"Mom," Honey said. "How bad is this."
Rhoda was quiet a long moment.
"I don't know yet," she said. "But I know it isn't small."
"They just came," Honey rubbed her temples. "They shouldn't have been able to do that."
"No," Rhoda said. "They shouldn't."
She opened her mouth to ask another question when Lady Grey's voice drifted out through the open parlor door, in her even Viennese drawl.
"Actually, Miss Honey, before you go, my warlock has been lying about his age by one hundred years and spends every Samhain weeping in the pantry because he never spoke to his sister again after a rift that was entirely his fault."
There was a very small silence.
Then Lady Grey, in a voice both small and horrified said, "I did not mean to say that."
From the porch swing came another voice. A calico sat up straight, swished her tail and said, "My witch's prize apple pie recipe was stolen from her neighbor, and she has won the autumn bake-off twelve years running with a recipe that isn't… oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh."
Three more cats spoke at once. Then four. Then the lot of them. The parlor, the porch, the whole of FACTS & FIBS erupted.
Honey did not move. Beside her, her mother had not moved either: arms wrapped tight across her middle, face gone perfectly still, her eyes clouded with a worry her daughter had never seen on her before.
"Oh no," Rhoda said very quietly. "Oh no."
Chapter 2
The Telling
Rhoda did not say anything else after "Oh no." She straightened her shoulders. Her heart was beating too fast. She made her walk, past her daughter, past Roam, past the open front door, through the front hall, past the parlor and the kitchen, all the way down to the little room off the pantry that had been her own since the house was theirs. She opened the cabinet above the writing desk, the one she had not touched in years.
The book was where she had left it. Of course it was. She had put it there herself. Her fingers knew the shape of it before she lifted it down. Damp-cool even when it was dry. Heavier than its size. She held it in both hands for a moment, then turned around and carried it back down the hall.
At the threshold of the parlor, Rhoda stopped. The cats everywhere had begun milling, restless about being transported without their witch or warlock. About what they had blurted out for everyone to hear. This was a first. At least in Rhoda's lifetime. She needed everyone close. Cats included. She could not have this conversation with them scattered.
"My loves," she said, in the gentle, coaxing voice she had used on lost familiars in hedgerows. "Come inside. All of you. Let's gather in the parlor. We're going to have a little chat."
Ears turned. Cats everywhere rose. The cats under the rocker. The cats in the planter. One by one they lifted themselves out of the cold grass and followed Rhoda's voice. They drifted into the parlor in a slow hush, settling on the rug, the wing chair, the ottoman, the back of the settee. The Persian reclaimed her armchair. The calico returned to her wood basket by the fireplace. By the time the last tabby stepped in, the parlor and the hall were full of cats.
"Edgar," Rhoda said. "Come away from the map a minute. I need you, too."
Edgar came. He paused when he saw what was in her hands, then crossed the rest of the way from the dining room, settled on the arm of her wing chair, and rested his arm across the back of it. His weight settled beside her, the weight she had leaned into for as long as she had known him. He had stopped being a tracker and become, just then, what he had always also been, her husband, who had walked beside her through a great many rooms, in a great many houses, and who was willing to walk beside her through this one. Whatever it was.
"Sweetheart," Rhoda said to Honey. "Come sit."
Honey came. Roam came with her, both folding themselves down on the rug like children at story time. The cats had arranged themselves into something between a circle and an audience. One by one their eyes came to rest on Rhoda.
The house went still. Rhoda settled the old book flat on her lap. It was smaller than the registration book and older than anything else in her house. The binding had been leather once, long ago, and then it had been alligator for a very long time after that. It was damp-feeling even when it was dry. The cover was mottled with darker stains she had long ago stopped trying toidentify. The edges of the pages were hand-cut, uneven, yellowed at the outsides and darker toward the spine, as if water had been close to them many times but had never quite ruined them. It smelled, when she bent her head to it, of river water, green and old and full of things you can't see.
She had not opened this book in a lifetime. She had kept it safe because one did not lose track of the thing an old Cajun traiteur had written by hand. But she had not needed it. Until tonight.
Rhoda opened the book to a page somewhere near the middle. The script inside was not any language most would have known. It had the slopes and curls of French but the letters were older than French, and the vowels stretched. Some lines were in red ink. Most were in black. The pages had been written by a hand that had pressed hard. On the left page was a drawing, crude and careful of a cat's mouth, stitched shut with black thread. On the right page, facing it, was another of a cat's mouth opened so wide it no longer looked like a mouth. Between them, in the margin, was a word.
Rhoda touched it with one finger. The shape of it under her finger pulled her back across her life so fast she had to close her eyes for a breath.Green storm light. Stilt-house over a black slough. An old woman's hand on hers, the stove warm at her back, a cup of tea. The whisper came, You listenin', child?She had been much younger then, still a little afraid of the dark. The swamp witch had taught her how to stop being afraid of it and how to stay respectful of it anyway. Rhoda opened her eyes.
"I only ever heard this story once," she said. Her voice had gone low and dreamy, the voice she used to put sweet Honey to sleep as a child. "A very long time ago, when your father and I were young, a friend of mine sent us south to learn from people in the swamps."
"This truth was told to us," Rhoda said, "by an old traiteur, a swamp witch, who lived at the edge of the water. Part Cajun, part something older and other. Her house sat on stilts above a black marsh, and she had more cats than any other soul we met in our travels. A storm came through the evening we went to her, and when the wind fell and the light went green, she sat us down by her stove and she wrote many stories out for us by hand, in this book. Do you remember Edgar?"
