This chapter is dedicated to PipSqueeks88. She's writing a lovely book called Discovering Aurora which is an expertly crafted fantasy-coming of age story about love, loss and growing up. You should definitely give it a read.

xxx

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."
― J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The man opened the door. The ocean floor stretched in front of me.

Water lapped back and forth through the doorway, like a wall. It did not penetrate.

"Don't be surprised." He told me. His tentacles seemed to have lost all interest in me. They were stretching as far as they could towards the doorway. Fish swam past, strange fish with obscene, bizarre-coloured scales and fangs. Some of them sported strange human appendages. Bloody ears trailing behind them, teeth lining their spines, eyes held between their jaws, their teeth puncturing them.

"How do I get out of here?" I asked him.

He pushed me.

I swam in the deep. I felt like a squid. My dress billowed back and forth in the water as I struggled upwards. I looked up and saw nothing. Just water stretching on and on.

I wondered where the light was coming from.

I lost my breath perhaps a minute later. I crossed the point of no return. I let air out in a mad gush through my mouth and nose (like the father when he smoked coarse as a factory worker).

I breathed in, fully expecting me to be able breathe water like a fish.

The water stung the insides of my nose. Alas, I could not breathe it.

Everything stung now. The saltwater sting my eyes. My nose was burning. I had no air left. My ears were fit to bursting (ah yes pressure eye had quite forgotten about that eye still wonder how survival happened).

Then, I saw it floating past me. My little finger, pale and bony with the little mole right above the knuckle. And the furry thing wrapped around it. I knew almost immediately what it was. A cat's tail.

I felt it again. The sudden loss of hearing. The nausea. It was happening again.

The demon-fish swirled around me with idiot grace. Blood surrounded me. I reached for my little finger, my teeth clenched, my heart hammering in my chest. I grabbed the soft fur of the cat's tail. I watched as it unravelled itself. I watched my finger float away.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was back at the city, under the streetlights. My hair was plastered down my face. My dress clung to my body. I breathed in huge gulps of air. I vomited as usual, but I revelled in it. I was clutching something wet and furry.

Several violent yelps and snarls erupted simultaneously from around me. I looked around me. Cats. Cats everywhere.

The deserted streets were gone. Cats were walking both ways. The ones around me eyed me with suspicion. They delicately stepped around the folds of my dress. I coughed out saltwater.

"You really have a proclivity for puking on me, don't you?"

The cat called Nostradamus was sitting in front of me, his head cocked to the left, holding another can of tuna between his paws.

I couldn't help smiling.

"Have you come to take me to the club?" I asked him.

"It seems you've already got your commitment. And some other things as well, I expect." The cat winked at me. "You'll want some rest, I suppose. You'll also want to talk thing over."

I nodded.

"Then come with me. And pay attention this time. Another brush with Voltaire is not ideal for you right now."

I got up and wove my way through the crawling mass of cats, my eyes firmly fixed on Nostradamus' tail.

He stopped in front of a café and jumped on one of the tables arranged outside. "Have a seat."

I looked up at the signboard. Nothing, as usual.

I sat carefully, cringing. My feet felt sore.

"You're dying, or so I'm told." he said.

"Who told you?"

The cat yawned and scratched its rump. "How long do you have?"

"Look, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do."

"You're supposed to do what you're supposed to do. Then, you're supposed to die."

"So bloody morbid, the lot of you."

A fat, balding man in a vest appeared next to us. His flesh was green with rot.

"What will we be snacking on today, hmm?"

"Tuna for me, nothing for the girl." Nostradamus said.

"Nothing at all? A strong, healthy ghost like her..."

"Nothing, Phillippe."

"As you wish, street-prophet."

The waiter walked back inside.

"Why does everybody keep calling you a prophet?" I asked him.

"Because that is what I am. Now, we were talking about time, weren't we. A week? Two weeks?"

"A week." I said.

"Not good. Many things to be done."

"I need to get out of here."

The cat sharply snapped his neck up at me. "So the Yakuza have got to you, then."

"They told me that I'd die and that I'd destroy the in-between."

The cat said nothing. The waiter appeared after a while with a plate of something steaming and delicious-looking.

Nostradamus tucked in.

"So I won't die?"

"Oh you die. Most certainly. The question is, is that death necessary?"

"Why should I trust you?"

He was almost finished with his tuna. "You don't trust the Yakuza, do you? Old octopus head?"

"I guess not. But that doesn't answer my question."

The cat looked up at me, its whiskers flecked with tuna. "Trust. Interesting concept. Must be a soul thing, you know. It's just that...well, I haven't come across anybody who takes things like that seriously."

"So I'm supposed to find this Queen of Cats?"

"If you want. She might let you out. If you find her in time. And you're not going to be able to do that by yourself. Now, the Yakuza let you go for some reason. They also sent you on the right direction. Which is what makes me worried."

"Won't they die as well if I die?"

"They can spew science better than the best of them but they have no idea what will happen when you die."

I sat, my head cradled in my hands. I felt the narrow little nub where my little finger used to be. No phantom pain. Nothing. I wiggled my fingers.

"So nobody has any idea what's going to happen next week?"

"You'll die next week. And we'll all explode. Or not."

I nodded. "So the Queen of Cats."

"We can try." he said. "We can try if you want. She is the only real way out of here."

"If we fail?"

"You die here."

"If we find her?"

"She lets you go back. Or she keeps you here. It's simple, really."

"So how do I find her?" I asked him.

"I don't know. You'll have to find a high priestess of some kind. Famously inimical bunch, those. That's where I can help you."

"Really?"

I absently toyed with the cat's tail in my hand, now dry.

"Yeah. I know a few of them. As long as we keep pestering them, one of them should budge."

"They'll tell me the way?" I asked.

"Maybe. Or they'll intercede on your behalf. You'll need to sacrifice something though-Hey!"

The cat went around his half-finished plate of tuna and pawed at my clenched hand. I opened it out.

The cat yelled and screamed. It leaped off the table and landed square on the floor.

"Airy fic! Get away from me. Get away from me and don't come back! Swine! Beelzebub's spawn!"

"But what about-

"Go away and don't come back."

vӓY