected to find that the apparition in the hole was gone, a figment of her vivid imagination. But it was still there—staring out of blank stone eyes.

  She stooped to look more closely at what was now quite clearly a little statue. It was a sneering, evil tittle elf, a creature of the cracks and holes of the world. Perhaps a mandrake, or a little fee guarding the lands of Faery.

  A woods of fabulous spells,

  Old sticks and roots and holes,

  Leannan’s grand dominion…

  When she remembered those lines from Faery, the menace of the woods evaporated like a rotten mist. As with new eyes she looked around her. What had been hostile was now suffused with wonderment. The little face was not sneering, it was grimacing to frighten any who might threaten its queen. One of her doughty fairy soldiers.

  Mandy was delighted. These were the actual woods of the poem. Here a twenty-year-old Constance Collier had written the dream of Leannan, the Fairy Queen…

  With a newly confident tread, full of gladness and awe, Mandy marched to the top of the rise.

  Spreading before her was a magnificent vista indeed. The road had been carefully planned to take advantage of it. It meandered down across the rolling green fields to a long lake dusted with lilies and swans, and thence across the wide pasture that led to the house. How typical of Will T. Turner to describe this place simply as “crumbling.” Had he been forced to leave his car at the gate and come on fool also? Probably trudged this very road, thinking that the gate was rusted closed, the leaves not raked, that there were rather too many lilies in the pond, and the green was high with cockle-burs and dandelions.

  And he never noticed that he was in the Land of Dark, where lived the Faery of Constance Collier’s extraordinary creation. Poor Will T. Turner.

  Emerging from the woods, Mandy set out across the fields, filling her nostrils with the dry, sharp scent of autumn brush, her mind flashing image after image of paintings that must be painted here.

  Late or not, Constance Collier had an illustrator. Amanda Walker had decided that she would not be driven off, not even at the point of a gun.

  I’ll do Hansel and Gretel in the woods, of course. And Briar-Rose’s castle from this vista, with the thornbushes choking the ramparts in just this light.

  Everywhere she looked there were more glories, wonderful wooden fences all tumbling down, a shattered hayrick, a great rusting contraption of scythes that must once have mowed the lawns.

  How exactly right Constance Collier was to let it go to its natural state. If ever there had been happy land, this was it.

  Oh, Pollyanna, smite on. You are heading toward a rough meeting with a very difficult old lady. Constance Collier eats illustrators for breakfast. She had quite literally fired the great Hammond Morris by burning the pictures he had done for Voyage to Dawn. When she heard that story, Mandy had felt contempt for Constance Collier. But she hadn’t been offered this job then.

  As she approached the house, she began to see that it was indeed in serious disrepair. The architecture was Palladian and very elegant, red brick and white columns, a lovely curved side porch, tall empty windows. Leaves were everywhere, choking the gutters, matting the walks, blowing about on the porch.

  There wasn’t a sound. Despite the cool air, the bright morning sun was making Mandy sweat. Her portfolio had grown heavier, and she was glad to lean it against the wall when she finally reached the house. She went up between the tall, peeling columns and hunted for a doorbell. She settled for knocking.

  Her blows echoed back from within. There wasn’t an answering sound, not the clatter of feet, not a call.

  When she knocked again, though, there was a startling flutter of wings at the edge of the porch. Six or seven huge crows wheeled about in the front yard, then settled into an oak and commenced to caw at one another.

  “Hello!”

  The sound of her voice caused the crows to rise again. They rushed back and forth across the weedy yard, their wings snapping with every turn.

  When she knocked, the door rattled. It was obviously unlocked. Telling herself that old people are hard of hearing, Mandy turned the blackened brass knob and pushed the door open.

  Inside was a shadowy central hallway with rooms to the left and right. The hall runner was old but fine, the lighting fixtures elegantly fluted. When Mandy pushed the buttons on die switchplate, none of them turned on. She looked at them; bits of wax revealed that they were now used for candles. Halfway down the hall a brand-new Panasonic vacuum cleaner could be seen in an open broom closet. At least there was some electricity still in the house. This touch of modem technology gave her hope, until she saw that the machine was not only new but not even completely unpacked. Its body was still in a plastic bag; as a matter of fact, all the packing material was visible beyond the end of the hall, in die kitchen. Somebody had been wrapping it up, perhaps to send it back.

  As she proceeded into the house, the crows crowded onto the front porch, cawing and bickering among themselves, their voices echoing in the silence. But also, there were softer voices, and they were nearby. “You’ve got to be more careful,” said a man. An older man, whispering. An elderly woman: “I must keep on. By the Goddess, I’m so close!”

  “Miss Collier?”

  A gasp at the top of the stairs, then silence. Mandy sensed that she had interrupted a very private conversation. She would have returned to the front door, but by this time she was closer to the kitchen, so she hurried toward the back.

  In the center of the kitchen was a heavy oaken table, its legs elaborately carved with gargoyles and grapevines. On it there was a toasting frame, of the kind meant to be held over an open fire, and a partially cut loaf of homemade raisin bread.

