* * * * *
The people of his pack were absent for long stretches of the day, leaving Gyp to cry anxiously in his crate’s confines. Isis occasionally meandered into the room to rest in the dog’s sight. Gyp wondered if Isis had done so to show a little solidarity with him. Gyp wasn’t certain that felines expressed such sentiments. But Gyp was thankful for the cat’s presence and offered no snarl that might have chased the cat away.
Gyp’s worse days were those when his master failed to return at night. Gyp and Isis suffered overnight stays at the kennel, there blending their worried cries with the other, stranger animals there assembled. Gyp felt powerless to guess what his pack might have felt, or what motivated his trusted owners to abandon him for nights on end in a kennel with animals he did not wish to know.
Marjory and Ben always returned to bring Gyp and Isis home. Gyp felt the home’s tension growing with each return. Kate smiled at him and demanded that he not leave her side in the house. Gyp’s obedience didn’t waver. Kate no longer took him for late afternoon walks. She no longer tossed tennis balls in the backyard. She curled deeper into blankets, and she held Gyp tighter as a lethargy squeezed upon her.
Gyp noticed when the tension overhanging the home turned to fear. Isis’s description of Kate’s hurts had put all of the dog’s senses on guard, and the dog vowed to miss nothing that might tell him more of Kate’s condition. What Gyp saw gave him no comfort.
Kate’s body continued to wane. Gyp noticed Kate had no appetite though she lost so many pounds, and Gyp refused to taste the table scraps he once relished while his master continued to grow thin. Kate often scratched her paling skin, and Gyp worried what might lurk beneath the skin to send Kate’s fingernails clawing at her arms and legs. Gyp and Isis rested on the bathroom’s cool tile floor while Kate’s stomach retched. Kate’s hair fell in clumped locks onto the shower floor, and the bandanas and baseball caps Kate wore to hide her loss frightened her German Shepherd.
Gyp did not understand the illness that feasted upon Kate. He could not know where Kate went so many days that made her so weak and ill upon her return. He felt when the fear began to sour into desperation, and the gloom that descended upon his home stole his breath.
Kate no longer confined Gyp at night to the confines of his crate. She no longer chased him off of the foot of her bed while she tossed and turned in her sleep. Gyp and Isis hardly moved during the night, each determined not to interrupt Kate’s precious rest.
“Her sickness worsens, dog.” Isis whispered one morning after Kate and her parents again left their home.
Gyp’s eyes watered. “How do you know? You’re just a cat.”
Isis squinted. “She shivers though her body is so hot. I can taste the sickness when I lick her hand while she sleeps.”
Gyp tried to swallow the rising panic. “Don’t the people know how to help her?”
Isis’s eyes glistened for the tears that formed in them. “I wish I could believe that, but after all this time, I don’t know. I hear them talking. They hope to chase things out of her body. I don’t understand what makes her ill, but I see Marjory and Ben’s eyes fill with despair and fear.”
Gyp sighed heavily. “I can smell the anguish.”
Isis surprised Gyp by rubbing against him. Gyp shook for a few moments as the cat purred and kneaded the larger German Shepherd’s neck. Gyp relaxed, suddenly thankful that Isis had shown him such comfort instead of a hiss. Felines were the strangest creatures Gyp thought he might ever come to know.
Isis smiled softly as Gyp calmed and lay beside his old friend. “I think Kate would call our friendship a small miracle.”
“A miracle?” Gyp’s ear rose.
“A kind of people magic.”
Gyp nodded. “Like the magic that makes a Frisbee float, or the magic that makes the pond cool. I wish I knew a magic to make Kate well.”
The cat’s good eye narrowed. “What would you give for that magic? Would you give everything you had for the power to heal Kate?”
Gyp put growl into his words. “I would give anything, cat. Do not doubt the bond between a master and her dog.”
“Then follow me,” Isis nodded. “Let me show you where I hide.”
Concern trumped whatever shame Gyp might have felt as a dog following the lead of a cat as stealthy as Isis. They moved silently through the house though no one was home. Gyp couldn’t avoid a sense of excitement. He had never moved so freely through the house. Usually, he had always been locked in his crate, or taken to the kennel, when his masters were away. Gyp had not known that Isis enjoyed such free reign to move about the rooms. Had his concern for Kate not been so pressing, Gyp might have succumbed to the temptation of the comfortable couch, or even Marjory and Ben’s king-sized bed.
