Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

I wouldn’t want to hit someone’s cat by accident.

Theme anthologies are gold mines for some writers. Give them a topic, and they can write a story around it. Cat story, horse story, a story about a magician with a sword, a haunted house story, a story about a mermaid . . . And oh, how I envy those writers.

I just can’t do it.

Lord knows I’ve tried. But it’s sort of like the fable about the emperor who would give his fortune to the man who could look at a white horse and not think about its tail, but in reverse. The more someone gives me a theme, the more those stories elude me.

But once in a great while, I still manage to wriggle and wrangle a story into a theme anthology. “Strays” is a tale like that. I was approached by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, a longtime friend and fellow writer. She was editing an anthology to be called Warrior Princesses. Surely, as a fantasy writer, I could come up with a story that had such a character.

Well. No. Or rather, yes and no. I was working on a story. And with a touch or two, perhaps I could convey a bit of royalty to my protagonist.

And once I did, I perceived that she’d actually been a princess all the time. For every female cat is a queen.

Lonnie Spencer looked like a boy. She sat on a rusty bike, one foot on the curb, the toe of her other ratty sneaker in the gutter. She had scabby knees, a smoking skull on her baggy sweatshirt, and a baseball hat backward over her chopped black hair. What’s wrong with that kid’s face? was my second thought when I saw her. My first had been to avoid him because he looked like he’d kick gutter water at you just to get it on your school clothes.

As I edged past, she spoke in a clear girl’s voice, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

I had been staring. I’d never seen anyone my own age with a big scar down her face. It ridged her Native American skin, pulling her cheek and her eye to one side. It was hard not to stare. So I looked down and saw the Barbie doll lashed to the front of her bike. It had a fur skirt and one boob. Her clumpy hair was tied back with gold thread. A tiny wooden bow was slung over her shoulder.

“Amazon,” I said without thinking.

“Yeah!” Lonnie grinned and suddenly didn’t look so scary. “She’s an Amazon warrior. That’s why I cut off her tit. So she can shoot a bow better. I read that they really did that.”

“I know. I read about it too.”

Our eyes met. Connection. We both read, and we read weird stuff, stuff about women who were warriors. It’s so simple, when you’re a kid.

In her next breath, Lonnie announced, “I’m a warrior too. I been teaching myself martial arts. Ninja stuff, swords and pikes, too. I want to learn to shoot a bow. Scars are okay, on a warrior. Hey. My name’s Lonnie Spencer.” She stuck out a grubby hand. She had a boy’s way of doing things. “What’s yours?”

Her hand was scratchy, scabs and dirt and dry skin. “Mandy Curtis.”

“Mandy, huh. Bet you get teased a lot about that in school. Handy Mandy. I hate school. All the teachers hate me and the kids tease me all the time. ’Cause of my scars, you know, and because I don’t dress like they do. They think if you don’t have the right kind of clothes, you’re nothing. Lower than shit.”

Her words spilled forth. I sensed she needed to talk but didn’t find many listeners. I’m a listener, like my mom. She says it’s our curse, to have total strangers tell us their darkest secrets. I glanced at Lonnie again. Not many of the girls I’d met at school would want to be seen talking to her. My clothes were a lot better than hers were and I was still having trouble making friends.

I kept walking. I was supposed to come straight home from school every day. We were new to this neighborhood and Mom was jumpy. Our building was okay, but two blocks away was a commercial strip, and the apartments that bordered it attracted what Mom called “a rougher element.” Mom had never defined that but I looked at Lonnie and knew. She coasted her bike alongside in the gutter as I walked. “I didn’t get my scars in a fight, though,” she volunteered abruptly. “My mom threw me through a picture window when I was two. She was pretty drunk and I was fussy. That’s what she says, anyway. Cut up my face and cut my leg muscles, too.” She watched for my reaction. Her words challenged me. “That’s why I limp when I walk. They had to put over a hundred and seven stitches in me. After that, they put me in a foster home, until my grandma came and got me. Now Mom has me.”

Kids ask the questions that adults swallow. “Why do you want to live with someone who threw you through a window?”

Lonnie lifted one shoulder. “Well, you know, she’s my mom. She went to counseling. And the court says it’s okay, and Grandma is getting pretty old. So.” Again the one-shoulder shrug.

So. That could sum up a lot of Lonnie Spencer. So.

The conversation lagged awkwardly. Mom wouldn’t want me hanging around with Lonnie. I knew it. I think Lonnie knew it too. But I was as desperately lonely as she was. “You go to Mason School?” I asked her, just as she exclaimed, “Oh, no! Not Scruffy, oh, man . . .”

She hopped off her bike, letting it clatter into the gutter. Without a look at me she hurried to a sodden calico body at the edge of the street. I followed her, reluctant but curious. Lonnie crouched close over it; I stayed back. The cat’s mouth was open, white teeth and a sprawling tongue. I wouldn’t have touched that sunken body with a stick, but Lonnie stroked it, smoothing its soggy fur.

“I hope his next eight lives are better than this one was,” she said quietly.

“You really believe a cat has nine lives?”

“Sure. Why not? One old lady, a foster mom, she told me if a cat really likes you, it can give you one of its lives. Wouldn’t that be something? Get to live a cat’s life?”

I looked at the dead cat. “Doesn’t look like he enjoyed it much,” I pointed out.

“I can think of worse lives than being a stray cat,” she said darkly as she unslung her backpack. She pulled out a can of neon orange spray paint. The balls inside it rattled like dice as she shook it. Then she outlined the cat’s body, meticulously tracing each leg and the tail, even the jab of an ear against the pavement. She surveyed her work, then capped the paint and put it away. Without squeamishness, she picked up the little body and moved it to the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street. The orange outline of the body remained on the pavement, a grim reminder. I was speechless.

Lonnie wiped her hands self-consciously down her shirt. “I don’t think people should just hit a cat and forget it,” she said quietly. “This way, whoever hit that cat has to look at that outline every time they drive past. I put the bodies up off the street and some city guy comes and picks them up instead of the next fifty cars making him mush.”

“Do you think we should try to find his owner?” I asked in a hushed voice. In a macabre way, I relished the idea of being the bearer of such sad tidings.

“Naw,” Lonnie said dismissively. She looked down at the dead cat with bitterness. “Scruffy didn’t belong to anyone except himself. A stray disappears, no one wonders about it.” She shrugged into her backpack. As she picked her bike out of the gutter, she added, “I figure it’s something I owe them, in a way. My loyal subjects should not be left dead in the street. I done all I can for him, now . . .”

“Your loyal subjects?” I asked skeptically. Being weird is okay unless it’s fake-weird. A lot of kids pretend to be weird just to impress other people. I wondered about Lonnie. Maybe even her scar story was fake, maybe she’d just been in a bad car wreck.