Patsifer and the Falls Dragon, Part One

[This is the fifth book in a series of seven that I wrote, printed and bound as gifts for family and friends between 1993 and 2009. This book was written on the December threshold of Y2K, in that season of breathless wondering if the World as we know it will survive. In August of 1999, I met the gentleman, Bentley, with whom I would weather that threshold, and was delighted that he had two cats, since I was, by that time, catless. Patsifer and Abbyca were wonderful company, and Shelburne Falls, their home, was a magical place. 

The vulnerable part of this book, for me, is that I’m part dragon. At that time in my life, my work as a therapist became more focused on working with clients presenting with chronically suicidal and self-harming behavior. Deep parts of me were moved and began to stir… ]

Patsifer was curled up, sound asleep on the salmon pink couch in a Victorian drawing room, with dark green flowered wallpaper. Lace curtains hung at the windows, and the afternoon sun slanted in, falling across a comfortable heap of books, catalogues, a dish of brownie crumbs, and a laptop computer. Patsifer, herself, was a puddle of calico fur with pink-padded paws stretched over her head. Napping deeply, with the particular abandon of a young and healthy house cat, she twitched once or twice, and then leapt into the air with a squeak, limbs and tail outstretched. 

Landing awkwardly on the Oriental rug, Patsifer sat for a moment, and soothed herself with a moistened paw to the ear, and then padded off through the dining room, to look for her sister. Abbyca, who enjoyed playing with her food, was floating kibbles in the water dish. Patsifer attracted her attention with a mild tongue lash across her ample grey rump. 

“I had that dream again only this time it dumped the Mole Hollow Candle Shop into the falls and I got soaking wet.” She looked askance at the puddles from Abbyca's sport in the water dish. “Would you please come with me to see what is happening down there by the pot holes? You're so much better around the water than I.” 

Abbyca responded to the appeal in Patsifer's eyes, knowing herself to have the lion's share of moxie, agreed. “OK, I'll just have a bit of a snack for fortification and then we'll go.” 

Abbyca and Patsifer lived in the village of Shelburne Falls, a small New England town, exceptional for several features of the landscape. It is situated within a circle of hills, so that its size is forever limited,  its quaint historical charm thus guaranteed. 

It also surrounds a sort of step in the Deerfield River, a unique rock formation left by a glacier millions of years ago. These are called, unceremoniously, the Potholes. Local history has it that the potholes and the waters that flow through them have always been a place of power in a center of community. Long ago, three warring tribes of indigenous people living here agreed that the territory within a day's walk of the falls belonged to no one and was shared by all as a place of trade, hunting, and communing with gods. 

This designation holds true today. In the summer, tour buses and vacationers, obedient to their guidebooks, make their way down the Mohawk Trail and pull into Shelburn Falls to hunt, trade and commune with gods. This generally takes the form of walking up and down three blocks of Bridge Street, purchasing tourist items and local art, consuming quantities of ice cream and tofu pups, and photographing one another.

 Luckily, Abbyca and Patsifer were setting out on a dreary Sunday in October when most of the tourists, except foreigners on bargain package tours, had all returned whence they came. They made their way indirectly, as cats do, through the few blocks of town to the steep, wooded banks of the river and down to the rocks behind the Mole Hollow Candle Shop, the one that had crashed so spectacularly into the water in Patsifer’s dream. 

Mole Hollow Candle Shop still stood, perched precariously on the edge of the falls, a temple of commerce with the best view of the pot holes. Ages ago, the Deerfield River was dammed at the top of the natural falls, narrowing the falls and exposing a valley of glacial granite, smoothed into undulating humps and shelves, deeply marked with white and golden quartz in patterns like the stripes on a fat cat's belly. 

Among these humps and shelves, appearing apparently without rhyme or reason, are pot holes, smooth, circular openings in the stone, worn in by millennia of gravelly whirlpools. Some are the size of bird baths, shallow puddles lined with green slime. The largest are the size of a small elevator shaft, tunneling deep into the rock, disappearing into the river's flow. 

During the summer months, children and others with thermal insensitivity, and particularly vague concepts of mortality, slide, jump, splash, and dive among the falls and potholes, especially when rain has been heavy and the water level is high. Everyone else wanders around on the rocks exercising cameras, and occasionally shedding litter. 

