Blackfoot Read online

  Blackfoot hissed again, his ears back. You didn’t say anything about a cat last night.

  “You were too busy being sarcastic.”

  “Still talking to the cat, I see,” said Peter’s voice. He must have been right behind her, because he leapt from the huge outer stones as Annabel turned her head.

  “There’s more of them,” she said, ignoring the remark.

  “I noticed,” said Peter. “Keep them away from my tickerboxes.”

  “They’re not mine!” Annabel protested. “I can’t stop them from doing whatever they want to do!”

  Peter gave the half-shrug that conceded a point. “Oh well, I’ll think of something.”

  “Did you bring it?”

  “Of course I did. Here: it’s proper quality stock.”

  Annabel caught the carelessly tossed book with reverent fingers and caressed the blank pages. “It’s perfect! Tell your mother I’ll send her a portrait for payment just as soon as I can make the ink and find another pen.”

  “I’m not sitting still for a portrait,” said Peter ungratefully. “She’s got piles of paper and books at home, what else could she do with them but give ’em away?”

  “Well, I think it’s lovely to have a paper merchant for a stepfather,” Annabel said enviously. “All that wonderful paper, and ink you don’t have to mix! I’d never stop drawing.”

  “You never stop drawing anyway. What are you meant to be doing today?”

  “Nothing. Grenna said I was getting in her way.”

  “You might as well come to lunch, then,” said Peter, shrugging off his coat. His shirtsleeves were already stained with greasy brown marks and there were spots of the same on his suspenders.

  “Thanks,” Annabel said, not at all perturbed by the backhanded invitation. Grenna had her on a diet of bread and water, claiming that Annabel was eating her out of house and home. Peter’s Mother, on the other hand, was free with cheese, apples, and pastries, and was round enough not to care if Annabel was more than a little bit round, too.

  Annabel settled herself on a convenient slab of stone with her new book and searched for the nub of pencil that was always tucked away in her front pinafore pocket. She preferred drawing with pen and ink, but when neither were to be had, her tiny pencil was nearly as good. It had the added advantage of not leaving her face and hands ink-stained at the end of the day. It also had the advantage of a tiny eraser at the other end, a luxury to which Annabel didn’t otherwise have access.

  She amused herself with sketching different angles of Peter’s face, content to sit cross-legged on her stone while he amused himself with his tickerboxes. She didn’t understand them, anyway.

  You don’t try to understand them, said Blackfoot. He was sitting on her shoulder, his whiskers tickling her ear. He always liked to watch her draw. You like to think you’re stupid.

  “I am,” said Annabel equably, shading the cracks between flagstones.

  “You are what?” Peter demanded, shooting her a sharp look. “You know, if you keep talking to yourself you’ll soon be as mad as a pair of wet gnau in a hole.”

  “I was talking to Blackfoot.”

  “Got a lot to say this morning, hasn’t he?”

  “He’s always got a lot to say,” said Annabel, with a private smile for Blackfoot. He hissed, but not at her: over Peter’s shoulder, three more cats were springing lightly into the ruins. “Did you figure out what your tickerbox was up to?”

  “Oh, that’s actually very interesting!” said Peter, immediately losing interest in Blackfoot. Blackfoot made a rude noise somewhere around Annabel’s ear, though she wasn’t sure if it was aloud or not. “It was cannibalising the others, just like I thought, and it was building itself a secondary engine.”

  “Oh. What for?”

  “The main engine was getting overheated with the speed of the rotor shaft–”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Speed and movement cause heat– don’t do your cow eyes at me, Ann! The simple explanation is that the tickerbox was getting too hot, so it made itself a cooling engine with the rotor shaft and a few blades from another tickerbox.”

  “Should it be able to do that?”

  “Of course not. It’s not magic, it’s clockwork. It can’t think.”

  Piffle, said Blackfoot. He may think it’s just clockwork, but he’s got so much magic dripping off him that he couldn’t stop it influencing the clockwork if he tried. Not to mention the enhancement field– you’re not listening to me, are you, Nan?

