Stiltskin (Andrew Buckley) (16 page)

Robert was panicking. And not just panicking, he was close to hysterical. Back in the normal world, in Othaside, sometimes bad things would happen. His alarm wouldn’t go off and he’d be late for work so he’d panic. He would forget his adoptive mother’s birthday and he’d panic. Even during one of the many weird events of his life, like when he was seventeen and he’d fallen asleep in his own bed and had woken up on his neighbour’s kitchen table with no memory of anything. His neighbours were members of a local militia group known for their short tempers and large guns. He’d panicked.

Yet even during any of those times, he’d never felt hysterical. But being in Thiside and feeling the ease with which he was sliding into this new world, hysterical didn’t just feel like the right thing to do; this world felt comfortable. Like a pair of warm socks on a cold day. There was a prime example; the building was burning down around him and all he could think of was warm socks!

He grabbed the stack of clothes from the chair, which wasn’t completely on fire just yet, and assessed the situation with a hint of insanity playing on the edge of his mind. The walls were on fire, the ceiling was looking precarious, the heat and smoke blinded almost all his senses, the floor creaked beneath him, but somewhere in the chaos he heard Lily’s voice screaming, “Get away from the door.”

Robert, in his hysteria, stood in his pyjamas holding a pile of clothes and waited patiently for his brain to comprehend the words.

Melvin obviously wasn’t operating on the same wavelength as he kicked open the door with a strong hoof, smacking Robert in the head. Melvin ducked his head through the door.

“Don’t just stand there, Robert,” said Melvin, “the whole building’s on fire!”

Robert let out a tiny laugh that seemed a little inappropriate, considering the situation. “Yes, I had noticed.”

Melvin pulled him to his feet and dragged him out through the door. Lily was pulling on a pair of pants underneath her nightdress as Melvin grabbed her hand and pulled her down the tight hallway. The far end of the hallway was already consumed by fire and the smoke was so thick that it was almost impossible to see. Robert and Lily were dragged down the stairs into the barroom where Melvin stopped and shielded his eyes. The room was an inferno. The flames twisted and contorted in ways that Robert had never seen, swirling here, zigzagging there, climbing the walls, and shooting along the ceiling, eating at the rough woodwork that made up the halfway house.

Melvin began to make his way toward the door, letting go of Robert and Lily to fend for themselves. Robert assumed that his job as their host had abruptly come to an end. Lily grabbed his hand and kicked over a nearby table, flattening some of the flame and taking them a few feet closer to the exit. Melvin had vanished from view.

“This is ridiculous,” shouted Robert. “We’re not getting out of here.” The fire flared up around them in agreement.

“Don’t be hysterical,” shouted back Lily.

“And why not? This seems like the perfect time to be hysterical!”

The beam above them cracked. Robert hit the ground and assumed the foetal position. He was mildly surprised when he wasn’t crushed like an egg, as was his expectation. He looked up to see Lily, the short woman he’d spent most of the day with, holding the beam over her head as if she was competing in the Olympics. The beam must have weighed the same as a small car.

“Uh,” was all Robert could come up with.

“
Move,
Robert! I can’t hold this forever,” said Lily as her stance weakened slightly. She bent ever so slightly and threw the beam into the air. Robert scrambled back the way they had come and Lily dove forward, toward the exit, as the massive piece of wood crashed down, raining cinder and a good chunk of the upstairs into the barroom.

Fire surrounded Robert as he edged his way around a pile of rubble and crawled into the large stone fireplace that wasn’t on fire. The irony of the situation made Robert laugh inappropriately again and he began to wonder what was wrong with him.

“Meow,” said the kitten.

Robert had crawled as far back into the fireplace as he could and was surprised when he looked down to find a tiny kitten brushing up against his leg. The kitten was coloured an unusual orange and black, with fluffy fur and deep yellowish-green eyes. The kitten blinked at Robert.

“Huh,” said Robert. The kitten chased a couple of loose embers and seemed completely at home with the building burning down around it. It crouched, twitched its little tail, and dived after a rampant ember as it drifted out of the fireplace into the inferno.

“No!” shouted Robert, but his concern was unfounded. As the cat scampered toward the fire, the flames moved away from it, as if they were afraid of the tiny creature. Robert reached forward and grabbed the kitten by the scruff of the neck. He held the cat out in front of him, stood up, and left the safety of the fireplace. The flames backed away from him as if running for cover and a pathway quickly revealed itself. It took a while to get around some of the debris, but soon enough he was through the billowing smoke and stumbled out the front door into the cold night air. He made his way to where the Goatheads stood holding each other while Maureen sobbed quietly as their home burned down.

“Robert?” said Lily.

Robert coughed in reply.

“How did you make it out of there? The fire was everywhere; we sent the Gnomes back in after you.”

As the adrenaline flowed away, Robert realized his lungs were heavy and his throat felt as if he’d swallowed a handful of gravel.

“Cat,” was the only reply he could come up with as he coughed again and held up the kitten as if to prove the point.

Lily turned back to the halfway house and let out a loud whistle. In reply, the two Gnomes crashed out of a second floor window and landed smoothly on the ground. The tip of Gnick’s pointed hat was on fire, making him look like a giant novelty candle. General Gnarly blew it out.

“Nice to see you got out okay, moron,” said Gnick.

“Thanks for going back in for me.”

“Thank Lily; our vote was to let you cook for a while.”

“Oh, well, thanks anyway.”

“Robert?” asked Lily.

“Hmm?” said Robert.

“Where did you find the cat?”

Melvin let go of his wife, who crumpled into a heap and was hugging her knees.

“Cat?” said Melvin.

“He was inside. I assumed he was yours.”

