“What is your name?”

“Autumn, Maiden of Zenithcidel, stole the Well, owe the Mothers, viewing memories.” I said in quick succession the instant I heard my familiar’s baritone voice.

“You have returned.” Sam stated, whatever magical directive he was under that compelled him to ask his questions evidently satisfied with my shorthand answers.

I was back. Back from The Well fast enough that my hair was still dry at the roots and my skin had not yet wrinkled.

The kitten was right.

I had been Melew, a Maiden attempting a minor charm. I hadn’t, no, she hadn’t succeeded.

Never opening my eyes, I slowed my breathing and reaffirmed the grip on my aura. “I’m going back.”

“You have never attempted consecutive memories. I advise against this choice.” Sam stated. A warning in words if not in tone, since he only had the one, but It was lost on me as I slipped back into The Well with no effort at all.

In a room that looked exactly like it always did, I tapped my foot. The same three walls with the gold and silver and bronze pattern surrounded me.

Did it always take so long for the door to appear? I had just been there. I would have to start counting.

The empty light came eventually, as it always did, and I stepped into its iridescence.

Precept Wisco’s irises shifted fluidly from green to blue to purple to red and then back again until they settled back to her natural honey brown. The other Maidens in my coven applauded from our half circle of seats placed around the precept.

“Thank you all. Over the next cycle, you all will become proficient in the use of glamor.” Precept Wisco began. She was a short woman with short black hair. Streaks of pure white ran straight back from her hairline on both sides. I’d only met her a minute or two ago but she looked sturdy, like a badger.

She started her lecture. I couldn’t do it. Both of my first lectures had been nothing but two hours of talking about things I could do in my sleep. By Wisco’s second word, I knew that hers would be the same. It would kill me if I had to sit through another second of such basic instruction. I had already found the color of my soul and though he had forbidden me from telling anyone, I was decades more advanced than any of the other Maidens.

“Yes, Maiden Kavinli?” Precept Wisco acknowledged my raised hand.

“What if we are already proficient with glamors?” I asked, using my proper voice and preparing myself to demonstrate my prowess.

“Then I would suggest finding the value in reviewing the basics,” Precept Wisco smiled and continued her lesson “Now, how many of you have attempted performing a glamor before?”

I begrudgingly raised my hand along with most of the coven. Of course they had tried. Everybody did as soon as they learned they could. The real question should have been how many of them could change their face entirely and maintain it, like I could. I’d bet my last piece of chocolate that I was better than Wisco.

“The first key to maintaining a glamor is to forget you have changed anything at all.”

She continued, her eyes passing from Maiden to me to Maiden until they snapped back. I had focused my aura and manifested it, changing my face to an exact mirror of my instructors, down to the small white scar that just barely peaked out of her hairline. Surely, she would recognize my skill and send me to a more advanced coven. A full facial glamor was years beyond what any of the other girls in the chamber could do. I wasn’t sure Precept Wisco could even do it.

She continued her lecture without a single word to me. “It becomes ever easier to maintain an illusion if you can make yourself believe it is not one.”

I stopped listening after that, instead turning my mind to wondering what I had done to deserve the soul crushing boredom I was going to endure for the remainder of the cycle. He had told me that I would be ahead of everyone else, but I hadn’t anticipated just how boring it all was going to be.

Beginning to nod off, I fell back and sat up in a bathroom still filled with steam.

For the second time in what couldn’t have been more than ten minutes but felt like seconds, Sam asked his questions and I gave my answers. I wrapped myself in the towels that had needed a wash the day after I had rented the room and wiped a swathe of steam off the mirror with my hand.

Scratching an itch on my right palm, I noticed my hair was lightening at the roots and the dull brown of my eyes were beginning to green. “Too much Autumn. Need more Dani.” I said to my reflection. It had been days since I had needed to apply the glamor, which compared to the three or four times a day It had been necessary when I had first fled Zenithcidel, I felt pride in my improvement.

