Chapter 4: Perspective

Violet traipsed back to her window, feeling drained. She knew the demon was trapped, for she could not hear it anymore, but that didn’t make her feel any less frightened.

It was an aimless, unmoored sort of fear, drifting randomly around the center of her being, tensing her muscles and squeezing the breath from her lungs. There were stars beginning to appear in the sky now, the light going from blue to a silky, raven feather black.

She tucked her notebook under one arm and put both hands on the windowsill, ready to climb back inside. But before she could the cat caught the hem of her skirt with one paw.

“You shouldn’t go inside just yet.” It said.

Violet paused and glanced down. It was just dark enough that the cat was beginning to merge seamlessly with the night, its eyes standing out like silver coins. Still, she could see its paw on her skirt, claws hooked into the fabric, and from there was able to follow the paw to a leg, and the leg to the rest of the cat proper. That made her feel a little bit better.

“Why?” She asked.

“You’re trembling,” the cat said. “And you stink like fear. Sit down for a little bit before you go back in.”

Violet stared wistfully into the cozy, well lit expanse of her bedroom. Normally it never felt like anything special, but now her room seemed an oasis from the encroaching night.

“I’m afraid because I’m out here,” she protested. “I wont stop being scared until I go back inside.”

The cat didn’t loosen its hold on her skirt and though Violet gave some thought to simply tugging free, she knew she’d leave a chunk of fabric behind if she did. And this was the only (relatively) clean skirt she had left. The others were all stained with ash or grass.

“You’re safe,” the cat said. “I’d let you know if there was anything coming…which there isn’t. Now sit down, I want to talk with you and I’d rather do it here than inside.”

“You talked with me in my room before….”

“Because it was light out. Now, if anyone observed us, they probably wouldn’t see me.”

“You’d just leave me to get in trouble?” Violet asked, momentarily scandalized.

“Better than what would happen to me,” the cat said, then sheathed its claws and let her skirt go. “…Of course, if you really want your lamplight and your bedsheets that badly, I suppose I could go ahead and leave.”

Violet was not so young or naive that she didn’t know exactly what the cat was doing. It wasn’t really respecting her fears and letting her go. There was a reason it had mentioned wanting to talk to her about something immediately beforehand.

But that talk would have to occur outside.

She hesitated, caught between residual dread and a growing, pernicious sense of curiosity. Finally, Violet blew out a breath and turned slowly from her windowsill, keeping her notebook hugged close to her chest, sigil faced outward.

“You’re mean.” She muttered as she shuffled to the side of the dying rosebushes and sat crosslegged on the ground, her back firmly to the house.

The cat smirked and settled into the grass opposite her, judiciously avoiding the slice of yellowy light leaking from her open bedroom window. It looked very pleased with itself.

Violet waited expectantly, but the cat said nothing. Perhaps it was building up to something?

Still no words came, the cat simply sat in a proud Sphinx like pose, ears and whiskers twitching every so often, tail swishing back and forth through the grass with all the benign regularity of a metronome needle. Its eyes slid half shut, until there were little silver crescents staring back at her from the darkness. Violet shifted impatiently in place, eyes drifting away from the cat to the forest beyond, then to the side of her house, beyond which lay the ominous gravel alleyway and the trapped demon and…

“What did you want to talk to me about?” She asked at last, not even bothering to hide her impatience.

The cat straightened up.

“I was waiting for the stars,” it said. “…Do you know the constellations?”

Violet blinked, caught off guard. Of all the things she’d been half expecting or wondering about the cat’s intentions…this wasn’t one of them.

Slowly, she shook her head.

“Why am I not surprised?” The cat sighed. “Everything about this place seems designed to keep people pinned here, like a butterfly to a board.”

“I thought you liked coming here.” Violet said, fresh unease blossoming in the pit of her stomach.

“I like hunting here,” the cat corrected. “The mice are slow and dazed, as are the people. There’s no curiosity, just a general terror of what might lie beyond.”

“But there are demons and monsters out there.” Violet said defensively.

“So? Can you not defend against them?”

“I….” Violet trailed off, glancing again to the corner of her house and the unseen things that lay beyond it. Once more the full reality of what she’d done settled in her mind, a bit more comfortably this time.

“We’re getting off track,” the cat said, but there was a warm bloom of self centered satisfaction in its voice. It had clearly made the point it wanted to. “We were talking about the stars.”

