Page 16 of Madness Becomes Her

“You are a cat.”

“Yesssss,” he hisses at me, curling his fluffy tail around my leg as he parades around me arrogantly.

“You can transform.”

“Can’t everyone?” he says in a riddle.

“No.”

“Lies. I don’t like lies in my woods. Only truth.”

“Can you help me or not?”

“Dependssss.” Walking to the front of me, he plops, still looking proper and rigid, with a bored look on his face.

“Depends on what?”

“If you can answer my riddle.”

This again?

“I’m not good with riddles.”

“I’m not good with directions.”

I hate to realize it, but this is probably the most straightforward conversation I’ve had since landing here, and it’s with a blue cat who was just a man in a forest of trees who wanted to… No, that line of thought will do you no good, Eleanor.

I swear I hear a tree moan in sexual satisfaction as I shut the thought down.

“What’s the riddle?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“What do you break the moment you name it?” he says, lifting a paw and inspecting beneath his claw absently as if bored with my very presence.

My brain turns in circles, and my confusion causes me to panic that I won’t be able to answer and, therefore, won’t be able to go home.

Home.

Something I don’t even have, so I don’t know why I’m trying to get there so badly.

Focus!

“Uhm…”

Think, think, think.

I’m terrible at riddles and also terrible at being put on the spot. I once told someone my name was Susan because I couldn’t think of my own when asked. I panicked.

I’ve always been an awkward girl, now, woman. Half of me wonders if that’s why I seem to fit with all the oddities here perfectly.

“I don’t know.” I hang my head, defeated.

“Silence is the answer,” the cat says to my floundering. “No bother. I knew your head was too big to have a large brain. Full of rocks, most likely. I’ll help you.”

“You will?”

“I’m feeling generous.”