Isis led him into the kitchen, where Gyp smelled the chicken he enjoyed during the weekend. Gyp peeked at the refrigerator, atop which rested the treats Kate spoiled upon her dog after Gyp performed his obedience commands well. Isis emptied a low groan to remind the dog of their earnest business, beckoning Gyp onward with his paw as the trashcan distracted Gyp's nose. Gyp turned a corner and felt his heart turn heavy. His legs shook. Gyp recognized the door to which Isis had directed him, a door that descended into darkness.
“You’re taking me to the basement?” Gyp willed himself to remain still.
“Is a basement enough to scare a dog?”
“Well,” Gyp turned and looked back into the kitchen, towards the treats on top of the refrigerator, towards those wonderful smells wafting from the trash, “it’s dark. It’s damp. It’s the basement, and Kate never allowed me down there.”
Isis rolled his eyes. “Such courage from the dog who warns me to question the bond between a master and her dog. Would such a dog fear the dark?”
Isis didn’t wait to hear Gyp respond before pulling the basement door open with a paw. The cat bounded down the steps. Gyp tested each of his descending steps with a timid paw. The basement was Isis’s domain, a refuge kept for a cat who needed peace from a frolicking German Shepherd pup, who needed a cool place to nap when the summer turned hot, or a place of solitude when strangers came into the home. Gyp felt like an interloper. He had seen furry spiders crawl into the kitchen from out beneath the basement door. He had seen mice scamper down the steps as Marjory chased them with the broom. Gyp could not guess what creatures lurked in the basement.
But Isis hinted that a magic waited at the bottom of the steps that might make Kate feel better. And so Gyp timidly descended the steps, his nostrils wide as he smelled strange scents he hoped were benign.
“Over here, dog.”
The smells were so crowded and strong that Gyp could not tell Isis’s direction.
“Listen.”
Gyp heard a rattle and crawled towards the noise. A shadow flashed in the corner of Gyp’s vision, Isis leaping to the high edge of a basement window before pulling back curtains to illuminate some of the darkness with sunlight.
“Remember your courage, dog.”
Isis dropped from the ledge and waited for Gyp in a basement corner strewn with bone. Skulls of mice and squirrel heaped on the floor. Graying feathers piled atop a set of old chairs tossed into basement storage. A snake’s carcass rotted next to a rabbit’s pungent, bloated head. A second later, Gyp’s realized what creature had created such a deadly space out of a hidden corner of the basement.
Isis’s eye never looked more sinister. Gyp did not suppress his snarl. All of his suspicions, and a terrible amount more, appeared proven regarding that furtive cat allowed to slumber at the foot of Kate’s bed.
“What wickedness is this?”
Gyp bared each of his long, sharp teeth and raised the fur on his spine.
Isis did not respond to the visual warning and instead slunk, chin first, onto the basement’s cool concrete. Isis’s last eye looked away from Gyp.
“I never truly believed you to be a dumb crea
ture,” Isis sighed. “You prove you’re plenty smart when you snarle at me. This is my wicked corner of the world. All these bones are tokens of the dark craft I practice. I have been so selfish, so afraid, for all of these many, last years, that now, when I want to work my power to save the only living thing I have loved, I find my skills spent.”
Isis wept, and Gyp sheathed his snarl’s teeth.
“I am older than you could dream, dog,” Isis continued. “I am many years older than what is natural to my kind. I should have abandoned my comfortable spot on Kate’s bed many years ago. But I have held back death through all the bones I have returned to this dark, basement corner. I have practiced a most wicked kind of magic.”
Gyp twisted his head. “But you spoke of magic as a wonderful thing. You said that magic might oothe Kate’s hurt. Why do I now smell fear?”
“How do I explain?” Isis whispered. “You never knew me in my youth. I was feared fighter. No cat, and certainly no dog, I promise you, tread lightly on my block. I scratched eyes. I ripped ears. I tore fur. No nest was safe for my skill at climbing trees. No mouse lived very long who entered my house looking for warmth in the winter.”
Isis closed his remaining eye to continue. “Only, that was when I was young. I grew old before you ever arrived. My reflexes slowed. I lost an entire eye. My claws dulled. Neighborhood creatures no longer feared me, and the mice scampered from one corner to the next before I could pounce upon them. I mourned for all I had lost.
