Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (3 page)

“It was very good of you and the children to come forward, Mrs. Scarborough,” he said to me. “Most conscientious, especially since you are not, ahem, British. We are, in the interest of international harmony, religious tolerance, and respect for the customs of others sadly ignored in former times, attempting to repatriate many of the mummies and have them returned to their tombs. I don't suppose your niece or Mr. Hoskins would care to come with us to interpret for us the original location of the remains you've brought?”

I said absolutely not, and if that priestess didn't get herself out of Cindy this instant, the deal was off. At that point, Cindy had a little coughing fit, and one of the female grad students, a girl who looked Indo-Asian, stood a bit straighter and got a weird look in her eye.

Cindy glanced at me a little regretfully and shrugged.

“We at the British Museum certainly appreciate your efforts on behalf of the offended parties and to show our gratitude, would like to offer you a gift certificate for the postcard of your choice at our gift shop, ” the director said.

I chose this one of the mummy I'm enclosing with this letter.

Should be home well—today, by your time, about five in the evening. See you then!

PortChetzemoka, WA

Dear Mom, Bro, Cindy and Jason,

It's very nice to be home again after the trip to England. The cats are glad to see me. I'm sorry, Brother, that every cat in five miles has flocked to your house to see Cindy, but I don't know what I can be expected to do about it. As far as I know that priestess is back home again in good old Memphis, maybe enjoying a new incarnation as kittylitter for the descendants of her former goddesses.

I am very happy to hear, however, that Wizards of the Coast is considering adding Jason's new deck, The Eyes of Hamen-Ra, to their pantheon of Magic Cards.

Egyptian-ness seems to be quite the thing these days. Several of our local channelers have added—uh—new stations, with Egyptian entities as their guides or whatever the heck they call them. Makes me wonder what I brought back in my coat pockets and shoes when I came home.

But on a more practical note, Mom, you'll be glad to hear I've become more active in city government. I am our neighborhood's liaison with the public works department for having potholes on our street filled. Can't stand the damned things. Guess this wraps it up.

Love, Annie

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

At first he thought the candleflame above his ears was the white light he'd been chasing, trying to get within pouncing range. But now, as he pried his encrusted eyes open, he saw it was just a candle.

He lay there dazed, among the waxy smoke of candles and the tinkle of windchimes, a cool breeze rippling his matted, fever-soaked coat.

Hmm. He no longer felt too hot or too cold. Stiff though. He could barely sit up, his muscles were in such a rictus. He took a long horizontal stretch, avoiding the candles and keeping his tail well out of the way, then stood on his hind paws and stretched upward, batting with his front paws at the curling candle smoke before dropping again to all fours.

Wherever this was, it wouldn't do to lose his self-respect, and he began setting in order his striped saffron coat, white paws and cravat with short, economical licks. He wrinkled his nose and lifted the outer edges of his mouth at his own smell. He had been to the vet. Dr. Tony and his wife Jeannette were lovely people and really knew how to pet a fellow, but their establishment reeked of antiseptic and medicine and Mustard did not like medicine.

When he looked up from cleansing the underside of his tail, another cat sat there, a female, surgically celibate, as he was, clad all in black from nose to tailtip, ear points to claws. “Finally awake, are you, lazybones? About time. Come along now. It is high time you met The Master.”

“I do not have a master,” Mustard said. “My personal attendant is female.” He looked around him and considered the stone walls, the tiled floors without so much as a rug to warm the belly on, the ceiling so high birds tantalizingly flitter through the rafters, cheeping and leaving droppings on the floors and furniture. His home was a log cabin with his own private solarium (though his junior housemates had made free of it as he couldn't always be bothered to run them off. Besides, they were bigger than he was, all except the kitten. She had been a rather sweet little thing who begged him for hunting stories and when he growled in annoyance, would flop purring beside him.). His house was set in a large yard with a strip of forest in the back where he caught many tastey adjuncts to his the healthful but monotonous diet of low-ash kibbles his attendant provided. His last happy memory was of sitting at the picnic table being petted by his old friend Drew, who had stopped by to visit.

“Don't look now, but we're not in Kansas any more, Red,” the black-robed female told him.

“My name is not Red, it is Mustard,” he said. “And I do not live in Kansas. I was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska but for the past ten years have resided in the state of Washington. It is warmer there and I may go outside and it is altogether more congenial. Are we there still?”

“Your questions will be answered at length,” she said. “When you've met The Master. And don't fret about a little nicknaming. You'll have to take a new one when you join the Order. I was formerly known as Jessie Jane Goodall but now am known simply as Sister Paka, which is in the Black Swahili tongue the name of our kind.”