  “Blackfoot says you’re wrong,” said Annabel, applying herself to a profile view of Peter.

  “If the cat thinks it can do better, it’s welcome to try.”

  Annabel drew in the annoyed crinkle in his brow.

  You said one of the cats was at the house last night, Blackfoot said to her. What was Grenna doing?

  “Don’t know. Something big, though.”

  How was the spell performed? Was it laid out, item-based, or free-form?

  “She laid out the spell,” said Annabel, sketching another view of Peter with one of his brows up and his head cocked to hear better, his eyes still stubbornly on his tickerbox. “But the laying out looked like it was for item-based spells, only instead of items in the circles it was me and the cat.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Peter, plucking at a wire strung tightly through his tickerbox. “The spell wouldn’t work. It’s meant to flow from the ignition point and through each of the components to its conclusion. You’re not a spell or an item. The flow would stop at you.”

  You should have told me this last night, said Blackfoot.

  “What’s the cat saying now?”

  “He’s saying I should have told him this last night,” said Annabel. The odd quality to Blackfoot’s voice was setting off uneasy flutterings in her stomach. It almost sounded as though he was afraid. “Wait, I thought you didn’t believe Blackfoot speaks to me.”

  “I don’t,” said Peter, hunching his shoulders over the tickerbox again. “I just find your psychosis interesting: you’re having conversations with yourself. Why would you have told the cat about the spell last night?”

  Annabel shrugged one plump shoulder. “Don’t know.”

  Things are happening far more quickly than I expected, said Blackfoot, as though to himself. I should have taken you away the minute the first one turned up.

  “Taken me away?” said Annabel blankly. “Why should I go away? And do you mean the cats?”

  They’re not cats.

  “What’s it saying?”

  “He says the cats aren’t cats.”

  Peter tutted. “Wrong again.”

  “Don’t be smug,” Annabel told him.

  He’s right and wrong, Blackfoot said broodingly. They are cats. They just weren’t always cats. And some of them are less cat than others.

  Annabel thought about it, and came to a surprising conclusion. “Like you, you mean?”

  Blackfoot bit her ear. That’s not important. What’s important is that you don’t go back to Grenna tonight.

  “I have to go home tonight!” protested Annabel. “Where would I sleep? What would I eat?”

  Peter gave a rude snort of laughter, and she threw a pebble at him.

  “Blackfoot says I shouldn’t go home tonight.”

  “Oh, if that’s all, you can use one of our guest rooms. Mum likes having you around: says you’re restful company and you eat everything put in front of you.”

  “I bet you said something rude when she said that,” said Annabel.

  “And she clouted me for it,” said Peter cheerfully. “All right, if your psychosis is telling you that something’s up, you’ll probably be safer at our place: Grenna gets up to some nasty bits of magic.”

  “Well, we’d better go soon,” Annabel said, with a doubtful look at the positive stream of cats that had begun to flow into the ruins. “We’ll be swimming in cats if we stay here much longer.”

  2
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  Annabel woke in the wee hours of the morning, grumbling and unsettled in her borrowed bed, to find a cold patch on her pillow where Blackfoot should be. She sat up groggily, pawing hair out of her eyes, and automatically patted the mattress around her. “Blackfoot?”

  There was not a whisper of movement to the shadows. A sharp prickle of unease woke her properly, bringing with it the realisation that for the first time in many years, she couldn’t hear Blackfoot anywhere at the edges of her mind. Annabel kicked her legs free of the sheets and slid down onto the rug beside her bed. She knew Blackfoot wasn’t in the room but she lit a candle and searched anyway, working her way across the room until she was sitting on the low window-seat, hot and bothered and confused. He’d never spent a night away from her pillow since she’d met him.

  Annabel frowned into the bruising of purple and cobalt morning and picked at fragments of wood on the windowsill. It wasn’t until she’d absentmindedly picked three or four curls of wood from the sill that she realised they were shavings that had been carved out from two sets of three deep gouges. They were evenly spaced, surprisingly deep, and only ended when the sill did, as if something (or some cat, thought Annabel, with a sinking feeling) had been dragged through the window against its will. What had happened while she slept?

