321. Penny

 

321. Penny

The Atshebies were playing fay peek-a-boo in a magnolia grove in Minced Forest.  They  made themselves invisible and then made only their faces visible among the leaves and the flowers of the trees  for just a  brief second. If they were spotted by me, Little Dolphus, the intellectual Leafy, I cried out the name of the kittykid whose face I had spotted. Basically that was how we played. It may be a silly game, but we find it fun.

And then Penny appeared, interrupting our play.

“Where is  Pedubastis?” she asked us.

“What do you want with her?” I asked suspiciously. I am always suspicious. It’s a Leafy trait. Penny is a pretty fay girl who always looks a bit messy, but that day she looked different. She looked a little bloated.

“It’s personal and urgent,” she said.

“I don’t think Pedi knows we are here in the forest,” said Neferhari. “We shouldn’t be.”

“I always know where you are, children,” said Pedubastis, appearing on the branch of a tree and leaping down to the ground where she turned into an Egyptian person. We had never seen what she looked like when she wasn’t a cat before. So we were very surprised.

“What is it, dear?” she asked Penny.

And Penny, who was wrapped up in a huge pink cloak allowed it to drop to the ground.

“I need a midwife,” she said.

“Oh, my!” said Pedubastis. “Is it a mortal’s or a dwindler’s?”

“A mortal’s.”

“And why hasn’t he found you a midwife? They are mostly mortals. There are no fairy midwives.”

“What does Penny need?” asked Neferedi.

“Hush! I’ll tell you later,” said Pedubastis.

“I’m not with him. It was a one time thing.”

“Was it voluntary?”

“Oh, yes! All my doing!”

“Better, then,” said Pedubastis. “If you are walking alone in this, we’re off to the Temple of Mayet.”

And we were all covered by a mist, and when it dispelled, we were inside the Temple of Mayet.

“What is happening?” cried all the Atshebies. “Why are we here?”

“Wait till I see to Penny and then we’ll talk,” said Pedubastis.

Pedubastis spoke with three cats from the temple and they led Penny off.

“Go play in the pond. Try not to drown. I have to be with Penny,” said Pedubastis.

The Atshebies didn’t feel much like playing. They went outside but didn’t get into the little barque  there was in the crescent shaped pond round the temple. What they did was start to ask me questions.

“Who is that?” they said, when a cat arrived with a woman, both moving very decidely into the temple.

“She’s a mortal,” said Nefernedi. “I can tell. Because of the way the cat is clutching her and she is clinging to the cat. Why is a mortal here?”

“I don’t know if I should be answering your questions,” I said. “But yes, that woman is mortal. Don’t ask me more questions. Just wait till Pedubastis is ready to tell you.”

“I’ll tell them,” said a three coloured  cat who had been watching us from a distance. She approached and said, “Maybe you are a little young to know, but since you’ve seen Penny…”

And she told the Kittykids something they didn’t know till then.

“Fay children usually pop out of nowhere. You know that, don’t you? Like you probably did.”

“We were ordered kids,” said Neferviki.

“Even so. Your daddy is fay, your mummy is too, and you popped up and were collected and delivered to your parents by the regular childgivers. But what you don’t know is that fairy women can have kids with mortal men. If they do, they bear those children in their bellies for a while, like mortal women do. And then they drop them out. They usually need the help of a midwife to do this easily.”

“Penny will have a baby?” asked Neferclari.

“Yes. And its father is a mortal or a dwindler.”

“What is a dwindler?” asked Neferniki.

“A fay who has gone bad and is losing it.”

“Who is no longer magical?”

 “Who is somewhere along  the process of degenerating from mean fairy into mean mortal.”

“They lose their special abilities,” said Neferedi wisely. “I’ve heard of them, but I didn’t know they were called dwindlers.”

“Penny said the father of her baby is mortal,” I said. “No need to dwell on dwindlers.”

“Let’s hope he was a nice one. So she’s lucky and the child will be nice too,” said the cat.

“Oh, dear!” said Neferclari. “I wonder what the baby will be like!”

And we all began to go up and down  the temple steps nervously and impatiently, waiting to see what kind of a child Penny would have.