In her early childhood photographs Alice was a thin little girl, very blond, wiry and lively. She had studied at Art Institute where her father taught; she was the only child among classes of adults. She had spent hours of her childhood in the city’s museums drawing skeletons, and at the zoo drawing the animals, while other children threw popcorn at the caged beasts. She had taught herself the intricacies of bone structure and of the movement of muscle over bone; she had learned how to bring alive the bright gleam of an eye, the sudden lifting of a paw. Some of her relatives, misunderstanding, had called her a prodigy. She had simply loved animals and wanted to paint them.
She was twenty when he met her; she was a student in the first classes he taught. He had found her dedication to animals too commercial, not painterly. He had told her that a true artist strove for the abstraction, for the heart of meaning, not just to reproduce an image. She told him she was striving for the heart of meaning, and that he was blindly misguided if he didn’t see it. She told him he was too out of touch, too idealistic. That someone who had spent four years fighting in the Pacific should see more clearly than he did. He said being a Marine had nothing to do with what he saw as a painter. He had told her that if she wanted to be a commercial artist—and he had used the term like a four-letter word—she should go across the bay to the more commercial school, and not waste her time at Art Institute.
She had been the only student at Art Institute to be making good money long before she graduated. She had established a name for herself while most of the students were still trying to find out what they wanted to do. And as he worked with her in class, he began to see that her work was not simply realistic, that it had a deep, involving power.
He still got calls two years after her death from people in other states who didn’t know Alice was dead, who wanted her to do a commission. Since the first of the year he’d talked with five thoroughbred breeders and more than a dozen hunting and show kennels. Her work had a richness and a quality of mystery that stole nothing from the strong aliveness of the animals she painted; as if she painted not only the animals, but aspects of their spirits as well.
He had given Alice’s childhood diary to her parents, though he would have liked to keep it. It contained many of her small, early drawings, mostly of the pets she had as a child. One cat in particular she had drawn many times. There was a pastel of the same cat in their favorite restaurant in the city, a small French cafe. He hadn’t been there since Alice died. The small, intimate cafe, whose walls were hung with the works of many Bay area artists, held too many painful memories of her.
In the map cabinet now were only the drawings of the garden door, and a few sketches of the child who had disappeared. He didn’t know why he had kept the drawings of the child, likely the kidnapped child had been killed though Alice had refused to believe that.
The little girl had vanished from the garden when she and Alice were visiting Alice’s aunt here, the child had been playing alone by the tool shed. Alice had searched frantically, gone to all the neighbors and into the village, and after several hours to the police, beginning the search that lasted long after Aunt Carrie died, that lasted until Alice was killed.
When he and Alice started dating, she had been so preoccupied over the child’s disappearance that she seemed, often, hardly to see him. She would be white, shaken with the things she thought might have happened to the little girl.
The wind rose, soughing through the garden and through the tops of the redwoods that thrust black against the night sky. Above the trees against the stars, pale clouds blew. He rose and went into the dark studio and did not switch on the lights.
His new paintings covered the walls, in the darkness they were only black squares. They oppressed him, he did not want to look at them, he felt constricted by them and by his commitment to finish the series.
The date for his show at Chapman’s was too close and he wasn’t ready, the work wasn’t ready. His lack of passion for the work, and his lack of professionalism in letting himself go like this, had no excuse. He told himself he’d lost the desire and thus the skill, that he wouldn’t paint anything worthwhile again. He knew that was stupid. He wasn’t some twenty-year-old who didn’t know how to handle hard times. But he couldn’t shake the depression, and the work reflected his barrenness—stilted and dry.
He turned away from the paintings restlessly and went back outside. Without conscious thought he crossed the brick veranda and headed up the dark garden toward the door of the cats.
The carved oak door was lit faintly by the scattered house lights at the outer boundaries of the garden. In the wind under the blowing trees the cats’ faces seemed to move and change expression. They chilled him. As he stood looking, annoyed with himself for coming up here, he began to imagine space beyond the door. Unending hollowness. Deep spaces yawning down inside the hill. He imagined he could hear echoing sounds above the wind and voices whispering from deep beyond the door. And then he shook his head, and turned away, and went back to the terrace for a drink.
Chapter 2
Perhaps 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 behind 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 surprised 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 something. 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.
Chapter 3
She 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.
The Catswold Portal Page 2
