"Attention. Attention. I hereby call this meeting to order," said Coraline with a swig of soda.
"Point of order, chair," said Wybie around a mouthful of pizza. "If we're having a meeting, shouldn't we actually be an organisation? Preferably one with an awesome name. I suggest 'The Avengers'. All in favour?"
"Let the record show that Wybie had every opportunity to shut up, and took none of them." Coraline aimed a light kick at Wybie from under the table, which connected with an aggrieved "Ow, what?" from Wybie.
Maria studied them dubiously for a moment over her glass of soda before saying "Do you guys go on like this all the time?"
The exhaustion and fear they had felt once they had stopped running had, invariably, been replaced completely with a kind of giddy euphoria once they realised they weren't being followed, that they had lost their sinister pursuers in the streets. Although that initial euphoria was faded, it was still present in their cheer and humour. When you've escaped a prolonged captivity from inhuman captors, then you can't help but feel positive.
As if that weren't enough, they had also discovered a small pizza bistro along one of the busy streaming streets. It was small and compact, with only a handful of tables inside it, and it specialised in Chicago-style deep dish pizzas. It was practically empty; the only person in there besides Coraline, Wybie and Maria was the girl behind the counter, who absently counted coins in the cash register and quietly crooned along with her headphones.
Now they sat around one of the circular tables covered with a green-red checked tablecloth, with a communal pizza sitting in the centre and flanked by three tall sodas. Wide windows opened onto the city while keeping it apart, making its sounds muted and events at a distance.
"What? Me getting hit? Yeah, that happens a lot," said Wybie.
"He usually deserves it, though," said Coraline.
"You're the very soul of kindness, I've always thought," said Wybie, shifting a little in his chair. "So, what are we doing?"
"We're eating pizza. And drinking soda. Keep up, Wybie."
"Hilarious. No, I mean, what are we going to do? Are we going to the police? Calling our folks? We shouldn't be here."
Coraline cast her gaze down, and sipped at the rim of her glass. Outside, a cloud passed in front of the sun and darkened the street briefly.
"I've been thinking about this," she said, quietly. "And I don't think we should leave. At least, not right away."
Maria frowned at her, and Wybie tilted his head quizzically.
"...Explain?" he asked.
"Look," began Coraline, "We know that there's a Beldam here in Chicago. We know that my Beldam's here as well. And we know that they're working together to get us. No arguments there."
Maria and Wybie nodded.
"Maria escaped her Beldam, and her Beldam followed her all the way to Ashland, and told her servants to take us well. That means that her Beldam knows about us. And because she's working with my Beldam, that means she knows about our families."
"Wait," said Wybie. "You're … you're not saying ..."
"I'm speaking from experience here, Wybie. When the Beldam took my parents..."
"Which Beldam?" interjected Maria, confused.
"Whi … my Beldam. Why?"
"Just checking," said Maria. "Look, maybe we should give them different names. Otherwise, our conversations are going to get pretty confusing."
"That's … okay, that's a good idea. My Beldam can stay the 'Beldam'. And your Beldam... did she ever call herself something else when you were around?"
"No. Other than 'Mother', but she doesn't deserve that name, I think."
"Fine. We'll call her-" Coraline hesitated while her mind rummaged for a good name. One of the random memories, thrown up for whatever strange reasons, was of Mr B. chasing after his mouse on that beaten dirt track, crying out "Pa-dazh-di!"
"The Czarina," she decided. "That appropriate?"
"Okay. The Czarina."
"Right. So the Beldam took my parents to try and lure me back. She knew it would work. And if she's working with the Czarina, what's going to stop her playing the same trick to make us come back to Chicago?"
Wybie blanched when he thought of his grandma, seized up by whatever monster lurked in Chicago. Coraline brooded, her own memories of her time alone coming back to her. Maria looked from one to the other, alarm and guilt on her face. She was appalled by the thought that she might have endangered their families.
