to think. I remembered something Master Evyndd had once said—that in sorcery and magic, it's a black cat that commands the darkness, and not the other way round. That it is a magic that should be inherent and inherited within me. I had to find out. So I embraced the blackness, and to, I found it a comfortable enough place—though I wouldn't want to live there.' She paused meaningfully. 'There was nothing else but to try the thing.'
Cezer's huge, heavy paw reached out to ruffle the fur on the back of her head. 'We shouldn't be here if you hadn't, Mamakitty.'
'What happened to you after you were swallowed up by the blackness?' Cocoa was plainly enthralled by her friend's experience.
The long muscles of Mamakitty's powerful back and shoulders were starting to unkink. 'Though I found myself in a land where there was no light at all, I discovered almost immediately that I felt perfectly at home. You see, I had been trying hard to think of who, or what, might help us in our hour of need. I remembered a promise I had made, near the start of our quest to find the white light. A promise is a powerful thing.' She eyed each of them in turn.
'Do you remember what the Red Dagon said when I swore that if it let us go free, one way or another, I would bring to its attention something that was not red or orange?'
Cocoa's eyes widened slightly. 'It said to call out to it, and whatever kingdom of color we were residing in, it would come.'
The black-furred head nodded. 'But for it to respond, I had to be standing not in our world but in a kingdom of color. That's why I jumped that visitant from the Kingdom of Black. I didn't know if doing so would take me where I wanted to go. Fortunately, it worked.'
Samm hissed in consternation. 'If your ploy had failed, you could have been lost to us forever, or killed.'
Her response took the form of a resigned shrug. 'Better to be trapped in a kingdom where all black cats are ultimately welcome than to die at the hands of vermin like the Mundurucu.'
Cocoa frowned. 'I see how you were able to bring the Red Dagon to our aid, but how was it able to return to its home?'
Mamakitty turned to her, grateful to be able to talk again cat to cat. 'By the same incomprehensible means it used to journey here from the borderland between the kingdoms of Red and Orange. How a mountain can make itself travel through space and time I do not know, any more than I understand how it can drink down the ever- flowing volume of an entire river without becoming saturated. I know only that, having tasted its fill of new colors, the Red Dagon went home.' Her expression turned wistful. 'I hope it will be happy now, with nothing to quaff again but red river.'
'I think it will,' Cezer rumbled contentedly. 'It will always be able to taste the memory of other colors. Bitter colors, as the Mundurucu must have been, but that shouldn't matter to it. I don't imagine that the palate of a mountain is particularly cultivated.'
After a while, fatigue took the place of exultation. Carrying water in their mouths, the animals were able to extinguish the small fires that flaming, fleeing Mundurucu had set around the house. Only one blaze, at the edge of the forest, threatened to get out of hand, and Taj dealt with that by setting an exceedingly precise backfire.
But they could do nothing for the house itself, for the dwelling that had been their home since before any of them could remember. The wooden part of it, together with all it contained, had burned to the ground. As for the portion that remained in the cavern beyond, the heat had reached into every nook and crevice once occupied. Nothing combustible had escaped the conflagration, including the wizard's study, his library, and much else of inestimable value. With its destruction, the memory of Susnam Evyndd would perish forever from the Gowdlands. His accumulated writings and lore, an incalculable wealth of arcane knowledge—all had been lost.
'Well, that's done, then, and nothing for us to do about it.' Flopping down heavily onto the burned and bloodied lawn, Cezer stuck out his tongue and began to clean himself.
'Perhaps not quite entirely.' Mamakitty was looking at Oskar. 'Haven't you begun to wonder about your own recently transformed self, Oskar?'
His response reflected his confusion. 'In what respect is the question asked?'
'Look at us.' She gestured with a forepaw. 'Samm is gifted with greater strength than ever, myself with the ability to dictate to the darkness. Taj has become the mythic firebird, able to command the flames. Cezer has become truly a king of beasts, and Cocoa the master of lean power.' Yellow eyes peered searchingly into his own. 'What about you, Oskar? What is your gift, beyond the ability to inspire a few trees in a far place? Wherein lies your newly given forte in this world?'
