Мэгги Стифватер - Lament

I scrubbed my hands with the potent lavender soap and rinsed them under a blast of water.

Something firm and heavy rolled between my fingers, and before I realized what it was, I saw Granna's ring quickly circle the drain and disappear.

I swore and stuck my finger into the drain, but it was an old sink with one of those gaping drains that was just waiting for personal effects to fall in. My ring was unreachable, somewhere in the plumbing. And of course Granna was the one picking me up today. She'd go through the roof.

Friggin' ace.

I returned to the lobby, where I found Maryann and worked out the details of when to play during the wedding. And of course, like always, since I'd already puked, I did fine and I found myself a half hour later with a bright shiny check for $175.

Making small talk with people I don't know and will never meet again is not my forte, so I escaped outside and dialed Granna's number. "Granna? Mom said you'd pick me up.

"You're done already?" "Yes."

"You have a better hourly rate than my doctor." I heard some kind of thump from Granna's end of the phone.

"I guess I do. What are you doing?"

"I'm, uh--" another thump, "painting a piece of furniture that doesn't want to be painted. But it'll wait. It'll be a half hour before I get there, though."

I squinted at the church. It was hot here on the sidewalk, but it probably wouldn't be too bad if I waited under the birch trees nearby. Of course, I could've waited inside in the air-conditioning, but that would've meant small talk. I told Granna that was fine, and headed over to the trees.

Sure enough, it wasn't terrible. It was hot, but I could stand it. I rested my harp case against one of the trees and walked a little further into them. They had been planted in straight lines, about fifty of them, all beautiful and straight, with canopies so lush that I couldn't tell where one tree ended and another one began. The grass underneath was beautiful and green as well; it looked like something out of a dream.

I couldn't sit, or I'd get grass stains on my old-woman sheath. So I stood next to one of the birches, looking at the way the bark peeled off and left smooth tree-skin beneath it. Beautiful, but smelly.

I sniffed. What was that smell, anyway? It was sweet, fruity--rotten. Like clover cut and left to molder. And it wasn't the trees.

Ten feet away from me, I saw movement blink in and out of focus, like a frame skipped in a movie reel. The rotten smell clipped in and out with it. Black. Big.

I stepped backward, putting a tree between me and whatever it was. I wasn't dumb enough to think it was my imagination. Not anymore. Blink. The movement flickered again. This time it was barely five feet away from me-- flashing a negative image on my eyes, as if I had looked into the sun and then closed my eyes. The after-image was of a great, dark animal, taller than my waist, neck pulled back and long, long body crouched. Getting ready to-The attack came from behind, and the force of it took my breath away. My shoulder hit the ground, but I didn't feel any pain. All I could think about was the crushing weight on my chest, and I wondered if I would ever find my breath again. And that stench. That rotten smell, as if I were already dead and decomposing. A massive feline head, too long and narrow to be a proper wildcat, surged toward my neck.

I threw an arm up; anything to keep those teeth from my neck. The cat's teeth sank into my forearm with no resistance at all. It tossed me up in front of it. I gasped, but there was no one to hear. It was as if this wood were a thousand miles away from the church and the wedding goers.

My arm burned in the cat's grip. I used my other hand to jab my fingers into its eye, and with a snarl, it released me. Blink. Flash. It was behind me, paws and claws throwing me to the ground again. Blink. On the other side of me, worrying me like a mouse. Blink. Seizing my arm again.

Fire burned under the massive teeth. I scraped, pummeled, clawed at the cat, but I had no effect on the rock-hard muscles beneath its skin. I was being toyed with, and it was going to kill me.

Because I'd washed Granna's ring down the drain. I was going to die because I was a frigging idiot.

The cat snarled suddenly, spinning, dragging me with it by my arm. I saw a flash of someone else, a person. The person seized my arm as well, gripping the cat's head with his other arm.

"Don't," I gasped. "Not a normal cat--watch out--" "I am watching out," snapped Luke.

Oh God. What was he doing here?

The cat was tearing my arm one way, Luke was tearing it another way, and I saw claws and red.

With another raspy snarl, the cat dropped me and sprang toward Luke, probably twice his weight and taller when on its back legs. This was going to be awful.

But in the time it took me to stumble to my feet, Luke had seized the cat by the side of its face and the skin of its neck. As the cat raked a massive paw toward his face, Luke pulled a dagger out of nowhere and slid the blade into the bottom of the cat's jaw. Just like that. His expression was the same vague one he'd wore when he spoke to Eleanor--just as calm--and the motion he used was effortless, practiced, efficient.

The cat fell to the ground by his feet, somehow even larger when dead. I stared at it, the limp angle of its neck, the dagger stuck into the bottom of its head. I watched Luke pull the dagger free, wipe it carefully on the grass, and replace it in a sheath under his pants leg. I was frozen in place by the memory of his face as he killed it.

