Feature Writer: JHB

Feature Title: Year of the Kat

Published: 11.12.2010

Story Codes: Mind Control

Synopsis: An ancient magi encounters a Celtic goddess.

Link: https://mcstories.com/YearOfTheKat/YearOfTheKat.html

Author’s Note: This was my 17,000th post in the Garden of Mind Control. Many thanks to kbug, TeraS, flibinite, neicie and others there who helped me make it better than I could on my own. For the record, Katharina von Bora was an actual 16th-century German woman with red hair. Yanet, Bergusia, and Ucuetis were actual Celtic deities . . . though no word on their hair color.

 

Year of the Kat

“When I was seventeen, it was a very good year . . .”

Melchior Newin listened to the classic song, playing out of the old cathedral-style radio on his book shelf, and tried to recall when he was seventeen: how callow and self-possessed he was, how immortal he felt in those days. He remembered how he could eat anything and still eat more and never gain an inch on his waist. He recollected his thin, wiry body that could run, jump, lift weights, and hardly ever feel sore, how he could sit up until all hours with his friends at the academy, discussing how they were going to make the world–the universe–a better place, speculating on finer points of philosophy, mysticism, and the sciences.

Sighing, he wistfully remembered one of his classmates, a brash young Greek named Alexander who had big plans. The two of them trained together, planned to work together. But, by the time Alex started making his big noise around the Mediterranean, Melchior had long since been called aside by one of the teachers, identified as a special student, a very special young man.

For all that Greek had transformed what he thought to be the world, it had been transformed again, more than once, before the special student had begun his first field assignment. He was not quite 350 then, and had been studying astronomy in the Himalayas, learning how small the world in which he grew up truly was. As the youngest member of the team, so reckless, so impressionable still, not yet ready for a solo journey, he traveled with two more senior guardians to southern Palestine, to check on a unique, powerful, toddler, living in what humanity considered to be an unimportant place.

Melchoir remembered how their appearance—as well-to-do foreign scholars—and their straightforward explanation that they were magi raised so much confusion over what and who they actually were; how his inexperienced, clumsy inquiries led to the local authorities hunting the child; and how the three of them had to arrange safe passage for the child and his parents out of the country. He also remembered how taken he was with the power and potential of the child, how he wanted to stay with the little family and assist them, and how his superiors dragged him off, reminding him of the need to remain detached observers and guardians.

While that child had died, the death was, somehow, not final, and his life and teachings echoed through the next fifteen centuries. The now middle-aged magi was living in the British Isles most of the time; he had set up the library in a small Oxford college at its founding, and was quietly collecting scrolls and artifacts, mostly from the fading Celtic and Saxon civilizations. Fortunately, people didn’t pay much attention to the faculty in such colleges, and even less to the librarians. Still, a long sabbatical was in order from time to time, as it confused people enough (well, in combination with a couple of mind tricks he had picked up) to prevent too many questions about just how long Melchior had been there.

Taking a deep breath in the present, there in his apartments off the library, Newin stood up and stretched, pouring himself some English Breakfast tea and letting his mind wander to 1516, when he was traveling through Germany during one of those leaves. The radio shifted to Palestrina as he recalled a bright, vivacious nineteen-year-old: Katharina von Bora was deeply intelligent—Melchoir had been around long enough by then to know that medieval northern European ideas about differences between male and female intelligence were hooey, but this girl’s mind, the questions she could ask, surprised even him. She was also as fiery and defiant as her red hair, with a wit as sparkling as her green eyes, more than willing to push back at him: “Ach! Who do you think you are, so full of yourself?” was her constant refrain. It was the first time in centuries that the magi had felt attracted to a woman, and he was smitten.

He had fallen in love with her, even as they had argued over all sorts of concepts of God and church and science and . . . well, he came perilously close to telling her about the reality of his life. During those constant verbal battles, they fell more and more in love. But her parents were opposed, and he knew that he couldn’t reveal his true nature . . . or, at least, he was quite afraid to. His heart broke when he returned to Britain without her, knowing that her parents were going to shut her up into a convent to tame her.