He shrugged diffidently. 'I don't know. To be this wolf-creature, I suppose.'
'That is a consequence of the magic, not a commanding of it.' She continued to stare at him. 'In my recalling and my rushing, I remembered something else Master Evyndd once said. Something about dogs, and what they truly mean to the house, and to the home.'
Tongue lolling as he panted, he shook his head in bemusement. 'I don't follow you, Mamakitty.'
'I speak of that which is magically inherent in each of us, thanks to the wondrous ministrations of the Master Evyndd.' She stepped to the side. 'Go and lie in your favorite place, Oskar.'
Wolf brows drew together. 'You mean, on the stone stoop by the front door?' When she nodded, he shrugged a second time and loped off to comply. He did not wish to argue with her, and had nothing else to do anyway.
Pacing around an ever-tighter loop, he finally reached that mystic moment known only to settling dogs, whereupon he laid down, head to tail, and with a sigh of contentment closed his eyes. They blinked open not long thereafter, though, as a brightness filled them.
It came from all around him. No, he corrected himself. It came from within. From within him. Soft and warm it was, with a fragrance of old fireplaces and hot stoves, of running water splashing in a sink and food baking in an oven, of well-worn furniture and fresh linen. It was the essence not of house but of home—which, as those who are privy to such secrets know, are two entirely different things.
Behind him, within the ardent radiance that emanated from himself, the abode of Susnam Evyndd was restoring itself. Curtains and walls, carpets and floors, windows and collapsed chimneys, all became as they once had been, reborn from the depths of his dog soul and memory. When all was at last once again as it once had been, his jubilant companions padded and slithered and hopped over to rejoin him.
'I don't understand.' Oskar was gazing in astonishment at the miraculous resurrection he had unaccountably wrought. 'What happened? What did I do?'
'It's an enchantment that resides within your transformed self,' Mamakitty told him. 'I thought it might be so. Don't you understand, Oskar? It's a thing you keep safe within you at all times. I heard the Master say it often, always with sincerity and feeling. 'Home is where the dog is,' he used to say.'
'So we have a home again. That's a good thing.' Cocoa gazed in contented astonishment at the reborn dwelling.
'You all do,' Taj agreed, 'but what about me?'
Mamakitty considered the vigorously radiating firebird, at once new legend and old friend. 'You do present a problem, friend Taj. I don't think your old cage would suit you, and I don't believe I could sleep comfortably within a house knowing that you were dozing above me on a wooden and flammable roof. Surely we can find you a nice, cozy, incombustible cave that connects to the main cavern in the rocks and exits separately to the outside.'
The firebird nodded sagely. When it did, flecks of flame fell like shorn whiskers from the underside of its blazing beak. 'That should do me well enough. Speaking of doing, what are we to do with ourselves, now that we have carried out the Master's wishes and restored color to the Gowdlands?'
'Time enough to decide such matters.' Cezer yawned enormously, his great leonine jaws gaping wide. 'I'm not concerned with the immediate future, since I intend to spend it sleeping and eating. And maybe doing other things long put off.' He lifted an eyebrow in Cocoa's direction. For once, she did not respond with insult or sarcasm. Observing the eye contact and correctly interpreting its significance, a host of conflicting emotions rushed through Oskar. He fought down the choking sensation in his throat. Magic or no, some things were not destined to be. Love was one intangible even the strongest sorcery could not always put right.
'Odd as it may sound, I think Cezer is correct.' Mamakitty inspected the renewed edifice approvingly. 'We can't exactly go wandering into the nearest village in these bodies. Perhaps, with time and careful perusal of Master Evyndd's restored store of knowledge, we can learn how to switch more efficiently between our animal natures and our human selves.' Tilting back her head, she began to yowl.
It was a striking ballad of joy and triumph that she sang, one famous among cats. Cezer and Cocoa joined in.
