Chapter 25

“Children!” said Mort. He sounded genuinely thrilled to see them again. “You’ve returned!”

Alder blinked, feeling a bit off-kilter, and looked around. He was standing, just as before, in the entry hall of a house that had not existed just a moment before. He had the strange sensation of having not moved a step but, at the same time, having been transported an immeasurable distance. It took him a moment to get his bearings, but as soon as he did, he said, “Hello, Mort. Have you seen my kitten?”

“Hmm,” answered the opossum, touching together the sharp-nailed fingertips of his strange little hands. “I’m afraid I haven’t noticed any visitors. . . .”

Alder’s heart tightened as if there were a band around it.

In Oak’s arms, Walnut struggled to be released. Oak set him down, and as soon as his paws touched the floor, he ran off like an orange bolt, disappearing around the corner in the hallway.

“Walnut!” Oak called after him.

“Oh dear,” said Mort, “oh my.” He looked on the verge of freezing up once again, but then—

Meow.

Mew.

Here they came, sauntering back to the hallway, one orange kitten—Walnut—followed by the other—Fern!

“Oh, those sneaky kitties,” Mort said, relaxing.

“Fern!” Alder half cried her name. He knelt down, and Fern pushed her forehead against his knee as if nothing strange had happened at all.

“The gang’s all here,” said Mort. He began to prance in place, his strange little boots clip-clopping on the wood floor. “Such a delight!” He giggled, a rather unsettling sound, especially as it emerged from those rows of yellow sharp teeth, but Alder was so relieved to be reunited with his kitten that he grinned in return.

“Hello, Mort,” said Oak. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“I was hoping you’d come back,” said Mort. “As soon as the wind picked up, I thought, well, this is traveling weather, and I set right to work making refreshments, just in case. I remember last visit, you said that cider upsets your tummy, is that correct?”

“Ye-es,” Oak said slowly.

Mort clapped his tiny hands. “Well,” he said, “this time I’ve prepared a spot of tea. How does that sound, hmm?” He turned toward the living room.

Behind Mort’s back, Alder whispered to Oak, “Can we drink his tea, do you think?”

“I don’t remember anything in Feline Teleportation about eating or drinking in a portal world,” Oak whispered back. “But I remember reading a story once where a girl ate six pomegranate seeds in the underworld, and then she had to spend half of each year there. Only that was Greek mythology, so it’s probably not the same.”

Still, Alder thought, better safe than sorry, so he said to Mort, “We just finished our tea, right before we came.”

“Oh,” said Mort, looking a bit disappointed. “Well, I hope you won’t think me rude if I have a cup, just the same. It’s ready to pour, you see.” He gestured to a small table in front of the fire; upon it squatted a teapot gently steaming.

“Please,” said Alder, “we insist.”

Like a fussy old man, Mort bustled over to the side table and poured a long amber stream from the pot into one of the three teacups. “I do like to drink my tea before it’s had a chance to oversteep,” he explained, and his nose twitched rather adorably as he sniffed the fragrant liquid. Behind him, the fire sparked and cracked. “I’ll set out cream for the kittens,” he said, pouring some into a saucer and putting it on the floor in front of the fire. “They so enjoyed it last time, and travel does deplete a kitten, don’t you agree?”

If they’d already had a drink of cream last time they were here, Alder couldn’t see what harm could come of allowing them to have another, and so when Fern and Walnut headed toward the saucer, he didn’t stop them.

Oak must have come to the same conclusion, because she didn’t stop the kittens either, instead sitting in the same spot on the couch she’d sat in last time they’d visited.

Alder followed Oak’s lead. Now that he knew Fern was safe, he could feel himself relaxing.

“It’s such a treat, don’t you think,” said Mort, “to sit with a nice hot drink?”

Alder and Oak both nodded.

Mort took a rather noisy sip and then set down the teacup. His hands, though grotesque at first glance, were actually quite beautiful up close. From the cuff of Mort’s sleeve came a second cuff, this one of fur, which ended neatly above his five pink fingers. Each finger was tipped with a long, curved claw that looked, Alder decided, very much like the human fingernails in the pictures from the World Nail Competition that he and Marcus had researched. Those nails, he remembered, were considered beautiful if their shape mimicked the golden ratio.

Suddenly, Alder pictured a hand strumming a banjo, fingers flying. Two fingertips—those of the index and the middle fingers—were each capped with an upside-down golden claw.

That was what his father had called the finger picks he’d worn when he played—his golden claws. Suddenly, and completely, and for the very first time, Alder remembered his father’s hands.

“Is my dad here?”

Alder hadn’t known he was going to ask that question until he had blurted it out, and he found that with the question came a hot flood of tears.

“Oh,” said Mort, and he looked so agitated that Alder worried he might perhaps freeze up again, like he had last time. He lifted a cookie from the plate next to the teapot and held it out to Mort, hoping it would distract him from his agitation. And perhaps it worked. Mort took the cookie, one of his odd pink fingers brushing Alder’s wrist, and then he nibbled it, his teeth shaving it away bite by bite to nothing.

“Thank you,” Mort said when the cookie had disappeared. He shook out a cloth napkin and pressed it to his mouth. His whiskers vibrated with intensity.

“Alder,” he began, “I’m afraid your father isn’t here. I live alone, you see.”

“I didn’t think he lived with you,” Alder said. He took a napkin when Mort offered it and dabbed his eyes. “I just thought that maybe . . . he might visit, or something.”

“I’m sure he would, if he could,” Mort said. “I’m certain of it.”

Oak reached over and took Alder’s hand. Her hand was warm, and soft. She squeezed Alder’s, and he squeezed back. The kittens, bellies full of cream, abandoned the saucer and jumped one and then the other atop Alder’s lap, as if they knew he needed them. They purred loudly, butting their heads first against one another and then against Alder’s belly, and he petted them with his one free hand, and then both hands, when Oak released him so she could pet them, too.

“There is more than one way to travel,” Mort said. “Energy, you know, cannot be created or destroyed. It can be harnessed and it can be let free. But it’s still there, dear children. Energy never dies.”

And then Oak reached her other hand over to twine around Fern’s tail, and it was when all four of the children’s hands were upon the kittens that the flash occurred, brilliantly bright, so bright that it filled their noses and ears and mouths as well as their eyes, and then they were home, back upon the tree stump, and Alder felt as full of wonder as ever a person could be.