Chapter Text
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea,
In a beautiful pea-green boat.
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy,
O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
Edward Lear
~&~ ~&~ ~&~
Sarah ran her hands across the line of books on the shelf, searching for something, but she didn’t know what.
She breathed in the smell of them, isle upon isle of vellum and leather, the dust in the air almost too thick. The library was one of her favourite places, story upon story just waiting to be discovered. And as an actor, and a teacher, an artist even, she couldn’t get enough stories.
Her arms were already full with volumes, but she felt as if something was missing. This week’s lectures were all about poetry, and she wanted something fresh for her students. Something fun. Something with a hidden meaning.
As she ran her hand down the row, it suddenly caught. She turned to see that a book was sticking out by a quarter inch. Head cocked to the side, she read the spine:
The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear
With a smile, she pulled it out and added it to the already heavy pile in her arms.
~&~ ~&~ ~&~
‘Hullo, Doctor Williams! Working a Saturday again I see?’
The Librarian, Sue, greeted her with a warm smile as she dumped the pile of tomes on the counter.
‘Afternoon, Suz, and yes. I have a lot to do before Monday morning’s symposium, and my lectures. Late nights for me...’
Sarah smiled. At thirty she was the youngest lecturer on campus, also the only one who was unmarried. She taught English Literature, ran the drama club, and gave an evening class in portraiture on Wednesdays. Evidently, she was also the hardest working professor on campus too, something her colleagues both admired about her and mercilessly teased her for.
‘Aah, Edward Lear!? I do so love his limericks!’ smiled Sue as she logged each book and placed them in a bag for Sarah to carry.
‘I hope my students like him just as much.’ replied Sarah as she picked up the bag, blanching at the sheer weight of it. With a rueful smile, she left the library, heading straight for her office and coffee.
~&~ ~&~ ~&~
The rain thundered against the windows of the two hundred year old building, giving Sarah’s lecture a moody backdrop of sound.
It was nearly the end of the day, for her students at least, and she could see them flagging in their chairs, Lord Byron and Shakespeare still rattling around in their heads she had no doubt.
‘For tomorrow I would like you all to choose a poem, any poem, as long as it was first published in English. You will all be giving a reading, and then a short analysis. And Parker, I mean short.Three hundred words maximum, not three thousand.’
Sarah smiled as she said it and everyone laughed. Parker Jackson, a blonde girl three rows up, blushed hotly as she grinned in response, hiding her face behind a textbook.
‘Now before you all go, tomorrow we’re moving onto nonsense poetry, focusing on Edward Lear. I thought we could all use a break from sonnets.’
Laughter again. She brandished the book, as if it was a weapon.
‘Oh, read us one, Dr Wills! There's still two minutes...’ cried a girl from the front row. Evelyn Tyton. A murmur of assent rang out. They loved it when she read for them, always admiring her use of metre and accent.
‘Very well…’ she sighed but was pleased whenever they asked her to recite plays or poetry. Half were in the Drama Club too, and her colleagues joked that she had a little following of students that worshipped her like a goddess.
She opened the book, the page falling open to a poem called The Owl and the Pussy-cat.
Owl…?
Unbidden, an image flared in her mind of a white barn owl flying towards her. Then, a shock of blonde hair. Mismatched eyes. A knowing smirk...
It died away almost instantly and she shook her head slightly, clearing her throat as she looked down at the page. She really did need an early night at some point.
‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea, in a beautiful pea-green boat…’
~&~ ~&~ ~&~
A glass of rosè in hand, Sarah marked the last of the assignments she’d spent most of the evening on, and sat back in her chair.
Her back throbbed, so she kneaded the place at the bottom of her spine, pushing out the tension there. She got up and stretched, going to the fridge to see what she had in, realising that she’d forgotten to eat. Again.
Sitting down with another glass of wine and a plate of last night’s Chinese, she picked up the book of nonsense poetry.
She flicked through it, chuckling at the imagery and the rhyming stanzas, making mental notes here and there about context and underlying meanings. She was meant to be relaxing after all, not working.
But, for some reason, she kept flicking back to The Owl and the Pussycat, her eyes scanning across the words for the tenth time, now unseeing as they were memorized. It was a child’s story, simple and pretty, but something about it bothered her.
She placed her hand to the space between her eyes and squeezed them together against the headache that throbbed there. Sleep was what she needed, so she snapped the book shut.
Finishing off the last bit of her dinner, she tidied up, then padded through to her bedroom, yawning as she slipped between the sheets.
As sleep started to creep into the edges of her conscious mind, she sighed back against the pillow.
A vision of her dressed in a black catsuit came swirling into her mind, dancing with a man who wore a white cape that looked like feathers, on the edge of a moonlit shore, all the colours bleeding into each other, his laughter ringing through the night as he twirled her into his arms…
‘If only it was true…’ she whispered to herself, sleepily.
And then she was sound asleep.
~&~ ~&~ ~&~
The full moon lit up the peaceful face of Sarah Williams, as the clock in the hall struck midnight, cool tendrils of light caressing her like a lover.
The Witching Hour had come.
An antique floor length mirror was standing to one side of the window, one of Sarah’s most prized possessions. It had been a gift from the faculty when she’d earned her doctorate.
Since leaving home, her extraordinary experience in the Labyrinth had begun to fade, and she wasn’t even sure if it had really happened. Her friends had visited her often to start with, but as she grew up, they had spoken to her less and less, and after she left for college, she had not been able to contact them again.
She’d put it down to childhood whimsy and a fear of growing up. It must all have been just a wonderful dream. Even him.
Especially him.
With an electric snap, and a burst of something in the air, Sarah disappeared from her bed. Something writhed beneath the covers, a large black cat with bright green eyes emerging from them.
It blinked. Once. Twice. Staring toward the light coming through the gap in the curtains.
The mirror shimmered then, the reflection turning to an image instead. An image too fantastic to come from the Above.
Night was waning over the Labyrinth, the castle lights just visible in the distance. Torches lit up the meandering trail of stone as morning bled into the edges of darkness.
The cat stared into the mirror for a long moment, head cocked to one side as if in thought.
Then it hunkered to the floor, about to pounce, and, in one dexterous leap, the cat was gone.
Once again the mirror reflected a room. One which was occupied by nothing but the pale moonlight...