Originally this was a character background for Kataryna, my Pooka character, whom I grew to know and love. But her tale has become one of my best and so I would like to share it with you!
Kataryna (c) to me, but Pooka are (c) Changeling: The Dreaming by White Wolf and that is that!
Note: I have entered this story for the Book, so it may only be up here for a short while. Read it well you can!
A Pooka's Tail
* Some Scenes May Disturb *
Here's my story, and you can believe it or believe it not. I really do not care, except that it is the truest truth I have ever written and contains very little garnishing.
I was born on the Winter Solstice (June the 22nd, for you dimwits) in the darkest hilly reaches of Auckland. My mother, Eliza, was a mere 18 years and my father a no-good bastard who ran away when he found my mother was pregnant. That's an indication of how my life is going to be, fairly miserable.
Mother did her best for me, but there's only so much you can do when you're 18, unemployed and a high school dropout. At least she didn't smoke pot or drink, nothing like that. But when I was five she married, a man called Jackson. Not that I ever called him that, he's always been Bad-Daddy to me.
She met Bad-Daddy in the supermarket one day, whilst out purchasing food for us for the week. He was stacking food, stacking food at the age of twenty-five, as you may have guessed, he was hardly a professional. Unless he was a professional food-stacker. I wonder if there is such a profession, perhaps there is an art to it, I don't know. The competitions would probably be deadly, dull and boring anyway. Who wants to watch someone speedily stack food tins?
Anyway, the story goes thus, Mum and I were wandering through the store, me probably munching on a chocolate bar I had taken from the shelf and decided to eat now so that mum couldn't put it back later. Chocolate was always my favourite food when I was little. She was doing the extremely exciting task of trying to find the cheapest washing powder in relation to the size of the packet (she used to take a calculator along for goodness sake) and I, of course, was bored. So I meandered off, possibly in search of more chocolate. Who knows, I can't remember. Anyway, two minutes later and I was busily examining a carton of biscuits when I heard a voice behind me say: "Excuse me little girl, could you please put that back and where is your mummy?" I turned around and there he was. Six foot four, towering over me like some huge giant. His hair looked like someone had attacked him with a razor and his shoulders were so broad I could have sat on only one quite comfortably. He had a moustache that looked like it was trying to take over his upper lip and a beard that had almost suceeded. He was such a giant of a man that I immediately screamed and ran away. It was going to become something of a habit for me. As I ran away, I ran headlong into mum, whom had finished up with her washing powder and come looking for me. She looked up (mum was short, about five feet, four inches) and smiled.
"I hope my child isn't bothering you," she said, giving me a stern look.
"Oh no," he replied, innocently enough, "but I think I may have startled her."
For some obscure reason, my mother was quite taken by this huge, frightening bear of a man and about six months later they were married. I never got to like him, even before he started hurting me. Every night he came into my room and told me stories, but they were no particularly nice or particularly good stories. He told me about the little girl who wandered through the woods and got eaten by a wolf (or something like that), about the two kids that pushed a witch into an oven and the little girl that ate the bears' porridge and then got eaten by the bears (Bad-Daddy had a habit of making the endings a little more gruesome).
I was reading a lot then, and was reading at what must have been twice my level. Stories of dragons, faeries, gallant knights, princesses and great adventures. When I was eight I discovered ElfQuest and ate it right up (not literally, I ain't no Redcap). It seemed sad to me that here I was reading about wolves that lived with "people" and here was Jackson telling me that wolves ate people and hurt little girls. I later learnt that he was the wolf. He used to drink a lot too, bitter beer that left the foulest smell on his breath. One day, when I was reading the latest adventures of Cutter and his friends, trying to hide and pretend that mummy and Bad-Daddy were not having a huge arguement about the power bill or something, he came into my room. He must have got sick of the arguement, Mum had probably won, she usually did. Anyway, the next bit I shall not go into details about, for the mere thought of it makes me sick inside and I have no wish to force it upon anyone, but he came into my room and did indecent things to me. He kept this up for the better part of the next year and it hurt more than a thousand wounds. It was terrible, but it had its good side, because if it was not for Bad-Daddy, I might never have found Cat.
