The Catswold Portal (20 page)

M
orian carried the little cat up the garden, snuggling her, admiring her patterned coat of orange and black and white. The cat glanced up at her companionably, then flicked her tail at a winging bird and chattered a hunting cry. When Morian laughed at her, she looked back clear-eyed and snuggled closer, relaxed and trusting.

Reaching the porch, Morian shifted the calico to her shoulder, opened the door and, carrying her, emptied the laundry basket. She took it into the bedroom and found an old quilted robe to line it. Stroking the little calico and talking to her, she put her down near the basket, shutting
her in the bedroom while she went to collect a litter box and cat food.

In the kitchen, as she filled a bowl with water, her thoughts were on Anne. She had been alarmed and puzzled by Anne's distress, and amazed at Anne's sudden helplessness. She couldn't believe Tom was as changed as Anne said. Yet Anne was not given to imaginative flights. She would have to see him for herself; maybe she could figure out what had made Anne react so alarmingly.

Anne's husband had died in a mental institution. Anne had had a hard time and was sensitive about mental problems. Morian shook her head; the thought that Anne herself might be having such a problem chilled her.

She had known Anne long before Anne and Tom had moved to the garden. Anne had kept her equilibrium remarkably well through the hard times with her husband. It seemed strange that now Anne would be losing her grip.

In the bedroom Morian arranged water and food dishes on a newspaper, knowing the little cat would be happier in one room until she got used to the house. She could let her deal with the black tom later. Morian smiled, speaking softly to the cat. “It'll take Skillet a while to get used to you.” She stood watching as the calico peered with curiosity under the dressing table. Skillet had been lonely since Tiger died, but he wouldn't want another cat in the house.

She opened the window three inches from the top for fresh air, checking to be sure the screen was latched. The cat was sniffing the laundry basket. Morian watched her circle it then hop in and begin to knead the quilted satin as if she was pleased with the sleeping arrangements. This pleased Morian, too, and she knelt to stroke the little cat, admiring her brightly mixed colors against the cream robe. “You don't seem anxious to get out. Too bad Braden won't keep you—he needs something alive around him. He's getting morose.”

The little cat's purr rumbled against Morian's stroking hand.

“You need a name, you know.” Morian thought of several, but didn't offer any. The cat was beautiful and she'd like to
keep her. But she didn't want this to get too permanent. Maybe Braden would change his mind.

In the kitchen again, she made a sandwich. She ate it looking out at the garden, thinking about Anne and Tom, then she left for an evening class.

In the bedroom the cat napped briefly. When she woke, she ate all the food. She used the litter box with interest, then prowled the room restlessly. Now that she was alone she felt shut in.

When the door wouldn't open under her demanding digging, she leaped to the windowsill. The breeze blew in above her. She leaped again and clung to the top. Under her weight the window dropped a few inches. Encouraged, she climbed atop the sash. It dropped farther. Balancing, she sniffed the night air, pushing at the screen, then she clawed the screen. It was an old screen and rusty, and when it ripped she stuck her nose through the small tear and pushed.

The hole expanded. She pushed through and, balancing awkwardly on the sash, she gauged her distance to the railing below. She quavered, rocking across the screen, found purchase with her hind legs, and leaped. Her rocketing jump ripped down the screen, sending her thudding onto the rail.

In a little while she was back at Braden's. Crouching on the bricks, she stared into the lighted room. When Braden didn't look up, she mewled. When he ignored her, she clawed the glass.

 

Braden heard her, and scowled. What the hell had Morian done—left the door open? After some moments of strained patience he picked up a folded newspaper and opened the door, meaning to scare the cat away. He smacked the wall loudly, but the cat only stared up at him and marched past him into the room.

Flicking her tail, she leaped onto the model's couch and circled, kneading the crimson velvet. He stood watching, amazed by her colossal nerve, and flattered by her determination. He watched her settle herself comfortably, her colors rich against the red. She gave him an unfathomable green
look, lowered her eyes as if dismissing him, and began to wash herself.

