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“Brrr,” said the visitor.
“Let me fetch you a warming cocoa,” said Sister Hospitality, without much enthusiasm.
“No,” he replied, “cocoa disagrees with me. Brrr, I was introducing myself. Brrr, the name.” He handed over a card on which was scribbled an illegible note to himself. “Sorry, other side.” There it was: BRRR, three rs. COURT REPORTER TO THE EMERALD CITY MAGISTRATES.
Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire hung up their own robes—Sister Apothecaire using a lower hook. Sister Doctor stumped off in her stocking feet without further comment. Her diminutive associate blushed by way of apology. “Sister Doctor and I must enter our activities in the Log of the House,” said Sister Apothecaire to their guest. “Please excuse me, too. Sister Hospitality will see to your needs.” She left the Lion standing among the cleaning buckets, the barrels of cornmeal, the bins of dried beans.
Sister Hospitality went to hang the Lion’s traveling cloak in a clothes press. When a pocket twitched, Sister Hospitality recoiled with a shudder and she tried unsucce
ssfully to disguise her curse as a cough.
“Oh, my guard cat has scared you good,” said the Lion—almost approvingly, thought Sister Hospitality. “Nearly forgot about my little kitty-thingy. It’s been following me since Shiz. I must be the first Lion it ever saw, and it’s become smitten. Look at it, the little dollop.”
The cat may have been white once, but it was old enough for its fur to have thinned. “I never saw such a thing,” said Sister Hospitality. “It’s distinctly offensive. Creepy. Almost transparent. Male or female?”
“That much isn’t transparent, I’m afraid. Everything else is.”
“What ailment does it suffer from?”
“Cats don’t usually last as long as this one clearly has,” said Brrr. “That’s my guess. A cat gets old, its fur goes white, it dies. This one’s got some years on it, looks like, and if cat fur is white to start out with, how much paler can it go? Look.” He rubbed the cat’s arthritic spine, and a net of hairs came off on the pad of his paw. He held them out. Each hair looked like nothing so much as a thread of glass.
“Revolting,” said Sister Hospitality, charitably enough.
“Look, it hardly has a shadow,” said Brrr, and this was almost true; the morning light of the vestibule slanted through where the cat stood, stretching arthritically on the flagstones.
“What name does it answer to?”
“Have you ever known a cat to answer to anything?” said the Lion. “But I call it Shadowpuppet, for old as it is, it still enjoys the game of stalking prey.”
“If it’s as fragile as glass, it will be pleased to learn that our own mousers have recently fled,” said Sister Hospitality. “Cats can be so territorial. Present company excepted,” she continued, leading him up the stairs toward a receiving parlor.
“Oh, I’m territorial enough,” said the Lion. “Still, Shadowpuppet never leaves me, and I think I can scare off your convent cats if they come back.” He lifted Shadowpuppet, because the stairs were too steep, and Sister Hospitality would not pause even for a cat of advancing years.
“May I ask, what is a court reporter, Mr. Brrr?” Sister Hospitality pushed the drapes back to let in sunlight the color of old bandages.
“Sir Brrr, when I’m at home,” he corrected apologetically. “Title awarded by Lady Glinda herself, at the conclusion of that little Matter of Dorothy.”
“Beg pardon,” said Sister Hospitality, no tone of regret to stain her inflection.
“Not that I use it,” he hurried on. “The house has fallen on hard times. I do pickup secretarial work to make ends meet. Now, to business. I am dispatched by the Lord High Magistrate of the Emerald City to make enquiries of a member of your—tribe? Flock? Whatever it is a body of maunts calls itself. You know, like a swarm of bees, a murder of crows, a parliament of owls.”
“I’ve heard that lions consort together in a pride,” said Sister Hospitality.
“Those that let others join,” interjected Brrr. “Let’s not go there.”
“Call us a deference of maunts, if you must. And deferential, then, within reason, we’ll try to help. Do you know the name of the maunt you have come to ask about? Though we take new names as our obligations require, most of us remember what our original names were.”
The Lion steadied the spectacles on his nose. Dander flecked the lenses; no wonder he peered and blinked at the small notebook in his paw. “I can’t read my own writing. Jackal?”
“We have no Sister Jackal.”
“Sister Quackle? No, perhaps a C. Cackle?”
Sister Hospitality said carefully, “Oh, dear. I wonder if you could mean Yackle. She was laid to rest over a year ago.”
“Was she an oracle?”
“Sir Brrr. We are a convent of holy women. We don’t trade in prophecies. What would a seer be doing in a mauntery?”
