Cat Tales Issue #1 Read online

  “If a child lives in a house, and a house lives in a city, and a city lives in a region, and a region lives in a country, and a country lives in a continent, and a continent lives on the whole world wide, then this is the continent of dreams upon which the child lives. A dream that came out of the great forests of the old world.”

  “Why are we here?”

  I could see trees falling, jerking, disappearing as the monster shoved them aside.

  “She is a very strong dreamer,” the spider-kin said. “I have had my eyes on her for quite some time. Perhaps others have, too.”

  “And what is that?” I asked. I felt as though I was not the mighty warrior-cat of dreams that I had come to think of myself over the last five years of defending the girl from dreams, most no stronger and no more clever than the Arenea above us.

  “An Azdaja,” it said. “If it comes to a choice between killing the girl and letting the Azdaja eat her and take over her dreams, well, there are other little girls you can protect.”

  I shuddered, and held Jaela close. “Never.”

  “When you see it, you will understand. Now run! But do not go into the house. For there are things even worse than the Azdaja in the Great Forest.”

  I backed into the darkness of the forest and ran. One of the clever-clever things that I have learned, as a dream-walker, is to run faster than feet can run, faster than thought. I do not know of any other dream-walkers who can run so fast, but of course now I realize that I only knew a handful of our kind, hardly enough to say that I knew anything at all.

  But still, when I put my tail to it, I could run faster than the Azdaja, for I heard the sound of it fading behind us.

  The Aranea could run even faster, or had some other trick, for it was waiting for us when I stopped, gasping, under another tree.

  “Doesn’t this forest ever end?” I asked.

  “No,” said the spider-kin. “In this dream, it is everywhere. Beware the forest, but beware the things that are not in the forest even more. You are about to come upon the Wolfish-kin soon, by the way.”

  “Why are you following us?” I asked.

  “Because I want to get out of this forest as much as you do. I far prefer the safe little dreams of little girls than that of the Great Forest and its kind. I could get eaten up in two snaps out here.”

  “You’ll get eaten either way,” I growled. “When we get back, I will crunch you right up.” I let Jaela slide down to the ground.

  She looked up at the spider-kin. “You have a face.”

  She was right; among the many spider-eyes and the snapping jaws, a pattern of splotches on the hairs of the Arenea formed a face, a lovely cat-lady’s face that seemed to wink as the wind rippled the hairs.

  “Stop that,” I said, and the cat-lady’s face laughed.

  The spider said, “I suppose,” and the face disappeared.

  Suddenly, the forest seemed to part like a pair of gauzy curtains across a breezy window, and a dream-walker stepped through: a cat.

  “Hello, cousin,” said the cat politely. She had calico fur and a collar made of something shimmering and bright, like fish scales. Her tail was like the thinnest, most delicate, beckoning finger, and her smell was like perfume. “I see you are in some difficulty.”

  Nevertheless, I stepped between her and my girl. “Who are you?”

  “I am Slide,” she said. “I am a member of the Society of Secret Cats, and I am here to return you and your charge to your own dreams.” She walked closer to me, but I did not step away from my girl.

  “I have no intention of hurting you or your child,” Slide said. “However, if you would follow me, I will guide you back to the lands you know.”

  She stopped within paw’s reach and tilted her head back a little, baring her throat. If you do not know that it is a sign between cats that you might do with the cat what you will, you do now. When we fight, the loser must bare his belly and throat to the winner, in such a way, just as a human must bow.

  I cleared my throat--we hadn’t been fighting, after all, but perhaps more cosmopolitan cats, those who didn’t protect a single dreamer’s dreams and know only a handful of other cats, well, perhaps it was a custom of theirs. I felt awkward, like my fur was out of place. I brushed my paws down my sides quickly, then picked up Jaela and purred to her for a moment, almost more to reassure myself than her.

  “We will be all right,” I told her. “I will keep you safe.”

  “Ferntail,” she said. “I don’t like that cat. She will scratch me.”

