Cat Tales

by Alma Alexander

  "Yes," Aris said, subsiding, his eyes on the harp he now saw glinting on the far side of the enormous hearth.

  "Well, then," said Bek. "Perhaps you could honor me with a tale later. Perhaps even the one of how a solitary gleeman came to be trudging the Ghulkit roads in mid-winter."

  "Foolishness," muttered Aris under his breath.

  Bek laughed out loud. "Ah, a longer tale than that, I think," he said. "But there is no hurry. First we get you warm. It is certain that you will be going nowhere for a while. It is only getting worse outside."

  Aris sipped his drink and stole an apprising glance around the room as he did so. It did not appear to have windows; this nagged at him obscurely, as though it should have occasioned at least one important question to surface in his mind. He could not pin it down, however, and he let go, knowing that the stray thought would return all the faster if not pursued. The room was larger than it first appeared, with the far corners lost in dark shadows. Aside from the firelight, it was lit by candles – groups of them, placed on any flat surface with enough space to bear them. There was a desk in a nook beside the fireplace, overflowing with parchment, ink bottles, quill pens, and a quantity of leather-bound books. It also bore a stuffed owl and an hourglass which looked about to spill the last of its sand into the lower chamber. Further out, there was an armchair which presently served as sleeping quarters for three identical black-and-white cats who were tangled in a knot of paws and whiskers on the cushioned seat. More books lay in piles on the floor beyond that. Whoever the owner of this cottage was he was no humble tiller of land – these books were riches, even had their bindings gleamed with subtle inlays of silver and gold.

  Feeling Bek's somewhat sardonic gaze upon him, Aris finally turned back to his host.

  "I would," said Bek, his voice hiding a suspicion of a smile, "be happy to answer questions. Within reason."

  Aris gestured. "There is a king's ransom in books here," he said, and it was not a question. Quite.

  Bek inclined his head. "Some of them," he said, "probably were. I am a collector. Of books, amongst other things. For example…" He rose, and fetched a wooden case from a shelf, opening it up on a hinged edge to reveal rows of meticulously displayed butterflies. "This one," he said conversationally, pointing to a midnight blue specimen with silver flecks on his wings, "I had to travel far to find. Very far. You might say it was worth more than any two of those books."

  Aris had gulped down the last of the fiery liquid in the pewter mug, and it dangled from his hand as he examined the butterflies with interest. Bek took the cup from him.

  "Good. Another, I think."

  "What is it?" Aris, who was feeling quite ridiculously invigorated, asked.

  "Secret recipe," Bek said. "Amongst other things, I am a healer."

  Aris cast his eyes around the windowless room again, and felt the question he had been chasing earlier coalesce clearly in his mind.

  "There are no windows," he said.

  Bek, who had been pouring more steaming liquid into Aris's mug from a kettle that had been hanging in the hearth, nodded without turning. "This is so."

  "Then how do you know that it is getting worse outside? And how did you know that I was there?"

  "One does not necessarily need to see with one's physical sight," Bek said, "in order to observe one's world." He walked the few steps back to Aris with the steaming mug in his hand. "And there is no need to look quite so alarmed. It is a gift, much like your own with the harp."

  "Magic," said Aris, and could not keep his distaste out of his voice. Aris and enchantment had a relationship akin to that of a cat hater and any kind of cat – magic pursued Aris, flattered him, cajoled him, tried to climb up to his lap to be petted, while he spent all his energies trying to shoo it away and keep it at arm's length. Using his experiences he had composed a number of songs and tales and the irony was that he was becoming known for his tales of magic even while fleeing it with all his might.

  All Aris had ever wanted to be was a singer of songs, a teller of tales. He knew he was good enough to achieve this with no magical intervention. He was just having an inordinately hard time proving it to himself.

  "If you wish," Bek said equably, "then yes, magic. None that will harm you. You yourself just said I saved your life. This is no less than the truth. I could show you what it is like outside now, and it is considerably worse, if you can imagine that, than when I called you in here. But I suspect you would think that I was just showing off… and you would probably be right."

