Chapter 7: Maud

That evening Violet took a careful inventory of all the items she’d be bringing along on her journey.

It was not a very long list, but putting it together still took a while, for Violet had to pause between each entry and wrestle with a funny tickly feeling at the bottom of her stomach. It wasn’t quite nervousness, she thought, the sensation was too abstract. It seemed closer instead to how she felt when trying to recall a nightmare. There were elements that frightened her, but she wasn’t quite sure why.

It had to be the thought of venturing beyond her village, beyond the river even. She had decided that she would do it, but only in the same way that a person might decide to become an astronaut someday.

Violet hesitated, frowning down at the page in her notebook where she’d listed her electric lantern. Focusing this much on the actual journey part of her journey made her feel vaguely ill, so instead she did her best to think about her equipment and only her equipment.

She had folded the blue plastic tarp and stowed it beneath her bed, along with the case containing the vials and the weird glass screened machine. She’d also taken a closer look at the vials but many were cracked and all were empty. Some were stained with various materials but their contents had all but entirely evaporated in the years since the case had last been opened.

Violet wondered distantly what it was that the machine did, and what exactly the sigil(?) on its bottom was, but there were no answers easily available and so she moved onwards.

There was the spool of fishing line and of course the spark lighter, though Violet had refrained from striking it indoors. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally set the hanging clothes in her closet alight. That would be a tough thing to explain to her mother.

With her existing equipment all noted, Violet turned her thoughts to the things she had yet to acquire. She’d need cookware in order to prepare meals with, but the thought of pilfering her mother’s pans made Violet feel guilty.

And she still had no reliable way of drawing a sigil. Pencils and pens worked well enough for her notebook, but she couldn’t use a pencil to draw upon stone or brick or even the wall of her house. The cat had recommended chalk, but….

Even as she ran over this little quandary, Violet remembered the ash-pit, full of splintery cinders and other burnt up refuse. She’d once gotten in terrible trouble for drawing all over the back wall of the house with the charred point of a long stick.

Charcoal could work, she supposed, though it would be useless for drawing on dark surfaces with…and it was rather fragile too, even when compared to chalk.

It would do in a pinch, Violet concluded, but made no move to gather any. The ash-pit wasn’t about to get up and wander off, after all, and she’d only just gotten herself cleaned up after the events of the day.

Instead, she resolved to find some chalk.

The next morning Violet went wandering out by the emptier edges of the village, hoping to encounter the cat. But though she half expected it to emerge from every new shadow, the world around her remained still and silent.

On a whim, Violet peered into the alleyway where she’d drawn her first sigil, feeling a prickly, anxious tingle pass through her as she did. Her mark had been scoured from existence, of course, and all that remained were a few streaks of faintest pink, frozen where they had dripped down the wall.

Violet stepped away, feeling disheartened, then turned and hurried along. The alleyway felt haunted, though by a shattered potential rather than any demon or ghost.

Before she’d gone much further she caught a noise at the edge of her hearing. Somebody was humming, the noise distracted and directionless.

It came from a house right at the edge of the abandoned part of the village, bordered by a splintery white picket fence that closed in a scraggly little garden.

The hummer was a girl about Violet’s age, rather round and distinctly pink in coloration. She was seated upon a raggedy purple feather cushion just short of the gate and seemed occupied squinting down at the crumbling concrete walkway that ran to the front door of her house. Next to her sat a small plastic bucket filled perhaps halfway with a small jumble of differently colored sticks of chalk. Yet Violet couldn’t look at that.

The girl’s legs were puddled beneath her, skinny and bent in ways that Violet couldn’t help but stare at. They seemed almost vestigial, like in a more natural world the girl might have ended at the waist, with nothing more below that.

She wore a lopsided and very much makeshift pair of glasses, the left and right sides each having once belonged to a different pair entirely. The mismatched lenses gave the girl’s eyes a strange appearance, as though they were two different sizes.

