In the beginning, there was light. Soon after, the migraine followed. Rachel was convinced as she awoke to blinding pain and perfumed smoke, that she was in fact experiencing the worst and greatest of all mothers of migraines. She didn’t want to open her eyes.

“Are you awake?” A voice, dry as winter weeds asked, followed by a pregnant pause before it added another question on top of the first, “are you alive?”

“Definitely one,” Rachel replied dryly, “I’ll get back to you about the other.”

Squinting and holding up a hand in front of her face to hide the worst effects of the piercing light in front of her, Rachel felt a twinge in her side. She was surrounded by some sort of fragrant smoke, and she could feel a very lumpy mattress beneath her. It was hard to really tell where she was. Could be a burning house. Could be a perfumery. She had to keep herself from gagging at the smell of the smoke invading her lungs.

“Don’t move too fast,” the voice spoke up casually, not particularly kind, but not mean. Bored.

Rachel nodded slowly, holding back a cough, “I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied. Adjusting to the light a little, she realized she could see shapes around her. A large stained glass window across from her in a small room. Strings of—things hanging from short rafters above and around her. 

There was a roaring fireplace on one wall, flames churning and sucking in some of the smoke. In front of the fireplace, the shape of a cat rested, tail twitching occasionally. A door was not very far from it. There was a table near the window, a couple of chairs, and a misshapen barrel beside them.

“Where am I?” Rachel asked the voice, slowly turning her head, “and where are you?”

There wasn’t anyone there with her. The smoke thinned out a little more, at least enough for her to tell that one of the things hanging from the rafters above her head was merely a rope of garlic.

“I may have overdone it on the medicinal herbs, my apologies,” the voice replied without really answering her question. Then Rachel looked back to the cat, and for an instant had a very funny feeling.

Medicinal herbs? Had someone drugged her?

The cat climbed to its feet. The smoke had cleared even further now, seeming to funnel itself into the fireplace. She could see now that the cat was pitch black, and terribly thin. She lowered the hand in front of her head to place it over her heart. “Poor thing must be starving,” she whispered.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The cat walked towards her. It was a slow, lazy slink. Then it leapt onto the very small bed Rachel realized she’d been lying in, and climbed onto her chest to stare Rachel right in her eyes.

“Yes. I am very hungry. So get to it.” The cat intoned, tongue lashing out to lick its nose as it opened its mouth wide.

“Oh Jesus!” Rachel cried, shoving the cat away and scrambling to her feet to run away. Or, rather, trying to scramble to her feet and run away. What ended up happening in reality was that the moment she stood up, a horrendous pain in her side caused her to pitch forward to the ground in agony and curl into a ball. It was a tremendous, thrumming, beating sort of pain. Like her heart had grown large enough to make her whole body pulse.

“Not quite,” the cat informed her, hardly impressed at Rachel’s dramatic reaction. It simply jumped down from the bed and walked towards her face.

Lowering its head, the cat purred.

Rachel’s eyes shot open wide, “are you—“

“No. I’m not the devil.” The cat sat back on its haunches and began to groom itself by licking one front paw and dragging it over an ear. “Just your run-of-the-mill familiar. Companion to the magically inclined. God of the household, really. Now, I suppose demanding my lunch from you was a little premature. I do apologize for that, but hunger tends to put me in a bad mood. Take your time getting back into bed. I don’t have the energy left to re-stitch the bite.”

This was all too much at once. Blinding pain. Migraine. Stinky perfume smoke. A talking cat. Rachel sobbed, not wanting to even move an inch.

“You’ll need another day. Perhaps two,” the cat intoned, mostly to itself once it lowered its paw long enough to give her a once-over. “You’re lucky I came along before that giant trout finished the job. Never trust a golden fish wish, dear. They’re all liars.”

“Giant trout,” Rachel repeated, “golden fish wish,” she continued, “talking cat…”

“It’s very rude to criticize your familiar’s species,” the cat snapped at her, sniffing haughtily, “I’m sorry you didn’t get a toad or a rat. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Inch by inch, Rachel moved her hands. Then her legs, with many tears and deep breaths. Then finally her arms, and her body as she climbed back onto the uncomfortable bed. It was still

better than a dusty wood floor.

Once she’d had enough time for shock to kick in and her panic attack to fade into enough background noise that she could form a coherent sentence again, Rachel spoke, “I don’t understand any of this.”

The cat gestured at her with one of its front paws. It actually went a long way to calming her nerves. Like taking a tranquilizer of cuteness. “Now,” the cat’s voice crackled, “I do apologize for all of this confusion. It wasn’t how I’d intended to welcome a new mistress, but I was in quite a rush last night.

Rachel nodded, doing a reasonable impression of someone who knew what was going on.

“I think I made a mistake,” the cat continued, rubbing a paw under its chin thoughtfully, “but I’m not sure where. You see, my last mistress went missing recently. So I needed a replacement. I may have put too much mugwort in the recipe, though. It isn’t easy preparing magic alone without opposable thumbs.”

“Okay, so you need a replacement mistress, I got that,” Rachel said, “but what was the recipe for?”

“Right. Yes. Perhaps recipe isn’t the right word for it. Formula is a little more apt. It was a summoning spell. I was trying to perform a ritual to find the most suitable candidate to serve my glorious self,” the cat went on, looking away from her towards the window. “Then it dropped you in Goblin’s Lake, and here we are.”

“What?!” Rachel blurted out.

“Yes, most definitely too much mugwort,” the cat repeated itself. “Anyway, I am Sir Fishbits, and you are now hereby promoted from boring every day otherworld primitive to mistress of my cottage and the Witch of Dreadforest. You’re very welcome.”