  He held out the mug. "Drink it. I promise you there is nothing harmful in it at all. If you have to know, it isn't even magic." The word was emphasized, lightly, with something akin to amusement. "It is herbal knowledge, no more."

  Aris accepted the drink after a brief hesitation. Bek inclined his head in an acknowledgement of this acceptance, put away his butterfly collection, and on the way back bent over to inspect Aris's harp.

  "I think it has taken no harm," he said. "I would be very grateful if you would play for me later. If there is something here that I miss, it would have to be music."

  "I owe you my life," said Aris. "A song or a tale is small enough price for this."

  "We all place our own value upon things," said Bek cryptically. "I may not even choose to count it as payment. I may consider your offering something to place me in your debt."

  Aris looked at him for a long moment, and then put down the mug he still cradled in his hands. "If you would pass me the harp," he said courteously.

  Bek did so, with infinite care and gentleness, and Aris spent a few moments adjusting the strings and tuning the instrument to his satisfaction. This done, he glanced up, cradling the harp against his body.

  "Is there something specific that you would hear?"

  "Whatever you choose."

  Aris bent his head over the harp, strumming a few experimental chords, letting the beloved instrument guide him, as it had done so many times before – it almost had a gift itself, this battered harp of his, of passing the right song, the right tale, into his head. It did not fail him – the melody that came flowing from under his fingers was a tale of vivid spring, of bluebells in ancient forests, of young love blighted and lost through blundering and malice. As always Aris lost himself in the telling, pouring his body and his mind into his art, making his voice an instrument of his soul. When he was done, he 'woke' back to his surroundings as the last chord of the harp still hung brilliant and sparkling in the air, and saw the glint of tears on Bek's cheeks.

  "That," Bek said, "could easily have been a tale of my own youth. How could you know?"

  "I, too, do not require windows to see," said Aris.

  "I told you it was the same kind of gift," Bek said. "I thank you. That was well chosen, and well done. We can discuss your fee, gleeman, when we rise. I do not often entertain visitors, but I have readied a pallet here by the fire for you. I hope you will find it comfortable."

  "Thank you. I am sure I shall. But as to the fee…"

  Bek raised a hand for silence. "All in its time," he said, "although here we do have the luxury of choosing our moment… For now, I wish you a good rest and a pleasant night. You may dream, in this room. Pay it no mind." He chuckled. "It is just a little bit of… magic." Again, the word was emphasized with an unspoken smile. "I think I do not have to warn you to touch nothing here that you do not begin to understand… ah… perhaps it is safer to touch nothing at all, then, if magic is your bane."

  He saw Aris flinch, and his face assumed a contrite expression.

  "I do apologize," he said, " I have absolutely no intention of plaguing your rest with fear or anxiety. Rest easy – what is here, is mine, and will not harm you."

  Aris bowed. "It would be ungracious to find fault with sanctuary," he said. "I owe you."

  "No," Bek said. "It is I who am in your debt."

  He bowed lightly, vanishing behind another curtain, twin to the one through which they had entered the room from outside a
nd blowing out one bank of candles on his way out.. Aris doused the rest, put away the harp, and settled onto the comfortable sleeping pallet, piled high with furs, which had been provided for him. But sleep was elusive, especially after one of the armchair cats decided to leave its companions in favor of the furs of the pallet and curl up, purring imperiously, against the pallet's occupant. The room was palpably benign, to one as sensitive to atmosphere as a trained gleeman was, but there was something about it that made Aris's hair stand on end even so, especially in the deep silence of the night shadows. Not even the comforting, anchoring presence of the cat helped. Something was brushing along the edges of his mind, lightly, and would not let him rest. His fingers ached for his harp – inconveniently, for he could hardly take up the instrument and start improvising on it while his host was asleep in the next chamber. So he lay back with wide-open eyes, wakeful and worried, his thoughts in curious chaos, until his body rebelled and presented him with a violent cramp in his leg. He kicked, dislodging the disgruntled cat, and rose to his feet.

