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ows and shapes already there, then sketched in a cat peering from beneath the
vines and wistfully, she made the cat into
Murp. Broad-faced, round-eyed, and orange tabby-striped, with a white blaze
down his nose, white bib and white feet, Bame/s cat grew out of her memory
until he stared back at her from the page.
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She got a lump in her throat, and closed her eyes, and gripped the crayon so
hard it snapped in her hand. She could see that horrible blue light again, and
Bamey with
Murp tucked under his arm, running toward her toward what he thought was
safety. 1 should have been able to save him, she thought. Hot tears rolled
down her cheeks. A mom should be able to save her children, damnut. The
universe shouldn't give you kids and then take them away. She dropped the
crayon fragments and her drawing and sobbed, burying her face in her hands.
"Mrm-m-p?"
A furry head shoved against the back of her arm and rubbed along her back. Her
eyes flew open. A cat. she thought, while her heart raced- Jesus Christ, what
a weird coincidence.
"MrrmTrp?"
She turned around, and when she saw the cat on the log, began to shiver.
Bizarre coincidence. It was a big orange beast with white markings and bright
yellow eyes . . .
.. . just like Murp.
Can't be. Murp vanished with Bamey.
She reached out a trembling hand and scratched the cat under the chin. He
butted his head against her hand and closed his eyes and purred like a
chainsaw.
"Murp?" she whispered. The cat chirruped.
Cautiously, because Murp loved to be poked up and
MINERVA WAKES 129
cradled but plenty of cats took offense at that sort of han-
dling she picked the cat up. He flung his head back into the crook other arm
and sprawled, all four legs sticking up in the air, and the volume of his
purring doubled.
Jesus Christ. She was shaking so badly she was afraid she might drop him. She
rolled him against her chest so she could get a good look at his left hind
leg. It couldn't be
Murp. But Minerva would be able to tell easily enough.
Murp had a white stripe that ran completely across his left flank high up sort
of a racing stnpe.
So did this cat.
"Murp!"
"Row-w-w-wr." Murp always spoke when spoken to.
She sat on the log, scratching the cat's belly, snuggling him as close as she
could. The questions raced through her mind. Where had he come from? How? How?
She looked at the drawing, lying on the ground at her feet the drawing of
Murp. Perhaps it was not a coinci-
dence, after all- Still holding Murp close to her chest, she walked to the bit
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of underbrush where she had drawn the cat. Perhaps she could see pawprints if
Murp had walked through that precise spot, she would write off chance occur-
rence completely.
But there were only more leaves under the vines. Not pawprints no conclusive
proof.
And then she thought If I drew the kids, would they come here?
She ran back to the fallen tree, the cat still cradled in her arms, and put
him down to pick up the art supplies. "Oh,
Murp," she whispered, "could it be this simple?"
She sketched closing her eyes from time to time to bring each little face
before her. It was so hard, so very, very difficult, to get the features fixed
in her mind for she never saw her children as faces with fixed features, as
having noses of a particular length, or eyes with the eyelid creased at a
specific angle, with the shadows falling just so over soft, smooth, freckled
skin. She thought of them as movement, as voices, as personalities; fragile as
sunbeams, transient as hope, always changing. How could she draw that?
130 Holly Lisle
But she drove herself to remember the exact line of each jaw, the precise
curve of each mouth and she could hear their voices in her memory as she
worked, and remember their hands in hers, slight and fragile.
"Mommy? ..." a voice whispered into the gentle breeze, so faint Minerva first
believed she'd imagined it.
"Bamey?" she answered. Her voice caught in the lump in her throat. "Bamey,
where are you?" She looked around her wildly.
'The bad man has us," Carol said- "He won't let us go, Mommy." Her words were
no louder than the rustling of leaves.
Then Minerva made out three faint shapes ghosts standing in front of her in
the clearing and she fought to hold in a scream. Bamey and Carol and Jamie
stood only inches away, insubstantial as shadows. She reached out a hand to
touch them, willing them to her with all her heart.
"Come get us, Mommy," Bamey whispered.
"Please, Mom. Please don't let this guy have us," Jamie pleaded.
T'U be there as fast as I can," Minerva said, and then the children were gone
as if they'd been erased, and something dark and towering replaced them.
"So you are here," the huge shadow said. Its voice encom-
passed the horrors of her nightmares and made them all real- "How convenient."
Then it, too, vanished. Minerva became aware that beside her, Murp hissed, the
fur on his back and tail standing straight out, his ears pressed flat against
his skull.
The Unweaver
She reached out and stroked the cat. "We're going to get them back, Murp," she
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said. Her voice trembled- "We're
going to stop him. too. I'll figure out how this all works."
Darryl finished replacing the window in the boys' room and looked out across
his backyard at die last scattered col-
ors of sunset. Birkwelch sat on Jamie's bed, picking up and putting down toys
He was uncharacteristically quiet-
"I'm tired. I'll paint it later," Darryl said, and leaned
MINERVA WAKES 131
against the wall. "After I get Minerva and the kids back. I
just wanted to get the hole fixed so the room would be ready for them."
The dragon stretched out on the bed and started running a toy truck up and
down his scaled belly. Things might not work out that way, Darryl, old pal."
"I'll get her back." Darryl tightened his grip on the putty knife. "She'll
learn whatever she needs to know. You'd be surprised at how talented she is. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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