“Yet another excuse you have found to delay our leaving for an undetermined amount of time.” Sam stated. He hopped down off his perch and landed on the counter silently, a skeleton no more.

The morning after I had discovered my familiar had sprouted a whisker, I had woken to find him staring at himself in the mirror, fully furred. His tortoise shell coat varied between every shade of blue, from baby to near black, and the yellow flits of light I had become so accustomed to being watched by had been replaced by gleaming blue eyes. Even with all the changes and new flesh that had happened, he was still small enough to fit in one hand.

“Leave me alone, cat.” I sighed.

“You are emotional.” Sam said, pointedly not leaving me alone. His hypnotic baritone sounded even stranger coming from his current state than when he had been bones alone.

“I’m fucking bored,” I snapped, suprised at my own anger. “It's all the same shit! Charms and glamors, precepts and maidens, shit I can already do or shit I’ve been forbidden to do. I try to keep myself entertained. I take notes? But for fucks sake, the last memory I viewed, Kavinli, the girl who I was, was fucking bored too!”

I left the bathroom mostly dry and got dressed. Still wearing the sweatshirt that hung just above my knees and the stolen shorts, I had added a pair of long white socks that were also stolen from the laundry that had made walking while my feet healed much more manageable.

“You speak as if you were allowed to live with The Well for your own enjoyment.” Sam said, following me out of the bathroom.

“You don’t know what it’s like going in and out of that place. Seeing the same things, doing the same things, and hating it but knowing that the only thing you can do is continue torturing yourself.”

Sam jumped onto the dresser, empty except for my notebook and pencil. “Tell me.”

My jaw dropped. “Did I just hear you express genuine interest in me?”

“Yes.” Sam stated, nonplussed.

The only thing I had ever gotten from him besides annoyance was his focused monotone when he was compelled to ask his questions.

“What is wrong with you? Why do you want to know?”

Sam’s newly furred face scrunched, showing sharp little teeth, and he let out a hiss that sounded more like stones being ground together than the sound of a kitten. “I can not know. It has been forbidden.”

Expression in his voice and a facial expression? After what I had come to expect from my familiar, I believed him.

“What do you want to know?”

“All that you do.” His face relaxed and he put his teeth away..

I told him. I told him about the light and the doors and the three metallic walls. I told him what it felt like to fall out of a memory. The words flowed out of me and I didn’t care to stop. The more I spoke, the freer I felt. I told him everything I could think to tell him and then I stopped.

“Hmmm.” He growled, his voice sounding like it could shake the old paint off the walls if he really wanted to.

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“Again, are you alright?” I asked.

The little blue kitten that was really only a little blue kitten in appearance swished his tail violently while the rest of him remained utterly still.

I only wanted to pet him a little. It was the fur, my familiar's annoying demeanor hadn’t ruined it for me yet.

“Sam?”

Nothing.

Then, finally, he spoke. “It is unwise to tell you.”

From some of the memories I had lived through, I had gathered that familiars were souls woven into magical bodies by some benevolent entity with the explicit purpose to serve and assist their sorceress. Sam had come early from what I understood and with at least one other explicit purpose. If I gave him a command backed with my aura, would he be compelled to follow it like a run of the mill magical entity that was bound to my will should or if it would fail and further complicate our already contentious relationship?

I couldn’t risk it, so I did the only reasonable thing I could think of to increase the chances that Sam would tell me the information that I had suddenly discovered I would die without.

I begged.

“Tell me, please? I’ll do anything,” I pleaded, dropping down to my knees and shaking my clasped hands in front of me. I did my best to make show of it, even sticking out my bottom lip like a little girl. “I’ll never stuff you in the toilet again, I promise!”

Sam watched me without any reaction, stated simply. “I will tell you if you assist me in a need I am unable to sate myself.”

