Bookshop Cat

Asha's father caught a thief. Suspect-looking as soon as she entered, the girl skulked around the classics, dragging her heels. She glanced over her shoulder, then shoved Jane Eyre into her skirt band and beelined for the door.

"Hasn't paid," Asha whispered.

Father looked up, shrieked, "Oh no you don't!" and raced to block the thief's way. He raised crustacean hands that clicked twitchy satisfaction. Years at the bookshop had worn him to grist, and defending the store was among his few remaining joys.

The thief broke into sobs, stifling the wet with incriminated hands.

Father made her his bookshop cat. Gave her a pair of ears and a tail and a striped ratty onesie.

"Please," the thief said. "I-"

"Aa aa aa," father clucked, waggling a finger. "Cats do not speak."

So she shuddered in silence.

"Darling," father said. "Come pet the kitty."

Asha's stare ballooned. She shook her head and hid behind a zine rack.

"Darling," father warned.

Asha walked over and reached out her hand. Stroked the hair — the fur — of the thief-cat.

"Look her in the eyes, Asha. Let her know she's your kitty cat."

Asha's gaze met the thief's, and she recoiled with a pop of breath. Already, there was something defeated, something dead in those eyes. It touched an old fear in Asha, one she had forgotten, one that preceded her.

"Good cat," Asha murmured, turning away.

Asha's father soon grew bored of his bookshop kitty, and angry that she ate more than a feline should. Eager to make her worth his while, he built obstacle courses of his books, whooping as the thief ran circles round the shop, scaling stacks and leaping through hollows carved in shelf backs. Father's belly laughs never ceased, and he began filming with his camcorder, uploading video of the thief-kitty's crashes and stumbles, her wipeouts beneath pillars of tumbling tomes.

"They love my clips!" Asha's father spent hours smiling at his dusty PC.

One day an elder came to the door, claiming herself the thief's grandma. She had missed the girl, she said, and grown nauseous when spying father's clips, seeing her granddaughter's humiliation served on gilded screen.

"Let her come home," the elder begged with knotted brow.

Father shook a stony head. "She stole."

The elder bent and pulled a ring from her satchel. It bore a violet stone, twisted with serpentine glimmers.

"I meant this to be hers. But take it, if you'll let her go."

"I will take it," said father, snatching it from wrinkled fingers. "As payment for the years I've played guardian. But she stays."

The elder clenched her jaw and growled, but Father shooed her to the door with a broom, the ring's reflections swimming sperm-like on his knuckles.

Asha stood frightened, her knees tapping castanets. She looked at the elder's face, now battered by bundled husk, and she felt in her bones that she should have done more, long ago. She was late, and the guilt hollowed caverns inside.

She strode forward, followed by father's eye. She lifted the thief and knocked the kitty-cat ears to the floor. She planted a kiss on her lips and pushed Jane Eyre into paws, which recalled they were hands.

"Flee."

Asha shoved the thief out the bookshop door. She stepped to father and claimed the ring, offered it to the elder. But the woman's eyes lingered on Asha's hand, where the stone was fusing with her finger, where it spread violet fur up her arm. Asha fell to the floor, her arms thickening with muscle. She unleashed a tiger's roar that sent her father stumbling into his obstacles, dusty books crashing to his skull. His eyes widened. Fell upon Asha. Why has your love abandoned me?

I'm sorry, she thought, snapping dagger teeth. You should have known better.

The thief's grandmother stared, pained that this power should have belonged to another. But she hobbled aside, nodding, wondering if perhaps this new bearer might find the one she'd saved. Asha bound out the door with a flurry of violet light, out to the wild spaces that lay beyond her father's bookshop.

Timbray Shafer has previously been published in Apparition Lit, The Dribble Drabble Review, Every Day Fiction, and 50-Word Stories. He has also self-published seven works, including a young adult fantasy satire series called The Rens.

Find more by Timbray Shafer in the Author Index.

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