He Nearly Killed the Cat
The Next Steps
By Anne B. Walsh
Meghan pulled back the deep red shower curtain and shrieked, nearly dropping the towel she had wrapped around her. Neenie, coiled into the most compact ball her feline form could make, looked up with an inquisitive mew. Is something wrong? she seemed to be asking.
"What are you doing in there?" Meghan sank down onto the side of the bathtub, pressing her hand against her chest. "You scared me!"
Neenie stood up human and stepped out of the tub. "Sorry about that," she said. "I didn't know anyone else was planning on using this bathroom. It's cool in there, and comfortable. The curves on the tub fit my body just right." She looked her sister up and down. "Which is more than I can say for some people."
"You're just jealous." Meghan stuck out her tongue. "I always knew when I finally caught up with you, I'd have plenty."
"When you finally caught up? Pearl, you were three years younger than us. You were never going to catch up unless something strange like this happened."
"Or until I got old enough to use an Aging Potion without anybody stopping me."
"Which would have been seventeen," Neenie pointed out. "At which point, you'd also be old enough to do anything else you wanted to, so why would you bother?"
"If you have to ask, you'll never understand." Meghan indicated the door with her eyes. "Do you mind? I was practicing hand-to-hand with Fox and I'm all sweaty."
"Get un-sweaty, just don't take too long. I'm going downstairs to start dinner. Did Dad and Uncle Pat and Aunt Carrie say when they'd be back?"
"I don't think they knew." Meghan frowned. "Dad, my Dad, said they were going to see a woman about a world. That could mean anything." The frown turned into a scowl. "It's not fair I'm not allowed to use my name for him anymore. And I know, I know," she added before Neenie could say anything. "It's too close to his nickname and it would be dangerous and it would bring the Reality Cops here. But I'm still allowed to be annoyed about it, aren't I?"
"If you want to be." Neenie sketched a small attic room in the air between them, getting a shiver from Meghan. "But since I don't think you really want to go back there…"
"Tell me again why magical people are the best," Meghan said in an unnaturally high voice, standing up to dip a little curtsy and flutter one edge of her towel like a skirt. "Tell me again why I should only ever talk to magical people and never, never to those nasty people who aren't. Tell me again why I have to stay safe in my attic and never, never, never come out." She dropped the mannerism. "I'd have been almost like Rapunzel, wouldn't I? Locked up in her tower to keep her safe."
"Except it wouldn't have been any prince climbing up to get to you there." Neenie populated her attic room with stoop-shouldered, thick-lipped, dull-eyed young men in robes. "It would've been the pick of the magical world, which isn't saying much."
"Amen." Meghan's smile went dreamy. "You and I found the two best ones around. Which of them are we going to get first?"
"I don't know yet. I think it's part of what Dad and your Mum and Dad went to see… whoever they went to see… about. And that didn't make any sense at all, did it?"
"The sad part is, it did." Meghan shook her head, looking grieved. "We've been sisters too long."
"Any time you want to get away from me, you know where the edge of the domain is." Neenie stepped out into the hall. "What do you want for dinner?"
"How about… food!" Meghan bounced up and down and clapped her hands. "I want food!"
"Your towel's slipping," Neenie said dryly, and closed the door on Meghan's yelp of dismay.
It is nice to have Pearl back, and Aunt Carrie. Nima and Reyna are wonderful, but they live one domain over in their little towers, not here in the cottage, and I was starting to get overwhelmed by boy.
Still, I miss Danger.
Neenie sat down on the top step of the stairs, welcoming her sadness for a few precious moments, the only ones she was likely to get this day when someone wasn't asking her what was wrong.
I have to stop myself from snapping back every time I hear that question. What's wrong? What's not wrong? We aren't all here—we haven't even figured out where we all are, and we're leaving two of the most important people until the end! Shouldn't we try for them next? Wouldn't that give us more power, a better chance of finding the rest of the Pride, if we had the Pack all together again?
She sighed deeply. And then I feel unworthy, because it doesn't work like that. Legendbreakers have to balance their knowledge and their gut feelings to figure out which missions to take when, and we know the other two missions we have left are both more difficult than Danger's, because they involve characters who are very visible in the ridge at the point we'd reached. Danger was never seen in the ridge at all, but the RC's still can't do anything to her, because they need her in the world to balance the other person who's there—and no one in their right mind would argue that he's not visible!