"We can't leave," Coraline said quietly and with unmistakeable strength. "Not when the Beldam and Czarina can hurt my mom and dad, or your grandma, or anyone, so long as it keeps us coming back to this city, and to her lair."
"So if we can't leave, what do we do?" said Wybie. He had shifted again in his chair.
"I said that if we left, the Czarina would take our parents and make us come back. I say we cut out the middleman."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we pool what we know, get some stuff, go to where Maria met her, find the Czarina in her Other World, and kick her ass into dust," said Coraline, and took a gulp of her soda.
Maria looked at Coraline with pensive excitement at the idea. Wybie nodded, uncertainly.
"So how do we do that?" he said. "Are there special weapons you can use? Did your Beldam have a weakness you could exploit?"
"This is where that 'pool what we know' thing comes into play," said Coraline, taking out a clean paper napkin. "Do you have a pencil or something?"
Wybie drew out a pencil from one of his coat's innumerable pockets. Coraline set it to the spread out napkin and jotted the points as she spoke them, keeping her mind focused.
"Okay, numero one. We know that there's a Beldam, the Czarina, who lives here in Chicago and preys on it."
"Number two: We know that my Beldam, the one Wybie and I fought in Ashland, has gone to the Czarina for help."
"If she's picked her out for help, then they might be family, or something like it," said Wybie. "Or maybe the Czarina's especially powerful, and can spare the help she gives."
Coraline frowned. "That's true. I'll make a note. Number three: we know that the Czarina has two … basically, they're puppets that look like and act like people. At least two."
"Two which beat us senseless without even a fight," said Wybie.
"Right, when we weren't expecting them. Next time, we will be." Coraline pressed especially hard on the napkin with the pencil, and cursed when it tore through the paper.
"My Be … The Czarina has her lair in the Merchandise Mart, make a note of that," said Maria. She steepled her fingers together and said, absently, "That's funny."
"What is?" said Coraline, writing around the rip in the paper.
"Because where we stopped was blocks and blocks away from the Merchandise Mart." Maria drummed her fingertips together. "They surely weren't going to walk us all the way across the city, were they?"
Coraline's frown deepened. "That is odd." She scribbled at the edge of the napkin. "Is there something here we're missing? There must be."
"You think it over," said Wybie quickly. "I'm just going to the bathroom." He picked himself out of his seat and walked through the bistro to the bathroom at the back, scratching irritably at his back as he went. Coraline stared after him, then turned back to the napkin. Her face lit up with a sudden memory and flash of inspiration.
"Souls!"
"Beg pardon?" said Maria.
"That's what the Beldam was drawing her power from," said Coraline. "I won all three souls she had in her keeping, from three children she'd taken before. When I was running from her with them, she screamed "I'll die without you!" That's what she eats, what she needs. The souls of kids."
Maria shuddered. "And if we managed to take the souls the Czarina has in her keeping..."
"Then we'd starve her out, and the Beldam with her. We'd beat her, and free the children as well." Coraline's eyes were practically dancing now with the prospect of a workable plan. "She'd have three, maybe a couple more if she's more powerful like Wybie says. When you were there, did you see anything small and circular, about the size of a ping-pong ball? Or did any ghost-children speak to you?"
"No, nothing like that. But there were a lot of places I didn't enter. Her Other World was basically one big building, and it was huge. There were a lot of places you could hide something."
"Okay, so we have a plan at least," said Coraline, pleased with herself. "Get the souls. We could challenge her to a game for them, maybe an exploring game like I won before. If we pull it off..."
There was the faint whisper of the slightly ajar bistro door opening a little wider, letting in a little more noise from the outside. Coraline and Maria turned their heads to see who had entered, instantly alert.
It wasn't Miss Thimble or Mr Bodkin, however, or anything like them. It was a battered-looking tuxedo cat, black all over but for white markings at the chest and paws. It glided over the floor on four silent feet, and looked up at Coraline and Maria and mewed.
"Hello," said Coraline. "Who's a good kitty? Do you want a bit of pepperoni?"
