Reserved for the Cat

She frowned a little at that, because she rather thought she would not need the cat to put words in her mouth, but let it pass. So for right now, she should simply lie back and be pampered. That would not be bad. She thought fleetingly of her belongings at the boarding house, inventoried them in her mind, and reluctantly, decided they were not worth going back for. Though poor Madame would wonder what had become of her . . .

I will get your keepsakes, the cat promised. She nodded. That would do. There wasn’t a great deal she wanted; a little left of her mother’s “jewelry” consisting of a jet rosary, a jet bangle, and a silver locket, a few letters and her mother’s marriage license.

I can get those. Leave it to me. You will have to find a place to hide them, though.

That was easy enough; it would be even easier once she had a private place of her own, but for now, thanks to any number of overheard conversations and the plots of any number of sensational operas and plays. “I will ask for a Bible and paste the papers inside the cover,” she said. The jewelry would probably escape notice. The marriage license, however, would give her age away. Fortunately dancers tended to look ageless so long as they did not put on weight. She should be able to pass, easily, for being ten years older than her real age. Old enough to be the real Russian dancer.

“How did you manage to talk to these men?” she asked, finally. “I thought you could only talk to me.”

The cat grew tense. That . . . is an excellent question.

She waited, but the cat remained silent. “Well you ought to answer it then,” she said impatiently.

I am thinking. The cat washed an ear with one paw. You believe in magic by now. Yes?

It was her turn to hesitate. Did she? Real magic, not stage magic? The thing of fairy tales? How else could she be talking to a cat?

“I . . . suppose . . .”

The two gentlemen that “rescued” you are magicians. That is why I can talk to them too. There is no need to go into much detail, but talking cats are the least of the astonishing things in their world.

She stared at the cat, who began washing his other ear. “But I’m not a magician!” she protested. “Am I?”

True, you are not. But your father was. He . . . charged me with taking care of you, you know. And some things, like being able to talk to magical creatures, come with the blood.

“But I never did before!” For some reason, she felt indignant, as if this sudden ability was an imposition. “Why is it that I have not been talking to magical creatures all my life?”

They would have had to be willing to show themselves and talk to you first. Could a cat smirk? It sounded like he was smirking. They don’t display themselves before just anyone. If you are a magician, you can coax or coerce them, but if all the power you have is to speak to them, they are likely to stay in hiding. Except for the ones you would not have wanted to see. Those, I kept away.

That gave her pause, and she bit back the irritated retort about snobbery she had been about to deliver. “There are bad creatures?”

So bad, you would have spent all your life in terror.

In that case she certainly did not want to see them. “So these men are magicians?” She thought about that. The cat certainly had known, well in advance, what he was doing. He’d gotten her onto the ferry, across the Channel,. And across England to this specific town. “Did you plan for this all along?”