A few years later, he heard that she had been helped to leave the convent by a troublemaking scholar from Wittenburg, and that they had married.

Even more years later, he sat in a bar with a playwright named William something and told that story—leaving out the specifics of date and place, of course—and later found out that the author had some success putting it into a production in Stratford. That didn’t bother Melchior too much; but when Cole Porter made a mint off the thing and didn’t owe Will or him a dime in royalties, he was somewhat perturbed.

Now, as another term was beginning, Melchior Newin, BA, MA, MLS, MPhil, PhD, ThD, DLitt, was feeling his age a bit. What the Americans had dubbed “The Great Recession” had finally faded; even though it was a relief to have budgets begin to loosen somewhat, he had managed to delay for another decade the computerization of the rare manuscripts catalogue. Still, he knew that the rapid dissemination of information was something which he had to deal; except, perhaps, in ancient British universities. It was getting harder for his kind to hide anymore.

Not that there were too many of his kind left. He was pretty sure he was closing in on 2,500 . . . unless he had just passed it; years seemed to blend together for him anymore . . . and, from what he had seen, three millennia was a pretty typical lifespan, and, as normal human lives had become longer and safer, fewer magi seemed to appear. Add the growing human propensity for mass destruction—about two dozen of his kind had been lost to collateral damage in the last century, and there were only ever 60 whom Melchior knew of at their peak—and he was part of an endangered sub-species.

He wondered just how long he could keep at it. Some years back, he had protected a musical grimoire from a modern-day siren, but the mercenaries who came after the telekinetic codex last spring had left him with a strained back, and just a few weeks ago it took him twenty extra seconds to defuse a bomb meant to destroy the ancient Druidic stabilization runes. While Caspar, the senior magi on that first field assignment to Palestine, was dealing with basically the same human technology in his last work with Jerome as when he began with Ramses, Melchior had seen the means for identification and communication transformed multiple times, and it was harder and harder for him to keep secrets. One of these days, he would simply be too old, too brittle, too slow to get the job done.

He put on his academic regalia, which had changed surprisingly little since he fist came to Oxford and not at all since well before the Great War, and pondered all his losses, all his mortality, all that he had given up, all the friends who had come and gone, and the never-pausing press of duty pushing on him over centuries. He ran a hand through his graying hair and checked his beard for crumbs as he loped across the quad and joined the faculty queue into the chapel for convocation, truly wondering whether it was time to give up and fade away. But who would replace him? Certainly not that young brownnoser from the philosophy department with his mere twenty-five years of tenure, who, in his role as marshal for the procession this term, was careful to point out, “Dr. Newin, this is the way we line up here.” The librarian had to bite his tongue to avoid spitting out some words about leading these processions when philosophy boy’s great-great-great-grandfather was in diapers.

As the faculty left the chapel and broke ranks, heading for the spiked punch bowl at the reception, Newin was reflecting on how the new provost seemed a bit less pretentious than any they’d had since the Chamberlain government, all the while halfway paying attention to Carstairs from political sciences, who was bellyaching about a passionate, argumentative new fellow in his department. “And worst of all, she has all her facts in a row! I hardly get that from these young things . . .”

As he continued droning on, Melchior felt obliged to look when his colleague pointed toward a young woman whose doctoral hood still had creases in its dark blue lining from being new in a box. She was going toe-to-toe with the chair of the humanities department about something, her red hair in a bun that seemed charming to the librarian for its appearance of having been hastily assembled. Somehow, she looked very familiar to him. She glanced over and seemed to immediately recognize him. Turning on the ball of her right foot—he noticed she had dared to wear sneakers with her modest dress and regalia—she moved straight toward him: “Dr. Newin! I have something I must discuss with you!”

Melchior was sure he recognized her, somehow, and began to stride toward her . . .

. . . but he was suddenly pulled aside and spun around by another new faculty appointment. “Newin! You’re Melchior Newin, the head librarian, yes?” the brash, almost exotic brunette, standing about four inches shorter than he, demanded. “I’m Janet Déesse, new member of the anthropology faculty. I have heard that you have a bit of experience with antiquities, and I was wondering if we might chat about it.”

