Esther M. Friesner - Puss

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2024-11-24 0 0 115.33KB 19 页 5.9玖币

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Puss

Esther M. Friesner

THE BOOTS WERE ONLY THE BEGINNING. I STILL FEEL his hands on

me, hard fingers driving deep into my ribs, jamming the heavy, clumsy sheaths of

scarlet leather onto my hind legs while I squalled and spat until he cuffed me silent.

"Now walk!" he bawled, drunk with the bit of wine his own coin had bought.

"Stand tall, you worthless animal! I'll make my fortune with you yet. There's fools

enough in this wretched world who'll pay good money to see a trained cat."

Where had he ever gotten them, the boots? I never doubted that the world was as

he painted it: cruel, cold as a dry tit, full of soulless shells like him who'd do anything

to hear two coins chink-chink together in their fat, hairless palms. Surely that was

how he had found the man to make them.

Oh, how they hurt me! No cat was ever born who'd willingly ask for such a

crippling. He had me under the forelegs and swung my body forward—first one

side, then the other—in imitation of human strides.

"Walk, damn you! The old fool said as you were special—pox take him. Must be

something more to it than a gaffer's babblings, or it's all up for me. Walk!" His sour

breath was full of curses for me and his father; his brothers, too, snug in their more

comfortable patrimonies of mill and farm. They knew nothing and cared less that the

youngest of the three now spent his night in a stable, kneeling in piles of horse-fouled

straw, torturing a cat.

I could not walk—not like that—and he was too great a fool to bide and seek my

true talents. So it seemed I should be free, soon or late. All it wanted was the taste of

blood.

I let myself hang limp in his hands, deadweight. He groaned. I could see the

self-pity bubbling up in his eyes behind the fat, ready tears of a drunkard.

"Worthless." He held me off the floor so the boots with their heavy soles and heels

pulled my hind legs down. The pain raced clear up my spine, a white fire in my

brain.

"Worthless!" This time it was a shout, and a shaking to go with it. My eyes

clouded with the red haze. Rage filled my mouth, called up the ghosts of my true

teeth— not these paltry stubbins good for reaping only mice and rats. Oh, the

hunger!

"Damn the old man." Now he was sniveling. I got another shake for his father's

imagined sin. "All those years a-dying, and Bill and Tom crowding 'round the bed,

simpering like daub-brained girls." And another shake yet for my poor, spinning

head. "Cunning bastards. One to keep deathwatch, one to stiff-arm me off, keep me

far from the old turtle so's it'd look as if I didn't care was no one there to shut his

eyes for him after. Well, it worked, blast them all to hell for it! Mill and farm gone,

and nothing for me but this!"

And he swung me back and flung me hard against the stable wall.

The boots were my death. I could not twist in midair and take the fall as I should,

not with them weighing me down. I felt my ribs shatter as I hit the rough-hewn

boards, my spine come unstrung with a single snap against a jutting beam. My limbs

crumpled under me when I slipped down into the straw, all skewed. Warm, salty

blood welled over my tongue. I let my mouth hang open and the thin, red flow

trickled out, dampening the golden dust that overlay the straw. Soon, through the

death of this small, much-punished husk, the Change would come and work its

power. Soon I would be free.

But the pain was too fierce. The fury in my veins wailed impatiently for my lost

wings, for the clean, knife-bright freedom of the air. Peace alone commands the

Change, and I was too much dominated by wrath, trapped in a skin once glossy and

sleek under a loving hand's care. Now drab and dirty, matted with filth, it would be a

relief to shed it once the compact was fulfilled.

It was very hard, the dying, and long. He did his part to hurry it on, standing over

me, driving a sprung-toed shoe into my belly. Air tore out of my lungs, scraped my

throat with agony as a shallower breath forced its way back in. These mortal bodies

cling to life too strongly.

"Stupid cat. Hell have you." I heard him stagger out of the stable, still cursing.

Clouds fell across my eyes. Alone, finally left in peace, I sought the hidden power of

the blood. Now the Change must come, in solitude, with the old sea's taste fresh and

metal-tangy on my tongue.

Change. The clouds darkened; only the savor of blood remained, the copper

bloom at the heart and core of being.

Change. Scent and touch followed sight and sound into oblivion. I felt my self

tearing free from the blood-woven web of the world. As my soul struggled, I sensed

without seeing that the filthy stable had faded away around me. Laved by the

shapetide, my dying shell lay upon the strand that lies between time and time.

Child? She came as I knew she must come, as she comes for all of us when the

Change is imminent. Some of my folk say she was the first to find the way to the

shore where the shapetide runs. Some call her goddess, all name her Mother. Her

voice was a tender hand upon me, dulling my failing body's pain. I felt the layers of

fur and flesh peeling away like the falling petals of a rose.

I am here, I answered in the only true speech. With more than eyes I saw her. She

loomed above me, her great yellow eyes warming me. Their fire seared all else away,

even the bones of evil memories. My spirit sprang from my broken chest, taking

wing against the wind.

Child, you must return. Keen as a hatchet blow, cold as a plummet into an

ice-crusted river, that sharp saying. My battered soul snapped back into its aching

vessel and my sightless eyes stared wide. What? But the compact—

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