  I looked back at Slide, who was licking her paw and bathing her face with it. I didn’t see any reason not to like her, but it was all very strange.

  “Lead on,” I said. What else could I do?

  Slide did not take us through the curtains of dream, the way she had come. Apparently, it was a way that could only be used by the Society of Secret Cats, and not by humans. If I were to go through such a way, I would have to promise my loyalties to the Society, and leave Jaela behind, to be guarded by a mere kitten, and that I could not bear. Jaela was like a kitten to me, even though at six, she was old enough to be my mother.

  As we walked through the forest, I saw that the Aranea followed us. The way the spider-kin traveled was to wait until we were almost out of sight, then cast a thin line of web, almost invisible, through the trees. As the line of web touched a far tree, a little bit ahead of us, the web would disappear, and the spider-kin would appear where the web had touched. In such a way, the Aranea could travel as fast as we.

  We did not travel as fast as we had when I had run. As I said, I am very fast.

  “Do you need to slow down?” Slide asked, after a time. “Or to rest?”

  “Not a bit,” I said. “Keep going. The sooner Jaela is back in her bed, the better.”

  We ran and we ran, and the sounds of the Azdaja faded behind us.

  “Now are you tired?” Slide asked.

  “No.”

  We ran and we ran, for a short way or a long way, and through the gaps between the trees, I saw that the moon never moved, that time never passed. Even though time did not pass, I began to become tired.

  Not the kind of tired that comes from too much running, the but kind of tired that comes from too little sleep.

  “Now are you tired?” Slide asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But keep running.”

  “We are almost there,” answered she.

  Jaela whimpered on my shoulder. I slowed to a trot and looked at her. Here, in dreams, she appeared to be asleep, and having bad dreams.

  I looked around and saw a clearing in the trees, a place where Slide might watch over us while I tried to find out what monster inside a dream-within-a-dream might be haunting my child.

  “Here,” I said. “We must rest. Jaela is asleep, and something is inside her dream. You must protect us from the Azdaja and whatever monsters may come, including that.” I pointed at the Aranea, who lingered at one of the trees at the edge of the forest, watching us with glittering eyes and the pattern of a cat’s face in its hair, with wide, crazy eyes.

  “No,” it said. “You cannot stop here. You must not stop here. Not in a clearing. Never in a clearing.”

  But I didn’t listen to it; the call to sleep was too much. I laid Jaela in the long, thick grass, then shifted into cat form and curled up beside her, purring, to sleep.

  I woke up, stretched, and yawned so widely that my tongue curled in my mouth. I was on top of Jaela, and we were back in her room. It smelled like a real place, and not like a place in dreams (for some reasons, humans do not create the smells of things in their dreams very often). I jumped off the bed and went in search of water, because my mouth was as dry as a bone that has been left in the sun for a hundred years.

  As I lapped water from my water-dish, I heard the crystal whine of claws screeching against glass and looked up. Outside the glass door to the patio, Slide was running her claws against the glass.

  I padded over to the glass.


  “Let me in,” she said.

  I looked up at the latch. I could easily open the lock, but I could never push the heavy door out of the way.

  “Not here,” I said. “Go around the house until you find the open window next to the pink and yellow curtains. That is my princess’s room.”

  She sauntered away, showing the curl of her tail, and I skipped back to Jaela’s room.

  She was having a nightmare, her face turning back and forth on her pillow, her dark hair sticking in long threads to the edges of her mouth. As I sniffed her breath, I heard a scratch at the window.

  “Let me in,” Slide said.

  “Just a minute,” I answered. I licked the edge of Jaela’s ear, which is usually all it takes to wake her up, but she only moaned and turned her head away. I purred in worry, pushing my paws against her blanket, for a moment turned back into a little kitten who knew nothing about dreams.

  I would have to go into her dreams. Perhaps, when I had woken, she had not come with me, and even now, she was dreaming horrible things.