  Something—some magic—had been performed that dragged Blackfoot away and out of the window.

  Grenna, thought Annabel, hot and sticky with fear. Once, she’d stayed out to avoid one of Grenna’s bigger pieces of magic. Grenna had sent out a Compel spell that weighed on her slowly through the night and at last woke her, forcing her home from her snug little hole in the castle ruins. Annabel gave a little gulping sniffle and realised that she was leaning precariously far out the window– almost as if her body was trying to climb out without her knowledge.

  “No!” squeaked Annabel, scrabbling away from the window seat. “No! Not again!”

  But her feet were already edging for the window again, slow and reluctant and inevitable. She dashed for the door, pulling at the Compel spell just long enough to tumble into the hall, which mercifully ran in the right direction and didn’t make it achingly difficult to walk.

  Moonlight and shadow played on the walls through arched windows as Annabel hurried down the hall. Peter’s room was just two doors down, convenient and unlocked, and didn’t pull her far enough out of the prescribed route to drag at her. Annabel hurried across the room and bounced onto his bed, prompting a groan and a few choice words that would have made his mother box his ears if she’d heard them.

  “Get off, Ann! Why are you so fat? And what are you doing on my bed?”

  “Grenna’s got a Compel on me,” said Annabel, all in one breath. “And Blackfoot got dragged through the window and I think that was her, too.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Can you get rid of the Compel?”

  Peter sat up, fumbling for his glasses, and set a softly glowing ball of light spinning above the bed with a snap of his fingers. Annabel waited, fidgeting with impatience and worry as he studied her, and with one foot trying to make its way back down to the floor, at last said: “Well? Can you?”

  “Sorry, Ann. She’s got a bit of you that she’s using– hair or something. You’ll have to go back. Want me to come with you?”

  Yes, said Annabel’s cowardly thoughts. Out loud, she said: “No. Grenna probably just wants me to go out and get some things for her. Once I get back the spell will stop pulling at me, anyway. Maybe I’ll sleep in the garden instead.”

  Despite that, Annabel was even more nervous once she was out in the cool air. There was a distinct feeling of menace to the early morning, and a crawling sensation between the blades of her shoulders that tried to convince her that someone was watching her. Worse, she still couldn’t pick up even the faintest hint of Blackfoot at the edges of her mind. Was he dead? Annabel’s feet began to move faster of their own accord, momentarily freeing her from the pull of the Compel spell, and she felt the tightness of fear stretching the skin of her face taut against the chill of the morning.

  By the time she reached the lane to Grenna’s cottage, Annabel was sweating despite the cold morning air. She stopped in the rutted lane, her breath short and burning in the back of her throat, and stared.

  There were cats everywhere. They lined the fence, straggling along it in clumps and couples; they perched on the roof of the cottage, peering at Annabel as she faltered on the path; and more disconcerting still, they stared at her from the windows of Grenna’s workroom. Annabel huffed out a rather shaky breath and came to the conclusion that if all the cats were here, then Blackfoot must be too, even if she still couldn’t hear him. That made her feel better, and she was able to push through the gate and into the house without more than a brief thought of running back up the path to Peter’s house and leaving Blackfoot to his fate. All the same, she made sure she eased the door open and shut without a sound, and when she went to her bedroom she changed into her flannels. Annabel might not know exactly why Grenna made her wear flannels for magic, but since Grenna’s magic was plant-based and it stood to reason that cotton clothes could muddle her magic. It occurred to Annabel that the witch might find it easier to find her if she wore her cotton everyday clothes.

  When she was flanneled and hot and uncomfortable, Annabel slipped back out of her room and went quietly in search of Grenna and the grey cat. She had a feeling that whatever Grenna was up to, and whatever had drawn Blackfoot and all the other cats here to the cottage, that grey cat would be in on it.

