Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

“You are from the gate—”

Startled, she stared at him openmouthed. He was speaking her own language!

“Gate?” she floundered. “There was no gate—just the stones. Neil knocked me down when I tried to keep him from shooting the cat. I had every right,” the almost forgotten heat of her temper was again a trace of warmth in her. “I had posted the land—up to the Lying Stones and beyond. Where… where is this?”

She made a small gesture to indicate what lay about them, house, strangers—this land itself.

“You are in the Green Valley,” he told her, “in Escore. And you came through one of the Gates—May the Lady turn her favor to you now.”

“Who are you?” she came directly to the point, “and what are the gates?”

“For the first, I am Simon Tregarth. And for the second—it would take an adept to make that clear to you—if he or she could.”

“How do I get back?” She asked the most important question of all.

He shook his head. “You do not. We have only one adept now and your gate is not his. Even Hilarion cannot send you back.”

The woman in gray had entered behind him. Now she pushed to the front though she kept a space between them as if she had some aversion to the man. She addressed him abruptly and he shrugged before he turned again to Kelsie. It was plain that there was little liking between the two of them.

“She who is Wittle would know how you came by that jewel. Surely you did not bring it with you.”

“She had it—the woman who died—Roylane.”

There was complete silence and they were all staring at her as if she had uttered some word or words which had dire meaning.

“She gave you her name?” countered the man who had called himself Tregarth.

Kelsie’s chin went up, she sensed disbelief in that question.

“When she was dying,” she returned shortly.

Tregarth turned to the woman in gray and spoke quickly. Though she might be listening to him she never looked away from Kelsie. Something in that unending stare made the girl more and more uneasy, as if in each blink of an eye she was being accused of the death of the traveler and her companions.

However, Tregarth had once more turned his attention full upon the girl.

“Did you also take her jewel, and by her word?”

Kelsie shook her head emphatically, her denial aimed more at that woman in gray than to him. “The cat took it,” she said. Let them believe or not it was the truth. And she added to her first statement by describing just how the animal had taken the gem from its owner. Once more she was aware of a brush of thick fur against her and looked down to see the wildcat come to a stop before her, seating itself with tail tip covering both its good foot and the mangled one together, as if it was the two of them against this world.

The woman in gray was plainly startled by the appearance of the cat. The ornament still lay around the animal’s neck. The cat dipped its head to catch the gem between its jaws once again.

Though she had started forward a step and uttered a sound as if denying the cat its trophy, the gray woman now stood, plainly completely astounded by the creature’s actions.

“This is as it was before?” Tregarth asked.

“Yes. Only the cat took that—” Kelsie thought it wise to make that point as soon as possible. She had no desire to be thought of as one who had robbed the helpless dead. Though why she would want such a bauble she had no idea.

“And the cat entered the gate before you or with you.” He did not make a question of that statement. But she saw fit to answer:

“Yes.”

Now it was Dahaun who broke in with a fast burst of speech in which Kelsie heard her own name and the word “gate” mentioned several times. First Tregarth and then the gray woman nodded, the latter reluctantly, Kelsie believed. She watched the other bring a small bag out of some hidden pocket in her robe and pull at its drawstring until the pouch lay flat on the mat covered floor. Going down on one knee she spread out the bit of cloth yet more and then turned to the cat, meeting it eye to eye though she uttered no sound.

If she was asking it to give up guardianship of the stone she was unsuccessful. For the cat drew back, though still facing her, until there was more space between them. A line showed between the woman’s eyes which looked so pale under her dark brows. She spoke now, something with a certain rhythm which could have been part of a ritual. But the cat did not move. At length she picked up the bag and as she did so shot another keen and threatening look at Kelsie, speaking as one with authority.

Tregarth heard her out and then translated for Kelsie’s benefit.

“You are bidden to make your familiar let the power go—”

“Bidden?” snapped Kelsie. “I have no control over the cat. Familiar—” a scrap of old knowledge came suddenly to the fore of her mind, “that’s what they used to say about witches—that they had animals to help them. Well, I do not know where your Green Valley is, nor Escore, nor any of this country! I am not a witch—such things do not exist.”

For the first time there was a quirk of smile about his lips. “Oh, but here they do, Kelsie McBlair. This is the very home and root of what you might call witchcraft in your own place.”

She laughed uncertainly. “This is a dream—” she said more to herself than him.

“No dream,” his voice was entirely serious and, Kelsie thought, he was looking at her with something close to pity. “The gate is behind you and there is no going back—

She threw up her hands. “What is all this talk of gates?” she demanded. “I’m probably back in a hospital somewhere and this is all coming from that bump on the head—” But, even as she tried to hearten herself with that thought and speech, she knew that it was not the truth. Something far past her ability to answer with anything believable had happened.

The woman in gray advanced another step, now her hand came out palm up to Kelsie and her frown grew the darker. She exploded into a burst of words which ran up the scale of sound near to a command shout.

“She is the witch!” Kelsie counterattacked.

“Yes,” Tregarth answered calmly and with a certainty which made it the truth. “Have you any control over the cat?”

Kelsie shook her head vigorously. “I told you she took the thing from that woman—that Roylane, when she was dying and the woman let her. It was not given to me. Let this—this witch beg it from the cat.”

Tregarth was already studying the animal, now he turned to the one who had brought Kelsie here. He asked her a question in that other tongue which sounded almost like the twittering of excited birds. It was Dahaun’s turn to face the cat, taking the disputed stone away from the self-proclaimed witch and moving it nearer her own hand.

For a long breath or two they ail stood waiting, Kelsie was plagued by the thought that the cat understood all that had passed and was content now to tease them. Then at last the animal dropped her head to spit the stone straight before her into the center of a piece of shimmery cloth which the woman of the riders had produced. The witch moved but Dahaun waved her back. It was she who drew the cords to make a bag and then held that by the drawstring.

“For the shrine—” Tregarth spoke to Kelsie. “Its power has died with she who held it.” Then Dahaun arose, leaving the bag on the ground where the cat caught it up by the string, and spoke to the witch whose pallid face was a little flushed now and whose mouth was a straight line of severity. She turned quickly, her gray robe spinning out at her momentum and went, all those gathered there allowing her wide room.

Tregarth watched her go and now it was his turn to frown. Once more he spoke to Kelsie.