Jilly took the big book from Erica and dumped off the rest of the soft orange sand before righting it again. And Erica got her first good look at the thing they’d come to retrieve.
She hadn’t seen many—any?—round books in her life. Not outside of the books for toddlers and babies. In her mind, book equaled rectangle or square. Or moved into the realm of scroll. Circle wasn’t something she instinctively thought of as “book.”
She was really going to have to expand her thinking.
The book was covered in the soft pale tan leather, as Jilly had described, with thick stitches of the same kind of leather running only one edge of the circular shape to form a bound side. The top cover had four long, ragged slash marks through the leather. And under that was a kind of reddish color. The whole thing gave the effect of looking like an animal had slashed through actual flesh and there was blood beneath. It was…disturbing to say the least.
As Jilly set the book on the ground, she glanced at the cats. “Damn it, damn it. Memnon!” She started to rise.
Erica grabbed her hand. “Book first. Break whatever spell they’re under. Then we’ll take care of them. All of them.”
Jilly glanced at the fighting cats again, then shook her head and looked back down at the book. “I’m supposed to be the experienced one here.”
“And the man you love is fighting his own son to keep his son from succumbing to this spell. Makes sense you’d be distracted.”
“You are wise beyond your years, my lovely niece.”
“And I’m scared beyond my gut acid, my lovely aunt. Read the book so we can figure out how to fix all this.”
Despite the situation, Jilly chuckled under her breath. She slowly, carefully lifted one side of the round cover, easing it open as the binding ties at one side first resisted then slowly gave in to the movement. It was like opening a spiral notebook once the binding loosened, and Jilly was able to lay it flat in the soft sand.
The inside was made of cream paper, like Jilly had said. The writing on the paper, however, wasn’t nearly as plain. Some sort of silvery-gold ink had been used. It sparkled in the sunlight. Almost impossible to see thanks to all the reflections and glittering, like light bouncing off metal. Jilly lifted one page, she and Erica both squinting at the writing.
A jingling sound rose up out of the book. A sound like toy bells.
The cat fight behind Erica stopped abruptly. The silence was ominous.
Jilly cursed under her breath but didn’t look away from the book. Erica had less restraint. She glanced back. Memnon and Galahad were both staring at her and Jilly. Or more precisely, they were both staring at the book. Their so-similar blue eyes glittered under the sun’s glare, their pupils contracted to almost nothing. The stare was intent, focused, and all the fur along both their backs stood up.
Not good. This couldn’t be good. “This isn’t good.”
“I know. I know. Help me. This fucking ink is impossible to seen in the sun.”
Erica looked around for something that could serve as a shade, glanced down at her t-shirt and sighed. She should have remembered her flannel shirt, still back at the temple. Ah well. Was too hot for flannel anyway. She had a nice bra on. And everyone was cats right now. What the hell.
She pulled her t-shirt off and draped it over her and Jilly’s bent heads. The cream-colored cotton still let through lots of light, but the shade was enough to make the ink on the round pages visible.
“Efficient,” Jilly murmured, turning another page.
“Gets the job done, right?” For some reason, Erica wanted to laugh. A laugh that felt out of place in the circumstances.
Hot air brushed her back, cooling her sweat even as the hot sunshine baked her skin. Her Chicago-living, still-deep-in-winter skin. Sun screen on her entire body might have to become part of her routine if she was going to randomly land into deserts like this.
Another giggle bubbled up in her throat as she stared down at the metallic ink. What was she laughing at? There was nothing on the page that should have spurred giggles. In fact, she couldn’t read the language on the page at all. It was a series of lines and cuts and the occasional circle. It reminded her of one of the similar styles of writing on Earth like Ogham or Runic. Like the book in the temple containing the passage about this book. Except, unlike the book in the temple, she couldn’t seem to make these simple symbols resolve into something she could read.