  She found them in Grenna’s work-room, the door open to allow a sprawling spell of chalk and braided cotton rope to trail away into the garden. From that door also issued Grenna’s voice, dry and cracked, and higher than usual. Who was she speaking with? More importantly, why was her voice so different? It gave Annabel the nasty feeling that Grenna was actually frightened of whomever it was she was talking to. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, clutching at the cuffs of her flannels without the courage to take the last few steps that would bring her level with the door of Grenna’s workroom.

  Then, right at the outer edge of her mind, there was the faintest tickle of Blackfoot’s voice.

  Nan?

  A warmth of reassurance blossomed in Annabel’s chest. Blackfoot was here! She nudged forward, trying to avoid the worst of the creaky floorboards, and followed the trailing spell out towards the back garden. She held her breath as she passed the open work-room door, and through the gap, she saw a brief flash of reflection in the window opposite the door. Grenna, her stick-like legs protruding below the hem of a flannel night-gown, was scratching nervously at her arms while the pale shadow of a large grey cat stalked around her.

  Annabel darted for the door before either of them could notice her, hurrying out into the back yard with unease crawling down the back of her neck. Was it the same cat Grenna had put in the spell with her? More importantly, why should Grenna be scared of a cat? Annabel shivered and scrunched her bare toes in the grass. Nothing made sense, and she was beginning to be even more frightened than Grenna’s magic usually made her feel. The back yard wasn’t much better than the front yard or the house, either: it was all cats out there as well. The only difference was that these ones were caught in parts of the spell, each sitting in a coil of pale rope that curled out from the main track of the spell. And as Annabel dithered, looking for Blackfoot in the darkness and confusion of cats, another cat slipped through the doorway and stalked across the grass to sit in one of the empty coils. She didn’t bother to try and count the coils, but she had the feeling they would match pretty closely with the number of cats.

  “A parliament-full,” Annabel murmured, remembering what Peter had said when the cats first arrived. Where was Blackfoot? Was he caught in one of the coils as well? She moved further into the garden, skirting carefully around the curls of the spell, her eyes searching the shadows and scrubby bushes for any sign of Blackfoot’s inky black form.

 
; “They’ll put him in the middle of it,” she said aloud, hunching her shoulders against the cold of morning and the even more pervasive cold of fear. Blackfoot was a special cat– was probably, if she thought about it, actually more than a cat. Grenna and the other cat that was more than a cat knew it, and they would have put him in one of the more important parts of the spell. Annabel couldn’t do magic, but she had come to know a little bit about it in her years with Grenna. Like Annabel herself, Blackfoot was an important commodity, and his placement in the spell would be central. She turned away from the outer, curling edges that were swiftly filling with cats, and carefully tiptoed through the blank spots in the spell, edging toward the middle of the spell piece that sprawled in the back garden.

  Annabel found him in the centre of the main whorl of pale rope, just behind the well, stalking to and fro with his tail lashing.

  Nan! There was a mixture of relief and irritation in Blackfoot’s voice. How did you get away from her Compel?

  “Didn’t,” said Annabel, shivering with relief. She crouched beside him, making very certain that she was still in a blank part of the spell and that her flannels didn’t go over that pale rope by so much as a single fold. “She lays them for the house, not for her. I only had to come back here. What’s happening?”

  This time the irritation was most prominent. Why didn’t you tell me it’s your birthday today?

  “It isn’t. Is it? I don’t know. Grenna never told me when it was. What has my birthday got to do with anything, anyway?”

  Nothing, if it wasn’t that it’s this one, or that he’s here, or that we’re all here together. We have to get you to the castle.

  “That’s the first place she’ll look for me,” Annabel said, tugging nervously at her flannel sleeves. “She knows I go there with Peter.”

  That doesn’t matter.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” said Annabel crossly. She had forced herself to come out here and rescue Blackfoot despite her fear, and he was repaying that loyalty with impatience and reticence. “If you’re going to be all morbid and mysterious, I’m going to leave you here.”