[story] lest auld acquaintance be forgot
author: kytha (kytha)
email: kyzaboo [at] gmail.com
I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.
-- Joseph Addison
Palomir is of the quietly smug opinion that he has finally grown past the stage of being ruffled by any of his boss's idiosyncracies.
He knows, instinctively, that it's too good to last.
Gale proves as much when she snags him by the collar, buries her faceagainst the exposed skin, and enthusiastically depiliates his neck with her nostrils.
At least, that's what it feels like, judging by the crass snort being directed into his nape. Palomir can't even muster a yelp of surprise, freezing like an animal who hopes desperately that feigning death will convince a predator that indigestion is most certainly not the better part of valor.
It's a moot point. Gale releases him just as abruptly as she has seized him, leaving him off-balance and teetering on the balls of his feet.
Gale delivers her verdict in dire tones: "You smell like dead people."
The pretense of solemnity is upset by the way she wrinkles her nose as if she really has caught a whiff of something disgusting. "You should get that taken care of, y'know," she tells him sagely, wagging a finger in front of his nose. "It's best to get these things early on, before you get an infestation."
An infestation of what, Palomir almost asks, but before the elf can open his mouth to sputter, she's gone.
"What was that about?" he demands of Erias-- unsurprisingly, the blond has stuck his head out of his cubby to see what all the fuss is about.
"Dunno," Erias answers helpfully. "I think she meant you need a shower."
Palomir spends the majority of the morning contemplating the various trajectories his coffee mug will need to take in order to impact with his cousin's head, given a) the mug is half-empty, b) Erias' cubicle is on the other side of the hall, and c) the fact that his cousin's skull is probably of a greater circumference than average due to an abnormally large ego, or at least a big mouth.
Before he can continue to mentally eviscerate his cousin, Palomir finds himself distracted by all the hectic activity expected of a criminal organization masquerading as a respectable trading firm. Thoughts of revenge are shelved in favor of trying to work out just how they've managed to acquire six hundred kilos of flour in their basement, and whether or not killing the civilians involved will be cheaper than paying them off.
Just before lunch, Gale loudly notes that she might in fact be responsible for the demolished sugar warehouse on Sixty-Sixth Avenue, currently being debated on the radio as either a terrorist attack or a grudge strike by disgruntled diabetics. This announcement inevitably prompts several people to reach for their anti-depressant of choice, but it's all in a day's work, and life goes on as usual.
For the most part.
Palomir is not, by nature, a particularly superstitious elf. Magic, of course, is something he does believe in. In a city built mostly on a giant tree, employed in a so-called cake mafia by a girl sporting a cat's ears and tail, after having lived more than three (for the most part incredibly dull, but still) centuries - he'd have to be a complete idiot not to. There are even days when he can be persuaded to believe in miracles; to be fair, his sense of awed reverence is largely limited to marveling at their continued survival after increasingly improbable, life-threatening circumstances.
Beyond that, Palomir is rather disinclined to indulge in any folkloric nonsense. As far as he is concerned, if passing under a ladder is the fastest way to get to his destination, he'll gladly do so. If the thirteenth day of a given month happens to fall on a Friday, the only reason it's something to worry about is because Gale will insist that everyone wear their clothes backwards and wear pieces of wood around their necks to ward off bad luck.
He's not sure how he can be expected to believe that a minor genetic mutation can give an otherwise unremarkable bit of foliage the ability to impart good fortune. Coins tossed into fountains are surely only detrimental to the quality of the water circulating the city's sewer system, and poorly mounted, rusty horseshoes hung over doorways represent nothing short of lumping the possibility of tetanus on top of the very real risk of a minor concussion.
In sum, it's all ridiculous. Anyway, superstitions contradict each other half of the time. Trying to follow all of them at once would be beyond unreasonable, and Palomir is nothing if not practical.
Gale, conversely, is notoriously unstable, fond of eschewing good sense in favor of overblown dramatics. In the chaos that passes for Palomir's daily routine, one moment of sinister foreshadowing is easily dismissed as another of the girl's inscrutable whims. In any case, if it was something really important, he's sure she'd make a bigger fuss out of it.
He's so determined to ignore all possibility of occult interference that he doesn't find himself worried about why his neighbor's been complaining about her cats behaving strangely, or why sheets he's sure he left tucked in this morning are rumpled by the time he comes home. Or why little things around the house-- spoons, tinfoil, even the hideous shot glass his uncle gave him for his two-hundredth birthday and that Palomir reluctantly keeps on his mantel - disappear.
Palomir suspects it's one of the neighborhood kids playing a prank, probably on a dare. Elves don't tend to keep residences among the suburban areas of Windy City; Palomir's been here for two or three months, so he's still something of a novelty. He's hoping it wears off soon.
If there is anything that might tip him off to something being amiss, it might be disturbed slumber - as a general rule, Palomir's dreams have never been troubled. Despite Gale's pronouncement, this doesn't change. A full week after she seizes him, he dreams of nothing more unusual than being swaddled in unusually comfortable bedsheets, then floating in the middle of an endless ocean. He wakes up restless, chest and throat oddly sore.
Palomir doesn't think much of it, and goes about his morning ablutions with his typical gusto, i.e. none.
And then he goes to work.
Unlike Gale, he doesn't make a habit of greeting the other members of the mafia. They're usually polite enough to return the favor. That is why it's a surprise when Engol greets him abruptly, falling into step beside Palomir as he strides along the lobby.
"Hey." Engol, Palomir notices, has already managed to acquire a mug of hot, strong-smelling coffee, which he's sipping at as he walks. From this side, he can only see part of the twisted, jagged scar that runs diagonally across Engol's face; the shorter elf refuses to talk about it (or how he ended up working for Gale, as well - Palomir assumes it's blackmail), and Palomir isn't really curious either.
"Hey," he returns, greeting delivered with his usual blandness, and he expects the conversation (if one can call it that) will end there.
Instead, Engol blinks, and his eyes abruptly focus on Palomir, as if he's seeing him for the first time. For all Palomir knows, that might be accurate. All the same, he's left tensing uncomfortably underneath that stare, and he wonders what he's done to earn it. He resists the urge to pick up his pace. Undue scrutiny, in his opinion, is only a sign of trouble.
In this instance, his beliefs aren't disappointed.
"You haven't noticed anything ... strange about the office, have you?" Engol asks. The question seems to stick in his throat a bit on its way out, as if only desperate circumstances could have forced it out. He still looks slightly ill from having said it at all.
"No," Palomir says, and then to make the answer more honest, amends, "No more than the usual." He has the strange urge to tug his hat down tighter over his eyes.
"I wouldn't normally ask," Engol grimaces. When they reach the elevators, he waves Palomir in first, then steps in behind him and presses the button for the eighth floor. He waits until the door closes before he continues. "Only, some of the girls up in the Finance Redistribution department swear there's something funny in the air."
"The air?" Automatically, Palomir thumbs the button for the ninth floor.
Engol nods. "Yeah. Might be a problem in the air ducts. The ones closest to 'em say they're sure they're hearing something in there, too."
Palomir catches the hint. "I'll get it looked into."
Engol looks, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, relieved. For a horrible moment Palomir gets the feeling that if he was wearing a hat, Engol would have just tipped it at him.
As it is, Engol does lift his mug at Palomir in silent toast. "Thanks. I 'preciate it."
The elevator comes to a smooth stop, a quiet 'ding' announcing their arrival at the seventh floor. Engol steps through the doors and ambles his way down the corridor.
The moment he gets to his own cubby, Palomir places a call to maintenance, which promises to get a couple of men to have a look at the offending ducts. He gets a report by mid-afternoon: there's nothing out of place with the air ducts themselves, but they've located a couple of vents that open onto the outside of the building that shouldn't be open, but are.
For a moment, Palomir tenses, but the head janitor guarantees that it's nothing to worry about.
"The vents aren't large enough for anything but a bird or a rat to getinto, sir!" he's told, the voice on the other end of the line confident - and clearly proud of a building that it has done its best to render infiltration-proof. "And they only fasten from the inside, anyway."
"And the complaints about air quality?" Palomir's pen drums against the desk edge.
There's a rustle of paper. "Well, there's scratches on the inside of the vents near Finances, and a hell of a lot of - beggin' your pardon - crap. We figure something might have gotten into the ducts and died; that, or something's made its nest in 'em and keeps bringing back all kinds of things to eat. Haven't found out which one it is yet, sir! They're still looking. Pers'nally," the janitor's tone turns confidential, "I reckon it's the second."
The elf feels an unpleasant twinge. "It's not going to need an actual cleaning-out, is it?"
"Could do, sir!" the head janitor says, sounding obscenely cheerful at the prospect of being able to use any of two dozen different pesticides Palomir knows are stored in the supply closet. "There's enough shi - sorry, waste here for a lot of little critters. We might even have an infestation!" Palomir wishes he hadn't said the word with such relish; belatedly, he remembers that the entire janitorial staff is made up of short, hyperactive humanoids with a strong resemblance to terriers. Enthusiasm might be forgiven.
"Right, well. Just keep me up to date on things before you decide to nuke the entire ventilation system."
"Oh, there'd be no need for that sir!" The janitor sounds shocked that Palomir could even suggest it. "We could just close off the vents that connect floor seven's air ducts to the other floors. Then we could fill 'em up with poison. 'Course, we'd have to shut down the whole floor til' we've gotten all the buggers, but--"
"Yes, yes, I think I've gotten the picture," Palomir says testily, before the janitor can launch into a convoluted explanation of every technical aspect of the theoretical operation. "Was there anything else?"
"Er, right. Did y'want a written copy of the report to go up to your office, sir?"
"Yes."
The connection is terminated with a sharp click. As Palomir sets his own handset down, he hopes the cold feeling in his stomach is the sandwich he had for lunch asserting itself, and not a premonition.
What a lot of fuss to make for a couple of scratches and some bird droppings.
The planners of Windy City, Palomir sometimes has cause to feel, had probably been gifted with a sense of irony denser than heavy lead. As if it weren't enough to gift a place perpetually stuck in the atmospheric equivalent of a writer's block with a name that could belong to a tropical beach resort, he finds himself rudely awakened in his house on Peaceful Drive by three things.
The first reason he wakes is the nightmare. Palomir doesn't get nightmares often. He assumes this is because of the admittedly self-indulgent and melodramatic notion that he's stuck in a living one, but this particular vision doesn't even give him the dignity of being something normal.
Palomir dreams of being stuck in a dark, open place, with a stench far more pungent than any fiction of his mind has a right to be. It's not claustrophobic - he can sense that there's a lot of space above him and around him, and he's not bound in place. It would be almost comforting if he was. Instead, he feels the weight of countless stares directed at him from every direction, as cold and alien as the moon.
Of course, to the best of Palomir's knowledge, the moon has never emitted a sense of malice nearly as powerful as this. For the space of several heartbeats, they find themselves caught in a stalemate.
Palomir, however, only has one set of eyes. He senses the sudden shift in the air, the beating of a hundred silent wings creating the pressure of movement at his back. Before he can turn and face them, the first of what feel like several little knives dig into his flesh. He tries to shield himself with his arm and then they get that too--
At that point, much to his relief, the nightmare ends.
The second reason he wakes up is almost directly related to the first. After the one-second pause it takes him to realize he's no longer dreaming, he registers the sharp pain lancing through his right hand, along the lines the dream-shadows have carved into his palm. It's painful enough that he doubles over it in reflex, eyes watering.
The third reason he wakes up, and the reason he doesn't even have the time to examine what feels like a very deep and very nasty gash (where's the blood, he wonders) is that the old lady who lives next door is screaming at the top of her lungs.
It's mostly incoherent, and terribly shrill, and on top of everything else that's woken him up so far, Palomir's not sure he wants to go and see what's wrong now. Still, a sense of civic duty - or possibly, masochism - compels him to stagger towards his poor, rickety excuse for a balcony and look down.