“Humph,” Mustard said. “Affected. I've fallen into some cult, haven't I?”

She turned her new-moon dark tail to him and he waved it for him to follow. Since he wanted answers and had nothing better to do, he graciously obliged.

He was not, however, prepared for how weary he would be or how long the corridors were—miles and miles of them, stone walled or pillared, lined with trees and bushes—his favorites, roses. He was mortally shamed and self-disgusted to have to pause to rest from time to time on their journey, which felt more like a quest of many days' length from the way it taxed his strength. Normally he was light and spry, even though well advanced in years for one of his kind. He considered himself merely seasoned, toughened, tempered, but today he felt every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of his life.

He expected impatience and jeering from the so-called sister, but instead she simply squatted on her haunches, closed her eyes and wrapped her tail around her front paws until he pronounced himself ready to carry on once more.

At last they padded up a long, long flight of stairs, high into the rafters, by which time even the flitting birds could not hold the exhausted orange cat's attention. The lady in black scratched at an enormous wooden door, partially open, and from within an unusually deep and sonorous voice, a voice like the rumbling growl of a big cat—the kind Mustard had once seen in a television movie-- bade them enter. Mustard straightened his white cravat and remounted the three steps he had backed down upon first hearing that echoing tone.

Sister Paka pawed and pawed at the door but couldn't get it to swing further open. Mustard meanwhile had regained his breath, and with a deep sigh walked to the door, inserted first his nose, then his head, shoulders, and upper body, and walked in. She entered grandly behind him, tail waving, as if she always sent her messengers to announce her entrance. She bumped into Mustard's behind immediately.

He could go no further straight forward, because a big hole took up most of the floor space, about an inch from his front paws. Hanging above the hole was a gigantic metal thing, a bell, as he recognized from the tinier versions he'd entertained himself with on various overly cute cat toys. That had to be why the so-called Master's voice sounded so deep and sonorous—it was bouncing off this humongous piece of hollow iron. Cheap trick. Mustard repressed the urge to growl himself. That hole was so deep it made the sound of his breath and heartbeat echo back up to him. And the edge was very very close.

Sister NL sat back on her haunches and swatted at his rump. “Kindly move forward, please. The Master must not be kept waiting. Do you think you're the only soul he must counsel today?”

“Who said I wanted counseling?” Mustard asked, but proceeded around the hole and the bell, hugging the wall as tightly as he could, since his exhaustion made him tremble. He was far less than his usual balletic self. Fine first impression he'd make. He could not help but hope the Master was a cat-loving human with kind hands and some nice tidbit and a bit of sympathy for a cat as ill-used as himself. He would love to feel warm fingers stroke his fur now. He didn't actually like cats, if the truth were known. He was a people sort of cat. He called his own person a personal attendant, just to keep it clear to others that he knew she was probably an inferior breed—especially since she had always had more time for his housemates than for his own excellent self, but he had loved her touch nonetheless.

He could see the other side of the bell hole now. A chair—a plain, straight-back chair with a bed-pillow on the middle, was the only bit of furnishing in the tower. On the pillow reposed another cat. This cat was a male—an old male, even more orange than Mustard himself. The old cat was absolutely rusty around the stripes actually.

“Peace, my son,” the old cat said.

Sister Paka put a paw on Mustard's neck to force his head down.He bit her hard on the right leg and she fell beside him. He could tell she wanted to hiss but instead she lay there, submissively, on her side, though he could have torn her throat out if he'd wished.

“Peace, I was saying,” the old cat said again. “Paka, see that bit under his cravat? He missed a spot. Get it for him will you, my child?”

Sister Paka put the paw of her wounded leg onto his chest, and, carefully leaning forward, gave the spot a lick and a promise. “There now,” she said. “Much better.”

The Master purred. “Yes. And that is a nasty looking bite you have there.”

Mustard hurriedly gave it a lick, causing Sister Paka's fur to partially cover his fang marks.

“Much better,” the Master said. “And so are you, my son. We had nearly despaired of seeing you on your pins again. The damage to you was great.”

“Damage?” Mustard asked. “I don't remember.”

“You no doubt slept through much of it, as our kind tend to do. But when Tony and Jeannette brought you here, it was after they had put you to sleep to spare you pain. They thought certainly you were dead, but as they were readying your earthly shell to return to ash, you stirred. Already you were beyond their knowledge and your lady had been told you were dead. They did not wish to raise her hopes only to have her lose you again, so they brought you to us.”

“And you are?” Mustard asked, tapping his tail against the edge of the hole. He stopped that at once. It hurt.

