Page 16 of Madness Becomes Her
“You are a cat.”
“Yesssss,” he hisses at me, curling his fluffy tail around my leg as he parades around me arrogantly.
“You can transform.”
“Can’t everyone?” he says in a riddle.
“No.”
“Lies. I don’t like lies in my woods. Only truth.”
“Can you help me or not?”
“Dependssss.” Walking to the front of me, he plops, still looking proper and rigid, with a bored look on his face.
“Depends on what?”
“If you can answer my riddle.”
This again?
“I’m not good with riddles.”
“I’m not good with directions.”
I hate to realize it, but this is probably the most straightforward conversation I’ve had since landing here, and it’s with a blue cat who was just a man in a forest of trees who wanted to… No, that line of thought will do you no good, Eleanor.
I swear I hear a tree moan in sexual satisfaction as I shut the thought down.
“What’s the riddle?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“What do you break the moment you name it?” he says, lifting a paw and inspecting beneath his claw absently as if bored with my very presence.
My brain turns in circles, and my confusion causes me to panic that I won’t be able to answer and, therefore, won’t be able to go home.
Home.
Something I don’t even have, so I don’t know why I’m trying to get there so badly.
Focus!
“Uhm…”
Think, think, think.
I’m terrible at riddles and also terrible at being put on the spot. I once told someone my name was Susan because I couldn’t think of my own when asked. I panicked.
I’ve always been an awkward girl, now, woman. Half of me wonders if that’s why I seem to fit with all the oddities here perfectly.
“I don’t know.” I hang my head, defeated.
“Silence is the answer,” the cat says to my floundering. “No bother. I knew your head was too big to have a large brain. Full of rocks, most likely. I’ll help you.”
“You will?”
“I’m feeling generous.”
