| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Gerri Leen / Artwork by Holly Eddy |
| Make a donation to this writer |
| Shadow of a Black Cat |
The black panther prowls, its cries carrying across the
ground it covers, making those who hear it peer out of
curtained windows and check that doors are latched up
tight. Horses and cows, locked in barns for the night,
move nervously in their stalls.
In a town far south, a woman pauses at her dressing
table, notices how insubstantial her room seems, how
airy the corners, how evanescent the gaslight. She
closes her eyes and focuses her will, imagining the room
as it once was. Elegant. The height of fashion in a house
that was the model of sophistication, in a town that was
one of the richest, busiest places in the region.
Thurmond, West Virginia: her home for such a long time.
The big cat stops for a moment. He senses the fabric of
the world shifting, feels the force of his mistress’s will.
He hears the wail that means the huge, roaring thing is
coming. Loping easily, he makes his way to the rocks
that overlook where it will pass. It appears out of the
mists as if called.
The cat sniffs. There are no humans on it. And somehow
the cat recognizes the wrongness of the thing, how out
of place it is.
But this is not unusual.
The cat leaps aboard the rushing thing, lands on a cold,
hard surface, like the rocks of the river he races past.
He skids but stops before he slides off. Heart racing,
yowling in triumph, the cat rides the roaring thing toward
the woman who calls him, who brought him to life.
The woman finishes her hair, securing the last bit with a
pin her husband has given her. It’s a panther, black and
sleek, and its eyes were emeralds that gleamed, but she
has willed them to become topazes, and they shine
copper now. She murmurs a word, calling on the spirit of the cougar as her grandmother taught her to do
long ago, before her father took her away from her mother’s people and told her never to mention she was
part Shawnee.
There are no black cougars. But she needs one, and so one has been born. He prowls now where the
Shawnee once hunted, brought to life by magic and will and terrible desperation.
She’s been working on this for decades. And tonight, finally, she has remembered the words of her
grandmother. Shawnee words that will bring the cat home and release her.
Her door opens. Her husband looks in on her. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
She can see the outline of the doorframe through him, but he slowly solidifies. He is holding his gloves,
slapping them hard into the palm of his hand.
Her back twinges with pain. Each slap of the glove finds an echoing mark from his riding crop. The blows were
delivered methodically, as if he got no pleasure from hurting her.
That he can still hurt her, even now when they are both dead, is the worst of the wrongs she has been dealt.
“Mkateewa,” she whispers, naming the cat. It means black in Shawnee. Black like the New River that rushes
by the town. She intends it to mean darkness and death and deep, swiping claws. She rises, ignoring the
pain in her back as muslin slides over torn skin.
Her husband turns from her, as if in disgust. If there were still a town to go out to, he would be solicitous,
gentle and tender in public. The best of all possible spouses. No one would ever know what happens behind
these walls.
What happened—tenses are such a problem when you’re dead.
“A black cougar was seen wandering the town,” she murmurs as she rises.
“There’s no such thing.” He does not seem to realize she is wearing one in her hair.
He definitely does not realize she has conjured one, that even now she can feel her cat riding the rails to this
grand junction of lines and tracks.
There is no such thing as a black cougar. It is a satisfying thought. Only the unreal can free her from the
inescapable—it is a puzzle she has put together.
The pin pulls her hair as she turns to look out the open window. She sees the town for what it really is: a
faded, desolate place at night.
She hopes that after tonight, she will never see it again.
The cat feels her pull. Even though the rushing thing frightens him, he stays on it, ignoring the vibrations and
the trail of vapor that carries back to him a tangy scent smelling of things human. He hears the howl of a
whistle, like the cry of a hawk, only louder. Not quite the wail of a dying rabbit, but close in its ability to pierce
the night.
The cat shivers, and he feels a warm touch on his fur. He hears her say “Mkateewa” and knows it is his name.
He feels at once in two places. A small cat on this huge, rushing thing, and even smaller, clinging to hair that
smells of sweet grass and berries. He sees a man, sees something white flapping in his hands.
The woman flinches with each flap, and the cat yowls in anger. His claws come out, pulling the hair tight, and
he feels her pain.
The river turns white and wild. He hears it as he roars by, the wind carrying the sound of water hitting rocks,
of owls hunting the darkness, of night swallowing up things that should not be.
But he is protected. He feels her will around him and around the rushing thing that should also not be. Sage
smoke seems to carry them forward, the beat of a war drum matches his heartbeat, and her hand touches
him again, in that second place, where she carries him with her, so high up. The cat digs into the hair again,
but soon he will claw other things.