  I lay down beside her an slept, even as Slide scratched at the window.

  “Let me in,” a deep voice called. “Let meeee in.”

  “Not by the whiskers of my chinny-chin-chin,” I muttered. The place was dark and full of stone, wet, and smelly. I didn’t see Jaela anywhere...but I saw a line of web leading from one low doorway to another. The web twitched. I picked a direction and ran toward one of the doors, following the web.

  The web led me to a white Aranea’s nest, which looks like a tangle of white cotton candy rather than a proper spider’s web. The nest filled up one corner of the room, with a tiny black hole near one wall: the door.

  I crept up to the door and looked inside. Jaela was inside, shivering and ripping bits of web off her.

  “I can’t get out,” she said. “Please, Ferntail. Help me.”

  “Spider-kin!” I roared. “I will murder you. I will eat you up. I will crunch you like a snack and spit you out and leave you bleeding while I crunch you again.”

  A hiss of laughter echoed down the strange stone corridors, but it sounded far away.

  “Let meeee in,” the deep voice boomed.

  I scratched open the nest. Web stuck to my paws, but I didn’t care. I shifted form until I was like a gray lion with my luxurious tail streaming behind me.

  “Get on my back and hang on, my princess,” I said.

  Jaela crawled out of the nest as best she could, still covered with web. When she climbed onto my back, the stickiness of it helped hold her close to me.

  I turned and ran down the corridor, my paws as silent as night.

  If I had run quickly before, that was nothing to the speed with which I ran now. I followed the thread of web from corridor to corridor, through a maze that seemed to change around me. But always the booming demands and the hissing laughter became louder rather than quieter, closer rather than further away.

  I could have run for a moment. I could have run for a year. I did not know which it was, that place was so twisted around and around on itself.

  I do know that Jaela stopped whimpering and shivering, and that something formed in her hand that shimmered with heat and shone light before us.

  I do know that between here and there, my paws skipped past some places, jumping from shadow to shadow with miles and miles between them, untouched.

  And then we were there: the stone walls fell away, and we were in a great cave. A crack ran across the cave from one side to the other.

  The web led to the Aranea, on the same side of the crack as we.

  On the other side of the crack, was a thing of darkness and fire, so big that it could barely turn. It seemed as though it ought to be able to step over the crack easily, yet it could not.

  Where it turned, the fire and darkness of it erased rocks, widened the cavern, and shuddered the earth. Underneath it the rock heated red-hot, and its feet, which I could not see except as part of its fire and darkness, left deep gouges in the stone.

  “Let meeee in,” it roared.

  It was the Azdaja. I shivered. As the Aranea had said, it would be better to let Jaela die than to let it through into the waking world, even for a moment. And it would be more merciful to let the child pass into the worlds of death (which even we cats do not know how to walk) than to let that thing burn its way out of her body.

  But first, we would fight.

  I roared, and we ran down the slope of the cave toward the great monster, while the Aranea hissed and reared up to wave its forepaws at the thing.

  It looked back at us, saw the girl, and said, “Nooooo!”

  But still we ran, and Jaela hefted the thing she had made in dreams. I felt her weight on my back shift, even growing heavier. A woman’s voice yelled, “Ferntail and Home! Ferntail and Home!”

  I roared again, and stones fell from the roof of the cave. As we approached the crack, it thinned and thinned, until it was gone, and the Azdaja charged across the cave toward us.

  Jaela’s weight on me shifted again, and I saw a golden thing fly past me, toward the monster.

  But I can run faster than thought, and we reached it, Jaela and I, at the same time as her burning, golden spear. My claws and teeth reached toward its darkness; Jaela drew or dreamed a pair of lightning swords that made my hair stand on end as they crackled in her hands.

  And then we woke, and Slide was scratching on the window still.

  “Let me in,” she meowed.

  Jaela sat up, rolling me over on my side in a most undignified manner. “Who’s there?” she said.

