Ninth Life
For her ninth life, Esther wanted to rest. She put in a request to be coddled and pampered. To be born warm and safe, under a roof on clean towels, to be well fed and snuggled every single day. And she got all that. A pedigree even, valued and worshipped in a way she hadn’t been since her first life four thousand years ago.
She should have known there’d be a catch: witches. The catch was almost always witches.
Esther could have slipped into the retirement she’d asked for. Followed the sun through the windows as it crossed the floor, stretched out, curled up, stretched again, warm and pretty. Her witches, Judi and Frida, wouldn’t even have minded. They expected nothing of her but companionship. Her presence. But if she’d learned nothing else across nine lives, it was that she couldn’t leave well enough alone.
The morning routine: Judi and Frida arrived at the Manitou Wishing Well, their little gift and tchotchke shop in Manitou Springs, Colorado, parking in the back alley. Judi unlocked the door, and Frida carried Esther tucked under her arm. She snuggled comfortably against the warm felt of Frida’s winter coat, sheltering her bare and wrinkly skin against the chill in the air. She flicked her large ears and narrowed her gaze for a cursory look around. Twitched her whiskers as she took a breath. The neighborhood raccoon had been through during the night. He could do what he liked, since he stayed out of her jurisdiction. Last month, she’d smelled a bear, come down from the pine forest along the mountains, which had been intriguing. It had reportedly gotten into a dumpster the next block over. She would have liked to have seen that.
The sky was uncharacteristically gray. Smelled like snow. She shivered, and Frida held her closer.
Once inside, Judi entered the code for the alarm, and Frida released Esther, who jumped to the floor. Esther had lived with the two women for twelve years, since she was a bouncing kitten. They had lived with each other for forty. There were pictures of them together from their early years, at festivals in parks, wearing flowing skirts and flowered garlands over their long lustrous hair. Frida’s had been black, shining, her skin brown as desert sandstone. Judi’s hair had been light auburn, her face flush with the sun. Now, both had gray hair, and their bodies had filled out to stoutness. Sometimes Esther thought she would have liked to have known them when they were young. But that seemed like it had been a hectic life. Knowing them now was quiet and comfortable.
Tail up like a flag, Esther made her first patrol of the shop while Frida turned on the lights and the point-of-sale computer and Judi started the electric kettle for tea. Back room first: a space of undecorated drywall with a couple of bare bulbs hanging. Metal shelves held cardboard boxes of back stock, baskets of seasonal items covered with drop cloths to keep the dust off, odds and ends that had piled up over the last decade. The pair talked every month or so about clearing out the space but never seemed to get around to. Cards and posters, local art, T-shirts and candles, handmade jewelry, and books and rocks. The assortment sometimes seemed nonsensical, but most folk who walked into the shop reacted with delight.
Two places in the storeroom had cracks that offered access to mice, and Esther stopped by them both to reestablish boundaries. As long as the mice stayed out, she had no issue with them. But once they came in, they were fair game. She didn’t smell any fresh tracks or droppings; the small folk were keeping their side of the bargain.
The women had a small altar set in a nook by the curtained doorway into the shop, with a palm-sized alabaster statue of Bast and a prayer card of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a chunk of quartz and one of sodalite, with swirls of gray split through the twilight blue. A bundle of dried lavender, another of sage, and a decade worth of prayers whispered over it. Esther nodded to it respectfully.
Next, out to the shop floor. Clockwise, starting with the corner that held all the metaphysical books and supplies, along with a pair of chairs and a little table where Judi sometimes did readings for people. Then the shelves with local art, wood carvings and paintings, collages of pressed flowers and painted river rocks. Racks of T-shirts were at the front of the store by the windows; that was what brought in most of the tourists. Esther trotted a well-practiced path weaving in between shelves and displays, her foot pads pressing on carpet fibers. The air was a little chilly today, sending a shivery twitch over her bare skin. She tried to hide it because she did not want Judi or Frida deciding that she needed to wear a sweater.
Frida leaned on the front counter and watched her cross the front of the store. “Esther, baby, you’re getting old to be doing that. Why don’t you rest?”
That was projection; Frida was the one who complained about her hips while climbing out of bed every morning, and every morning Judi told her to see the doctor about that hip replacement they’d been talking about, and Frida always said next month, next month. Esther decided right then that enough was enough. The next time she curled up on Frida’s lap, she would poke a paw in just the right place, where the pain radiated out in a spot of heat. Frida might ignore Judi’s straightforward request, but she’d attribute some intuition to the cat’s attention.
That was the trick to influencing her people. Make it magical.
At the front door, Judi turned the sign from closed to open, and performed the ritual that she didn’t know was a ritual, holding open the steel-framed glass door and looking up and down the sidewalk, breathing in the clear air of the foothills.