Violet looked to the sky. There weren’t too many stars out yet, only the very brightest had begun to shine and they hung like points of burning ice in a clear, cloudless sky.

“I know that one,” she said, pointing. “That’s the North Star.”

“Very good.” The cat agreed.

The North Star hung directly over the electric blue haze of the Glow, which had reached full brightness. It was a clear night and though the Glow was a long ways off, Violet could still see individual rays and threads of light piercing the heavens.

“I can always tell direction because of the Glow,” Violet said. “It even works if it’s cloudy and you can’t see the stars.”

The cat nodded but said nothing. As she observed her feline companion, something occurred to Violet.

“…Have you ever been there?” She asked.

“Where?”

“Over there,” she pointed, finger silhouetted by blue. “To where the light is coming from.”

The cat scrutinized the Glow for a long moment, as though it was some little known destination that needed careful examining, then shook its head curtly.

“No.” It said.

Despite herself Violet couldn’t help but be surprised. The Glow was something she saw almost every single night, its light bright enough to pierce even the thickest storm clouds and fogs. It presented a comfortable constant, a reminder that there was some peaceful stability even past the limits of her village.

“It’s protective,” she said. “A good omen.”

“I don’t believe in omens.” The cat yawned and ran one paw through its whiskers, keeping them sleek and straight.

Violet cocked her head and looked down to the sigil on her notebook’s cover. It had grown considerably more blurred since she’d last looked at it and so she dug the stick of chalk out of her pocket and began to touch the symbol up.

“What kind of sense does that make?” She asked.

“Not believing in omens? Plenty. There’s nothing to say that one random event will have much bearing on the nature of things to come.”

“But you just had me defend against a demon with a chalk drawing. Next to that, omens make plenty of sense.”

“Whatever’s causing that glow is powerful,” the cat admitted after a moment. “But I doubt it cares about you. Power tends to make things solipsistic…why do you think mountains never talk to anyone?”

Violet considered this for a time.

“I’ve never seen a mountain.” She said at last.

“I have,” the cat said. “I’ve even been on one, though only briefly. I’m not fond of slopes.”

Violet looked up at the sky again, then down to the inky blankness of the nighttime forest. Suddenly it didn’t seem quite so foreign and frightening. Perhaps it was because she had the sigil, or because the cat was right next to her…or even because she was within easy scrambling range of her bedroom window, but she didn’t feel even half as scared as she’d been before.

“Did you really mean it when you said you couldn’t beat the demon without me?” She asked after a moment.

The cat gave her a sidelong glance.

“You shouldn’t need to ask,” it said. “I could have chased it away if I’d wanted to, but sooner or later it would’ve come back. Thanks to you it’s trapped in that drainpipe.”

“What will happen to it?”

“It’ll starve. Eventually.”

Violet winced at the thought of that. Folded in amongst the fractured cloud of words and threats it had poured into her mind had been apologies and pleas, needle sharp and bright as broken glass. They’d felt strange and discordant even when compared to the rest of the demon’s speech.

Why had it said that? Even when it was threatening murder there had still been ( s o r r y ) differing tones ( p l e a s e h e l p u s ) sprinkled throughout.

She wanted to ask how long it would take for the demon to finally give up and die, but at the same time…did she really want the answer?

What if it took weeks or months? What if it never truly died and there was always the thin, reedy semblance of some voice begging for her to let it out?

Violet took a deep breath.

“What if there are more?” She asked.

“Then you take the sigil, trap them someplace tight and brick them up.” The cat said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Violet swallowed. Her throat still felt sour from when she’d been sick, but though she badly wanted a drink of water, she stayed where she was.

“I was serious about what I said before. There aren’t supposed to be demons here. I don’t know how the one in the drainpipe got across the river.”

But though she expected the cat to share in her worry or at least contribute some energy to contemplating the problem at hand, it only yawned and rolled onto its side, seeming to enjoy the feeling of the grass on its whiskers.

“Or….” Violet tried to plow ahead. “Or…I don’t know how you got here either.”

She hadn’t really considered this part of the equation beforehand, but now she just felt surprised at herself. Cats didn’t like open water either.

The cat ignored her for a few moments, but as Violet’s gaze persisted it rolled onto its back, regarding her sagely from its new upside down position.

