Date: 2011-09-14T05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Magic; Short stories; alma alexander; whine; Fantasy; Good and evil; cats
Description: Humans domesticated a lot of animals from the wild, bringing the beasts into the house and the barn to serve us. We chose them. But cats ... were different. They chose us. They came to live at our side, by our hearth, of their own free will, in exchange for being fed and adored, and we've been at their regal beck and call ever since. What they bring to us are purrs, magic, mystery, stories, and secrets. Look into any cat's eyes and you will know that the cat knows far more than it's telling. In the second collection of stories in the Alexander Triads, you get a glimpse at what lies behind the

Cat Tales

Alma Alexander

Copyright Alma Alexander 2011

ISBN 978-1-4524-2131-5

Published by Kos Books at Smashwords

Kos Books

A & D Deckert

343 Sudden Valley Drive

Bellingham WA 98229

Publication Record

Homemaker, Renard's Menagerie, July 2007

Hourglass, Jim Baen's Universe, Feb. 2008

Safe House, published for the first time here

Smashwords License Statement

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Homemaker

Hourglass

Safe House

Reviewers Say

Other Books by Alma Alexander

Contact Alma Alexander

About the Author

Foreword

At a recent social gathering, someone left a knot of people talking about a random topic, was away for a short time and by the time that he returned the subject had already changed … to cats.

"What is it about writers," he asked, apparently genuinely puzzled. "You leave them alone for five minutes and they start talking about cats?

I don't know about writers, but cats… have had a certain kind of mystique to them ever since the first one deigned to permit itself to become "domesticated" and call a human hearth its home. They are the perfect subject for so many things – not least being writerly conversations at literary parties. They are walking metaphors, they were once worshipped as gods and they have never forgotten it, and even the most klutzy or stupid cat manages to give an impression of a certain kind of focus and concentration and insouciance, as if they all know precisely where they are going (if not exactly how they plan on getting there). Cats are just walking stories, waiting to be told. And because they are so mysterious, so self-possessed, often remote (as though they lived on a different world, as perhaps they do), the stories that lie hidden behind those calm eyes of emerald green or warm amber are always mysteries. A cat does not kiss and tell. But they DO seem to tease, and flirt, and invite you to find things out… if you can.

Cats have (naturally) played a certain part in several of my own stories. I present three of them for your enjoyment.

Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 2: Cat Tales.

Alma Alexander

Summer 2011

'Homemaker' was one of those oddball stories, written because I heard it call me but then left behind in a drawer (or, in this instance, a hard drive) because there was no obvious thing to do with it. The story, told from the point of view of a cat, was strongly anthropomorphic, and it had an oddly 'young' feel as though I had been aiming it at children – which I hadn't, which I rarely do. When a magazine by the name of Renard's Menagerie turned up, some years after this story was written, and asked for stories just like this one – stories that were animal-centric and even stories written from the animal's POV – the market seemed tailor-made for this particular tale. I sent it in, and they published it in July 2007.

Chapter 1:

Homemaker

I'd been keeping an eye on Janine Murray for some time from the safety of the bushes behind her home. She was the new kid in town, skinny and shy, with a pair of John Lennon spectacles always half-falling off the end of her nose. I'll admit she wasn't exactly promising material. This one would be a pushover to win. But to make something of her… to Make this family… that would be a different story. However, I always did thrive on challenges.

"Mom," Janine called the first time I allowed her to see me, shivering on the back porch, "there's a black cat…"

But I was gone. In the first few encounters, it was important to keep the mystery going.

The next time, I stayed a little bit longer. After that, I almost allowed her to touch me. And then I came to within a whisker's breadth of the saucer of milk she was offering before diving back into the bushes as if something had startled me. The more elusive I was, the more determined she became to "tame" me.

"We don't need a cat," I heard her father snap one evening. He was always banished to the back porch for his evening smoke, by himself, and it was a good time for either Janine or her mother to get him alone and ask him for things. That comment was good news, actually – Janine had obviously asked if they could keep me – but the tone of her father's voice was not exactly encouraging. But I would give it time. I could see that they needed me.

The first time I allowed Janine to see me actually lapping at her offering on the porch I waited long enough to know that she had gone to get her mother and that they were both watching me eat from the back door. I sat back and started cleaning my whiskers, deliberately ignoring them.

"Isn't she pretty?" said Janine. There – I knew the girl had taste.

"She's a moggy, darling – and she's so painfully thin – and how do you know it's a she anyway?"

"I know."

"Oh, dear. You know that would mean a trip to the vet. If she stayed."

I looked up at that, mid-motion, and then flung myself off the porch into the bushes.

"She's probably somebody's," said Janine's mother. "She seemed to understand the word 'vet' perfectly well, anyhow."

It was weeks before I came close enough to explore the house. It had had a cat door before they moved in, but they had no pets so they had locked it shut. After a while, though, I realized that Janine had stealthily unlocked the cat door and was leaving the house accessible. The first time I came in it was well after midnight, and they were all fast asleep. It was a pleasant house, and it had all the right things. I tried out one of the cushions on the sofa – it was just right. I had an excellent nap before I made my escape in the morning before the rest of them stirred. But I made sure that they would know I'd been there.

The next time I snuck in, there was a saucer of milk by the fridge. I could feel my whiskers twitching. They were doing well.

I allowed myself to fall asleep on one of the wicker chairs on the back porch one or two days later, knowing they would find me there. When I felt Janine's thin hand on my back, I kept my eyes closed and started purring.

"Listen," Janine said happily, "she enjoys it."

"Your Dad doesn't like the idea, Jan," said her mother. "Now go inside, you have homework."

"Michelle thinks we're lucky," Janine said. "Black cats are supposed to be lucky…"

"Funny, that," said her mother. "I always heard just the opposite. Homework."

Michelle. Hmmmm. It was working already.

When I let their next door neighbors catch me stalking the cage with their budgies, they had already seen me on Janine's back porch often enough to assume I belonged there. So it was to that house that they directed a complaint.

"She's not our cat," Janine's mother said apologetically. "But come in. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

The neighbor from the other side subsequently popped over to tell Janine's mother what a fusspot the woman with the budgies was. They too shared a cup of coffee. Then Janine's family was invited there to dinner one night. Michelle came to hang out with Janine, and soon there were other girls there, too. I allowed myself to be seen and stroked. They all thought I was beautiful, and I was gracious enough to accept the compliment – as well as the small can of tuna which they sneaked off the pantry shelf to give me.

