Chapter 1 #2
Katherine sighed. “Now, what would a sweetshop want stolen?”
“Ah, so you’re interested, then?”
“No. I’m not. And my list of acceptable goods for services rendered is very short now. I don’t eat sweets.”
“Oh. Yes…” Imogene Chrysler apparently reflected a moment, then brightened again.
“But I do! And only a quarter of the payment’s in merchandise anyway.
Now, it seems a former employee has made off with one of their prized recipes, and they’re in need of someone to reclaim it.
Very simple theft. Very straightforward.
Just the thing to shake off the rust.” She fished around in the bag until she’d conjured a brown ball of yarn, several green, and two sandy-colored skeins.
“And very nice countryside there too. Going to need lots of green…”
“Imogene.” Katherine’s steely tone drew Mrs. Chrysler’s reluctant gaze.
“Yes, Katty?”
“This was amusing for a while, but I’m serious. For the umpteenth time, and I mean it, I have no interest in running all over the world doing the jabby-pokey again.” She made a couple of half-hearted fencing motions in the air with her spoon.
“Jabby-pokey?” Mrs. Chrysler regarded her sharply, slack-jawed and scandalized.
“Yes. And I can’t think of a single case you could bring me that would make me want to. So please. Drop the joke now, will you?”
“Joke? Katty, we were a force to be reckoned with! The best swordswomen, the best thieves, this side of the Stinky Mountains!”
“I know. But that was a long time ago. And we never wasted our time with jobs as small as sweetshops, did we?”
“Well, I wanted to ease you back in. We’ve had a forty-plus-year hiatus.”
By this time a hovering purple tail had wandered up to the table, and its owner summoned the courage to take a tentative swipe at the ball that Ember had knocked from the bag.
What are they talking about? asked a disembodied voice. The ball moved slightly.
Mr. Scruffles looked up from washing his face, regarded the tail, and frowned. What good was it to be invisible, if only in bits? he thought. Poor Tilly. Well, it takes all kinds. He cleared his throat.
Adventure, he replied carelessly, then splayed his legs out at angles, ears pricked and eyes wide with excitement. And I’m all for it! The mistress keeps me cooped up in here much too much. Despite, he clarified with a huff, my many years of valuable service.
Oh, Tilly darling, said Ember, why not let us see the rest of you? Ember sniffed at the tail and idly fluffed it with her paws as she flopped over on her back. The floor sizzled slightly.
Tilly slowly materialized, whapping the yarn suspiciously. She allowed Ember to keep playing with her tail, granting this indulgence to her closest friend. I remember those adventures, she said. Never cared for them too much.
Of course you didn’t! Mr. Scruffles thundered. Tilly pulsed out of sight and back again. They were for hearty cats, adventuring in wild, faraway lands!
So say you, Tilly replied, regaining her composure and giving him a scathing look. To me, things often got a bit too… sticky. She struck the yarn ball again, sending it into the sitting room.
Don’t worry, Ember said, trotting after Tilly and Mr. Scruffles in pursuit of the ball. The mistress hasn’t knitted any maps in ages. No matter how much the yarn lady begs her.
“You need to get out, Katty!” Mrs. Chrysler was protesting, even at that very moment.
Katherine had deposited all of the dishes in the sink by now and was scrubbing them industriously.
“No, Imogene. You need to get out. Your nest is empty, and now you want to recreate the good old days as a distraction. Well, as you can see, my nest is not empty.” She swung a soapy arm to take in the cottage.
“Katty,” Mrs. Chrysler replied in a measured tone, “your nest is full of cats.”
Buttons and Mittens, who’d been chasing each other across the ceiling, dropped into the dishwater, splattering both Katherine and Mrs. Chrysler with suds.
Katherine wiped her brow, as if nothing had happened. “So?”
“Katty, even your dragon looks like a cat. Cats on the walls, cats on the furniture, cats in the sugar bowl, for goodness’ sake.
” Mittens careened off the wallpaper and hit the floor at a skid; Buttons bounded off a couch cushion above Ember, Mr. Scruffles, and Tilly, who were trying to fish the yarn ball out from underneath the sofa; and a small cat named Hot Sauce slunk out of the sugar bowl.
Mrs. Chrysler cleaned the suds from her glasses with the fringe of her skirt and replaced them.
