Wylles’ face clouded. “Already evil has come to this place. I saw my father here with you, planning evil. I want to know what you are planning.”
When she laughed at him, he turned white. “You are my subject. When I ask you a question you are obliged to answer.”
“I am no one’s subject. I am Catswold; I bow to no ruler.”
He screamed a spell and swung the shovel; she drove heaviness into it so it dropped, and grabbed his hands. He struggled but soon they stood locked together by her grip, and by their powers. She burned to weaken him. He was only a boy, but he filled her with cold fear. Suddenly he jerked free and snatched up the hoe, and his spell, born of rage, overrode hers. They scuffled, she hit him. The hoe struck her in the head a blow that dizzied her, pain warped her vision. She faced him, dizzy, her back to the wall. She felt herself changing and was terrified to be small. Gasping, she shouted a forgetting spell as she felt herself change to cat.
She was cat, staring up at him. Wylles stared at her blankly, then looked at the hoe he held, puzzled, and he lowered it. She watched him, her ears back, then wiped her paw at the blood that ran down her cheek. She didn’t know whether he had changed her or whether the pain had changed her.
He looked down at her, puzzled, made no effort to harm her though she was small. Silently she brought the changing spell, and brought it again—she became a woman again with effort. When she stood tall before him, he seemed startled. “Where did you come from? I don’t…”
“We came in here together, don’t you remember? I was just behind you. You were telling me your name. I had asked you where you live.”
“I—Tom,” he said, confused. “Tom Hollingsworth. I live up—up the garden. In the white house. You’re hurt—you’ve hurt your head.”
“I hit my head. I must go and tend to it. Maybe you’d better go home, Tom.”
Wylles nodded obediently and went out. She stood outside the portal watching him meander up the garden. Then she headed for the studio, dizzy and weak.
When Braden opened the door and saw the blood he put his arm around her and helped her to the couch. “Better lie down. I’ll get some ice.” She lay down gratefully on the vermilion silk. He left her, and soon she could hear the rattle of the ice tray. He returned to hold an icy towel to her forehead and cheek, his dark eyes intense. “Are you dizzy? Can you see clearly? Are you sick to your stomach? Melissa? My God, what happened to you?”
Gratefully she let him doctor her. Even under the cold pack she could feel her cheek and forehead swelling, and then, terrified, she felt the falling sensation that came with change. Pain made the change, she was sure of it now. She blocked the metamorphosis stubbornly, willing herself to hold human shape, sick with terror that she would become the little cat as he watched.
“Are you dizzy, Melissa? Do you feel nauseated?”
“Not dizzy, not sick. It just hurts. The ice makes it better.”
Kneeling beside the couch he drew her to him, holding her close, his lips against her hurt forehead. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“I fell, up in the woods—I tripped on something, a branch. So stupid.” She was steadying now. The sense of turning to cat was fading. “I fell against a tree and hit my head.”
“But you’re trembling.”
“It frightened me. It hurt.”
He tilted her chin up, kissing her. “You’re completely white. Is that all that happened? Or was it someone—did someone hurt you?”
“No, there was no one. The pain made me dizzy, the fall frightened me. I—I’m all right now.”
“Rest a while. I’ll get a blanket.”
She watched him tuck the blanket around her, already she was drifting.
He said, “Don’t go to sleep. If it’s a concussion you mustn’t sleep. Talk to me.”
She didn’t want to sleep; she was terrified of going to sleep and changing. But she was very sleepy. Fighting to stay awake she rose at last, went into the bathroom, and washed her face. When she came out of the bathroom she stood behind him looking at the new painting, one from the Victorian house.
This painting had a dark quality. She saw herself standing beside the bevelled mirror in a bedroom of the Victorian house, wrapped in reflected shadows. She stared into her own face, startled.
She had, in this painting, a quality the other paintings did not show. Her face reflected power. Her eyes, within the shadows, reflected magic.
He was working away, oblivious to her. She stared at his back, frightened. Braden was seeing too much. First the secret cat shadows through her figure, and now this revealing glint of magic, far too explicit to be comfortable.
But he didn’t know anything consciously, she was convinced of it. Whatever Braden perceived was seen not with his conscious mind.
When she had stood behind him for some minutes held by the painting, and upset by it, he turned. He was frowning, annoyed that she was standing there. But she supposed this was natural—no one wanted someone looking over his shoulder. He said, “Do you feel any better?”
She nodded.
