rix_scaedu | Entries tagged with catheline

I wrote this to Friendly Anon's prompt "Another winged cat/sons of the earth universe story please!" It follows on from An Unexpected, Hidden...Truth.

The family gathering for Christmas lunch was over and too many people had heard and seen Millie’s “funny turn” for her to pretend that nothing had happened. “It’s my professional opinion,” Mr Rathbone, the Designated Tutor, explained, “that Mrs Wade is under the effects of a spell and has been since her formative years. The good news is that it appears to be protective in intent.”

It was Catheline who asked, “And the bad news?”

“Depends on exactly what the spell does.” The Designated Tutor shook his head. “If it’s been in place as long as I suspect, it will have helped shape her personality. Removing it might have no effect at all, or it could be like removing a load bearing wall in a building.”

“Why is that, young man?” Millie Wade was feeling snappy again.

“It seems to be amending the way you think, I’m not exactly sure how, which is why I think you need to see an expert. If your mind is a self–supporting structure, then well and good. If your mind is ‘leaning’ on the spell and then we remove it, well, it could get messy.”

“I could have some sort of breakdown, or go insane?” The older woman pursed her lips, considering.

“Essentially, yes. That’s why I’m not going to touch it. I don’t want to go blundering around in something as delicate as this could be. Besides,” he added, “just because you’re under a spell that doesn’t automatically mean it should be lifted. Do you have any older brothers or sisters who might remember what was going on at the time?”

“We hardly talk. You think they might know something?” She was all sharp attention.

“The spell seems to have been put on you with your parents’ consent. It is certainly possible that your siblings might know something about it.”

“Would they remember after all these years?” That was Catheline.

“Violet still brings up that I ate the last cupcake at a party when I was four,” said Millie. “She might. Caroline’s the eldest so it’s worth asking her. Jack always had his head in the clouds or down an anthill, but Dora might be worth a word too, she was always ferreting out things you didn’t necessarily want her to know.”

“I can make the calls in the morning,” offered Catheline.

This is Friendly Anon's paid extension to At Christmas Lunch. It is followed by So, What Does That Mean?

Catheline’s mother and Mr Rathbone continued to skirmish over the ham and turkey, all-out war only being avoided because he refused to be drawn into an attack for which he could be found to be at fault. His opponent tried to rile him by disputing his sources but Mr Rathbone merely smiled and asked her to pass the cranberry jelly. Over dessert she took a different tack and asked Catheline to bring out an album of copied old photographs she’d given her.

“There are pictures of my father and grandfather in here together with their friends from the Sons of Earth,” the older woman told Mr Rathbone as she opened the book to a double page of black and white photographs. “See, not a robe in sight!”

“Magic wielders aren’t bound to wear robes,” commented Mr Rathbone, although he was wearing a dark green robe himself. “I recognise some of these faces: Angelus Farmer; Sebastian Dorrigo; Montgomery Seldon; and Erasmus Phelan. Your father and grandfather moved in powerful circles. Which ones are they?”

“Here’s my grandfather,” she pointed at a man in a solid-coloured vest with a large, black dog sitting beside him. “He always had a dog like that. I have no idea what breed it is or where he got them from.”

“I believe it’s the same dog,” remarked Mr Rathbone calmly, “a cù dubh of some sort. That would definitely make your grandfather some stamp of mage. Why do you believe it was a series of dogs?”

“Because no dog could live that long,” was the sharp retort.

“No normal dog,” came the quiet correction. Then, “Who told you it was different dogs?”

“My father.”

“What did he tell you about the Sons of Earth?”

“They’re just a human loyalty club he, Grandad and their drinking buddies joined during the weirdness before I was born.” She looked at him, “Why do you ask?”

“Weirdness? What do you know about the Shadow War?” Mr Rathbone was leaning forward in his seat now. “I’m thinking that it hadn’t been added to the history curriculum when you were in school?”

“Young man, when I was in school, History ended at the beginning of that century.” She sighed. “I read the daily newspapers through events that Cybil’s done exams on. The Shadow War was when the things that go bump in the night tried to take over the human world. It was weird.”

“So, who told you that?”

“Daddy.” She was staring straight ahead, her expression blank and her voice that of a child.

“And you believe him?

“Always. Uncle Gussie said I should always believe Daddy. Everyone would be safe if I believed Daddy.”

“Why would that be-“. Mr Rathbone fumbled for her given name.

“Millie,” hissed Catheline’s eldest daughter, Cybil.

“Millie?” The Designated Tutor smoothly finished his question without breaking the trance the older woman seemed to have stepped into.

“Because then the men in the long black coats won’t be able to find us again.”

“Millie, you have a book of pictures open in front of you. Show me pictures of your Daddy and Uncle Gussie.”

The blank-faced, no, child-faced woman turned the page and said in her child’s voice, “Here they are!” She pointed to two young men, dressed in clothes that dated their photograph to the cusp of the 1930s and 40s. “That’s Daddy.” She laid her finger on the figure on the left and then moved it to the right hand one, saying, “And that’s Uncle Gussie.”

“Thank you, Millie. I’m sorry if my questions were difficult.” Mr Rathbone touched her hand. “It’s time to come back to now.”

The older woman’s expression returned to normal. She blinked and looked confused. “How did we get to this page? Though this is a good picture of my father and my mother’s brother, Uncle Gussie, together. It was taken just after my parents’ engagement party.”

