Cats Triumphant Read Free

wanted to see what was out there, over those ghostly hills.
    A nudge from behind brought her to her senses. Mira had been warned to let the Summerland come to her. She must not pass beyond the circle of candles. They marked the protective barrier of the chalk circle. Not everything beyond the gate was benevolent. She grasped for Zoomer, who loomed over her, a comforting presence.
    “Violet Schuman,” she called. “I am here to see Violet Schuman, if she wishes contact. She knows me.” Another thing the book had warned against was giving her name. It was just like identity theft in the real world: creatures in the underworld could have power over her if they came into possession of genuine facts about her. She wasn’t about to let that happen. This place was wonderful, but too scary for her to want to be trapped there.
    The air thickened as an indistinct figure swirled into being before her eyes.
    “My darling,” it said huskily.
    “Oh, Aunty,” Mira said, then paused. Violet had never been that short. This person came up to Mira’s collarbone. It was a trick. “Where were you born?” she shouted at once.
    “Er, Cleveland?” the figure said, wavering at the edges.
    “You’re an impostor. Begone!” Mira flashed a banishing gesture that would have made her dungeonmaster proud.
    “Darn!” said the shade, and disappeared. Another form dropped down in front of Mira, but she didn’t let the element of surprise throw her off.
    “What’s your middle name?” Mira demanded.
    “Melody?”
    “Wrong! Go away!”
    They crowded in around her, cocooning her in brilliant light that overwhelmed and confused her. One after another, she rejected them, until she was facing only one form. It tilted its head to one side.
    “Mira Penelope, you’re amazing.”
    Mira didn’t recognize the figure surrounded in blue-white glory, but it moved like Aunt Violet, and it certainly sounded like her. The face took on more detail, becoming similar to Mira’s, but with more nose and less chin. Mira gazed, astonished.
    “Aunty?”
    The shade smiled. “In the … well, I guess it’s not flesh. Mira, what are you doing here? Have you passed over, too?”
    “No! I came … to find you.”
    “In heaven’s name, why? Didn’t you have enough of me in life?”
    Mira wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She hesitated, afraid to touch the luminous shape, but then couldn’t restrain herself. She threw herself at it, hugging the surprisingly solid form to her. The cold flame didn’t burn her. Far from it; it warmed her. Mira held Violet, squeezing her eyes closed to keep tears from running down her cheeks. She felt a tentative pat on the shoulder.
    “Now, now, enough sentiment,” Violet said, giving her a little shake. The old lady seemed to be just as she was the last time Mira had seen her, crotchety, brusque, formidable, but whole and erect now, not wracked with the shaking or the weakness of atrophied muscles. “Now, how is my worthless brother?”
    They talked together for a while. Mira gave her updates on everything that had happened in the last two years. She was surprised that the people in the afterlife had no way of knowing what was going on with the people they left behind. She didn’t know how long they went on laughing and sharing memories. The light never changed there, and she never tired.
    “But what I really need to know, Aunty, is the name of the village that Great-great-grandfather Georgi came from,” Mira said at last when they’d run out of relatives to abuse. “I’m still trying to look up our family history, and the geneologists all said it would help if I knew that.”
    “Is that all, girl?” Violet said, her shade brightening with amusement. “Volberg was the place. I couldn’t find a trace of it on modern maps. Probably lost. Everyone there died, or left, or it was renamed by the shifts in government. You know the way things happen.”
    “Volberg,” Mira said, committing it to memory. As she