1 A Hiss-tory of Magic

by Harper Lin

  “You mean precognition.”

  As they chatted, I watched as Jake got between one of the firefighters and a man I hadn’t seen before. He couldn’t have just been a visitor in town, judging from how Jake and Gillian both acted so tense around him. The strange man’s strikingly handsome face was ruined by a squint when he turned and caught my eye. I returned his glower with an expression of confused stubbornness. Still, I didn’t look away. Jake gave a sharp word and the strange man broke eye contact with me to acknowledge the argument he was almost having with Jake.

  “That’s Blake Samberg. He studied forensics in Boston,” Bea told me. “He’s Jake’s new partner, been so these past two and a half weeks.”

  Aunt Astrid hummed as she considered them. “They seem to be getting along.”

  “Jake complains a lot about how on edge Blake is. City slickers, you know.” Bea rolled her eyes. “I bet he’s accusing the firefighters of arson. He calls it his gut, but really he’s just conditioned to be extra suspicious of absolutely everybody else in the world.”

  “What a shame,” I said. “He’s cute.”

  Bea drawled, “Give it time.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Either he’ll have you on edge, too, or…”

  “Wonder Falls will mellow him out.” Aunt Astrid finished, confidently. She handed her thermos cap back to me and carefully folded up the empty paper bag.

  As the fire truck began to pull away, Blake and Jake entered the ruins of the café, and Bea urged us off the bench to gather materials for the cleanup. She had the keys to her minivan, where the cleaning utilities awaited.

  It was late enough in the morning that the sun was up, but the light of the day hadn’t changed that much. I spared a glance at the overcast sky. “I hope it doesn’t rain. The Brew-Ha-Ha doesn’t have a roof anymore.”

  “Not over the customer area, but we can start with the kitchens.” Aunt Astrid handed me a mop. She took a broomstick for herself, and Bea took the bucket of cleaners.

  So we went around back and met Jake on his way out.

  “Don’t go in there.” Jake’s voice was stern, his expression worried with a hint of panic.

  Bea looked confused for a moment. With a laugh, she asked, “What, do you think I had so much sentimental attachment to this café?” She moved forward into the kitchen anyway. “These things happen, sweetheart. We just do our best with whatever happens in business—”

  Jake interrupted her with a grappling sort of hug, trying to turn his wife away.

  He was too late. Bea saw something inside the kitchens, and she screamed.

  Blake strode up to the back entrance and blocked the way through.

  “What is it?” I demanded of him.

  Aunt Astrid handed the broom to me and put her hands on her hips. “What is going on, here?”

  “This is a crime scene. Please”—Blake gestured to the sidewalk—“wait here until we can call for backup.” His voice was hoarse and deeper than I expected for someone with such a clean-cut look.

  Aunt Astrid and I exchanged startled looks. A crime?

  Arson, I thought. Some troubled teenager left rude vandalism that survived the building fire.

  Bea, still in Jake’s embrace, started to sob. Bea wouldn’t have shed tears over a bit of vandalism. “Wh—who was that?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Jake answered, at the same time Blake said, “Théodore Lanier.”

  “Damn it, Samberg!”

  I’d never heard Jake swear before.

  “Ted?” I could barely get the word out. My nerves trembled with the looming sensation of something gone so, so, so wrong. “Théodore’s his full name, Théodore Lanier.” It’s supposed to be said like ‘lan-YAY’ in that Frenchy way, where the R is silent. “He’s our baker. What about him?”

  Blake turned to me again. “If the ID card belonged to the body, ma’am, then it could very well be that Ted…is dead.”

  Aunt Astrid gasped in horror.

  “There’s a body in there, burnt to a crisp.” Blake deadpanned, “Your baker’s been roasted.”

  Jake’s jaw dropped. Bea released a wailing sob.

