The Ninth Life

The two black limousines pulled up outside the singular house. She had hired two, because that was the way it was done. That was the way it had always been done, and so she did it that way. She made the arrangements and she gave her instructions, so there was not a batting of one eyelid and no eyebrow arose as she made her dignified way out of the house and climbed into the second of the two cars. 

She sat rigidly as the two dark cars awaited their cue. There was no movement from her as the cars joined the hearse in a procession to the church. She sat with her ghosts and they shared a companionable silence.

The limo drivers accompanied the two funeral directors in retrieving the coffin from the hearse and walking it into the church, and they sat quietly on the rear pews as the vicar addressed the solitary woman in a solo performance that looked for all the world like a solemn school lesson. Detention for a pupil who did not behave properly in class earlier that day.

The small, disjointed band gathered around the graveside, but only one of their number gazed down upon the grave. What she saw, only she knew and she would take that knowledge to her own grave. A grave that would have one less bystander.

When he was done, the vicar approached the woman and stood awkwardly. Usually he would say a few words, but there were none to be had on this day. He raised his hand, wanting to bestow some small comfort upon the woman, but she was elsewhere and he was not invited to the place she had removed herself to.

After they had all left, she remained. Unmoving and unmoved. It were as though she were awaiting something and could not afford to miss it. The cold seeped up through her shoes and began to numb her ankles. Soon, she would have to move before the cold reached her knees.

In the moment that she broke her self-imposed exile and she returned to the world, her animation was shocking and brutal. A statue come to life. There was something unnatural about the lack of transition.

Her faraway eyes focused on something at the edge of the small and well-tended graveyard. Out by the ancient grave stones, next to a sad and lost stone child, sat an interloper. She had seen the creature from the off. Seen it from her kitchen window as she washed her tea cup and saucer. They had followed it here, and it had sat patiently. Waiting for her to conduct her business so it could then start in on its own.

She smiled a wry smile that almost touched her eyes, but gave up when it was obvious there was no point going that far. The implacable cat stared at her. It had waited for long enough and there was a fierce impatience in it’s poise. 

With a purpose and conviction that belied her apparent years, the woman strode over to the cat and stood before it.

“Do what you will,” she said quietly, but clearly, to the feline.

Now the cat made her wait. The woman was not surprised. Against all expectations, she had never liked cats. There was something wrong about a creature that feigned domestication. Cats reminded her of the worst of people, calculating and manipulative. In it for themselves. There was an absence in cats that sometimes chilled her, because she knew that there was never really an absence. That the dark really did contain monsters, only the worst of those monsters were beyond the imaginations of most. 

The insolent cat noted her disdain for its species and it made her wait some more. The two were at something of a stand-off. The woman knew better than to stare. A cat would always win that contest, but she also knew it was disrespectful to look away. Her eyes alighted upon the one inconsistency on the feline’s black pelt. On its forehead was a patch of pure white fur. The more she looked at it, the less she could deny what it was. An inverted cross. She wanted to dismiss this, but could not. Not in the case of this cat.

Eventually, satisfied with the wait it had imposed upon the woman, the cat arose and turned its back on her, it glanced back at her in a cursory gesture, in case she was in any doubt as to her requirement to follow it. 

She was glad that she had worn sensible shoes, but even then, her feline tour guide seemed intent on dragging her through the most unsuitable of terrain. Several times, the path was barely passable, if indeed it was ever a path for someone her size to traverse. The brambles were the worst. Laying nonchalantly in wait and casually brushing at her, but always managing to catch her with their thorns and once they had a purchase they were not easily convinced to relinquish it. During a particularly harrowing skirmish, she emerged from the barbed tentacles, having extricated herself from their clutches, only to hit her head on a low hanging branch. 

“Ow!” she howled as she rubbed her head.

She felt the cat’s eyes upon her as she administered some comfort to her ailing head. It sat there, observing her. Reminding her of one of the many reasons that she did not like cats. She was hurt and in pain and yet this thing was unconcerned. Cats rejected the concept of caring so totally that it sickened her, and this small emissary was more cat than any she had previously encountered.