Cat first showed up three months after Daddy went Bad. She was a part of me, but it didn't feel so much like it at that point, it was only later when we fully merged to become one person. She hated Bad-Daddy as much as I did, but she helped distract me and showed me that I could do other things, like shape-shift. There was also Lullaby. Lullaby turned up the night before Cat became a part of me and she told me that something wonderful was going to awaken in me and protect me from all the evil things. Lullaby is a dragon, but not a scary dragon, for one thing, she's only three inches tall and looks almost cartoonish with big ears and rainbow coloured scales. She sang to me at night and helped me forget my torment. It was at that point that my eyes changed colour and I developed dark rings, and of course the ears and tail, but my parents could not see them and I had to struggle to explain to them why I took to wearing skirts all the time. Not that Bad-Daddy minded. The creature I could turn into was called a ring-tailed lemur. I'd seen them at one of the rare times when mum had been able to afford to take me to the zoo. Bad-Daddy hated zoos, he hated animals, said they gave him the creeps and the world would be better off without all these stupid animals like monkeys and horses. I hated him so much I think I would have killed him if ever I had the chance. I probably would if I were strong enough to do so. I thought the ring-tails were sweet, so gentle and peaceful unlike the more garrulous (great word that) monkeys whilst still retaining a sense of fun. I dreamed of being one. And Cat showed me I could become one. The temptation to transform and never turn back was great, but I gallantly fought it off. Everything was alright for a while then, Bad-Daddy still did nasty things to me, but they stopped hurting after a bit and I had Cat and Lullaby. Then Mum caught him in the act. She yelled at him, she cradled me, and he was dragged off to be thrown in jail. I hope he rots there.
For a few months Mum was guilt ridden, after all, this horrible act had been taking place in her house for almost a year and she hadn't known. She sent me to talk to counsellors and took lots of prozac to calm her depression. When she was off the prozac she scuffed around the house all day, hardly doing anything and the place quickly ended up looking like a bomb site. I kept my room tidy, it was the best I could do. Everytime anyone asked me a question I would dance around the truth and I didn't understand why except that it made things so much more interesting. Its amazing how you can turn a dull event into an exciting story with just a few simple mistruths. Then Mum just disappeared, went out shopping one day and never came home. I came home from school to find the house a mess, her closet empty and no money in the change jar. In fact, nothing in the change jar except the rubber mouse I had put in there to scare her. She'd been happier that day before too, whistling around the house and actually putting on makeup and going out. I thought it was the drugs, no I realise it was just cos she'd made her decision. She was leaving and she was not taking me, her dear, beloved daughter, with her.
Just a few notes about school. I liked school, I drank up information like a sponge, especially that which related to animals and history. Math and I always seemed to have an argument. I actually made my math teacher smile one day when I told him a lengthy story about why I had been unable to do my homework. You see, it had been a very windy day, and the birds that nested in the sycamore tree out the back of my house had lost their nest. It was a nice sycamore tree, with lovely wide sweeping branches that were just right to climb to the top of, it was almost as if you could reach the clouds. Of course, I climbed it nearly everyday - the air always beckoned to me. Anyway, I had just finished doing my homework, and thus to celebrate, had decided to climb to the top of the sycamore tree and see how the sparrow nest was doing. So, I went outside, braving the vicious winds (although they had died down just a bit now) and clambered up the tree. Only to find that the sparrows, who generally ignore me, were flying around in a panic. The nest had fallen from the tree! I clambered down again with great haste, and searched the neighbouring shrubs. Finally I found what I sought, a tiny, beautifully woven bird's nest, with cobweb and cotton wool (something I'd provided just to see if they'd use it) entwined in with the sticks, a work of avian art. It was wedged beneath a bush and in it were three tiny birds. They were just newly feathered, scrawny but still somehow cute. Since I couldn't leave them there, our neighbourhood had more cats than a convention of middle age spinsters, I decided I would have to adopt them. So I took the nest inside, and put it inside a shoebox, but first I had to line the shoebox (baby birds are messy wee fellows) and therefore picked up a piece of paper and put it underneath the nest. It was not until the next day that I realised that the piece of paper I had picked up was, in fact, my homework sheet.
Anyway, back to the serious stuff. Being a practical girl (and also one known for telling tall tales) I decided against going to the neighbours and telling them that my Mum had cleared off without me. Instead, I prepared myself a meal, cleaned the house and went to school as per normal. The problem was, Mum had left no money, and my pocket money was barely enough to buy a tin of sardines. No matter, I simply turned into a lemur and snuck into the neighbours house when they were out. They had a cat door, although their cat, Timmy, was way too fat to fit through it, he'd probably jam. I raided the larder, taking a couple of apples and four slices of bread. Enough for a day, but not enough for them to realise. I almost got caught in there when Timmy tried coming through the cat door, squeezing his massive bulk through the tiny opening. Luckily, there was a popping sound and he burst free. He was too old and fat to bother trying to catch me, so I took my prize and left. Unfortunately, stealing food in lemur form generally made it hard to carry and the bread was quite dirty when I got it home, but I ate it anyway, in lemur form cos that way a little goes a longer way.
Perhaps my plan would have worked, but I'd forgotten about the rent, and a week later Mrs Goodens, our landlady (a huge, mountain of a lady, the human equivalent of Timmy the cat) came to investigate. At that point I was playing checkers with Lullaby, whom she could not of course see, and she caught me in the act. I was too naive to deny the exsistence of the dragon, and since noone knew what had happened to my mother, I was thrown in a mental institution. Here I was immediately diagnozed with childhood schizophrenia (I was seeings things and had some most bizarre delusions, like the presence of a tail for goodness sake!).
