The fourth story in Freckled Whelp, based upon Macbeth.

I watch the scene as it swirls in the contents of the cauldron. There is a man in the cauldron, and he is called Macbeth. He is speaking to my mistress in a wondering voice, with a wandering gleam in his eye. My yellow eyes narrow, as my tail twitches with curiosity.

A bubble forms just above his head, in the cauldron, and I am tempted to pop it with my paw. But I resist this instinct. It is not wise to touch the contents of a witch’s cauldron. A familiar must stand sentinel—close—but never seen.

In the cauldron, my mistress raises her hands, veined and crinkled, as she speaks to Macbeth. She is as old as time. She is withered and bent like a twisted tree. But her eyes are sharp, and they move as swiftly as my tail, her mind taking even faster turns. She is telling Macbeth his future, because he is a very important man. Macbeth will be king someday, the spirits say. This is what she has told me, and what she and her Sisters tell Macbeth now.

But Macbeth implores them to tell him more. The Weird Sisters—for that is what the world calls them—all three disappear, with a screeching cackle and a whirl of smoke, and Macbeth is left alone, before his image too disappears from the cauldron.

They like that name—the Weird Sisters. It makes them smile.

My mistress appears before me with her Sisters, in the flesh, just outside the cave we call home. I jump from off of the cauldron’s edge and rub against her legs as I purr. She runs a hand across my head, and scratches behind my ears with long nails.

“All went well, Graymalkin,” she says. She sounds tired and glad.

“More to be done,” mutters one of her Sisters, hobbling into the cave.

“Work for Macbeth, not for us,” says the other Sister. “We’ll kill swine, curse sailors, crunch nuts, and we’ll wait.” She holds out her arm, which seems huge thanks to her heavy sleeve. Her familiar, Harpier, glides down from the clouds. I watch the hawk enviously. It is a secret wish of almost every cat to fly. Our leaping is the closest we can ever get to it, and we are forever searching for higher places to jump from. Perhaps we swat down birds out of envy. I’m not sure.

Harpier preens his brown feathers, then says, “Macbeth has gone. I saw him leave the heath.”

My mistress grins, baring yellow teeth. “Gone, gone, gone to kill a king!” She dances gleefully about the cauldron, her bare feet bouncing alternatively on the cold stone and the damp grass. I wind my way out from under her legs, twisting and turning until I am free.

“Kill a king?” I ask.

My mistress stops. “Of course, my pet. Macbeth will not wait for kingship. He will not trust Time, who gives and takes, takes and gives. Oh, no. He will seize his crown.”

“A crown, a crown,” echoes one of the Sisters. “A circlet that chokes the brain.”

“Why would he want that?” I ask.

“It’s not the crown that he wants.” Paddock, a very learned, warty toad who also serves as a familiar, hops into our circle. “It’s a metonym, you see. Macbeth wants what the crown represents. Power, wealth, status.” He shrugs. “They’re all after that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” I say. I look up at my mistress and sniff. “It mustn’t be all that special,” I meow. “After all, a cat can look at a king.”

My mistress laughs sharply. “A cat can look at whoever he likes. A man cannot. So to be king—to look down upon the world—what a taunting, tantalizing, terrible thing! That is something men will always kill for.”

The wind whistles through my whiskers, and I shiver, just a bit.

…

A witch doesn’t truly need a familiar, which is not to say that we aren’t important. A witch is lucky if she has one. We accomplish certain tasks for our mistresses: collecting little animals and herbs for her spells and her potions, guarding her against forces which might mean her harm. And of course, we offer companionship. Being a witch can be lonely, even if you have a coven. The world does not take kindly to witches.

There is one task that a witch really does need a familiar for, though. That is, it’s a task that she can’t do herself. That is dreamwalking.

Humans can only ever enter their own minds; they cling to their selves like brambles to fur. We animals, I think, must be more flexible, more porous. It is easy for us to slide from our own mind into that of another, particularly when someone is sleeping, and their brain sits unguarded.

That night, my mistress bids me enter the mind of Macbeth. I am to leave something there, something that will guide Macbeth towards his mission. It is a simple task, so I take my time.

