Meowmancer: Short Story
# Meowmancer Visual Short Video: https://youtu.be/U2ukaEBMst0
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Being dead was supposed to be restful. Instead, I’m trapped in the body of a cat named “Buttons” with a tiny brass bell collar that chimes every time I so much as twitch my whiskers. The indignity is unbearable.
My “master” is a fourteen-year-old witch named Liora who just won entrance to the Royal Academy of Magical Arts—the very institution that rejected me in my living days. While she studies in marble halls lit by enchanted crystals, I was forced to attend Dumrul’s School for Dark Arts, a crumbling backstreet academy that specialized in training villains and henchmen.
Not that I became either. I developed myself into a necromancer through pure determination and possibly spite.
“Oh, Buttons, you’re so fluffy!” Liora coos, scratching behind my ears in her dormitory chamber. The room overlooks the academy’s rose gardens, where marble statues of famous wizards seem to mock my current predicament.
I’ve been working on establishing my authority as her spiritual guide. It’s been... challenging. The whole thing is harder than I thought it would be.
“The spirits demand tribute,” I announce in my most ominous meow.
“Aww, someone wants dried fish!” She reaches for a pouch of something that smells suspiciously appetizing.
This is not what I meant.
---
My first real breakthrough came with the frog incident. I’d found a perfectly deceased amphibian in the academy’s herb garden and decided this would be Liora’s inaugural test.
“Focus your energy,” I instructed, pacing around the small corpse beneath the moonlight streaming through her tower window. “Channel the darkness between life and death. Feel the—”
“Like this?” Liora waved her hand casually, speaking a simple incantation, and the frog popped up, looking healthier than it probably had in life.
I stared. In my living days, that same spell took me three hours, four blood sacrifices, a circle of black candles, and still resulted in a frog that croaked backwards. It was kind of embarrassing actually.
“Excellent!” I recovered quickly. “You show promise, young apprentice.”
“You’re such a clever familiar, Buttons. The other girls are so jealous that you can do tricks!”
I began plotting larger resurrections immediately.
---
The main obstacle to my grand plans is Rilvur Winterwell, Liora’s insufferably noble boyfriend. He’s the son of a duke, studies battle magic, and has the annoying habit of being suspicious of me. I can’t stand him.
“That familiar is plotting something,” he whispers to Liora as they study together in the academy’s great library, surrounded by floating books and self-lighting candles. “Look at those eyes. That’s not normal cat behavior.”
“Don’t be silly,” Liora giggles. “Buttons is just expressive.”
Rilvur doesn’t understand that we need a fresh body for proper necromantic work, and he’s conveniently sized. I’ve made several attempts to solve this problem.
The loose stone gargoyle incident was promising until I miscalculated the trajectory and it crashed three feet to Rilvur’s left, startling a group of pixies. The rotted floorboard in the tower stairs would have worked perfectly if Rilvur hadn’t decided to use the floating disk spell that day. And don’t get me started on the poisoned herring I somehow managed to eat myself. That was a disaster.
“I swear that familiar tried to murder me with fish,” Rilvur tells Liora after the herring incident, while I’m busy coughing up hairballs in the corner of her stone chamber.
“Buttons probably just wanted to share!” Liora scratches my head sympathetically while her enchanted quill continues taking notes by itself. “Didn’t you, precious?”
If I could roll my eyes any harder, they’d fall out.
---
My opportunity finally arrived during one of my midnight fury sessions. I’d been having what Liora called “zoomies” but what I preferred to think of as “expressing my eternal rage through rapid movement across ancient stone floors.” It’s not my fault I have energy to burn. She’d grown tired of my 3 AM parkour routine along the dormitory rafters and decided to take me to the kitchen cellars for some calming treats.
“Master Aldric always has those dried herring bits you like,” she whispered, carrying me through the torch-lit corridors of the academy’s lower levels.
But when we reached the great kitchens, we found something far more interesting than fish.
Goodwife Martha Crumplebottom, the head cook, was slumped over her enormous cauldron of tomorrow’s porridge. Her spirit had clearly departed, leaving behind a perfectly preserved vessel.
“Oh no!” Liora gasped. “Poor Goodwife Martha!”
This was it. My moment.
“The veil between worlds grows thin,” I intoned dramatically. “She calls out to return.”
“Should we fetch the healers?” Liora knelt beside the body.
“Healers?” I scoffed. “Child, you have power beyond their herb-brewing assistance. You could bring her back.”
“But... is that right?”
“She died preparing food for others. Such dedication deserves reward.” I was rather proud of that reasoning. “Besides, who else will serve the morning gruel? Someone has to do it.”
Liora considered this, then nodded slowly. “What must I do?”
Finally! I began instructing her in my signature technique—the Blackthumb Method. It involved specific hand gestures, ancient words of power I’d learned in the dank cellars of Dumrul’s, and a particular way of channeling energy that I’d developed during my living years. Not that it had worked very well for me, but surely with Liora’s natural talent...