I started sleeping in the house. The family didn't seem to mind. A beanbag appeared beside the TV one night, and it was just the right size for a cat. I appreciated their thoughtfulness. But it was still best when I climbed into Janine's Dad's lap when he least expected it and sat there kneading his legs. He always protested, but I could tell that he enjoyed the attention, especially when he knew that Janine was jealous – she'd sort of discovered me and she rather thought of me as "her" cat. But her dad smelled nice – a sort of musty male smell with a whiff of leather from the patches on the elbows of his sweater, and tobacco. He had a moustache – whiskers almost as respectable as mine. If he'd been a cat he would have made a very good mouser.

The family seemed nicely established now. The left neighbor got Janine's mother and father involved in a bridge club. The right neighbor said that Janine could come over and play on the Internet on his computer if she liked. The neighbor two houses down the road asked if Janine could baby-sit. Michelle practically lived at Janine's place. And in the middle of it all – as there should be – there was a contented cat drowsing before the TV. The center of the circle, the heart of the house.

It was probably time for me to go. I had done all I could here. Janine couldn't help being skinny and shy – but she had had her hair streaked gold and she wore a different pair of glasses which did far more for her than the ones she had been saddled with when I had first seen her. I knew that she was getting second looks in the street.

And there was another kid down the road – a boy who sat alone for hours on the steps leading up to his front door, a boy who missed the dog his family had left on another continent. Another challenge. Another day. Another family that needed me.

All the same – I stood in the road for ages when I walked away from Janine's house. It was getting harder and harder to leave every time. I Make a good home – and when I get it just about perfect, that's when I'm called to leave, and start again. Perhaps there will come a time when I will be allowed to Make a home for myself – and stay sleeping by someone's fireside during the long cold winter nights. But until then, I have work to do.

I am a Homemaker.

'Hourglass' was actually the third story I wrote about the character named Aris – the gleeman, or singer, or travelling troubadour (call him what you wish) whose defining characteristic was that he had the same relationship to magic as those poor people who are allergic to cats have with every cat in creation – the cats know their presence is not wanted and this particular fact makes them perversely determined to ingratiate themselves with precisely the people who cannot endure their presence.

Magic pursues Aris relentlessly, never quite letting him out of its sights – and all he has ever wanted was a perfectly decent and ordinary life. But cats and magic – what can I say. They have minds of their own. This story was published in Jim Baen's Universe, in February 2008 – submitted, accepted, and published all within the space of a handful of weeks, which is unprecedented for a sale like this. But they liked it. And their version (you can look it up it's still online as far as I know) had a perfectly wonderful illustration of the cat at the heart of this tale…

-----0-----

Chapter 2:

Hourglass

I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

Prove it…

Aris cursed the cozy inn whose potent ale had made him utter that boast and then have his bluff called. Wyn and Allyc, the two fellow gleemen who had provoked his words, were at this moment no doubt ensconced beside another warm fire in some congenial hostelry, nursing mulled wine and laughing quietly over Aris's stubborn insistence to honor the rash boast he had made.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit, come back with wealth, and he could return and spend many a satisfying evening telling avid listeners across the length and breadth of all the Kingdoms how one gleeman had dared to defy almost impossible odds. He would get rich in Ghulkit, and then get rich all over again telling stories of Ghulkit in the tame lands afterwards. No other gleeman could compete….

Aris allowed himself a grim smile as he struggled through the snowdrifts on the lonely back road. Spend a winter in Ghulkit. He should have known there was a good reason why people did not do this. He had already found out – the hard way – that if he was not totally focused on the road he was travelling he could find himself mired in innocent-looking snow banks which were hip-deep or worse. At least once he nearly lost his harp in the drifts; and even without that, he could almost physically feel the effects of the killing cold on the fragile instrument. Whenever he gained some sort of sanctuary and obtained a spot to ply his trade, he would have to thaw out the harp for half an hour or more before he could usefully employ the instrument to assist him in the simplest of songs.

This day was worse than many a day before it, because often the cold would be ameliorated by a thin and watery kind of sunlight which would even manage, weak and etiolated as it was, to render the muffled, frost-sparkling landscape beautiful in Aris's sight. That, at least, had been a sort of gift – he had composed several songs about the beauty of the snow country – but after a while even that had not been enough to make him forget how cold he was. And this morning – this morning it had started snowing. By the time he had hit the road it was not just snowing, it was snowing heavily; he should have stayed another day where he was, at the village where he had been given adequate if not lavish hospitality. But he had thought it a flurry. The locals could have told him it was not, had he thought to ask – but he had not asked. The blizzard had grown steadily worse; in the white light Aris lost all track of time and could not have possibly said if the sun was meant to be overhead or setting. He only knew that he had been walking for hours, that he was on the verge of losing all feeling in his feet, that he could see no further in front of him than the length of his outstretched hand, and that he was in real trouble.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit.

If he was not careful, he was in real danger of spending eternity here.

He could have missed the house by the roadside altogether, so camouflaged was it in the snowdrifts; and in his snow-blanked mind Aris had been focused for so long on just putting one foot in front of another that he would have had considerable trouble recognizing even familiar things, let alone something that barely differentiated itself from his frigid environment. But he retained enough wit to pause briefly when he smelled what he thought was smoke; even so, he almost did not see what lay right before him and it was quite probable that he could have shrugged the smoke smell away as a hallucination of his fevered brain and struggled on. But even as he halted, a black hole suddenly yawned in the nearest "snowdrift". It took Aris precious moments to realize that someone had just opened a door.

"Whuh…" he muttered, in a cold-cracked voice, through lips that seemed to have stiffened into icicles.

"You walk to your death, stranger," said another, lighter voice. It sounded very young. "This is not a day for travelling. I have a fire inside. Come."

"Whuhuh… thhhan…thank you," Aris managed to force through chattering teeth.

He allowed himself to be guided through the doorway. When it closed behind him, he found himself in close darkness, and fought a rising panic – but then, a moment later, what appeared to be a heavy curtain was lifted at the far end of the hall and beyond it Aris could see the inviting red glow of a fire. An involuntary sigh escaped him at the sight, and his host chuckled softly at this.

"Come inside," he said. "Let's get you out of those wet clothes."

By the time he was fully in command of his senses, Aris was a little startled to find himself wearing a fur-edged woolen robe, sitting beside a hearth whose sheer size made it look as though it belonged in a king's hall and not some lost and snowbound cottage in the wilds of Ghulkit, and clutching a pewter mug full of some hot drink. It was the mug that made him snap back to himself because the scalding heat from its contents had made him jerk away the palms of his hands which had been wrapped around it. He very nearly spilled the whole mugful into his lap, only saved by a steadying hand on his own.

"Easy," murmured his host. "That is better inside you…"

Aris remembered his manners.

"I think," he said, "you saved my life."

And at that he looked up and finally saw the face of his companion.

