A Hiss-tory of Magic: A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 1 (2 page)

M
arshmallow later told
me what had lured her out. I’ll do my best to translate, beginning with the moment Aunt Astrid left that morning. Before I get to that, though, I need to explain something about witchcraft.

Basically, witches work with another dimension. Most people know that dimensions consist of height, breadth, and depth. Some people consider the passage of time the fourth dimension, and I don’t know if that’s true because I’m not a physicist, but that sure would make the next thing I’m going to explain a little easier to grasp.

The other dimension exists. It’s obvious to us witches. We balance that world with the life in this world, which we share with nonwitches.

Imagine a square. Now, notice how a square can turn into a cube with an added dimension or just a few extra lines to suggest it. Time takes a different shape too, with an added dimension or two or three or more. That’s why Aunt Astrid experiences time out of order: she lives the future in the present.

Every person, even nonwitches, has an extra body in this collection of other dimensions. It interfaces with one’s physical body, locked to it for as long as life continues.

The bodies of the other dimensions get damaged more easily but heal more quickly than physical bodies, but because of the interface, the state of one body does affect the other. That’s how Bea does her healing. Her body in the other dimension has a looser interface with her own, and her witchy senses let her see exactly what is wrong with the other person’s “other” body. She works her magic, which these other dimensions are made out of, and she makes people healthy again or at least takes away their pain.

Cats know the other dimensions even better than witches do. I just happen to be in the same zone most cats are in, which is why I can connect with cats better than Bea or Aunt Astrid.

These other dimensions are like an ocean. It has zones of visibility, currents, quakes, and an irregular ebb and flow that makes it difficult to explore. That’s why we witches have different talents from each other and also why a single talent might not work all the time.

Practicing witchcraft is like sailing a ship on an ocean. We can set down an anchor, as Bea can do with healing people’s bodies; we can tether to a buoy, as I do with the bonds I make with cats; we can turn the sails when the wind changes, as Aunt Astrid tries to do in response to her visions of the future. However, if there’s a giant tidal wave or an iceberg or a sea monster… Well, then it’s all we can do to keep from sinking. When that happens, witches and nonwitches are in the same boat, really.

Okay, maybe not. We witches do our best, but that has never been good enough for nonwitches. Nonwitches have always thought that just because we know when some danger from another dimension is coming, we’re also dangerous—that, because we’re not strong enough to stop evil, we must be evil, too. No wonder we’re neurotic about our privacy!

The Greenstones came to Ontario from Massachusetts. My I-don’t-know-how-many-greats grandmother took the hint from the witch trials in Salem that the New World still had old problems. She might have run forever but never found a place where a witch could be accepted by other human beings.

She settled in Ontario because she found acceptance here from a being that’s never been human. Among the generations of Greenstone women since then, this being has been known as the Maid of the Mist.

When I was at that awkward and insecure age of dealing with bullies at school—and growing into a magical talent I couldn’t accept because magic had left me orphaned—I took frequent trips to the waterfalls where the Maid of the Mist was supposed to have first appeared to the errant Greenstones.

I’d been full of hope that the Maid of the Mist would appear to me and grant me some guidance, but she never did. Maybe she wasn’t as connected to us witches as we’d thought. Or maybe the Maid of the Mist just wasn’t interested in the emotional issues of adolescent humans.

But on the day of the fire, the Maid of the Mist appeared to Marshmallow.

I
didn’t want a grooming
. I might like that it takes me back to my days in show, during which I won ribbons and was very proud to look so pretty, but that time is past. It’s for no good reason now that Astrid takes me to that cold, bright place to get rained on, and I don’t taste right afterward when I try to clean myself. Sometimes I get indigestion from whatever they put in my fur. I’m getting too old for grooming.

Yet I’m also too old to fight, scratch, and bite in protest. Besides, I know it will be over sooner if I don’t make any trouble.

When the time came, instead of taking me to the groomer’s, Astrid said she was going somewhere and told me to stay put. I took a catnap. Instead of being at the groomers for real, I had an uncomfortable dream about the grooming, a nightmare.