“Place your hands thus, speak the words of unbinding, and remember—” I guided her through each step, watching as she performed my ritual with perfect precision beside the flickering hearth fires.
Goodwife Martha’s eyes snapped open.
“Well,” she said, sitting up and dusting flour off her apron, “that was most unpleasant. Is it dawn already?”
I felt a surge of pride. My technique! My method! Finally, validation of my—well, you know what I mean.
The temperature in the kitchen plummeted. The hearth fires turned an unnatural blue. Shadows began moving independently of their sources, and a sulfurous smell filled the air. Something that definitely wasn’t supposed to exist in the mortal realm materialized between the hanging herb bundles.
The demon was tall, irritated, and wearing what appeared to be very official-looking bracers marked with infernal runes.
“Mortimer Blackthumb,” it said in a voice like grinding millstones. “I have been looking for you. Did you really think we wouldn’t notice your ways?”
My tiny cat heart stopped beating. Well, it would have if I’d still had a heartbeat.
“You’re coming with me,” the demon continued, “back where you belong.”
“Um,” said Liora, “who’s Mortimer?”
Goodwife Martha, apparently unbothered by being recently deceased, began stirring her porridge with a wooden spoon the size of a sword. “Anyone fancy a bowl?”
This was not how I’d planned for the evening to go.
---
“That’s my familiar!” Liora stepped protectively in front of me, her academy robes billowing dramatically. “His name is Buttons!”
“Your familiar,” the demon said with obvious amusement, “is a wanted fugitive from the underworld. Mortimer Blackthumb, necromancer, escapee from eternal damnation, and apparently now... domestic house pet.”
The irony was not lost on me.
“Buttons taught me how to bring Goodwife Martha back,” Liora said defiantly. “He’s been instructing me in the mystical arts!”
“Has he now?” The demon’s eyes glowed like forge coals. “Using his signature technique, I’d wager. The same sloppy energy work that got him banished in the first place.”
“Hey!” I protested. “My technique is perfectly adequate!”
“Did that familiar just—” Rilvur’s voice came from the kitchen entrance. Of course he’d followed us, probably worried about propriety. “Did it just speak back to a demon?”
“Everyone’s taking this surprisingly well,” Goodwife Martha observed, now ladling porridge for invisible customers. “I mean, considering the circumstances.Am I really zombie?”
The demon lunged forward, but Liora was faster than I’d given her credit for. Her shield spell—far more advanced than anything taught in first-year classes—knocked it back several feet into a rack of copper pots.
“Goodwife Martha!” she called. “A little assistance, if you please!”
“Oh, certainly dear.” The cook picked up her enormous ladle. “I’ve been wanting to try this recipe on something more challenging than turnips.”
What followed was perhaps the most undignified battle in supernatural history. Liora hurled spell after spell with increasing creativity, her magic far exceeding what any Royal Academy student should possess. Goodwife Martha wielded kitchen implements like weapons forged in the depths of the underworld itself, and Rilvur mostly shouted and tried to stay out of the way while attempting to cast protective wards. It was pretty chaotic.
I watched from behind a flour barrel, realizing with growing amazement that my young witch didn’t just have natural talent—she had power that would have made the Royal Academy’s greatest masters weep with envy.
The demon, smoking slightly from what appeared to be enchanted porridge, finally retreated through a tear in reality.
“This isn’t over, Blackthumb!” it called as it disappeared. “We’ll be back!”
“Looking forward to it!” Goodwife Martha called cheerfully, already cleaning her battle-ladle. “That was fun.”
---
Later, as we sat in the now-quiet kitchen sharing Goodwife Martha’s surprisingly good post-resurrection porridge by candlelight, Rilvur turned to me with a look of grudging respect.
“So you really were trying to kill me,” he said.
I meowed innocently.
“For magical purposes only,” Liora said, scratching behind my ears. “Weren’t you, Buttons? I mean... Mortimer?”
“Mortimer is such a distinguished name,” Goodwife Martha added approvingly. “Much more fitting for a learned familiar than Buttons. It sounds important.”
Finally. Some recognition of my true nature.
“But I still think Buttons suits you better,” Liora continued. “You’re just too adorable to be a fearsome necromancer.”
I sighed inwardly. Perhaps being an adorable house cat wasn’t the worst fate imaginable. At least Liora had real power—power that would have gained her instant acceptance to any magical institution in the realm. Goodwife Martha made excellent porridge, and Rilvur... well, Rilvur was still conveniently sized for future magical endeavors.
“Besides,” Liora whispered, “now that I know who you really are, we can work on some truly fascinating projects.”
Her smile was absolutely wicked, worthy of any graduate from Dumrul’s School for Dark Arts.
Maybe being dead—and cat-shaped—was going to be more interesting than I’d thought. Especially at the Royal Academy of Magical Arts, where I finally belonged, even if I did have to purr for my supper. Life—or death—has a way of working out sometimes.
*The End*