The woman flinches as the pin tears at her hair. It hurts more than she expected, but she consoles herself
that it will hurt her husband even more. They walk slowly, death holding them back, keeping them from
arriving at the door. Her husband doesn’t know he’s dead. She isn’t sure why he doesn’t know, but he thinks
this is life, never questions. Just fades away and then reappears for his nightly ritual.
Something...other controls this. But she can end this.
“You were lucky to find me,” he murmurs. “Most men wouldn’t put up with your past.”
Her past. Her father was a coal miner. He died in the mines, left her tied to the town, trying to pay off his
debt. She was beautiful. She thought the fine gentleman who wanted to rescue her was her salvation. But he
had only spotted the perfect victim. One who would never, ever leave him.
She thinks that if she had left him, he’d have hunted her down and killed her, but then she might have been
free. If she had struck back at him, had shot him or stabbed him or poisoned his food, maybe whatever holds
her here would have let her go.
But they died together, their beautiful house burning down around them, the locks fusing in the heat,
initiating some hellish bargain to trap them together forever.
She hears the train coming, feels the pin rip a bit more in her hair.
The cat sees a huge thing crossing the river. It is like a hollowed-out log that a cub would crawl through, and
he crouches as low as he can, growling as the rushing thing leaves the earth and flies through the air, into
the log, over the water.
The log is not solid, and he can see the water through it. He begins to panic, but then the log is gone, and he
sees a building. He leaps off the thing, feeling her near him.
The pin clatters to the floor, and the woman can smell the sweet grass of her grandmother’s fields. She can
hear the beat of her cousins’ drums. She can see smoke curl from the pipe her grandmother’s brother smoked
and knows it is the sacred dust her impossible cat is raising as he rushes into the woods toward where the
house was before it burned.
Her husband bends down; the pin stabs him, and he sucks at his finger. Then he frowns. “Weren’t these
emeralds?”
The cat smells her. She is things old and things young and things hurt. She smells like the sacred doe that will
never be caught. Like the warrior who sits under the sun and waits for the coming dream. She called him
forth. She holds his soul.
His soul lies on the floor. His soul has just stabbed the man she hates.
She smiles. “They were emeralds. They are something very different now.”
To the cat, the man stinks of the rushing thing, of oily, dark places that smell close and dangerous and he
jumps through the open window to get closer.
The woman laughs as her cat lands on the floor near the fireplace. His eyes glow copper in the gaslight. His
fur is blacker than jet, than coal, than the dark heart of her husband.
The cat does not hesitate. Hatred fills him and he leaps, landing hard on the man. He sinks his claws into
unreal flesh. He bites into veins that hold no life. He shakes the corpse of the dead man and tears at it until
there is nothing left.
The woman sinks to the ground as her husband disappears—not fading out this time as he’s done so many
times before, but burning from the edges in, like a parchment held to a candle flame.
She can hear his screams as whatever hellish bargain he’s made is finished.
The cat walks over to her, sniffing her, rubbing against her, marking her as his own. She smells good, and he
allows her to pet him even though she is making strange sounds and his fur is wet from where she sets her
face against him.
She forces herself to let Mkateewa go. “There are no black cougars, my great one. But there are now.” She
stands and, with a vicious stomp, breaks the pin in two. The vessel that holds the cat’s soul is broken, and he
is no longer under her control.
Yet, he does not attack.
The cat is confused. Her smell has changed, but he has ridden the rushing thing to get to her. He has crossed
the broken log to save her. He lies down next to her feet and rests.
The woman smiles as she watches him lying so peacefully. But there is little time, and she has no desire to
tarry in this ghost of a town. “My beauty, you must finish this before you become too real to kill me.”
Her will is strong. He feels her calling him. Her touch on him is lighter now. Like the spring breeze through the
leaves.
She bares her neck to him. Closes her eyes. Her back no longer stings. Her husband’s lash can never touch
her again.
The cat lunges. She tastes of the downed elk, of the deep woods and mountain trees that give way to rock
and snow, of bear and wolves and ravens that cry loud and long.
Her hands twist in his fur, and then she is gone.
He sees her fade. Like fog over the river. She is light and full of warmth, and he rolls in what is left of her until
she is truly gone.
The house around him disappears. He lies in rubble, in a place that barely smells of anything human.
In the far distance, he hears a ghostly wail. Not quite the sound of a hawk, not quite the squeal of a dying
rabbit. He pads away from the rushing thing that would carry him back to the mists.