“What a nice day,” Judi said, like she did every morning, and a sense of peace settled over the space. Esther flicked her ears in satisfaction. Then came the rituals Judi and Frida were very well aware of, the touching of charms over the door and under the cash box, lighting a candle on the counter and speaking words of protection and welcome. A tricky balance—letting good intentions in and keeping malcontents out. Encouraging, but with moderation. Esther had studied the nuances in all her previous lives, from patrolling temples to nurturing kittens in dangerous nests. One could not keep perfectly safe, no matter how many protections one put in place. To live was to be in a state of danger, however slight. And to truly live meant taking risks. To explore, to learn, to grow, one must be uncomfortable, at least a little.
But this was her ninth life, and she was well satisfied with the comfort of her place. She had her own bed, a plush cushion with a rim on it, up on the front counter. These days, she needed help getting up there (once upon a time she could simply jump, but she knew better than to try that with the stiffness in her knees). She put her paws on the side of the counter, reaching, and Judi picked her up and set her on the bed. Esther folded up her legs, tucked her whip-like tail around herself, and purred, just a little. Both Frida and Judi scritched her shoulder as they passed. This too was a ritual.
Winter after the holidays was the slow season. The day’s first customer, announced by the clatter of the brass bells on the door, was a friend, coming in to buy a pack of locally made bison jerky after his morning walk. The friendly chat across the counter was about the weather and local gossip (the daughter of the guy who owned the Mexican restaurant up the street got into CU Boulder, the real estate agent who dealt with a lot of the downtown leases was getting divorced and nobody knew who was going to get the property business, and so on, the cycle continued). Esther’s eyes went half-lidded, lazy with the flow of conversation.
The next visitors: a sprawling family of three generations, grandmother, parents, and three kids between about five and twelve. They seemed to instantly fill the shop with their presences and chatter. The kids could not keep still, the harried mother chased after them, her long coat flapping around her legs. Grandma stood by seeming very satisfied, and Dad just looked tired.
“Whoa is that cat naked?” The oldest one stopped cold and stared.
Esther cracked an eye to stare back and flickered her whiskers.
“She’s a Sphynx cat,” Frida said. “She’s supposed to be like that.”
The children all gathered around, and while Esther didn’t particularly like being studied, she put up with it.
“Can I pet her? Please?” the oldest asked, and because he said please, Esther politely lowered her head and let them all touch her warm, soft skin.
Dad got a T-shirt, mom got a hand-dyed scarf, and Grandma and the children all got bags of rock candy and gummy worms.
“That was very nice of you,” Frida said. “Well done.”
Esther flopped to her side for a well-deserved nap.
She woke up right on time for lunch, a few bites from Judi’s tuna fish sandwich and a big drink of water, and took another turn around the store before settling back for her afternoon sleep.
The next time the bells on the door rang, Esther cracked her eye and watched the new person step in, flinch, and glance back over their shoulder. As if not sure if they wanted to go in or out. Judi didn’t look up from her book and Frida was in the back. The person finally decided to slip in, closing the door quietly behind them to not disturb the bells again.
Esther didn’t move, by all appearances remaining asleep, but kept one eye open to watch.
The visitor appeared to be a woman—no, a girl. One foot on either side of that admittedly fuzzy line of her late teen years. She wore a black puffy coat, worn out jeans, and torn sneakers. A knit cap was pulled down over her ears, and light brown hair feathered out around her face. She had a furtive look and tired, puffy eyes.
Well, wasn’t this interesting?
The girl made a slow, nervous circuit along one side of the store, reading souvenir T-shirts. Pretending to read souvenir T-shirts, rather. Along the candy shelves, she touched a box of locally made chocolates—and slipped it into her pocket.
The Manitou Wishing Well had never been shoplifted from. Not once, not ever, which was an anomaly in the world of retail. It was the witches—the spells and charms at the thresholds, the bundles of chamomile under the counter, the general sense of well-being that permeated the air here. It encouraged people to buy things, but it also discouraged those with ill intent. If this kid had intended on stealing, she should never have made it through the front door. Yet here she was.
There was also something of a failure of logic at work here. Of all the shops along this tourist stretch, the Wishing Well was quite possibly the least enticing for a shoplifter. Very little here was all that valuable. Some of the jewelry in the case by the counter, maybe. But there wasn’t really any place you could resell jokey T-shirts about Rocky Mountain oysters.
The visitor rounded the next set of shelves, moving out of Esther’s sight.
She sat up, shook out the sudden chill on her hairless skin, and made her way down, from counter to the stool by the cash register, and then to the floor, in three graceful steps. Her tail was up, the end twitching, ears on alert. Padding without a sound, she stepped carefully, purposefully following the girl to the back of the store on a route that took her the opposite way around the shelves. Sneaking. Hunting.