Standing beside him was a very young man, almost a boy. His untidy shoulder-length fair hair and two engaging dimples he produced as he smiled, together with the small hands and the narrow child-sized hips, made Aris initially guess his host's age as fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. But then he met the eyes of blue fire that sat in that young, unlined face, and felt his stomach knot. The eyes were ancient beyond measure, all-knowing, all-seeing, old. This was someone of no age at all, or perhaps all the ages of the world; beneath the intensity of those eyes Aris dropped his own, utterly confounded, feeling as though all the sins that he carried in his soul – the pride, the arrogance, the ambition, the selfishness – were open to their scrutiny.

"Who are you?" he asked after a beat of silence.

The other laughed softly.

"You may call me Bek. Now drink that. Slowly."

He raised an eloquent eyebrow when Aris hesitated, and Aris, feeling obscurely shamed, lifted the mug to his lips and drank. The scalding liquid burned its way down his throat, to the extent that tears came to his eyes as he swallowed. He coughed.

"Sorry," said Bek. "It needs to be hot. You were on the verge of snowsleep."

"Snowsleep?" repeated Aris blankly. He suddenly roused. "My harp..! My harp!"

"Rest easy," said Bek, one hand on Aris's shoulder. "It is here. I took the liberty of unwrapping it and wiping it down. It is a fine instrument. You are a gleeman?"

"Yes," Aris said, subsiding, his eyes on the harp he now saw glinting on the far side of the enormous hearth.

"Well, then," said Bek. "Perhaps you could honor me with a tale later. Perhaps even the one of how a solitary gleeman came to be trudging the Ghulkit roads in mid-winter."

"Foolishness," muttered Aris under his breath.

Bek laughed out loud. "Ah, a longer tale than that, I think," he said. "But there is no hurry. First we get you warm. It is certain that you will be going nowhere for a while. It is only getting worse outside."

Aris sipped his drink and stole an apprising glance around the room as he did so. It did not appear to have windows; this nagged at him obscurely, as though it should have occasioned at least one important question to surface in his mind. He could not pin it down, however, and he let go, knowing that the stray thought would return all the faster if not pursued. The room was larger than it first appeared, with the far corners lost in dark shadows. Aside from the firelight, it was lit by candles – groups of them, placed on any flat surface with enough space to bear them. There was a desk in a nook beside the fireplace, overflowing with parchment, ink bottles, quill pens, and a quantity of leather-bound books. It also bore a stuffed owl and an hourglass which looked about to spill the last of its sand into the lower chamber. Further out, there was an armchair which presently served as sleeping quarters for three identical black-and-white cats who were tangled in a knot of paws and whiskers on the cushioned seat. More books lay in piles on the floor beyond that. Whoever the owner of this cottage was he was no humble tiller of land – these books were riches, even had their bindings gleamed with subtle inlays of silver and gold.

Feeling Bek's somewhat sardonic gaze upon him, Aris finally turned back to his host.

"I would," said Bek, his voice hiding a suspicion of a smile, "be happy to answer questions. Within reason."

Aris gestured. "There is a king's ransom in books here," he said, and it was not a question. Quite.

Bek inclined his head. "Some of them," he said, "probably were. I am a collector. Of books, amongst other things. For example…" He rose, and fetched a wooden case from a shelf, opening it up on a hinged edge to reveal rows of meticulously displayed butterflies. "This one," he said conversationally, pointing to a midnight blue specimen with silver flecks on his wings, "I had to travel far to find. Very far. You might say it was worth more than any two of those books."

Aris had gulped down the last of the fiery liquid in the pewter mug, and it dangled from his hand as he examined the butterflies with interest. Bek took the cup from him.

"Good. Another, I think."

"What is it?" Aris, who was feeling quite ridiculously invigorated, asked.

"Secret recipe," Bek said. "Amongst other things, I am a healer."

Aris cast his eyes around the windowless room again, and felt the question he had been chasing earlier coalesce clearly in his mind.

"There are no windows," he said.

Bek, who had been pouring more steaming liquid into Aris's mug from a kettle that had been hanging in the hearth, nodded without turning. "This is so."

"Then how do you know that it is getting worse outside? And how did you know that I was there?"

"One does not necessarily need to see with one's physical sight," Bek said, "in order to observe one's world." He walked the few steps back to Aris with the steaming mug in his hand. "And there is no need to look quite so alarmed. It is a gift, much like your own with the harp."

"Magic," said Aris, and could not keep his distaste out of his voice. Aris and enchantment had a relationship akin to that of a cat hater and any kind of cat – magic pursued Aris, flattered him, cajoled him, tried to climb up to his lap to be petted, while he spent all his energies trying to shoo it away and keep it at arm's length. Using his experiences he had composed a number of songs and tales and the irony was that he was becoming known for his tales of magic even while fleeing it with all his might.

All Aris had ever wanted to be was a singer of songs, a teller of tales. He knew he was good enough to achieve this with no magical intervention. He was just having an inordinately hard time proving it to himself.

"If you wish," Bek said equably, "then yes, magic. None that will harm you. You yourself just said I saved your life. This is no less than the truth. I could show you what it is like outside now, and it is considerably worse, if you can imagine that, than when I called you in here. But I suspect you would think that I was just showing off… and you would probably be right."

He held out the mug. "Drink it. I promise you there is nothing harmful in it at all. If you have to know, it isn't even magic." The word was emphasized, lightly, with something akin to amusement. "It is herbal knowledge, no more."

Aris accepted the drink after a brief hesitation. Bek inclined his head in an acknowledgement of this acceptance, put away his butterfly collection, and on the way back bent over to inspect Aris's harp.

"I think it has taken no harm," he said. "I would be very grateful if you would play for me later. If there is something here that I miss, it would have to be music."

"I owe you my life," said Aris. "A song or a tale is small enough price for this."

"We all place our own value upon things," said Bek cryptically. "I may not even choose to count it as payment. I may consider your offering something to place me in your debt."

Aris looked at him for a long moment, and then put down the mug he still cradled in his hands. "If you would pass me the harp," he said courteously.

Bek did so, with infinite care and gentleness, and Aris spent a few moments adjusting the strings and tuning the instrument to his satisfaction. This done, he glanced up, cradling the harp against his body.

"Is there something specific that you would hear?"

"Whatever you choose."

Aris bent his head over the harp, strumming a few experimental chords, letting the beloved instrument guide him, as it had done so many times before – it almost had a gift itself, this battered harp of his, of passing the right song, the right tale, into his head. It did not fail him – the melody that came flowing from under his fingers was a tale of vivid spring, of bluebells in ancient forests, of young love blighted and lost through blundering and malice. As always Aris lost himself in the telling, pouring his body and his mind into his art, making his voice an instrument of his soul. When he was done, he 'woke' back to his surroundings as the last chord of the harp still hung brilliant and sparkling in the air, and saw the glint of tears on Bek's cheeks.