  Mindful of the injunction not to touch anything he nevertheless embarked on a quick wander around the room, peering with a measure of real curiosity at some of the more accessible books – but the fire had burned low and in the half-light he could make out little except the glint of their precious bindings. The owl on the desk proved to be companioned by a pair of tiny stuffed mice which sat somewhat smugly right under the bird's lethal claws secure in the knowledge that the talons would never be reach them, even though the owl had been caught in a position of stretching one foot for possible prey. Beside it the hourglass… the hourglass had not moved.

  Aris took a closer look. Yes, there was a still a very small pile of fine sand in the upper chamber, but now that he was close enough to see he became aware of the fact that it was not seeping into the chamber below, in the manner of hourglasses. In fact, it was frozen, in stasis, as much as the owl forever reaching for prey which would never be caught.

  Touch nothing here that you do not begin to understand…

  It was too late. It was a gesture as instinctive as time. Aris watched his hand reach for the hourglass, and turn it over.

  He shivered in a sudden blast of cold. An owl hooted somewhere close by. The friendly house had melted away around him, and he stood beside a huge snowdrift with the hourglass in his hand and his harp, his travelling pack, his gleeman's cloak and a fur-piled pallet with one first startled and then very irate cat at his feet. Upon closer inspection he appeared to be standing barefoot in the snow, with his boots a step away at the edge of the pallet. Aris hopped onto the furs of the pallet, displacing the hissing cat, and quickly drew the boots onto feet already blue with cold – then, before doing anything else, working swiftly to wrap the exposed harp into its multi-layered pack. Only once this was done did he pause and stare at the hourglass, which he had dropped into the snow when making the dive for his footwear.

  The sky was clear, hung with stars and a huge close golden moon, but it was bitterly cold and his breath hung in white clouds before his face.

  A deep sigh behind him made him spin in the direction from whence it had come, and he found himself looking at a wizened old man, bent with age, his sparse hair white and straggly across the collar of his robe. He leaned heavily on a carved staff, both gnarled and twisted hands, bare of gloves, upon its head. There was nothing in this ancient being to suggest the almost childlike youth of Aris's erstwhile host, Bek. But then the old man looked up and the eyes were the same glowing embers of blue fire.

  "The Eternal Hour was a high fee to choose, gleeman," the creature that was Bek said in a low voice cracked with the passage of time.

  "The Eternal Hour?" repeated Aris blankly.

  "What you hold," Bek said, "made me and my home timeless. You could have spent a century inside my room and emerged young and beautiful the next morning."

  Aris picked up the hourglass gingerly and held it out. "But I don't…"

  Bek shook his head. "Too late. It is in your hand now. I mean – take a look around you… nothing made it that was not part of your immediate environment when you touched the glass. Your own belongings, and then the pallet you slept on, the mug you drank from, the chair you sat on…" This was correct; only now did Aris notice these items, incongruous in the snow. "And one careless cat," chuckled Bek, with real amusement. "Well, they're yours now, cat and all. And the hourglass. You control your life now, to use however you choose. You may take whomever you wish into the stasis with you, and they may then leave unmolested… unless they touch the glass, and you may not warn them directly not to do so. Just be warned – it is a treasure with a price…"

  Aris shivered, and not with cold. "What?"

  "Keep it too long and you forget what time is," said Bek. "I received it when I was very, very young… and kept it for too many centuries…." He coughed. "They do catch up with you…"

  "But I don't want it," Aris said obstinately, a hint of panic in his voice.

  "Then," said Bek, "you had better give it away within this hour – before the sand runs out to the last few grains, and then stops, starting your Eternal Hour."

  "But if someone else…"

  "If someone else turns the hourglass over before the end of the hour, it is theirs," said Bek. "But just as you may not warn them not to touch it when it belongs to you, so you may not hide its nature while it is still free. It may be taken in ignorance or innocence, but never passed on willingly under the same geas. If you give it away, you give away everything – including the knowledge of its power." Bek chuckled. "And you may find it hard to find people who love eternal life enough to take it over by choice…."