Mrs. Fidwidget - or maybe it was Fidinky, he can never remember her name - is kneeling in the middle of her back porch, hands clasped to her mouth. Palomir's not the only one who's been woken up by the noise. The lights of other houses around the park are slowly flickering on, throwing the sparse greenery in sharp relief. The groggy, irritated grumbles that accompany the additional illumination are easily audible to his ears, but he tunes it out with the ease of long practice and focuses on the house beside him.
Mrs. Fidwidget's screams have died away to mute silence. In the stark light, it's easy to see what caused them in the first place.
In any given population of sentient beings that is large enough - and prosperous enough - there will always be an old cat lady. Occasionally, the cats might be substituted for rats, or cows, or even exotic three-pronged slimes, and sometimes the old lady in question is neither a lady nor old. But every neighborhood has one: they're a bit eccentric, and they smell funny even from within a ten-meter distance, and they always seem to like their pets better than people.
They are, of course, harmless. They may cause general aggravation to the people near them by providing a signal beacon to every stray animal of their choice, and their neighbors may not exactly appreciate their beloved darlings trampling through their yards or clawing up their furniture or loudly and bawdily attempting to send their population hurtling towards the neighborhood's carrying capacity - but they are harmless.
So it is fairly accurate to say that, despite whatever inglorious crimes Mrs. Fidwidget's cats might have wrought on the local ecosystem, she most certainly does not deserve to find them scattered behind her house in various states of 'stone dead'.
All one hundred and twenty of them.
Palomir's stomach does not turn.
In one of the other houses, woken by the fuss, a little girl begins to cry.
Nobody attempts to hush her.
It is, Palomir decides, a particularly bad day to be at work. He hasn't been able to sleep since his painfully early morning, and it shows - thankfully, there isn't anything too complicated, and he can sort through most of his tasks automatically. Some of the chill from the night seems to have stuck with him; he can't help but shiver occasionally.
He has seen, firsthand, several arguably more terrible things than a yardful of dead cats. He has not, however, actually seen a yardful of (definitely murdered, unless cats these days come equipped with explosive brains) dead cats before, and there's something to be said for the shock value of something novel.
His phone rings, and he answers it automatically, "Good - argharghargh - afternoon, you have just reached the offices of Tucker and Tucker, may I help you?" before he realizes that the call is being made on the internal lines, and that he's grabbed it with his right hand.
To their credit, the person on the other end of the line doesn't choose to comment. "It doesn't look like there's anything else in there, sir."
Palomir feels like he's suddenly tuned into a conversation he hasn't exactly been part of. "I'm sorry, what?"
"M'fraid there's nothing else in the vents except more of the same, sir." The head janitor's tone is patient, used to dealing with far flightier conversation partners, but it's audibly disappointed. Palomir is profoundly relieved until the beast-man pipes up hopefully, "Y'want we should search the vents of other floors too? It might've just spread to another floor."
"No."
"Just making sure," the head janitor sulks, mildly dispirited that his helpful, completely motive-free suggestion should meet with such scathing disapproval. "I'll get t'work on the official report of th'incident, then."
"You do that," Palomir says, with a firmness he doesn't really feel. He puts down the phone at the same time Erias comes into his cubby, nose wrinkled and fanning a sheaf of papers Palomir recognizes as their most recent account balance in front of his nose.
"Whew!" Erias says, fanning furiously enough that his self-generated breeze blows strands of his pale blond hair away from his face. His face is sheened with sweat, and he's looking a little wilted; this doesn't spare him from getting the sharper edge of a withering glare when Palomir reaches over to snatch the papers away from his cousin's hands. With the ease of long practice, Erias ducks out of range, and continues his vain efforts to provide some healthy ventilation around the general region of his head via frantic fluttering of the sheets that represent hours of painstaking calculations.
Palomir settles for leaning back in his chair and trying his best to look disapproving. Naturally, he's rather good at it.
Equally naturally, Erias looks anything but abashed. "Hot, isn't it?"
"I don't see why you find it uncomfortable. It feels perfectly fine to me."
Erias gives the dark-haired elf a sardonic look of his own, though it's punctuated with a long, slow roll of both eyes. "In case you haven't checked the thermometer recently, it's in the nineties," he retorts. "And that's indoors."
When the papers flutter back into arm's range, Palomir lunges for them, but Erias is already flipping them out of reach. Palomir scowls.
"Do you know how long it took to get that together?" he demands. "Stop waving it around like it's a feather duster!"
"I am not!" Erias looks injured at the mere accusation. "I'm just employing it to my short-term - immediate, even - benefit. Anyway," he points out, "You can always just print out another copy of the thing. We do live in a digital age, you know. Power of technology, etcetera. You could probably get the computer to work out the sums in half the time, if you'd bother to use it for more than just plain typing." Erias stares at Palomir's plain little computer almost calculatingly.
"It's the principle of the thing," Palomir snaps, rubbing at his arms. "And I have no intention on relying on a machine for something as basic as simple addition."
"Suit yourself." Erias shrugs; he tends not to be terribly concerned about Palomir's life, in Palomir's experience, unless there's an opportunity to get a good laugh out of it. Or to make a particularly bad joke at Palomir's expense. Palomir can sense one of the latter coming on by the way Erias is eying him over the fanning papers with exaggerated care.
"If you ask me," Erias sing-songs, and Palomir braces himself for the punchline, "I think you just need to get l--"
Erias doesn't get to finish his sentence, because there's a noise that sounds like hollow, booming thunder - or like several soft things slamming into a metal container - and the smell of rotting flesh and something only definable as fowl assails their nostrils.
"Run," Palomir suddenly says, seized by a sudden mad conviction, and he's pushing a protesting Erias out the door, down the hall, ignoring confused yells from the other cubicles and shouting only for the others to get out get out getoutgetoutgetOUT--
Like a swollen, putrescent hurricane of dark glistening bodies and snapping beaks, the ravens explode from the air ducts. They don't caw, or screech, or make any noise at all, save for the slow fleshy beat of wings and the painful sounding crunch as the weight of several combined bodies - heedless of usual mortal constraints such as pain tolerance or even expiration - batter down the obstacles in their wake.
Palomir's hand hurts, and this time it bleeds, spilling blood all over his shirt where he's clutched it desperately to his chest. He can hear Erias shouting, something he can't make out; it's muffled by the living-dead wall of feathers that doesn't so much fly as ooze towards him.
He hits the elevator door shoulder first, and he scrambles out with his uninjured hand to hit the down button. He'd be going down stairs, except that the fire escape is on the other side of the bird-thing-creature. He doesn't think the elevator will get here in time. The miasma the birds' bodies form is already stretching towards him, lengthening into something like a neck, a head, a beak--
Hallo, elf. The voice that speaks is like wet slush. Together the ravens have formed what is unmistakably a head; sluggishly, they cock it towards him. Palomir realizes that curled, broken bodies have compressed to form crude eyes that roll crazily in their makeshift sockets; if the voice is slightly slurred, it's probably the tongue to blame, because it's made up of more of the same - and it's riddled with maggots.
Although it's nearly impossible to tell when it is that the birds' gaze is focused on him, Palomir senses that he's being coolly assessed as a meal, though he's not about to be eaten-- yet. His eyes dart to the elevator's digital display, watching the numbers ascend. Six... seven...
The giant beak parts. You'll make a lovely dinner for the children.
The last thing Palomir remembers thinking, before the birds descend, is that he expects Gale will be livid.
Gale isn't.
Palomir wakes up in slow, painful increments; he's aware of a horrid smell under his nostrils that he can't move his head enough to get away from, and the dull murmur of what he thinks are voices. Everything's fuzzy around the edges, at least hearing wise. He's not quite sure he wants to risk what it's like for his sight.
Eventually, if only to convince whoever's wielding the smelling salts that he no longer needs to be called back to the material world, he manages a gurgle.
He manages quite a bit more when the surprise of him making a noise results in a gasp and someone actually tipping the salts into his nose--
A considerable amount of mass confusion, agonized flailing, and hasty apologies later, Palomir finds himself propped up on the couch, awakenbut finding no comfort in it. His eyes are a red-rimmed, furiously watering mess; he's solving this problem as best as he can by keeping a small towel soaked in ice-cold water slapped across his face. Gale is perched beside him. He suspects she's probably put her feet up on the cushion without taking her shoes off again, but he's in no position to argue the point.
Anyway, he's far more interested in confirming that he is not, in fact, completely barking.
"I didn't dream all that," he croaks. "Did I?" The gauze wrapped around his hand feels real enough, though he has a sneaking suspicious he doesn't actually want to ask how he got the wound.
"Um." Gale makes a noncommittal sound. "Some of it. Could we have some privacy please?" The last is directed reproachfully at everyone else in the room, particularly Erias-- who is, Palomir notes without surprise, loudly informing everyone that he's won that bet with Uncle Enfaloth about when Palomir's sanity would finally snap.
He winces when he hears his cousin go on to note that seeing Palomir stab a ballpen through his hand is really just an inevitability, with the way he's been acting of late.
Palomir imagines, as he hears people shuffling out, that this is what going mad must feel like. It's never the realization that you're not only round the bend, you're running cross-country in a child's wagon - it's the way people suddenly speak and move more softly around you, as if everything in your general vicinity must now be heavily padded and preferably shatterproof. Even words.
Refreshingly, Gale isn't treating him like he's a shoo-in for a mental ward, but she doesn't seem to quite understand what's going on, either. Once they're the only ones left in the room, Palomir preempts her.
"You're the one who was going on about smelling dead people on me. I didn't believe it, now it's real. So tell me what I'm supposed to do about it."
"That?" Gale sounds blank. "That was just to--"
"If you are about to tell me that I've been having horrible nightmares about birds, hallucinating monsters from beyond the grave, and seeing all of my neighbor's cats dead in her backyard because you wanted to mess me up," Palomir says, in a low and terrible voice, "I will not be responsible for my actions."
There's an audible, considering silence. Palomir fancies he can hear the assorted mental gears of Gale's brain weighing her options.
Gale's mouth shuts with a gentle click, but in the next moment, it's open, and she chooses her words delicately.
"Right. Ha ha. Sorry about that." The girl coughs, and Palomir can hear her tail thump against the armrest. She's nervous. That's never a good sign.
"So," Gale says brightly. "You were saying something about birds...?"
Not for the first time, Palomir wonders what he has gotten himself into.
After some discussion, consisting of questions of the genuinely interested and probing nature on Gale's part and Palomir's monosyllabic responses, she's somehow determined that the key to this particularly mystery lies in Palomir's neighborhood. His house seems like a likely place to begin. Palomir realizes he's irrationally afraid that Mrs. Fidwidget's army of cats will all be lolling in their usual afternoon haunts, blissfully and publicly obscene in the way only small things with no use for clothes can be.
He needn't have worried. The cats are nowhere in sight, and a rather alarmingly sunken-looking Mrs. Fidwidget is hunched in the rockinchair on her porch, tipping forward and back in slow, sad creaks. Shame makes Palomir turn his head away from the oddly empty sight - the old woman usually has at least three cats in her lap at any given time, with more clustered around her feet; no one knows how she manages not to tread on their tails.
Even with the haste he employs in the maneuver, Gale is in his house before he is. This is because this is Gale, who is in the habit of barging into Palomir's room in the middle of the night and dragging him off on assorted questionable errands while he's still too groggy to let his sense of morality get in the way.
Apparently, Gale has as little compunction about using a window rather than a door during the day as she does in the anonymity of the night. She's already set off to poke her nose about his home. It reminds him of a particularly inquisitive, oversized cat, though considering what his most recent experience with cats has been, the comparison makes him shiver.