He knew he ought to pitch her out.

But what harm could she do in the studio for a few hours? He felt like going out anyway, so let her stay. He stared out at the night, cold and perfect, pulled on his tennis shoes, and went running.

He ran through the hillside residential streets, breathing in the scent of the huge redwoods that stood guard among the houses. He stopped in the village after an hour's run, cooled down, and had a beer and a hamburger. Eating on the restaurant's deck overlooking the stream, he wondered if he should have left the cat in the studio. What if she made a mess? Yet he had a strange, unaccustomed feeling of pleasure at knowing she waited in the empty rooms to greet him.

When he got back, she seemed not to have moved. She looked up from the couch languidly yawning, her open mouth pale pink, her green eyes slitted sleepily, the pupils narrowing in the sudden light. Almost reluctantly he phoned Morian and explained that the cat had come back and that he didn't want a cat. Morian said her screen was torn. She said it looked to her as if the cat had made her own decision, so why didn't he relax and accept it.

She said, “If you don't want the cat, just put her out. She doesn't want to stay with me. You can't force a cat to live somewhere.”

He knew he ought to put her out. He knew he shouldn't let her get the idea she belonged here. He glanced out to the garden, remembering the sharp chill as he walked home, and wondered where she would sleep. Well, where the hell had she slept before? Cats slept outside, that was where cats lived.

He didn't mean, passing the model's couch, to become interested in how the moonlight slanting down through the skylight stroked the cat's mottled coat. He stood studying the patterns of her orange and black markings against the shadow-crossed silk, seeing a rich painting. Then, annoyed at himself, he made a drink, got a book and went to bed.

 

The little cat woke in the small hours. The wind was up, rattling branches against the windows. Through the skylight, clouds ran across the moon, hiding then revealing it. Moon shadows swam across the floor, and she leaped off the couch to chase them. The blackness under a campaign chair belled out then sucked back, and she leaped into it, her eyes huge, then charged out to chase the tracery of branches dancing along the walls. Twisting, spinning away she plunged into the black tunnel behind the stacked canvases and raced along its length to burst out again, eyes blazing.

But suddenly different shadows were in the room with her. Four shadows fell through the glass where four cats stared in. She approached them stiffly, her lips drawn back in challenge.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder: the black tom and the old white female, and her two half-grown kittens. The kittens, bolstered by their mother's presence, snarled and spat. And as the calico moved closer, all four cats screamed a challenge and forced against the glass. She held her ground, snarling, until the black leaped at the glass so hard it thrummed and vibrated. She backed fast, and took protection behind the easel.

When he charged again, the glass shook as if he would come flying through. She fled for the kitchen, leaped to the counter then to the top of the refrigerator. There she crouched, listening.

When after some time no sound came from the studio, she began to prowl the kitchen counters.

She found nothing edible. She jumped to the floor, drank water from the bowl, then went to investigate the bathroom. Leaping to the counter she sniffed the tubes and bottles. They smelled like the man. When she grew bored with the bathroom she prowled the bedroom. He was asleep; the sound of his snoring interested her. Moonlight swam across the bed. She jumped up, patting at the streaks of light that shifted across the white sheets. She watched Braden. She
had never seen him lying down. She stood studying him, sniffing his arm. In the chilly room she was drawn by his warmth.

When he rolled over snoring she jumped clear. Then, purring, she nosed down into the warm nest he had left. Settled against his warm back, she flexed her claws happily in a wad of blanket.

She slept, her nose tucked under one paw. And within Braden's sleeping consciousness something prevented him, when next he turned over, from rolling on her; something made him slide to the left before he turned, a sense of caring that rose without his volition.

 

He woke at dawn and lay looking out at the bay and marsh stained red by sunrise. The blood red sky was reflected in the wind-rippled water, cut through by sharp spears of marsh grass. He had painted this marsh, an early series capturing sunrise and storm and the clarity of summer light: a dozen different moods of the salt marsh.

