Shadow Play Read Online Free Page B

the chance to make for the door. I shouted at the others to close their legs and bunch together. But by the time they reacted, she was outside and scurrying down the veranda.
    The neighbours were proving useless; if anyone was going to achieve anything it would have to be me with my first-hand knowledge of her wiles. I chased her down one side, we circled once and once again, the others merely watching. By the time we finished our second round, I could tell that she was tiring. I was gaining upon her, and in a flash of quick thinking, I shut the door leading to the staircase. Now I would get her; now in one smooth motion I would bend while still running and grab her.
    Except, once again she outwitted me: she leapt up and stood on the railing. And as I drew nearer, preparing to lunge, still with no sign of recognition or understanding of what she would do next, of what she would have to do next, I fancy I saw her eyes flash – her eyes, not the kitten’s – and that was the last time I saw her.
    Everything crashed in upon me in the few seconds it took the little ginger ball to shoot down seven storeys: who was actually falling down, what I had lost forever. I screamed her name in terror and my heart stopped for an entire lifetime before I realized she hadn’t quite fallen. There was no smashed mess in the courtyard; somehow she was lying suspended just above it.
    Someone else shouted ‘the spider’, and then I noticed. A giant black creature was hanging right in the middle of the emptiness, and it had spun an invisible web to every corner of the second-floor veranda. It was large even from where I stood, twice as large as the kitten which was lying still a few feet away from it. I shouted her name again and begged her to wait, that I was coming, I was sorry, I had now understood everything. Just to wait until I ran down, just hold on and trust me, and we would see this through together. We would run away the moment I picked her up and never return to the area. She was right, I shouted, even now no one else had seen anything.
    I don’t know how much she heard of my reassurances, or how much she believed me, because I was speeding down the stairs as I screamed. Perhaps she would have held on if she’d heard everything; perhaps she thought it was all a ploy. But it wasn’t: my whole life had been about to shatter before me, I had myself pushed it over the edge and now only a miracle had saved it. I was running down flooded by tenderness; I was running down in absolute terror; I was running down full of love. Just her eyes kept pulsing before me, as she had stood on the railing. That, and the picture of her in the corner, so cowed she could only turn into a kitten. Now all I wanted was to hold that kitten – it seemed that even if I never saw her again, all I needed to be happy was in that kitten.
    The web gave way around the time I reached the second floor; I saw her last paw letting go when I looked out of the little window. She didn’t land on her feet as cats are supposed to do, perhaps because this time she was only a kitten. There was no blood on the courtyard floor when I reached her, and for a second I continued hoping. But my hands felt wet the moment I picked her up, and then they both turned red.
    I still don’t know whether the web collapsed from the strain of holding her, whether she fell through one of its holes, or whether she let go out of fear of my approaching. I don’t know if she heard those last words, if she realized I had changed completely, that I was ready to see us through anything, that I only and unconditionally loved her. I don’t know. What I can tell you is that the incident didn’t even go to the police, because no one had seen anything besides a raving man chasing a kitten. Everyone shunned me afterwards; they thought I had lost it out of worry for my missing woman.
    Yes, the police did pay me a visit, but there wasn’t a single