I pad through the dream-forest, which I recognize as the oak-filled Birnam Wood. It is a foggy day in Macbeth’s dream. I can’t be certain if this is merely a dream, or a memory as well. Not that it matters; both are unreliable and tend to blur. In the dream, a boy and a man approach. I steal into a bush—walking through a dream is like swimming through mud—and the brambles do not pinch me. There is not enough attention paid to them in Macbeth’s mind to give them any sharpness. I’m grateful for that.

The man looks a bit like Macbeth, and the boy does too, even more so. Both have hair of reddish-brown, and dark, clear eyes. I assume that Macbeth, in his dream, is a child again, and that the man is his father. My mistress said Macbeth has no children.

The two of them carry bows and quivers of arrows. There are hunting knives on their belts. They walk slowly, quietly. Not as quietly as a cat walks, of course. My mother could tread silently on stone floors and crisp brown leaves alike. That is what I remember of her: silence, amid mine and my siblings’ mewls and purrs. And warmth, vague and faraway. The only warmth I have known since then is weak sunlight, and a boiling cauldron.

Macbeth’s father whispers to him, and points. I follow his gaze, and see a great stag on the horizon. It does not seem to see them, its horned head down, munching on grass. They move closer to it, hunched like the Weird Sisters. Curious—as is my nature—I follow.

Macbeth’s father whispers to his child again, and Macbeth nods at him, and lifts up his bow. He strings an arrow through it, and readies his weapon. Before I can blink, the arrow hums through the air, and pierces the stag.

It screams in pain as blood blooms from its wound like a flower. I swallow as the rest of the forest is drenched in blood. It pools in the grass and trickles down the tree trunks. I am a cat, and no stranger to blood, yet I tremble. I try to remind myself to be still. That is the trick of dreamwalking. The world around you is unstable, like sand, and, lest you be lost in dreams, you must be steady, and remember that only you are real.

Macbeth grins, two teeth missing in his mouth. The young Macbeth doesn’t seem to notice the blood, and neither does his father. Macbeth’s triumphant smile falters, as the stag lifts its head and bays desperately. It is still alive.

“Go, cut its throat,” says Macbeth’s father. “Show yourself to be a man.” His words echo through the red forest.

“Man, man, man…”

Macbeth walks towards the stag, shaking as much as I am. Tears sprout at his eyes and run down his small face. He kneels before the dying animal.

The movement should be swift. But the cut is long and painful. Macbeth is not strong enough to slash through the stag’s pelt. He pulls his knife along in a jagged motion. Behind him, I notice, his father has disappeared. Macbeth is alone with dying stag, which does not go limp until it has suffered a great deal.

My horror jolts me back to my purpose. I leave the weeping Macbeth and run until I reach a remote corner of his mind, the very edge of Birnam Wood.

I shake my head, lick my paws, clean my face, feel fur against my nose. I remind myself that what I have seen is a dream and nothing else. A dream that is not even my own. It cannot hurt me.

Then, I reach into my own mind, remembering what the Weird Sisters asked me to leave. I drop the silver dagger for Macbeth’s memory to find in the morning.

…

The Sisters watch Macbeth’s coronation through the cauldron. The silver circlet glints on Macbeth’s head, and his wife sits beside him, wearing a crown as well. They look happy, or at least something close to happy. Their expressions are strange and twisting. There is much they must hide. But they hide it well.

The people in the crowd before them cheer for Macbeth, and chant his name. They sound a little like the Weird Sisters. Spells often involve chanting, repeating important and magical words. What sort of spell the crowd is casting, I couldn’t say, but it seems to cause the glint in Macbeth’s eye to both falter and swell. It’s like watching a dance, his wife’s hand on his.

The Weird Sisters are pleased, and I should be too. But I can’t escape the dying stag from nights before, though I have tried to clear my head of it. It hurts my head. I told Paddock. “Willow bark,” he said, “will ease the pain.” But the pain I have must be of a different sort, because it hasn’t gone away.