All night the wind had blown; he could remember waking to wind. He frowned, remembering the cat jumping on the bed, and he turned to look.

She slept soundly in a nest of tangled covers. He reached, meaning to throw her off, but she looked too small and delicate to manhandle. Let her sleep.

He wished he had a cup of coffee. Alice used to bring the pot into the bedroom at night, plug it in when she woke. He got up finally, went into the kitchen, filled the coffee pot and stood barefoot on the cold floor while it brewed, thinking about the work, the show, and Rye Chapman. By the time he carried the pot and a mug back to bed, his feet were freezing and the sunrise was past its peak. The cat hadn't moved. He got back in bed and slid his feet under her, feeling her warmth like an oven. She woke suddenly and turned her green stare full on him, her expression chilling. Then she got up, stalked across the bed, and resettled herself where his feet couldn't reach her.

He grinned. Alice would be amused. A sense of Alice, a
sense of the empty spaces where she should be, lay behind all other thoughts.

He got up finally and got to work, not stopping until the cat rubbed against his leg, startling him because he'd forgotten her. He looked down, rigid with the shock of fur against his ankles. “What the hell do you want?”

She headed for the kitchen.

 

After nearly a week the cat was still there. Braden wouldn't admit she had moved in. She came and went at her pleasure, clawing at the door to get in, leaving deep scratches on the wood frame, waiting outside impatiently if he wasn't home or didn't come right away. He bought a few cans of cat food—he could always give them to Morian. The cat slept on his bed at night but was not allowed on the pillow; house rules began to grow up in spite of his insistence that she was temporary. She paid little heed to rules; though she did not get into the paint again after being cuffed lightly, probably because she didn't like the smell. And she had never offered to claw the canvases. He was completely caught up in the work again, the cat and everything else existing outside the real world of the paintings. He woke, painted, ate, slept, painted. He fed the cat and let her in and out to avoid her insistent yowling and scratching, or her insouciant rubbing against his legs. Twelve paintings were finished. Chapman came by and was pleased, and took some photographs for the papers. Braden wasn't on a real high, but he was working. Alice used to say the house could burn down around him when he was working.

Alice hadn't been so single-minded, shutting out everything else. She had been able to juggle several things at once—painting, print making, etching, housework, lectures. She had been such a careful draftsman, had always known what she was going to do before she did it, known what the work would look like. He could never manage that; his pleasure was in the exploration, in the discovery of forms unrevealed until he touched the right combination to free them. Alice had marveled at that. Well, Alice had been or
ganized. She always said he lived by intuition—it was a standing joke between them. Alice put things where she could find them, then found them there. He put things where he could find them, then forgot where that was. He missed her. His occasional nights with Morian were warm and caring and completely casual. Morian was the earth mother—giving, loving, but not involving herself. They were good friends, as Morian had been with Alice. He couldn't stop thinking of Alice; he was thinking of her more now than he had done for months.

It had taken him a long time to learn to escape the raw memories that tore at him. Now again they were like a fresh wound—he was thinking of her again as he had just after she died, lonely for her in the way he had been those first months. As if she would walk into the room, as if when he looked up she would be there working. Now again when he woke at night he reached for her—and was startled and angry when he touched the damn cat.

Bob maintained that patients in depression could be helped by having a pet, a living creature that they would hold and talk to, to let them know they were still among the living. With that thought Braden almost chucked the cat out. But she gave him the rolling over, green-eyed coquette treatment, and he ended up stroking her. And he thought, as she watched him so intelligently, that sometimes her eyes didn't seem like a cat's eyes. Sometimes her green gaze seemed to hold a greater knowledge. Braden studied her, puzzled and intrigued.

Maybe Alice would know what that look was, maybe Alice would be able to explain what he found so strange about the small cat.

