Episode 117: Mississippi (Liam)

He pulled the car off 20 sometime mid morning and led it down some little side roads to this one place, a casino, that looked right out onto the water of the Mississippi. The water was pretty brown, for something he’d always figured was blue.

He nudged Mim’s shoulder.

He’d gotten pretty used to having her around. The way she moved, like a little grasshopper. The way she ran her tongue over the edge of her top teeth when she was thinking about something. The way she smelled, like summer and heat.

“Hey, Mim,” he said to her. “Mississippi.”

They’d camped the night before in the Bienville National Forest and gotten a late start, partly because the camp showers were warm, which they weren’t at the place before that, and partly because neither one of them felt like driving through Jackson at rush hour.

Liam didn’t much like cities anyway, never mind all that busy-ness in the morning.

“We made it!” Mim said, just like that grasshopper. Asleep to happy in the time it took Liam to figure out what to say to her. “Do you want me to set the tent this time or are you always going to do that job?”

He guessed there was a little bit of a beach, maybe, but it was midmorning.

“Are we camping for a day?” he asked, just to be clear. He didn’t much care. It could take them a week to get to the Grand Canyon, or it could take them a month. Whatever she needed.

“What did you want to do?” she asked him.

“Well I just did it,” he said. He pointed out past the parking lot to the water. “The Mississippi. Now I’ve seen it.”

She laughed.

He liked her laugh. He didn’t know why, but it was like a warm breeze on his neck, like summer and trees blowing in the wind.

“Alright,” she said. “Get out.”

“Camping or walking?” If they camped, he figured they could find a nicer place than this parking lot. Besides that, it looked like the opposite bank, way across that muddy brown water, was flooded up to where the trees were standing in the water. He wasn’t sure what that meant for camping, but he liked the idea of higher ground, just in case.

“Walking,” Mim said.

“‘Kay,” he agreed. He pulled the keys out of the ignition, and both of them got out into that hot Mississippi summer. Well, he guessed it wasn’t summer just yet, but it was hot enough to count as summer in Liam’s book.

“Left or right?” he asked her, after they’d locked up. “Guess I should say, south or north?”

“South,” she decided.

If they walked on south far enough, he knew they’d get all the way to Baton Rouge. Maybe if they came back this way, after wherever else they went before they ran out of money, he’d ask if they could stop there. He didn’t even know what they had down there in Baton Rouge but he liked the sound of the name.

“Are we pretending we’re a couple again?” Mim asked. She had her left hand reached out toward him like they’d been doing.

Pretending, yeah.

He took her hand, and went on pretending he didn’t hate pretending. “Guess so,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m still worried,” she said, with a little kind of shrug thing. The wind picked up a little and then settled quick before she added, “But I’m here. With you. It’s not so bad. How are you feeling?”

He gripped her hand real tight in his. “Same,” he told her. He looked out at the water, which was easier than looking at her eyes. “I thought it would be cleaner,” he said.

She laughed. “Well I thought we’d do something…’cause you said see it. But I don’t think tasting the river is a very good idea anymore.”

Liam sort of started to laugh, but someone behind them both said in a deep voice, “It looks refreshing to me,” and then in a second Mim had turned, shrieked real loud, and fallen into the water. Right out of his grip, just like that.

“Mim!” he called. He jumped in after her.

Damn, but it was cold. Rivers didn’t have any business being this cold in June.

He got ahold of her. “Who is that?” he asked, and then he turned back to look up at that parking lot on the bank. There was two people off in the lot, with no car, but he didn’t think he’d seen either of them before.

And there was a leopard that probably had escaped from some kind of zoo. Only it hadn’t. “That’s your dad’s cat,” Liam said. Onyx. He’d know that cat anywhere. It seemed more human than animal and seemed to get a kick out of watching humans make fools of themselves.

Mim didn’t seem too fussed about the cat. She was looking down at the water. “Do you think there are gators in here?” she asked. The wind whipped the tips of the water and made it look all choppy. From shore it had looked pretty smooth.

Gators? He didn’t know. He didn’t know enough about that kind of thing to know.