The elf can't imagine what she's looking for. She's already explored the creaking house on many an occasion, probably even without his knowledge or his approval. Palomir does not keep an untidy house, but still he feels a prickle of self-consciousness at the thought. He hopes that she's never gotten a chance to see his home whenever he's inadvertently left a pair of underpants crumpled over some piece of furniture or something equally undignified.
Perhaps, he ponders, Gale finds a strange kind of novelty in her first invited visit.
With a squeak of rubber on steps that are carpeted only in a thin layer of dust, Gale bounds up to the second floor, presumably to explore there as well. Palomir sighs, reaching up to take off his fedora - only it's not there, probably left behind in the office during his little melee with, with... what? he wonders. 'The Forces of Darkness' sounds too epic and too trite to be killing cats behind old ladies' houses; 'a ghost' doesn't quite work as an adequately descriptive noun for something like that thing.
That sounds appropriate enough, Palomir decides, as he rolls his sleeves up and steps into the kitchen. It's the Thing until he can find a better name to call it by.
The elf has managed to put the pasta on the boil and is halfway through chopping the onions for the sauce when he hears a loud squeal from the second floor; like a shot, he's up the stairs and holding his chopping knife in an icepick grip before he registers the squeaking of springs. Familiar springs.
He comes to a slack-jawed stop in the middle of the doorway to his room.
Gale is bouncing on his bed, giggling like a little girl, skirts flying with every bounce and giddy whooping filling the air.
"Palomir!" she yells happily, completely bereft of self-consciousness. "You didn't tell me your bed bounced this well!" The sound of her bottom soundly impacting with the mattress seems to underline the statement.
"You've been holding out, you jerk! Not that I blame you," she adds, as an afterthought. "If I had digs this comfortable, I wouldn't be spreading it around either."
Gale wallows on the bed, happier than a pig in mud. Her appalling indolence transforms the clean sheets and twin-sized mattress into a luxurious pleasure dome for the average bed-bouncing fanatic, a shrine for those in search of the perfect set of springs, a padded palisade...
The elf's mouth goes into a thin, hard line, channeling the near-heart-attack she's given him into righteous irritation.
"Gale, get off the bed," Palomir orders curtly. This is his house, in the end. He's only really her employee as long as he's in uniform - never mind the multiple times she's coerced him into following her orders when he's not in it.
His new sense of control, unsurprisingly, doesn't mean anything to his boss. Who is, for the record, behaving in a completely unprofessional manner, having forsaken bouncing in favor of wriggling on the bed like a landed catfish - completely upsetting the formerly-immaculate bedspread in the process.
The elf's fingers itch to re-tuck the linens under the bed. Gale puckers her lips and sticks her tongue out at him impishly, lying belly-up with her head tilted back to peer at him.
"Spoilsport," she accuses complacently, without any true rancor. She rolls over onto her stomach and continues. "Besides, I'm just getting comfortable. We're going to be spending most of the night on this thing, after all."
Palomir takes a moment to sort through that. And then comprehension crashes in like a hurricane.
"What?"
This is the most awkward situation Palomir has ever found himself in, and he's still not sure how he's gotten here.
After a dinner consisting of two parts silent contemplation and one part slightly sour spaghetti, he and Gale have turned in for the night, on his bed, together. It's somehow simultaneously comforting and insulting that Gale's hardly made any fuss about changing clothes or respecting privacy. While Palomir himself has dressed down to a looser shirt and highly informal shorts (for his own comfort, if nothing else), she's climbed into the bed fully clothed in her orange dress, shucking off socks and shoes on the way.
She had insisted that it was absolutely necessary that she was body-length from Palomir during the night, since vengeful ghosts denied of their prey were twice as likely to come back and finish the job. Palomir strongly suspects there's quite a bit more of made-up and half-arsed in there than Gale herself is willing to admit, but it's comforting not to be treated like he's (too) crazy for seeing a corpse-bird that no one else can.
Of course, he's starting to see that Gale's faith in the integrity of his mind and her willingness to protect his body have a few drawbacks of their own.
Despite the fact that he's pointedly lying on top of the covers while she's snuggled underneath, she's managed to fling a leg and an arm over his side in her sleep. Palomir remains on his side, refraining from rolling over. Her touch makes him itch.
The thing is, the hand carelessly flung across him dangles Gale's signature bubblegum-pink gun from its half-nerveless fingers. Even if she seems asleep, Palomir doesn't want to risk startling Gale into shooting him in the kidney, or worse. Knowing Gale, worse is not merely likely; it's inevitable.
Really, if he'd allow himself to be completely honest, he doesn't mind the warmth and pressure of her limbs that much. Letting someone touch you involves a world's difference in mindset than actually touching someone yourself, and with Gale, it seems, 'letting' her do anything is more of a law of nature than a choice.
Against his will, and more comfortable than he will ever admit to being, Palomir falls asleep.
For the second night in a row, he wakes up in an unpleasant manner. On this particular occasion, he's been half-thrown to the floor to the accompaniment of muffled gunshots, sheets hobbling his legs; despite his better judgment, he opens his eyes. Color spots dance crazily across his vision-- for a moment he thinks he can see, in the dark space between them, the cold gaze of dead things staring back, dark beaks clicking staccato rhythms that echo his pulse...
"Missed it!" Gale yells vehemently, vibrant and loud and alive. He can feel her weight roll off the bed-- the recoil as she leaps off jolts his legs up sharply tumbles him heels-over-head and onto his back.
All in all, this is not an auspicious start to the day, particularly not when he can hear the loud yells of other houses in the neighborhood being roused by the racket.
The clock's been broken since he came here, and he hasn't figured out how to fix it yet, mainly because it doesn't come with a manual and also because all the buttons have been stuck in place by grime. The display blinks a sullen red 12:00 AM from its position on the side table, and the elf closes his eyes.
No. Definitely not. If there is a word for the antithesis of auspicious - anti-auspicious? Non-auspicious? Suspicious? - it applies to the situation at hand distressingly well.
One eyelid peels back and he peers at the clock again; much to his own dismay, the digits are beginning to change. Blip by digital blip, slowly at first, then faster and faster until he's left wondering whether it's rushing to count down the day or to start a new one.
7:56 AM. 12:59 PM. 9:21 PM.
He wonders why he feels so cold.
"Palo!" And then Gale's by his side again, warmth and annoyance and eternal exasperation at his inability to get with the program and just roll with the punches even before he even knows they're coming. He blinks, and the clock face returns to normal.
"Geez, don't you have a bath in the house?"
Palomir gives Gale a mute look, the kind that says 'Do you have any idea of the kind of soulrending anguish that is likely to befall me in the next few minutes if we don't find a way to get this thing out of my life? And you're still making jabs at my hygiene?'
Gale has never been terribly good with subtitles.
"Come on," she says decisively, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him up with that inhuman strength he's never questioned the origins of. "We're going to pay Mrs. Cat Lady a visit."
"Fidwidget," Palomir manages feebly. "Her last name is Fidwidget."
"Whatever."
As it turns out, Mrs. Fidwidget is in not much of a state to do anything, much less host any visitors. She pays careful, patient attention to Gale's rambling spiel about the water getting cut off from their house, funny old world isn't it, and can she just throw her cousin into the tender mercies of Mrs. Fidwidget's bathtub for a few minutes please, he's drunk and needs to be sobered up?
The old woman squints at them. Palomir proceeds to do his best impression of drunkenness, which isn't very hard since most of his limbs already feel like they're made of marzipan or something appropriately weak and bendy.
"He's an elf. You're a cat." Mrs. Fidwidget, Palomir thinks, does have a habit of choosing the most inconvenient time to become perceptive.
"Well, yes," Gale says, gesticulating, "But we're cousins by adoption, you see, and sometimes there are ties stronger than blood, and that's really what matters, isn't it?" She smiles, trying to look as winning and charming as one can with a half-delirious elf under one arm and a precariously balanced mirror under the other.
Mrs. Fidwidget gives Gale the same look that all old women have been giving since the dawn of time, to all grubby children with hands tucked behind their backs, a shattered precious object in the near vicinity, and the word 'innocent' scrawled so boldly across their features that it might as well be written in glowing ink and ten-inch letters.
It's the kind of look that says, 'I know you're up to something, buster, and whatever it is, you're not fooling me.' Palomir imagines she's had a lot of practice, after having had to use it on who-knows-how-many generations of cats.
The porch light gives a loud, electric hum, flickering out for the space of a breath; for an instant, they're all bathed in darkness.mThis time, Palomir's eyes are properly open, and he can see into the shadows left in the wake of the light. There are no particularly nice things in them.
His sharp, high-pitched yelp - entirely involuntary, of course - appears to settle something in Mrs. Fidwidget's mind, because she's nodding to herself like this explains everything and undoing the bolts on her door. She pokes her nose out into the night air warily, glaring at them both. "Well? Are you coming in or not?"
As Gale gladly accepts the grudging invitation and hauls them both into the house, Palomir's struck by how much more the old woman in the flowery nightcap and woolen nightshirt reminds him more of a cat than the girl beside him.
Maybe it's all just a matter of perspective.
The elf doesn't know how Gale knows that Mrs. Fidwidget has a bathtub. He thinks it would be wise not to ask; not because Gale might withhold the answer, but precisely because she might go into painful detail about it.
Palomir waits, a bit apprehensively, as the water pools into the bath. It's one of the old fashioned kinds that come with copper claws for legs and have probably outlived their former owners. In the light of the circumstances, the last thought is not a comforting one. He and Gale are still fully clothed except for their feet; the cold tiles should feel like ice against his soles, but it's almost warm compared to his current body temperature.
If he squints his eyes, he thinks he may be able to make out his breath puffing into mist. Or he could be hallucinating again.
Gale watches the tub as hot water pours into it, steam wafting off the liquid and making the air difficult to breathe.
For some reason, the girl has insisted on unhitching Palomir's bathroom mirror from its hooks and bringing it along with them. Now it's propped in the middle of the doorway, reflective side facing out. Mrs. Fidget is a fussy, disapproving presence beyond it, at least until Gale firmly and politely asks her to leave because no doubt 'Pally' is going to be violently purging his stomachful of sin into the can within moments.
There's something about the way she says it that tells Palomir it's not just a lame hack to get the old woman safely away from something she'll probably regret seeing. Instead, he asks, "Is that mirror really necessary?"
Gale's explanation, accompanied by a pitying stare, is a simple, pragmatic, "Mirrors trap spirits."
Palomir hasn't the faintest idea what to say in response that would be appropriate. He's not even sure there's an appropriate response at all, so he nods, making a note not to ask the girl any more obvious questions in the future - she answers far too readily, and she smiles too much about it, too.
When the tub comes to three-quarters full, the girl shuts off the water and turns to him.
"Alright," Gale announces, with the morbid glee normally found only in the terminally sadistic or the clinically deranged. "In you go!"
That is all the warning the elf gets before she seizes him by the front of his throat, squeezing hard, and throws him into the tub.
--he is in his house, except that he isn't. For one thing, it smells different-- varnish and mahogany and something vaguely floral, where he recalls nothing but a smell like wet dog and mold. For another, none of the furniture is his own. He's in the building that is his house, except that it's evident that someone else is currently occupying it.
There's also the matter that there's not a single thing in color.
Palomir looks down at his hands. They look normal enough. He wriggles them experimentally. Functioning rather better than the last time he had seen them, too. There's a strange buzzing sound at his ears, and he shakes his head irritably as he picks himself up.
Fine way to help a guy, sending him crashing through a tubful of water and smack on his tail bone. He's aware that it's a train of thought that doesn't precisely make sense, but he supposes he can be forgiven for being disoriented at the moment.
Ruefully, he reaches up to rub at his neck, wondering if there are already bruises forming. She'd choked him. It had probably worked the way she had intended, if he was here now instead of being dead and drowned, but still.