"That," Bek said, "could easily have been a tale of my own youth. How could you know?"

"I, too, do not require windows to see," said Aris.

"I told you it was the same kind of gift," Bek said. "I thank you. That was well chosen, and well done. We can discuss your fee, gleeman, when we rise. I do not often entertain visitors, but I have readied a pallet here by the fire for you. I hope you will find it comfortable."

"Thank you. I am sure I shall. But as to the fee…"

Bek raised a hand for silence. "All in its time," he said, "although here we do have the luxury of choosing our moment… For now, I wish you a good rest and a pleasant night. You may dream, in this room. Pay it no mind." He chuckled. "It is just a little bit of… magic." Again, the word was emphasized with an unspoken smile. "I think I do not have to warn you to touch nothing here that you do not begin to understand… ah… perhaps it is safer to touch nothing at all, then, if magic is your bane."

He saw Aris flinch, and his face assumed a contrite expression.

"I do apologize," he said, " I have absolutely no intention of plaguing your rest with fear or anxiety. Rest easy – what is here, is mine, and will not harm you."

Aris bowed. "It would be ungracious to find fault with sanctuary," he said. "I owe you."

"No," Bek said. "It is I who am in your debt."

He bowed lightly, vanishing behind another curtain, twin to the one through which they had entered the room from outside and blowing out one bank of candles on his way out.. Aris doused the rest, put away the harp, and settled onto the comfortable sleeping pallet, piled high with furs, which had been provided for him. But sleep was elusive, especially after one of the armchair cats decided to leave its companions in favor of the furs of the pallet and curl up, purring imperiously, against the pallet's occupant. The room was palpably benign, to one as sensitive to atmosphere as a trained gleeman was, but there was something about it that made Aris's hair stand on end even so, especially in the deep silence of the night shadows. Not even the comforting, anchoring presence of the cat helped. Something was brushing along the edges of his mind, lightly, and would not let him rest. His fingers ached for his harp – inconveniently, for he could hardly take up the instrument and start improvising on it while his host was asleep in the next chamber. So he lay back with wide-open eyes, wakeful and worried, his thoughts in curious chaos, until his body rebelled and presented him with a violent cramp in his leg. He kicked, dislodging the disgruntled cat, and rose to his feet.

Mindful of the injunction not to touch anything he nevertheless embarked on a quick wander around the room, peering with a measure of real curiosity at some of the more accessible books – but the fire had burned low and in the half-light he could make out little except the glint of their precious bindings. The owl on the desk proved to be companioned by a pair of tiny stuffed mice which sat somewhat smugly right under the bird's lethal claws secure in the knowledge that the talons would never be reach them, even though the owl had been caught in a position of stretching one foot for possible prey. Beside it the hourglass… the hourglass had not moved.

Aris took a closer look. Yes, there was a still a very small pile of fine sand in the upper chamber, but now that he was close enough to see he became aware of the fact that it was not seeping into the chamber below, in the manner of hourglasses. In fact, it was frozen, in stasis, as much as the owl forever reaching for prey which would never be caught.

Touch nothing here that you do not begin to understand…

It was too late. It was a gesture as instinctive as time. Aris watched his hand reach for the hourglass, and turn it over.

He shivered in a sudden blast of cold. An owl hooted somewhere close by. The friendly house had melted away around him, and he stood beside a huge snowdrift with the hourglass in his hand and his harp, his travelling pack, his gleeman's cloak and a fur-piled pallet with one first startled and then very irate cat at his feet. Upon closer inspection he appeared to be standing barefoot in the snow, with his boots a step away at the edge of the pallet. Aris hopped onto the furs of the pallet, displacing the hissing cat, and quickly drew the boots onto feet already blue with cold – then, before doing anything else, working swiftly to wrap the exposed harp into its multi-layered pack. Only once this was done did he pause and stare at the hourglass, which he had dropped into the snow when making the dive for his footwear.

The sky was clear, hung with stars and a huge close golden moon, but it was bitterly cold and his breath hung in white clouds before his face.

A deep sigh behind him made him spin in the direction from whence it had come, and he found himself looking at a wizened old man, bent with age, his sparse hair white and straggly across the collar of his robe. He leaned heavily on a carved staff, both gnarled and twisted hands, bare of gloves, upon its head. There was nothing in this ancient being to suggest the almost childlike youth of Aris's erstwhile host, Bek. But then the old man looked up and the eyes were the same glowing embers of blue fire.

"The Eternal Hour was a high fee to choose, gleeman," the creature that was Bek said in a low voice cracked with the passage of time.

"The Eternal Hour?" repeated Aris blankly.

"What you hold," Bek said, "made me and my home timeless. You could have spent a century inside my room and emerged young and beautiful the next morning."

Aris picked up the hourglass gingerly and held it out. "But I don't…"

Bek shook his head. "Too late. It is in your hand now. I mean – take a look around you… nothing made it that was not part of your immediate environment when you touched the glass. Your own belongings, and then the pallet you slept on, the mug you drank from, the chair you sat on…" This was correct; only now did Aris notice these items, incongruous in the snow. "And one careless cat," chuckled Bek, with real amusement. "Well, they're yours now, cat and all. And the hourglass. You control your life now, to use however you choose. You may take whomever you wish into the stasis with you, and they may then leave unmolested… unless they touch the glass, and you may not warn them directly not to do so. Just be warned – it is a treasure with a price…"

Aris shivered, and not with cold. "What?"

"Keep it too long and you forget what time is," said Bek. "I received it when I was very, very young… and kept it for too many centuries…." He coughed. "They do catch up with you…"

"But I don't want it," Aris said obstinately, a hint of panic in his voice.

"Then," said Bek, "you had better give it away within this hour – before the sand runs out to the last few grains, and then stops, starting your Eternal Hour."

"But if someone else…"

"If someone else turns the hourglass over before the end of the hour, it is theirs," said Bek. "But just as you may not warn them not to touch it when it belongs to you, so you may not hide its nature while it is still free. It may be taken in ignorance or innocence, but never passed on willingly under the same geas. If you <i>give</i> it away, you give away everything – including the knowledge of its power." Bek chuckled. "And you may find it hard to find people who love eternal life enough to take it over by choice…."

He began to flicker and to fade against the gleaming moonlit snow. Aris threw out an imploring hand. "No! Wait!…"

"Be careful with your gift…" Bek's voice came drifting back, and then he was gone, completely gone, leaving Aris alone in an empty wilderness with an hourglass that held his destiny. He sank down onto the furs that had been his pallet, dropping the hourglass beside him in the snow, and buried his head in his hands.