“Then magic arrived one afternoon, when the hurt of my lost eye still festered. An albino cat strayed into our yard. I was ready to hiss and spit, to fight and scrape, at such trespass. But the albino cat mesmerized me. His eyes were pink, and his paws held no claws. I don’t think that albino cat could hardly see, for a film covered his eyes. Nor do I think that white cat could hear well, for I snuck so close before he noticed my approach. Lesions irritated the cat’s short fur, and it seemed the sun would burn such colorless skin.
“The albino smiled at me and betrayed no fear. I asked him what foolishness or bravery made him so bold to enter my space. The albino cat said that fatigue and discomfort had long ago stolen his concern for health or harm. The cat claimed he was older than any cat could guess. He claimed an ancient power allowed him to know so many years. But he said such a power, like so much magic, was both a blessing and a curse. He told me how badly his skin itched. He told me how all his color had faded to leave him so pale.
“And it shames me to remember how I laughed at his pain,” Isis shook his head. “I said I would be thankful to know such power. When that albino cat offered to give it to me, I agreed to accept it without asking about the details I was about to receive.
“The white cat showed me how to hunt and kill for the magic to lengthen my years. I never worried about what I would become, no matter that the albino suffered his sores and blisters before my eyes. I could only think of how the creatures would once again fear me. I wanted the mice to again feel my bite when they stole into my home.”
Isis’s paw flashed across the beam of sunlight penetrating his dark basement corner and squirrel skulls flew from the cat’s frustration.
“I never regained the youth I so badly craved. I gained so many more years, but my afflictions multiplied. Teeth fell from my gums. The sight of my last eye blurred. Scabs crusted upon my skin. I became a slightly different version of that white albino. I only extended my hurt and surrounded myself with bone in this dark basement corner.”
Isis exhaled a long sigh. “I pursued selfish motivations, and so the magic turned against me. But, Gyp, there is still some good that might be wrought. The magic might still give us hope instead of despair.”
Gyp's heart quickened.
Isis nodded. “I have pined beside Kate every night since she has turned ill, wishing that I could give her some of the magic I accepted from the albino cat. Only, I chose selfishly when I accepted that power that ebbs through me to extend my years. I must wait for another animal to decide to accept that power, and I must wait for another animal to decide where to direct it. I am that albino cat, Gyp, cursed and desperate to find another creature to accept that magic’s weight and relieve me of the burden of too many years.”
Gyp rested his nose on the concrete. “What would become of you should another creature accept your magic?”
Isis smiled. “My time would end. I don’t fear my death. The last of my teeth hurt badly. My skin burns in the slightest light.”
“How does this power heal Kate?”
Isis whispered. “My sacrifice will not be enough to soothe Kate’s suffering. The magic will need a new source from which draw its power. It will require an unselfish source so that the magic will heal rather than harm. The magic will need a source willing to sacrifice itself for another.”
Gyp barked. “Haven’t I told you I would do anything for Kate? Do you doubt me?”
“Do you understand how much the magic will take from you?
Gyp growled. “I will give anything.”
Isis’s last pupil narrowed upon the dog. “Even your life? That is what the magic will demand, dog. That will be the magic's cost.”
Feared stretched quickly to Gyp’s heart. Gyp had never before considered magic, and he had never before wondered what became of his thoughts and love after death. Gyp knew nothing could avoid an end. Only, he had believed his passing waited too far beyond the horizon for his consideration. Instead, death had crept behind him, carried in the whispers of a cat, implied in the skulls and bones stacked in that dark basement corner.
Memories of sunny days spent with Kate upon a field filled with lush, green grass washed away his mind’s fear as quickly as the dread had descended. He longed for the Kate who walked beside him. His missed his master’s smile when he obeyed a command. He missed Frisbees gliding through the air. Gyp could not imagine a world without Kate. Gyp considered the sickness concerning Kate a dark kind of magic far more sinister and wicked than the death Isis claimed the dog would meet. It was not fair for one so young as Kate to suffer.
“I will give my life for hers, cat.”
Isis grinned, and tears flooded his remaining eye.
“I envy your courage, Gyp,” Isis purred. “At least I can see that you do not go alone. Maybe I can go with you into that end.”
Gyp rested a paw upon Isis. “That is much, Isis. Would you consider that a kind of magic as well?”
“The best kind I should ever know,” Isis nodded.