D
awn. Melissa woke lying next to Braden deliciously warm curled on the blanket. Outside the bedroom window the sky was barely light. She stretched lazily, her toes touching the foot of the bed and her fingers tracking across the headboard. She jolted awake filled with panic: she wasn't a cat anymore.

She stared down at herself, at her rumpled dress. How close she lay to Braden, nearly touching him. His hand lay across her hair. She watched him, stricken, terrified he would wake. He slept sprawled naked, tangled in the blankets, blankets and sheet tumbled away from his bare back.

How long had she lain beside him as Melissa? She had felt no pain at the changing. Unless it was pain that woke her. Carefully, slowly, she slid off the bed.

He didn't stir. She tiptoed to the door, but then she turned back and stood watching him. Seeing him from the viewpoint of a woman was very different from seeing him through the eyes of a cat. The cat had seen height and strength and security, had been aware of his kindness and restraint, had seen a human she could be comfortable with, and one she could tease and manipulate when she chose. But now as a woman she saw him differently, and different emotions moved her.

He was strong and lean; she liked the clean line of his jaw and the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. She liked his deeply tanned face against the white pillow. He had a smear of green paint on his left ear; she wanted to wipe it off. She could still feel the heat of his body where she had
slept against him. She knew his scent sharply, as the little cat had known it.

Beyond the windows, red streaks of dawn stained the bay. He would wake soon. He would look out at the sunrise then roll over and plug in the coffee. If she was still sleeping on the bed as the cat, he would stroke her and talk to her, and she would purr for him. If he found her gone he would call her, then pull on a pair of shorts and go into the studio looking for her, calling her.

He stirred suddenly and rolled over almost as if her thought had woken him. She fled down the hall and through the dark studio to the glass door. She was fumbling with the lock when he called, “Kitty? Kitty, kitty?” She wanted to giggle. He had never named her, just
kitty, kitty.
She heard his footsteps. Panicked, she got the door open at last and ran for the bushes.

She crouched down in the little space under the bushes at the end of the terrace, her back scraping against the branches. She wanted to change back to cat. But she didn't know how to change.

She didn't know why she had changed to a girl; she knew she had been a girl before, but she could remember nothing except being a cat. She remembered traveling through strange, hostile country, and before that a dark, smelly man shoving her into a leather bag. She remembered the smell of diesel fuel as she fought to get out of the bag. Then the diner. She remembered traveling, miserable and hungry, her swollen eye hurting her, and her swollen paw sending pain all through her body. She remembered the stray cats and the fights and the blazing eyes of the rat as it crouched to leap at her.

She looked up the garden to the door in the hill. The door had drawn her here, pulling her on, hungry and hurt and frightened. She heard a door slam somewhere up the hill and then in the lane a car started. She could smell bacon cooking, and could hear faint voices from the houses above. Soon Braden would come out searching for the little cat. She didn't want to be caught here hiding in the bushes. But she
didn't know where to go. As a cat, she would simply have run up the garden and disappeared in the bushes. Now she didn't know where she could hide. In her distress, a memory touched her: a woman's face so pale it was nearly white, surrounded by blackness. Then she remembered animals; a huge toad as big as a person. A tall creature with a woman's breast and a bird's face and all covered in white feathers.

She pulled her skirt around her sandaled feet for warmth, listening to the din of birds in the garden. Their riot stirred her hunger; she wanted to slip out and grab one. She was appalled at herself, not at the thought of eating raw bird but of being seen catching and eating it.

The studio lights came on, and she could hear Braden inside calling the cat. Through the windows she could see him searching behind the stacked canvases. When he turned, she slid deeper under the bushes. He disappeared toward the kitchen, and she fled across the garden and across the lane.