“
I
am Mu Mao the Magnificent, spiritual leader of this order. Sister Paka you have met. The order is the Spiritual Order of Our Lady of the Egyptian Bandages. We are an interdenominational feline monastery and convent for the spiritual enlightenment and growth of our kind. While the non-celibate may study here, only the surgically celibate may take vows. Otherwise—well, we
are
all cats, after all.” He twitched his ears in a humorous way. “Any vow taken by a more corporeally unenlightened cat would be meaningless in the face of our natural compulsions. But once altered, we may concentrate on higher matters.”

“So, then you yourself are—?“ Mustard asked.

“Yes. You see, in many of my former lives I was a human being, a priest, holy man, shaman, what have you until I finally was allowed to achieve my highest form in this incarnation and became a cat. But my corporeal urges interfered with my ability to concentrate, so I voluntarily left my littermates and my safe abode and as a tiny kitten walked to the veterinarian's to go under the knife so that I might help others.”

“He's what's called a bodhisattva by Buddhists,” Sister Paka said with awe.

Mustard was impressed. “I like Tony and Jeannette—my doctors—very much but I always complain when I have to go. It smells bad there, and I dislike needles and having patches of fur shaved. I would never have gone for the surgery myself except my attendant forced it upon me. I admit, life has been calmer since. I have time to study and read many subjects.”

Mu Mao purred approval. “This is good. And although you are now emaciated, it is clear that you have kept sleek and active under normal circumstances.”

“I am a fine hunter of vermin,” Mustard said without false modesty. “And chase down even the fastest horoscope scrolls, however they may attempt to roll from my grasp.”

“You are versed in astrology as well?” Sister Paka asked rather breathlessly.

“Oh yes. From the time I was a tiny kitten such scrolls were toys —my attendant—procured for me and me alone at the food-procuring place. None of my housemates were allowed to chase them. I alone was deemed worthy.” His white cravat stuck out beyond his nose with pride, so even he could see a few pale hairs without taking his eyes from the cat on the chair.

Mu Mao did not sound as approving as Mustard might have hoped, but flicked the bushy rust-and-cream tail shielding his paws. “Did you not seek to share with your housemates the knowledge you acquired thus?”

“Of course not! They were
my
scrolls,” he said, baring his teeth and then, seeing the old cat's eyes, added quickly, “Well, the kitten asked about them once and I did try to explain a few of the rudiments to her but she was much too young to grasp much of it.”

“But that is a good start,” Mu Mao the Master said in a tone sage enough to reflect his apparently exalted status.

“A good start of what, please?”

“A good start on your new life.”

“My new life?”

“Well, yes. You've passed through number one and are now heading into your second.”

“Then I didn't—survive?” He looked down at himself, all around at himself, and began licking furiously to reassure himself that all parts were there and solid and working.

“It's amazing you survived intact long enough to be brought to us,” Mu Mao said. “Your mouth and your entire digestive tract was ulcerated. Something caustic, Tony thought. Something sudden.”

“Something,” Sister Paka said, “poison.”

“But how can that be? I always ate the same thing, and have not even hunted much in recent years.”

“Apparently you ate something out of the ordinary. And that something may linger to kill your former housemates as it killed you. The young one would be in particular danger, I should think.”

“The kitten?” he asked, remembering the way the fur on her belly curled like a sheep's wool and how fluffy her tail was and how, though she was cute, she had the taste to be black so that it wasn't all that obvious—and she never tried to take Susan's attention away from him.

“Yes. And the others.”

“I don't care—“ he began to say with a spit, but catching the slight hiss from Sister Paka, stopped himself. Mu Mao gave him a warning look.

“Yes, well. I understand you have made that evident over the years. If you are to join us here, you must give up your greatest vice.”

“I told you I've
been
neutered.”

“A natural function is not a vice. You must abandon the baser instincts of our kind in search of enlightenment.”

“I never said I wanted to be enlightened, though I like a sunny patch as much as the next cat. Why would I want to stay here? You're all cats. No human petting, and I've yet to see a food dish.”

Mu Mao said, “Well, we shall see. You'll realize what this life is to be about soon enough. Sister Paka, you must take Mustard with you to the fish pond. A few more of those poor primitive spirits can be released from the bondage of their present lives in order to sustain his own, and then he may work in the garden while he regains his strength.”

Sister Paka told him it was his duty to take the largest and fattest of the fish from the pond. “They've learned whatever lessons life as a fish can teach,” she told him. “And are ready to move on.”

He obligingly caught one and would have done more but she assured him they were always there for the catching and he didn't want to eat too much at first or it would make him spew. He felt tender inside and realized he wished to avoid that.