And yet, here she was, allowing herself to be led deeper and deeper into the woods by a creature she’d usually cross the road to avoid. It didn’t help that she was allergic to them. Her nose bled in cat owner’s houses and her eyes itched and swelled so ferociously that she could not see. As the cat resumed its sauntering lope into the woods, she entertained the fantasy of her walking over its grave. This idea, of a person making a cat shudder by walking over its grave, amused her enough to provide her with a second wind. Thankfully, the brambles gave up their attempts to tear her to pieces in the slowest onslaught possible and the last of their perambulation amongst the trees was almost pleasant.

Almost.

The last part of the walk was into an unreal darkness that seemed augmented by the surrounding trees. There was a chill in this place, the presence of the trees ominous. The woman fancied that the darkness was flowing into the cat, or it could have been that the cat was the darkness and it was oozing out of it as though it were a growing and living aura. 

As she watched, dizzied by the effects of the darkness, the cat gradually faded, swallowed up by a localised patch of darkness that increased in size and height until it carried the unmistakable form of a man, or rather the shade of a tall and powerful man.

Patricia…

The word was out into the world, but it could not be said to have been spoken, equally, it was not imagined.

You are the last.

Patricia was painfully aware of this, having buried the last of her sisters this very morning.

The seventh sister of a seventh sister.

There were nine of us, thought Patricia. Always nine. As well as her six sisters, there was her Mother and her Mother’s sister. Nine of them, in the one household. They came as a package. They were one. Then they came apart one by one, and they were no more.

She had watched as they passed, her family and her entire world had disintegrated before her. Nine lives lived together. Now she was all that was left, and she was alone.

Today was the thirteenth of June. 

The last of her sisters, Amethyst, lay in the ground, not so very far away, but she was a world away now. She had died on the sixth. They had all died on the sixth of June. The odds of that were billions to one, and yet it was always going to happen that way. They hadn’t had a choice when it came to their departure date. 

Patricia wondered whether they’d had any choices at all. Pawns brought to the earth to play out a game beyond their understanding, let alone their control, and now here she was, on the cusp of the opposing back rank. One last step and the lowly pawn that she was would become a queen.

It is time…

“It is late, is what it is,” Patricia was relieved that not only had she found her voice, but that it was her own. A mild anxiety had welled up in her at the prospect of her voice failing her. She needed her voice now and she needed all her strength. She needed everything she had, and anything else she could muster, in order to get through this and leave the terrible game she had been entwined in since birth.

Betrayal was her prime concern. That she would betray herself in her hour of need. That her eyes would alight upon the prize. The wrong prize. Shiny and seductive. A few simple words could undo her, even now. After all, she was just one, the last of nine. She owed them. She owed them all.

How could she be so selfish?

Or selfless?

In the end, it all amounted to the same thing.

The timing is none of your concern.

Now she chuckled, the sound of it alien in this place of shadows. The laughter was that of a young woman with no cares in the world. A young woman with the world at her feet, but Patricia was far from young, and all of her petulance and exuberance had deserted her bit by bit as she suffered the loss of her Mother, and her aunt, and each and every one of her sisters. They took the best parts of her and left her alone in a harsh and cruel world that was beyond her. She had only ever needed her family, and as she lost that, she lost everything including herself.

“Timing is everything,” she spoke boldly and with conviction, “do you really think that none of this is my concern?”

This is not… 

“Not what?” she demanded.

You have no right.

“No! You have no right!” she shouted across at the dark form, “you never had a right.”

You dare defy me!

“Defy? This isn’t defiance! This is too little and too late. I put up with far too much and for far too long. I was meek and willing. I just wanted everything to be OK. For everyone to be OK. But they never were,” her breath stuttered out of her as she fought the strong urge to cry. She just wanted to let go and for the tears to consume her. She had failed, but it had taken her such a very long time to see that failure for what it was.

You are the chosen.

“No, I am your daughter, and that’s all I wanted to be. That is all the seven of us wanted to be, but you did this instead. You sacrificed everything, and for what?” she bit her lip, still fighting the tears.

But I did this for you…

“You did it for yourself, but I think you lost sight of who you were a long time ago. You can’t see any of it, can you? How you made six sisters feel when they had to live with their younger sister being the best of them, the best of us all. They were given no choice. They were no good by the accident of the timing of their birth. There was nothing they could do to redeem themselves. Nothing they could be to find some recognition. They were as nothing. Just a necessary occurrence that made me possible. That made this possible.” Her fists were balled and her fingernails bit into the lined flesh of her palms. She had ridden out the threatened storm of tears, now she had a placid anger holding her in place.