Running toward the village brought new memories. She hurried past houses tucked among huge redwood trees. Scenes began to come to her: she was a child walking along this street holding a woman's hand, they were going to the village for ice cream. She couldn't remember the woman's face. Then she was inside a shop that sold bicycles, stroking a red bicycle. Then she and the woman were crouched together beside a stream looking for stones. These memories did not fit with the white feathered womanbird and the toad, or with the black room where a woman's white face seemed suspended.

Walking, she had soon passed all the houses. Now there were only shops. To her left the redwood trees rose up a hill above the stores, and there were houses tucked among the dark trunks.

She lingered before a hardware store, then stood looking into a dress shop. A sign reading “tool rental” meant nothing to her. But she remembered the art store.

Where the street dead-ended and a cross street cut through, she recognized the Greyhound station. She remembered riding the Greyhound to the city across a huge
bridge. As she stood looking, a big black dog came around the corner and stopped, staring at her, his head lowered. She watched him warily. He sniffed her scent, and his lips drew back in a snarl. She backed away. He crouched to chase her and she fled through a shop door, slamming it in his face.

She was in a tea room. The tables had white cloths. It was half full of people eating small, leisurely meals. The smell of hot pastries stirred her hunger. She longed for a cup of tea and something delicious and sweet. She watched a man pay for his meal and she knew suddenly that she had no upperworld money.

She realized, shocked, that she was remembering not one world, but two.

Confused, light-headed, she left the tea room quickly, pushing out onto the street.

There was not one world, but two.

When she was able to look around her again, she saw that the dog was gone. Watching for him, she wandered the village—trying to jar her memory, trying to put pieces together. Certainly, whatever that other world was, it was far different from this world.

She looked at herself in a shop window, her figure an indistinct smear among shattered light and reflections. She touched the cloth of her dress and she remembered a loom. She fingered her jeweled bracelet and was aware of caves, and of a metal pick in her hand. Slowly she was able to reach back to that world, to glimpse stone ridges and stone sky and dark, cavernous wastes. Slowly, the Netherworld returned to her. Then suddenly and vividly she saw Mag's cottage, then Affandar Palace. She saw Efil's chambers; she saw the black bedposts carved into four leering Hell Beasts.

It was in that chamber that she had been changed into a cat.

She was Catswold. Half woman, half cat.

And she was still hungry.

She examined her bracelet again, and then turned back up the street, to the jewelry shop she had passed. She went
in boldly, removing a small diamond bob from among the bangles.

The bland-faced, pudgy jeweler was reluctant to accept a jewel she had removed so casually. He looked at it in his glass, then asked to examine the whole bracelet. She gave it over, explaining patiently that she needed money. He looked for a long time at the individual jewels. When finally he made an offer, the amount had no meaning for her. She folded the paper bills into her pocket under his puzzled, uneasy gaze, and headed for the tea shop.

 

In the art store Braden bought half a dozen tubes of paint and some linseed oil, then he stopped at the Greyhound station for a paper to see the reviews of last night's opening at the de Young, then went across to Anthea's for breakfast. He ordered from Betty Jane, hiding a grin because her hair was the same too-red tangle that had always amused Alice. He asked how Betty Jane's mother was doing in the nursing home, then settled back to read the art page to see what Mettleson had said about his award in the annual. One thing about Rye, he got work around to the shows without Braden having to bother with it. This was one of the Coloma paintings, one of the semi-abstracts of ferns growing inside the roofless brick ruins of an old gold rush bank building. Rye had borrowed it from a collector for the show. Mettleson said it was “…reality blown apart and reassembled into lyric tapestry without seeming to have been rearranged, so discerning is West's eye for the essence of pure abstract poetry that exists in the everyday world.”

Sure, Mettleson. Poetry. But the review pleased him. He was finishing his eggs and ham when his attention was caught by a girl just coming into the tea shop. She started in but suddenly she turned back, returning to the sidewalk and standing at the curb with her back to the window. The one glimpse he had of her was striking: a tangle of brown hair framing a cleanly sculptured face, gorgeous eyes fringed by thick, dark lashes. Now she stood looking up the street as if she were waiting for someone. Watching her, he began to see a painting—the girl's figure
framed by the red awning, the white letters of the awning making abstract shapes against her hair, and these patterns blending into the blue building across the street. The whole scene was contorted by light warping across the glass. He made a sketch on his napkin, a quick memory-jogging study.

