by T. Wyse
"Eat your sardines." Meldice quickly broke her silence.
"Ugh no, I can't." Amelie said. She had been offered pickled, oily fish before and wasn't able to stomach it.
"Guess you'll just have to get hungry enough." Meldice said with a foreboding tone. "These'll be a delicacy within a year I'd wager." She took the plate and chomped down a couple of the salted fish.
Meldice dangled a sardine in front of the cat. "I bet this fluffy guy will take them." She smiled warmly at the shaggy cat. The cat stood up and stretched, Amelie was immediately struck by the way its bones slid under the loose skin, bulging visibly even under the thick fur.
"He's a funny fellow." Meldice grinned. "What a crook'd back he has, was he hurt or something?"
"Isn’t he yours?" Amelie asked, surprised.
She looked at the cat, gnawing the sardines only inches away from her. The more she regarded him, the more carefully she scrutinized, the less he looked like a cat.
His tail was fluffy and somewhat matted, somewhat longer than she had ever seen. His legs were at odd angles, shoulders hunched over. Its back, as Meldice had observed, was oddly crooked. His posture resembled a weasel, or a ferret, more than a feline.
His face betrayed the most to Amelie's scrutiny. His ears were oversized lops, with shagged fur sharpening to a drooping point. His face and jaw seemed normal enough, but he lacked whiskers. Two jutting teeth emerged from his lower jaw, even when it was closed, giving him a bulldog’s scowl. His flattened snout was practically invisible behind the wild and thick fur of his face.
His eyes, strangest of all, were a hypnotic red. No, not just red, they held the illusion of glowing, reflecting a gentle red hue onto the fur surrounding them. She stared into his eyes, lost in them for a moment, and he gazed back at her, gnawing on the salted fish. The eyes were so deep, and down in the depths of them she saw a soft white light, like fading embers of a bonfire.
The embers tickled the back of her skull, bringing back that funny ringing in her mind. She broke the gaze and the obscuring sound ended abruptly.
"No, he arrived with you." Meldice said, unconcerned. "Mister M'grevor thought he was yours, that you were carrying him in your pack or something" Meldice made a mock voice that Amelie recognized as the man who she had met in the shelter of concrete.
"He's...pretty odd looking, don't you think?" Asked Amelie, cautious about revealing what seemed so obvious to her now.
Meldice smiled. "Awww he's just a crazy mutt, aren't you?" She stroked the not-cat's cheek and it rubbed up against her hand contentedly. "Really, I have an aunt who raises purebred lop eared cats, he just has a funny back and a bunch of weird breeds mixing in." Meldice concluded.
"I guess." Amelie said, unconvinced.
She hadn't ever seen a cat as weird as this one. She motioned closer on the bed to pet the shaggy creature, and he rolled over happily at the increased attention. He seemed friendly at least.
"In any case," Meldice rose to go. "I have to get back to working in the garden." She nodded conclusively.
"Mother says you should rest and find your legs today, 'figure out the layout' and all that" she impersonated her mother's voice, but it didn't remind Amelie of the woman she had met. It must have been the Donna Woolley who existed before.
"Later we'll set you up with some shoes and some outside clothes, assuming you feel up to it." Meldice smiled, nodding. "I have a few sets of both to spare." She paused, then added; "We'll have to find a name for mister kitty." Meldice winked smartly. "That's your assignment for today."
“Oh, one thing.” She caught herself halfway through the door. “Do NOT light any fire, not a candle, not a match. Whatever you do.”
“Because it could start a fire?”
“No, well yes, but not in the way you think. The fire is weird now. It’s hard to do it justice, but just promise.”
“I promise but, how can it be weird?”
