Fur, Fangs, and Silence

This is our third burning.

The rancid smoke of her burning flesh coils through the night air, assaulting my sensitive nostrils. Years in Hell should have hardened me to such mortal cruelty, but no. The stench remains abhorrent to the senses.

Althea’s screams echo through the clearing the townsfolk carved for her pyre. Not a soul moves to help her. Some faces twist in cruel delight. Some even cheer, their malice justified by a single sentence scrawled in a mortal’s holy book.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Exodus, they call it. Chapter twenty-two, verse eighteen.

I shudder to think how many souls were sent to the afterlife by that one sentence, even after witnessing its horrors again and again.

Do they care that she helped heal their sick and dying, or that when we came to this town three months ago, after my human’s fifth drowning, their crops flourished in abundance? No. Despite all she did, they see what they cannot comprehend and loathe it—perhaps even covet it.

I wait in the woods behind the clearing as the townsfolk of this dull-witted little settlement hunt for her “demonic familiar.” That, of course, would be me. If only they knew how close to the truth they were.

It is deep into the night by the time Althea’s screams finally fade into cold silence. Only then do the townsfolk, satisfied that their witch is truly dead, return to their hovels. When at last I approach her pyre, the wind has already begun to gather her ashes, swirling them back toward the charred husk of her body, fused grotesquely to the blackened post.

I watch as the dust of her becomes whole, and the first glint of her raven hair conjures memories of the day she found me lying almost lifeless on a forsaken road.

My human has an insatiable need to heal. Sometimes a bird with a broken wing, a child with consumption, or, in my case, a daemon trapped in the form of a black cat.

I had one chance to escape my torment in the depths of Hell, and I seized it. The magic allowed me to transfer my soul and powers into whichever earthly vessel had most recently died. Of course, it was my luck to be bound to a tiny form of fur. Yet in the last four years, I have developed an odd fondness for my claws and teeth. I am still able to command the elements and bend nature to my will.

When Althea found me, she thought I was dying and bound my life’s essence to hers. Little did she know she had bound hers to mine. An immortal.

Oh, how Hecate would rage to learn that one of her own daughters had unknowingly bound her soul to the goddess’s most prized prisoner.

My human’s skin has reknit itself, glowing faintly in the moonlight. Soon, her beautiful emerald eyes will flutter open. Gazing upon her, still caught between life and death, I cannot fathom how the other humans treated her this way. Least of all her lover, John.

I did not care for him much, even if he brought me delicious scraps from his hunts and spared Althea from bartering with the vile butcher. He’d always come into her cottage at night, like a bandit. And in a way, he was. He stole my human’s heart. A heart that should belong only to me. If only I had been given the form of a man and not cursed to live as a beast. I would have knelt at her feet and begged to be ruined by her.

Alas, I am fur, fangs, and silence.

While John is a man.

Disrupting them in their passion gave me endless amusement. It became somewhat of a pastime, along with hunting the vermin that plagued our home. John once vowed, when Althea wasn’t listening, to skin me alive. The claw marks I left on his face likely only steeled his resolve.

John’s endless promises of marriage, followed by endless excuses as to why he could not marry her, caused me to cough up hair on more than one occasion. Still, Althea believed him until he bore witness against her at the trial. If it can even be called that. I paid close attention, determined to see how far John’s betrayal would go. As I watched and listened from my hiding spot in the church, I realized the townspeople’s only motivation was fear and jealousy.

One human after another testified about the “horrors” they saw her commit in the forest. All of it lies. John’s was the vilest. He called her love a bewitchment, as if his coward’s heart were some pious thing she had stolen from him.

Was Althea a witch? Yes.

Actually, she was one of the most gifted witches I had witnessed. Those with her level of ability usually succumbed to the corruption of power, but not Althea. She used what she was gifted to better every life she touched, mine included.

When the trial was concluded, and my human was sentenced to burn again, it was John who lit the pyre. Rage and helplessness warred within me. My human has never broken in any of her other executions. Usually, she’s a ball of hellfire, spitting out profanity and curses to scare her murderers. Not this time. When John approached the pyre, she let fall a solitary tear—a silent acknowledgment of his betrayal, and my heart shattered seeing her pain.

Before we leave this forsaken town, it will be him who burns.

Althea stirs upon the smoldering pyre. Naked as the day of her birth, she makes her way toward me.

She picks me up, nuzzles her face in my fur, and then scratches that insufferable part behind my ears. I purr on instinct. Damn this feline body of mine.

“Thank you for waiting for me," she says as she places me back on the ground. “You are the only one I can trust.”

Well, finally, she has been brought to reason.

I meow and make my way to the forest, guiding her onward.

