Unfamiliar Territory, page 8
But, not one to get into an argument with my mother, at least not half the time, I dropped the subject. “Anything new here?” I asked her.
“Let’s see … not much, although I did see that Lyle got a shipment of brand new super sharp hypodermic needles.” She glanced in Grimm’s direction.
He gave a theatrical shake of his body and stalked off, muttering something about evil cats. It’s just as well I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, given that he was making derogatory remarks not only about my mother, but my species. Still, I chuckled.
“You are terrible, Mom,” I chided.
She gave the feline equivalent of a shrug. I licked her forehead affectionately. “I’d better help my partner get through his exam. Behave yourself, Mom!” I jumped down from the swing and resumed my second form. Waving at my mother, who was already getting comfortable for another nap, I turned and started for the back of the house, in the direction Grimm went.
“Sit, Grimm,” Lyle commanded.
Grimm sat dutifully.
“Shake.”
Grimm extended his paw for Lyle to hold.
“Other paw, Grimm.”
Grimm extended his other paw for inspection.
“Say, ‘ahhhhh.’”
Grimm opened his mouth wide.
This routine always tickled Lyle pink. He grinned as he inspected Grimm’s teeth.
“I wish all my patients were this compliant,” he said to me. I had stayed in my human form to more easily communicate with Lyle. The veterinarian continued his exam with the very accommodating canine, running his hands down flanks, lifting his tail, and palpating his abdomen. Finally, Lyle stood up.
“For a large intact male approaching the age of seven, he is in excellent shape,” Lyle praised. Grimm wagged his tail hesitantly, liking the positive tone of his doctor but unsure what might come next.
“But seven is still considered young for Lycanhunds,” I argued.
Lyle nodded in agreement as his eyes continued assessing Grimm. “That it is, which goes against every other dog breed I know. Usually the bigger the dog, the shorter the lifespan.”
I fake-coughed into my fist and let out a quick, “Magic!”
The veterinarian grinned at me. “I know, I know. I’m a mundy. And so are most animals. Magic isn’t something I encounter a whole lot in this line of work.” He surveyed the two of us, adding, “Present company excluded.”
I grinned. Grimm’s tail gave another half-hearted wag. Clearly, he was still a tad uneasy.
“I hardly think of you as a mundy, Lyle,” I told the older man. The term referred to people with no magical skills. It was slang for mundane. “After all, look at your daughter.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I can’t take any credit for her skills. That was all her mother.”
At that, he went silent, perhaps thinking of his wife who, as I had been told, left Lyle and Fleurette years ago and never returned. I couldn’t help but feel that I had inadvertently stumbled upon a sore subject. The silence became a tad awkward.
Lyle shook off his short air of melancholy, however, and changed the subject with slight inelegance. “No shot today,” he told the big dog directly, shooting both of us a grin.
Grimm immediately lost all apprehension and jumped up and turned a quick circle, looking more like a puppy than a regal Lycanhund. ‘No’ and ‘shot’ were definitely a part of his vocabulary.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said. He waved a hand dismissively and started picking up his instruments. Lyle’s clinic was an outbuilding that had been retrofitted to care for his smaller patients if his clients chose to travel to him. Grimm, weighing in at nearly one hundred and fifty pounds, barely qualified as a smaller patient.
“And how is my other favorite patient doing today?” Lyle asked me with a friendly wink.
Fleurette’s father was the only other human to know that I was more than what I seemed, although like his daughter, I let him assume I was just a shapeshifter and nothing else out of the ordinary. When Fleurette had first brought me to his home, I wanted to keep everything from him, but Lyle was no dummy and knew immediately there was something more to me than meets the eye. He patched me up and he’d been my trusted doctor ever since.