“We lit a candle on the first day, when mother was trying to find her supplies in the cellar. The match lit the candle but they just spewed smoke. We couldn’t put either of them out, and they weren’t even really giving off light, just pouring out a…burning feeling.” Meldice’s breath had caught, her gaze distant. “Mother managed to run upstairs and throw it into the dirt, but even that didn’t stop it. The candle went for a full day and just burned through the soil. It dug deep enough that water started coming up, but even that didn’t put it out. The only good thing that came of it was we got the spring in the front. We had to dig the one in the back ourselves. So, again, if you even light a match it isn’t going to help you.”
“I understand.” Amelie nodded.
Meldice smiled and waved then left closing the door softly as she did.
The tears didn’t return, and in fact the hurt had ebbed almost entirely.
She continued petting the cat. His fur was very soft despite its unkempt appearance and was quite unlike the fur of any animal she could recall. "So what's your name, little kitty?" She asked in a sweetened, talking in a silly baby voice.
"Kokopelli" the cat replied, in a purred, crackled voice.
The shock was instant and the terrible ringing had returned in force, conflicting with her instincts to peel away from the filthy and awful thing. She winced against the conflict and staggered backwards, tumbling off of the bed and over the side. The blankets again hungrily wrapped around her feet and ended up in a lump on top of her.
The creature leapt up gracefully, avoiding the ensuing maelstrom of fabric and landing back on the bared sheets.
The thing, the talking animal, pounced off the bed in a second fluid motion and trotted slowly over to her face. Voiceless and her skin icy with horror, the crows, she thought of the crows tearing at her.
Freeing her hands from the blanketed tether she clawed backwards on the hardwood floor, trying to get away. She was afraid that if she broke her gaze with the thing it would leap and attack.
“No need for that, child.” He scolded, and retreated to the foot of the bed. He moved with a silken grace, but his shoulders and back were ever crudely hunched, both raised above his head. “Your parents, er, Lucas and Adele Beren, sent me.”
“They sent you?” She shouted, and the surprise tore through that ringing denial. The elation cut through the fog in her brain and the fear. She leapt forwards, and looked down at the creature. “There was…a giant, and he said they were alright…and…” She searched through the numb memory.
“Both quite alright but it would seem you’re in a bit of a state.” A single eye squinted and he turned his head curiously at her. “He spoke to you of these things, and yet I can still sense the defenses in place.” He sighed, then muttered: “Sounds like them. What did he say to you exactly?”
“They were okay, and they had sent a guardian to be with me, to protect me, to make sure I wasn’t alone.”
He gave a sagely nod, burning eyes closed. “Yes, both are quite well, better than they have left you it would seem. For now we must worry more about keeping you safe and well. In that spirit I am here to ‘guard’ you I suppose.” He purred.
“So, um, what are you exactly?” She relaxed onto her knees, still towering over the creature.
"I am a cheat, a liar, a beast." The creature's tail flitted back and forth, and he licked his paw with a kind of perverse pride.
"I am a pale remnant of something that was once great, I am a teacher, a musician. I am the maiden's fear and the mother's revelation." The thing stood up, and leapt upon the bed once more, its face became a darkened silhouette, its eyes glowed and its jutting lower fangs shone in the dim light.
"Above all, I am a trickster." It concluded. "But for what it's worth, I am here to protect you from that which would cause you harm."
Amelie didn't know whether to be comforted by its declaration of fealty, or even more worried. She sat there staring silently at that thing...at Kokopelli for a long time.
4
Fealty
She had knelt there,
eyes locked on that funny creature long enough for the window’s light to shift from him and leave him in the shadows. For his part he had been silent the entire time, meeting her gaze in a mutual silence.
Some invisible clock turned in her mind and whatever coping mechanism that still lurked in the depths of her brain finally decided that the anathema of the creature was no immediate threat.
She turned again to look at the room. It certainly seemed no more interesting than before, but there was at least a sense of tired calm buzzing about her now. She wasn’t alone, her parents were alive and ‘better off’ than she. The light now tickled some of the golden spines of the books, maroon and aged bindings glowing with a shy pride at being inspected. They all wore rough textures, and upon inspection the pages were uneven, but not ragged. To a gentle distress she found it difficult to return the first few books she had sampled to the resting perfection they knew. Each book took a minute or more of rather meticulous positioning to align them amongst their siblings, but she was satisfied in the resulting order.
