I blinked at her again. Over the last 10 years of our friendship, I tried to talk to her in blinks hoping she would understand. I had spent hours learning Morse code from an old book I had found on her shelf. But poor Mrs. Twiggs didn’t have the ability to understand me. She spoke to me out of loneliness, to hear her own voice, better than the silence of a dead husband. As much as people came and went in her life, the loss of her precious Albert could never be reconciled. I feel that heartache from Lionel’s death. “Yes, dear I miss Lionel, too,” she said. Maybe I was getting through to her. “Who would want to kill such a nice gentleman? A man who would never hurt a soul. A man who had nothing to give up except his life. I hope the police find who did this.”
“If they don’t, I will,” I said.
Mrs. Twiggs merely smiled, not understanding my purrs and my noises. Or maybe she did? I gave her one last nuzzle and then headed back out into the streets.
I wandered through the crowds of tourists darting in and out of the stores. Sped by the local brewery where hipsters sat with their dogs on the patio. I heard a soft voice singing. It was Abigail. She stood outside the hundred-year old general mercantile store, playing her guitar and singing. Her guitar case contained a few crumpled dollar bills in it. Even above the powering scent of perfumes and homebrew that poured onto the sidewalks, I could smell Abigail. I could smell her scent but it was more than her scent. It was what Mrs. Twiggs called her aura, the colors that outlined Abigail. As a witch I could see those colors around humans; as a cat, I could smell them. Her aura scent was different yet familiar. I had smelled it somewhere in my memory. The song she played which had put me in a trance was the melody my coven had sung the night before the witch hunters came for us. It was a very ancient melody dating back to what Elizabeth told us was the realm of the Druids. Many of the witches who came to America were from Scotland and Ireland. Their bloodlines dated back thousands of years to the spell casters who walked the earth from Samaria and the Nile back to the dawn of mankind and beyond. Our bloodline is ancient. Abigail's aura scent is ancient.
People walked past her, looking right through her like they do with me. Not acknowledging that she was a beating heart. In my three hundred years living as a cat, seeing people from this vantage point, I grew to appreciate and at the same time, to be disappointed in humans. They could be both kind and cruel.
A drunk stumbled out of the bar, smashing into Abigail’s shoulder. She righted herself, protecting her guitar. I listened in when he stopped to talk to the girl. “Hey, you’re really good. What’s your name? You’re cute. How old are you?” He stood inches away from Abigail shifting from foot to foot barely standing. His belly popping out from under his beer soaked T-shirt. His greasy hair stuck against the sweat of his forehead.
Abigail politely said thank you and moved away. The drunken man moved with her. “No, I mean it. You’re really cute.” He reached for Abigail. She knocked his hand away. When she started to walk away, he grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the alleyway. I heard her yell. He pulled her into the dark. I ran after her, jumping on a fire escape as he put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams. I leapt onto his back and clawed fiercely into the skin of his face. He screamed, “What’s going on? What is that?” He fell to the ground in agonizing pain. His face contorted, changing shape, his eyes bulging and turning blood red. A voice not from this world came from his throat, “It comes.”
Abigail picked me up and we ran, grabbing her guitar on the way. When she finally stopped, breathless, we had reached the outskirts of Asheville by the Biltmore Estate. She fell to the ground sobbing. I pushed myself next to her, rubbing my scent over her. She ran her fingers along my soft fur. “What was that? Have I finally gone insane?” She stared into my eyes. “Was that real? Are you real?”
“Yes, Abigail, I’m real. Everything you’ve ever known or think you know is about to change. There are alternative worlds and creatures that walk between them. That creature in the alley was from the shadow world.”
“What kind of creature are you?”
“My name is Terra Rowan. At one time I was much like you. Circumstance put me in this body and powers I don’t yet understand have bought us together.”
“I’m too tired to understand this tonight. I have to find a place to stay.” She rubbed her eyes, yawning and stretching.
I was exhausted as well; bringing her this far had taken much of my energy. “You can’t stay on the streets. It’s not safe anymore. I know a place. Follow me.”
I led her into the densely forested woods between the oaks, ash and thorn. These three trees are the magical trinity of the fairy folk. The mountain ash tree known as the rowan, my namesake, holds the power to ward off fairies and protect against black magic. As I’ve said, mine is an ancient bloodline. On my eighteenth birthday, I was to craft my wand from my ash spirit tree, the source of my power as a white witch. My wanding day never came.
Abigail tripped as the terrain became stubborn, not giving ground easily, I could tell she was exhausted. Asheville sits in a valley between the Blue Ridge, Appalachians and Smoky mountains. The mountain forests are thick with thorns and creatures that guard its entrance. Every step spends your strength and your will to continue; yet the Abigail girl did not rest. We headed up Black Mountain following the stream that runs from the French Broad River through the mountain. After some time walking in the dark, Abigail stopped. I had forgotten that humans don’t have my night vision. She stood perfectly still, it wasn't the dark that stopped her, it was the feeling we were being watched. We hurried on at an urgent pace until we reached our destination. The Abigail girl stood looking over the old log cabin. “It’s been empty for years since Agatha Hollows died. She took me in when I first came to Asheville,” I said as she walked up the creaking steps. She peeked inside holding her nose.
“It’s not so bad. There’s plenty to eat,” I said as I heard a mouse scurry into a dark corner.
She looked at me. “How long has Agatha been gone?”
“She died shortly after the war.”
She looked around. “What war?”
“The big war,” I replied.
“Surely you can’t mean World War II. You can’t be that old.”
“No, the war between the states. The Civil War,” I said.
“The Civil War,” she repeated. “How old are you?”
“I was 17 in the year of our lord 1692.” I thought for a moment. “So that would make me 325 years old.”
“How is that possible?”
“I'm a witch. We age much differently than your folk. We have much of your same frailties; our bodies can’t last forever but we live much longer than humans. Until we reach our wanding age of 18, we age as you do. Once we wand, we stay young for hundreds of years,” I explained. “That’s why we live in secret, constantly moving from town to town. We must keep our secret.”
“I'm too exhausted to understand this tonight. Please let’s get some sleep.” She found an old cot in the corner of the cabin by the fireplace. She was already sound asleep when I dropped the mouse by her feet. I made quick work of my dinner and then I fell asleep next to her.
I woke up, leaving her still asleep. I owed it to Lionel to find out what happened to him. I headed back to town and to the alley to find the black and white stray I call Pippa. Giving names to animals reminds me that I am not one of them. Pippa frequents the alley where Lionel was killed. I found her sitting by the alley’s entrance begging from passersby. She was a tuft of a mutt no more than 10 or 11 pounds with curly, matted fur. Her eyes are kind, her disposition sweet. She is a tolerable dog by my belief. “Pippa, did you see what happened to Lionel?”