He had finished, memorizing the colors while eating the last of his biscuit, when the girl turned to look in, and he raised his hand in greeting—then wondered why he had done that. She looked startled and turned away, and he dropped his hand, feeling foolish. Why had he waved? He didn't know her. He had never seen her before. His aftervision was filled with her startled gaze before she spun around and headed up the street.

But, strangely, his shock of recognition remained.

He grabbed the check and dug in his pocket for change.

He searched the streets for her, wanting to talk to her, wanting to find out if he did know her. Wanting, suddenly and intensely, to paint this girl. Unable to shake the powerful, curious feeling that he knew her. Puzzled, and annoyed because he couldn't remember, he looked into shops and down side streets, and even walked up into the wooded residential area around the library and looked in through the long library windows, but she wasn't in there.

He went home at last, totally frustrated. He wanted to paint her beside the tea shop window. He could still see her dark-fringed green eyes. He dropped his sketch on the work table and unfolded it, but he didn't need it; the painting was surprisingly clear in his mind. Excited, he set up a fresh canvas, changed his shirt, and got to work.

 

Melissa had evaded Braden by ducking into the dress shop and browsing among the racks at the back. She wasn't sure why she was hiding. Braden couldn't know her. She wasn't sure, either, why she had turned to look back into the restaurant. She had just wanted to look at him; she hadn't thought he would be watching her, had thought she wouldn't be noticed. She had frozen, terrified, at his look of recognition.

But how could he recognize her?

She remained behind the dress racks until she saw him go past the window. She had avoided the sharp-faced saleswoman. Now the woman stood beyond the rack looking her over, taking in her long dress and unruly hair. “May I help you?”

“Help me?”

“May I show you something, my dear? Would you like to try on a dress?”

She felt confused, disoriented.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

“I—yes, I'm fine. A dress—the yellow dress in the window.”

But then in the fitting room the saleswoman stared at her, shocked because she wore no undergarments. Cringing under the woman's disapproving gaze she dressed again quickly and left the shop.

She wouldn't go in there again. And she didn't want the suggested panties and bra and slip—she felt constricted thinking about them. Distraught and afraid Braden might still be searching, she headed for the edge of the village away from the shops. There on a deserted street the black dog found her again, and he had been joined by two big hounds. She turned to see them coming toward her fast, noses down, sniffing her trail. Before she could run, they circled her.

They lunged and drew back, baiting her. She was stricken not simply with her own fear, but with a child's total panic: this had happened when she was small. She had been chased and surrounded by dogs. She stood facing them, edging toward an oak tree in the yard of the nearest house.

When the black dog lunged, she kicked it. He snapped at her, and when she kicked again he jumped on her, knocking her against the tree. She twisted as she hit it, and climbed. The rough bark tore the skin inside her legs and scraped her arm, then she was up the tree clinging with all fours, holding tight with sharp claws.

The cat clung in the tree, spitting, her claws digging into the branch as below her the dogs leaped at the trunk, barking and snarling.

The little cat remained in the tree until late afternoon, backing along the branch each time the dogs leaped. She was only cat now, she remembered nothing else. Long after the dogs tired of the game and wandered off, she remained clinging in the branches. Only as darkness fell did hunger drive her down again, and instinct point her toward the garden. Hardly visible in the darkness except for her white markings, she fled between houses through the darkening woods, evading other cats, running in panic from dogs, streaking across streets in front of headlights. Twice she was nearly hit. When she crossed the lane to the garden, running, she almost collided with the black tom. He hissed and cuffed her and bit her. She dodged away and made for the veranda and safety.