“Certainly, Miss . . . Ms . . . Doctor . . .”

“Oh, just call me ‘Janet.’”

“Ummmm . . . yes . . . well, why don’t you stop by the office this week when you have some time.”

“Oh, no! I was hoping you might come over to my place tonight!” She was quite forward, but intriguing in a way no one had intrigued him in decades: “I have found this book with what I am pretty sure is Gaelic text in it, but with Latin mixed in. I’ve dated the cover to the volume at the early twelfth century. Would that be something that interests you?”

There was part of Melchior that was interested, and part of him that was just tired. The book she was describing could very well be the Canon of Inverness, an ancient writing that was rumored to contain spells which kept the English—not to mention the Romans and others before them—from successfully maintaining a foothold in the Scottish highlands. Back in the day, he was rooting for the Scots, just a bit, and had even investigated whether there was a non-human reason why, after centuries of resistance, the English had succeeded. But, while he had heard rumors of the Canon, he found no evidence of it or any Gaelic spell-casters.

So, despite himself, despite the weariness and ennui he had been feeling, and despite the fact that he was sure there was somebody else he wanted to speak to before this dark woman with the powerful eyes who smelled faintly of apples interceded, the magi in him responded: “Yes, of course, lead the way.”

Like most of the new faculty, Dr. Déesse had lodgings far from the lecture halls, down behind one of the dining halls, in a lower level apartment. As Newin followed her in, the apple fragrance became quite overpowering. “Have a seat, Doctor,” she had called out almost absently, gesturing to a divan that faced the small fireplace, “and please pour yourself a sherry while I get out of my regalia.” She bustled off into what he assumed was her bedroom while he draped his own robe and hood over a chair—leaving him still in tails and white tie, this being a British university—poured two sherries, placing hers on the table as he settled into the small sofa, sipping his own.

As the librarian peered at the titles on her bookshelves in the somewhat dim light of the room, sipping the liqueur, he suddenly felt feminine fingertips on his temples, tracing small circles. There was almost a jolt through his system, and he almost unconsciously began to slip into his training, defending himself against a psychic attack. But, before he could rise or speak, he heard his new colleague’s voice, yet somehow not her voice, somehow bigger: “Relax, Melchior, relax. Yanet, goddess of sex and sensuality, commands you to relax.”

The magi struggled to stand, or even protest, but found that he just couldn’t manage to want to. The apple fragrance was like a musk now, and there was a glow in the room that was not from the university-issue lighting. The fingers of one hand kept contact with his face, his hair, his ear, his neck as she moved around the settee and stood before him.

She was naked, her form a perfect symphony of curves; her skin, flawless and almost glowing on its own; her hair was now a mane of wild yet perfectly coifed raven curls; and her breasts, now quite large, though somehow fitting, seemed supported by no visible means. But her eyes and her mouth, with its captivating voice, had the man before her absolutely riveted.

The goddess straddled the magi’s lap, purring, “Why, Melchior! No need for us to bother with this ridiculous human convention of last names, is there?” His shirt was opened as her long, manicured nails raked his chest hair. “It is so good to feel how, even at your age, you can still get up and around.” She shifted on his lap, making him moan.

“I know who you really are. I have known for ages, actually . . . I am a goddess, after all. I planted the story of the Canon—still a fascinating volume, but not quite what it purports to be—about a quarter-millennium ago, when I heard that you possessed the Hammer of Ucuetis, a much more interesting piece because, with that, I can summon his consort, Bergusia. She is my sister, the goddess of prosperity, and, when I restore her to this world, we will transform it into the queendom of our pleasures it always should have been.”

The goddess sucked on his nipples for a moment. “You probably wondered why I didn’t do this before. Well, baby, the Hammer is only useful when the constellations are properly aligned, which will happen in about a week. Had I taken you and it right away, I would have had to keep it hidden from your kind for centuries. Better to be patient.”