Hanging down in front of her face were wisps of hair, as fine and colorless as corn silk. They were longest in the front and grew only in patches. For the most part the girl was bald as an egg, her scalp just as pink and splotchy as the rest of her.

It was only after a moment that she noticed Violet and looked sharply up, clearly caught by surprise. Her eyes, huge and tiny all at once behind the lenses of her glasses, blink blink blinked.

“Oh…um…hi Violet.” She said.

“Hi Maud.” Violet mumbled, suddenly feeling very awkward.

For a moment there was silence, the two of them shifting gazes.

“…How’s your mother?” Maud asked at last.

“She’s well.” Violet said. Her gaze was tugged past Maud, first to the bucket of chalk at her side, and then along the collage of drawings that dappled the concrete walkway. There were dozens of them, all colored and erased and done over again many times each. Violet could see houses and rivers and sunbeams, flowers and fence pickets and foxes, all melting into one big artistic cacophony.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t talked to anyone in a while.” Maud said, and her voice did something funny. She suddenly looked like a dog that wanted nothing more than to please. Surreptitiously, one of her hands went out and began to scrub away at the nearest fox drawing.

Violet nodded faintly and was suddenly not at all sure what to say. It occurred to her that she could ask to borrow a stick or two of chalk, but if she just did that out of the blue then it would be rude and….

“I like your drawings.” She said instead, shifting in place on her side of the gate.

“Thanks,” Maud said, and smiled shyly. “Um…do you want to draw something too?”

Violet considered. Sitting down and drawing a few pictures would be a good way to break the ice. Spending some time with Maud would allow her to ask for chalk casually, with no tension between them. Violet began to nod but the motion froze and she suddenly felt uncertain and a little bit bad. She wasn’t agreeing to spend time with Maud because she really wanted to, she was just using the other girl in order to get something she wanted.

“Maud….” She began.

Maud began to shake her head.

“I’m sorry.” She said again, and the words came almost like a muscle twitch, fast and automatic.

“Sorry for what?” Violet asked, caught off guard.

The girl before her shrugged helplessly.

“I…I really didn’t know that the demon had stolen my chalk until the symbols started showing up.”

Violet felt an unpleasant little squeeze of something that wasn’t quite terror jitter through her chest. She’d known, in the back of her mind, that this was the girl the cat had stolen the stick of pink chalk from…but it was only now that the associated implications began to click into place.

“Oh.” She mumbled, not at all sure what else to say.

“I…I mean, I couldn’t have done it myself, right?” Maud asked, gesturing down to her legs, but though she was clearly attempting a joke her tone was too anxious to let any humor filter through.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Violet said, but could only mumble. She wanted to run away and go someplace quiet and contained, like she did whenever bad things happened. But though the temptation gnawed at her, she forced herself to stay put.

Maud blinked, surprised.

“You really mean that?” She asked.

Violet nodded, but the motion was distracted, her eyes had gone to….

Very suddenly the cat appeared from the shadows just short of Maud’s house. It met Violet’s gaze, gave her a curt nod, then set to stretching. Violet forced her eyes back to Maud and nodded again, more sharply this time.

“Are people being mean to you?” She hurriedly asked, suddenly desperate to keep the girl’s attention as far away from the cat as possible.

Maud hesitated, then shook her head and forced a smile.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I shouldn’t complain…they’re just watching out for demons, right?”

Behind her, the cat stalked closer, low to the ground but for its tail, which stuck straight up like a radio antenna. Violet forced herself to nod along to Maud’s rhetorical question, though she didn’t believe it for a second. She kept her eyes far from the cat, even as it delicately dipped its muzzle into Maud’s bucket and came out with two more sticks of chalk, one red and one white. It winked at Violet, clearly amused, and vanished into nothingness.

Violet let out a small breath, simultaneously relieved and upset.

“Do you want to draw something with me?” Maud asked again, offering out the chalk bucket, so recently abandoned by the cat. For a moment Violet was certain that she would notice the missing sticks, but Maud’s gaze was firmly upon her.