I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming when I heard a hissing sound. It made me curious because it was half like the sound of the rain that humans make and half like the sound of a cat warning everybody else away. Usually, I don’t care, but this was a voice that knew me, and it wanted help.

I opened my eyes. I didn’t know if the sound had woken me up or if I was still dreaming, but
the room of the grooming salon disappeared and made way for a vast dreamscape of open sky and wild river waters. At what felt like the end of the earth, the wide river dropped. The hiss became a roar of water hitting water that made my fur fluff up with fright. I had already gotten wet and didn’t want to drown.

Then I saw the falling water take the shape of a cat. She was a long-haired Persian—or at least she was shaped like one—but I think that was just a shape that she was taking so that I could understand her.

She told me that Astrid Greenstone should take “it” from her—but that she needed the other humans to help—and me, too.

“You have the wrong cat. I don’t know the streets,” I told her. “If they don’t come fetch me, then I can’t help them. I’m too old for this.”

The Cat of the Mist told me, “No, it has to be you. Treacle can help get you there. Hurry, or else—”

I challenged her: “Or else what? What gave you the right to threaten me with anything?”

The Cat of the Mist turned into mist that wasn’t shaped like anything, and I dreamed that the water covered where this giant misty cat used to be. It overflowed over everything. The bank of the river broke with all the water, which then filled the forest even to the top of the trees. I saw this as if I wasn’t really there, as though I was flying. The dream changed so that I was in it instead of only watching, but the overflow didn’t stop. I clung onto a branch, feeling like a kitten again, when I used to play in trees, climb too high, and get stuck.

I woke up.

The window was open because I never sneak out and sometimes Treacle sneaks in. I jumped out the window, leaving the cool and cozy familiar smells of my home.

I sent Treacle a message: “I’m outside. Now where do I go?”

Treacle was astonished. “Outside? You? Without a human?”

“I’m going to get to a human if you would just tell me. I’ll tell you why later. I don’t want to be late.”

Treacle gave me some roundabout directions because he wanted me to stay away from the street gangs. When I understood where our humans would be, I ignored the detour and passed through street-gang territory to get there. Do you know, now, how much I put myself through for you?

Really, they weren’t that bad. I’m a big cat, and my fur makes me look even bigger and tougher. If I moved right, they wouldn’t even notice I was old. They were mostly surprised to see a strange new cat that they didn’t know.

I didn’t run, in case that would make them curious enough to chase me. One rude young calico that smelled like the Dumpster tried to rally the others to corner me, but many of them had stayed up all night hunting and weren’t in a mood for surprises.

I could have used magic then. Not all cats can do it. Two things stopped me: First, I knew the magic would leave me for the next hour if I used it then. Second, I knew my humans would need my magic.

What was really bad was the dog out walking its human.

Oh, the dogs!

Dogs you should run from when they see you because they’re loud and violent first. They don’t think. They’re not smart enough, not like cats. Humans only think that dogs are smarter because dogs are more likely to do as they’re told. And even so, they don’t do that all the time.

This one’s human made noises like “No!” and “Come back!” after the giant St. Bernard broke the strap that kept them together. I had to run, duck into an alleyway, and climb over a wire fence. At my age, too!

I very much wanted to use magic then too, but I didn’t.

When I finally found my human, Astrid, you can imagine my relief. I wasn’t done yet, of course. The gods are annoying.

Five humans walked out to the banks of a dry river made of rough flagstones. I didn’t know one of them, the one who was asking, “Did Mr. Lanier have any reason to come in early?”

Astrid answered, “Work ethic—that’s the only thing I can think of. I had no idea he would come in so early, but he does that sometimes—or he did, if that corpse is really his. Oh, how awful!”

“He loved his job,” Cath said
.
“A kitchen accident…” She shook her head. “That would have been a bad way to go.”

The human I didn’t know said, “We don’t know enough to say that it was an accident yet.”