Lyle was a solidly built Black man in his late fifties, with a bit of a paunch and a receding hairline. What hair he had left was unruly curls, just like his daughter’s, although his was salt-and-pepper instead of brown, and kept trimmed short. He was only slightly taller than Fleurette. His daughter must have taken after her mother more in looks, for the only thing that she seemed to have gotten from her father, besides the hair, was his kind eyes, although his were a shade darker than hers.
I waved one hand in a dismissing gesture, a smile gracing my lips. “Just fine, doc,” I bantered. “How’s life for you?”
He rubbed his goateed chin. “Well, I’m fine,” he mused, “but, just between you and me, your mother has been awfully persnickety. More so than usual, I mean.” He let out a chuckle before sobering again. “I don’t suppose you could see what was wrong with her, would you? She won’t even shift most of the time to chat with me.”
I rolled my eyes. Mothers. “Sure, Lyle, I’ll do it right now. Are you sure Grimm doesn’t need a shot?”
I shimmered down as Lyle let out a large laugh. As I ran back toward the house, Grimm yelled out at me, “That was a low blow, furball!”
Chuckling to myself, I reached the porch in no time and came to a sudden halt in front of my still-recumbent mother. I jumped up and stared at her. “Okay, Mom, what’s the deal? Lyle said you weren’t talking to him.”
“Hello again, Cressida. Back for more?”
I wouldn’t let her sway me. “Spill.”
She stretched out a front leg, claws splayed, and then tucked it back under and glared at me through heavily lidded eyes. “Cressida, how old am I?”
“Um…” The question had caught me off guard. “Fourteen, right?”
“And how old are you?”
“I’m two, Mom.”
“And how much longer must I wait to see my only daughter finally settle down and pass the torch?”
Oh, sweet Freya, help me. My ears flattened. “Not this again, Mom.”
She hadn’t blinked this entire time. Now she did, slowly. “You asked what was bothering me.”
“Mom—”
“I was looking, Cressida—actually looking—for my mate for years. I was seven when I met your father.”
I had heard all this a thousand times. Yes, my mother didn’t find her true love until she was seven years old. His name was Roger Curtain, and he was an accountant. Not exactly thrilling, I know. Anyway, they got married and tried to start a family but after a few years of trying with no results, Mom began to wonder if perhaps she had married the wrong man (keep in mind that there must be true love between the couple for the magic to grant a child). Before I was even conceived, she had written a letter to my dad explaining that she could no longer be with him, etcetera, and placed it somewhere within easy access of a cat. Finally, after five years of marriage, Mom found out she could no longer shift back to human, which could mean only one thing. She retrieved the letter and placed it on Dad’s desk and left her home forever, never to look back. I was born shortly after that, out in the woods in that abandoned barn.
“Mom,” I stated, my voice firm. “I am young. Younger than you at this age because I spend a lot of time as a human. I have loads of time to find The One. I want to do something in this world before I settle down. He’s out there, I’m sure, but I have plenty of time to find him.”
I jumped down, ignoring the angry stare and flattened ears my mother was throwing at me, and ending this rancid discussion. “Now, be nice to Lyle; he just wants to help you. I’m heading back to Fleurette’s. I’m off to save the world again first thing in the morning!”
I stormed off like a petulant kitten, rushing down the driveway to the road before my mom could get another word in edgewise. I was out of sight of Lyle’s homestead before I heard familiar toenails clicking down the road at a fast pace behind me.
“Cress, hold up!” Grimm called out, his mouth open in a mild pant.
I slowed to a walk while Grimm caught up. “She is without a doubt the most irritating animal on the face of the planet!” I fumed out loud.
Mirth rolled off Grimm. “So, in other words, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?”
I glared at him, my ears flattening. Cats are good at glaring. He just stared right back. “You want a claw in the eye? Maybe then Lyle will have to give you a shot.”
My threat did not much faze the big dog. Instead, he went into play position, rump up, front legs splayed down low, mouth open but no teeth on display. “You have to catch me first!” he declared before tearing off down the road, kicking up little pebbles with his speed like a giant puppy.
