Grimalkin - Chapter Three (Patreon)

Chapter Three

Upon beginning a new adventure, one should never forget the three basics: food, money, and a good disguise.

-Lady Chatterwick

Upon further discussion, it seemed that Tia was actually on her proving quest, which was probably why she was so insistent that she wasn’t a kitten.

“But what is a ‘proving quest’?” Maria insisted, as the two cats made their way back up the apple tree.

Tia’s tail flicked, but her eyes stayed focused on the branches surrounding them. When they were far above where Maria had always stopped, the black and white kitten stepped a careful paw out onto a thin branch that extended up to the overhang of the third floor. “It’s meant to prove that I’m worthy of being considered an adult. It’s assigned by the head of the family.” She walked gracefully out onto the branch, eyes fixed on a small, worn statue perched on the castle wall. “For some reason, the Grimalkin decided to send me here, to watch over the royal family of this little castle. I’m supposed to stay for three months, and then return and present a Report. Now come on.”

The kitten made the word ‘report’ sound very important, and Maria wanted to ask what she was supposed to be reporting on, exactly, since that was her family the other cat was talking about, but for the moment she was more concerned with with way the branch under the other kitten’s paws was swaying.

“Do we… have to go that way?” Maria asked, staring in amazement as Tia made a graceful leap from the branch to the statue, perfectly timing the movement of the branch to give her the little extra boost she needed to cross the intervening distance. Maria swallowed hard, and heard herself hiss softly. While she’d survived the fifteen foot drop from her perch earlier with remarkably little damage, she somehow doubted she’d be as fortunate if she fell from thirty feet, especially when there were no cushioning bushes below.

Tia shot a burningly contemptuous glance back at Maria from her new perch atop the statue. The old stone had been worn down by weather to the point that Maria couldn’t even tell what it was, which was yet another argument for the age of this hidden bailey, since the servants would never have allowed anything so shabby to remain if they knew about it.

“Unless you want to stay there until you die. We’re too light to work that mechanism you used when you were human,” from which statement, Maria guessed that Tia had tried, “and there’s no other way out. Whoever hid this place did a good job.”

Maria bit her lip, wincing as her newly sharp teeth dug into it painfully. “It’s just that I’m not sure if I can-”

Tia hissed scornfully. “Stop thinking about it and just do it. You’re a cat now. You can do things no mere human ever dreamed of.”

Drawing in a bracing breath, Maria set a paw on the branch. It swayed nauseatingly beneath her weight, and her claws extended, fiercely digging into the bark. “No, I really don’t think this is a good-”

“Just do it,” Tia yowled, and Maria found her body flowing down the branch with liquid ease before her human brain could catch up. She very nearly ruined it when she was about to make the leap to the statue, and she made the mistake of looking down, but while her leap was ungainly and accompanied by a humiliatingly terrified howl, her claws caught on a lump on the stone, and she scrambled back to her feet, shivering in fear.

Tia, who had watched the whole awkward business with unconcerned yellow eyes, gave Maria’s shoulder a conciliatory lick, and Maria felt her fur flatten beneath the rough tongue. “There, I knew you could do it,” Tia said, and turned to begin making her way up the wall. Maria followed.

❦ ❦ ❦

As it turned out, there was a whole maze of pathways on the walls of the castle, if only you were cat-sized. From protruding stones, to statuary, to narrow ridges which seemed to serve no purpose except to give the pigeons a place to roost, the two kittens made their way up and up and up.

When wall finally gave way to roof, Maria breathed a sigh of relief, but Tia didn’t even hesitate. Over the shale shingles they went, and then higher still, past walkways and crenellations, up a tall bell tower that was no longer manned and stood empty of all but sleeping bats and one orange tabby cat, also sleeping.

As they approached, the tabby opened one lazy eye. The other quickly followed as the cat, a lanky young adult, rather than a fluffy kitten, jumped to his feet. Staring at Maria, he hissed. “Petunia! What’s the meaning of this?”

Clearly disgruntled, Tia sat and began licking at one of her front paws. “What does it look like?” she hissed back. “Obviously, I accidentally bit that princess who likes to read and turned her into a Felis.”

Growling, the tabby stalked forward, back arched. “That’s impossible,” he snapped. “That doesn’t actually happen in real life.”

Maria glared at him. “Obviously,” she said, “it does. It doesn’t matter how, I guess.” She cast a sidelong look at Tia, who avoided her eyes. “But here we are, and I need to know how to turn back into a human. Right now!” The last word emerged in a whimpering yowl so pathetic that the tabby looked surprised and sheepish as his fur flattened.

“Well, I guess that’s true,” he said. “For now anyway.” He shot a dark look at Tia, as she continued steadfastly cleaning her paws. “What have you tried so far?”

“I told her to think human,” Tia offered, though her voice was slightly muffled by the mouthful of long fur she was grooming.

The tabby snorted. “Like that’s going to work. You’ve been trying that for years, and how’s it working out for you?”

The black and white kitten looked up, yellow eyes narrowed as a menacing growl rose in her throat. “It’s better than, ‘It’ll happen when it’s time, Petunia’.” She sing-songed this in the same way Maria would have quoted her mother’s oft-repeated, ‘Oh dear. Do go and brush your hair, Maria.’ Obviously Felis parents weren’t that different from the human variety.

“It will,” the tabby said, with a long-suffering sigh.

Maria looked back and forth between the two. “Wait, do you mean that Felis are actually supposed to be able to turn into… To people?”