The cat came high-stepping daintily back to the furs from the snow where it had initially fled. It approached the human, butting Aris's knee with its head, purring loudly, but this elicited no measurable response. The cat came round the back of Aris and settled against the side of his leg where he sat on the furs, starting to clean itself.

Spend the winter in Ghulkit.

Aris allowed himself a bitter chuckle at the memory of a stray thought that had accompanied him on the road before he had found Bek's house – a thought that took on the force of premonition, seen with hindsight. If he wasn't careful he could find himself spending eternity here.

The cat leaned more insistently against him, letting out a small whimper. Aris lifted his head and turned to look at it, resting his chin on hands folded on his knees.

"Poor beast," he murmured, "you hardly asked for this…"

He reached for the cat, awkwardly, at an angle; the cat shied, backing away. Its hind leg slipped off the edge of the fur, onto snow… and into the side of the hourglass.

Which tumbled slowly, and then righted itself.

On the opposite end.

Sand began flowing back into the chamber it had just left.

Aris sat frozen in mid motion, staring, unable to believe his eyes. He had not fulfilled the geas of explaining the nature of the hourglass to the cat, but the cat was an animal – would such an explanation have made any difference? And could he really take a serendipitous accident as a gift from the gods and walk away, free?

The cat had gone over to investigate the hourglass as Aris carefully rose from the pallet furs, slung his harp-pack securely diagonally across his shoulder and chest, and reached for his pack. Slowly, quietly, like a thief stealing away, he backed off from the cat that would never die. He gained the edge of the road he had been travelling before he had found Bek's house, and hesitated, very briefly, as he cast a glance first in the direction in which he had been heading, then back along the way he had already come.

I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

Would they laugh at him if he returned destitute, frozen, in rags?

Would they miss him if he never came back at all?

But he was a gleeman. It was their appointed task to seek, to find, to experience. If some chose to hide from that task in comfort and safety – well – they would sing the same old songs to tired audiences till the end of time….

The end of time.

Aris shivered, irresolute for a moment under the golden moon. He glanced back briefly and then turned, staring. The pewter mug and the chair in which he had sat in Bek's house were still there – but the pallet, its furs and the cat were gone. And so was the hourglass.

A voice inside his mind screamed at Aris to flee this enchanted place, to seek familiar places and more hospitable lands. But there was a shimmer of moonlight on the horizon, and the snow gleamed with promise underneath the stars. He was Aris, gleeman, storyteller, and there were more stories out there to be found.

There was no choice at all.

The moon pooled and shimmered in the footsteps of the trail he left behind him, following the snow-mantled road into the future.

This story was submitted to an all-YA edition of a well-known fantasy magazine, to a respected editor experienced in her field. She held on to the story for the longest time and then, regretfully, passed – she had a limited number of spaces and, she said to me in a cover letter, she had had to let a number of stories she would under other circumstances have loved to publish to to (perhaps) other homes. I attempted one of her suggestions, but in a situation that was a complete reversal of the "Hourglass" story, this particular tale went to its chosen market… and met the same fate – the editor adored it, but could not make a case for using it in the journal's current context. What this means, of course, is that this is a BRAND NEW STORY that has NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED BEFORE, or even seen by more than a handful of people. And now, here, it is offered to you the new reader, released into the world – to find its place amongst the other stories where cats have padded in on silent but regal feet and demanded their rightful place in the spotlight.

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Chapter 3:

Safe House

I've said it many times to those who have come to seek me out over the years. Happiness is a cocoon. You cannot find the safe house until you need it – because until you need it, you do not know that it is there.

I don't know what changed for me when I turned ten. My family, until then my refuge and my sanctuary, turned a dark corner somehow – the details I still do not know, and I would have known even less of them back then, back when I was still a child, back when such things would not have been spoken of in front of me anyway. But that summer was when I remember things beginning to go rotten – I remember my life acquiring a queasy softness to it, the kind that would suck in a careful exploratory touch, let it sink into yielding spongy flesh as though into a fleshy paunch.

The summer I turned ten was the summer my older brother was arrested – a bunch of his friends had held up a local convenience store, and although he was not the one actually holding the gun, he was the only one who was identified by the store owner (where our family shopped fairly regularly) and he was the only one picked up. He would not snitch on his mates, so he took the fall – and they managed to pin the charge of armed robbery and attempted murder on him. He was seventeen years old, but his eighteenth birthday loomed in mere weeks; the lawyers stretched out the trial, and on the day he turned eighteen they charged him in court as an adult. His life was shattered, gone, annihilated. It was as though he had grown up all these years, had waited all this time, only to hit this wall when he became old enough for the impact to kill him. I never saw him again.

My mother went cold and distant after; she had held down a job as a receptionist at the local walk-in clinic for some time, but after the arrest she simply stopped being the same smiling, efficient, helpful person that the office wanted as their face to the world. By early fall the job had evaporated. She returned home one day, and never really left it again – and the weird and somehow scary thing was that she still got "dressed for work" every morning, with her smart work clothes getting more and more wrinkled and grungy and dirty, and then did very little else except sit and stare into space or occasionally into the TV where the endless cycles of the daytime soaps to which she would quickly become addicted followed one another in quick and dreary succession. It was a gradual thing, but it did not take too long for those twisted fantasies to become far more real to her than her own family's lives. She barely spoke to us at all, and it fell to me, often, to scrape together a meal for the family in the evenings when my scowling father came home from his own job. He had never been, had never aspired to be, anything more than what he was – a good mechanic who knew his way around cars. Had the fates been kinder he might have made a go of it in his own shop – but he had never had that chance. He had spent his life obeying other people's orders, often people far less qualified and way less savvy than he was, and he had managed to shoulder it all for a long time – but when the family fell apart, so did he, and the bitterness and resentment he had tried to keep from us now came home with him from work and became the silent guests at every meal.

I learned quickly to keep my head down and my voice low. My younger brother, barely eight that summer, was still too much of a child to realize the need for it, the only one of us in the household who could still find a smile in a day. He took me out into the overgrown back yard that summer, and shared with me clouds shaped like dragons or like sailing ships or like pirate hats; he went wandering barefoot out into the streets and still managed to find, somewhere, in the weed-infested gutter-backyards of local businesses, something pretty – a posy of weed-flowers to bring back to our mother, who barely noticed them, or to me.

He laughed out loud once too often, at the wrong time. My father lashed out in fury. My baby brother had to go to the Emergency Room to have stitches put into the gash in his scalp, ripped open when he flew across the kitchen and into the edge of the kitchen table, and to fix his broken nose. He did not laugh too much or too often, after that.