I sighed and started running after him. I didn’t push myself, knowing there was no way I’d catch up to the beast. Before long I had reached Fleurette’s house. Grimm lounged at the foot of the front door, tongue lolling to the side as he panted heavily. “I won.”
I just stared with fake contempt. “You cheat, dogbrains.”
“Furball.”
“Stinkmuffin.”
“Stinkmuffin? Are you just making up insults now?” Grimm’s tongue went back in his mouth as he sat up and shook his coat.
“Looks that way,” I snarked. I transformed into a human before Grimm could say anymore. “Ha. Looks like I got the last word.” Grimm growled at me, but it was his playful growl. I patted his head affectionately as I passed by to open the front door. He swiveled his head up to lick my wrist and followed me inside, jumping up on the sofa to lounge.
I found Fleurette in her workroom, a tiny room off the kitchen. I imagine it served as a pantry before Fleurette came to live here. The walls were lined with every herb imaginable, dried or in the process of drying. At approximately six feet long and four feet wide, there was only enough space for Fleurette’s worktable and a chair, which sat at the back of the room. There were no windows in here, so Fleurette had an electric lamp on the table, with the brightest bulb possible powered by limited free energy.
The worktable was always a bit of a mess, with papers piled haphazardly in one corner, various glass vials and stacked books toward the back, and used tea and coffee mugs strewn about. There was also a perch near the back for Rupert, and although he always went outside to defecate, a few loose ebony feathers always found their way to the table’s surface and added to the mess. Fleurette referred to her space as “organized chaos.”
She was in the middle of grinding up something in her heavy marble mortar, her back turned to me and her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. I leaned in the doorway and rapped a knuckle softly on the frame.
“Knock, knock.”
“Hey, Cressida. Be a dear and hand me the funnel, will you? It’s hanging on the wall to your right.” Fleurette didn’t even look up.
I located the funnel and placed it on her table next to her. “Fleurette, was your mother annoying?” I asked her without preamble.
She let out a low laugh. “She left us when I was young, so I don’t remember if she was annoying or not,” she replied. Whoops, I had forgotten that detail of Fleurette’s past. I hoped it wasn’t a sore subject. Based on her reaction, it didn’t seem to be.
“Oh.”
“Since she didn’t have any compunction about leaving her family, though, my guess is that yes, she would have been annoying. Why do you ask? What did Belinda say to you?” She turned in her seat to look at me, a small smile gracing her kind face.
How anyone could have left this woman as a child was beyond me. I marveled at the amazing job Lyle had done as a single father to raise such a caring soul.
“The usual,” I responded with a sigh. “Mom wants to know why, as an adult barely out of childhood, I might be more interested in being single and living my life on my own terms rather than immediately setting out to find my perfect mate.”
“I see.”
“I mean, look at you! Here you are older than me, at thirty-one, and still single. It’s not like you are rushing all over Gaia’s green world trying to find a man!”
I swear I saw her face fall just a bit before she swiveled back around to focus on her table. Her hair, while held back in a loose ponytail, still fluffed up enough to hide her face from view. “Well, that’s a little different.”
Uh-oh. I felt like I had inserted a paw into my mouth. “What makes it different?” I asked softly.
In a very quiet voice, she answered, “Because this is a small town and nobody is right for me here, and I don’t have the chance to get out and see the world like you do. So, it looks like the single life is for me.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll be single forever. If it’s fated to be, Mr. Right will find you.”
Still hiding behind her hair, she chuckled sadly. “I wish I had your optimism.” She turned again to look at me, determination etched in her face. “But listen, enough about me. Be kind to your mother. She just wants what she feels is best for you. Just because what you feel is right for your life and what she feels is right don’t match up, doesn’t mean one of you is wrong. You both are vastly different people with vastly different views on the world. The bottom line is that she loves you, no matter what. Don’t go out on another job being mad at your mother because you never know what the future will bring.”
