Monthly Archives: June 2011

Good With a Knife

“You know, Plum-Bottom, I feel I am more handsome with each passing day.”

The purple feline stretched and yawned. He found that was an adequate response to most human conversation, but he was moved to ask in his driest purr, “Plum-Bottom?”

Marlowe ignored the question. “And today I will go wooing, to plight my troth to dear Drunais, Princess of Faerie, Queen of My Heart!”

“Who happens to be a sweet young fey of ninety-two. In thirty years you’ll be a withered old man, and she’ll still be in the first bloom of youth.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Cat didn’t deign to reply, but stuck out one leg and began to groom himself, though not before turning so Marlowe wouldn’t see what he now unaccountably considered his embarrassing bits.

Marlowe continued his shave, quietly musing to himself as the sharp blade passed expertly over his face:

“‘Tis dreadful that my friends of distant night
believe that I was bested in a fight.”

“I don’t know if it’s harder to endure being this ridiculous colour, or having to listen to your flights of verse,” Cat replied in a pause from licking his purple fur. “Love makes you foolish, like a child after candy.”

“Now I set sail to grasp my Helen from
the clutches of vile Fate, cold Fortune
and her father.”

“Whom rumour has it can split hairs with his sword,” Cat reminded him.

Marlowe sheathed his knife and said, “We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Would you be the cause of war between the fey and the mundane?” Cat asked.

“The Faerie folk do not make war. I’ve not even been able to get them to understand the idea.”

“Quite sensible,” Cat said. “No species but humans makes war. I wonder why that is?”

“No thirst for glory,” Marlowe suggested, buckling on his sword, but Cat opined, “Too clever.”

“Nor do any but the mundane–as you call us–make poetry,” Marlowe reminded him.

“Perhaps you need it to assuage the horrors you inflict upon each other.”

“Perhaps the horrors are a necessary adjunct of the songs.”

“Perhaps I am the Queen of England,” Cat replied.

“Impossible,” said Marlowe. “Her hair is red.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve asked Sir Hyphen-Dash for permission to woo young Drunais?” Cat asked.

“Just because he’s Governor of Her Majesty’s Colony of New Albion does not give him power over the hearts of his subjects,” Marlowe proclaimed, but Cat reminded him, “In fact I think it does. I’ve read the charter, you know.”

“The charter bedamned! I’ll do as I please. Sir Hyphen-Dash has had enough of my permissions.”

“This isn’t the first?” Cat asked, and Marlowe shook his head. “I was once promised to his daughter.”

“Broke it off, did you?”

“More like I was broken off. That demon Walsingham instructed me to fake my death and join this secret expedition, so here I am. But it’s not without comforts.”

“Or mustard,” replied Cat cryptically.