Probably the institute years were the best years of my life, which says it all really... There were fifteen of us, four autistic kids who ran around clapping and stared right through you, five kids so deeply depressed that we all had to eat with plastic utensils, two diagonozed as schizophrenic (including me) and the rest were all overly aggressive. There were two kids that I later realized may have been Fae, there was Jessy, the nine-year old that collected all sorts of rubbish and tried to make it into things that just didn't work, and Serena, who kept trying to eat her furniture and who mauled one of the other children so badly they had to be rushed to hospital. And then there was Daniel.
Daniel was a pale kid a good three years older than me. He had scraggly blond hair and a general ill-kempt look. His eyes were pale, sky blue and so haunted you could all but see the ghosts. When I first met him he was sitting alone in the area they laughingly called the "playground". It was an expanse of concrete surrounded by three high, barb-wire topped brick walls and the institute itself. The only decoration was two basketball hoops that rose from the grey sea like barren trees in the snow, and the faded outline of a hopscotch game. The other kids were inside doing crafts (from which I'd been forbidden for a week cos I had stolen some supplies to create a paper flower which I was going to hide under Jennifer's bed and pretend it had grown from the ball of paper she had thrown under there last week - I only really indulged in "nice" pranks, since these other kids were so fragile thast I could break their minds if I scared them, I just wanted to introduce some magic in their lives cos the reality was so grey and bleak). Daniel had just not gone. He was new there, and probably the oldest, at thirteen (when we turned sixteen we were shifted into the adult asylum). Some idiot had thrown a bottle over the wall, which bordered a busy road, and Daniel had found it. When I found him blood was trickling down his wrists, he hadn't slashed deeply.
"Hi there," I said, collapsing beside him with great flare. "I believe the white-coats call me Kataryna, the only reason I've been able to figure out is cos it's my name. What's yours?"
"Daniel," he replied, the shadow of a smile flickering on his pale lips.
"So, hello Daniel," I bowed theratically without standing up. "What ya in for?"
He looked at me as if I were mad, which was probably a good assumption given where I was. "What the hell do you think?" He asked.
"Hrm," I pondered, looking his skinny frame up and down. His hair could do with a wash, I surmised. A bath probably wouldn't hurt either. My eyes alighted on his slashed arms. I hummed and harred a moment than replied. "I think you are in here for the megalomaniac belief that the blood you drip onto the concrete will bring new life to the ground and possibly grow a tiny human being."
"Are you for real?" He asked, confused and somewhat startled.
"I'm very real, you can touch me if you like. I won't bite. Hard."
He shook his head and looked at me properly for the first time. Most of the kids could see my ears and tail, it had got them into trouble because the white-coats were too banal to notice. Daniel was no exception, I say the surprise flare in his eyes for just a second before he decided to completely ignore them. "So what are you in here for?" He asked, "or is that a pretty stupid question?"
"Oh, I'm here to amuse you chaps. Unofficially. I was planted here by the Corporation of Child Rescuers as a spy. But officially I'm schizophrenic."
"Figures," he replied.
"So why do you cut yourself?" I queried. "Do the talking carrots tell you to?"
"Hah," he almost smiled. "No, do they tell you to?"
"Of course not, then I would be completely mad. Besides I don't cut myself, although the invisible dragon does spy for me. She works for the CCR too."
"Really?" I think he was humouring me. "Why would a dragon work for a group of child rescuers?"
"They pay her with flies."
"Yes? Really?"
"No, it's actually sultanas."
"You're quite something," he said. "I'm just not sure what. You're either pulling my leg or completely bonkers."
"Neither, I'm the sanest lemur-girl you'll ever meet."
He was silent for a moment, trying to pretend that his ears hadn't just confirmed what his eyes had already noticed.
"Give me your arm," I instructed him. I think he was curious, because he put his hand out to me. I leaned over and licked up the blood. It was coppery and tasted foul. I hadn't been told about the dangers of this kind of action.
"What the hell are you doing?" He pulled back his arm. "Oh, let me guess, you're a vampire?"
"Of course not," I scolded him, "vampires are nasty creatures that roam at night and wear waistcoats. Am I wearing a waistcoat? No. I'm a Changeling."
"A what? Never mind. Does your tongue have healing powers?"
"In a way," I replied, in fact it did, I could use my tongue to heal the minds of people, something I practised with Daniel. Of course, that involved my tongue in a whole different way. "What it actually does is allow me to learn a bit about you. The blood contains your secrets, you know, and although I can't read them all, I can tell this much. Something has made you very sad, something has made you not want to live and possibly it involves someone older than you but close to you." I was speculating wildly on the last bit, but I actually hit the bulls-eye.