This is your destiny. There is nothing else.

“Well, that is where you are wrong, Father. I thought I had no choice. You convinced me of that, but you were wrong. I don’t have to do this.”

But you do!

Patricia shook her head, “no. No I don’t. I have to go willingly, or not at all.”

The alternative is to waste your life. To die as nothing. To…

“To turn my back on all the sacrifices you made my sisters make? I have to do this because of what you made us all do? Too late to turn back now?” she chuckled a darker, mirthless chuckle, “the alternative is not nothing. The alternative is something. If I go along with you and your plans then it will be as though I never existed, and as thought my sisters never existed. But we did. We meant something. My sisters meant the world to me. This does not. I never deserved this. This means nothing to me. My sisters deserved better. We are better than this.”

You are the seventh of seventh. 

You are to be the most powerful of witches.

Together, we will have dominion over all worlds.

This is our destiny.

“No. This is one man’s dream. Your dream. I am already powerful. I am loved and I love. That is true power. My sisters were devoted to me and they were my world. That is the only world that counts to me. Without love, there is nothing and that is the truth of it.”

You cannot…

“I can!” she cried, “and I am.”

Pricilla!

“That’s not even my name!” she laughed as she said this, “That was my aunt’s name. The woman you betrayed my mother for all those years ago. You don’t know me. You never even tried.”

That’s not true…

“True? True!” she cackled now, “you wouldn’t know true if it crept up behind you and bit you on the arse! Did you know that I hate cats? Completely and utterly hate the vile creatures? They remind me of you, and that really is not a good thing. Even my body rejects them. I’m surprised I’m not coming out in hives while I am inflicted with your presence. You and cats? You just don’t belong in this world. You don’t work. You don’t fit. The world would be a better place without you.”

She stopped to draw breath and that was when it hit her. The oppressive and ominous silence of this place.

“See?” she pointed around her, “no birds and no birdsong. No joy. Cats go out into the world and they take. Just like you. You gave nothing and you tried to take everything from me. You nearly took my song, but I still have it, Father. I still have the very essence of me. I locked it away, deep inside to protect it from you. I will never be what you want me to be, because I am me, and I am free.”

Don’t do this…

He continued with his demands, but as she turned and she walked away from him, she only heard the pleading of a small, lost creature that quickly faded to a sad whining reminiscent of an injured cat.

“They even sound awful,” she muttered to herself as she left the woods and escaped the destiny her Father attempted to mould for her. 

As she walked home to another, uncertain life, a life she intended to fill with purpose and joy, she chuckled to herself. Seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, she thought to herself. That took a lot of planning and effort. And it will take even more planning and effort next time around.

That there will be a next time, she has no doubt. Her Father will try again. One day, he may even succeed. 

But that is of no concern to her now, she has other matters to attend to. A hundred yards from the home she shared with her sisters, her mother and her aunt, she takes a left and walks up a short path to a wooden door that is in need of a fresh lick of paint. She knocks and the corner of the old door scrapes the stone floor as it begrudgingly opens.

“That pup of yours…” she states, immediately getting down to her business.

As the farmer’s wife picks the pup up and places him in the cool hands of the older lady she witnesses a transformation. This time, Patricia’s smile reaches her eyes and her face lights up. The years fall away from her and she is young again.

Dogs can do this to a person, just as long as that person’s heart is open and receptive to the love a dog freely and constantly gives. And Patricia is ready, she is more than ready and not just because this pup, the supposed runt of the litter, was the seventh of the litter. That didn’t matter to Patricia one bit. Rufus, her new friend and companion, held a magic all of his own from the very start and he always would. A magic that Patricia would share with him for the best part of thirteen years, when the farmer’s son would find Patricia laying peacefully at the side of her favourite footpath, with Rufus, her faithful companion laying at her side. 

Both them would die peacefully together on a bright Summer’s morning in Rufus’s thirteenth year, toward the end of the first week in June, a second life, well lived, in peaceful and rewarding companionship.