The woman is gone, but he keeps the name she gave him. He is Mkateewa, the black cougar. He should not
exist. He does anyway.
ground it covers, making those who hear it peer out of
curtained windows and check that doors are latched up
tight. Horses and cows, locked in barns for the night,
move nervously in their stalls.
In a town far south, a woman pauses at her dressing
table, notices how insubstantial her room seems, how
airy the corners, how evanescent the gaslight. She
closes her eyes and focuses her will, imagining the room
as it once was. Elegant. The height of fashion in a house
that was the model of sophistication, in a town that was
one of the richest, busiest places in the region.
Thurmond, West Virginia: her home for such a long time.
The big cat stops for a moment. He senses the fabric of
the world shifting, feels the force of his mistress’s will.
He hears the wail that means the huge, roaring thing is
coming. Loping easily, he makes his way to the rocks
that overlook where it will pass. It appears out of the
mists as if called.
The cat sniffs. There are no humans on it. And somehow
the cat recognizes the wrongness of the thing, how out
of place it is.
But this is not unusual.
The cat leaps aboard the rushing thing, lands on a cold,
hard surface, like the rocks of the river he races past.
He skids but stops before he slides off. Heart racing,
yowling in triumph, the cat rides the roaring thing toward
the woman who calls him, who brought him to life.
The woman finishes her hair, securing the last bit with a
pin her husband has given her. It’s a panther, black and
sleek, and its eyes were emeralds that gleamed, but she
has willed them to become topazes, and they shine
copper now. She murmurs a word, calling on the spirit of the cougar as her grandmother taught her to do
long ago, before her father took her away from her mother’s people and told her never to mention she was
part Shawnee.
There are no black cougars. But she needs one, and so one has been born. He prowls now where the
Shawnee once hunted, brought to life by magic and will and terrible desperation.
She’s been working on this for decades. And tonight, finally, she has remembered the words of her
grandmother. Shawnee words that will bring the cat home and release her.
Her door opens. Her husband looks in on her. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
She can see the outline of the doorframe through him, but he slowly solidifies. He is holding his gloves,
slapping them hard into the palm of his hand.
Her back twinges with pain. Each slap of the glove finds an echoing mark from his riding crop. The blows were
delivered methodically, as if he got no pleasure from hurting her.
That he can still hurt her, even now when they are both dead, is the worst of the wrongs she has been dealt.
“Mkateewa,” she whispers, naming the cat. It means black in Shawnee. Black like the New River that rushes
by the town. She intends it to mean darkness and death and deep, swiping claws. She rises, ignoring the
pain in her back as muslin slides over torn skin.
Her husband turns from her, as if in disgust. If there were still a town to go out to, he would be solicitous,
gentle and tender in public. The best of all possible spouses. No one would ever know what happens behind
these walls.
What happened—tenses are such a problem when you’re dead.
“A black cougar was seen wandering the town,” she murmurs as she rises.
“There’s no such thing.” He does not seem to realize she is wearing one in her hair.
He definitely does not realize she has conjured one, that even now she can feel her cat riding the rails to this
grand junction of lines and tracks.
There is no such thing as a black cougar. It is a satisfying thought. Only the unreal can free her from the
inescapable—it is a puzzle she has put together.
The pin pulls her hair as she turns to look out the open window. She sees the town for what it really is: a
faded, desolate place at night.
She hopes that after tonight, she will never see it again.
The cat feels her pull. Even though the rushing thing frightens him, he stays on it, ignoring the vibrations and
the trail of vapor that carries back to him a tangy scent smelling of things human. He hears the howl of a
whistle, like the cry of a hawk, only louder. Not quite the wail of a dying rabbit, but close in its ability to pierce
the night.
The cat shivers, and he feels a warm touch on his fur. He hears her say “Mkateewa” and knows it is his name.
He feels at once in two places. A small cat on this huge, rushing thing, and even smaller, clinging to hair that
smells of sweet grass and berries. He sees a man, sees something white flapping in his hands.
The woman flinches with each flap, and the cat yowls in anger. His claws come out, pulling the hair tight, and
he feels her pain.
The river turns white and wild. He hears it as he roars by, the wind carrying the sound of water hitting rocks,
of owls hunting the darkness, of night swallowing up things that should not be.
But he is protected. He feels her will around him and around the rushing thing that should also not be. Sage
smoke seems to carry them forward, the beat of a war drum matches his heartbeat, and her hand touches
him again, in that second place, where she carries him with her, so high up. The cat digs into the hair again,
but soon he will claw other things.