She was grinding on her guest quite persistently: “And I shall keep you, my sweet. I have the sense that it has been some time since you last enjoyed such carnal delights, but I also have the sense that, in your many travels, you were trained quite well, so, once my sister and I get you loosened up again, I’m sure you’ll be great fun.”

Her breath was hot in his ear, the apple musk almost suffocating: “For now, darling, all you have to do is take me to the Hammer.”

Melchior wanted to, so very badly. He was more aroused than he had been at almost any moment since his youth. He would end his interminable guardianship and happily be the plaything of a goddess, or even two. All he had to say was . . .

“NO!” He pushed her away, panting heavily. “I cannot . . . must . . . not . . .”

She almost fell to the floor, but instead stood over him: “I . . . well, I am a bit disappointed, but I expected no less from you, and I can wait a few more days. In the meantime,” she leaned in and kissed him deeply and the world began to go dark for him, “here is something to almost remember me by.”

“Dr. Newin . . . Dr. Newin . . .”

The graying librarian opened his eyes, looking for the dangerous Celtic goddess, but seeing Janet Déesee, her straight hair in a ponytail, leaning over him. She was wearing a dark jacket and skirt combination with a pastel blouse, all quite plain. He, with his own clothes quite properly shevelled, mumbled, “What? What . . .”

“You seem to have dozed off, Doctor. I am so sorry; I never realized how late it was.”

He was quite sure something else had been going on, quite certain the woman before him had actually been . . . but no, he knew he had just dozed off. “Oh, I am so terribly sorry.”

“No reason to apologize, sir. Here”—she handed him a small, clearly ancient volume—“why don’t you just take the book with you. Will you have some time to study it during the week? If it isn’t too much trouble, I can come by on Friday evening when the library is closing, and we might have a chat over tea.”

That seemed quite reasonable to Melchior, who excused himself and, with his regalia draped over his arm, he was soon loping across the quiet quad, back to the library and his apartments, only stopping in his office to leave the book on his desk. “I must indeed have one foot in the grave,” he pondered “if I am dozing at before ten in the evening over half a sherry.”

He never even quite noticed when he took a dried, pressed apple blossom out of his pocket and put it under his pillow. But that night, he had dreams of the goddess Yanet, entering into furious foreplay with him. He woke in a cold sweat, unable to quite remember what put him in such a state.

The next several nights were very much the same. In every dream, his activity with the eternal Celt grew more intense, but they never moved past foreplay.

His days were filled with the normal office activity, but looking at the Canon seemed to make him tired, irritable, and just a bit headachy. During the week, he grew cross with staff, impatient with everyday duties, and more and more convinced that his best days were over.

During the week, he also received messages from that young political science fellow. “Doctor Newin, this is Dr. Langstrom, and I really would like to talk to you,” was the message in his voicemail on Monday morning. Wednesday brought an e-mail: “Trying to get together with you. Interested in your techniques for preserving rare items.” And the very next day brought a handwritten note—Newin almost didn’t believe the current generation knew penmanship: “Hoping to stop by tomorrow,” was the sentence on a card embossed, “From the desk of K L Langstrom.”

At no time did he feel like replying to any of these—he wasn’t feeling much like suffering anyone’s company in the library of late, least of all some young upstart—though he kept wondering why she seemed familiar. It was almost as if something at the tip of his mind was being withheld from him. Were he feeling better, he might have tried to jog his memory. But it wasn’t that sort of a week.

Finally Friday came, and he woke anxious to see Janet, though he didn’t remember why, save that he had an appointment with her. Before he went to the office he went out and had his hair and beard trimmed—the barber had never seen Dr. Newin come in on a work day—and he put on his best suit, a pressed shirt, and even cologne.

Once he got into his office, however, his mood soured again. He snapped at a clerk who complimented his tie, and his relief that Friday had finally come was shattered by the memory that a colleague was dropping in. But wasn’t he anxious to see her before?

Having shooed the final students and clerks out of the Great Hall, the magi headed back to his office, and was overwhelmed by a powerful apple musk. “Hello, sweetie,” husked an other worldly voice, and there was Yanet in all her naked splendor.