Daniel looked startled. "You can tell that from my blood?"
"Why else would I drink it?"
"It was my parents," he explained. "My father got very angry one day and hit me. I was terrified and that night I ran away. I lived on the streets for two weeks and during that time both my parents died. In a car crash. It was terrible, I never got to say goodbye, I never got to tell them I loved them..."
He was almost crying, I gave him a hug. "So you hurt yourself because you want to be with them?"
He shrugged. "It certainly ain't no talking carrots or invisible dragons."
In my breast pocket, Lullaby chuckled.
"Besides," he continued. "Life sucks."
"No it doesn't."
"Yes it does."
"Prove it."
"You prove it."
"Ok," he picked up the task, "look where we are, a concrete zoo. A cage. In three years they're going to throw me in another place like this, but without the arts and crafts. I'm never going to be happy."
"You're wrong," I informed him, "there is magic even here."
"Yeah right."
"Come with me, I'll show you."
He grudgingly got to his feet, wiping his hands against his jeans, leaving a bloody smear. I skipped ahead, taking care he didn't step on my tail (he wasn't going to anyway, cos I knew he could see it and was just pretending not to). It didn't take me long to find what I sought, a tiny, parched daisy growing in a crack in the concrete sea.
"There," I pointed.
"What, a weed!"
"This is not a weed," I replied. "This is a hardy little daisy, a survivor, like you and me, she was blown into here when naught but a seed, but did she give up? No, she found herself a crack, spread out her roots and grew, so that our life might be a little brighter. See, magic."
"That's not magic, that's just chance."
"Some would argue there is any difference. Anyway, let's get a ball, I bet I could beat you at basketball."
I was wrong of course, but hey, that's what life is for.
After that, Daniel and I became firm friends. We played together whenever we got the chance and I think, nay, I know, Daniel was quite taken by my strange quirks and continuously tall tales. He helped me play pranks on the other kids - we told little Johnny that little faeries lived in the toilet cisterns and it was them that flushed the toilets (we both got into trouble when he was caught trying to catch them with string nooses) and we told one of the other kids that the white-coats were using our skin samples and blood to make clones for their alien planet. I remember fondly the day I caught Daniel carrying out a cup of water after a dry spell to sprinkle on the little daisy and the times we hid bread in our pockets to feed to the sparrows and feral pigeons. I loved Daniel in that innocent, childlike way, but as I slowly grew older there was a part of me that wanted to do more with him. It seems weird to me how victims of sexual abuse often crave sex. My shrink told me it was cos it was the only way I felt wanted, but that was bollocks. When Bad-Daddy raped me I didn't feel wanted, I felt abused and empty, if anything I would think that sex was the last thing I would relate to anything pleasant. No, I wanted Daniel in the way I would if I were four years older and more mature. One day, in the playground, I kissed him, nothing deep or particuarly erotic, just a gentle peck on the lips. Cathy saw us though and she told the white-coats. I got such a lecture that when I was finally let out of the white-coats office, I immediately went after Cathy and bit her. It was the first time I had ever bitten someone. She screamed and it bled. She had to get four stitches and will always have the scars. I got two days in solitary confinement and a further week of restricted movement. When they finally let me out I found out that Daniel had gone. They'd sent him off to live with his Aunt in Wellington, since they no longer considered him much of a risk to himself. I had got him over his suicidal tendencies (or so I'd like to believe) and they had set him free. That night I left. It was easy, easier than I would have thought. I simply strode outside after supper (when they were too busy organising everything to notice one was missing), changed form in the playground and climbed the wall. It was brick and so ancient that it offered ample fingerholds. The barbed wire was a bit of a problem, but it had been ill looked after and I eventually found a bit so corroded it had broken. I suppose I could have gotten away any time I liked, but here I had food, care, entertainment. Sure it was boring, but at least i had very little to worry about. Then I headed north. I had no money, no clothing and was probably being hunted by the law (I had just escaped a mental institution for goodness sake), but at least I had something the others didn't - I could turn into a lemur. Now, a lemur in the streets of New Zealand is a tad conspicuous, so I moved only at night, and only through quieter areas, such as across rooftops. When I needed to turn into a human I stole washing from people's lines or used the old trick of walking into an empty house through the cat door and taking food, clothing and small amounts of money or jewelery (you have no idea how hard it is pawn jewellery when you're thirteen years old). Finally I got to Wellington and through extensive searching (with the aid of Lullaby) managed to find out that Daniel and his Aunt had moved back down to Christchurch. Exasperated, I turned around and headed back south. I've never had much to do with the other Fae, apart from the occassional Pooka or kindly Sidhe. But now I'm here and hoping I can find Daniel...
Kataryna Delilah Lemusu