She sampled the red and gold garden, and found a thematic grouping within the shelves. There were some on Philosophy, certain familiar selections of classical literature, but the bulk of the wall was formed of books on plants and gardening.
The aged fictional books were familiar to her though they were not on friendly terms. She knew them all, save a few, but not in the traditional sense. Inked printing on pages tended to slither and nip at her eyes before too long, thus leaving marathon reading out of the question. She much preferred printing that glowed in the wind, pages that she could conceive of almost as fast as they could be turned, she preferred to read braille, the printing of the sightless.
The thought of one of the philosophical books intrigued her a little, but the chosen tome’s stubborn clinging to its spot made her turn to the gardening section in hopes of finding a more willing participant. She found one she could get loose, its cover declaring it to be “The Modern Hobbyist Gardener, Volume 8”. Modern being subjective as it had been printed in the late 19th century. She gingerly cracked it open, and glanced at the pages in the dim light. The words were clinical, and lacking any sort of whimsy that would make it worth the effort of wrangling the squirming letters.
The pictures within weren't much more interesting. Bland technical diagrams told the reader how to make a specific formation of flowers, so that they would grow into an aesthetically pleasing pattern when in full bloom. Without some kind of 'before and after' pictures, the book only gave black and white renditions of the garden after blooming, the thing was drabber and more depressing than anything else.
It returned to its aged peers with little struggle, and she fiddled with it a little, going so far as to blow on it to make sure the volumes were flush. She itched a leg thoughtfully, finding no real distraction here.
Resorting to simply prying, she gently rummaged through the chest at the foot of the bed. Finding it with nothing more interesting than extra blankets and a pillow, she sighed and glanced at the painting.
It bore the thick texture, and dimensional strokes of a painting based on oil. Inside the frame stood a somewhat pristine landscape, a strand of trees bracketing a lake, mountains forming the backdrop. A sky with sparse clouds rose to the painting's height, and in its bottom depths was a darkened black. An indistinguishable signature scrawled itself in white in the darkness of the painting's bottom.
The only residents that appeared in the paintings were a pair of stylized shapes. One of a bird flying above the landscape, its colouring faded to grey in the subdued lighting. The other shape, one more subtle, was that of a fish leaping from the water, its shape bent over in a posture indicative of its return trip to the water below. The painting had little to offer of interest, at least to those who only had eyes.
The knowledge of the language of the blind had given her a somewhat unique perspective on art, one that would not be polite for any other to observe. She closed her weary eyes and focused on the patterned chaos of brush strokes. Valleys and mountains rose up from the face of the canvas, hidden messages and insights into the painter’s technique and moods shivered in the currents.
There was a funny mark that she had never seen before. A clear, wormlike shape in the lower left of the painting, coiled upon itself in a flattened “S”. Curious, she forced an eye open and found it utterly invisible within the lazy light.
In the dimness of the room Amelie could fully understand Mrs. Woolley’s insistence on the closed drapes. It really was less about fear of the outside and more about illusion, the illusion that the world inside was still pristine and whole. It was grey and drab however, like an old photo with its colours washed out by time and crudity of capture. It was a relic of a now gone era, and the light of reality would burst the fragile perfection.
Amelie stared at the door, the final curiosity left to her at the moment. In the times like this, in an unfamiliar setting and without the emotions and expressions of other humans to guide her own, the push to explore burned hot in her mind.
There was, of course the other curiosity, the one that one might scream of. She stole a glance at the lounging creature, once again on its place on the bed. His expression was strange, not as simple as an animal, but unreadable to her perceptions. He did breathe and he certainly was real as Meldice had seen him as well. Still she was happy to let the invocation of her parents invoke an aura of trust for the creature. As far as she could read his breath and his language, he was being honest.