Luke looked at me, questioning. It was the look you'd give a stray dog, holding your hand out, finding out if it would let you approach. I suddenly remembered the question he'd asked earlier: "Do I scare you?"

I swallowed and found out I had a voice after all. "I washed Granna's ring down the drain."

It was all the permission Luke needed. He was by my side in a second, taking my trembling arm in his hands, wiping the blood away with his own T-shirt, examining the four puncture wounds.

His fingers touched the bruises blossoming on my shoulder and the scrapes on my neck, and then he crushed me to him. He held me so tightly it hurt, and I felt his breath ragged on my skin.

Then he released me. "Where's the key? Where's the ring?

I was breathless, though probably for the wrong reasons. "I told you, I accidentally washed the ring down the drain."

"And the key?"

I looked down. "Mom told me to take it off."

"Your mother's an idiot!" Luke circled me, looking for more damage. I noticed the claw marks in his jeans, the red that stained his calf.

"You're bleeding."

Luke stopped in front of me. "So are you. You could've-- it could've been a lot worse."

I remembered abruptly. "Granna's supposed to pick me up. What am I going to tell her?"

"The truth."

That was almost laughable. "She'll never believe me. She's pretty out there, but not homicidalwild-cat out there."

"She'll believe you." Luke pointed to the harp case. "Is the key in there?"

I nodded and watched him retrieve it. I stood quietly as he clasped it around my neck once more, the scrape on my neck stinging slightly as the chain moved over it. He kissed the skin next to where the key hung, sending a chill through my body, and then hugged me again. He spoke into my ear, for me alone. "Please be careful."

That sounded like a goodbye, but I didn't want to be left alone to wait for Granna. "Are you leaving?"

"I'll watch you. But she wouldn't like to see me with you."

I let him get a few steps away, and then I asked the burning question. "Why were you here?"

Luke shrugged. "You wanted saving, didn't you?"

NINE

 One of Granna's more positive traits is also one of the most annoying: it's damn near impossible to get her panicked or flustered. Like Mom, she has her extreme emotions packed away in a little box, only to be taken out for special occasions. Seeing me with minor signs of supernatural mauling didn't qualify as a special occasion.

Instead, she just helped me get my harp in the car, got a paint-spattered towel from the back seat, and spread it on the passenger seat so I wouldn't get blood on her fuzzy gray seats that smelled of orange solvents. She put the car in gear without a word.

I poked at my wounds; I was a bit proud of them.

They were the best sort of injury--they looked awful but really didn't hurt too much. Their gore was being wasted on Granna, whose pity was in the same box as the rest of her emotions. "Do you have some paper towels or something?"

As she pulled out of the lot, I glanced discreetly in the rearview mirror, hoping for a glimpse of Luke, but there was only an audience of birches visible. I wondered what would happen to the giant cat's body.

"Alcohol wipes in the glove box," Granna said. "We'll clean it up better at my house."

"Your house?" I paused, hand in glove box.

Granna really looked at me for the first time, and I blinked, seeing so much of Mom's eyes in hers, hidden with crow's feet. "Do you really want to explain that dress to your mother? I have some of your clothes at my house still."

So maybe Luke was right. She would believe the truth.

"What was it?" Her voice was calm and even; she might as well have been asking, "How did it go?" or "Did you have a nice day today?"

I sighed, a little amazed that I was just going to tell the truth, and then I described the entire attack--from the loss of the ring to Luke's rescue. I took great pleasure in telling that last bit, actually, after the way she'd treated him in the driveway. I waited for her to distill it into some tidy tale devoid of passion and danger, but she said nothing for a moment. The car was silent, except for its tires whirring on a road dappled with the shapes of summer leaves.

Finally her mouth quirked, and she said, "We should talk about this once you've gotten cleaned up."

I wasn't sure why the discussion would be any different once I was wearing different clothing, but Granna was as dangerous to poke as Mom. We didn't speak again until we'd gotten to her old, L-shaped farmhouse in the middle of a cornfield.

"The clothes are upstairs in the guest room. In the closet on the shelf. I'll get you some tea." She headed for the kitchen and I headed up the stairs.

The farmhouse was always drafty, no matter how hot it was outside, and the guest room was the worst. Granna had covered the creaking, splintery wood floor with a colorful woven rag rug and hung bright abstract paintings on the pale-as-ice walls, but it always felt cold to me. Cold like nasty chill-in-your-head cold, not grab-me-a-sweater cold. Dad had told me that this had been Delia's old room, and that as a child she'd nearly died here. Even without the dying part, just knowing that this room had helped form Delia's charming personality made me hate it.

I grabbed my clothing from the closet--so that's where my favorite baggy cords had gone--and changed in the bathroom. As I rinsed the dried blood from my skin, I remembered the feeling of Luke crushing me to him and the smell of him pressed against my nostrils. A fist squeezed my stomach at the memory... like nerves, but better.

Where is he now?