Maybe he's dead anyway.
He looks around him at a world that has been bleached into shades of black and white, like an old movie or an overexposed photo, and he wonders where he is. When he is. And why his dark hair and red shirt and horrible, horrible apricot shorts are the only splashes of Technicolor in a monochrome world.
The fall of light through the window at the far end of this hall tells him that it's just past noon, probably, although there's something wrong about the way the illumination spills over the floor. It makes him frown, for a moment, and he's stepping over to the window before he can help himself.
The patch of grass he remembers as barely accommodating an outdated seems to extend infinitely longer. Instead of ramshackle buildings, the horizon is broken up by the enormous trees that rise from the ground everywhere, leaves turning sunlight into dappled patterns that shift as the wind blows. It's all done in tasteful grey with even a hint of sepia, but Palomir can tell it's in full spring glory anyway. He had aspirations to be a gardener once.
Funny how dreams turn out.
For the first time Palomir realizes that the noise in his ears is birdsong. It's not all just songbird warbling, saccharine and expected. There are harsher calls underneath the dulcet tones, and underlying it all is the whisper of leaves, the susurration of feathers on wings. A hundred delicate noises work together to provide, well...
One hell of a noise.
Palomir flinches; as if the recognition was all the noise needed to more effectively beat on his eardrums, he feels as if the din has risen thrice fold in volume. Curiosity prods at him about the world outside this house, the life-sized daguerreotype of a Windy City lost to memory. Exploring it isn't likely to be a chance he'll get again in his lifetime, even for one as long as his.
Reluctantly, the elf reminds himself that he has to let it go. There are more important things to find out, anyway, like how exactly this is supposed to be helping him get rid of a ghost he's not even sure exists. He supposes, since the world likes a certain kind of order in things, that there's probably something he's meant to find here. Something important. If he's been dropped into some bizarre alternate version of his own house, that's as big a hint to start looking around as any.
So he does.
There's nothing out of place on the first floor, though it's amusing to see an outdated icebox where his refrigerator currently is. It's a little less so when he spots severe, grim-looking pictures on every horizontal surface. The people in the pictures are a study in contrasts, the severity of dark hair and eyes against moon-pale skin giving them an unusually piercing stare. Unnerved, Palomir treads up the stairs to the second floor, feeling the luxuriously soft carpet flatten beneath his toes.
Aside from quaint furniture, there's nothing terribly special or interesting about the second floor either. Palomir is temporarily baffled; he perches on the edge of a four-poster bed covered in ash-grey sheets so he can collect his thoughts. There is something in this house, and he has the feeling he's getting closer to it-- but apparently, finding it will present a problem.
The birdsong has been grating at his ears all this time, and though he does do his best to ignore it, even he can't miss the sudden thread of fresh song that winds its way into the melody. It's not by any means the most siren or charming of voices. If anything, it adds to the discord, a flat hum in the middle of notes determined to scale off the charts.
Instinct compels him. Palomir follows the noise.
It leads him to a small ladder disappearing into a trapdoor in the roof; he's not sure how he missed it his first couple of turns around this corner, but there it is, hanging within reach. The elf grasps the rungs and climbs up before he can think better of it; nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he doesn't think he has that much else to lose.
He has half an idea of what to expect, anyway.
When he climbs into the attic, the sight that meets his eyes isn't as surprising as it could have been. There's a girl that looks like she might have just walked out of one of the daguerreotypes downstairs, except that her hair's in disarray and she's currently squatting on the floorboards, making coaxing noises at what looks like a duck with a splint. Despite her disheveled appearance, there isn't an air of slovenliness about her: just rumpled majesty.
Sort of like a queen stuffed into a milkmaid's outfit, perhaps. It doesn't matter so much what you dress like as what you move like.
It's not as if the woman's state of dress can possibly gather more attention than the hundreds of birds that pack the attic. They're wedged into every corner, squabbling in their high-pitched voices. They're fussing around the woman, snuggling closer to her, pecking at hands and neck and cheek for her attention.
By the light provided by the round window set into the roof, Palomir sees that the woman is bleeding from a hundred little vicious love-bites, dark blood trickling along her arms and neck.
Eventually, the woman realizes she's being watched; she looks up at Palomir and smiles. It's the guileless, innocent smile of either the very young or the very witless, and when she pulls herself to her feet, Palomir can't stop his mental vision from overlaying her with the image of a crane, rising stiff-legged from its crouch.
Hello, she says brightly. Who are you?
"I'm no one," Palomir answers sketchily, avoiding a direct answer. His father once warned him about women. It's never really worn off. Gale doesn't exactly qualify as one to his mind, and he suspects she falls into an entirely different mental category anyway. The woman before him is filled of something more worrying than the usual feminine wiles; it rolls off her in waves.
She's completely and utterly mad.
She's still smiling, though, and she's coming closer, which makes Palomir tense, but not withdraw. Not yet. She's offering her hands toward him, fingers curled to form a crude cup.
That's a nice name. No-one. Do you want to feed the birds too? I've got plenty of food in my pockets, so there's no need to worry about running out.
Not anymore, Palomir thinks. The moment she's properly gotten to her feet, every bird in the place lunges for her skirts, pecking and tearing at its many, many pockets with the sound of ripping cloth. She doesn't seem to notice, and the elf finds himself having to shake off a couple of jackdaws that are attempting to peck at his ears.
It dawns on Palomir - like a slow, crystallized epiphany - that the birds are mad too.
Whether it was the girl who went first and her brood after isn't something he wants to speculate on.
Too quickly for him to avoid it, she's by his side, touching his sleeve, grinning vapidly into his face.
Palomir recoils, wrenching from her grip, but by then it's too late - she freezes, sniffing the air.
Cat, she whispers, lip curling. Her voice is very soft.
It gets louder very quickly.
CatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatCAT! With every word, she grows larger and larger, less and less human; when she shrieks the word for the last time, her neck is stretched impossibly long and her dark eyes glitter from a sea of feathers.
CAT-LOVER, BIRD-SLAYER! I'LL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR MY SUPPER! KEEYAGH!
Shrilling death, the bird-woman's beak plunges towards him.
Palomir turns, and runs.
--i'll kill you i'll kill you friend of murderers traitor to feather you dare bring a beast of claw and fang into my nest and let it tear my children you will die--
Distantly, as if the noise is coming from beyond heavy fog, Palomir hears the mirror shattering--
--Gale's voice distorted by the water, calling out sharp and strident--
And then, nothing.
Later, when he no longer feels like throwing up if he opens his eyes, Gale gives him a small shard that appears to have come from a mirror, duct-taped around the edges for the sake of delicate fingers. He handles it with his good hand, wincing. Right now, he's bandaged over most of his body, a large proportion of his current injuries acquired from broken glass worming into his skin.
His reflection informs him that Gale's fingers have left a conspicuous print on his neck. He expects it will fade, and he has no intention of explaining it to Erias. Palomir turns the bit of mirror in his hands, catches his breath.
A tiny raven is frosted inside the glass.
"What is it?" Palomir asks, forgetting his resolution to no longer ask Gale any questions he either knows or isn't going to like the answer to.
Gale shrugs.
"Your ghost."
The agent swears that he had no idea that Palomir's house had an attic. Small wonder, since the trap door's been nailed shut and painted over, and it has changed hands enough that the original plans have been lost. Palomir has to borrow a ladder from someone else in the neighborhood to pry the entrance open.
He is not sure what he was expecting to find, but he is not disappointed when all that is there to greet him is dust and bones.
They're tiny, but too big to belong to rats. He nudges them apart with the end of a broom to discover fragments of beak as well.
A glimmer in the middle of the dust catches his eye, and he bends down to pluck the errant shotglass off the floor before it can roll into a corner. With his gaze closer to the floor, he notices one of his missing spoons, but he doesn't bother to pick it up when he straightens and looks around again.
There's nothing of the ghost here.
Nevertheless, he boards up the door tightly behind him, and firmly and politely informs the real estate agent that he'd much rather move to another location, if it's all the same to him. Maybe somewhere crowded. Preferably well-lit at night.
And, he can't emphasize this enough, no animals.
When he works up the courage to ask Mrs. Fidwidget about the woman who once lived in his house, it's on the day he moves. There's not much to handle, so he already has most of it boxed up and crammed into the car he's persuaded Engol into lending to him; transporting the furniture has already been taken care of this morning.
It's as good a time to ask as any.
"With that description? You must mean my grandmother," the old woman murmurs eventually, after a considerable pause. "Though goodness knows how you even know of her. There have been other people in that house since the time I was a girl, and that was a long time ago."
"Did she happen to like birds?" Palomir's not sure why he's asking, but it slips off his tongue anyway.
"Like them?" The old woman's voice turns wistful and distant, stroking the back of the tabby that chooses this moment to crawl onto her lap. "She loved them."
The elf opens his mouth to respond, then swallows his words.
Tabby?
Palomir stares as cats begin to sidle out of dark spaces he was hitherto certain were unoccupied; like an inexorable, multicolored furry tide, they roll across the ground in their smooth, indolent strolls-- cock o'the walk, and feeling like it, too. Tabbies, gray and orange and all shades in between, calico and tortoiseshell, longhair and short: they come out, every one of them, from those wavering dark places between things, where something that might be a rock or an old boot or a cat can be any of those things if it chooses to be.
In a moment, Mrs. Fidwidget's house is covered in warm, faintly humming feline bodies, and things look no different than the first day Palomir had arrived here.
Except he knows, they should be different, somehow. He may occasionally have strained relations with conventional definitions of sanity, but he's certain something one has seen dead should have the decency to remain so. In the sea of feline bodies, he's definitely sure he can pick out one, two-- at least ten different cats that, as far he's aware of, were last seen dead as earth in Mrs. Fidwidget's backyard.
He's pretty sure the big fuzzy one with the crooked tail is grinning at him.
Mrs. Fidwidget doesn't seem to noticing anything out of the oridinary. Tutting, she lifts up a pathetically mewing kitten, its eyes crusted over with some rheumy grime. "Oh dear. Bit early for your time, weren't you? She loved birds," she continues, switching conversational tracks smoothly. It's disconcerting, Palomir finds, being spoken to by an old woman who apparently engrossed with the hygiene of an extraordinarily ugly young cat.
"She loved birds so much that she spent more time with them than she did with people. Probably got on with them better, too. We used to say it was because she was a hen-witted, and air-minded, all those cruel things children will say of their elders when they're a certain age and more eccentric than the usual." She digs around in her pocket to produce a delicate lace kerchief, only to spit heavily into it and proceed to dab at the eyes of the squirming kitten. Mrs. Fidwidget isn't having any of that nonsense; she's holding it firmly by the nape, like a recalcitrant child.
"In any case, she loved birds, and I loved cats. It was," Mrs. Fidwidget says, a significant sort of tone entering her voice, "A situation doomed to end in tragedy."
"What happened?" Palomir dreads the answer. He flexes his sore hand, still wrapped in bandages.
"Oh, well. Some of my cats found and tore apart one of her birdies' nests, like cats will sometimes do for fun or for show. Only old Gramma Birch took it as personally as if my cats had killed her own children. More personally, probably; she never liked her children much." Mrs. Fidwidget releases the kitten, satisfied; purring, it joins the tabby on her lap.
"So I wound up with my darlings - Coxie and Russet and Bridge - laid out like firewood at our front door. Gave me quite the turn the other night, seeing my poor babies like that. Like, er. Whatsisname. Deja vu." She shakes her head almost mournfully. "Anyway after that, there could never be any question of it - it was war."
"Who won?"
It's getting late, Palomir thinks. He should get moving soon, but that last question has to be asked, at least.
Mrs. Fidwidget gives him a distinctly predatory grin.