"So Pearl has the right idea after all," she said aloud, trying to rally her mood. "Is it going to be my mate, or hers?"
Not that we can decide anything until the Pack-parents get home.
I wonder where they did go?
"Thank you for having us," Patrick Black said to his hostess, accepting a cup of tea. Not the most creative of names, but it served me well before. Besides, you can't really do much with the ones Mother and Father gave me. I always wondered if our family went in for such ridiculous first names because the last name is so plain…
"You're always welcome here." Suzie glanced over her shoulder. "Despite what my partner's conduct might lead you to believe. She doesn't usually hide from visitors, I promise."
"We're not offended," Carrie assured her, taking a lump of sugar for her own tea and passing the bowl across the table to John. "Not after what we've been hearing from Neenie these past few weeks."
"I beg your pardon?" The tone made it an honest question rather than an offended outburst.
"My girl has a quick eye." John stirred his tea gently, the spoon never coming in contact with the sides of the cup. "Not to mention, she went straight from training with you and your partner into a particular household from our ridge. It would have been difficult for her not to make the connection."
"True enough, and nicely said to avoid unfriendly attention." Suzie regarded the small pastries on the plate she had set out, eventually selecting something that looked to Pat like a miniature pecan tart. "She, and you, have it right. Eve was originally the birth mother of one version of your son." Her eyes indicated Pat and Carrie.
"What happened to her?" Carrie asked, setting her teacup back into its saucer. "How did she end up here, in Outer Time?"
"You've all studied your ridge?" At three answering nods, Suzie went on. "Then you know that your greatest enemy didn't intend to kill her that night. It was a snap decision, made when she annoyed him by begging him to spare her son. In her world, he decided the other way. Instead of killing her, he threw her aside into the wall, stunning her enough that she couldn't move, but leaving her alive and aware while he murdered her child, with her husband already lying dead downstairs."
"I can see how that might leave her with a few scars," Pat said under his breath, his hands gripping one another under the table so that he didn't shatter the delicate teacup by trying to handle it while he was this angry.
"She doesn't remember anything from the rest of that night," Suzie confirmed. "It's probably best that way. We know she was functional enough to remember her wand when she ran out of the house, but only because she has it now. Her next memory is from a day or two later, somewhere in a forest. She was staring into a pond, wondering if it would hurt to drown, and it came to her that death was only a doorway, a passage into a new world. If she could work out a spell which would take her outside of her world, wouldn't she find the people she'd lost there? And maybe, would she be able to bring them back?"
"People have been wondering that as long as there have been people." John picked out a small muffin for himself. "I assume, since she's still alive, that what she found was Outer Time."
"It was. And when she learned that there were a great many worlds like hers, and painful things happening in all of them, she decided that she wanted to do something about it." Suzie smiled ruefully. "Her first thought was just to kill as many versions of her enemy as she could before he killed her instead, and she managed that a few times, but finally she hit a world where he got wind of her before she finished working through his safeguards. Which was where I came in."
"Was that happenstance?" Pat judged his temper, and his tea, to have cooled enough that he could safely drink it now. The tea, that is, not the temper. "I can't imagine, with all the thousands of worlds on our series alone, that you would just have happened along at the perfect moment to save her, recruit her, whatever you call it."
"I may have been watching her," Suzie allowed. "Letting her burn off the worst of her anger before I approached her. If I'd come to her too soon, she would've rejected me, and gone out to get herself killed deliberately. Which would have been a terrible waste."
"But instead, you waited for the right time." Carrie swirled her teaspoon three times through her tea, then set it down in her saucer with a sharp clink. "Did you wait with our world too?" The cold venom in her voice sent a chill down Pat's spine, even when he knew he wasn't the one being targeted by it. "Let them get to a certain point, then step in to play hero?"
"Carrie!" John spoke sharply, drawing all eyes to himself. "That's uncalled for."
"Tell me you haven't wondered it yourself," Carrie shot back. "Tell me it doesn't seem a little too convenient that they got there in time to snatch up your Neenie and turn her into one of them, and to stop the whole world from being merged back into the ridge, to keep it on our main instead, but they couldn't make it in time for the rest of us…"
"We have rules, as I'm sure you're learning." Suzie's voice remained as calm, as mild, as ever, but an underlayer of pain was beginning to emerge. "One of those rules is that Outer Time has to remain consistent for everyone, Legendbreakers and RC's alike. Once they have entered a world, whatever they do there before we arrive is real. It happened. We can't step back through Inner Time and stop them from ever coming in, no more than they can do that to us."