“Augustus Brown was your maternal uncle.” Mr Rathbone was looking at her with great sympathy. “My condolences, dear lady, but I think you need to talk to someone far more skilled than me. On a professional basis.”

This follows on from Under The Christmas Tree and was written in response to Friendly Anon's prompt of "Another winged cat universe story!" It is followed by An Unexpected, Hidden...Truth.

“I got a kitten for Christmas,” Olivia told her maternal grandmother proudly.

“That’s nice dear,” her grandmother smiled at her, “and what else did you get?”

Olivia rattled off her list of gifts before she was distracted by a newly arrived aunt with more presents to hand out.

Later the older woman said to Olivia’s mother, “I thought you weren’t going to give her a kitten?”

“Mum, no-one gave her a kitten but she got one for Christmas anyway.” Catheline sipped her drink and added, “It has wings.”

“I suppose it’s black?” Her mother sniffed. “At least Thaddeus isn’t followed around by evidence that Lachlan’s ancestors weren’t entirely human. When I was a girl it was put down to black fae blood, these days it’s supposed to be from dragon-begotten Neanderthals or some such thing. It’s all the one thing though, non-human blood. You should have married the Radcliff boy, there’s no magic in that family.”

“And precious little of interest about him, as I recall,” was Catheline’s reply. “I was told recently that the magic thing with Thaddeus and Olivia is probably down to a rare recessive gene, which is why magic hasn’t shown up in either family before. And the kitten is a lavender-grey colour.”

“You must have gotten it from your father then,” snapped her mother. “I’m sure there’s nothing like that on my side of the family.”

“I wouldn’t lay bets on it,” warned Catheline. “I did some internet research between kitten discovery and breakfast this morning. Apparently they’ve discovered thirteen gene sets across three chromosome pairs that produce magical ability and they’re finding evidence that there are other genes sets that block magical ability. We could be just loaded with it, except…”

“Ridiculous. My father and grandfather were members of the Sons of Earth. There couldn’t have been anything like that in our bloodline.”

“I don’t know about that,” Mr Rathbone had accepted Catheline and Lachlan’s invitation to stay for the family lunch and had been sweeping past on his way to the dips. “The Sons of Earth was a cover organisation for wizards, mages and sorcerers during the Shadow War. Over half them are supposed to have been magic wielders.”

I wrote this to wyld_dandelyon's prompt "cats with wings or sparkly things."

Christmas, smack in the middle of summer, was also smack in the middle of kitten season. Catheline usually stopped outside the pet store in the shopping centre for a few minutes when she took the children Saturday-mornings shopping and her daughter Olivia had decided that she wanted a kitten for Christmas. Catheline did not want there to be a kitten for Christmas. She and Lachlan had four children ranging from sixteen year old Cybil to six year old Olivia, a McMansion house with a just enough backyard for a rotary clothes line, two cars with which to provide parental taxi services and an Education Department assigned Designated Tutor because Thaddeus’ thirteen year old explosions had turned out to be rather more than ‘just hormones.’ A cat of any size seemed unnecessary.

The family had assumed that the Designated Tutor would go on his own vacation when school broke up for six weeks of holidays but instead Mr Rathbone had slotted intensive magic summer school into the time that ordinary school had occupied so Thaddeus was working harder, and more enthusiastically, than he had all year. Magic didn’t run in either Lachlan or Catheline’s families so no-one knew why it had turned up so strongly in Thaddeus. However Mr Rathbone was happy to watch the other children too, was less trouble than the au pairs some of their friends had and he came with gold-plated ‘Working With Children’ checks and certification. During term Catheline had been coming home from work to find everyone’s homework had already been done, sparing her the uphill battles, so she was happy to have him take the children in hand for the holidays.

People said that you never got just one gifted child in a family but Cybil was as unmagical as you got despite flirting with a goth-look, Frank at nine and a half was fanatical about his soccer while Olivia liked dolls, drawing and occasional dressings-up. Catheline hoped they weren’t gifted, their grandmothers glaring at each other over whose fault Thaddeus was had been quite enough.

The Christmas presents were wrapped and under the tree, there were no kittens and Catheline went to sleep knowing that tomorrow would start about five…

“Thank you! Thank you!” Those were the first words Catheline heard and they were coming from an excited six year old standing beside her bed. “My kitten came!” Then she was gone again.

Catheline rolled over and found that Lachlan had rolled to face her. “I thought we agreed on no kitten?” she asked.

“We did and I didn’t get one. I think we should go see what’s going on,” her husband suggested.

They were decent down stairs and downstairs in under five minutes. On the lounge room floor Olivia was sitting beside the Christmas tree, the unopened presents stacked beside her. In her hand was the string of a cheap, glittery, thread-wrapped foam bauble off the tree. She was dangling it in front of a three month old kitten that was batting at the bauble with its paws. The kitten had short, grey fur with an almost mauve tinge and wings to match. It was definitely not the sort of kitten Olivia’ parents were used to.

“I think she’s too young for training,” commented Mr Rathbone disapprovingly from behind them, “but if her familiar has shown up, then it’s not too early to be laying the foundations. I would suggest good manners, gardening and cooking as a starting point.”

Catheline turned to look at him. “So, two of our children are gifted?”

The tutor raised a long, thin eyebrow at her. “My dear ma’am, in my professional opinion all of your children are gifted. Thaddeus is merely the only one who requires formal tutoring at this point. I put it down to a double dose of one of the more obscure recessive genes.”