"Well think, boyo," she says. "It's cats who've got nine lives, innit?"
the end
email: kyzaboo [at] gmail.com
I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.
-- Joseph Addison
Palomir is of the quietly smug opinion that he has finally grown past the stage of being ruffled by any of his boss's idiosyncracies.
He knows, instinctively, that it's too good to last.
Gale proves as much when she snags him by the collar, buries her faceagainst the exposed skin, and enthusiastically depiliates his neck with her nostrils.
At least, that's what it feels like, judging by the crass snort being directed into his nape. Palomir can't even muster a yelp of surprise, freezing like an animal who hopes desperately that feigning death will convince a predator that indigestion is most certainly not the better part of valor.
It's a moot point. Gale releases him just as abruptly as she has seized him, leaving him off-balance and teetering on the balls of his feet.
Gale delivers her verdict in dire tones: "You smell like dead people."
The pretense of solemnity is upset by the way she wrinkles her nose as if she really has caught a whiff of something disgusting. "You should get that taken care of, y'know," she tells him sagely, wagging a finger in front of his nose. "It's best to get these things early on, before you get an infestation."
An infestation of what, Palomir almost asks, but before the elf can open his mouth to sputter, she's gone.
"What was that about?" he demands of Erias-- unsurprisingly, the blond has stuck his head out of his cubby to see what all the fuss is about.
"Dunno," Erias answers helpfully. "I think she meant you need a shower."
Palomir spends the majority of the morning contemplating the various trajectories his coffee mug will need to take in order to impact with his cousin's head, given a) the mug is half-empty, b) Erias' cubicle is on the other side of the hall, and c) the fact that his cousin's skull is probably of a greater circumference than average due to an abnormally large ego, or at least a big mouth.
Before he can continue to mentally eviscerate his cousin, Palomir finds himself distracted by all the hectic activity expected of a criminal organization masquerading as a respectable trading firm. Thoughts of revenge are shelved in favor of trying to work out just how they've managed to acquire six hundred kilos of flour in their basement, and whether or not killing the civilians involved will be cheaper than paying them off.
Just before lunch, Gale loudly notes that she might in fact be responsible for the demolished sugar warehouse on Sixty-Sixth Avenue, currently being debated on the radio as either a terrorist attack or a grudge strike by disgruntled diabetics. This announcement inevitably prompts several people to reach for their anti-depressant of choice, but it's all in a day's work, and life goes on as usual.
For the most part.
Palomir is not, by nature, a particularly superstitious elf. Magic, of course, is something he does believe in. In a city built mostly on a giant tree, employed in a so-called cake mafia by a girl sporting a cat's ears and tail, after having lived more than three (for the most part incredibly dull, but still) centuries - he'd have to be a complete idiot not to. There are even days when he can be persuaded to believe in miracles; to be fair, his sense of awed reverence is largely limited to marveling at their continued survival after increasingly improbable, life-threatening circumstances.
Beyond that, Palomir is rather disinclined to indulge in any folkloric nonsense. As far as he is concerned, if passing under a ladder is the fastest way to get to his destination, he'll gladly do so. If the thirteenth day of a given month happens to fall on a Friday, the only reason it's something to worry about is because Gale will insist that everyone wear their clothes backwards and wear pieces of wood around their necks to ward off bad luck.
He's not sure how he can be expected to believe that a minor genetic mutation can give an otherwise unremarkable bit of foliage the ability to impart good fortune. Coins tossed into fountains are surely only detrimental to the quality of the water circulating the city's sewer system, and poorly mounted, rusty horseshoes hung over doorways represent nothing short of lumping the possibility of tetanus on top of the very real risk of a minor concussion.
In sum, it's all ridiculous. Anyway, superstitions contradict each other half of the time. Trying to follow all of them at once would be beyond unreasonable, and Palomir is nothing if not practical.
Gale, conversely, is notoriously unstable, fond of eschewing good sense in favor of overblown dramatics. In the chaos that passes for Palomir's daily routine, one moment of sinister foreshadowing is easily dismissed as another of the girl's inscrutable whims. In any case, if it was something really important, he's sure she'd make a bigger fuss out of it.
He's so determined to ignore all possibility of occult interference that he doesn't find himself worried about why his neighbor's been complaining about her cats behaving strangely, or why sheets he's sure he left tucked in this morning are rumpled by the time he comes home. Or why little things around the house-- spoons, tinfoil, even the hideous shot glass his uncle gave him for his two-hundredth birthday and that Palomir reluctantly keeps on his mantel - disappear.
Palomir suspects it's one of the neighborhood kids playing a prank, probably on a dare. Elves don't tend to keep residences among the suburban areas of Windy City; Palomir's been here for two or three months, so he's still something of a novelty. He's hoping it wears off soon.
If there is anything that might tip him off to something being amiss, it might be disturbed slumber - as a general rule, Palomir's dreams have never been troubled. Despite Gale's pronouncement, this doesn't change. A full week after she seizes him, he dreams of nothing more unusual than being swaddled in unusually comfortable bedsheets, then floating in the middle of an endless ocean. He wakes up restless, chest and throat oddly sore.
Palomir doesn't think much of it, and goes about his morning ablutions with his typical gusto, i.e. none.
And then he goes to work.
Unlike Gale, he doesn't make a habit of greeting the other members of the mafia. They're usually polite enough to return the favor. That is why it's a surprise when Engol greets him abruptly, falling into step beside Palomir as he strides along the lobby.
"Hey." Engol, Palomir notices, has already managed to acquire a mug of hot, strong-smelling coffee, which he's sipping at as he walks. From this side, he can only see part of the twisted, jagged scar that runs diagonally across Engol's face; the shorter elf refuses to talk about it (or how he ended up working for Gale, as well - Palomir assumes it's blackmail), and Palomir isn't really curious either.
"Hey," he returns, greeting delivered with his usual blandness, and he expects the conversation (if one can call it that) will end there.
Instead, Engol blinks, and his eyes abruptly focus on Palomir, as if he's seeing him for the first time. For all Palomir knows, that might be accurate. All the same, he's left tensing uncomfortably underneath that stare, and he wonders what he's done to earn it. He resists the urge to pick up his pace. Undue scrutiny, in his opinion, is only a sign of trouble.
In this instance, his beliefs aren't disappointed.
"You haven't noticed anything ... strange about the office, have you?" Engol asks. The question seems to stick in his throat a bit on its way out, as if only desperate circumstances could have forced it out. He still looks slightly ill from having said it at all.
"No," Palomir says, and then to make the answer more honest, amends, "No more than the usual." He has the strange urge to tug his hat down tighter over his eyes.
"I wouldn't normally ask," Engol grimaces. When they reach the elevators, he waves Palomir in first, then steps in behind him and presses the button for the eighth floor. He waits until the door closes before he continues. "Only, some of the girls up in the Finance Redistribution department swear there's something funny in the air."
"The air?" Automatically, Palomir thumbs the button for the ninth floor.
Engol nods. "Yeah. Might be a problem in the air ducts. The ones closest to 'em say they're sure they're hearing something in there, too."
Palomir catches the hint. "I'll get it looked into."
Engol looks, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, relieved. For a horrible moment Palomir gets the feeling that if he was wearing a hat, Engol would have just tipped it at him.
As it is, Engol does lift his mug at Palomir in silent toast. "Thanks. I 'preciate it."
The elevator comes to a smooth stop, a quiet 'ding' announcing their arrival at the seventh floor. Engol steps through the doors and ambles his way down the corridor.
The moment he gets to his own cubby, Palomir places a call to maintenance, which promises to get a couple of men to have a look at the offending ducts. He gets a report by mid-afternoon: there's nothing out of place with the air ducts themselves, but they've located a couple of vents that open onto the outside of the building that shouldn't be open, but are.
For a moment, Palomir tenses, but the head janitor guarantees that it's nothing to worry about.
"The vents aren't large enough for anything but a bird or a rat to getinto, sir!" he's told, the voice on the other end of the line confident - and clearly proud of a building that it has done its best to render infiltration-proof. "And they only fasten from the inside, anyway."
"And the complaints about air quality?" Palomir's pen drums against the desk edge.
There's a rustle of paper. "Well, there's scratches on the inside of the vents near Finances, and a hell of a lot of - beggin' your pardon - crap. We figure something might have gotten into the ducts and died; that, or something's made its nest in 'em and keeps bringing back all kinds of things to eat. Haven't found out which one it is yet, sir! They're still looking. Pers'nally," the janitor's tone turns confidential, "I reckon it's the second."
The elf feels an unpleasant twinge. "It's not going to need an actual cleaning-out, is it?"
"Could do, sir!" the head janitor says, sounding obscenely cheerful at the prospect of being able to use any of two dozen different pesticides Palomir knows are stored in the supply closet. "There's enough shi - sorry, waste here for a lot of little critters. We might even have an infestation!" Palomir wishes he hadn't said the word with such relish; belatedly, he remembers that the entire janitorial staff is made up of short, hyperactive humanoids with a strong resemblance to terriers. Enthusiasm might be forgiven.
"Right, well. Just keep me up to date on things before you decide to nuke the entire ventilation system."
"Oh, there'd be no need for that sir!" The janitor sounds shocked that Palomir could even suggest it. "We could just close off the vents that connect floor seven's air ducts to the other floors. Then we could fill 'em up with poison. 'Course, we'd have to shut down the whole floor til' we've gotten all the buggers, but--"
"Yes, yes, I think I've gotten the picture," Palomir says testily, before the janitor can launch into a convoluted explanation of every technical aspect of the theoretical operation. "Was there anything else?"
"Er, right. Did y'want a written copy of the report to go up to your office, sir?"
"Yes."
The connection is terminated with a sharp click. As Palomir sets his own handset down, he hopes the cold feeling in his stomach is the sandwich he had for lunch asserting itself, and not a premonition.
What a lot of fuss to make for a couple of scratches and some bird droppings.
The planners of Windy City, Palomir sometimes has cause to feel, had probably been gifted with a sense of irony denser than heavy lead. As if it weren't enough to gift a place perpetually stuck in the atmospheric equivalent of a writer's block with a name that could belong to a tropical beach resort, he finds himself rudely awakened in his house on Peaceful Drive by three things.
The first reason he wakes is the nightmare. Palomir doesn't get nightmares often. He assumes this is because of the admittedly self-indulgent and melodramatic notion that he's stuck in a living one, but this particular vision doesn't even give him the dignity of being something normal.
Palomir dreams of being stuck in a dark, open place, with a stench far more pungent than any fiction of his mind has a right to be. It's not claustrophobic - he can sense that there's a lot of space above him and around him, and he's not bound in place. It would be almost comforting if he was. Instead, he feels the weight of countless stares directed at him from every direction, as cold and alien as the moon.
Of course, to the best of Palomir's knowledge, the moon has never emitted a sense of malice nearly as powerful as this. For the space of several heartbeats, they find themselves caught in a stalemate.
Palomir, however, only has one set of eyes. He senses the sudden shift in the air, the beating of a hundred silent wings creating the pressure of movement at his back. Before he can turn and face them, the first of what feel like several little knives dig into his flesh. He tries to shield himself with his arm and then they get that too--
At that point, much to his relief, the nightmare ends.
The second reason he wakes up is almost directly related to the first. After the one-second pause it takes him to realize he's no longer dreaming, he registers the sharp pain lancing through his right hand, along the lines the dream-shadows have carved into his palm. It's painful enough that he doubles over it in reflex, eyes watering.
The third reason he wakes up, and the reason he doesn't even have the time to examine what feels like a very deep and very nasty gash (where's the blood, he wonders) is that the old lady who lives next door is screaming at the top of her lungs.
It's mostly incoherent, and terribly shrill, and on top of everything else that's woken him up so far, Palomir's not sure he wants to go and see what's wrong now. Still, a sense of civic duty - or possibly, masochism - compels him to stagger towards his poor, rickety excuse for a balcony and look down.