“Yes! Whatever it is.” I said, jumping to my feet. I didn’t know if my begging had any effect on him but I chose to believe that I was too cute to resist, even for him.

Sam leapt to the floor. “Since my transformation, I have experienced a sensation I can only describe as hollow,” he padded over to the door, pawed at it once, and then turned his big blue eyes back to me. “I have come to understand this hollowness is what you would know as hunger.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it any more than my familiar could keep himself from asking his questions. For all his deep voiced brooding and talks of duty, my cat needed me to feed him. “Is the wittle kitty hungwy?”

Sam arched his back, sending every blue hair on his body standing on its end. He thundered in a voice that shook the glass of the window through the mattress with every word. “Do not mock my misfortune, you ignorant child!”

I kept laughing, I couldn’t stop, but I did make my way towards the door. I would get him food. Not just because I wanted to know how he could cure my boredom and not just because I was responsible for him, and definitely not because he had scared me. “What do you eat? I don’t think they would keep cat food in a house that doesn’t allow pets.”

I opened the door.

Sam bolted through the small gap before I could so much as tell him no. The little streak of blue fur and teeth and claws bounded down the stairs and disappeared into the lower stories of the boarding house.

“Come back you stupid cat!” I yelled, slamming the door behind me.

Down I went, taking the stairs as fast as I could with no concern for the sounds I made. I slid onto the second floor landing and collided with the only other tenant of the boarding house that just happened to be standing there at that exact moment.

“Oh!” Ms. Mole cried out in surprise and dropped her cane.

I caught her by her shawl and helped her regain her balance. “I’m sorry!”

From underneath her curtain of long gray hair and thick round glasses, she called after me. “Be careful on the stairs, dearie.”

Down I went.

I had stayed at the boarding house too long. I’d been meaning to leave since the night I had encountered the spirit, but I had continued to find reasons to stay. I needed to take one more trip into The Well, glamor myself one more time, steal one last loaf of bread from the kitchen, or get one more morning of sleep. I should have been smarter but instead I had hung around long enough to be tricked by my mutinous familiar. My leaving would no longer be by the way of quietly slipping away, thanks to Sam it would be much more dramatic.

Just before I took the last several steps, a clamor of falling pots and pans broke out from the kitchen.

“Hey!” I heard someone shout.

Arthur? I thought.

My socked foot hit the bottom step and kept going without me.

Down I went.

My aura flared within me, reflexively trying to soften my impact but the constricting force of the Mother’s Seal stopped it dead and I crashed to the floor on my hands and knees, hard. “Hhhhh.” I seethed, cringing from the hot nails of pain stabbing through my joints.

I heard footsteps stop just in front of me. “Hey, are you alright? Did you do that on purpose?”

Arthur.

I looked up and took his offered hand..

“I’m fine.” I said, already limping into the kitchen without letting another moment pass. I had a safe assumption of what had caused all the noise.

“Are you sure? I saw you fall, that looked pretty rough.”

“I have to find my cat.” I said, forsaking any small hope I had left for staying in the boarding house. What if someone saw him? What if the wrong someone saw him? The trail of disarray showed me the path he had taken through the kitchen and it led all the way to the open window over the sink.

“That was yours? I would have caught it if I knew that.” Arthur said.

Regular cats were nimble and much quicker than I was. Sam was not a regular cat and I had no idea what he was capable of. The chances of me finding him and then being able to get my hands on him, either with stealth or speed, had plummeted to almost nothing. What if Sam was the wrong someone and he meant to turn me into the Mothers? I was done. He had been very clear about his disapproval of my choice to live as a fugitive.

I didn’t respond to Arthur. “What do I do, what do I do?

Arthur tried with me again, looking genuinely concerned. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll help you find it.”