Violet hesitated, too shaky to manage words for a long moment.

“I…I’ve got things to do, Maud,” she said lamely, feeling worse with each word that staggered from between her lips. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Oh, um…that’s okay,” Maud attempted a smile but it shivered apart into a grimace. “…Later, then.”

Violet turned and hurried back home, feeling trembly and ill.

She found the cat in her back garden, sitting in the shade of the shed. It had laid out both sticks of chalk in the grass and presided over them like a hunter showcasing new trophies. It had gotten most of the chalk dust out of its fur but there was still a white blotch just above its left eye.

Upon catching sight of her, the cat offered a sharp toothed and very triumphant grin.

“I apologize for springing that on you,” it said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “But you adapted admirably. Keep that up and you may just survive your proposed journey.”

Violet blew out a breath, quietly upset.

“You didn’t need to do that,” she protested. “I could have asked.”

“You didn’t complain when I stole the first stick of chalk.”

“Yes I….” Violet trailed off and instead just shook her head. Debating the obvious wouldn’t get her anywhere. “…I didn’t know it would get her in trouble.”

“Drawing the sigils got her in trouble,” the cat countered. “And I don’t recall being the one to do that.”

Violet simmered but said nothing. The cat continued after a moment.

“I could always return the chalk if you’re really so incredibly upset by my devious actions….” It offered.

The cat’s tone rubbed her the wrong way. A part of Violet wanted nothing more than to challenge the cat’s bluff…but if that happened then she would have no recourse but to go straight back to Maud for no other reason than to get chalk. Again, she felt a sick, curdled feeling stir in the bottom of her stomach. As wrong as the theft was, it would be even worse to take advantage of Maud like that.

Violet looked away. The cat nodded, and when it spoke again its tone was a bit gentler.

“Just be glad that she’s here in this…place. If she were in the woods then her mother would have devoured her at birth.”

“People don’t do that.” Violet said, horrified.

“You’d be surprised. Anyway, moving on. Have you gathered your frivolities? Do you still need anything?”

For a moment Violet thought about refusing to let the topic go, she felt upset enough to keep arguing about Maud and the stolen sticks of chalk…but it was already done. There would be no point besides furthering her own anger.

“A hatchet.” She muttered.

“Easy.” The cat said, then slid past the air and into the space beyond.

For a moment there was silence, then came a crash from inside of the shed. Violet jumped, but even before she could go to investigate the cat tumbled gracelessly into view, teeth denting the wooden handle of an axe.

In an instant it shot back up, fur slightly askew, and cleared its throat, desperately trying not to look self conscious.

“There.” It said, nodding stiffly down to where the axe lay in the grass at its paws.

The axe had seen better days, its blade banded with brownish-orange stripes of rust, the handle rough with splinters and ragged strips of old duct tape. Violet cocked her head. What the cat had fetched for her was a full sized wood axe, at least three feet long. Such a thing wouldn’t be especially portable.

“But….” She started to say, then immediately realized something. A hatchet was nothing more than a shortened axe. Her thoughts turned to the saws hanging on the back wall of the garden shed. It would be easy enough to cut the axe down to size. The resulting implement would be a bit unbalanced, for Violet was pretty sure that a purpose built hatchet had a smaller, lighter blade than a full sized axe…but it would be better than nothing.

In the end she fetched a rough toothed saw that was every bit as rusty as the axe and none too artfully cut the handle short. It took a while for her to get the saw blade to bite into the wood, but once she did it wasn’t long before the end half of the handle dropped into the grass with a thump.

Violet held the hatchet up, admiring her work. It was true that the end of its handle was a bit uneven and rough, but that could always be covered over with tape.

She’d need to sharpen the blade too, and find some way to get the rust off. But that could always be done later. Even in its current state the hatchet seemed plenty sharp.

