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 to identify.
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?"
He smiled at her and nodded. "I do."
"Now, I'm going to read to you." Rhoda drew in a deep breath and bent her head to the page.
She touched the first line with her finger and began to read in a voice and cadence not her own, but one that harked back to the swamp witch.
It had been a very long time since her mouth had shaped sentences like this, and it felt, Rhoda thought, a little bit like dancing an old dance.
"Long time ago, child," she read, "before anyone kept books.
Before anyone kept rules. The witch and her familiar, they lived together under a different promise.
That familiar loved her witch. She carried her witch's secrets the way a well carries water.
Not stored, you hear? Held. That secret, she become part of the creature.
She fuse into the bone. A familiar who know her witch's shame, she carry it in her teeth.
A familiar who know her witch's joy, she carry it in her tongue.
And a familiar who know her witch's sorrow, she hold that one close, child, close to the heart, and she quiet about it for the rest of her days. That was the bond. You understand?"
Honey nodded. Roam nodded. The cats in the parlor all nodded.
"Now," Rhoda continued, "the bond could end.
Oh yes. Familiar go rogue, that bond end.
Witch pass on, that bond end. Familiar grow old and lay down, that bond end.
Nothing wrong with that. The end of a bond ain't a wound, child.
It's a closing. And the secrets she carried, they go on with her, and the world turn, and the work go on. "
Rhoda's finger stopped. "But the bond can be broken another way. Not ended. Not closed. Some bonds ain't ended, you see. They just covered up."
Rhoda's finger rested beside the drawing of the stitched mouth.
"When a bond hold a lie inside it, child, that bond don't die.
She fester. She go on living in the wrong way.
And the secrets in the familiar, they stay with her, bound still, hers still, but rotting child.
Rotting in her bones, long as the lie live. "
Rhoda turned the page. A third drawing: a cat with her jaws forced open so wide her head was nearly split.
"And if the lie go on long enough, and if it go on deep enough, one night, child, the bonds gon' remember themselves.
Every loyal creature who ever held a bound tongue, she gon' feel it at once.
That old magic come up out of the ground and out of the water and out of the dark places under things.
She come up, and she reach into every familiar, and she open they mouths. "
Rhoda's voice was barely above a whisper now. "Every cat. All at once. And the spilling don't stop, child. It don't stop. Not until the lie is found. Not until the bond that was spoiled is answered for." Rhoda stopped reading. The parlor did not breathe.
Rhoda's finger moved to the word in the margin. She touched it once more. "The old ones called it," she twisted her bottom lip pulling on it with her teeth, but she couldn't hold the words any longer, "The Telling."
The word landed in the room like a stone in a still pool. And the pool answered.
Honey felt it in her spine a half-breath before she heard it.
The pressure, the low hum she had felt on the porch now coming out of the air itself.
Lady Grey went first, a small betrayed breath and then a helpless flood, "Hildegard Voss eats pastries over the sink at two in the morning and tells her sister she has been eating healthier, she has been eating healthier," and Lady Grey clapped a paw over her own mouth in horror.
The calico in the wood basket sat up, already apologizing with her eyes, and spilled her witch's stolen fertilizer. The Persian bayed.
In the dining room, the Copy Reveal Device above the sideboard began to chime. Then it broke into a chorus: witches and warlocks worldwide pushing through the glass.
Edgar rose and stared at the mirrored device. "We're getting dozens of calls from witches everywhere."