“They’re cats. They get into things. And there are only seven, Imogene.”
Mrs. Chrysler sighed. “All right, Katty. It seems to work for you, I admit. I’ll even concede your house is cleaner than mine, generally.
” She moved to put the lid on the sugar bowl but then noticed it contained, instead of sugar, a little pillow with “Hot Sauce” embroidered on it.
She sighed again and set the lid down. “You are right. I do need to get out. I’m lonely since Pip got married this summer.
I admit it. But he was forty-one. It was about time.
” She sucked a seed out of her ancient teeth.
“I just don’t know what to do with myself now,” she said, opening her hands in supplication.
“My family’s gone. So what if I do want to recapture some of the good old days?
When we were young and daring and full of vim and vigor? This isn’t a joke to me.”
Katherine listened with a stitched brow, then looked around her cottage, watching her pets lounge on the furniture or bound across various surfaces.
She herself hadn’t felt lonely after they’d given up their old trade and settled down to a less adventurous life so many decades ago.
But then again, she hadn’t found—then lost—anyone special like Imogene had, and magical cats didn’t move out like children did.
“I’d just… I guess I’d really just like to do something that made us feel young again,” Mrs. Chrysler went on, absently sweeping crumbs from the tabletop into her hand.
“And if it earned us a bit of extra income, a buffer of sorts against any impending tax hikes, that would be good too. Wouldn’t it? ”
Katherine regarded her friend closely. She pictured the Chrysler yurt now, spacious and empty except for Imogene, with only an aging dragon for company.
She remembered what a cozy place it had always seemed when Pip and Charlie were around, and considered how empty it seemed with them gone.
Imogene’s home had always struck her as a perfect place to grow old, and her thoughts suddenly turned to Fergie Mayweather, who had lost her home.
“All right,” she said. “We can do something, Imogene, you and me.”
“Really? The sweetshop in Birmingham?”
“No. I want to stay local. Just look around a bit. Let’s go into town.”
“A trip to the pub, then?”
“Fine. We can ask Todd what’s going on with this tax business. He always has an ear to the ground.”
“Perfect. And how are we going to get there?” Mrs. Chrysler raised her eyebrows, holding out the bag of yarn suggestively.
“We’re going to walk.”
“Oh.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
A brilliant pink sun rose over the ocean the next morning, and as usual Katherine Winterhaven was at the beach to see it.
It was only a short walk through the woods from her cottage to the shore, and she tried to make the trip as often as possible, especially in the crisp dawn air when the birds were stirring.
None were singing now, of course. Winter was approaching.
But the odd jay could be heard now and again.
Mr. Scruffles and Ember were by her side, Ember turning each step on the sand into paw-shaped glass.
What pretty things you make, my dear. I’ve never seen the like, said Mr. Scruffles.
Thank you, my love.
A purple tail bobbed along behind them, its owner delicately stepping on the glass to avoid soiling her paws. Katherine leaned down, and the timid cat became whole to rub against her proffered fingers.
“What do you think about Imogene’s ideas, my dear?”
Meow.
“Just what I think too.” Katherine stretched her back and looked out over the waves.
In their youth, Caterina Hornsboggle and Imogene Chrysler, née Imogene Dodge, had been a crack team of quite in-demand specialists, keenly sought by a variety of clients in need, with their reputations preceding them all over the continent.
Wouldn’t believe it now to look at them, would you?
Katherine snorted. Two old ladies dining quietly in a small kitchen, surrounded by cats.
That wasn’t the way it had always been. Oh no.
Despite herself, Katherine had to agree with one thing that Imogene had said last night.
Without their adventures, they had ceased to be young.
But forty-ish years ago felt like yesterday.
Miss Dodge had become Mrs. Chrysler and Caterina had become Katherine, espousing a nice hard K to which she’d always been so partial, and hanging up her old name for one that didn’t carry the same notoriety in circles concerned with… er, involuntary charitable donations.
Going on in the trade alone had been out of the question.
Unthinkable. But in a blink of an eye, Imogene had become a wife and mother, then widow, and now mother-in-law.
And Katherine had become a respectable craftswoman—a knitter, quilter, seamstress—who didn’t dabble in magic swords anymore.
Caterina had been something else entirely.
Well, still respectable, but generally on the other end of a very sharp blade.