The cat looked at her impassively with large olive eyes, and mewed again. Coraline once again felt the pangs of recollection.
"Coraline? You're looking awfully strangely at the cat," said Maria.
Coraline ignored her and dropped to one knee beside the cat.
"If you're trying to give me a message, nod once. If you want me to follow you, nod twice," she said seriously.
Maria stared at her with the expression of one who suddenly feels that they're the only sane person in a world like a madhouse. It was an expression she wore often.
"Coraline, why are you-"
"Maria, just trust me," Coraline hissed. "Cats … I think cats know about this. About Beldams. One helped me in Ashland." She watched the cat intently.
The tuxedo cat looked up at her and then, with careful deliberation, nodded twice.
"Maria, stay here with the cat," Coraline ordered, standing up. "I'm going to get Wybie. We have to go with that cat."
"You … the cat, what?"
"I'll just be a second," said Coraline, walking briskly to the bathroom.
"What?" Maria implored again, to no avail. She looked down at the cat, which looked back with the insufferable self-confidence common to all cats.
Coraline quickly knocked twice on the bathroom door, then threw it open and entered.
"Wybie? We've just ..." she began, and then stopped.
The bathroom was small, clean, and made to be unisex. A urinal rose from the far wall, two old fashioned stalls ran along the right, and a sink and stack of towels sat to the left. Bright electric lighting ran overhead.
Wybie wasn't using the facilities when Coraline entered. He was standing in the middle, with his fireman's coat lying on the floor nearby. He turned, surprised by Coraline's entrance.
He was startlingly skinny without the coat, Coraline realised. Beneath, he wore only a thin, khaki-coloured, long-sleeved top, which hung loosely in some places and showed his thin chest clearly enough in others.
What it also showed, and what Wybie had been trying to hide, was the sharply defined and rigid lines of a back brace beneath the thin fabric. He had been trying to adjust it when Coraline entered.
He stood silent and ashamed, anger flaring and dying in his eyes before he turned abruptly away, and grabbed for his coat on the ground. Coraline saw him wince as he bent sharply down.
"You ever heard of knocking, Jonesy?" he muttered, pulling his arms back through the sleeves.
Coraline let the door close quietly behind her. She tried to find something to say.
"Remember you asked me why I wear the coat all the time?" he said. "Well, this is why. Because I was born with a screwed spine, and I have to wear a brace all the time so that, given a few damn years or so, it'll finally fix itself. I've been wearing it since I was a kid. If I don't, it's honest-to-god hard for me to stand. And if I do wear it, then it itches like hell half the time, and I'm waiting for it to itch like hell the other half. Does that answer all your questions?"
There was a bitter, controlled cadence to his voice that she'd never expected to hear, a brittle anger tempered with shame. She tried to find something to say.
"It's nothing to be ashamed about," she said softly. "I knew a kid back in Pontiac, who was born with brittle bones in his legs. He needed leg braces and walked with crutches all the time, and we didn't think any less of him for it. Heck, he was a member of my gang, the Hubcaps. He could belch the national anthem, even. You have to respect someone who can do that."
"Well, it looks like we're all not as lucky as your kid in Pontiac," said Wybie with sudden, violent spite, and he finished drawing his coat tightly around him, and fastened it up. He worked in silent anger, and Coraline stood by, feeling at least as humiliated as she thought Wybie felt.
He finished, and didn't storm out or anything. He just stood there, keeping his face away from hers.
"When I started kindergarten for the first time, I had just moved in with my grandma," he started, slowly, hesitantly, "My mom and dad had died a few months ago in a car crash on a highway outside Portland, I think. I can't remember much about it. Anyway, I went to kindergarten, and I was wearing the back brace, and clothes that weren't heavy enough to cover it. Some of the other kids there saw, and when we went outside for a break, they got together in a group and tried to take it off. I always wore coats after that. I only grew big enough for this last year."
Coraline stepped forward and took his hand in hers, gently. He looked down at it, startled.
