Chapter 23 - Talking to the Cat

Johann had hoped to seal away his childhood forever.

Table of Contents:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22

Recap: In the previous chapter, Johann’s wife told him off for having lost his temper with Astrid.

It’s no surprise that he struggles to speak with someone who is part of his painful memories; however, that was a long time past.

Can a bridge be rebuilt between siblings? Will they solve this problem together?

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When you did not have your mother, you had your sister.

Nina’s words weighed on Johann’s mind as he exited the house. Ignoring the curious spirits watching from the across his barrier, he stared at the Greenhouse, where a faint light indicated someone was inside.

Mouth dry, he wondered how to address Astrid after having lost his temper. He felt more helpless, somehow, than when he had tried to bash into the Shelleys’ mausoleum.

It was more difficult barging into the mausoleum of his old life, the childhood he’d hoped to seal away. The ghosts of his past were more frightening than Mr. and Mrs. Shelley’s remains.

Echoes of his vulnerability caused him to shiver. How was he to revisit those memories, when he’d finally built a life of his own? How was he to peer inside and find a scrap of gratitude to his sister?

After all, she had been his source of strength when he was a boy. He’d chosen to leave when he was old enough to work. It was not Astrid who drove him off.

Nina was right. He’d told her everything about his past; there was no pretending she was confused. Perhaps she was more intuitive because she was a woman.

Johann did not know why it never occurred to him that Astrid might have come because she had no other place to go.

Has her husband died yet? The question had become a running joke in their house, words pronounced by young children who didn’t know their aunt. Now that they had met her, Johann was ashamed to have let it go on for so long.

He should have known better. Their unkind, jesting words reflected on him, making him look cruel.

Wiping his hands on his trousers, he crossed the back lawn. The light in the Greenhouse flickered unenthusiastically; even with that light, the building did not appear much brighter.

If he stared long enough, he could pretend the one-hinged door led to the dark room where he’d slept at Cinder House. It was a place where, in spite of his sister’s efforts, he’d allowed anger to take root.

He wished for a moment that he could stay outside with the deceased. They stared at him with pale countenances. The sympathy on their faces was dreadful, more so than if they had bared their teeth in malice.

They were the ones trapped in limbo, doomed to roam the graveyard by a force he could not identify—and yet they pitied him.

I am more pathetic, he thought, ducking past the door, than ghosts wrenched from their rest.

The source of the flickering light was a lamp on Johann’s desk. Before it sat Astrid, staring at the jug that contained the moth.

Astrid did not look up as he entered; she did not stir, lost in a miserable thought. She had taken the ring off of her finger and placed it on the table; she seemed to have wrenched the comb from her hair in anger. Her silver-streaked hair hung down her back, like it had done when she was a young lady.

The sight brought him a blast of nostalgia. For a moment, they were both young. The only difference was that, this time, she had her back to him. When he’d been a child, she was always attentive; now she did not seem to notice his presence.

Johann took a step forward. Though he had been given instructions by his wife, he could not seem to find his voice to invite his sister back to the house.

Indeed, he was speechless; wrapped in dark nostalgia, he could scarcely breathe.

“Nina is awake,” was all that he managed, when sufficient time stretched by. “She wants to speak with you.”

Astrid remained motionless. He wondered if she was under a spell, until she responded with the slightest of nods. Her eyes did not shift from the trapped moth. She watched its scarlet-streaked wings flutter, her expression one of disappointment.

“I wanted to help you.” Her voice lacked energy; it was thick with grief. “I know that I harmed your family. The fact is, Johann, I don’t know how to talk to you now.”

Johann shifted in place, looking out of the window as he strained for a reply that would sound forgiving as well as apologetic.

I want to trust her, he thought. It has been too long; so much has changed.

“We have that in common, then,” he mumbled. “I don’t know how to talk to you, either.”

Astrid swallowed, looking up, but did not turn in his direction. In the flickering of the lamp, she appeared frail; her hair, loose and unkempt, gave the impression of a person who had given up on herself.

She appeared to be arranging a sentence in her mind, but before she could speak it, a new voice drifted in from behind Johann—male, irate, and unfamiliar.

“Then perhaps you should spend less time not talking,” it said, “and pretend you are strangers. That way, you might finally be able to sort this out.”

Johann nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned to see a man standing inside of the Greenhouse. Baffled, he tried to remember if he had heard anyone join them.

He had never seen this man, yet had the niggling sensation that they were not strangers. There was something familiar about the man’s leer. His dark hair framed a pale, bony countenance. Bizarrely, he looked both tired and awake, standing tall and lithe.

Arms crossed over his chest, his amber eyes fixed disdainfully on Johann’s face.

Johann hoped he did not look as uneasy as he felt. What on earth was wrong with him? Perhaps he had finished losing his mind, and was now imagining things stranger than spirits rising from the grave.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “How did you get past my barrier?”

“I was never on the other side of it, you dimwit,” the man shot back. It was impossible to discern his age from the sound of his voice; while youthful, there was also something ancient to it. “I lived in this place long before you came and made it into a macabre pantry. By the by, Wolfgang is too stuffy of a name. Why did you think anyone, even a cat, would appreciate being called that?”

Johann turned to his sister, battling the urge to laugh in baffled exhaustion. At last, he had achieved a level of shock in which he could not even speak words of anger.

He felt only mortification. It was comical and cruel that a stranger should now turn up, claiming to be his cat.

Astrid had gotten to her feet. She, at least, was able to look this person in the eye without the sense that she was being mocked.

Her posture relaxed; whatever was going on, she did not think it enough of a threat to lose composure.

“I suspected from the start that your cat was not a cat,” Astrid told Johann, before turning to the newcomer. “Who are you, then? And why have you taken so long to shift out of a feline form?”

“They used to call me Finn,” was the reply. “Even as a cat, I did not look like a Wolfgang.”

Astrid only smiled, waiting for this stranger, Finn, to reply.

Johann kept his gaze fixed on her, afraid that he would look like a fool if he turned.

Of course he had seen that infuriating leer before, but not on a human face. He’d seen it on the face of the cat that kept him company, the cat that behaved as if it thought him a fool.

The cat who seemed to understand more than Johann did.

It is no surprise, he thought with resignation, that the disguise worked on me. I’m not the great wizard I wanted to be. I never have been.

“A graveyard keeper can take many forms,” Finn said. “Most prefer to appear as owls, but I never liked flying. Graveyard keepers retain their forms, until such a time when they must care for their hallowed ground. I never thought that it would happen, and until these people moved in, there was no danger.

“Graveyards,” he finished drily, “are not made for the living, but at least these strangers were not threats. Now an Elf has tried to make my charges into his new kingdom; graves and mausoleums have been broken into. Such a thing has not happened in centuries.” With a heavy dash of sarcasm, he finished, “Aren’t I fortunate?”

Graveyard keeper, Johann thought. The old, black cat has always been here. He was in this building when we moved in.

I should have realized cats do not live that long naturally.

“Very well,” said Astrid, cautiously. “Do you have a plan? We all know these people deserve to return to their state of rest.”

“To begin with,” replied Finn, taking a step nearer to the desk (Johann tensed, so as to not flinch away), “you must create a trap of iron. Release the moth and change it back. It cannot spill its secrets if it does not have a tongue.”