The girl lingered in the metaphysics section, running a finger along the spines of books, picking up a couple of samples from a row of baskets full of rocks. She pocketed one, a faceted quartz. Brought a box of incense to her nose and started to tuck it inside her coat.
Esther hopped up onto the shelf and put a paw on the girl’s hand.
She gasped and drew back as if she’d been touched by fire. “Geez, what—” Her eyes were round, staring.
Esther frequently inspired this reaction in the people she snuck up on. She let out a single, simple Mreow. Surprisingly loud in the small space of the shop.
“Esther?” Judi called from the counter, and Frida came in from the back room.
In a panic now, the girl turned to flee. Esther was a step and a half ahead of her, jumping down to the floor and leaping to the aisle, where she sat regally, staring up with her big green eyes, tail wrapped around her feet. The girl froze. She didn’t have to, she could have easily stepped around Esther or gone a different way.
But Esther was worth stopping for, just for the sheer novelty value.
That gave Judi and Frida time to reach them, and the predicament became clear: the girl stopped mid-stride, with the box of incense in her hand, unpaid for.
Esther got up, went to the girl, and set a paw on her leg, so she could nose around the pocket where she’d stashed her haul. The girl was too astonished to move or complain. And really, Esther was so gentle about it, who could argue? The girl dumped the haul on the reading table and slumped into a chair, shoulders bent dejectedly.
Judi sighed, looking merely disappointed rather than angry. Frida crossed her arms and said, wryly, “Well, that looks like a fun night in.”
For a moment, the two women looked down at the girl, waiting, and the girl just stared at her hands.
Finally, the silence was too much and the girl said, “Aren’t you going to call the cops?”
“ACAB,” Frida murmured under her breath.
Judi raised an eyebrow. “Do you want us to?”
Shaking her head, the girl started to stand, “Look, I’ll just leave everything here. I’ll go. We can pretend like it never happened—”
Esther jumped into her lap, an instant anchor. The girl hesitated, hands lifted, baffled. A hard case, evidently, so Esther had to put in a little extra work. Flicking her tail, she kneaded the ratty jeans over the girl’s thigh, then curled up and tucked in her paws. The final touch: a low, barely audible purr. The girl would feel it as a rumble.
Finally, the girl’s hand came down to tentatively rest on Esther’s back. She attempted a pet. Esther arched her back into it, encouraging.
Judi and Frida exchanged a glance. Yes, they’d gotten the message, that there was something going on here. The girl passed through the shop’s protective magics because she needed to be here.
“Her name is Esther,” Judi said.
“Why doesn’t she have fur?”
“That’s the breed. It’s natural.”
“Is she always so friendly?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Frida said. “She must like you.”
Tears welled up at the corners of the girl’s eyes. After that, Esther didn’t need to know the details. Judi and Frida would take care of that. Pleased with herself, Esther closed her eyes to slits and hummed.
“Why did you come in here in the first place?” Frida asked, with genuine curiosity. This was a problem that needed solving. “There’s better places if you were looking for a haul.”
“It just…it’s warm in here. Safe?” Her expression twisted, like she wasn’t used to saying the word safe, like it felt strange in her mouth.
“Why don’t I go make some tea?” Judi suggested. “Then you can tell us all about it.”
The girl finally looked up, blinking. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“It looks like you need it. You take black, green, or chamomile?”
“Um. I don’t know?”
“I’ll make some chamomile.” Judi went off to the back. Frida pulled up a couple more chairs. The girl kept petting Esther, who licked her paw and stroked her whiskers.
This was her ninth life, and she had planned on resting, spending lazy days curled up in a soft bed. But if she still had work to do? So be it.
© Carrie Vaughn
Carrie Vaughn‘s work includes the Philip K. Dick Award winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times Bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, and over twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. Her most recent work includes the novel Questland, about a high-tech LARP that goes horribly wrong and the literature professor who has to save the day, and a Kitty spin-off collection, The Cormac and Amelia Case Files. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop.
A bona fide Air Force brat (her father served on a B-52 flight crew during the Vietnam War), Carrie grew up all over the U.S. but managed to put down roots in Colorado, in the Boulder area, where she pursuers an endlessly growing list of hobbies and enjoys the outdoors as much as she can.
When she was about eight years old, her mother gave her Heinlein’s Red Planet. Shortly after that, her father sat her down to watch 2001. So, really, this is all their fault.
My Favorite Authors (you can tell so much from a person by this list): Ray Bradbury, Robin McKinley, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, John Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Patricia McKillip, Connie Willis, Ursula K. LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay, Lois McMaster Bujold, Arthur C. Clarke, Peter Beagle, Iain M. Banks, Maggie Stiefvater, etc. etc.
Celebrating CdL 