"I thought they could blockade times," Pat objected, frowning. "Neenie and Fox have been fretting about it, worrying that we might not be able to get to their friends at any time except the one the RC's want us to."
"That goes to another rule. Whoever makes a significant change in a particular world 'owns' it after that. It runs by their rules, which means by the rules of the team or solo working there." Suzie crumbled a bit of her tart shell between her fingers. "Of course, if that team or that solo isn't paying attention, someone from the other side can slip in and make another change, and that flips the 'ownership' of the world. And the set of rules which apply there."
"Which explains, when the twins came to get me, why the RC's had to knock." John rapped his knuckles twice against the table as illustration. "The RC's had taken the world first by rehabilitating me and Fox there, but Neenie took it back with her very neat little coup, and it was still hers when they came to my door. And they knocked, which meant the RC's had to do the same."
"I… think I understand. And I apologize." Carrie looked directly at Suzie. "It hurt you, didn't it? Not getting there in time. Having to merge our world, even when there was an undamaged version of our main that you could slide it into so that no one's memories would have to be altered. I thought you didn't care, but really you care too much. And it hurts you."
"Every time." Suzie's voice was quiet and somehow brittle, as if without her iron control it would shatter into bleeding shards. "Every time I see a little boy cry because he woke up from his beautiful dream of a family. Every time I see a little girl have to be brave when yesterday's magical door is today's prosaic closet full of coats. Every time I see a man and a woman who could have been happy together, who could have given thousands of other people happiness from theirs, forced to settle for second best. They are the people I fight for. The people I try to help. And as hard, as unpitying, as I've had to learn to be, every time I fail hurts like the first time."
Pat reached for Carrie's hand, only to find it already seeking his. We've lost a lot, but we've found a lot too. And we are going to find the others.
We'll have to know what that pain she's talking about is like sooner or later, but I'd just as soon it be later!
John lingered after the Blacks had said their goodbyes, flashing a Go on without me hand sign in their direction. "May I ask a personal question?" he said, turning to Suzie.
"No one's stopping you."
"Were you once…" John wove a crown out of fire and sent it to hover over Suzie's head, just brushing her long black hair. "If it's none of my business, tell me so, but I couldn't help wondering. Especially when you brought up a little girl and a magical door."
Suzie exhaled a long sigh. "Yes," she said on the end of it, her voice barely audible. "Yes. I was, once." She looked up at the crown, her eyes gleaming in the firelight. "And I will be again. When my work here is done."
"Are you working as a Legendbreaker to regain your place, then?" John recalled the fire and wove it around his teacup, reheating the liquid within. "I didn't think things went that way."
"They don't. Not precisely." Suzie twisted a lock of hair between her fingers. "The place was never truly lost to me. It was given freely, and nothing changes that, not even my refusing it once. Not while I live and can change my mind. But when I finally make that choice, decide whether or not to accept that gift, I have to do it with all my heart. If I still value other things more highly, if I would hesitate at that door, then it's better for me to wait and work until I can be sure of myself. Until I can accept the gift as freely as it was given, and give everything that I am in return."
John looked up from his teacup and met Suzie's eyes. "Do you miss them?" he asked quietly. "Your family, your friends. The ones you lost, who passed through the door ahead of you."
"With every breath I take." Suzie's voice cracked on the last word, but she swallowed and went on. "But even though it took me a long time, I understand now that I was wrong to turn away. I have to believe that means we won't be apart forever. That they've forgiven me for being silly, all those years ago."
"Have you forgiven yourself?"
"Still working on that one." Suzie managed a smile. "And I see why you run your Pack. Not much gets past you, does it?"
"You've met our cubs, and Pat. It was a matter of survival. As for loss, and pain, and forgiving yourself…" John stared into his teacup, at the reflection of his own eyes.
The eyes which remained stubbornly blue, with no trace of brown.
"The more me I become, the more I miss her," he said softly. "And the more important it gets that we continue to increase in power. That we make no mistakes. If we can't rescue her, I don't know what I'll do. I do know that I can't live without her, not long-term."
"And I know you mean that as a fact, not just a trite saying." Suzie's voice had lost all traces of tears, returning to its usual briskness. "So how is it that you think I can help?"