Both cats turned to glare at her simultaneously. “There’s more than one kind of ‘people’, human child,” the tabby hissed. “But yes, we can take human form, when we choose. At least, most of us can, though we rarely bother.” His tone of voice made it clear that being a human wasn’t exactly a desirable condition.

“When we first shift, our matriarch assigns us a proving quest-”

“Usually around age eight,” the older cat put in.

Tia glared, fur beginning to rise along her back. “Yes, well. Whenever, we go on our proving quest with a member of the family who’s nearly an adult. I got ‘lucky’ enough to be stuck with my older brother, Tobias.”

Tobias licked a paw and smoothed the fur by his ear. “Yes you did. No one else wanted to go with you, since you haven’t actually made the shift yet.”

“Nobody wanted to go with you, either,” Tia hissed, “because you’re a-”

Maria interrupted the incipient sibling battle. “So, how do I turn back into a human?” She looked toward Tobias beseechingly. “Surely that means you can shift, so you know how, right?”

The tabby focused on his paw, stretching the toes apart and cleaning carefully between each one before he replied. “You just do,” he said, finally.

Tia flopped onto her side, eyes closing in exaggerated exhaustion. “You see what I have to deal with? It’s like telling someone an apple just is, like they’ll suddenly somehow know what one looks like, and how it tastes. It’s ridiculous.”

Tobias glared. “You just don’t want it enough. Everyone I know made the change when they needed to get something or do something they could only do if they were human.”

Tia curled up into an adorably puffy ball, yawning widely enough to show a disconcerting number of very sharp teeth. “There isn’t anything worth doing I can’t do as a cat. Now hush, and let me sleep.” Her breathing almost immediately leveled out into long, somnolent breaths.

Maria blinked. “Is she actually asleep?”

Tobias rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes. Cats need a lot of sleep, and Petunia is very good at being a cat.”

Something occurred to Maria, and she looked at the tabby consideringly. “Can you turn into a human, then? Right now?” She wondered what he would look like if he did. Would he still have long canines and slit-pupiled eyes, or would he truly be indistinguishable from anyone else? Could Maria have met a hundred Felis before, and never even known it?

The older cat looked around. “Here? Definitely not.” He lifted a paw delicately, looked at the evidence of neglect and a hundred small furred and feathered inhabitants on the pink pads. “Too small, and too grungy. Plus, my clothes are hidden in a pack outside the castle.”

Maria blinked. “Your clothes don’t just,” she tried to wave a hand, and almost tipped over as her paw waggled wildly instead, “change with you? Into fur, or something?”

He began grooming his ear in a way she was beginning to realize indicated embarrassment. “Some people can,” he muttered. “It takes a great deal of magic, however. I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”

She thought back to that moment when she’d woken as a cat, cradled in her bed of honeysuckle. Had her clothes been there, just puddled on the ground, or wrapped around her in some way she hadn’t noticed? No, she was almost certain they hadn’t. Had they, then, turned into some part of her cat-ness with her, or had they simply vanished, and she’d find herself entirely naked if - when! - she managed to turn back into herself?

Maria looked back and forth between the sleeping kitten and her older brother. “If neither of you knows how to turn me back into a human, then who does? I don’t want to be a cat forever!” She caught the raising of Tobias’ hackles and hurried on. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a cat, I’m sure, but my mother and father will be terribly worried.”

“Hmm,” Tobias murmured. He sank down onto his belly beside his sister and began absently grooming her ears. “You’re Maria, right? The one who reads?” Maria wasn’t entirely certain she liked this description, which made it sound like there was nothing more interesting about her than the fact that she enjoyed books, but she nodded.

“Well, Petunia said you hide a lot, so they probably won’t notice you’re gone until nightfall, anyway. There isn’t much we can do about that except hurry on our way. The sooner we start for home, the sooner we’ll get there, and the sooner we can ask the Grimalkin for aid.”

“The Grimalkin?” This wasn’t the first time the name (or title?) had been mentioned, but neither of the Felis had explained it.

He stretched out his neck, laying his head across his sleeping sister’s back. “The Queen of cats. She’s the one who sent us on this wild journey, so hopefully she knows what to do now that it’s all gone wrong.”

Maria found her own eyes growing heavy as she looked at the two snuggling cats. She felt herself shift toward them without conscious thought, drawn by the warmth and comfort they shared. “Wild?” She yawned. “I thought all Felis went on a proving quest?”

He yawned back. “Usually it’s something like, ‘Go into the forest and find a single night-blooming Star Orchid’, or ‘Climb the tallest hill and bring back ten stones, each of a different color’. The observer - that’s me, in this case - is just supposed to be along to make sure they do it, and help them if they really get in trouble. It usually doesn’t take longer than a day or two.”

“So a three-month-long spy mission on the royal family of a neighboring kingdom isn’t exactly standard?” Maria slid a little closer, and her paw brushed Tia’s warm fur. She was amazed at the level of comfort she took from that simple touch. She froze as she was about to edge nearer again. “We are a neighboring kingdom, aren’t we? I mean, we won’t have to travel for weeks just to reach this Grimalkin, right?”

Tobias chuckled, eyes drifting shut as his body began to vibrate with a deep purr. “Oh no, Princess. In fact, you might say we’re already in my kingdom. Since your kingdom and the kingdom of Felis are the very… same… thing….”

His voice drifted off into silence as he, too, fell asleep, leaving Maria suddenly alone and quite, quite awake.