Grimalkin's Test - Chapter Two (Patreon)

Chapter Two

When one begins to take things for granted, it is best to venture forth upon a new adventure. Upon one’s return, they may find that they see things with new eyes.

-Lady Chatterwick

“Mrrowr!” Maria complained indignantly. A little brown paw clapped itself to her fuzzy mouth even as she realized that some part of her had automatically translated the yowl into what she’d meant to say, which was, “I’m a cat!”

Leaves rustled beside her as someone else sniffed, sounding more than a little put out. Her ears heard a series of sharp, chirping meows, but her brain knew the little black and white cat next to her had said, “Of course you are. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Maria tried patting herself down with her soft little paws. She almost tipped over onto her face, and only managed to catch herself because she suddenly found that she was able to bend in ways she never had before. “This is impossible. This is impossible! Things like this only happen in fairy tales!” She tapped at her head, feeling soft, pointy ears bend beneath her paws. “I must have hit my head when I fell. Or maybe I didn’t fall at all! Maybe I’m dreaming, and I’m still up in the tree!” She looked up, as if she could catch sight of her human self, still lazily dreaming away the afternoon.

The black and white kitten snickered and began grooming her whiskers. “Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure you’ll manage to break the spell out of sheer disbelief.” Her voice was heavy with derision.

Maria stared at her. The other cat already looked impeccable. Well, as impeccable as she could get with long, fluffy fur that stuck out like an enraged dandelion. She was an undeniably adorable little cat. “How can you be so calm? A human just turned into a cat. This is a big deal!”

The other cat blinked her large yellow eyes, then set her paw down with slow deliberation. “Yes,” she hissed, eyes abruptly narrow and glaring. “Yes, it is. Do you know how much trouble I’m going to be in? And it’s all your fault!” By the time she finished speaking, the cat-voice Maria’s ears heard was yowling in fury, and the black and white tail was puffed to twice its already prodigious size.

Maria stared, feeling the fur along her own spine start to lift in some kind of instinctive reaction. It was like her whole body suddenly broke out in goose-bumps, and she shuddered. “My fault? My fault? How is this possibly my fault?”

Standing, the kitten began to stalk in a circle around Maria. “You grabbed me. In fact, you practically crushed me! Of courseI bit you! Who wouldn’t, in that situation?”

Maria twisted, trying to keep those angry yellow eyes in sight. She flopped over on her side as her head turned further than it should have, and she thrashed helplessly as she struggled to control four feet that all seemed to want to go in different directions.

The fluffy kitten stared, then sighed in resignation. Her furry haunches hit the ground as she sat, and she licked at her paw absently. “You’re too pathetic to stay mad at. Look.” She reached out and batted at one of Maria’s soft brown paws, pushing it into place beneath her. “You have to gather them under you first. You can’t sit up on your tail like that.”

Maria pulled all of her paws in, and managed to roll onto her belly. From there, she was able to sit up, matching the other cat’s pose, except that her own tail was still waving around uncontrollably, while the other’s lay in a graceful curl around her paws. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

Sniffing, the black and white kitten looked away. “Whatever. Just, look, you need to try to think human.”

“Think human?” Maria echoed numbly. “How do I do that?”

Raising a back leg, the kitten licked at a black tuft of fur on her thigh. “How should I know? I’m not human.” There was a hint of something unhappy in that statement, but Maria was too busy trying to ‘think human’ to notice.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on how it felt to be human. Not that she’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, but surely it couldn’t be that hard to do. After all, she’d been doing it for twelve years without ever having to work at it once!

Unfortunately, all she could think of was how loudthe world suddenly was, and how she’d never noticed before that she could smell absolutely everything from here. She was surrounded by the perfume of the wildflowers in the hidden courtyard, the roses in the rose garden, and the fragrant peach tea that her mother preferred on hot days. Even the scent of fresh-baked bread wafting on the breeze all the way from the kitchen, along with the savory aroma of some kind of meat slow-roasting over a fire in the great central hearth.

And the sounds! Bees bumbled, people murmured, insects and small creatures skittered through small, dark places. The world was filled with sounds she never heard before, or if she had, she certainly hadn’t paid attention.

“I- I don’t know how to think human,” she admitted, opening her eyes to find that the kitten had moved, and was now sitting with her large yellow eyes only inches from Maria’s own. She suddenly wondered what color her eyes were now. Were they still green, or had they changed as much as the rest of her? Was there any part of her that was still, well, her?

Maria suddenly found herself mewing and whimpering in a very small and frightened fashion. She dropped her head, shrinking back, away from the other cat. The world was a very big, very overwhelming place when you were a cat, and no matter how often she’d wished she hadn’t been born a princess, it had never once occurred to her to wish she wasn’t human.

The other kitten growled in frustration. “Look, um, human girl. Maria, right? It’s going to be fine. We’ll figure out how to get you back to normal. I mean, as much as humans are ever normal.”

Maria looked up, but couldn’t force her new body out of its small, frightened posture. “How will we do that? We don’t even know how I got this way in the first place.”