Mrs. Fidwidget - or maybe it was Fidinky, he can never remember her name - is kneeling in the middle of her back porch, hands clasped to her mouth. Palomir's not the only one who's been woken up by the noise. The lights of other houses around the park are slowly flickering on, throwing the sparse greenery in sharp relief. The groggy, irritated grumbles that accompany the additional illumination are easily audible to his ears, but he tunes it out with the ease of long practice and focuses on the house beside him.
Mrs. Fidwidget's screams have died away to mute silence. In the stark light, it's easy to see what caused them in the first place.
In any given population of sentient beings that is large enough - and prosperous enough - there will always be an old cat lady. Occasionally, the cats might be substituted for rats, or cows, or even exotic three-pronged slimes, and sometimes the old lady in question is neither a lady nor old. But every neighborhood has one: they're a bit eccentric, and they smell funny even from within a ten-meter distance, and they always seem to like their pets better than people.
They are, of course, harmless. They may cause general aggravation to the people near them by providing a signal beacon to every stray animal of their choice, and their neighbors may not exactly appreciate their beloved darlings trampling through their yards or clawing up their furniture or loudly and bawdily attempting to send their population hurtling towards the neighborhood's carrying capacity - but they are harmless.
So it is fairly accurate to say that, despite whatever inglorious crimes Mrs. Fidwidget's cats might have wrought on the local ecosystem, she most certainly does not deserve to find them scattered behind her house in various states of 'stone dead'.
All one hundred and twenty of them.
Palomir's stomach does not turn.
In one of the other houses, woken by the fuss, a little girl begins to cry.
Nobody attempts to hush her.
It is, Palomir decides, a particularly bad day to be at work. He hasn't been able to sleep since his painfully early morning, and it shows - thankfully, there isn't anything too complicated, and he can sort through most of his tasks automatically. Some of the chill from the night seems to have stuck with him; he can't help but shiver occasionally.
He has seen, firsthand, several arguably more terrible things than a yardful of dead cats. He has not, however, actually seen a yardful of (definitely murdered, unless cats these days come equipped with explosive brains) dead cats before, and there's something to be said for the shock value of something novel.
His phone rings, and he answers it automatically, "Good - argharghargh - afternoon, you have just reached the offices of Tucker and Tucker, may I help you?" before he realizes that the call is being made on the internal lines, and that he's grabbed it with his right hand.
To their credit, the person on the other end of the line doesn't choose to comment. "It doesn't look like there's anything else in there, sir."
Palomir feels like he's suddenly tuned into a conversation he hasn't exactly been part of. "I'm sorry, what?"
"M'fraid there's nothing else in the vents except more of the same, sir." The head janitor's tone is patient, used to dealing with far flightier conversation partners, but it's audibly disappointed. Palomir is profoundly relieved until the beast-man pipes up hopefully, "Y'want we should search the vents of other floors too? It might've just spread to another floor."
"No."
"Just making sure," the head janitor sulks, mildly dispirited that his helpful, completely motive-free suggestion should meet with such scathing disapproval. "I'll get t'work on the official report of th'incident, then."
"You do that," Palomir says, with a firmness he doesn't really feel. He puts down the phone at the same time Erias comes into his cubby, nose wrinkled and fanning a sheaf of papers Palomir recognizes as their most recent account balance in front of his nose.
"Whew!" Erias says, fanning furiously enough that his self-generated breeze blows strands of his pale blond hair away from his face. His face is sheened with sweat, and he's looking a little wilted; this doesn't spare him from getting the sharper edge of a withering glare when Palomir reaches over to snatch the papers away from his cousin's hands. With the ease of long practice, Erias ducks out of range, and continues his vain efforts to provide some healthy ventilation around the general region of his head via frantic fluttering of the sheets that represent hours of painstaking calculations.
Palomir settles for leaning back in his chair and trying his best to look disapproving. Naturally, he's rather good at it.
Equally naturally, Erias looks anything but abashed. "Hot, isn't it?"
"I don't see why you find it uncomfortable. It feels perfectly fine to me."
Erias gives the dark-haired elf a sardonic look of his own, though it's punctuated with a long, slow roll of both eyes. "In case you haven't checked the thermometer recently, it's in the nineties," he retorts. "And that's indoors."
When the papers flutter back into arm's range, Palomir lunges for them, but Erias is already flipping them out of reach. Palomir scowls.
"Do you know how long it took to get that together?" he demands. "Stop waving it around like it's a feather duster!"
"I am not!" Erias looks injured at the mere accusation. "I'm just employing it to my short-term - immediate, even - benefit. Anyway," he points out, "You can always just print out another copy of the thing. We do live in a digital age, you know. Power of technology, etcetera. You could probably get the computer to work out the sums in half the time, if you'd bother to use it for more than just plain typing." Erias stares at Palomir's plain little computer almost calculatingly.
"It's the principle of the thing," Palomir snaps, rubbing at his arms. "And I have no intention on relying on a machine for something as basic as simple addition."
"Suit yourself." Erias shrugs; he tends not to be terribly concerned about Palomir's life, in Palomir's experience, unless there's an opportunity to get a good laugh out of it. Or to make a particularly bad joke at Palomir's expense. Palomir can sense one of the latter coming on by the way Erias is eying him over the fanning papers with exaggerated care.
"If you ask me," Erias sing-songs, and Palomir braces himself for the punchline, "I think you just need to get l--"
Erias doesn't get to finish his sentence, because there's a noise that sounds like hollow, booming thunder - or like several soft things slamming into a metal container - and the smell of rotting flesh and something only definable as fowl assails their nostrils.
"Run," Palomir suddenly says, seized by a sudden mad conviction, and he's pushing a protesting Erias out the door, down the hall, ignoring confused yells from the other cubicles and shouting only for the others to get out get out getoutgetoutgetOUT--
Like a swollen, putrescent hurricane of dark glistening bodies and snapping beaks, the ravens explode from the air ducts. They don't caw, or screech, or make any noise at all, save for the slow fleshy beat of wings and the painful sounding crunch as the weight of several combined bodies - heedless of usual mortal constraints such as pain tolerance or even expiration - batter down the obstacles in their wake.
Palomir's hand hurts, and this time it bleeds, spilling blood all over his shirt where he's clutched it desperately to his chest. He can hear Erias shouting, something he can't make out; it's muffled by the living-dead wall of feathers that doesn't so much fly as ooze towards him.
He hits the elevator door shoulder first, and he scrambles out with his uninjured hand to hit the down button. He'd be going down stairs, except that the fire escape is on the other side of the bird-thing-creature. He doesn't think the elevator will get here in time. The miasma the birds' bodies form is already stretching towards him, lengthening into something like a neck, a head, a beak--
Hallo, elf. The voice that speaks is like wet slush. Together the ravens have formed what is unmistakably a head; sluggishly, they cock it towards him. Palomir realizes that curled, broken bodies have compressed to form crude eyes that roll crazily in their makeshift sockets; if the voice is slightly slurred, it's probably the tongue to blame, because it's made up of more of the same - and it's riddled with maggots.
Although it's nearly impossible to tell when it is that the birds' gaze is focused on him, Palomir senses that he's being coolly assessed as a meal, though he's not about to be eaten-- yet. His eyes dart to the elevator's digital display, watching the numbers ascend. Six... seven...
The giant beak parts. You'll make a lovely dinner for the children.
The last thing Palomir remembers thinking, before the birds descend, is that he expects Gale will be livid.
Gale isn't.
Palomir wakes up in slow, painful increments; he's aware of a horrid smell under his nostrils that he can't move his head enough to get away from, and the dull murmur of what he thinks are voices. Everything's fuzzy around the edges, at least hearing wise. He's not quite sure he wants to risk what it's like for his sight.
Eventually, if only to convince whoever's wielding the smelling salts that he no longer needs to be called back to the material world, he manages a gurgle.
He manages quite a bit more when the surprise of him making a noise results in a gasp and someone actually tipping the salts into his nose--
A considerable amount of mass confusion, agonized flailing, and hasty apologies later, Palomir finds himself propped up on the couch, awakenbut finding no comfort in it. His eyes are a red-rimmed, furiously watering mess; he's solving this problem as best as he can by keeping a small towel soaked in ice-cold water slapped across his face. Gale is perched beside him. He suspects she's probably put her feet up on the cushion without taking her shoes off again, but he's in no position to argue the point.
Anyway, he's far more interested in confirming that he is not, in fact, completely barking.
"I didn't dream all that," he croaks. "Did I?" The gauze wrapped around his hand feels real enough, though he has a sneaking suspicious he doesn't actually want to ask how he got the wound.
"Um." Gale makes a noncommittal sound. "Some of it. Could we have some privacy please?" The last is directed reproachfully at everyone else in the room, particularly Erias-- who is, Palomir notes without surprise, loudly informing everyone that he's won that bet with Uncle Enfaloth about when Palomir's sanity would finally snap.
He winces when he hears his cousin go on to note that seeing Palomir stab a ballpen through his hand is really just an inevitability, with the way he's been acting of late.
Palomir imagines, as he hears people shuffling out, that this is what going mad must feel like. It's never the realization that you're not only round the bend, you're running cross-country in a child's wagon - it's the way people suddenly speak and move more softly around you, as if everything in your general vicinity must now be heavily padded and preferably shatterproof. Even words.
Refreshingly, Gale isn't treating him like he's a shoo-in for a mental ward, but she doesn't seem to quite understand what's going on, either. Once they're the only ones left in the room, Palomir preempts her.
"You're the one who was going on about smelling dead people on me. I didn't believe it, now it's real. So tell me what I'm supposed to do about it."
"That?" Gale sounds blank. "That was just to--"
"If you are about to tell me that I've been having horrible nightmares about birds, hallucinating monsters from beyond the grave, and seeing all of my neighbor's cats dead in her backyard because you wanted to mess me up," Palomir says, in a low and terrible voice, "I will not be responsible for my actions."
There's an audible, considering silence. Palomir fancies he can hear the assorted mental gears of Gale's brain weighing her options.
Gale's mouth shuts with a gentle click, but in the next moment, it's open, and she chooses her words delicately.
"Right. Ha ha. Sorry about that." The girl coughs, and Palomir can hear her tail thump against the armrest. She's nervous. That's never a good sign.
"So," Gale says brightly. "You were saying something about birds...?"
Not for the first time, Palomir wonders what he has gotten himself into.
After some discussion, consisting of questions of the genuinely interested and probing nature on Gale's part and Palomir's monosyllabic responses, she's somehow determined that the key to this particularly mystery lies in Palomir's neighborhood. His house seems like a likely place to begin. Palomir realizes he's irrationally afraid that Mrs. Fidwidget's army of cats will all be lolling in their usual afternoon haunts, blissfully and publicly obscene in the way only small things with no use for clothes can be.
He needn't have worried. The cats are nowhere in sight, and a rather alarmingly sunken-looking Mrs. Fidwidget is hunched in the rockinchair on her porch, tipping forward and back in slow, sad creaks. Shame makes Palomir turn his head away from the oddly empty sight - the old woman usually has at least three cats in her lap at any given time, with more clustered around her feet; no one knows how she manages not to tread on their tails.
Even with the haste he employs in the maneuver, Gale is in his house before he is. This is because this is Gale, who is in the habit of barging into Palomir's room in the middle of the night and dragging him off on assorted questionable errands while he's still too groggy to let his sense of morality get in the way.
Apparently, Gale has as little compunction about using a window rather than a door during the day as she does in the anonymity of the night. She's already set off to poke her nose about his home. It reminds him of a particularly inquisitive, oversized cat, though considering what his most recent experience with cats has been, the comparison makes him shiver.
