The Catswold Portal

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  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 porc
h 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.

  When she stopped to rest beside the stream, half of her wanted to join with Efil, while the other half wanted to avoid him. And there was within her, as well, a fierce, painful hunger to turn back again to the inexplicable world above.

  But whatever she did, she must tell Efil that Vrech had found a changeling boy. No matter what she felt about Efil, no matter how he had deceived her, she must do this for him.

  When long hours later she began to smell the deep green scent of pine she ran, bursting out from the tunnel into the familiar Netherworld night. She crossed the stream, and knelt, and snatched up Netherworld earth in her hands. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  She looked for Vrech’s stallion, but it was gone. She wondered if Vrech, returning, had seen the pony behind the bushes. When she reached the pony she laughed at his impatient pawing. Quickly she swung onto his back, released him from the binding spell, and gave him his head. He flattened his ears and bolted for the palace.

  Near the palace she slid down and loosed the pony in his pasture. Approaching the palace wall and slipping in through a side gate, she could see lamps burning in the scullery. And though it seemed to be very late, the big dining hall was brightly lit, and she could hear voices and laughter. She moved to the back of the palace, looking up at Efil’s vine-choked balcony.

  Chapter 22

  She climbed the vine and swung onto Efil’s balcony. She thought as she moved to the window to look in that maybe she would regret her return. Yet she must do this; she felt compelled to bring news of the changeling boy to Efil. She could see through the partially open draperies that the room was dark. She turned the latch and gently pushed the door open—it was jerked from her hand, and someone grabbed her arm, pulling her in. A spell-light shone in her face.

  “Melissa!” Efil laughed drunkenly and pulled her into his arms. He stank of wine. “Where have you been? This is wonderful. Where did you go yesterday? I woke and you were gone.” He began kissing her and fondling her.

  She pulled away and moved to the mantel. “I have something to tell you, Efil. Something important. You weren’t asleep?” She glanced toward the bed, then watched him light a lamp by snapping his fingers in a showy spell. He was really very drunk.

  He said, “I just came in. Supper was endless. She’s all worked up about the damned dwarfs in the north and their silver.” He moved the lamp to a table; its light leaped up across his face to form unfamiliar contours. “She can’t get the dwarf nation to settle on a king elect without turning it into a battle over silver taxes. What difference? She takes what she wants anyway.” Again, eagerly, he reached for her.

  She moved away and sat down on the bench before the cold hearth. “Please listen. This is important.”

  He sat down close beside her, smiling indulgently, and began kissing her neck. She pushed him away, prying his fingers loose. “You must listen, Efil. Vrech has found a changeling boy. He has found a boy to be changed for Wylles.”

  He stared at her, frowning. “There hasn’t been time. She only—you’re not serious? But of course, you’re mistaken.”

  She shook her head. “There is a boy in the upperworld who looks exactly like Wylles. I have been there. I saw him.”

  He laughed, reaching for her. “You wouldn’t go there…not alone, my love.”

  He was exasperating; she wanted to slap him. “That is where I went yesterday. I followed Vrech. He has brought the boy to live in the garden by the portal. Six houses,” she said, trying to hold his attention. “Six houses surrounding a hillside garden. There is a door opening into the hill—a portal. Vrech has the boy living there, the child is the same age as Wylles. He looks exactly like Wylles only fatter, healthy, and strong.” She wished Efil was sober. “Don’t you understand? I followed Vrech up. I saw the boy. I talked with him myself.”

  Efil rose and moved irritably to the mantel. He stood looking at the row of dusty wine bottles, seeming not to see them. Absently he lifted one, wrapped a spell around the cork, and drew it forth.

  “Oloroso,” he said, seeming surprised that he held the bottle. “Worth a fortune—brought down from Spain generations ago.” He filled two goblets, holding the bottle carefully, not using a spell, as if with drunkenness his spells, too, were shaky. “In the upperworld they bid fortunes against fortunes for such wine.” His eyes, when he turned to look at her, seemed caught between drunkenness and fear stirred by her words.

  He handed her a glass. “Toni
ght you drink a fortune, my love. And tomorrow,” he said, lifting his goblet unsteadily, “tomorrow we banish the queen.”

  “How can you banish her? You don’t know yet if I’m with child.”

  “Tomorrow we will know.” He smiled, regaining his composure. “This morning I sent a page to Ebenth to fetch an old woman who is a master at the spells of prediction. She will tell us if we have started a son.” He watched her, laughing.

  “Oh yes, my love. She will tell us. She has a solid reputation among the peasants. Whether her prediction is true or not, the peasants will believe her.”

  She set her glass down. “No one can know so soon.”

  “This woman can. And if Siddonie has found a changeling as you say, then we must have proof at once. The old woman can give us that proof. A son, Melissa—a new prince of Affandar.” He reached to pull her up from the chair, to hold her. She pushed him away.

  He said, “Once the news is public, Siddonie wouldn’t dare to harm you.” He snatched up her glass, spilling wine. “Drink, Melissa—drink to our child—to a healthy new prince for Affandar.”

  She rose, took the glass, and set it on the mantel. “What about Wylles?” she said quietly. “Wylles is the true prince of Affandar.”

  “Everyone knows Wylles will die. Whether he dies here or in the upperworld makes little difference. It would be more convenient, though, if he died before any switch was attempted.”

  “You can’t kill him.” She watched Efil, shocked. “The Primal Law…”

  “No one spoke of killing.” He lifted her chin. “But poor Wylles knows pain. He could know more pain. Wylles knows fear, and that could turn to terror. Perhaps Wylles will find a way to ease his own hurts.” He pulled her close, kissing her, open-mouthed and ardent, forcing her toward the bed. Fear and repugnance filled her.

  “We daren’t, Efil. Not here.”

  “There’s no danger. Siddonie is occupied with a tinsmith from Cressteane, a hulking boar—as if size could assure her a breeding.” Crudely he pulled at her dress, pinning her against the headboard, forcing her, seeming possessed. She fought him, stiff and clenched, hitting him. But even drunk he was stronger. His weight was on her, his hands invading her; this was not lovemaking, it was cruel. She was terrified she would cry out and be heard beyond this room. She bit him, twisting away, and heard the door crash open.