Magnus and the Christmas Angel

One last kitten survives, but for how long?

Magnus followed her, of course. Callie had known he would. Sometimes she thought the boy she loved was still inside the man who had returned six years late and changed almost beyond recognition. She had always been able to persuade that boy to support her.

"We will go to Blessings, then," he said, "but let me put you up on the horse, Caroline. We need to be under cover before this gets much worse."

He sounded tired, and for a moment she almost turned back. He must have been riding these two days, and she was keeping him from journey's end. But the kittens would not survive if she did not find them, and they were all she had of Imp; a gift from Magnus many years ago, just before his father sent him off to the other side of the world.

But before he lifted her onto the horse, she heard a faint sound. "Magnus, wait. Do you hear that?"

He lifted his chin, his face intent. The tattoos that covered his chin and cheek made his expression hard to read, but after a moment he said, "Yes. Up there."

She looked where he pointed. A large oak tree. A small white kitten clung to a broad branch just above head height, making an occasional attempt to stretch to a hole in the trunk just out of its reach. It had clearly clambered or fallen from the nest, and was too weak to return.

Magnus handed her the reins, and quickly scaled the trunk, returning with the small animal. Callie put its littermate and mother down, and took the living kitten, tucking it inside her bodice, where its tiny cold body could be quickly warmed. It was full-furred, and its eyes were open, but still very young; perhaps the same age as Imp when Magnus rescued her from their tormenting older relatives. And it had not been alone for long, its belly still rounded from its last meal.

Magnus was already back up in the tree, sitting on the kitten's branch and checking in the nest. He met her eyes and shook his head, his own eyes sombre. No more kittens? Or no more living kittens?

"She was taking them home," Callie told him. "She brought them this far, but then the snow came. There is no point in going on to Blessings, now."

"We have no choice, Caroline. We cannot cross the hill in this." Magnus bent to pick up Imp and her baby, and put them inside his coat. He was right. In the brief time it had taken to collect the kitten and check the tree for more, the volume of snow had doubled.

She let him lift her on to the horse, and swing up behind her. The wind was colder this high, less filtered by the low shrubs that bordered the path. He urged the horse into a fast walk, and soon the grey shape of Blessings loomed before them out of the gathering dark.

"I will see to the horse, Caroline," Magnus told her, "while you take the kitten out of the snow."

"Will you leave Imp out here?" she asked. If Imp had been driven from Blessings to save her kittens from rats, as the wounds suggested, Callie did not now want to leave her to them.

"I will bury her and the little one. I don't want..." he trailed off.

"I saw the bites, Magnus." She tried to keep any tartness from her voice. It was kind of him to want to spare her, though she was not the protected child he clearly still thought her.

"Do you wish to... say anything?"

"Prayers, you mean? No, Magnus. I..." she swallowed, as tears thickened her throat, "I will remember her in life, and won't scandalise the rector by demanding a funeral." Her forced laugh sounded more like a sob even to her own ears. "I will see if I can make a fire inside," she said, and fled before she collapsed to cry on Magnus's shoulder.

The house was freezing cold, and empty. Her brother's creditors had stripped it of anything saleable, and broken much else out of sheer spite.

She went straight to the room that had once been the library, the shelves now bare and forlorn. Thank goodness! The marauders had not found the secret room she and Magnus had discovered when they were children. It fitted into an odd corner between a round tower on the original house and the New Wing (built when Charles II was restored to the throne), and no-one but them seemed to know of it. It had become her refuge from her brother and his friends after her father died, and was still stocked for a stay of several days at need.

She bustled about, keeping busy, wondering what was taking Magnus so long. The room was still stocked with wood to make a fire, and she soon had it started. Next task was a pot of tea—a kettle full of snow melting over the fire and fragrant leaves from the tin of tea she kept on the mantle. The tea was still useable, but unfortunately the food she always kept in her hideaway had long since turned to dust and mould. She tipped it out of the window, container and all.

She collected more snow, using every container she could find, and set it near the fire to melt and warm. Magnus would need a wash when he returned, and they at least had plenty of tea, if nothing more substantial.

If not for her concern about the kitten, she could be pleased to be here again, in the hidden room. Here, the girl she had been and the boy she had loved had talked for hours, studied together, shared hopes and dreams for the future. Perhaps here she could summon the courage to try to find common ground with the man that boy had become, to try to make something real of their marriage.

The kitten revived in the warmth next to her skin, and when Magnus arrived it was in her lap, playing with a ribbon she dangled and occasionally stopping to declare, with a peremptory meow, that a meal might be pleasant at some point in the near future. Poor little thing.