“No, we don’t own a cat.”

“No one owns a cat,” said Lily, a stern look chiselled into her soot-blackened face.

“Well, I… did I do something wrong?”

“I’ve never seen a cat before, except in pictures, of course,” said Melvin as he examined the kitten that kept trying to swat at Melvin’s floppy goat ears.

“What?” said Robert.

“Robert, there are no cats in Thiside. Anywhere. There hasn’t been any for a long time.”

“I just found him inside.”

“You did this!” shouted Maureen as she struggled to her feet. “You lot brought some sort of evil magic in here. And now look what happened.”

“Maureen―” said Lily.

“No, I don’t believe you, Lily! You should all leave right now. We have to rebuild our home.”

“We didn’t start the fire,” said Robert.

“Get out!” screamed Maureen.

“Come on, Robert,” said Lily and grabbed him by a pyjama sleeve. The Gnomes gave a slight bow to Melvin who was once again consoling his distraught wife and followed Lily and Robert as they walked away from the halfway house.

Robert, Lily, and the Gnomes had been walking in silence through the dark for almost thirty minutes. The Dark Forest’s name was well deserved, as any remote source of light was quickly chased away. It seemed to Robert that the forest didn’t want any light intruding upon its murkiness.

Robert still held the kitten firmly curled up and fast asleep under one arm and the clothes he’d grabbed from his room in the other. He hadn’t even stopped to lace up his boots yet, and every so often his oversized pyjama pants would slip slightly, causing him to re-adjust awkwardly.

The Gnomes had vanished up ahead not too long ago and Lily didn’t look like she was in the mood to talk. She walked, stern-faced, and was probably cold, wearing only her pants and nightdress.

As they rounded a sharp bend, they came upon the Gnomes who had built a fire in a more open area of the pathway and were cooking two small rat-like creatures on a spit.

“I thought we should stop and get a few more hours’ sleep before the sun comes up,” said General Gnarly. “It’s never a good idea to travel through forests at night.”

Lily simply nodded and sat down by the fire.

Robert dropped his clothes and placed the sleeping kitten near the fire. He couldn’t help but notice the fire no longer seemed afraid of the little cat. Robert picked up his change of clothes and looked around for somewhere semi-private to change.

“Just change, I promise I won’t look,” said Lily, without looking.

“What about them?” asked Robert looking at the Gnomes.

“Although we have no desire to see you naked, moron, you do smell funny and could use a change of clothes,” said Gnick.

Robert changed clothes as quickly as possible and sat on the opposite side of the fire to Lily, who looked like she was trying to extinguish the flames with her eyes. The clothes fitted him loosely and felt scratchy in places, but he imagined they were good for travelling and could stand up to a variety of elements.

“Will the Goatheads rebuild the halfway house?” asked Robert.

“Aye,” said General Gnarly. “The Goathead family have managed that halfway house for the better part of a century; they’ll want to continue the tradition.”

“Strange fire,” said Gnick as he launched into one of the rat creatures.

“Never seen anything like it,” agreed General Gnarly.

“How did it start?” asked Robert.

“I was downstairs when it started,” said General Gnarly, “looking for a nightcap. It just started from nowhere. One minute the room was quiet and dark, and the next it was ablaze. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Robert ran a hand over the sleeping kitten, who began to purr loudly.

“I wonder where this little guy came from?”

“Cats are a bad omen,” said Gnick.

“Why?”

“There are no cats in Thiside, Robert,” said Lily.

“But why?”

“Because the Emerald Guard was ordered to kill them all.”

Robert looked from Lily to the cat to the two Gnomes who were both tearing the dead cooked flesh from the rat creatures’ bones.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve heard of the Cheshire Cat?”

“From
Alice in Wonderland
?”

Gnick snorted and almost dropped his creature.

“Yes,” said Lily. “I don’t know where the Cheshire part came from, must be a British thing. But the Cat was real. Probably still is real.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said General Gnarly, “he died.”

“He vanished,” argued Lily.

“Died.”

“Either way, he’s no longer in Thiside and hasn’t been in a long time.”

“What was so special about him?” asked Robert.

“He was powerful,” said Lily.

“Magically,” agreed Gnick.

“Yes, magically powerful. He was believed to be a great source of magic in Thiside. The Wizards of Oz consulted him from time to time. He was there in the beginning before the Emerald City fell to ruin, before the Gnome wars, before the Giants, maybe before Thiside itself. And then all of a sudden, he vanished.”

“Died.”

“Shut up, Gnick,” said Lily, and smiled for the first time since the fire. “He vanished because the Wizards of Oz decided they should control the Cat’s power and in doing so, they tried their best to bind and imprison him.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” said General Gnarly. “They failed, and the Cat vanished, taking a lot of the magic of this world with him. But just to be on the safe side, the Wizards ordered the Guard to hunt and kill all cats.”

“That’s horrible,” said Robert.

“It is what it is,” said Lily. “But what’s strange is that after there being no cats in Thiside for the last four centuries, we have a kitten sitting next to us right now.”

All four of them looked at the sleeping kitten, who looked adorable in a way that only sleeping kittens can.

“You’re not suggesting that this little thing is the Cat you’re talking about?”

“No not at all. It’s just weird.”

“You know what else is weird,” said Robert sounding more defensive than he meant to. “How about you lifting that huge beam over your head?”

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at Lily, whose amber eyes reflected the flames that danced before them. The purring of the cat was all that could be heard for several long moments.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lily matter-of-factly. “We should all get some sleep.” And with that she lay down, facing away from the fire.

“Nice one, moron,” said Gnick.

“Get some sleep,” commanded General Gnarly.

Robert lay down on the hard earth with his head next to the kitten and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.