At present, however, the rocks around the falls were sparsely populated, and only a few people milled about on the overlook in front of Mole Hollow where Abbyca and Patsifer tucked themselves in between the pilings under the building’s foundation. Sniffing the breeze, Patsifer confided to Abbyca:  “I want to see if we can find the dreamer, the creature who is dreaming the dreams that I receive.” Like some animals, and some people, Patsifer had the gift of being able to receive, like a radio picking up waves, dreams and sometimes thoughts and feelings of others around her. Abbyca privately felt that this nonsense could be prevented with an adequate diet and felt a bit smug in her robust appetite and undisturbed sleep. But she also had a deep respect for Patsifer’s sensitivity, which made her an unsurpassable hunter and gave her uncanny insight into the character of their companion Bentley, the person who provides kibbles and regulates the Opening of the Door. “I think if we can just go down there to the rocks and sniff around… I'm pretty sure the dreamer is down there because all the dreams begin there.” 

“But how will we recognize it? What does it look like?” Abbyca queried.

 “How would I know? I always dream from the dreamer's point of view. The only thing I know is that its reflection in the water is huge and spread out almost like a bird.” Patsifer began to pick her way down the bank to the granite. Abbyca followed, confident, thinking: “Great, I can do birds,” and reminisced warmly about the unwary blue jay she had taken last week. 

Patsifer wandered out across the rocks, well away from the spray, and listened with all her senses, nose and whiskers quivering, ears alert and turning, and feeling the rock with the pads of her paws. From below, she felt a deep rumbling hum in the rock, getting stronger as she moved forward. Suddenly a jolt ran through the rock beneath her, and just before her, a crevice shifted and an oval reptilian head lifted up from the stone, of identical texture, gray and rough. The huge liquid eye blinked and narrowed as the head swung wide of the crevice. 

Patsifer made herself very small and watched as a long ridged neck followed. Then massive shoulders appeared above a sinewy torso and with a mighty heave and stagger the dragon emerged, as though the rocks themselves had become animate. It was an awesome beast with deep muscled limbs, a rough granite hide striped with layers of unimaginable time and an ancient, tragic face with uncomprehending eyes. On one haunch Patifer saw the graffiti, ‘Jason and Courtney ‘97’ written in pink spray paint, and from behind the dragon's cavernous ear rolled a Budweiser can and a small shower of cigarette butts. 

It slowly shook its head and stood for a moment gazing about and blinking in the bleak sunlight. It caught sight of Patsifer, and Abbayca, who was flattened on the rock behind her. The dragon lowered its great head, ears pricking forward and peered down at them, luminous eyes now glinting green and puzzled. Both cats began to hiss, crouching low, with ears flattened, and backing up at the same time. The dragon, startled, hissed also, but without conviction. 

Overwhelmed, the cats turned and ran, whisking back up under the pilings of Mole Hollow. Each of them would have made a tidy mouthful had the dragon been feeling peckish. 

Abbyca panted, “I guess that's your dreamer, right? Hardly a very manageable size for conversation is it?” Patsifer just stood quivering, fur standing on end, her eyes wide and fixed on the dragon. 

The dragon watched them for a moment and then noticed a small group of Japanese tourists who were taking each other's picture. They were oblivious of the huge beast, the size of a backhoe, crouching nearby. The dragon peered at them, blinking and growling, and began to flex and shift its weight from paw to paw, wriggling its hind quarters, almost like a cat stalking a bird. This made no impression on the tourists who bowed to each other and passed the camera with great ceremony. Lashing its massive tail, it swiped aside the camera bags and leapt ponderously into the air, vast wings unfolding and beating down great gusts of wind. The tourists lost their hats and scrambled after them in disarray, never noticing the great hovering dragon, nor hearing its frustrated howl ten times louder than the rushing falls. 

Patsifer, and Abbyca crept out and watched as the dragon drifted towards the dam, glaring down at a few teenagers lounging on picnic tables in front of Mole Hollow. One of them, who appeared to be a highly elongated six year old with green hair, flipped his cigarette butt over the parapet in the dragon's direction, but noticed the gray monster not at all. 