The elf can't imagine what she's looking for. She's already explored the creaking house on many an occasion, probably even without his knowledge or his approval. Palomir does not keep an untidy house, but still he feels a prickle of self-consciousness at the thought. He hopes that she's never gotten a chance to see his home whenever he's inadvertently left a pair of underpants crumpled over some piece of furniture or something equally undignified.
Perhaps, he ponders, Gale finds a strange kind of novelty in her first invited visit.
With a squeak of rubber on steps that are carpeted only in a thin layer of dust, Gale bounds up to the second floor, presumably to explore there as well. Palomir sighs, reaching up to take off his fedora - only it's not there, probably left behind in the office during his little melee with, with... what? he wonders. 'The Forces of Darkness' sounds too epic and too trite to be killing cats behind old ladies' houses; 'a ghost' doesn't quite work as an adequately descriptive noun for something like that thing.
That sounds appropriate enough, Palomir decides, as he rolls his sleeves up and steps into the kitchen. It's the Thing until he can find a better name to call it by.
The elf has managed to put the pasta on the boil and is halfway through chopping the onions for the sauce when he hears a loud squeal from the second floor; like a shot, he's up the stairs and holding his chopping knife in an icepick grip before he registers the squeaking of springs. Familiar springs.
He comes to a slack-jawed stop in the middle of the doorway to his room.
Gale is bouncing on his bed, giggling like a little girl, skirts flying with every bounce and giddy whooping filling the air.
"Palomir!" she yells happily, completely bereft of self-consciousness. "You didn't tell me your bed bounced this well!" The sound of her bottom soundly impacting with the mattress seems to underline the statement.
"You've been holding out, you jerk! Not that I blame you," she adds, as an afterthought. "If I had digs this comfortable, I wouldn't be spreading it around either."
Gale wallows on the bed, happier than a pig in mud. Her appalling indolence transforms the clean sheets and twin-sized mattress into a luxurious pleasure dome for the average bed-bouncing fanatic, a shrine for those in search of the perfect set of springs, a padded palisade...
The elf's mouth goes into a thin, hard line, channeling the near-heart-attack she's given him into righteous irritation.
"Gale, get off the bed," Palomir orders curtly. This is his house, in the end. He's only really her employee as long as he's in uniform - never mind the multiple times she's coerced him into following her orders when he's not in it.
His new sense of control, unsurprisingly, doesn't mean anything to his boss. Who is, for the record, behaving in a completely unprofessional manner, having forsaken bouncing in favor of wriggling on the bed like a landed catfish - completely upsetting the formerly-immaculate bedspread in the process.
The elf's fingers itch to re-tuck the linens under the bed. Gale puckers her lips and sticks her tongue out at him impishly, lying belly-up with her head tilted back to peer at him.
"Spoilsport," she accuses complacently, without any true rancor. She rolls over onto her stomach and continues. "Besides, I'm just getting comfortable. We're going to be spending most of the night on this thing, after all."
Palomir takes a moment to sort through that. And then comprehension crashes in like a hurricane.
"What?"
This is the most awkward situation Palomir has ever found himself in, and he's still not sure how he's gotten here.
After a dinner consisting of two parts silent contemplation and one part slightly sour spaghetti, he and Gale have turned in for the night, on his bed, together. It's somehow simultaneously comforting and insulting that Gale's hardly made any fuss about changing clothes or respecting privacy. While Palomir himself has dressed down to a looser shirt and highly informal shorts (for his own comfort, if nothing else), she's climbed into the bed fully clothed in her orange dress, shucking off socks and shoes on the way.
She had insisted that it was absolutely necessary that she was body-length from Palomir during the night, since vengeful ghosts denied of their prey were twice as likely to come back and finish the job. Palomir strongly suspects there's quite a bit more of made-up and half-arsed in there than Gale herself is willing to admit, but it's comforting not to be treated like he's (too) crazy for seeing a corpse-bird that no one else can.
Of course, he's starting to see that Gale's faith in the integrity of his mind and her willingness to protect his body have a few drawbacks of their own.
Despite the fact that he's pointedly lying on top of the covers while she's snuggled underneath, she's managed to fling a leg and an arm over his side in her sleep. Palomir remains on his side, refraining from rolling over. Her touch makes him itch.
The thing is, the hand carelessly flung across him dangles Gale's signature bubblegum-pink gun from its half-nerveless fingers. Even if she seems asleep, Palomir doesn't want to risk startling Gale into shooting him in the kidney, or worse. Knowing Gale, worse is not merely likely; it's inevitable.
Really, if he'd allow himself to be completely honest, he doesn't mind the warmth and pressure of her limbs that much. Letting someone touch you involves a world's difference in mindset than actually touching someone yourself, and with Gale, it seems, 'letting' her do anything is more of a law of nature than a choice.
Against his will, and more comfortable than he will ever admit to being, Palomir falls asleep.
For the second night in a row, he wakes up in an unpleasant manner. On this particular occasion, he's been half-thrown to the floor to the accompaniment of muffled gunshots, sheets hobbling his legs; despite his better judgment, he opens his eyes. Color spots dance crazily across his vision-- for a moment he thinks he can see, in the dark space between them, the cold gaze of dead things staring back, dark beaks clicking staccato rhythms that echo his pulse...
"Missed it!" Gale yells vehemently, vibrant and loud and alive. He can feel her weight roll off the bed-- the recoil as she leaps off jolts his legs up sharply tumbles him heels-over-head and onto his back.
All in all, this is not an auspicious start to the day, particularly not when he can hear the loud yells of other houses in the neighborhood being roused by the racket.
The clock's been broken since he came here, and he hasn't figured out how to fix it yet, mainly because it doesn't come with a manual and also because all the buttons have been stuck in place by grime. The display blinks a sullen red 12:00 AM from its position on the side table, and the elf closes his eyes.
No. Definitely not. If there is a word for the antithesis of auspicious - anti-auspicious? Non-auspicious? Suspicious? - it applies to the situation at hand distressingly well.
One eyelid peels back and he peers at the clock again; much to his own dismay, the digits are beginning to change. Blip by digital blip, slowly at first, then faster and faster until he's left wondering whether it's rushing to count down the day or to start a new one.
7:56 AM. 12:59 PM. 9:21 PM.
He wonders why he feels so cold.
"Palo!" And then Gale's by his side again, warmth and annoyance and eternal exasperation at his inability to get with the program and just roll with the punches even before he even knows they're coming. He blinks, and the clock face returns to normal.
"Geez, don't you have a bath in the house?"
Palomir gives Gale a mute look, the kind that says 'Do you have any idea of the kind of soulrending anguish that is likely to befall me in the next few minutes if we don't find a way to get this thing out of my life? And you're still making jabs at my hygiene?'
Gale has never been terribly good with subtitles.
"Come on," she says decisively, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him up with that inhuman strength he's never questioned the origins of. "We're going to pay Mrs. Cat Lady a visit."
"Fidwidget," Palomir manages feebly. "Her last name is Fidwidget."
"Whatever."
As it turns out, Mrs. Fidwidget is in not much of a state to do anything, much less host any visitors. She pays careful, patient attention to Gale's rambling spiel about the water getting cut off from their house, funny old world isn't it, and can she just throw her cousin into the tender mercies of Mrs. Fidwidget's bathtub for a few minutes please, he's drunk and needs to be sobered up?
The old woman squints at them. Palomir proceeds to do his best impression of drunkenness, which isn't very hard since most of his limbs already feel like they're made of marzipan or something appropriately weak and bendy.
"He's an elf. You're a cat." Mrs. Fidwidget, Palomir thinks, does have a habit of choosing the most inconvenient time to become perceptive.
"Well, yes," Gale says, gesticulating, "But we're cousins by adoption, you see, and sometimes there are ties stronger than blood, and that's really what matters, isn't it?" She smiles, trying to look as winning and charming as one can with a half-delirious elf under one arm and a precariously balanced mirror under the other.
Mrs. Fidwidget gives Gale the same look that all old women have been giving since the dawn of time, to all grubby children with hands tucked behind their backs, a shattered precious object in the near vicinity, and the word 'innocent' scrawled so boldly across their features that it might as well be written in glowing ink and ten-inch letters.
It's the kind of look that says, 'I know you're up to something, buster, and whatever it is, you're not fooling me.' Palomir imagines she's had a lot of practice, after having had to use it on who-knows-how-many generations of cats.
The porch light gives a loud, electric hum, flickering out for the space of a breath; for an instant, they're all bathed in darkness.mThis time, Palomir's eyes are properly open, and he can see into the shadows left in the wake of the light. There are no particularly nice things in them.
His sharp, high-pitched yelp - entirely involuntary, of course - appears to settle something in Mrs. Fidwidget's mind, because she's nodding to herself like this explains everything and undoing the bolts on her door. She pokes her nose out into the night air warily, glaring at them both. "Well? Are you coming in or not?"
As Gale gladly accepts the grudging invitation and hauls them both into the house, Palomir's struck by how much more the old woman in the flowery nightcap and woolen nightshirt reminds him more of a cat than the girl beside him.
Maybe it's all just a matter of perspective.
The elf doesn't know how Gale knows that Mrs. Fidwidget has a bathtub. He thinks it would be wise not to ask; not because Gale might withhold the answer, but precisely because she might go into painful detail about it.
Palomir waits, a bit apprehensively, as the water pools into the bath. It's one of the old fashioned kinds that come with copper claws for legs and have probably outlived their former owners. In the light of the circumstances, the last thought is not a comforting one. He and Gale are still fully clothed except for their feet; the cold tiles should feel like ice against his soles, but it's almost warm compared to his current body temperature.
If he squints his eyes, he thinks he may be able to make out his breath puffing into mist. Or he could be hallucinating again.
Gale watches the tub as hot water pours into it, steam wafting off the liquid and making the air difficult to breathe.
For some reason, the girl has insisted on unhitching Palomir's bathroom mirror from its hooks and bringing it along with them. Now it's propped in the middle of the doorway, reflective side facing out. Mrs. Fidget is a fussy, disapproving presence beyond it, at least until Gale firmly and politely asks her to leave because no doubt 'Pally' is going to be violently purging his stomachful of sin into the can within moments.
There's something about the way she says it that tells Palomir it's not just a lame hack to get the old woman safely away from something she'll probably regret seeing. Instead, he asks, "Is that mirror really necessary?"
Gale's explanation, accompanied by a pitying stare, is a simple, pragmatic, "Mirrors trap spirits."
Palomir hasn't the faintest idea what to say in response that would be appropriate. He's not even sure there's an appropriate response at all, so he nods, making a note not to ask the girl any more obvious questions in the future - she answers far too readily, and she smiles too much about it, too.
When the tub comes to three-quarters full, the girl shuts off the water and turns to him.
"Alright," Gale announces, with the morbid glee normally found only in the terminally sadistic or the clinically deranged. "In you go!"
That is all the warning the elf gets before she seizes him by the front of his throat, squeezing hard, and throws him into the tub.
--he is in his house, except that he isn't. For one thing, it smells different-- varnish and mahogany and something vaguely floral, where he recalls nothing but a smell like wet dog and mold. For another, none of the furniture is his own. He's in the building that is his house, except that it's evident that someone else is currently occupying it.
There's also the matter that there's not a single thing in color.
Palomir looks down at his hands. They look normal enough. He wriggles them experimentally. Functioning rather better than the last time he had seen them, too. There's a strange buzzing sound at his ears, and he shakes his head irritably as he picks himself up.
Fine way to help a guy, sending him crashing through a tubful of water and smack on his tail bone. He's aware that it's a train of thought that doesn't precisely make sense, but he supposes he can be forgiven for being disoriented at the moment.
Ruefully, he reaches up to rub at his neck, wondering if there are already bruises forming. She'd choked him. It had probably worked the way she had intended, if he was here now instead of being dead and drowned, but still.