  “Mr. Lanier”—Blake mispronounced the name as “LANE-ee-yur”—“could now be that body that’s layin’ ’ere—”

  I squeezed my eyes shut as if in pain and held my palm up and out at him, a gesture for Blake to stop. “I’ve got the gist of it, yeah! Detective…Punster, is it?”

  “Do you think I have a sense of humor?” Blake growled the question, offended by the notion.

  I seethed. “I’ll take any explanation other than the answer that this is really happening.”

  “We’ve got procedures to follow now,” Jake said to us. “Samberg’s right, at least on the point that this is a crime scene. We need backup to investigate before we know more.”

  He rubbed Bea’s arm to comfort her. Since I was carrying everything else anyway, I took the bucket from Bea. Jake and Bea walked back to the police car, and the rest of us followed them: Blake Samberg, Aunt Astrid, and me.

  I didn’t notice it then, but Marshmallow must have darted in from the alleyway at that moment and followed us.

  A Lesson in Magic

  Marshmallow later told me what had lured her out. I’ll do my best now to translate this, beginning with the moment Aunt Astrid left that morning. Before I get to that, though, I need to explain something about witchcraft.

  We’re basically working with another dimension. Most people know that dimensions consist of height, breadth, and depth. Some people consider the passage of time the fourth dimension, and I don’t know if that’s true because I’m not a physicist, but that sure would make the next thing I’m going to explain a little easier to grasp.

  There exist dimensions in addition to the ones that I just mentioned, and that’s the world that we witches live in. We balance that world with the life in this world, which we share with nonwitches.

  Imagine that I drew a square. Now notice how a square can turn into a cube with an added dimension, or a few extra lines to suggest it. Time takes a different shape, too, with an added dimension, or two, or three, or more. That’s why Aunt Astrid experiences time out of order: she lives the future in the present.

  Everybody, even nonwitches, has this extra body in this collection of other dimensions. It interfaces with their physical body, locked to that for as long as they’re alive.

  The bodies of the other dimensions get damaged more easily and heal faster than physical bodies—but because of the interface, the state of one body affects the other. That’s how Bea does her healing. Her body in the other dimension has a looser interface with her own, and her witchy senses let her see exactly what it is about the other person’s other body that’s wrong. She works her magic, which these other dimensions are made out of, and she makes people healthy again or at least takes away their pains.

  Cats know the other dimensions even better than witches do. I just happen to be in the same zone most cats are in most of the time.

  This other dimension is like an ocean. It has zones of visibility, currents, quakes, and an irregular ebb and flow that makes it difficult to explore. That’s why we witches have different talents from each other, and also why a single talent might not work all the time.

  Witchcraft is like being on a ship on an ocean. We can set down an anchor, like Bea can do with healing people’s bodies; we can tether to a bollard, like I do with the bonds I make with cats; we can turn the sails when the wind changes, as with the life Aunt Astrid tries to make with her visions of the future—but if there’s a giant tidal wave or an iceberg in the way or a sea monster… Well, then it’s all we can do to keep from sinking. When that happens, witches and nonwitches are kind of on the same boat.

  Okay, maybe not. We witches do our best. This has never been good enough for nonwitches. Nonwitches have always thought that just because we know when some danger from another dimension is coming, we’re dangerous, too—that, because we’re not strong enough to stop evi
l, we must be evil too. No wonder we’re neurotic about our privacy!

  The Greenstones came to Ontario from Massachusetts. My I-don’t-know-how-many-greats grandmother took the hint from the witch trials in Salem that the New World still had old problems. She could have kept running and never found a place where a witch could be accepted by other human beings.

  She settled in Ontario because she found acceptance here by a being that’s never been human. Among the generations of Greenstone women since then, this being is known as the Maid of the Mist.

  When I was at that awkward and insecure age of dealing with bullies at school—and growing into a magical talent that I couldn’t accept because magic had left me orphaned—I took frequent trips to the waterfalls where the Maid of the Mist was supposed to have first appeared to the errant Greenstone.