  He began to flicker and to fade against the gleaming moonlit snow. Aris threw out an imploring hand. "No! Wait!…"

  "Be careful with your gift…" Bek's voice came drifting back, and then he was gone, completely gone, leaving Aris alone in an empty wilderness with an hourglass that held his destiny. He sank down onto the furs that had been his pallet, dropping the hourglass beside him in the snow, and buried his head in his hands.

  The cat came high-stepping daintily back to the furs from the snow where it had initially fled. It approached the human, butting Aris's knee with its head, purring loudly, but this elicited no measurable response. The cat came round the back of Aris and settled against the side of his leg where he sat on the furs, starting to clean itself.

  Spend the winter in Ghulkit.

  Aris allowed himself a bitter chuckle at the memory of a stray thought that had accompanied him on the road before he had found Bek's house – a thought that took on the force of premonition, seen with hindsight. If he wasn't careful he could find himself spending eternity here.

  The cat leaned more insistently against him, letting out a small whimper. Aris lifted his head and turned to look at it, resting his chin on hands folded on his knees.

  "Poor beast," he murmured, "you hardly asked for this…"

  He reached for the cat, awkwardly, at an angle; the cat shied, backing away. Its hind leg slipped off the edge of the fur, onto snow… and into the side of the hourglass.

  Which tumbled slowly, and then righted itself.

  On the opposite end.

  Sand began flowing back into the chamber it had just left.

  Aris sat frozen in mid motion, staring, unable to believe his eyes. He had not fulfilled the geas of explaining the nature of the hourglass to the cat, but the cat was an animal – would such an explanation have made any difference? And could he really take a serendipitous accident as a gift from the gods and walk away, free?

  The cat had gone over to investigate the hourglass as Aris carefully rose from the pallet furs, slung his harp-pack securely diagonally across his shoulder and chest, and reached for his pack. Slowly, quietly, like a thief stealing away, he backed off from the cat that would never die. He gained the edge of the road he had been travelling before he had found Bek's house, and hesitated, very briefly, as he cast a glance first in the
direction in which he had been heading, then back along the way he had already come.

  I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

  Would they laugh at him if he returned destitute, frozen, in rags?

  Would they miss him if he never came back at all?

  But he was a gleeman. It was their appointed task to seek, to find, to experience. If some chose to hide from that task in comfort and safety – well – they would sing the same old songs to tired audiences till the end of time….

  The end of time.

  Aris shivered, irresolute for a moment under the golden moon. He glanced back briefly and then turned, staring. The pewter mug and the chair in which he had sat in Bek's house were still there – but the pallet, its furs and the cat were gone. And so was the hourglass.

  A voice inside his mind screamed at Aris to flee this enchanted place, to seek familiar places and more hospitable lands. But there was a shimmer of moonlight on the horizon, and the snow gleamed with promise underneath the stars. He was Aris, gleeman, storyteller, and there were more stories out there to be found.

  There was no choice at all.

  The moon pooled and shimmered in the footsteps of the trail he left behind him, following the snow-mantled road into the future.

  This story was submitted to an all-YA edition of a well-known fantasy magazine, to a respected editor experienced in her field. She held on to the story for the longest time and then, regretfully, passed – she had a limited number of spaces and, she said to me in a cover letter, she had had to let a number of stories she would under other circumstances have loved to publish to to (perhaps) other homes. I attempted one of her suggestions, but in a situation that was a complete reversal of the "Hourglass" story, this particular tale went to its chosen market… and met the same fate – the editor adored it, but could not make a case for using it in the journal's current context. What this means, of course, is that this is a BRAND NEW STORY that has NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED BEFORE, or even seen by more than a handful of people. And now, here, it is offered to you the new reader, released into the world – to find its place amongst the other stories where cats have padded in on silent but regal feet and demanded their rightful place in the spotlight.