"Those kids were grade-A assholes," she said, equally gently. He looked away from her, but he didn't push away from her, nor did he release her hand.
"I just got into the habit of not showing it, you know? My grandma made sure I kept covered up as well. I didn't want that to happen again, ever. And I guess I just pushed away other people at the same time."
Coraline gripped his hand a little tighter.
"I don't care that you wear a back brace," she said. "All I care is that you're a friend, and you saved my life when I had no one else to turn to. You tried to make friends with a lonely out-of-state girl, even when she treated you like dirt. You're my best friend, and that's all that matters."
He met her gaze. "All that matters?"
"Yeah," she said, and meant it.
They held the grip for a couple more moments, then Wybie coughed and turned away.
"Anyway, that's why I wear the coat," he said. "It's still not the only reason, though. It's still an awesome coat by any standard."
"It's a great coat," Coraline reassured him.
"It's a family heirloom," he said with pride. "It belonged to my grandpa when he was still alive. He was the first black fireman on the Ashland force. He saved a whole family while wearing this."
"Some history," said Coraline admiringly.
"It is, it sure is," he nodded enthusiastically. "Not only that, but he also...um...Coraline?" Now it was her turn to look away uncomfortably.
"What is it?" he said
"Its … to heck with it, so long as we're being honest with each other," started Coraline. "Wybie … you know how the people who brought us here were made by the Czarina?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, back in Ashland … my Beldam had made people as well. Clones of people I knew around the Pink Palace. My folks, Miss Spink and Forcible, Mr Bobinsky." She hesitated before adding "And you. She'd made your double to be a friend for me."
"Really? Another me?" Wybie mulled it over, before saying "Bet he wasn't nearly as handsome as the real me, though."
"She'd stitched his mouth shut so he couldn't talk. And he died to let me escape her."
Wybie opened his mouth, and then shut it.
"Did my talking really annoy you that much?" he said quietly. "I … guess Slugzilla might not have been much of a conversation piece, now I look back on it."
"But we're friends now," said Coraline. "I'm sorry I was rude to you at the start. I wasn't happy with anything, really. But I'll do better than that from now on."
Wybie looked her in the eyes, and she met his gaze. Then he smiled. "I believe you. And I trust you."
There came an abrupt knocking from outside the door. Maria's voice came through. "Uh, Coraline, Wybie? The cat's getting kind of impatient."
Wybie blinked. "The … cat?"
"Oh, yeah, that was what I came in here to tell you. There's a cat waiting outside. It wants us to follow it to somewhere it can tell us all about the Czarina."
Wybie's expression said "?".
"Look, just trust me. And follow me." She rushed out, and Wybie trailed after her, baffled.
Maria was waiting for them, the cat at her feet. It looked up at Coraline, and mrowled disapprovingly in the back of its throat.
"I was busy, alright? Just lead on," snapped Coraline. The cat turned and walked out at a brisk walk. Coraline marched off after it. Wybie and Maria exchanged confused looks.
"Wha..." she began.
"I'm just rolling with it," he responded, walking off after Coraline. Maria followed him.
They followed the cat through busy streets, across short stretches of road, and once through a park. If the sight of three kids following a cat was in any way unusual for Chicago, nobody commented on it. The cat walked on, under the shadow of rising buildings, through old quarters, into deeper parts of the city.
Finally, it led them to a dingy alleyway. The walls on all sides were covered with battered plaster, and cracked paving stones ran all the way up it, terminating at what looked like an old sewer grill, which opened into the ground.
The cat gave them a significant look and jumped down into it. They reluctantly followed.
They clambered down, and found themselves on solid ground in a sloping stretch of tunnel. It ran down into darkness, and sparking wires which ran along the ceiling provided weak and intermittent light. The cat was a barely glimpsed shadow running ahead of them. They followed it as best they could down the sloping tunnel, steadying themselves against the walls with both hands.