Maybe he's dead anyway.
He looks around him at a world that has been bleached into shades of black and white, like an old movie or an overexposed photo, and he wonders where he is. When he is. And why his dark hair and red shirt and horrible, horrible apricot shorts are the only splashes of Technicolor in a monochrome world.
The fall of light through the window at the far end of this hall tells him that it's just past noon, probably, although there's something wrong about the way the illumination spills over the floor. It makes him frown, for a moment, and he's stepping over to the window before he can help himself.
The patch of grass he remembers as barely accommodating an outdated seems to extend infinitely longer. Instead of ramshackle buildings, the horizon is broken up by the enormous trees that rise from the ground everywhere, leaves turning sunlight into dappled patterns that shift as the wind blows. It's all done in tasteful grey with even a hint of sepia, but Palomir can tell it's in full spring glory anyway. He had aspirations to be a gardener once.
Funny how dreams turn out.
For the first time Palomir realizes that the noise in his ears is birdsong. It's not all just songbird warbling, saccharine and expected. There are harsher calls underneath the dulcet tones, and underlying it all is the whisper of leaves, the susurration of feathers on wings. A hundred delicate noises work together to provide, well...
One hell of a noise.
Palomir flinches; as if the recognition was all the noise needed to more effectively beat on his eardrums, he feels as if the din has risen thrice fold in volume. Curiosity prods at him about the world outside this house, the life-sized daguerreotype of a Windy City lost to memory. Exploring it isn't likely to be a chance he'll get again in his lifetime, even for one as long as his.
Reluctantly, the elf reminds himself that he has to let it go. There are more important things to find out, anyway, like how exactly this is supposed to be helping him get rid of a ghost he's not even sure exists. He supposes, since the world likes a certain kind of order in things, that there's probably something he's meant to find here. Something important. If he's been dropped into some bizarre alternate version of his own house, that's as big a hint to start looking around as any.
So he does.
There's nothing out of place on the first floor, though it's amusing to see an outdated icebox where his refrigerator currently is. It's a little less so when he spots severe, grim-looking pictures on every horizontal surface. The people in the pictures are a study in contrasts, the severity of dark hair and eyes against moon-pale skin giving them an unusually piercing stare. Unnerved, Palomir treads up the stairs to the second floor, feeling the luxuriously soft carpet flatten beneath his toes.
Aside from quaint furniture, there's nothing terribly special or interesting about the second floor either. Palomir is temporarily baffled; he perches on the edge of a four-poster bed covered in ash-grey sheets so he can collect his thoughts. There is something in this house, and he has the feeling he's getting closer to it-- but apparently, finding it will present a problem.
The birdsong has been grating at his ears all this time, and though he does do his best to ignore it, even he can't miss the sudden thread of fresh song that winds its way into the melody. It's not by any means the most siren or charming of voices. If anything, it adds to the discord, a flat hum in the middle of notes determined to scale off the charts.
Instinct compels him. Palomir follows the noise.
It leads him to a small ladder disappearing into a trapdoor in the roof; he's not sure how he missed it his first couple of turns around this corner, but there it is, hanging within reach. The elf grasps the rungs and climbs up before he can think better of it; nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he doesn't think he has that much else to lose.
He has half an idea of what to expect, anyway.
When he climbs into the attic, the sight that meets his eyes isn't as surprising as it could have been. There's a girl that looks like she might have just walked out of one of the daguerreotypes downstairs, except that her hair's in disarray and she's currently squatting on the floorboards, making coaxing noises at what looks like a duck with a splint. Despite her disheveled appearance, there isn't an air of slovenliness about her: just rumpled majesty.
Sort of like a queen stuffed into a milkmaid's outfit, perhaps. It doesn't matter so much what you dress like as what you move like.
It's not as if the woman's state of dress can possibly gather more attention than the hundreds of birds that pack the attic. They're wedged into every corner, squabbling in their high-pitched voices. They're fussing around the woman, snuggling closer to her, pecking at hands and neck and cheek for her attention.
By the light provided by the round window set into the roof, Palomir sees that the woman is bleeding from a hundred little vicious love-bites, dark blood trickling along her arms and neck.
Eventually, the woman realizes she's being watched; she looks up at Palomir and smiles. It's the guileless, innocent smile of either the very young or the very witless, and when she pulls herself to her feet, Palomir can't stop his mental vision from overlaying her with the image of a crane, rising stiff-legged from its crouch.
Hello, she says brightly. Who are you?
"I'm no one," Palomir answers sketchily, avoiding a direct answer. His father once warned him about women. It's never really worn off. Gale doesn't exactly qualify as one to his mind, and he suspects she falls into an entirely different mental category anyway. The woman before him is filled of something more worrying than the usual feminine wiles; it rolls off her in waves.
She's completely and utterly mad.
She's still smiling, though, and she's coming closer, which makes Palomir tense, but not withdraw. Not yet. She's offering her hands toward him, fingers curled to form a crude cup.
That's a nice name. No-one. Do you want to feed the birds too? I've got plenty of food in my pockets, so there's no need to worry about running out.
Not anymore, Palomir thinks. The moment she's properly gotten to her feet, every bird in the place lunges for her skirts, pecking and tearing at its many, many pockets with the sound of ripping cloth. She doesn't seem to notice, and the elf finds himself having to shake off a couple of jackdaws that are attempting to peck at his ears.
It dawns on Palomir - like a slow, crystallized epiphany - that the birds are mad too.
Whether it was the girl who went first and her brood after isn't something he wants to speculate on.
Too quickly for him to avoid it, she's by his side, touching his sleeve, grinning vapidly into his face.
Palomir recoils, wrenching from her grip, but by then it's too late - she freezes, sniffing the air.
Cat, she whispers, lip curling. Her voice is very soft.
It gets louder very quickly.
CatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatCAT! With every word, she grows larger and larger, less and less human; when she shrieks the word for the last time, her neck is stretched impossibly long and her dark eyes glitter from a sea of feathers.
CAT-LOVER, BIRD-SLAYER! I'LL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR MY SUPPER! KEEYAGH!
Shrilling death, the bird-woman's beak plunges towards him.
Palomir turns, and runs.
--i'll kill you i'll kill you friend of murderers traitor to feather you dare bring a beast of claw and fang into my nest and let it tear my children you will die--
Distantly, as if the noise is coming from beyond heavy fog, Palomir hears the mirror shattering--
--Gale's voice distorted by the water, calling out sharp and strident--
And then, nothing.
Later, when he no longer feels like throwing up if he opens his eyes, Gale gives him a small shard that appears to have come from a mirror, duct-taped around the edges for the sake of delicate fingers. He handles it with his good hand, wincing. Right now, he's bandaged over most of his body, a large proportion of his current injuries acquired from broken glass worming into his skin.
His reflection informs him that Gale's fingers have left a conspicuous print on his neck. He expects it will fade, and he has no intention of explaining it to Erias. Palomir turns the bit of mirror in his hands, catches his breath.
A tiny raven is frosted inside the glass.
"What is it?" Palomir asks, forgetting his resolution to no longer ask Gale any questions he either knows or isn't going to like the answer to.
Gale shrugs.
"Your ghost."
The agent swears that he had no idea that Palomir's house had an attic. Small wonder, since the trap door's been nailed shut and painted over, and it has changed hands enough that the original plans have been lost. Palomir has to borrow a ladder from someone else in the neighborhood to pry the entrance open.
He is not sure what he was expecting to find, but he is not disappointed when all that is there to greet him is dust and bones.
They're tiny, but too big to belong to rats. He nudges them apart with the end of a broom to discover fragments of beak as well.
A glimmer in the middle of the dust catches his eye, and he bends down to pluck the errant shotglass off the floor before it can roll into a corner. With his gaze closer to the floor, he notices one of his missing spoons, but he doesn't bother to pick it up when he straightens and looks around again.
There's nothing of the ghost here.
Nevertheless, he boards up the door tightly behind him, and firmly and politely informs the real estate agent that he'd much rather move to another location, if it's all the same to him. Maybe somewhere crowded. Preferably well-lit at night.
And, he can't emphasize this enough, no animals.
When he works up the courage to ask Mrs. Fidwidget about the woman who once lived in his house, it's on the day he moves. There's not much to handle, so he already has most of it boxed up and crammed into the car he's persuaded Engol into lending to him; transporting the furniture has already been taken care of this morning.
It's as good a time to ask as any.
"With that description? You must mean my grandmother," the old woman murmurs eventually, after a considerable pause. "Though goodness knows how you even know of her. There have been other people in that house since the time I was a girl, and that was a long time ago."
"Did she happen to like birds?" Palomir's not sure why he's asking, but it slips off his tongue anyway.
"Like them?" The old woman's voice turns wistful and distant, stroking the back of the tabby that chooses this moment to crawl onto her lap. "She loved them."
The elf opens his mouth to respond, then swallows his words.
Tabby?
Palomir stares as cats begin to sidle out of dark spaces he was hitherto certain were unoccupied; like an inexorable, multicolored furry tide, they roll across the ground in their smooth, indolent strolls-- cock o'the walk, and feeling like it, too. Tabbies, gray and orange and all shades in between, calico and tortoiseshell, longhair and short: they come out, every one of them, from those wavering dark places between things, where something that might be a rock or an old boot or a cat can be any of those things if it chooses to be.
In a moment, Mrs. Fidwidget's house is covered in warm, faintly humming feline bodies, and things look no different than the first day Palomir had arrived here.
Except he knows, they should be different, somehow. He may occasionally have strained relations with conventional definitions of sanity, but he's certain something one has seen dead should have the decency to remain so. In the sea of feline bodies, he's definitely sure he can pick out one, two-- at least ten different cats that, as far he's aware of, were last seen dead as earth in Mrs. Fidwidget's backyard.
He's pretty sure the big fuzzy one with the crooked tail is grinning at him.
Mrs. Fidwidget doesn't seem to noticing anything out of the oridinary. Tutting, she lifts up a pathetically mewing kitten, its eyes crusted over with some rheumy grime. "Oh dear. Bit early for your time, weren't you? She loved birds," she continues, switching conversational tracks smoothly. It's disconcerting, Palomir finds, being spoken to by an old woman who apparently engrossed with the hygiene of an extraordinarily ugly young cat.
"She loved birds so much that she spent more time with them than she did with people. Probably got on with them better, too. We used to say it was because she was a hen-witted, and air-minded, all those cruel things children will say of their elders when they're a certain age and more eccentric than the usual." She digs around in her pocket to produce a delicate lace kerchief, only to spit heavily into it and proceed to dab at the eyes of the squirming kitten. Mrs. Fidwidget isn't having any of that nonsense; she's holding it firmly by the nape, like a recalcitrant child.
"In any case, she loved birds, and I loved cats. It was," Mrs. Fidwidget says, a significant sort of tone entering her voice, "A situation doomed to end in tragedy."
"What happened?" Palomir dreads the answer. He flexes his sore hand, still wrapped in bandages.
"Oh, well. Some of my cats found and tore apart one of her birdies' nests, like cats will sometimes do for fun or for show. Only old Gramma Birch took it as personally as if my cats had killed her own children. More personally, probably; she never liked her children much." Mrs. Fidwidget releases the kitten, satisfied; purring, it joins the tabby on her lap.
"So I wound up with my darlings - Coxie and Russet and Bridge - laid out like firewood at our front door. Gave me quite the turn the other night, seeing my poor babies like that. Like, er. Whatsisname. Deja vu." She shakes her head almost mournfully. "Anyway after that, there could never be any question of it - it was war."
"Who won?"
It's getting late, Palomir thinks. He should get moving soon, but that last question has to be asked, at least.
Mrs. Fidwidget gives him a distinctly predatory grin.
"Well think, boyo," she says. "It's cats who've got nine lives, innit?"
the end