“I can’t read it,” she said, keeping most of her attention on the pages. “Can you? It’s not resolving for me.” A laughed burst out. She frowned. “I have no idea why I just laughed. I almost giggled earlier. This is not a funny situation. Why do I keep trying to laugh? Nervous tic?”
She had a friend who sometimes laughed at inopportune moments, like if someone fell, not because she found the situation funny but because it was a sort of release of energy from her nervous system. Cali was also one of the first people to jump in and help someone who’d fallen, but people who didn’t know her often thought her nervous laughter was rude because they misinterpreted its reason.
This wasn’t that. Erica didn’t have a nervous laugh tic. There was nothing happening that had any humor to it at all.
Another giggle burst from her.
She widened her eyes at Jilly. “Shit. This can’t be good. Do you want to laugh?”
“Holding it in,” Jilly said, pressing her lips together hard enough for white lines to bracket her mouth. “It’s the book. Part of the passage. Remember?”
Erica ran through the passage in her head again. Got to the relevant part. “‘Humors no living being should experience until the time of the great dying’? That sound bad, Jilly. Very bad. Not funny at all.”
“Nope.” She flipped another page. And a soft giggle escaped her.
Shit. Erica blinked hard, trying to refocus and see the words on the page. “‘The book will set you free.’ That’s what the passage said. Somewhere in here has to be the answer.”
Jilly started running her finger over the metallic ink. She hissed in a breath, and Erica was appalled to see blood dripping from Jilly’s fingertip. Jilly held her hand out over the sands, letting the little drops of blood fall into the dirt before any could land on the book.
“Rooky mistake,” she muttered. Louder, she said, “If it looks metallic, assume it cuts like metal. Don’t forget that lesson the way I just did.”
“All metallic ink will cut?” Erica wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or amazed, but was pretty sure she swung more toward terror in that moment. Had they been safely in the temple, she’d probably have been more on the amazed end of the spectrum.
“Not all, but enough you have to be careful of all.” A little giggle jumped out of Jilly. She ignored it. “I wasn’t careful. I’m making mistakes.” Another mostly ignored chuckle.
Erica felt a laugh bubbling up her throat, too. She swallowed it hard and refocused on the text, making a concerted effort not to touch the ink.
“What happens if you get blood on the pages?” Erica had been training enough to know that blood and magic mixed sometimes. In weird ways. And a lot of the books they delt with were magic on one level or another. Not just books with knowledge from strange realms in strange languages. Actual magical stuff.
“Probably nothing good. Better not to risk it. Don’t remember anything about blood and the book, but you never know.”
“Was afraid of that.” Another laugh tightened in her chest. She clamped her mouth shut until it subsided. Then she focused on the page again.
And there! There. Something in all those runic-looking lines. A word. A word she could just about read. The ink winked and twinkled faintly, even in the diffuse light coming through her shirt, but not enough to prevent her seeing it.
“There’s something there,” she said, her voice tight and intent. “Almost…almost got it.”
Another laugh burst from her. So loud it startled her and she slapped a hand over her mouth, dropping enough of her shirt to let bright sunshine under the slim canopy.
A bright flash of reflected light off the page made her squint. She struggled to raise the shirt again, but Jilly stopped her with a sound that was half-laugh, half-grunt.
“Leave it. Look.”
Erica squinted at the book. And there it was. The runes resolving themselves into words she could almost read. Several Earth languages all at once, but words she knew.
“Can you read it yet?” she asked Jilly.
“Shh.” Jilly leaned closer to the book. Her finger still dripped a few drops of blood into the sand, but she ignored it.
Erica wanted to put something on that cut, but first they had to break whatever curse or spell or whatever had got the cats all napping in ancient sand boxes.
She blinked. Sand boxes? Like a sandbox, but sort of reversed with the boxes in the sand instead of the sand inside the box. Was that supposed to be, like…a joke? A pun? Did whoever put the book in this realm even know what a sandbox was?
Deciding it had to be a weird coincidence, she refocused on the writing. More of the words were in languages she could read now. But she was only picking up random words, not full sentences or anything that made sense.