"This must be the undercity," said Wybie in an echoing, excited whisper. "Cities don't always just sring up on empty ground. Some of them, especially the older ones, build on top of themselves. You'll find layers upon layers of city in some of the oldest ones, all on top of each other like layers in a wedding cake. This must be part of Chicago's."
"Why is it leading us down here?" said Coraline. "Is there something it wants us to see, or to do?"
"The question is, why are we following it at all?" said Maria. "What's important about this cat?"
"Not just this cat. All cats, I think. Wybie, remember the cat back in Ashland? He could travel to the Other World, and talk while he was there. He helped me out, and I think this cat wants to do the same."
Wybie looked dubious. "Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
"It's just … well, Beldams are one thing. Talking cats are another. I mean, I always knew the cat in Ashland was always pretty intelligent, but I didn't think he could actually talk..."
The cat suddenly stopped in a patch of flickering light, and turned to regard them. Coraline returned the look.
"Is this it?" she asked the cat.
"You know, I've always heard people say that talking to a cat's the first sign of madness," said Wybie.
"Wybie, shush."
"The second sign's usually when the cat starts talking back," he said cheerfully.
"Now if that isn't a good lead-in," said the cat abruptly, in a rolling, rich baritone, "Then I don't know what is."
The only sound in the tunnel then was the sound of Wybie's strangled "Glerk."
The cat tilted his head. "This is a bit odd for you, all things considered. I can appreciate that. I just thought you might to be appraised of our ability to talk to you in this place. It'll help prepare you for what's about to come. Why are you turning purple?"
Maria stood with her mouth wide open and gawping, Coraline was too preoccupied cackling into her fist, and so it fell to the utterly flummoxed Wybie to almost scream "How can you talk?"
"Same way you can," said the cat. "I just expel air and move my mouth and tongue about, and it practically does itself. Oh, wait, you meant in a different sense. Well," it chuckled, "You'll get a fuller explanation for that in a moment. Suffice to say for now that in some places, reality as you know it is a little … ah, thin on the ground."
"I, you, that's, I, what, clouds." Wybie's brain had temporarily turned all energies over to curling in the foetal position in a corner of his skull. Coraline took the lead.
"So where are you taking us?"
"Through here," said the cat, and motioned at the dark space behind it.
Coraline stepped past, and found that it was an opening for a much larger room, all of which was hidden by pitch blackness. But the room seemed a little warmer than usual, and she felt that there was something else inside it with her.
Then a crisp, dry voice said "Pat the switch, sibling."
There was a mewing sound from beside Coraline, and something batted the light switch on the wall into an on position. And around her, Coraline saw the room revealed. It could have once been an old storage room, and still showed signs of storage. Stained, rotten wooden barrels sprouted all around her, nestled around pitted grey walls. And perched on these barrels, sitting on the floor, prowling around her, there were dozens upon dozens of cats.
Alley-toms, their skins scarred and fur tufted with dried blood, sat side by side with sleek white Persians. Kittens, clearly bored with the proceedings, bounded and played on the floor. Tabbies, calicoes, manxes, Scottish Folds, American Curls, Russian Blues, and others from countless different breeds stood and sat and lay attention, nearly all of them watching the three with an unnerving intensity.
From in front of Coraline, the cat who had given the order to turn on the lights sat regally on the foremost barrel. It had a smoky grey coat, and dark brown eyes made luminous by the light.
"It's been a while since we've had humans present at a Grimalkin Council," it started in a voice that was most likely male, in the same dry tones. "Pardon us if we neglect some of the usual formalities." It tilted one corner of its mouth in a wry smirk, and from all around it, there was a chorus of dry, cattish laughs.
"Now, you're probably wondering what exactly you're doing here," the cat said, staring straight at Coraline. "And it so happens that we were planning on asking you that very same question ourselves."
Before she could respond, Wybie cleared his throat, and all attention in the room shifted instantly to him.
"I have to ask," he said, hesitantly. "Has the entire universe gone mad lately, or is it just me?"