I was thirteen when my father came home one night later than usual. I had left the porch light on, and my brother and I had retired to our rooms already – my mother was alone in the living room, alone in the dark with only the flickering light of the TV set for company. I could hear my father stumble into the entrance hall, and the glass shiver in the hallway window as he slammed the door hard; the creaky floorboards in the hall told me that he had not swung into the kitchen, where I had left a meal laid out for him, but had continued down the corridor which led to the back of the house and our bedrooms. The steps paused outside my own door.

What instinct made me do it I don't know – but I was out of bed and underneath it in one swift move. I could barely see from where I was cowering, my view partially obstructed by disarranged bedclothes hanging down almost to the floor – but there was a thin and then widening ribbon of light as the door was pushed open and my father stood in the doorway looking inside. At my bed. At the bed where I should have been sleeping.

He muttered something under his breath – not a worried exclamation at finding his daughter's bed empty, but something else, something that sounded angry and frustrated and actually peeved that something that he had wanted was not where he had though he had left it. Whether my senses were augmented by my fear, I don't know – but even underneath the bed I thought I could smell the reek of cheap beer that came from him – from this man in the doorway – standing between me and safety instead of being my bulwark against danger – knowing that I would never be safe in this house again.

He left, and I stayed for a long time curled up on the dusty floor underneath my bed, shivering. And then I climbed out of my bedroom window, let myself down gently into the dirt of a fallow flower bed, and walked away from the house across cool evening grass, barefoot and wearing nothing but a thin nightgown which was beginning to be tight across my chest and which barely reaching to my knees.

You cannot find a safe house until you need it – because until you need it you do not know it is there.

The house at the far end of our street must have been there for as long as we had lived there. Must have been – it could not have popped up like a mushroom in the night, waiting for me as my bare feet hit the cold pavement of the sidewalk. It was full dark now, but there was a light on above the door of the cottage, glimpsed through a half-open gate leading into a wild garden. It was surrounded by a tall hedge, which was nothing but green now – but somehow, although I could have sworn that I was ignorant of this place, I knew that the bushes were lilacs and would be covered with purple blooms in the spring. In the meantime there were other scents here now – something soft and sweet and enticing, night-blooming jasmine perhaps, something that made me stop before the gate and hesitate, looking into the garden. A grey tabby cat sat on the top step of the porch, flicking its long tail, looking straight back at me with a grave and serene pair of golden eyes.

This is a safe house.

The words came at me from nowhere, from the night. I reflexively turned to look, to see who had spoken, but behind me there was nobody and nothing… nothing but night, thickening, lowering, gathering up against me, like a monster growing huge at my back, its bright stars slitted eyes waiting for me to take a wrong turn, to stumble, to slip, to fall, before it would swallow me whole.

I stepped into the garden. The weight of the darkness immediately lessened, became less threatening; the tabby was gone, but the front door behind it was ajar. I could not remember whether it had been thus before or not – either way, it was unusual, and I stood frozen, caught between a sudden irrational fear of the dark and the terror of the unknown which lay behind that half-open, oh-so-inviting, door bathed in the spill of a lantern-shaped light fixed just above it.

"Come in," a voice called from inside. "You are welcome here."

There were slippers waiting by the door, and they seemed to be there for me – I examined my cold but grimy feet with some misgivings, but then slipped on the quilted slippers anyway and ventured a few steps further in. Through an archway to my left, a small cozy sitting room opened up, a tall lamp with a tasselled lampshade made from heavy yellow silk cast a warm golden glow on the place. There was a stone fireplace, with a wrought-iron fire-screen before it; a wingback armchair with a tapestry throw on it; a bay window with a calico-upholstered cushion on the window seat, where a majestic black cat was currently stretched out in an act of ownership and possession which left no doubt as to his absolute right to claim this particular spot in the room for his own. There were bookshelves on two of the three walls, stuffed with books; some looked old, ready to fall apart, and others barely read, as though they had been brought home from the bookstore an hour ago.

"Tea?" said the voice that had invited me in.

I turned sharply. A silver-haired woman stood smiling at me from the doorway across the room, leading out into the kitchen; she had a paisley shawl wrapped loosely around her shoulders, and was dressed in a long cotton shift which left her feet bare. She gestured with a hand, back in the direction of the kitchen. "I've just put the kettle on. You look like you need a cup of tea. I've cookies, too. Go make friends with Felix, I'll be right back."

Felix, the black cat, yawned at the mention of his name, flicking his tail and glancing in my direction with haughty emerald eyes.

"Where's the other cat?" I asked incongruously. "The tabby…?"

"Oh, around," said the woman, and smiled. The smile was strange, an accent note, a hint of cinnamon in apple pie, suggesting that there was more beneath the surface of the question than met the eye – but that was all I got. She ducked back into the kitchen, and I dutifully padded over to crouch next to Felix, who suffered me to scratch under his chin, his eyes closing to slits, a hint of a purr escaping from his vibrating throat.

The rattle of cup against saucer brought my attention back to the low table in the middle of the sitting room; as I turned, the silver-haired woman was just straightening after putting down a tray containing a tea cozy presumably hiding a teapot, two porcelain cups and saucers with pink roses on the sides, and a plate of cookies.

I stared at the offerings.

"I… no, thank you," I said awkwardly, suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of being in fairy country, that taking a sip of tea or a bit of cookie would cost me my freedom, or my soul. It would mean something I only barely understood, an acceptance of a contract the terms of which I did not know; it would be almost like allowing a door to close behind me without any guarantees that it would be opened again if I wished to leave.

But there was something in the scent of those cookies. A smell of belonging, and safety, and home. It was the scent of my baby brother's laughter before it had been quenched.

"What kind of cookies are they?" I asked, unable to help myself.

"Chocolate chips, of course. Everything tastes better with chocolate," my hostess said. "And my own honey, for sweetening, instead of sugar."

"You make honey?"

"Well, the bees do. I have a hive, out back," she said.

I could have sworn I had never noticed this house before, but once she said that I could remember things quite clearly – the garden in summer, just sufficiently unkempt to invite pleasurable speculation and daydreams about what went on behind that tangle of bushy lilacs, old-fashioned roses, holly, rowan, hazel a bunch of colorful flowers for which there were no real names – they were just splashes of scarlet or blue or gold amongst the green.

There were butterflies. And humming birds. And a stork had a nest on the chimney pot, and swallows' nests in the eaves.

And there were bees – a quiet heady hum to the flowers in the dog days of summer, something somnolent and sweet, lulling, inviting, as though to step through her gate – never quite closed, always a little ajar – would mean stepping into a small piece of heaven, apart from the rush and tumble of the real-life world.