  I’d been full of hope that the Maid of the Mist would appear to me and grant me some guidance, but she never did. Maybe there wasn’t as much of a connection as we Greenstones have thought between that first meeting and the place that it happened. Maybe the dimensions of the non-witch world and the other worlds had developed something like a wall between them rather than a curtain that even nonwitches could pull aside. That happens sometimes. Maybe this Maid of the Mist just wasn’t interested in the emotional issues of adolescent humans.

  But on the day of the fire, the Maid of the Mist appeared to Marshmallow.

  Marshmallow Moans

  I didn’t want a grooming. I might like that it brings me back to my days in show, for which I won ribbons and was very proud to look so pretty, but that time is past. It’s for no good reason now that Astrid takes me to that cold, bright place to get rained on, and I don’t taste right afterwards when I try to clean myself. Sometimes I get indigestion from whatever they put in my fur. I’m getting too old for grooming.

  Yet I’m too old to fight, scratch, and bite; besides, I know it will be over sooner if I don’t make any trouble.

  When the time came, instead of taking me to the groomer’s, Astrid said she was going somewhere and told me to stay put. I took a catnap and had an uncomfortable dream about the grooming.

  But a hissing sound made me curious, because it was like half the sound of the rain that humans make—and half the sound of a cat warning everybody else away. Usually, I don’t care, but this voice knew me, and it wanted help.

  The room of the grooming salon disappeared and made way for a dreamscape of open sky and wild river waters. The wide rivers fell when the earth ended, and the hiss became a roar of water hitting water that made my fur fluff up with fright. I had already gotten wet. I didn’t want to drown.

  Then I saw the falling water take the shape of a cat. She was a long-haired Persian—or at least she was shaped like one—but I think that was just a shape that she was taking so that I could understand her.

  She told me that Astrid Greenstone should take “it” from her—but that she needed the other humans to help, and me, too.

  “You have the wrong cat. I don’t know the streets,” I told her. “If they don’t come fetch me, then I can’t help them. I’m too old for this.”

  The Cat of the Mist told me, “No, it has to be you. Treacle can help get you there. Hurry, or else…”

  I challenged her: “Or else what? What gave you the right to threaten me with anything?”

  The Cat of the Mist turned into mist that wasn’t shaped like anything, and I dreamed that the water flowed from where this giant misty cat used to be. It overflowed over everything. I saw that the bank of the river broke with all the water, and it filled the forest even to the top of the trees. I saw this as if I wasn’t really there, as though I was flying. The dream changed so that I was in it instead of only watching, but the overflow didn’t stop. I clung onto a branch, feeling like a kitten again, when I used to play in trees, climb too high, and get stuck.

  I woke up.

  The window was open, because I never sneak out and sometimes Treacle sneaks in. I jumped out the window, leaving the cool and cozy familiar smells of my home.

  I sent Treacle the message: “I’m outside. Now where do I go?”

  Treacle was astonished. “Outside? You? Without a human?”

  “I’m going to get to a human if you would just tell me. I’ll tell you why later. I don’t want to be late.”

  Treacle gave me some roundabout directions because he wanted me to stay away from the street gangs. When I understood where our humans would be, I ignored the detour and passed through street gang territory to get there. Do you know, now, how much I put myself through for you?

  Really, they weren’t that bad. I’m a big cat, and my fur makes me look bigger and tougher. If I moved right, they wouldn’t even notice that I was old. They were more surprised to see a strange new cat that they didn’t know.

  I didn’t run, in case it made them curious enough to chase me. One rude young calico cat that smelled like the Dumpster tried to rally the others to corner me, but many of them had stayed up all night hunting and weren’t in a mood for surprises.

  I could have used magic then. Not all cats can do it. Two things stopped me: First, I knew that the magic would leave me for the next hour if I used it now. Second, I knew that you would need my magic.

  What was really bad was the dog out walking the human.

  Oh, the dogs!

  Dogs you should run from when they see you, because they’re loud and violent first. They don’t think. They’re not smart enough, not like cats. Humans only think that dogs are smarter because dogs are more likely to do as they’re told. And even so, they don’t do that all the time.