Coughing uncomfortably, the kitten looked away. “Well,” she muttered, “I might know something about that.”

Maria felt her eyes narrow as her brain finally started to function again. “That’s right,” she said slowly. “You said something about biting me.” Her eyes shot wide. “Wait! Are you some kind of were-cat? Will I turn back into a human on the full moon or something?”

She looked down at her chocolate paws. “No, I should be human now, and turn into a cat on the full moon. I-“

A soft paw cuffed her ears, bringing Maria back from the edge of hysteria. “Shut up,” the kitten growled. “I’m not a were-anything, and neither are you.” She rolled her yellow eyes disdainfully. “Werewolves aren’t even real. No, I’m a Felis. Sometimes, rarely, if a young Felis who may, possibly, not be entirely in control of her magic yet bites someone, it’s barely feasible that that someone might…”

The kitten looked away, licking her paw and then smoothing down the fur by her own ear. “Look-I-accidentally-turned-you-into-a-cat, all right?” She blurted the words out in a single breath, clearly deeply embarrassed by what had happened.

“You… You what?” Maria yowled, feeling the fur on her tail puff up. “You mean I’m going to be like this forever?”

The other cat glared as if Maria had said something stupid. “Of course not. In the stories, the human always turns back into a human and goes on about their merry way. I mean, usually the Felis and the human get married, or something ridiculous like that, but they’re all perfectly fine and happy.”

“Married!” Maria abruptly found herself standing on all four paws, and she was fairly certain that every hair on her body was now sticking straight out. “I’m not marrying you! I don’t want to marry anyone, and anyway, I’m only twelve!”

Sniffing, the black and white kitten glared, looking almost insulted. “I don’t want to marry you either, and I’m only eleven! That’s just what happens in those old stories, because somebody always gets married and lives happily ever after at the end of fairy tales. Well, and the villain gets burned at the stake, or exiled, or tumbled down a hill in a barrel filled with nails or something.”

Maria tried to stamp her foot. She only succeeded in patting a fuzzy paw against a large leaf, but she ignored it and forged ahead anyway. “Youturned me into a cat. Doesn’t that make you the villain?”

“There is no villain! It was an accident!” Now it was the other cat’s turn to sound like she wanted to cry, and Maria sank back onto her haunches, feeling like she’d just picked on one of her younger siblings. Belatedly, she realized that the kitten had said she was only eleven, so Maria was actually the older one. That meant it was her job to be the responsible one.

“Okay.” She took a breath, feeling her fur settle again. “So what does happen in these stories?”

The kitten sniffled. “The usual. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. One of them bites the other, accidentally, and they have to overcome three trials before they can be together. There’s usually a bad Felis or human who wants to keep them apart, so that’s the villain. I’m, like, the heroine here.”

Maria almost giggled. The other cat really did remind her a lot of her next youngest sibling, Peter. Peter never wanted to admit he was at fault, but he was always the first one offer to help fix a problem when something did go wrong. Even when it actually wasn’t his fault.

“So, we just need to overcome some…trials? What kind of trials? I mean, do they just appear out of nowhere?” She waved a paw, almost smacking herself on the nose. “Also, what’s your name? I can’t just keep calling you ‘kitten’ in my head.”

The kitten – and that was definitely what she was, with her outsized paws, small body, and gangly limbs – glared again. “I’m…Tuna. And I’m not a kitten!”

Maria choked. “You’re named after a fish?”

Tuna looked genuinely surprised. “Of course not! Tuna isn’t a fish word!”

“It totally is!” She tried the paw-wave again, with slightly better success this time. “We get tuna all the time, when the barges come down from Harrow. It’s a great big silver fish, and Cook serves it on pasta with little tomatoes and artichoke hearts. Noel always pretends to be sick on tuna nights, because she hates fish.”

“Fine! Um, my name is…Tia then!” Tia swiped at her whiskers with a flustered paw.

“Are you making up your own name?” Maria asked, astonished.

“Am not!” Tia yowled. “It’s a nickname!”

If Maria had still been human, and Tia had been one of her multitude of little siblings, she would have put her fists on her hips and given her a big-sister glare. As a cat, the look wasn’t quite as effective, but from Tia’s slumped shoulders, it still worked.

“-tunia,” Tia mumbled.

“What?”

“Petunia! My name is Petunia, all right? Are you happy now?” The kitten’s fur was now puffed up wildly, and her back was arched as her yellow eyes glowered into Maria’s. “Felis get their real names when they finish their proving quest. Until then, their parents give them a kitten-name. Mine is Petunia.”

“Oh,” Maria said. She wasn’t quite sure why the kitten was so defensive about it, but if it bothered her that much, then Maria wasn’t going to argue. “So, Tia, then?”

Tia looked at her suspiciously, but her body slowly shrank back to its normal width. “Yeah,” she said, grudgingly. “Tia.”

Maria stuck out a paw. “I’m Maria. Now,” she put her paw down when Tia just stared at it. “Let’s figure out how to turn me back into a human.”