I often kill little animals for my food, so death shouldn’t cause me any grief. Yet whenever I blink, I see in the brief darkness glassy black eyes and red-stained fur. Macbeth’s murder of the stag is not like the kills I have made: swift and necessary. I can’t help but wonder if the king looked the same, when Macbeth killed him.

The thought is troublesome, like a flea. I bite at it, scratch it, even try cursing it, though cats rarely need to curse. We have little use for language, though I enjoy the privilege of wielding it. The cursing cheers me, but the thought stays.

I try not to let it interfere. My mistress asks me, in the days to come, to spend more time at the castle. “I need a pair of eyes fixed on Macbeth,” she says. “You, of all of us, are the only one who can slip about unnoticed, Graymalkin.”

So I patrol the hallways of the castle, cold stone on my paws. The castle is not a pleasant place, at least not for me. I prefer the heath, the wild moors. There is space to run there, space to breathe. There is cool gray sky and dry grass whistling in the wind. I can’t run in the castle. Someone would fuss at me for making noise.

Though Macbeth is meant to be the object of my study, I don’t see him very often. He seems busy, and I suppose that being king must mean a great deal of work.

I can see him now, though, peering through a crack in the hall doors. Macbeth speaks to two men in hushed tones, the same voice he spoke to the Sisters with.

These two men do not look like the kind of humans that are usually in the castle. Their clothes are dirty, their beards unkempt. They look more like the people in the villages, but not quite like them either. I can’t describe it. There is something wild about these men, something I both respect and grow increasingly wary of.

There are footsteps behind me. I turn my head and see a woman approaching the doors. I recognize her from the coronation. She is Lady Macbeth, in a dress of swirling red, like a pooling drop of blood.

My muscles tense, ready to run. But she does not seem to notice me, even as she stands beside me. Her face is stern, and her expression focused. Like me, she is listening. As I relax, my tail twitches against her velvet slipper, and she looks down. She smiles, then whispers, “What have you heard?”

I, of course, do not reply. A familiar does not speak to anyone other than their mistress. But I do not think that Lady Macbeth expects an answer, because she does not wait for it.

“He’s plotting, isn’t he?” She smiles, joylessly. “What think you, little demon? What am I to do with my husband’s troubled mind?”

I blink at her, and Lady Macbeth blinks at me in return, as if we are having a reciprocal conversation. Then she pushes open the door. I hear a surge of air, and feel the whirl of her skirt. The two men leave. I watch Lady Macbeth speak to her husband, before the door shuts again, this time for good. Macbeth listens listlessly, uncaring. Like myself, he is both overwhelmed and spurred onward by thought. I wonder what plays in his mind, over and over and over. I suspect I know. That is a familiar’s job, and a cat’s specialty—to know things.

…

The Sisters have a different task for me today. Tonight is an important night. Macbeth is returning to our heath, to hear the worst. He must know his future. The Sisters need certain ingredients to contact the spirits whom they serve, and the chore is given to us familiars.

I don’t mind collecting things like yarrow leaves and pine needles. But that is not usually what I am tasked with finding. Most ingredients are things like lizard’s legs, fillets of fenny snakes. The finger of a birth-strangled baby we have been saving for a special occasion.

Harpier flies overhead, while Paddock hops beside me. We have reached the last ingredient: a howlet’s wing. It is dusk now. The owls are just beginning to stir.

I have been tasked with carrying the ingredients, in a pouch tied about my neck. I don’t like wearing it; it makes it difficult to walk, let alone run. I especially do not like having to smell the sour contents of the pouch, bits of animals bitten and skewered off. Cats are neat; we do not keep what does not serve us, the inedible pieces of prey. I count by threes in my head, to imagine myself somewhere else. The cave, safe and dry, the warmth of the cauldron a steady presence.

Harpier swoops down to a branch in front of us. “There’s a nest in the hollow of that tree,” he says. He turns his beak in the direction of a dead tree, the bark dark and musty. I sniff, and catch a hint of baby bird.

“Graymalkin,” says Harpier, “you’re small enough to fit inside.”