There were other memories. There were cats – always cats – lots of cats; there was the silver tabby which I remembered seeing outside the front door, the sleek black silhouette of Felix… but there had been others, a streak of marmalade, or a glimpse of tortoiseshell. Sometimes they seemed to be hurt, slinking into the garden, limping, looking like they had been in a fight, with scratched noses or shredded ears.

"Where's all your other cats?" I dared to ask, my voice sounding thin and reedy with an odd sort of apprehension.

"They come and go," she said. "Felix and I, we are the only ones that live here. The others come when they need me. This is a safe house."

It was the second time I had heard those words.

"Don't worry, sweet girl. You will always be safe here," she said.

The world smelled of jasmine, and quiet night, and sanctuary. She held out the plate of cookies. I took one.

I don't remember going home, but I woke in my own bed, late; my father had already left for work and my mother was at her accustomed spot in front of the TV, staring at it with dead eyes, wearing work nylons which were twisted around her ankles in an untidy spiral and which had a run all the way up one calf.

The world was still wounded, still wrong, still hurt. But there was something new in it, something that I could not – yet – name or find a proper place for. The world was no less full of fear and of darkness… but there was something I sensed standing between me and the true horror of it all.

I didn't find out exactly what until some two or three days later. My father had been late home again, but this time I was still out in the kitchen when he returned from work. His eyes were terrible – black holes in his face, empty of anything other than anger and need. He looked straight at me, and said my mother's name – very softly, but very clearly – and the hand that reached for me was not the hand of a father. It was the hand of a man, reaching for a body to slake a need. I was not his daughter in that moment. Perhaps I never would be again.

Somehow I slipped from his grasping arms, whimpering, half-blinded with terror and with tears, and ran for the safety of my room – but it was an illusion, for we had doors that did not lock and even if they did his weight would tear the flimsy door from its hinges if he chose to lean on it hard enough. But I skittered into the darkness of my room, slammed the door closed behind me, stood with my back against it for a breathless moment, and then heard his heavy steps following me down the corridor. I left the door, backed into the far corner, coming up against the wall when there was no further room for retreat, slid down it until I sat curled in a pathetic ball of fear and helplessness, arms wrapped tightly around knees drawn up against my chin, eyes huge and dark and fixed on the doorway through which he would inevitably come…

And what escaped from my mouth was a hiss, a cat's hiss, a feral noise of challenge and defiance.

My sight had changed, shifted. The room was still there, still familiar, but everything was larger now, looming, and I was no longer a cowering kid, I was a small brindled cat tucked into the corner of the room, back arched, teeth bared, eyes burning with rebellion. I was armed now, tooth and claw. Whatever came, I could take it.

But other things had changed, too. What did come was not my father, not the man I knew, anyway. What came into that room, seeking me with a hot and urgent need, was a demon of darkness with eyes as burning as my own, burning with a black fire of madness and evil.

This was the true thing that I had risen against. Not the man who sired me, whose blood ran in my own veins. We had both changed, turned into something different, something deadlier, something greater than ourselves.

I could have fled. As the cat, I was small enough, agile enough, and the window was open – one leap, and I might have been safe. But this was a shadow I knew for an enemy – and it was an enemy for others, not just for myself. Any victory here would be a victory for other innocent souls which it had devoured, souls which had lain defenseless in its path.

Unlike me.

I stood my ground. The shadow flowed into the room, over my empty bed, spasmed, shivered, growled, turned; its claws were none the less deadly for that they were not totally of this world, because they were more than that, because their wounds would go deeper than flesh, would scar the soul. And yet – and yet – they had to be faced, because this was an old battle, and if they were not faced down they merely grew stronger.

We came together, the shadow and the cat, in the middle of the room. The pain was unbearable, incandescent; I howled my agony, recoiling, twisting, fighting, biting, scratching. But I too made my mark because where my claws raked the thing shredded and faded, and light came through the cracks – and that helped. A little. By the time we broke apart, the shadow to retreat through the closed door, the small cat with scoured flanks and a deep claw-cut beading blood above one eye, out of the window… and running as fast as it could, limping on one wounded paw, towards the cottage at the end of the street.

This is a safe house.

At last, I understood.

She was waiting for me, the silver-haired woman, compassion in her eyes. She had ointment ready, and clean cloth soaked in warm water to bathe my wounds – and I was a girl again, in this house, my human body bearing the scars of my battle that night, but fading slowly under her ministrations.

"The first time," she murmured, dabbing at the cut above my eye. "The first time is always the very worst. You have no idea what to expect. And then it exceeds every expectation you could not possibly have had. It hurts. Ah, it hurts. I know. I bear my own scars."

"The other cats," I said slowly.

She nodded. "Like you, in a way," she said. "They come here already wounded, creatures seeking sanctuary. And I help, I am here for all of them. They are all called here before the worst happens, so that I can meet them, know them, give them the cookies… with the secret ingredient in it, the one that makes it possible for them to escape if they need to, to run like a cat can, clear-eyed in the dark, and find their way back here to be healed. But you are not one of those. You are different. You fought the darkness."

"Who are you?" I whispered, staring at her.

"I'm the Protector," she said simply, sitting back in her chair. "This is what I do, I take in the wounded of this world and this house, this garden, can make them whole again. This is a safe house, safe from darkness, safe from harm. Summer lives in this garden, and sweet dreams under my roof. I am here to give to all strength and sustenance, and the will to go on… and, when the time comes, the will to fight what I fight – to one, and one alone. So – it is to be you, I think. The Protector who comes after me. You know. You understand. You stood up to fight the darkness, all alone, on your own. You have the mark of the Protector on you. With me… it was later, and the pain already had a foothold in me, the damage was already done. With you, it might have come just in time – the true poison has been taken from you, although you were close enough to smell it, to understand what it truly means."

"But I don't," I said. "I don't understand any of this."

"You felt fear, but you were not conquered by it," she said. "That is a Protector's strength. We understand what lies underneath, we have to before we can rise to fight it. But it cannot destroy us."

"What do you mean?"

"You, my child, are what comes after me. There are only a handful of us in this world at any one time – the healers, the ones who make a safe haven and who guard it, sometimes by a word or an invitation inside for a cup of tea, sometimes with our own blood and tears. This is not your safe house, it is mine – but some day you will make your own haven. It is coming."

I should have known long before now, but it was only in this moment that I really made the connection in my mind.

"You are the tabby cat," I said in sudden understanding.

"Sometimes," she said, smiling. "And yes, although you don't think you remember that now, you've seen me here at least once in the aftermath of a battle with some demon out of shadow. Human stupidity, or arrogance, or greed – something that comes out of the dark and has the power to hurt the innocents in its way. I Protect."