Astrid and Cath stepped away from him, and my human said, “Just what are you implying?”

“Just that the police will be wondering what you could have done, too. It’s our job.”

I didn’t like him. He was making my humans unhappy, so I ran in front of his ankle to trip him.

He stumbled. “What?” Then his voice sounded pleased. “Oh, what a pretty kitty!”

I gave him an annoyed sideways-and-upward glance as he ruffled the fur at the top of my head.

“And she’s friendly! It is a she, right?”

“Yes,” my human confirmed. I meowed up at her.

“This is yours?” The strange human picked me up comfortably, grasping my ribs behind my forelegs not too tightly, then putting an arm under my hind legs. I relaxed like a rag-doll cat, but when he had me against his suit, I pawed to show that I still didn’t like him. His suit smelled like catnip. I don’t care because I’m one of the rare cats that catnip does nothing for, but I wondered how much he actually liked cats.

“I was going to take her to the grooming salon,” Astrid said to him, taking me from his arms. “Marshmallow must have escaped from Bea’s car. I’ll take her back now.”

Astrid was lying to him for some reason.

“And these won’t be needed for a while, either,” Cath added, lifting the bucket of hay on a stick and the rope monster on a stick.

Treacle and even Peanut Butter liked to chase after the hay. I didn’t. None of us liked the rope monster because it was usually damp and smelled too sharp and gross.

The strange human said, “Let me help you with that—”

“No, I can manage,” Cath told him. “Shouldn’t you be calling for backup? Jake’s a little tied up right now, what with being a decent human being to his wife, and you’ve got to delegate the real work of investigation to other people so that you can make your accusations.”

Astrid was holding me up to her shoulder, so as they walked away, I saw the strange male human’s crestfallen expression.

Cats have sharp ears, and I heard him say, “I’m just doing my job…” And he walked away.

“We hadn’t brought Marshmallow with us,” Cath whispered. “Wouldn’t he have noticed?”

“For now, we’ve got a more critical problem,” Astrid whispered back. “We need to get back in there before backup comes.”

Cath is a good listener. I told her,
I can hide you—with magic, I can do it. None of the other humans will know that you were ever there.

Still, she was confused. “Why? What—and Marshmallow just volunteered to do her magic.”

That’s what I went there for.

“That’s going to be a big spell,” Astrid said. “It would be easier with Bea, but we need to be discreet, and we need to do it now.”

We arrived at Bea’s moving machine, which they called a “car,” though it wasn't moving then.

Cath opened the door and pushed the things she was carrying into the car. She said, “Aunt Astrid, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

Cath knows about big spells, dangerous spells. She should have been allowed to go the rest of her life without being exposed to the dangerous repercussions of magic again.

“It’s faster to show you,” Astrid told her, as she moved me from her shoulder onto the cushioned surface covering the inside of Bea’s moving machine. “And we do need to be fast.”

Cath gave something like a human version of an anxious meow, then she surrendered. “All right. How do we do this?”

Cats can shift between this world, that world, and the other. We don’t normally take up the gatekeeper role, but my human is a witch, so I did that. That’s why I can use magic. Treacle and Peanut Butter are too young to do it like I can.

We cast three large spells. They would be a stretch of the two humans’ usual talents. First, I would need to pull the other dimension over this one. Doing that would make witchcraft easier for my humans to do, but even then, the spell would not be easy.

Cath would pull some of this dimension around the dimension I pulled so that anybody nearby would not be able to pay attention to them, would not be able to remember, and would not even know they’d forgotten anything when the two ended the spell and joined the solid world again. That part would come from Cath’s talent with minds even though she had never played with the mind of a human before and wouldn’t want to do it ever again.

My human would do the same kind of magic, except with time. Any marks they left, footprints or strands of hair, would stay missing in that place until three days later. That would come from her talent with time and could work because the future is mostly not set.

None of those effects were normal manifestations of our usual powers. Casting those spells was going to be difficult for all of us.