A surge of panic goes through me, and I only just manage to hide it. I did not think I would have to kill the howlet. To kill a little bird is wrong. Yes, cats eat grown birds, and I have no real qualms about that. But a little bird is hardly a mouthful. And to rob it of its chance to learn to fly—that seems far too cruel.

“I caught the lizard,” I protest. “And the adder. Besides, Paddock is smaller than me.”

“I cannot climb,” Paddock says. “I have no claws.”

“And I cannot fit inside the tree,” says Harpier, “without the mother spotting me. Now, she’s just gone out hunting, so the nest is unguarded. You’ll need to do it quickly. She will not have gone far.”

“No,” I say.  I kneed my paws nervously. “I won’t do it.”

Harpier huffs. “We’ll tell the Sisters.”

“Go ahead. I don’t care,” I say, even though I care a great deal, and my heart is beating faster already.

Before I can say another word, Harpier flies from his branch into the owl’s nest. I hear a sharp peep, a terrified squawk, and then silence. The entire forest is silent. And beside me, Paddock does not so much as croak.

Harpier emerges from the tree with a crumpled gray thing in his talons. It is sticky and red. An howlet’s wing, which he drops unceremoniously at my paws.

There is nothing I could have done, and moreover, that which was done was necessary. But I cannot convince myself of the truth of these things, as we walk home from Birnam Wood. The sun sets. The moon is the silver sliver of a claw, and the stars are paw prints, stamped into the sky. I count by threes, until I am home.

…

We dance about the cauldron, as the Sisters speak the spell. It is freeing, to walk clumsily upon my hind legs, yowling and screeching, loud enough for the spirits to hear me, and be pleased with my performance. Though it is bound by ritual and rules, spell-casting is a special time, one when the order of the mortal plain matters very little. I can forget about stags and howlets.

And then Macbeth is there, upon the heath. He takes a step forward, hesitantly, asking to have his questions answered again. I hide behind my mistress’ skirt.

The Sisters dip their wrinkled hands into the cauldron’s thick, bubbling liquid. It turns gold at their touch. They pour in sow’s blood, grease from the gallows. Smoke flows up from the cauldron as they add these ingredients, but their left hands, still submerged, do not burn. One of the Sisters lifts her hand from the potion, and fog follows it, hardening into a head, wearing an armored helm. The eyes in the head are red, burning, red like blood. I cower before the spirit.

“Beware Macduff,” it says.

I don’t know who this Macduff is, but I suppose Macbeth must, judging by the hardness that sets over his face. He asks to hear more, but is rebuffed.

“He will not be commanded,” says my mistress coldly. Her other Sister lifts out her hand, pulls forth the apparition of a child, drenched in blood. I am reminded of Macbeth’s dream, and I shiver.

“None of woman born shall harm Macbeth,” it says.

Macbeth is pleased. My mistress draws out her hand from the cauldron, bringing with it the last apparition. It is another child, wearing a crown, a tree in its hand. A tree drenched in blood. The spirits must know what haunts Macbeth. They are teasing him, and unknowingly, me. Or perhaps they know all, and hound me purposefully. I quiver.

“Macbeth shall never vanquished be,” it says, “until Great Birnam Wood come to high Dunsinane Hill.”

“That will never be,” says Macbeth softly, as if to himself. He grins and roams about, applauding his good fortune. A small beetle makes the mistake of walking into his path, and he crushes it without realizing. I watch this happen, and perhaps I am the only one who does.

The last thing the Sisters do, as I knew they would, is grieve Macbeth’s heart. They show him the progeny of a man called Banquo, stretched out to the edge of doom. Macbeth’s eyes grow wide, gazing at the long line of kings, and we disappear in smoke after our performance about the cauldron has concluded.

I don’t understand why this all had to happen. Lately, it seems I understand less and less, less than ever before. I say to my mistress, “Why is Macbeth so sad?” as dawn turns the sky a lazy shade of pink. “He has his crown,” I say. “What more does he want?”

“A crown is useless, Graymalkin,” says my mistress, “if it does not come with a legacy.”

“He had Banquo killed,” supplies another Sister, “by those men you saw in the throne room. Killed like a mouse, a rat, a mole. Killed under moonlight, by firelight. But his son escaped.”