"How…?"

"It will come to you, " she said gently. "It is given to all of us to find the one who will succeed us eventually – and I can see that someday you will take my place. Not here, but somewhere else, in a safe house of your own, in some other corner of the world where there is a need for healing magic and a healer to wield it." She paused, hesitated slightly as though she were weighing something in her mind, and then came to a decision and reached to lift a slender silver chain over her head. It bore a pendant, a single round stone, golden except for a dark vertical streak in the middle, looking like a lion's eye. Before I had a chance to protest, to refuse, the chain had slipped over my own head, the pendant coming to rest over my heart. "This will tell you when it is time," she said. "I only have a little time left – and when I am gone you will make a safe house, and it will grow old roses in the garden, and call to the sick and the wounded and the ones who need protection. And in that stone lies the spirit and the wisdom that I myself inherited once from all the ones who came before me. I have learned all it needs to teach me – it's yours now. You are the Protector. This house remains a safe haven for as long as I stay here – but the shadows come for us all, it is what a Protector knows from the very beginning. Make another safe house, for all the hurt ones in this, your corner of the world. It will take as long as it must… but don't let it take too long" She leaned over and actually kissed me on the forehead, as though in benediction. "Go, now. And remember."

My mother died when I was sixteen years old. The authorities came for me and for my brother, and took us from our father's house – they separated us, and I don't know where he went, in the end. I never saw him again after that last tearful goodbye, when they tore us apart from one another and he was put in one car and I in another and we were driven off in opposite directions. I was placed with several foster families, but nothing ever seemed to work out – not least because I was given to bringing in stray cats from the neighborhood, and speaking to them in a quiet gentle voice, and holding the feral animals until they stilled in my arms and looked at me out of glowing eyes that were blue or bright green or tawny orange-gold – and we had an understanding, that I would heal, and protect and care.

And then, before I turned seventeen, my hair turned silver-gray overnight.

I had not worn the cat's-eye pendant which the witch from the cottage had given me; I had kept it safe, but I taken it off from around my neck as soon as I was able to after she had placed it there that night. But on the day that my hair turned the color that hers had been, I took the pendant out of its safe place and hung it openly around my neck. And I walked out of the house in which they had placed me, taking nothing with me except that pendant – and I found an abandoned house at the end of a once-genteel street, and walked inside, and closed the door behind me. It was empty when I fell asleep curled up on the bare floor against a wall whose wallpaper was peeling in rotting streamers – but when I woke, the cottage had dreamed itself into being around me. There was a fireplace, and a lamp which shed warm golden light, and an oddly familiar black cat walked in from the back garden and yawned and took possession of the window-seat in the bay window.

I was home. And I knew what I had to do.

The shadows knew me, and came for me when I patrolled the neighborhood streets in the night, when the house lights were down and other people were sleeping. And I knew them, and faced them. And this, she didn't tell me, the witch – this I found out the hard way, myself – every battle is like the first battle, and every victory is like the first victory, because you are always fighting on two fronts – as the Protector, standing between innocents and harm, and as yourself, fighting your own fears and terrors and the shadows in your own soul, things you can never allow to win, because the moment you bow your head before them all the battles of the future are already lost.

I don't remember exactly the first time I fed a crying child the special cookies that allowed it to come running to me in the guise of a kitten when it was hurt or scared. But somehow, very quickly, the rest of my life disappeared somewhere into a dream – and this was all that I had ever done, all that I had ever been, and I could smell the old roses which had always been there in the garden of a cottage at the end of a suburban street.

And then came the day I saw a wary, rangy teenager poised ready to flee on my doorstep, staring at me with huge, wounded dark eyes, so much like mine had once been, full of a world of hurt – and yet defiant, ready to take on a world which seemed to be gathered against her. And I understood, and smiled.

She was who I had once been. And one day she would become what I was now. This was a new Protector, still young, still a chrysalis, but she would understand.

"Come in," I said softly, beckoning with one hand while the other closed around the eye of the cat on my breast. "This is a safe house."

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Reviewers say…

Midnight at Spanish Gardens: "Alexander's language is lovely and poetic...the imagery is beautiful, the setting is compelling...But it's the characters that drive this story, in all of their imperfection, in all of their passion or disconnection or feeling of failure." -- Alana Abbott, Flames Rising

The Secrets of Jin-shei: "Vivid and involving'... both an exotic journey into the imagination, and a graceful exploration of the heart." -- SF Site

Changer of Days: "Powerful characters and a powerful setting help to deliver what I am thrilled to say is a great bloody book." Altair

Gift of the Unmage: "This latest book seems as if it is going to be your standard coming-of-age magician tale, but then you realize it is so much more. It is philosophy, it is science fiction, and it is beautiful." -- Kelly A. Ohlert

Other books by Alma Alexander

Midnight at Spanish Gardens (Sky Warrior Books USA 2011)

Dolphin's Daughter and Other Stories (Macmillan, UK, 1995)

Houses in Africa (David Ling, New Zealand, 1995)

Letters from the Fire (Harper Collins New Zealand, 1999)

Secrets of Jin Shei (HarperCollins, USA, 2004/2005)

The Hidden Queen (Eos, USA, 2005)

Changer of Days (Eos, USA, 2005)

Embers of Heaven (HarperCollins , UK, 2006)

Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax, (Kos Books 2010)

WORLDWEAVERS Series

1) Gift of the Unmage (HarperCollins, USA, 2007)

2) Spellspam (HarperCollins, USA, 2008)

3) Cybermage (Harpercollins, USA, 2009)

Contact Alma Alexander

Website: http://www.AlmaAlexander.com/

Blog: http://anghara.livejournal.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlmaAlexander

Email: angharakirhama@gmail.com

Figure 1 Alma Alexander

About the Author

Alma Alexander was born on the banks of an ancient river in a country which no longer exists.

She began telling stories as a child and never stopped. To date, Alma has written close to three million words in more than a dozen published books. Her novel, The Secrets of Jin-shei, has been published in 14 languages in more than a score of countries. Her popular Young Adult Worldweavers series features New World magic and a heroine who is as American as Harry Potter is British.

The woman underneath the author likes books, embroidery, music ranging from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to Dvorak's New World Symphony, animals, coffee, chocolate, snow, velvet -- and, in people, kindness, intelligence and an off-the-wall sense of humor.

She is a punaholic, a chronic worrier, sentimental and passionate. She is married to a man who wooed her over the Internet and lured her to America, where she is currently owned by two cats.

Table of Contents

- Foreword
- Homemaker
- Hourglass
- Safe House
- Reviewers Say
- Other Books by Alma Alexander
- Contact Alma Alexander
- About the Author