For now it was better to rely on the comfortable curiosities and urges. For now she wanted to see what the rest of the house looked like. They couldn’t be too angry if she stepped out just a little? If necessary, she could simply claim that she needed to use the bathroom after all. The fact that she didn't after an alleged two days of sleep was an oddity she tried not to think of.
Reassuring herself once again that at worst she would face a stern scolding she crept quietly towards the door. Her bare feet tiptoed against the wooden floors. Closing her eyes and kneeling low to the crack below the door she reached out on the wind's currents, feeling the area beyond. She had to suffice on the barest of shapes and details as the nearby air was stilled and dull. There was a hallway behind the door, turning left sharply into a dead end, and turning right into a vague and inconclusive haze.
"Going to look around are you?" Kokopelli lay stretched out on his back, his face dangling over the edge of the bed regarding her with an upside down expression.
Amelie turned from the door to face him in what she felt was a softly authoritarian stance. "I'm not tired, not at all. I'm going to look around a little more, make the place a little less strange to me."
She knelt to the floor, focusing her mind again on the trickle of breeze coming from the gap where it met the door. There was no movement in the hallway, the house lay as still out there as it was in the room. Her ears were filled with disconcerting and rare silence, her breathing and the gentle crackle of the bed as Kokopelli fidgeted himself awake were the only sounds. No vague hum of electricity or moaning of pipes, no far off motor somewhere, nothing broke the quiet.
Surely they were all outside, in the garden, she reassured herself.
She turned the old doorknob gently and took a fleeting and final check before stepping out. The muffled sound of two pairs of padded paws hitting the floor gently sent a mild shock to her system.
"Well come on then!" she hissed at the cat-thing, leaving the door open a crack, enabling him to slink through.
He was graceful and fluid in motion, despite looking like some weathered old feral tomcat who had not seen the inside of a house its entire life. He paced around her twice and then, without looking up, asked: "So where do you plan to go?"
"Well," Amelie thought, surveying the passage. The hallway had four doors, three of them resembling the door she had exited and closed behind her. The fourth door, the one closest to where she faced, had a smaller, somewhat different design.
The breezes
under the doors gave little in the way of knowledge of the rooms behind. The closest door was a tight room, its furnishings blurred beyond her reckoning. The other rooms were more spacious and with a higher circulation about them, though apart from a desk in the room across the hall to her right, there was little in the way of clear objects.
She checked the smaller door opposite. It was locked to her voyeuristic disappointment.
"That's a bathroom." Kokopelli chimed in.
"You've looked around then?"
"Somewhat. I can't open doors, at least when people are around." He replied. "Got the bathroom, the guest room opposite it, then there's two other rooms that they've made up as bedrooms for the other four people, those are the doors near the end of the hallway. I think both were offices, or something similar." He listed off. "On the other side of the landing there are two large master bedrooms, and a smaller room near the lesser bedroom."
“We…might meet someone.” Amelie paused. “I take it I shouldn’t speak to you in mixed company?”
"I wouldn't expect an answer if you did." His purring voice chuckled. "People, especially at this point, wouldn't be very welcoming to me, would probably grasp at me, thinking to burn me as a devil or some such nonsense. No, unless your life is in direct danger or a similar circumstance, I will stay silent as best I can."
"It might be hard, we'll probably get caught, sooner or later." She stated, hoping for some lenience from this decree. Meldice, perhaps, would be worth sharing this strange secret with.
"In truth it’s unlikely any would even hear me." He answered. "It's very hard, almost impossible in fact, to hear the words I speak. You must either know to expect words from me, or must be being spoken to, and willing to hear, willing to perceive that an animal has words to share. I spoke to you while you cried in the room before, but you were not in a state to hear me. It is uncommon, but not worth risking if possible."