  As Mandy crossed the floor, she noticed that there were candles in the lighting fixture that hung down from the ceiling.

  And then she saw something really amazing: an ancient iron hand pump at the sink in place of the usual faucet. Attached to the wall behind it was a small hot water geyser such as Mandy had seen in the cheap hotels she had stayed in during her European days.

  The stove, to the right of the sink, was a huge woodburning iron monster with eight burners across its massive top. “Royal Dawn” was embossed in the ironwork on the oven doors. The witch could have cooked Gretel in such an oven and had room left over for a couple of nice casseroles.

  A thrill of childhood fear touched her. She’d never seen this place, but Jimmy Murphy and Bonnie Haver had sneaked in and seen a beautiful young woman cooking at this very stove. “She was pretty but her face was glowing in the firelight,” Jimmy had said. “She was so scary I thought I was going to pee in my pants.”

  That had happened ten years ago, half a lifetime for Mandy. If Constance remembered, it probably seemed like yesterday.

  From beyond the kitchen window there came the first loud sound Mandy had heard at this house, and it more or less astonished her. It was a splash, followed immediately by the distinct boing of a diving board.

  Could Constance Collier possibly be in swimming—a woman past eigh
ty, and in autumn? Mandy hurried out the back door and down an overgrown brick walk, which curved around a tangle of cedars. She came now upon another surprise. The walk ended in some brick steps, which led into a formal garden—overgrown, of course—surrounding a swimming pool inlaid with elaborate mosaics which shimmered beneath the agitated water.

  A young man, lithe and pale, his blond hair streaming like smoke behind him in the water, swam vigorously from one end of the pool to the other.

  “Hello?”

  Oblivious, he swam another lap.

  “Excuse me.”

  He stopped, touched the edge of the pool. “Oh.” When he stood up in the waist-deep water, Mandy saw that he was naked.

  She was instantly angry at him for flustering her, and spoke quickly. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m looking for Miss Collier.”

  “She’s not in the house?” He showed no inclination to hide himself. She tried to keep her eyes on his face.

  “I called. Nobody answered me.”

  “She’s supposed to be in there having an argument with my father.” He came out of the water, grabbed a towel from the grass, and began drying himself. “Were her birds there?”

  “Her birds?”

  “The seven ravens. They’re almost always with her. If they were there, so was she.”

  As the boy approached, the towel around his shoulders, Mandy realized that he was younger than he had seemed. Perhaps he was sixteen. Adolescent down brushed his top lip. “I’m Robin,” he said. Mandy knew she was coloring;Robin was very, very beautiful, in all the ways she enjoyed in the male. His muscles were firm but not knotty. His skin was smooth, yet he did not look soft. And his genitals were, well, very much there.

  He had been waiting for some moments before she realized that he was holding out his hand. She took it, pumped it once. He held firmly to her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. She felt the warmth of his breath on her skin. He smiled slightly, glancing down at his own turgidity. Mandy battled not to shake, and she inwardly cursed the heat she could feel in her cheeks. “I’m Amanda Walker,” she said evenly.“The illustrator. I’m doing the Grimm’s project with Miss Collier.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about it. Perhaps Ivy can help you. My sister.” He took a step closer to her. She could see his teeth behind his half-opened lips. His smile was so subtle that it managed to imply passion and politeness at the same time. Nothing could be read in his obsidian eyes, which contrasted oddly with the blond hair and sunny Nordic skin.

  “My sister is sunning herself in the maze, where the breeze can’t get to her.”

  Mandy had not realized that the great tangle of cedar in the center of the garden was, or had been, a maze. She was glad to turn away from the young man, though. He had a nerve not even wrapping his towel around himself.

  Close up, the maze smelled strongly of cedar oil. Mandy found the entrance and went a short distance in.

  Robin’s renewed splashes were absorbed by the thick and long-untended growth. There remained only the faint screaming of the crows. The creosote path was so overgrown that Mandy had to go on her hands and knees to make any progress.

  It wasn’t a difficult maze, because the way in was marked by a string. No wonder; there was no fun to be had struggling through these weedy corridors full of spiderwebs and sticky cedar balls.

  At the center of the maze was a complete surprise, a delightful secret garden. It was perhaps thirty feet square, and peopled by statuary. All the figures were characters from Constance Collier’s books: there was Pandoric, the wicked homed boy; opposite him his mother Drydana, who had the power to turn herself into a woodpecker. At opposite ends of the garden were Braura the huge maiden bear, rearing up, her bronze claws gleaming in the sun, facing Elpot, the King of the Cats, who had one shredded ear and knew among other dungs how to fly. In the middle, on a marble pediment, stood the Fairy Queen, the tiny Leannan, Constance Collier’s greatest creation, beautifully sculpted, with her trim waist and alabaster arms, her firm nose and delicate lips, and her wide gray eyes. The sculptor had captured not only Miss Collier’s description of her character but the deeper wildness that sent the Leannan racing through her forests, “the wild huntress screaming so shrilly that it froze the footsteps of whom she sought.”