Onyx waked over. “May I offer a paw?” he asked.

No way. The cat was the voice?

Disappearing house, Mim erased from existing, talking cat.

Liam fixed him with an intense stare. “Who do you really work for?” He pulled Mim into deeper water.

“I am unemployed,” the cat said.

“Why can you talk!” Mim yelled. “What did we eat?”

Waffles, but Liam doubted that waffle house was involved in anything. There was just one real overweight dark-skinned woman and a real nice older gentleman server. They’d fed them a nice meal and didn’t seem like they cared much about them one way or another.

The cat sat back on its haunches. “I’ve always been able to talk,” he said. “I just thought it might alarm you.”

“Yeah?” Liam asked. “Well it does. Where’d her family go, then?”

He’d like to see how the cat explained that, and the rocks, and Selmy wanting Mim all of a sudden after not knowing her.

“There’s another realm,” the cat said. “The house moved there. I can show you, the other cats are there too.”

“Why did the other house vanish?” Mim asked before Liam had the chance to. He ran his fingers over her palm, all reassuring he hoped.

“Your father was in a trial,” the cat said. “He completed it.”

That didn’t even mean anything.

Liam frowned, waiting for more, but when the cat didn’t say anything else he asked, “What was he on trial for, then?”

“It was a test, to become a king.” The cat stood up again. “It all sounds mythical. I can’t actually take you to him right away, but I can take you to a royal palace or your farmhouse.”

No way. This cat wasn’t taking Mim anywhere. He looked at her, hoping she wasn’t falling for any of this. “Oh, see?” he said. “Talking magic cat, can’t take you to your dad but he’s willing to take you somewhere.”

Onyx walked over to that couple that was a ways back in the parking lot and then padded back over with its mouth full of something like little tea bags. He set both of them down on the bank. “Pick this up,” he told them, “and think about your bedroom,” guess he was just talking to Mim then, “and drop it. It will take you home.” He nudged one of them with his nose. “And after you open that one to ensure it isn’t a bomb, actually do it with this one.” He looked at Liam now. “I never took you as suspicious, Liam.”

Not going to work, making him feel bad for a rational reaction to this insanity. “I never took you as a talking cat, Onyx.”

“Would silence improve our discourse?” Onyx asked, all smug and rhetorical.

“You just…” Liam pointed toward that couple, “go on over there by them, and we’ll go.”

He watched the cat walk off toward those other people, and then he leaned toward Mim’s ear, where she smelled strongest of herself, and whispered, “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t want to be in the water,” she whispered back. “I trust it less than I trust him. He’s seen me naked.”

That was about when Liam forgot how to stand upright and slid down onto the water, onto his knees in waist-deep water that wanted in his mouth now he was down that low.

He stood back up again. “Okay,” he said. “Shore.”

She laughed.

“That’s funny?” he asked. Maybe talking about her being naked made her as nervous to be around him as it made him to be around her.

“Probably not,” she laughed. “Shore…sure…not funny.”

Oh she just meant his pun he didn’t know he’d made. So much for any kind of emotional connection.

“Oh, that was an accident,” he muttered. “I thought you thought me falling in the water was funny.” Why was his voice so damn flirty? It was the naked thing, he knew it.

“Maybe a little,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. “I can’t believe you fell into this river,” she added. “It’s just a talking cat.”

She was all flirty too then. That was alright. “Oh, yeah, right,” he teased, since she fell in first. “Just a talking cat.”

Just Mim, naked.

Just Mim standing here in a wet peasant blouse, looking at him with those deep eyes all filled up with laughter. She brushed up against him when she walked on past.

“Are you ready yet?” Onyx asked.

No, they were going to get right back in that water.

That couple had walked over closer to them and now the man, who was one of the tallest men Liam had ever seen, called out, “Mim?”

The woman was one of the shortest women Liam had ever seen. They were a funny couple.

“Who wants to know?” Liam asked. He kind of stepped a little bit between Mim and that man even though he got the feeling the woman was the dangerous one.

“My name is Zero Lavesque,” the man said. “My former wife knew Onyx as a kitten.”