I couldn’t let myself, and in turn, The Well, fall into the wrong hands. A lump formed in my throat as I focused my aura and prepared to say the three little words that would have me back home before my knees could stop hurting, the three little words that would end it all. With my power on my lips, I spoke. “Mothers,”

The back door flung open and Anna, Arthur's sister, walked in. She held her arms out in front of her, Sam’s small form clutched in both of her hands. The kitten's blue fur was covered in smatters of blood and feathers and he was giving his best performance of a regular old kitten being preoccupied with cleaning itself.

“Look what I just found outside absolutely mauling a bird,” She said. Then, she noticed me.” Oh, hey. You’re wearing clothes this time.”

I clamped my mouth shut and released my aura, sagging back against the counter. All was not lost. I could still make a run for it as soon as I got Sam in my hands.

“That’s her cat.” Arthur said.

“You aren’t supposed to have pets here,” Anna responded, turning Sam to face her. “Why is he blue?”

“What is going on in there?” Ms. Lao barked from somewhere else in the house.

“Nothing,” Arthur called back and then he held his arms out towards his sister and whispered. “Give it to me, I’ll hide it.”

Anna rolled her eyes, but passed the bloody kitten to her brother. He managed to tuck Sam behind his back just before Ms. Lao stormed into the kitchen.

“What is all the banging? Why is it so loud? What are you doing down here?” She questioned, shifting her eyes between her children and then finally to me.

“We were just getting to know Dani.” Anna said.

I heard Arthur let out a sudden puff of air from his nose.

“Mmhmm, who was talking about a cat?” Ms. Lao said, narrowing her eyes.

Arthur spoke up. “ I was saying I wished I could get a cat, Ma.”

“Turn around. Why are you standing like that? What do you have behind your back?” Ms. Lao demanded.

Ms. Lao’s son did as he was told, holding up his hands and giving a dramatic spin, revealing that there was nothing behind him but the kitchen counter.

Where the fuck did he go?

“Mmhmm,” She said, walking out of the kitchen. Before she disappeared back into the part of the house I had never been in, she snapped. “No pets, clean the kitchen!”

No one spoke until we were all sure she was gone.

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“The little monster bit me and I let him go.” Arthur said, holding up a finger with four kitten fanged sized holes trickling blood.

“I think I saw him go back up the stairs.” Anna said.

I had not been treated badly by the mortals I had crossed paths with but the two siblings had lied to their mother on my behalf. That had been beyond what I deserved, that had been kind.

“Thank you both. You didn’t have to do that for me.” I said to them, bowing my head.

“I didn’t do it for you. You owe us.” Anna replied.

“What do you expect in return?” I said flatly, feeling myself growing cold. The chains of another debt were being fitted around my neck and I would be honor bound to repay it.

“I get to pet the kitten whenever I want.” She said with a smile that warmed away the chill that had come over me.

“Me too.” Arthur added, crossing his arms

I smiled back. “That can be managed.”

There was no sign of Sam or Ms. Mole on my way up but when I reached my door, It was cracked open. I slammed it behind me and turned the deadbolt.

“I am here.” Sam said, now clean, from atop the mattress in front of the window.

I crossed the room in two hard steps that shot streaks of pain through my sore knees. “I should lock you in the toilet for a year! What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I informed you of my hunger and yet you are surprised I acted in sating it.” He stated.

“I thought you wanted me to get you food, you stupid cat!” I yelled again.

“I am a predator. I do not get fed, I feed.”

I sank to the mound of blankets I called my bed and covered my face. The loss of needlessly channeling my aura twice and the toll of the fear I had felt overtaking my anger.

“To fulfill my obligation founded by our compact, I will tell you this. Someone has placed boundaries within The Well that prevent you from accessing it in full.” Sam said, his words slowing as he spoke.

“How?” I asked.

“I know not, but if they were placed. . .” He trailed off.

I looked up and saw the little blue ball of fur curled atop the mattress with his eyes closed. I had never seen him sleep before.

But if they were placed, I thought as I mimicked my not a kitten and drifted off myself. They can be removed.