“Where are you taking me now, Barnabas?”

That is not my name. But since this body is incapable of human speech, it is the name I must bear.

I meow again, urging her to follow. I lead her through the forest to where I had carried her clothing on a light breeze.

Althea pats the top of my head and says, “Oh, Barnie.”

Also not my name.

As she dresses, I will the apple tree she is leaning against to ripen its fruit to a deep crimson and lower its branches in offering. She plucks an apple and takes a crunching bite. Althea is always hungry after a resurrection. Before the first core hits the rich earth, she grabs another. Then, plucking a few more for our journey, she wipes the juices of her “feast” with the sleeve of her dress.

We are far enough from the town now for John’s atonement. Drawing on the memory of his betrayal, using it to fuel my magic from its very depths, I summon hellfire to burn his earthly flesh, dragging his soul to the inner circles of Hell. Their torments will know exactly what to do with him.

Spent, I curl up on the ground, exhaustion mingling with grim delight. John’s imagined screams comfort me. Now, the smoke smells sweet. The ringing of the town bells—an orchestra for my soul.

Althea looks back toward the town, distracted from her fourth apple by the uproar behind us.

She looks at me, confused.

My human lifts me from the earth as if I were a fallen apple, and together we flee into the wilderness, shadows swallowing her hurried steps.

We walk through the forest for hours, bound for the port town of Salem, hoping to find passage to another town far, far away. It will take about a week on foot. How I wish I were a horse to carry her after all she’s endured. Alas, a cat I remain. At least I am her cat. Forever.

As if sensing my thoughts, she gently caresses my cheek near my whiskers and says, “This was my eighth death.” Althea sighs. Grief contorts her beautiful face, and I lose myself in her eyes. They look so much like the fields of Eden. In a way, she is my very own Garden of Eden.

“I don’t know how, but I know I live again because of you, Barnie. You possess wild magic, and I’ve seen you do miraculous things. They say cats have nine lives. Did you give me yours? Will this be my last?” She looks at me, contemplative as if I could voice my answer.

No. You will live as long as I do, my love. Forever.

Instead of words, I let out a series of undecipherable mewling.

“You always know exactly what to say to cheer me up,” she says, smiling through her grief and nuzzling her face in the fur of my spine. Seven Hells. My purring begins again, and I vibrate throughout my tiny body.

Drops of water fall on my fur, but there is no rain.

“I won’t survive the next one,” Althea whispers.

I glance over. Tears well in her eyes.

“My body might. But this,” she says, pressing a hand to her chest, “can’t take it anymore.” Althea’s voice is raw with torment. “Each death leaves me feeling less like myself. The pain lingers, even when my wounds heal. I remember the burning, the screaming. I wake with smoke in my throat, fire beneath my skin, and the phantom kiss of a rope on my neck.”

“And probably not this either.” Her fingers drift to her temple. “It is like a piece of me is left behind, trapped in the world in between. The dying haunts my sleeping mind and waits for me when I wake.”

“I’ve seen too much hate, even when I thought I had found love. I was wrong.” Althea’s tears intensify, soaking my fur in her anguish.

“Just you and me, Barnabas. You’ve seen me through the worst of it, and I will always be grateful to you,” she says, tightening me closer to her. Her words, a salve and a torment. How I wish I could return her embrace and press my lips against Althea’s red ones. Instead, I resign myself to offering her a small token of my affection.

Up ahead, a few feet away, I manifest a small bush with no thorns. She’s been through enough without pricking her finger on a flower. From the bush, I bloom a sprawling sapphire flower this world has not seen since Adam and Eve fell from Eden. I couldn’t understand why Adam had plucked this flower and placed it behind her ear. But now that same urge overwhelms me.

I leap from Althea’s arms and prowl to the bush and sit in front of it.

She rushes over, her gaze fixed on the flower. She caresses its velvet petals.

“What is this? It’s beautiful. I haven’t seen this flower listed in any horticultural books. Blue flowers? How is it possible?” Althea brings her nose to the flower and inhales it until her lungs are full of its perfume.

“It smells divine.”

It is.

“Did you grow this for me?” she asks.

I bow my head, hoping she understands this motion as my yes.

She falls to her knees and motions for me to join her. I do.

Althea brings me to her chest and falls to the ground with me in her arms.

I command the bush to grow around us, forming a small dwelling just for us. I bloom all the flowers I can inside our cocoon.

Althea closes her eyes, smiles, and whispers, “I love you, Barnabas,” before drifting off to sleep.

I love you too, Althea.

I settle against her heartbeat and surrender to slumber, hoping against all reason that when this cocoon opens, I will emerge not as her cat, but as a man.