Good for her. Liam tried to focus. Whatever was going on here was bigger than however protective he felt about Mim. He looked at her to see what she wanted to do. He’d stand by it, help her out, whatever it was.

“I think we’re fine on our own,” Mim said. She locked her elbow with Liam’s and stood there, looking a little defiant and a little tough.

The woman stepped toward them, so Liam stepped between them.

“I used to be married to your dad,” the woman told Mim. “I can tell you anything about him you’d want to know, to test us. Or what,” she looked at the cat, “your mom looks like.”

Onyx kind of nodded his head.

“I know what her mom looks like too,” Liam pointed out.

Mim stepped forward, though. Liam didn’t much blame her; he’d be desperate to find his family too if he thought there was a way to get them back.

“On Sundays,” Mim asked, “what does my dad do?”

The woman looked up at the sky for a minute. Wind ruffled her hair while she seemed to think about something before she answered, “He smokes and he does some kind of assessment of his assets.”

Shit. Liam wondered how she knew that.

“Where’s his mole?” Mim asked.

The woman turned red.

That, more than any answer she could give, convinced Liam these people were for real.

“Next to his left nipple,” she said.

Alright, then. If Mim felt good about it, Liam would help her give these people a chance.

“Okay,” Mim said. “What do you want with us?”

Onyx prowled up behind the couple, making that huffy noise he liked to make. “Simply to reunite you with your family,” he said.

“Why aren’t they here, then?” Liam asked. If these people – catple – had her family, the best way to convince them would be to bring her family with, show them.

“They’re traveling,” the woman said. She looked up at the man with actual worry on her face, not just acting. She might be dangerous and fierce behind that I’m-just-a-small-helpless-woman stuff but she meant her worry about Mim.

“We will keep you safe,” the man promised them, like anyone could promise that kind of thing in a world with Selmy and talking cats and disappearing houses.

“Why was she in danger to start with?” Liam asked. If the man could tell him that, maybe he really could protect her.

“We don’t know,” the man said, serious. He put his hand on the woman’s back. “But she is a princess, and she should be with family. We’re family. Indigo is your aunt.”

Liam laughed and looked at Mim, because seriously… “A princess,” he said.

Mim wasn’t laughing.

The man held his hand out into the air and poured water from it somehow.

Magic.

The wind ruffled his hair.

“Yes,” the man said to Liam. “A princess.”

“And,” the woman said. She had a new tone of voice, like she’d moved on from persuasive argument right onto this is why teenagers annoy me, but she kept talking. “Someone just kidnapped your older sister, because she’s a princess. We’d like to keep you safe before they realize you’re alone and vulnerable.”

“I don’t have an older sister,” Mim argued, in a way that sounded like she wasn’t as sure of that as she wanted to be.

He put his arm across her back, hoping it was some kind of comfort for her.

“You have an older half sister,” the man said. “Born long before you.”

Mim looked out at the river, thinking about that.

He looked at Mim and tried not to think of his arm around her.

She looked up at the couple. “How do these work?” she asked. She’d picked up one of the tea bag things.

Onyx wove his body back and forth between the couple’s legs. The man looked like he was used to it, but the woman seemed like she might be trying not to yell at Onyx.

Onyx, if Liam had to guess, looked amused. He did it again. “You hold hands and imagine where you want to go, very clearly, and drop it.”

“Fine,” Mim said.

For a second, Liam got a little panicked that Mim was going to leave here without him. He guessed it was her choice if she did, but he wanted to go on being there for her until she was all set up with her family again.

She looked at him, expectant, and he let out a big puff of air. “You do the imagining,” he told her, still flirting. “I don’t want to send us to the wrong place.”

He took his arm from around her back and held it toward her. She laced her fingers with his, warm and soft and getting way too familiar for just pretending.

He blinked, and they were somewhere else. A little room with sloping ceilings and yellow walls, with two curtained windows that looked out on Mim’s family farm.

“Wow,” Mim said.

She looked real at home here.

He was in her bedroom.

He swallowed.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wow.”

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