Fire. Weeds. Jingle. Bells. Death.
That last was worrying.
She spotted boxes, sit, claws, angry, and destiny. Then something about…cats?
“Why am I seeing the word cat all over this passage?”
It was in different languages from different countries in their realm: gato, cattus, katze, chat, kedi, neko—Erica couldn’t read Japanese, but she knew the Japanese word for cat because a colleague at the university specialized in Japanese history and she collected cat statues—a few more words she thought might be cat if she just read those languages.
None of the passages with the word in it resolved into full sentences for her. But there were definitely cats all over the page.
She chuckled again, but ignored the reaction. “Is this some kind of cat book?”
“It’s actually referencing the Destiny Cats, but… I’m not sure why?”
“Destiny Cats?”
“Our cats. The guardians. Some cultures call them Destiny Cats.”
“Why? And why didn’t I know about that? And when was someone going to tell me?”
Jilly didn’t even glance up from the book. “It’s a good name. Never came up. Would have told you eventually when it did. Like now.”
“Fair. Is this like…a trap for them?” She looked around again. At all the cats sleeping inside the various boxes, with tendril vines covering them, locking them into the boxes. At Galahad and Memnon now staring at them like Erica and Jilly were some sort of empty spot near the ceiling. That sort of stare that made you think the cats had seen a ghost and were watching it.
Not a good image. She really hoped they weren’t looking at ghosts.
“Well, they would be with the guardian coming to retrieve the book,” Jilly said. “The people who put it here were trying to hide it, and they’d done a very good job. They didn’t want it pulled out of the desert.”
“So…maybe we should leave it? After we free the cats, that is. Maybe we shouldn’t bring it back to the temple.”
“The reason I could find it now, the reason I finally uncovered the clues to get us here…” Jilly finally looked up. “That means either the Wraith-sworn or the Elder-sworn have discovered where it is and are on their way here to get it. It will always be more dangerous in their hands than ours. We wouldn’t be here if the book wasn’t going to be safer in the temple.”
“But why set up protections against the cats and not the Wraiths and Elders?”
“Maybe they couldn’t? Maybe the ones who originally hid the book thought the cats and the temple were the greater danger? We’d have to ask them. And they’re long gone. This book has been hidden for several millennia.” Her attention had already returned to the book as she finished. “Okay. I think I have it. Get ready.”
“Get ready? Get ready for what?”
Jilly laughed, but Erica couldn’t tell if it was real humor or the weird laughter the book seemed to be causing.
Jilly collected some sand in her hand with the cut finger and held it up. She murmured some words from the book, though too quietly for Erica to hear. She wasn’t even sure what language. She looked at the page Jilly stared out, trying to see what her aunt saw.
And image rose up from the page, flashing forward like it would hit Erica. The 3D effect so sudden, Erica dropped backward from the book. The image continued to hover over the page even though she was no longer looking directly at the page. It was a sort of spherical shape, a shimmery gold color, not too different from the sand, and at Jilly’s next word, the sphere shivered.
A jingling sound echoed around the dunes, loud enough Erica gasped and covered her ears.
Oh no. If that hurt her, that had to hurt the cats. One lone howl confirmed her worry.
Jilly said something else from the book, letting the sand on her hand slide down to the ground. Erica was relieved to see no more blood dripping from her finger, but something about the way the sand slid off Jilly’s palm felt ominous.
Another shiver through the sphere and it jingled again. A booming sort of sound that literally made the ground shake.
Jilly pressed her lips together, her face screwing up tight as she glanced across the dunes. She shook her head and read one final passage.
The sphere let loose a ringing, echoing, chaotic sound that Erica felt vibrating through her bones. Even with her hands clamped over her ears, the sound set her teeth on edge and pounded against her skull like the worst hangover in the history of hangovers.
More howls and yowls from the cats. Erica looked up in time to see the vines covering the sleeping cats start to snap like broken rubber bands releasing and freeing the animals. The instant they were free, they each raced out of their box and circled up around Jilly, Erica, and the book.