"You and Eve were Neenie's mentors. By extension, the mentors of all of us, all the Pack, and the Pride too when they get here. That's a strong bond in Outer Time, isn't it?"
"Not many are stronger." Suzie selected a chocolate meringue, breaking it in two and offering half to John. He accepted with a nod of thanks. "We lent her the power to begin her domain—"
John quickly swallowed a mouthful of meringue. "That's what I thought she'd said. How do you mean, you lent her the power? Does she need to repay it?"
"Yes, but not directly." Suzie seemed more interested in dissolving her meringue with drips of tea than in eating it. "Because we taught her Legendbreaking, because she works by basically our rules, we get a share of the power she receives from her missions. And because she taught the rest of you, we get the knock-on effect from that as well."
"Do you also receive power from us internally? From the way we interact with one another, now that there are more of us?" Under the table, John crossed his fingers. This was the important question.
"Yes, strong positive interactions within Outer Time do count to help maintain a domain, and to repay us, since the type of power is the same. With as many of you as there will eventually be, you might almost have a self-sustaining domain… but then again, it will have to be larger than usual to support all of you, and then you're back into needing an outside power source." Suzie rescued the last piece of her meringue from the sea of chocolatey tea in her saucer and popped it into her mouth. "Nothing's free," she said around it. "And being human, pesky creatures that we are, we wouldn't accept it if it were. We'd always be looking for the catch, or at least for some way to pay."
Exactly what I was hoping to hear. "So, theoretically, if we were to do something which dramatically increased either your or Eve's personal happiness, it would add to your power, which would go a long way towards repaying Neenie's loan, perhaps wiping it out altogether. We could keep more of the power that we generate ourselves, more that we gain from missions. Which would make us stronger when we enter worlds, more sensitive to the RC's following us or getting ahead of us, generally better Legendbreakers all around. Yes?"
"Yes." Suzie frowned at him. "What are you thinking of?"
Helping himself to another cup of tea, John explained.
Still hand in hand, Pat and Carrie crossed back into their own domain, walking in dreamlike quiet. The late afternoon sun slanted through the leaves, turning the scene a delicate emerald, with occasional glimpses of ruby.
Autumn's coming. Not here quite yet, but on its way.
"It's the same time of year that you came to take us home from Inner Time," Carrie said aloud, breaking the stillness. "Wasn't that a strange little time loop, with your other self finding out about mine, and about Pearl, the same day that he died?"
"I'm just glad I thought to look at that carving your other self did before we left. We might have set up a time paradox if not." Pat held up his right hand, his eyes tracing the faint scar between wrist and thumb. "I saw blood on the letters in my time, so I left blood on the letters in yours, and bound a knowledge spell into it just in case one incarnation of me, or of him, wasn't up to figuring out the riddle."
"I don't suppose there ever was a Pearl without Kreacher's 'new master,'" Carrie murmured, leaning her head against Pat. "In the unaltered ridge, I mean. I've looked all through it, and there's not even a hint."
"She never had another her sharing the body, not the way we did, did she?" At Carrie's headshake, Pat sighed. "Which makes it official. No Pearl in the ridge. What about you?"
"I may or may not have been. It depends on precisely which world is being Chronicled. But there is that sad bit about me in one of the tells of our main, the one where Danger sees through the worlds into the ridge…"
"I like our version of 1 June, 1983, much better, thanks awfully." Pat kissed the top of his wife's head. "Screaming, bug-eyed monster and all."
"That's not a nice way to talk about your daughter."
"What daughter? I meant me!"
Laughter streamed behind them as the Blacks made their way home.
Author Notes:
I've tried to make Eve and Suzie's original identities fairly clear in this chapter, but in order to get it, you do need to be familiar with (coincidentally) the two universes I've ever written serious fanfic for. As for what John means by "increasing… personal happiness," well, you'll just have to keep reading to find out, won't you?
Neenie's hangout is taken directly from my own Poppy and Sesame, who adore lying in wait in the bathtub, then leaping up onto the rim and scaring bodily fluids out of me. Usually in the most literal fashion possible.
I've had Surpassing Danger, the Be Careful sequel (now known as What You Wish For), and The Lion, the Snake, and the Safe Room all requested for my next project, though of course SD is the most desired. I do hear you and I am planning to comply, but I'd also like to get cracking on an original. Any requests in that direction? Let me know, and don't forget to review! Next post as soon as it's ready!)