Without a word, Melchior fell back to where he was, mentally and hormonally, the previous Sunday. He dropped his trousers and fell to his knees pulling at his shirt as he kissed her feet and worked up her legs. She smiled, sighed, and sat on the edge of Newin’s desk as his mouth came to the juncture of her legs. She actually moaned at the feel of his lips on her nether lips, and let him finish his job while she flowed freely.

Once he had drunken deeply of her, she took his chin in her hand: “Did you enjoy that hors d’oeuvre?”

“Yesssssss,” he moaned.

“Are you ready for me to take you completely?”

He nodded furiously, whimpering.

“Will you take me to what I want?”

He stood, stepping out of his pants and undershorts, took her hand, and walked her to his inner office. With a wave of his hand, an invisible door on the back wall opened, the lights in the darkened room came on, and Yanet smiled as she beheld . . .

. . . a redheaded post-doctoral fellow, sitting in a Windsor chair, thumbing through the Canon.

Before a word could come out of the goddess’ mouth, the younger woman began reading aloud, and the brunette recoiled in some sort of psychic pain. As Melchior’s head cleared, he watched and listened, fascinated: Dr. Langstrom’s Gaelic and Latin pronunciations were both quite flawless.

As Yanet crumpled into a fetal position, Langstrom looked at him: “I told you I’d be coming by today. Wish I had known the dress code,” she winked. “Please, just let me finish this up.” She flipped forward a few pages in the ancient book, spewed out a few more sentences quite forcefully, and the Gaelic eternal vanished in a puff of sparkles and oddly ethereal flames.

The old magi was beginning to recover himself: “Did you kill her?”

“No. While the Canon has nothing about defending the Highlands, it has quite a bit about dispatching Celtic deities to parallel dimensions, which is why Yanet wanted you to hide her book away in here. She enchanted the book so that, no matter how much you looked at it, you’d never actually be able to read it. But now she’s gone to see her sister, probably forever.”

“Young lady, you have been terribly brave, but monumentally foolish! I don’t know how you got in here, but you do not belong here!” This probably would have sounded more impressive were he wearing pants.

“Ach! Who do you think you are, so full of yourself?” Her voice . . . that phrase . . . the scales of the past week began to fall from his mind.

“Katharina?” he blurted, blinking his eyes.

“Katharina Luther Langstrom,” she replied, extending her hand, “though I usually go by “Kaye” these days. I was named after my great-grandmother.”

“But . . .” Newin did some quick math in his head “. . . but that would make you . . .”

“I have just begun my fifth century, thank you very much. Though I prefer not to talk about it; a lady’s prerogative, don’t you know. I was pulled aside for a special course of study early in the seventeenth century, and came here to Oxford both to find the Canon of Inverness and to be mentored by you in my first field assignment. I was told you were a brilliant teacher.” She paused, and looked him over, “I was also told some stories from great-grandma.” Her green eyes cast downward for a moment: “Though nobody told me about that.”

Melchoir blushed, then pulled up his pants. “I have been an old, old fool . . . and must be even older and more senile than I recall. To have come so close to giving that . . . that creature my body and soul, and, even worse, control of the whole collection . . . I must be losing it, and would hardly be an fitting mentor for you.”

“Nonsense!” Her green eyes were fiery: “It took a deity, and one who was at work on you for almost three centuries, given the conjuring residue on her book, to even come close to storming your defenses, and she clearly came up short.

“I, however, was well schooled in a family tale that said, should a redheaded Luther girl ever meet you, she should do this.” The five-foot-six woman stood on tiptoe and kissed him, then looked at him and pulled him in for a longer kiss. “That one was just for me. I hope you don’t mind.”

The ancient magi grinned at his younger counterpart. “Not in the least.” The old-looking radio on his shelf began to play “The Year of the Cat:”

She doesn’t give you time for questions

as she locks up your arm in hers,

and you follow ’til your sense of which direction

completely disappears . . .

As they kissed again—this time for him—Melchior realized a whole new era was beginning. Perhaps there were some very good years still ahead.

THE END