  “Excuse me. Who are you, may I ask?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! The statue—I’m Amanda Walker. The illustrator. I’m here for my appointment with Miss Collier.”

  “You were meeting her in here?”

  “Well, not actually in this spot. But here, yes, at the estate.”

  Ivy rummaged among the things that had been spread out around her, pulled out a blue-faced watch. “It’s 10:30. She’s still with my father.”

  “Do you know if she was expecting me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been here almost all morning.”

  Ivy was every bit as handsome as her brother. Mandy found her presence, though, even more disturbing. There was something confusing about her looks, the strong-muscled aims and legs, the tiny breasts beneath the prim black bathing suit, the soft, gentle face with those dark humorous eyes. If such a woman were to embrace her, Mandy wondered, what would happen then?

  “I’m afraid I’m terribly late. I was due at 9:30.” The girl stared at her, almost as if she thought her mad. “A mistake,” Mandy added miserably. “Please help me.”

  The girl smiled at that. “You sound like you’re desperate.”

  “I know she doesn’t like people to be late. The job is very important to me. And I’m so late!”

  “You she’ll forgive, Amanda.”

  “Where can I find her, can you tell me that?”

  “Look what I have here.” The girl bent down and picked up a big, colorfully illustrated book that Mandy recognized at once.

  “The Hobbes edition of Faery!”

  “Signed and hand-colored by Hobbes just for Connie. Isn’t it wonderful?” She gave the precious volume to Mandy almost indifferently.

  “But this—it’s extraordinary. I didn’t even know it existed.” She looked down at the leather embossed cover. Reverently she opened it. Tucked inside was a photograph of Hobbes sitting with a much younger Constance Collier on the pediment of this very statue. He wore a wing collar and a striped shirt, the cuffs rolled up to the elbows. She was in a long dress, its top of lace. Her dark Celtic eyes gazed merrily at her companion, who looked rather stunned.

  This book was not illustrated with washed etchings as Mandy had assumed but with the delicate original watercolors that had been their models.

  A Hobbes watercolor of this quality went for five thousand dollars. And how many were here? At least twenty. “My God.”

  “See Leannan sinking dead,

  her eyes pearled by dew,

  Falling all ruined upon

  fearsome Braura’s bed.”

  Amanda was surprised at Ivy’s erudition. “You know Faery?”

  “Of course. Why do you think we’re here, Robin and I? We are students, just as you are a student.”

  “I’m an illustrator.”

  “That was only a pretext to get you here. You’ll see. She’s got all sorts of ideas for you.”

  Just then a new voice cracked from among the cedars:

  “There you are, you prowling ninny! Come out of there! Why didn’t you come upstairs? You must have heard us.”

  “Miss Collier?”

  A tall, thin woman in a dusty suit appeared among the shrubs. She burst forth brushing spiderwebs and twigs from her tweeds. “What in Goddess’ name are you doing in here? Oh! What do you have in your hands, you stupid girl!”

  Mandy was horrified. All she could do was hold out the priceless book and hope that Ivy would own up to her wrongdoing.

  “Don’t give it to me! I’ll drop it on the way back. Oh, be careful, careful! Don’t let those cedars touch the leather, they’ll start acid rot going! How could anybody be so thoughtless! Come on!”

  Mandy’s heart p
ounded as she hurried along behind Constance Collier, the precious book cradled in her arms. Back in the maze she heard soft laughter and realized that brother had joined sister from some hidden entrance, and both were enjoying the joke together—

  She followed Constance through the kitchen and into a tall library, its bookcases laden with calfskin and morocco bindings. A heavy silence descended, punctuated only by the crows. Finally Constance spoke.

  “Put it on the table. There. Now, young woman, are you mad? You must be to come in here and take the very best volume I have and carry it out into the sun, and then you go into mat dirty old maze—it’s criminal.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “No excuses! If you want to work with me, the first thing you’ve got to learn is to stop making excuses. I consider excuses loathsome.”

  Mandy knew she was turning scarlet, and hated herself for it. Blushing was a curse. But there was nothing she could do about it. She could only hope against hope and push ahead. “I brought my portfolio, Miss Collier. Of the ideas I’ve had for the Grimm’s illustrations.” Should she add that it contained all the really good ideas she had ever had for Grimm’s, and amounted to the best of her life’s work? No point. The sketches and paintings would speak for themselves.

  Constance Collier replaced the Hobbes in a slipcase on the leather-covered library table. “He killed my husband, in case you’ve ever wondered. Hobbes killed Jack.”

  Mandy recalled that Jack Collier had died under somewhat sensational circumstances back in the early twenties. A hunting accident or something. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Shot him. Shot us both.” She stared at the book for some moments. “You come highly recommended.” She looked up, her face for the first time clear to Mandy. It had the startlingly simian appearance that is sometimes associated with great age. Here and there were vestiges of the legendary beauty of the twenties and thirties, the dramatically straight, thick eyebrows, the narrow, angled nose. Gone, though, were those full, mysterious lips and the amazing lusciousness of complexion that Stieglitz had captured in his portraits of her.