“Your view of the situation is limited,” it said. “As, perhaps, is mine. I never really considered there to be a river in the first place.”

All Violet could do was stare for a moment as she tried to decipher what the cat had just said. Her first instinct was to dismiss it as facetious nonsense, the cat being deliberately obtuse in order to punish her for asking unwelcome questions. But she couldn’t quite do that, for there remained a sense of genuine earnestness buried beneath everything else.

Again the cat went back to looking up at the sky.

“I’m upside down now,” it said, stretching all four of its paws up, as though it expected there to be a solid floor somewhere in the air above it. “My perception is entirely different, as are the actions available to me. From my perspective the stars are below me, even if gravity continues to push as if I remain in my original configuration.”

Violet found a few blades of grass and began to twist them back and forth between her fingers, a restless confusion swelling within her. What the cat had said felt like it ought to make sense, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was all supposed to connect to…even if it seemed to be self evident to the inverted feline before her.

“See, I wish to make use of this position, this new reality I find myself in,” the cat said, slowly beginning to pedal its paws in the air, as though it were walking. “But surely I cannot, right? Can a cat walk while upside down?” It gave her a sly wink, one silver eye disappearing into the surrounding blackness for a moment, then, abruptly, the cat was gone.

It didn’t simply blink out of existence so much as the night grew more intense around it. Violet could still see the space where the cat was supposed to be, but now her eyes slid right off of it, no sensory grip established. It was as though a seam had opened in space and she was now staring into a place beyond, like…

She clapped her hands over her eyes and scooted instinctively back, stinging the back of her head against the wall of the house. But even as she did, even as she felt an instinctive pulse of fear rattle through her, Violet knew that this was very different than the demon. Her mind was not fizzing off into frightened patches of numbness, her eyes simply couldn’t process the new quality of the space before her.

It was so close. If she reached out she could brush a finger against its shapeless, depthless breadth, but the very thought scared her so badly that Violet scooted away, mindless of the thorny rose vines she was putting to her back.

Then, from somewhere quite close by but at the same time interminably distant, the cat’s voice spiraled into her ears, not seeming to land all at once.

“A willingness to view those spaces as endlessly alternate means that things like rivers and islands cannot exist in all variations.” It said.

Violet tried to track the cat’s words. They came from above her, she thought, somewhere close to where it had been looking before…

What had it just done? A confused part of her mind insisted that this was some sort of trickery, the cat had simply slipped off into the darkness and was now messing with her, but she could still see the patch of nothingness fogging the space where it had been lying.

Its voice did not come from that, however, and as Violet watched it began to fade, once more affording her a view of the grass and the dirt and the flowers. Still, her heart remained lodged in her throat.

“Where are you?” She asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” the cat said breezily, and Violet thought that it was somewhere between the rising moon and the icy twinkle of the North Star. “Where I am is not nearly so important as where I will be.”

And even before the last word was out of its mouth the cat was sitting primly before her, right side up once more, looking very pleased with itself. It had a flower beneath its front paws, one with red petals and splashes of blue along the length of its stamen. Violet hadn’t seen its variety before, not in the village at least.

Now she thought she understood, in the barest corners of her mind at least. The cat had somehow traveled somewhere, though she did not as of yet know how. As she watched the cat pushed the flower closer to her, a few of its vivid petals dropping off. It was still attached to its roots and a clump of damp soil, Violet realized, the cat had tugged it straight out of the ground.

“A gift from the other side of the river,” it said. “And look, I didn’t even get my paws wet.” The cat wiggled its toes in front of her eyes, little silvery claws lancing out for just a moment.

“How…?” Violet asked. She was too dumbfounded for more words to be possible.

“I wanted to, therefore I did. You like flowers, don’t you?”

Violet reached in front of her and gently stroked one finger along the length of the flower’s stem, as if to prove to herself that it was actually real. Then, mindful of its wellbeing, she scooped a shallow hole into the soil just short of the rose vines and replanted it there. The flower drooped, bedraggled by the journey it had just endured, but seemed very much alive and present.

The cat watched this with some interest but said nothing.

Even as she patted the soil down around the flower’s roots, Violet felt a strange, trembly fear arise, parting the confusion like a blade through water.

“…The demons can do the same thing?” She asked at last. Even airing the question made the inside of her head feel strange and coppery.