The last cat to jump free was Nimue. She rose from her box, stretched, and then, as if realizing something was wrong, leapt free of the container and raced to join the others. Memnon and Galahad circled the guardians a few times and then Memnon settled at Jilly’s side and Galahad at Erica’s.
Jilly murmured one last word and the golden sphere sank back into the page. The jingling sound stopped. And the last of the sand slid off Jilly’s palm.
A beat, two, then Erica looked around. All the cats were with them. The vines that had started to grow over them were now blackened and dead. A breeze fluttered across the dunes, shifting individual grains and moving the dead vines around.
Silence for a long moment.
Then Jilly let out a sigh. “Well. That was fun.”
“Ha!” Erica said. Then realized, “Hey, I’m not laughing for no reason. That must be good, right? Did you break…whatever that was, too?”
“Must have. Still not sure what that was.” Jilly flipped the book closed with her uninjured hand. “Let’s get back and get this safely stored.” Her gaze moved out over the desert again, her eyes narrowed.
“What are you worried about?” Erica rose and gently helped Jilly back to her feet.
“Worms and sand-dragons,” Jilly murmured. “The vibration and noise…” She trailed off, her stare into the distance reminding Erica of the way Galahad and Memnon had been staring earlier.
Erica followed Jilly’s gaze. A spout of sand plumed up over a distant dune. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jilly said. “That’s bad.”
“Run?”
“Run.”
They both turned and tore off in the direction of the tree, the cats swarming up around them. Memnon raced to the front of the group, taking the lead, while Galahad fell back to cover the rear of the group.
Erica nearly slowed, nearly fell into step with Galahad, as much to make sure he was okay as to protect the others.
But Jilly grabbed her arm and tugged her on. “Don’t slow down. Don’t look back.”
“Don’t say that! Why did you say that?” Because the very first thing Erica wanted to do now was look back.
She resisted the urge, but only barely. Keeping her head down, clenching her shirt in one hand, she ran across the dunes as fast as she’d run to catch the cats. The sun baked her exposed skin, but she didn’t feel like she had the time to pause and put her shirt back on. Not when, faintly and at the very edge of her hearing, she heard a thud, like something heavy hitting the sand.
The tree came into view just as she was starting to wheeze. She’d gotten into better shape since Jilly had revealed this destiny to her, but running over sand dunes underneath a scorching sun had not been in the training regime.
Note to self: add it to the list.
She gulped in air and tried not to slow down. The tree was there, in view, so close. Just a few more hundred yards and they’d be there.
She wasn’t sure a single palm tree in the middle of all this sand qualified as safe, but it was the way home. And she really wanted to get out of this desert before whatever was making that thudding noise behind them got close enough for her to see.
Despite her desperate need to turn and look at what was approaching, she managed to follow Jilly’s warning and didn’t. It took a great deal of effort. That saying about curiosity and cats…? Yeah, she was that. She was the cat. And she was really afraid if she didn’t heed Jilly’s warning, she’d end up dead.
The thud got louder. A sound like a dinosaur bellow from a movie rose not far behind her. That sound made her blood run cold. She tried to run faster, but her limbs felt like rubber.
Screams and shouts around her. She realized some of the cats had returned to their human forms. All of them shouting and pushing to reach the tree before…
Another loud bellow, so close Erica screamed.
Then a strong arm wrapped around her waist, practically lifting her off her feet, and the last dozen yards to the tree flashed by.
When the shade of the tree washed over her, Erica shudder. Sweat dripped over her skin, blurring her vision. But when she looked up, Galahad stood next to her, his arm around her waist, his scowl fiercer than she’d ever seen.
And she’d never been so grateful to see his scowl in her life.
“You okay?” she said, wheezing as she tried to catch her breath.
“Be better once we’re home.” He looked out across the desert. This time, Erica followed his gaze and risked that forbidden look back.
Yup.
She shouldn’t have done that.