  “Meaaaaowwww,” Slide called insistently, scratching harder.

  A hissing noise came from the corner of the ceiling, and I looked up. The Aranea had escaped Jaela’s dream, and was clinging to a corner of the room, forelegs waving at us.

  I swore and walked toward it, growling.

  “Let me in,” Slide meowed again. “We have to catch it.”

  “I can get it myself,” I said, crouching.

  “Don’t,” Jaela said. “It’s just a spider.”

  A spider a spider a spider. I looked again, and the creature was indeed, simply a small spider.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Slide hissed. “It’s a trick.”

  As I watched, the spider spun a web and let itself drop down to the floor, then scurried under the bed.

  The monster under the bed. It was just a spider, after all.

  Or was it a trick?

  Jaela slid her legs toward the floor and walked toward the window, where Slide still meowed and scratched. “Let meee in,” she yowled. My stomach went sour, like a hairball working its way free.

  “Wait,” I said, but it was too late: Jaela opened the window, and Slide exploded into a thing of fire and darkness, covering Jaela, folding her over like a piece of paper, and jerking her out the window.

  “No!” I jumped to the window ledge and followed the darkness, which flowed across the yard like a drip of rain down a window. Something caught on my back as I flew through the torn window screen. I shoved my way outside.

  The Azdaja was fast, but I am faster. Within moments, I had caught it, bit down into it, and pulled back. Under the Azdaja’s skin, I could see Jaela’s face, terrified.

  We woke again in a small burrow made completely of white thread. I meowed a small and scared meow indeed, but Jaela reached out her hand and scratched me behind the ears. “Brave kitty,” she called me, and I felt all the stronger for it.

  She pulled a small knife out of her nightgown, a steak knife stolen from the dreams of her own kitchen, and started to cut her way out of the webs. I shook myself, gathered my thoughts, and started to help.

  Within moments, we were back in the clearing of the Great Forest, pushing aside strands of sticky web.

  From behind us came a sickening crunch. I turned and saw Slide with the Aranea in her mouth, biting down hard.

  Jaela flung the knife at her, with a child’s hand. The knife turned in the air and onl
y tapped Slide sideways, but it was enough for her to open her jaws and release the small monster, who fell on the leaves and lay still.

  I shifted into I knew not what as I stalked the monster wearing the form of a cat. I had heard that dreams were not always as they seemed, but until that moment, I did not know what it meant.

  Beside me Jaela walked. I did not look to see what she had become, but it warmed my skin like the best, laziest sunbeam there ever was.

  Slide backed away slowly, into the darkness beyond the clearing, as we pushed our way through the tall grass toward her.

  In a long time or a short time (for time in dreams bends strangely), we were so close we could smell her: a foul thing made of fear and ashes that made me sneeze.

  I pounced, and Slide’s form in my mouth was very small indeed, and very bitter. I tightened my jaws.

  “Wait,” Jaela said.

  She was as tall as the trees themselves, a grown woman formed out of sunshine and gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze. A thing of great Homeness and safety. A kind of goddess.

  She bent over, picked up the Aranea, and studied it for a second.

  I held Slide in my mouth, twitching weakly.

  Jaela held the Aranea out to me, and I smelled it: the briefest wisp of perfume.

  I growled, dropped the cat’s form from my mouth, and lunged at the Aranea. It cast a web and disappeared. But I am faster, and I know the trick of jumping from place to place now.

  Before it could cast a second web, I had it in my jaws. The sweet smell of perfume filled my mouth and my nose, all the way out to my whiskers.

  I bit down hard, and blackness dripped from my chinny-chin-chin.

  I proudly brought the nightmare back to Jaela, who petted me and called me a good kitty while I ate it right up.

  The form of the cat faded into that of the true Aranea, the one with the pattern of a cat in its fur. It was bleeding on its body, leaking clear fluid streaked with white, but it spat green goo onto its forepaws and smeared them over the wounds, sealing them tight.