“Oh they want to,” the cat said. “They want to very, very badly. Most of them are too scattered to have any hope of getting through, but there are some out there that might get the hang of it eventually.”

“That one in the drainpipe….” Violet glanced hurriedly over her shoulder, to where the corner of her house and the alley beyond were drenched in shadow. “If it can do the same thing as you, what’s keeping it from leaving?” It was a bright, horrible sort of terror that came with her question, and again Violet thought about jumping through her window and slamming it shut, isolating herself from the rest of the world.

But the cat only shook its head.

“There are the bricks,” it said plainly, voice free of worry or fear. “You put them there, remember?”

“But….”

“Think of it this way. In my case there was a river that I needed to get across. That river only exists if I am upright, like I am right now. If I wish to travel in any other orientation then the river is no longer a problem, I can move across the space that exists above the river, or along the river. The demon in the drainpipe, however, it can contort itself any way it pleases but the bricks will always be there.”

Violet shook her head.

“You went past…you were in the space past space.” She protested.

“Hardly,” the cat smiled, seeming to enjoy her bafflement. “I can’t go through walls or under the ground, not ordinarily at least, and neither can the demon.”

Violet stared. The cat reminded her to breathe and she did. Then, slowly, she voiced another question.

“How do they even know about us?” Violet asked,

“You’d have to ask them,” the cat shrugged disinterestedly. “But I could hear their yearning. It sounds a bit like a kettle boiling over.”

Violet took a deep breath and shuffled herself back against the wall so she was sitting as straight as she could. It didn’t do anything to make her feel less frightened.

“Is this…recent?” She managed to ask.

“Today was the first time you’ve ever seen a demon, so…probably.” The cat shrugged faintly and looked elsewhere. It seemed to be losing interest in the conversation.

Violet snapped her fingers to get the cat’s attention back and was slightly gratified to see it jump.

“How can we stop them?” She asked.

The cat cocked its head, caught off guard.

“Stop them? Why?”

“Because there’ll be more coming!” Violet nearly shouted, the words coming out much louder than she’d intended. But though she half expected windows to open or people to start looking around, there was no change to the surrounding stillness.

“You have the sigil,” the cat said patiently. “And from firsthand experience I can say that you’re not completely useless with it.”

“What about everyone else? I can’t just show them the sigil or tell them about you…they’d think it was wrong.”

“Wrong….” The cat rolled its eyes and slid onto its side, trapping a tuft of grass between its front paws. For a moment Violet thought it was about to disappear again but thankfully the cat remained present.

For a long moment she just stared, unable to understand how the cat could be so entirely casual. The demon she’d bricked up in the drainpipe hadn’t been an anomaly, there would soon be more of its ilk coming. How couldn’t it grasp the terrible magnitude of that?

Then, slowly, her gaze slid to the horizon…and the Glow.

“Maybe you could do something for us.” Violet said.

The cat only sighed but Violet kept speaking regardless.

“You could go to the very heart of the Glow and ask if it could help us,” she said, staring hard at the cat, making it work to ignore her. “I know you could.”

Finally the cat grumbled and sat up straight once more. It looked unamused.

“I could,” it allowed. “But even if such an action were guaranteed to work, which it isn’t…why would I?”

“Because helping people is good.”

“Fossilizing people on the other hand, I’m not sure that’s socially acceptable. See, Violet, you live in a frozen place ruled by tradition and fear. You’re marginally better than the others here just by virtue of being open to acknowledging my existence, but you still don’t get it.”

“Get what?

“If your neighbors aren’t willing to accept change in order to fight what’s coming then even if I could save them I wouldn’t. They don’t deserve the effort I would have to put in just to continue living the way they do. I’m not interested in preserving the comfort of idiots.”

Violet felt her fists clench, a red hot needle of anger swirling through the center of her. She didn’t often agree with the rules her village set, or the reasoning behind the mandated superstitions, but how else could she react to an attack on everyone she knew?

“You’re mean,” she muttered, but this time there was venom in her voice. “I don’t care how good you are at scaring demons, you’re mean and cruel and…and no wonder nobody wants to talk to you.”

The cat regarded her evenly, expression unreadable, then got up and stretched.

“Perhaps we’ll see each other again.” It said, but though its tone was supposed to be casual Violet could hear a cold stiffness at the back of the cat’s voice that let her know her words had impacted.

And then it was gone.