The woman flinches as the pin tears at her hair. It hurts more than she expected, but she consoles herself
that it will hurt her husband even more. They walk slowly, death holding them back, keeping them from
arriving at the door. Her husband doesn’t know he’s dead. She isn’t sure why he doesn’t know, but he thinks
this is life, never questions. Just fades away and then reappears for his nightly ritual.
Something...other controls this. But she can end this.
“You were lucky to find me,” he murmurs. “Most men wouldn’t put up with your past.”
Her past. Her father was a coal miner. He died in the mines, left her tied to the town, trying to pay off his
debt. She was beautiful. She thought the fine gentleman who wanted to rescue her was her salvation. But he
had only spotted the perfect victim. One who would never, ever leave him.
She thinks that if she had left him, he’d have hunted her down and killed her, but then she might have been
free. If she had struck back at him, had shot him or stabbed him or poisoned his food, maybe whatever holds
her here would have let her go.
But they died together, their beautiful house burning down around them, the locks fusing in the heat,
initiating some hellish bargain to trap them together forever.
She hears the train coming, feels the pin rip a bit more in her hair.
The cat sees a huge thing crossing the river. It is like a hollowed-out log that a cub would crawl through, and
he crouches as low as he can, growling as the rushing thing leaves the earth and flies through the air, into
the log, over the water.
The log is not solid, and he can see the water through it. He begins to panic, but then the log is gone, and he
sees a building. He leaps off the thing, feeling her near him.
The pin clatters to the floor, and the woman can smell the sweet grass of her grandmother’s fields. She can
hear the beat of her cousins’ drums. She can see smoke curl from the pipe her grandmother’s brother smoked
and knows it is the sacred dust her impossible cat is raising as he rushes into the woods toward where the
house was before it burned.
Her husband bends down; the pin stabs him, and he sucks at his finger. Then he frowns. “Weren’t these
emeralds?”
The cat smells her. She is things old and things young and things hurt. She smells like the sacred doe that will
never be caught. Like the warrior who sits under the sun and waits for the coming dream. She called him
forth. She holds his soul.
His soul lies on the floor. His soul has just stabbed the man she hates.
She smiles. “They were emeralds. They are something very different now.”
To the cat, the man stinks of the rushing thing, of oily, dark places that smell close and dangerous and he
jumps through the open window to get closer.
The woman laughs as her cat lands on the floor near the fireplace. His eyes glow copper in the gaslight. His
fur is blacker than jet, than coal, than the dark heart of her husband.
The cat does not hesitate. Hatred fills him and he leaps, landing hard on the man. He sinks his claws into
unreal flesh. He bites into veins that hold no life. He shakes the corpse of the dead man and tears at it until
there is nothing left.
The woman sinks to the ground as her husband disappears—not fading out this time as he’s done so many
times before, but burning from the edges in, like a parchment held to a candle flame.
She can hear his screams as whatever hellish bargain he’s made is finished.
The cat walks over to her, sniffing her, rubbing against her, marking her as his own. She smells good, and he
allows her to pet him even though she is making strange sounds and his fur is wet from where she sets her
face against him.
She forces herself to let Mkateewa go. “There are no black cougars, my great one. But there are now.” She
stands and, with a vicious stomp, breaks the pin in two. The vessel that holds the cat’s soul is broken, and he
is no longer under her control.
Yet, he does not attack.
The cat is confused. Her smell has changed, but he has ridden the rushing thing to get to her. He has crossed
the broken log to save her. He lies down next to her feet and rests.
The woman smiles as she watches him lying so peacefully. But there is little time, and she has no desire to
tarry in this ghost of a town. “My beauty, you must finish this before you become too real to kill me.”
Her will is strong. He feels her calling him. Her touch on him is lighter now. Like the spring breeze through the
leaves.
She bares her neck to him. Closes her eyes. Her back no longer stings. Her husband’s lash can never touch
her again.
The cat lunges. She tastes of the downed elk, of the deep woods and mountain trees that give way to rock
and snow, of bear and wolves and ravens that cry loud and long.
Her hands twist in his fur, and then she is gone.
He sees her fade. Like fog over the river. She is light and full of warmth, and he rolls in what is left of her until
she is truly gone.
The house around him disappears. He lies in rubble, in a place that barely smells of anything human.
In the far distance, he hears a ghostly wail. Not quite the sound of a hawk, not quite the squeal of a dying
rabbit. He pads away from the rushing thing that would carry him back to the mists.
The woman is gone, but he keeps the name she gave him. He is Mkateewa, the black cougar. He should not
exist. He does anyway.
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