“Fleance escaped,” says the other Sister. “And someday, Fleance will be king, and Macbeth will die, and no child of his will wear a bloody crown.”

“Then why would he kill more?” I ask, speaking more to myself than anyone else. “If he can’t change what is to happen, why would he kill anyone else?”

My mistress smiles, and gives no reply. I sit by the cauldron, and feel no warmth.

“Go to the castle, Graymalkin,” my mistress says, after a moment of quiet. “I would know what the Lady Macbeth dwells upon.”

“Why?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

My mistress stares at me. Her Sisters do the same, and for a moment everyone is too stunned to speak. I shift uncomfortably, but keep my eyes up. A cat may look at a king; so too may he look at a witch.

“’Why?’” my mistress repeats. Her fingers pick at the dried skin around her lips. She pulls, until there is blood.

My ears flatten against my head. “I’m curious,” I say. “It is my nature.”

“Yes,” my mistress says thoughtfully. “Your nature. I thought I had stamped that bit out long ago.” She sucks on her lip, drinking her own blood. “You will travel to the castle to observe Lady Macbeth because the Macbeths are the object of our interest. That is all you must know.” Her voice is scratchy and old, but she speaks like a child.

“I thought that only Macbeth was important,” I say.

“Who said that?” My mistress turns around. “Paddock? Harpier?”

The two familiars look down, and shake their heads.

My mistress looks at me again. “Who said Macbeth was important at all?”

“But he’s king,” I say.

“For now,” says my mistress. Then, “Go.” And I can see that this will be the last word spoken, and I do not argue, as I leave to trek towards Birnam Wood through the fog that covers a spell-cast morning.

…

It is day outside, by the time I reach the castle, but the room is dark save for a single light. It casts shadows all about, and reminds me of the room I was born in. That was the bedroom of a cottage, and I can remember it only faintly. My eyes were weaker then.

The curtains hung over the bed are torn. A chair is toppled over. It sits on the floor, and Lady Macbeth is in front of it, cross-legged, staring at a yellow flame perched on a white candle. Lady Macbeth looks in my direction, unseeing, I think. Then she says, “I knew you were a demon.”

I freeze. Lady Macbeth lifts up her hand, and motions for me to come near. I obey. I sit across from her.

She does not acknowledge me for some time, but is entranced by the flame instead. She reaches her hand forward, only just touching it. She pets the flame gently, as if it were a little animal.

“Life,” she says. And Lady Macbeth pinches the flame out.

All the light in the room is now gone, but I am a cat, and I can see still. Lady Macbeth’s hands are raw and red. At least, I notice that they are before she reaches to her side for a cloth, which she begins to rub fiercely against her left hand, as if she were trying to start another fire with the friction.

“I can’t rub them clean,” she whispers, as a tear runs down her cheek. “Should I lance them off? Yes, that’s the way. The only way I’ll be free of it, I think.”

“It won’t work,” I tell her. “It will just mean more blood.” I’m not sure why I speak, but I suspect that my motive is simple. I can no longer stand to be silent.

Lady Macbeth looks at me, but does not seem surprised. She stops rubbing her hand, and sits up, running her thumb over her raw palm soothingly.

“How else, then, little demon?” she asks. “How do I wash away all this blood?”

I look at her hands. They are red, that is true, but there is no blood on them. I curl my tail around my feet and look up at her. A familiar’s instinct is to serve. It is too strong to deny.

“When I was a kitten,” I tell her, “a village boy tried to drown me. He placed me and my brothers and sisters in a sack, and threw us into a river. It was cold, as the water seeped through the hemp, and cats do not like to be wet. We scratched and bit and clawed, but it was no use, our teeth and nails were too small, not nearly strong enough. I was the last to be stuffed into the sack, so I was at the very top. It was for this reason alone that my head stayed just above the water, as my brothers’ and sisters’ limbs went slack beneath me, one by one. And then, just as the river water flicked against my nose, the sack was lifted up by a hand. It was my mistress. She arrived too late to save all of us, but not too late to save me.