Fleurette had a way of putting things into perspective. I wanted to stay mad at my mom, like a moody kitten. But my friend had a point. Feeling properly chastised, I nodded at her wisdom.
“Wow, Fleurette. You’re absolutely right. While I’m gone, can you tell her that I love her? I really do.”
Fleurette stood and gave me a quick squeeze. “Of course, Cress.”
Chapter 8
It's amazing what a full night’s rest can do for a body. Grimm and I both slept on the spare bed, as we always did, starting an early bedtime of eight o’clock in the evening. By the time four in the morning rolled around, we were both refreshed and ready to tackle another job.
I spent a good half hour grooming myself thoroughly, since I didn’t always have the opportunity on the road. With ablutions finished, all that was left to do was eat a quick breakfast and hitch up Humbert. We had already packed supplies—mostly extra food in case we were successful, and if our quarry needed to eat—the night before.
We were ready to roll by five, just as the sky was turning from deep purple to rosy pink. Fleurette held a cup of coffee in her hands as she sleepily shuffled out into the yard in her robe. She gave me another smile as I rechecked Humbert’s gear one last time.
“Stay safe out there,” Fleurette said by way of goodbye.
I headed to the back of the wagon to open it, since Grimm had informed me earlier that he wished to ride for a while, the lazy dog. Fleurette followed behind me, waiting for my response. As Grimm jumped up, I turned to her. “Of course! You know how I am.”
“Impetuous with no sense of personal safety?” Fleurette laughed while I shut the wagon door and glared at her, before cracking up and smiling along with her mirth.
I climbed up into the seat, grabbing the reins. “This will be a walk in the park. I’ll see you in a couple of days,” I told her. Waving, I flicked the reins at Humbert, who clopped into motion, leaving Fleurette behind in her yard waving back at me.
I was so used to turning Humbert left out of the yard that I had to stop and purposefully think about what I was doing. But turn right we did, and soon enough Humbert was plodding along at a steady pace, as the sun peeked over the horizon and started the day in earnest.
I had only ever come this way with Grimm on foot, and even then ventured on this road for about a half mile or so. I knew that the right-hand side held grassland, and the left was young deciduous woodland, because often we did a little hunting in this area when we had a day off. The monotony of the scenery, along with the rhythmic clop of horse hooves, lulled me into a state of mild torpor for the first few miles.
But soon enough, as the cooler morning air gave way to a cloudless sunny sky, the grassland to the right changed into the same forest as the left. After another hour, the grass was swallowed up completely by the thickening forest. Rabbit Hole Road also ceased to be, turning into a dirt path just barely wide enough for the wagon. It was obviously disused much of the time, although there were some signs of activity near the more rutted areas. My senses sharpened back up as Humbert carefully navigated the pockmarked path.
At noontime, the road grew even worse. Up until this moment we had been able to skirt around the larger potholes, but the road was especially narrow in this area. Despite urging Humbert carefully, the wagon lurched to a sudden halt. I swore under my breath. Requesting the horse to hang tight, I hopped down from the seat to investigate.
There was a prickly feeling on the back of my neck as I walked to the rear of the wagon, but my human side told me to ignore it. After all, I was in the middle of nowhere, so what could it be? I assumed it was just me getting squirrely, considering I had been human for about seven hours at this point. Already I could feel my eyes getting itchy and my skin starting to ache. I would just go see what the problem was and perhaps take a little break as a cat to unwind before continuing on.
Just as I thought. When I rounded the back of the wagon, I could see the wheel was trapped in a very deep rut. A good push to the back while Humbert carefully pulled would do the trick. I put my right hand on the door latch to see if Grimm could help.
“Don’t move!” shouted a voice behind me. I obliged, my hand stilling on the door handle, my left making sure it could be seen by my unknown assailant. So much for being alone out here. I mentally kicked myself for allowing my human side to be so complacent.