Howling again, the dragon shot up into the air, straining now for speed and height. The cats scampered nimbly along the retaining wall up to the dam to watch its progress. From hundreds of feet up, the dragon turned and dove down, aiming for the bridge that crosses the river at the widest point above the dam. With astonishing dexterity, it dove under the bridge, spreading wide its massive wings and tucking up its paws and hind quarters, skimming the water to come up on the other side, over the top of the bridge so fast that the blue Toyota pickup truck that happened to be driving across at that moment got drenched in the backwash. It slowed, but did not stop. 

The dragon shook itself in mid air and swooped low along the Bridge of Flowers, a pedestrian bridge that also crosses the river upstream from the other. Several white haired ladies could be heard to squeal “Wheeeeeee” as they protected their coiffures from the breeze and spray in the dragon's wake, but even they just continued to chatter and stride crisply along to McCusker's market. Turning slowly back, the dragon landed ponderously in the middle of Bridge Street, just before the bridge, and sat there, panting dejectedly. The cats, who had crept along the embankment to follow this display, crouched out of view under a car. 

Patifer whispered to Abbyca. "It seems to want attention. It was much more destructive in its dreams, though. There was one dream where it flew down at street level and ripped out all the power lines and street lights. There were showers of sparks everywhere, and people screaming and running in all directions, kind of like those movies Bentley watches in the middle of the night when he can't sleep. It doesn't seem to be attracting any attention today, except from us, does it?” 

Abbyca had regrained her equanimity and was losing patience with the giant beast's plight. “Why doesn't it just mind its own business and do some hunting? You’d think it would be hungry after that long hibernation.” 

The dragon, still gloomy in the middle of the street, rose up to challenge a car coming towards it. It stood on its hind legs, spread its wings and spiky-clawed fore paws, and snarled menacingly at the green jeep Cherokee, which kept rolling forward. The dragon lunged thunderously toward it, lashing its tail, swinging its massive head from side to side. The car slowed, seemed to pause, and then pulled carefully into a parking place in front of the Art Bank. A petite blond woman in a jean jacket hopped out. She rummaged in her purse for some coins, oblivious to the magnificent threat, a car length away. She fed the parking meter, then skipped up the steps and disappeared inside. Bewildered and deflated the dragon flopped forward on all fours again, hissing sadly.

By this time, the cats had been making their way down the street under parked cars, keeping the dragon in view. On the other side of the street a child of seven or eight had come out of the candy shop holding an ice cream cone. The flavor was Moose Tracks in a waffle cone with an obscene amount of orange sprinkles stuck on top. Concentrating on this marvel of confection, the child wandered along the sidewalk away from the dragon. Perking up, the dragon crouched low and padded over to the sidewalk, slinking up behind the child and stretching its long neck over her shoulder to make a snap of its huge jaws at the ice cream cone. Just at that moment, the day-glow edifice collapsed, the ball of ice cream landing splat at the child's feet. The cats could hear her gasp of despair, as she turned abruptly, almost crashing into the dragon's granite chest, and fled blindly back to the candy shop, holding her empty cone, to beg for a repair of her loss. 

The dragon, defeated yet again, rested its head on the handicapped parking sign and shed a few caustic tears, which burned holes in the concrete, and were later dismissed as frost damage.

Patsifer, a timid soul generally, crept out from under the car and approached the dragon. She hopped up onto the windowsill of the town hall, which brought her about level with the dragon's face. She waited, her tail curled around her paws until it had finished its tears. It looked at her, and she met its sad eyes with serene feline regard. It peered at Patsifer, its head tilting to one side, then the other, then moving close, almost nose to nose, with a primal wordless plea as old as time and as familiar as air. Both cat and dragon breathed slowly for a long, long moment. When it ended, the dragon closed its eyes and sighed deeply. Satisfied, Pastifer hopped down, and with her tail straight up in the air, padded off up Bridge Street towards home. Abbyca, still under the car, was mystified. “Patsifer is so unpredictable,” she said to herself. “First she's all skittery about a little water and then she's looking a dragon in the eye, nose to nose!” 

Next week: In the thrilling conclusion to Patsifer and the Falls Dragon, Part Two: Patsifer goes online and undercover to facilitate dragon rescue procedures in classic feline style.