 “My mistress has done terrible things,” I say. “She has gutted dogs and sows. She has cursed men and women alike. And I am afraid that she played some part in your own misdeeds. But she could not stand the wailing of kittens. It tore her heart in two.”

Lady Macbeth is quiet. Then, in a thick voice, she says “That does not change things. The river water could not wash away her sins. One good deed does not do away with a thousand ill ones.”

“No,” I say, “it doesn’t change things for her. But it did for me.” I lick my paw, and imagine, for a brief moment, a metallic tang. I imagine that Lady Macbeth sees blood all around us, a room drenched in it, like the Birnam Wood of Macbeth’s dream. It would make things simpler, more cut-and-dry, if this vision were real. But the world is not a dream. Nothing is so clear.  

“I love my mistress,” I say. “That will never change.” And I turn, and pad out of the room, through the hallway, towards the castle doors, towards the heath, towards home.

…

It is not the way of cats to confront or to rage. We are thespians, of course, and prone to dramatics, but when we leave, we leave silently.  We love a clean break, and do not care for goodbyes.

But I return home, once more, before I leave for good. My sentimentality is un-catlike, but I feel it nonetheless. I will miss the smell of herbs, of smoke, of age. I will miss everything I have ever known.

My mistress looks up as I exit the cave. She is standing vigil at the cauldron, watching its swirling contents. There is a battle raging in there, Macbeth’s last one, I presume. I can hear men shouting and dying, and it all sounds very final. He will fight until the last, I expect. He knows no other way.

I try to keep my stomach low to the ground, so as not to be seen. But my mistress has never once missed an exit, and she will not miss mine now. She watches men die, familiars die, forests die, nations die. Like a cat, she watches, and she is never surprised.

“Goodbye, Graymalkin,” she says. And she smiles at me with eyes that have seen too much to ever weep again.

I cannot say goodbye back. The ability to speak has left me, as I am no longer a familiar. My mistress’s magic slides off my back like water; I can feel any ties I had to her strain until they break. I am halfway down the hill, blinking in weak sunlight, when I realize I have already forgotten my mistress’ face. All I can picture is the wind—forever-and-gone in the blink of an eye. Blades of yellow grass lick at my stomach, as Birnam Wood looms large.

I am just a cat again, but that is not so terrible a thing to be. A cat holds some magic of its own; a cat can look at a king. But looking is such a little thing. There is power in a cat’s gaze, yes, but looking on horrid things, with only your teeth and claws to stop them, is not worth the knowledge. Harpier and Paddock can stand it, only because they cannot look at a witch or a king, but live with their heads down. That is, I think, the trouble with cats. We cannot help but look.

I walk through the shadows of Birnam Wood. It is a long journey, through thunder, lightning and rain, as the storm settles in to stay. But I do not mind. I keep the castle fixed in my head.

It is easy to walk through the doors, to slip in through the servants’ quarters. I sniff the air, so cold it stings my nose, until I find her.

The door is ajar, as if someone had flung it open. Lady Macbeth lies across the floor in a white shift. There is a knife in her hand, and blood pooling from her stomach. She looks like the stag and the howlet, and the three of them sit together in my memory, and likely will for some time to come. But now is not the time for that. I have a task, one that I have given to myself.

I lie beside her, tucking my paws beneath me. Lady Macbeth reaches out a shaking hand and runs it down my back. She pets me, haltingly, spreading her blood, staining my gray fur red. I purr to comfort her. It is the least that I can do.

Lady Macbeth looks at me. She smiles weakly and with relief.

“Little demon,” she says, “lead me to hell.”

People think that cats are cruel, and we are, sometimes. We live in extremes, of benevolence and malice and mischief. We do not dwell in caution or moderation. The places where we trek are dark and strange. We love our humans, they cling to us like burrs, but we cannot help but stride where they cannot follow. Where a cat walks, through dreams, through forests, through time, it is all the same. In the end, where a cat goes, it must go alone.

But I wait a long while before I turn and leave. I cannot lead Lady Macbeth anywhere. She goes somewhere even my bright yellow eyes cannot see. She is not a cat, and she will not return. So I make sure that, when she does leave this world, she does not do so alone.