“If that’s it, if you’re fully equipped now….” The cat began, adopting a somewhat portentous tone of voice, like it was about to deliver some piece of great knowledge.

“Are you gonna show me how to build a fire?” Violet blurted, interrupting.

The cat gave her a look of mild displeasure, then sighed and deflated just a little.

“Amongst other things. Now grab your frivolities.”

Violet hurried back through her bedroom window. She’d become rather adept at slipping in and out of it since she’d met the cat, and slid through on her stomach. Once inside, she went for her rucksack and packed as quickly as she could. This consisted mostly of stuffing the tarp down into the bottom of her pack, then tossing everything else on top of it. She probably didn’t need the rucksack, but it was easier to carry one specific thing rather than try and edge her way out the bedroom window with full arms. Putting it on with actual items inside felt strange, she wasn’t used to it weighing much of anything, but with that strangeness came a new sense of purpose. She fastened the rucksack’s hip buckle around her waist, cinched it at tight as it would go (which was just barely tight enough, it turned out) and hurried onward.

“Do you have everything?” The cat asked as it watched her clamber back out of the house. “Chalk, hatchet, spark lighter…all of that?”

Violet nodded. She’d even brought along her notebook and an extra pencil so she could write down every bit of what the cat was going to tell her.

“Good,” the cat said, satisfied. “Now follow me.”

With that it started off past the shed and towards the fence that formed the border between Violet’s back garden and the woods.

Violet followed for a few paces, then hesitated and came to a stop, gripping uncertainly onto the straps of her rucksack as the cat passed beneath the fence’s bottommost rail.

“Wait a minute….” She said, trying and failing to hide the anxiety percolating at the bottom of her voice, throwing tremors into each new word.

The cat paused and looked back at her, up to its shoulders in the tall grass.

“What?” It asked.

“We aren’t actually going in there…are we?” Violet asked, but the question already felt redundant.

For a moment the cat was silent, fixing her with a flat, unreadable gaze. Then, slowly, it turned and leapt onto the top rail of the fence. Suddenly, the scene felt rather familiar.

“Did you think that we were going to be building fires and pitching tents in your back garden?” It asked. The question, while not out and out contemptuous, still made Violet feel like cringing.

Now that she thought about it, doing all of that within potential view of her neighbors was risky, but….

She remained silent, staring past the cat and into the woods. Cold tingles of dread, so familiar they hurt, crept along her spine and pulled her insides tight. There were dark places between the trees, where the brush grew tangled and thorny, and all sunlight seemed to die.

For a moment it looked as though the cat was about to say something cutting, Violet could see an annoyed impatience curling behind its eyes, but instead it let out a quiet breath and waited.

In the back of her mind, Violet thought about backing away, edging into the ash-pit or even her bedroom, somewhere familiar and safe. But those instincts fractured and stammered into dissolution against something even deeper than the fear.

She looked back to the corner of her house and the alleyway beyond it, where the imprisoned demon was. Then she thought of what was coming to follow it, the demons and their yearning, high and piercing like the wail of a boiling kettle.

If she was to make her journey and reach the Glow then she would need to go through the forest. The reality of that fact felt suffocating. Yet she could not ignore it.

Violet shrugged off her rucksack and undid the top, digging until she found her notebook. The sigil she’d drawn on its front was blurred, the pink faded and faint. Retrieving the red stick of chalk from her pocket, Violet thought of Maud for a moment, then retouched the sigil until it shone clear and bright once more.

With that done she stood back up, holding her notebook tight to her chest. She could feel her heart hammering desperately against her ribs, each pulse pushing tremors through the notebook and into her fingertips. It reminded her a bit of how it felt to hold an injured bird.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on each individual action, doing all she could to decouple them from the greater context of their sequence, how they would soon be carrying her into the woods.

“Ready?” The cat asked, straightening up.

Violet managed a quick, shaky nod and clambered over the fence. With that done there were only a few more steps to take, then she was beyond the village entirely and swallowed by the forest’s dim embrace.