  This one’s human made noises like “No!” and “Come back!” after that giant St. Bernard broke the strap that kept them together. I had to run, duck into an alleyway, and climb over a wire fence. At my age, too!

  I very much wanted to use magic then, too, but I didn’t.

  When I finally found my human, Astrid, you can imagine what a relief it was. I wasn’t done yet, of course. The gods are annoying.

  Five humans walked out to the banks of a dry river made out of rough flagstones. I didn’t know one of them, the one who was asking, “Did Mr. Lanier have any reason to come in early?”

  Astrid answered, “Work ethic—that’s the only thing I can think of. I had no idea he would come in so early, but he does that sometimes—or he did, if that corpse is really his. Oh, how awful!”

  “He loved his job,” Cath said. “A kitchen accident…” She stifled a large exhale with her teeth and shook her head. “That would have been a bad way to go.”

  The human I didn’t know said, “We don’t know enough to say that it was an accident yet.”

  Astrid and Cath stepped away from him. My human said, “Just what are you implying?”

  “Just that the police will be wondering what you could have done, too. It’s our job.”

  I didn’t like him. He was making my humans unhappy, so I ran in front of his ankle to try to trip him.

  He stumbled. “What?” Then his voice sounded pleased. “Oh, what a pretty kitty!”

  I gave him an annoyed sideways-and-upwards glance as he ruffled the fur at the top of my head.

  “And she’s friendly! It is a she, right?”

  “Yes,” my human confirmed. I meowed up at her.

  “This is yours?” The strange human picked me up comfortably, grasping my ribs behind my forelegs not too tightly, then putting an arm under my hind legs. I relaxed like a Ragdoll cat, but when he had me against his suit, I pawed to show that I still didn’t like him. His suit smelled like catnip. I don’t care because I’m one of the rare kinds of cats that catnip does nothing for, but I wondered how much he really did like cats.

  “I was going to take her to the grooming salon,” Astrid said to him, taking me out of his arms. “Marshmallow must have escaped from Bea’s car. I’ll take her back now.”

  Astrid was lying to him for some reason.

  “And these won’t be needed for a while, either
,” Cath added, lifting the bucket of hay on a stick and the rope monster on a stick.

  Treacle and even Peanut Butter liked to chase after the hay. I didn’t. None of us liked the rope monster, because it was usually damp and smelled too sharp and gross.

  The strange human said, “Let me help you with that—”

  “No, I can manage,” Cath told him. “Shouldn’t you be calling for backup? Jake’s a little tied up right now, what with being a decent human being to his wife, and you’ve got to delegate the real work of investigation to other people so that you can make your accusations.”

  Astrid was holding me up to her shoulder, so as they walked away, I could see the strange male human’s crestfallen expression.

  Cats have sharp ears. I heard him say, “I’m just doing my job…” And he walked away.

  “We hadn’t brought Marshmallow with us,” Cath whispered. “Wouldn’t he have noticed?”

  “For now, we’ve got a more critical problem,” Astrid whispered back. “We need to get back in there before backup comes.”

  Cath is a good listener. I told her: I can hide you—with magic, I can do it. None of the other humans will know that you were ever there.

  Still, she was confused. “Why? What—and Marshmallow just volunteered to do her magic.”

  That’s what I came here for.

  “That’s going to be a big spell,” Astrid said. “It would be easier with Bea, but we need to be discreet, and we need to do it now.”

  We arrived at Bea’s moving machine, which they called a “car”. It wasn't moving then.

  Cath opened the door and pushed the things she was carrying into the car. She said, “Aunt Astrid, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  Cath knows about big spells, dangerous spells. She should have been allowed to go the rest of her life without being involved in this again.

  “It’s faster to show you,” Astrid told her, as she moved me from her own shoulder and onto the cushioned surface that covered the inside of Bea’s moving machine. “And we do need to be fast.”