Page 10 of Spring's Arcana
The nurse’s desk at the hospice said Mom was sleeping and they’d tell her about the call, so Nat hung up the old, cheerful yellow landline with a guilty sigh of relief. Kitchen trash didn’t need to be taken out but she did it anyway after dinner, restraining a childish urge to swing the half-empty bag while she shuffled in her uncle’s old motorcycle boots. She needed at least two pairs of thick socks before they wouldn’t slip off her feet midstride, but they were the footwear conveniently near the back door.
And comforting, too.
The temperature had dropped, hard snow-pellets instead of fluffy flakes hissing as it rode a knife-sharp norther. The plows would work through the night but her street was far down on the list, a white wasteland, the sky a low orange lid clapped over a frozen entrée. The alley was a deserted black throat where the weak glow of a few lamps didn’t reach; those who decorated for the holidays didn’t bother with back windows or fences.
Nat shivered, wrapping Leo’s old, bulky striped cardigan closer. It was no use, none of them would be out tonight. It figured; normally she couldn’t get them to shut up, but the moment she actuallyneededhelp—
A small voice, soft and restful but with a shadow of rumbling behind every word, vanished into the wind. “Well, what doyouwant?”
Nat looked around wildly, snow shaking from her sloppy ponytail.
“Down.” The cat hunched in the lee of a gray plastic trash bin,tabby stripes blending into shadow and her gold eyes lambent. “Look down. It’s amazing how you monkeys never think of that.”
If I was looking down, you’d be up somewhere high. Nat suppressed a sigh and the urge to roll her eyes like a teenager again. “Good evening.” If anyone came down the alley behind the brownstones, they might assume she was talking to herself, or a crazy cat lady.
Stop lying, Natchenka, cats don’t speak in this country.Mom’s voice, harsh and hurried. Of course she had no time for anything other than keeping the house running, right?Go wash your hands before you set the table, you’re filthy.
“Can the formalities.” Whiskers twitched, and a fluid shiver passed down the tabby’s spine. “It’s cold.”
“I know.” Nat crouched awkwardly and held out a hand. The cat deigned to sniff, a mannerly inspection of fingertips, eyes half-lidded and whiskers twitching in rhythm. “I can carry you to the porch.”
The tabby’s tail lashed once, thinking the matter over. “I won’t stay.”
“Of course not.” Feline etiquette meant never admitting hunger or submission; Nat wished a little of it would rub off on her the way their scent did. If she was crazy, at least the insanity was specific and consistent, and she was very deliberately not thinking about why Mom would send her to the parchment-haired de Winter and yet not believe her own daughter’s insistence on similarly strange things. “But we can at least keep your paws dry.”
“Very well.”
Nat gathered the small furry body carefully; the cat didn’t struggle, but also didn’t help. Trudging through the back gate, Nat restrained the urge to rub her chin on a small snow-starred head. “Normally I wouldn’t,” the cat said as she passed one of the garden boxes, dormant shrubs stretching skeletal arms in strange patterns. “Butsheis gone. This is your house, now.”
It was a day for uncomfortable truths, it looked like. Nat sniffed, not to express her opinion but because she was leaking again. Maybe Mom didn’t believe her daughter because she’d seen thestrangeness too and, like any reasonably sane person, didn’t want to admit it. “I met my grandmother today.”
It always surprised her how easy it was to talk to them. People ran right over you verbally, but cats gave youspace. If they didn’t know something, they admitted it—indirectly, of course, but still. And they never told her she was lying when she wasn’t.
All in all, she vastly preferred them—and dogs, and birds, not to mention squirrels—to human beings. Mom claimed an allergy to animal dander, but sometimes Nat saw a buried gleam in her mother’s blue gaze and thought the Great Pet Ban in the yellow house had a deeper reason.
She just hadn’t figured it out yet.
“TheGrandmother.” The tabby shifted uneasily in her arms, growing heavier for a moment. Claws touched Leo’s cardigan, and even though his old boots were waterproof Nat’s feet were numb. “Well, it had to happen. Sometimes even Baba is merciful.”
“Baba.” She couldn’t imagine calling the parchment-haired womanGranny. AndYaga,what a sardonic little laugh that was, now that Nat wasn’t nerving herself up to visit the Morrer-Pessel or too tired and heartsore from two jobs and the hospice visits to think. “They’re true, aren’t they. Those stories.” Either the old tales were true or the Mafia believed them more than child-Nat ever had; the difference was probably academic. “But Mom always…”
“Monkeys.” The tabby stretched to sniff Nat’s jawbone, shifting like a tired child. “You believe what you tell each other. How very strange.”
“I guess.” Going up the three porch stairs without slipping and falling on her ass was a little harder than Nat liked, between Leo’s boots and the second helping of vodka with dinner. “So what does she want me to find?”
Becausethathad been left out of the directions too. Baba had simply laughed.Go ask your mother,vnuchka. She knows what I’ll take for a miracle or two.
“A jewel of great price.” The cat’s laugh was a high chirrupingmiao,much nicer than de Winter’s. “Set amid iron vines only Spring may loosen. Oh, there are other things to gain first, butthatis theprize. Reach in and your arm will wither, but knock, and you shall be answered.” The tabby sneezed, delicately. “Set me down there.”
Nat bent. The world swayed a little; she managed to settle the cat on a thickly folded pad of ancient, fake-grass carpet. Before Mom started getting so tired, she never would have allowed something so tacky even on the porch. Leo’s great idea for Astroturf paths through the garden had died an ignominious death at the dinner table one night, but he’d already “organized” a roll of the stuff. No refunds, of course, and he wouldn’t hear of just getting rid of it.
The old country taught both him and Mom to be thrifty. When you were annoyed, you could call itcheaporhoarding. Still, Nat supposed, when you had to leave everything behind, accumulating enough weight in the new country so you didn’t blow away again like dandelion seeds was a reasonable strategy.
The dish of dry kibble tucked under the wooden swinging bench was full, and Nat tested the other plain pottery dish. Maybe the house was leaking warmth; the water never froze if she placed it in the right spot and asked it politely not to.
“That sounds like a riddle,” she observed, straightening. Mom’s generously curved shadow wasn’t going to fill the back door, haloed with incandescent light and irritation.Stop feeding those fleabitten things. Come inside, it’s cold.
“I’m a cat.” In other words, what else did Nat expect? The tabby sneezed again. “What would you trade for your mother’s life?”
